Beguiled Read online

  He smiled, and damn, that quick grin had a way of making her knees wobble. Good thing he didn’t do it very often.

  “They do,” he told her. “The banshee are demanding a wider territory now. They’ve been in Ireland for millennia. They want to move to the New World.”

  “The New World?” Maggie laughed and turned back to the glass, where she painted a frothy red ribbon at the base of a Christmas wreath. “Who’re you? Columbus? It’s not the New World, Culhane.”

  “It is to us,” he muttered, throwing a quick glance up and down the street.

  “Fine,” she said, grabbing the yellow paint and a fine-line brush to lay in candle flames. “Let ’em leave Ireland. What do I care?”

  He reached out as if to grab her again, then noted the wet paint dotting her skin and rethought it. “Maggie, this is what I have been warning you about. You cannot make decisions so blithely. You must learn. The banshee cannot leave Ireland for here. If they do, it will create a war with the Cree-An.”

  “The who?”

  Grumbling under his breath, Culhane shook his hair back from his face and said, “The Cree-An have been haunting this ground for centuries. If the banshee invade, the war will spill into the world of human dreams, and the nightmares they cause will follow mortals into the waking.”

  “Freaking nightmare faeries now?” Maggie groaned, and looked up and down the suddenly deserted street as if looking for an escape. She didn’t find one. Though for the first time, she wondered where everyone had gone. She didn’t even hear the low rumble of skateboard wheels on cement anymore. Weird.

  “You just made my point about all of this, Culhane. I don’t know Otherworld. Don’t have a clue about the Fae.” And that was the bottom line, Maggie told herself.Why she couldn’t bring herself to be a queen. How could she be?

  “I am willing to teach you,” he ground out in a tight, low tone.

  “And that will take how long?” Maggie looked down into the red paint and stirred it so that it wouldn’t develop a dried-out skin across its surface. “You want me to sit on a throne and make decisions that affect not only your world, but mine, too. I can’t do it.”

  “Maggie . . .”

  She lifted her gaze to his, and staring into those pale green eyes, she finally managed to say, “What if I screw it up? What if what I do causes a war?” Hearing the words spoken aloud made her shake her head. “No way. I can’t risk it. And you shouldn’t want me to.”

  Culhane moved closer and Maggie breathed in the clean, almost foresty scent of him. Did he have to smell so damn good? Wasn’t it enough that just looking at him could make the most stalwart feminist throw all of her ideals out the window and beg him to take her? Culhane was a walking, talking orgasm-in-waiting and being this close to him made Maggie’s hormones jangle so loud, her brain practically shut down.

  “You are the destined Queen, Maggie,” he reminded her for the twelve thousandth time. “Your reign was foretold.”

  She choked out a half laugh. She knew what he said was true. She felt drawn to Otherworld now. But that didn’t mean she was comfortable with her role. How could she be? Maggie hadn’t been raised to believe in the Fae. She’d always assumed her grandmother’s stories were just that. Stories. And even if she had believed, knowing about the Fae would not have prepared her to be their Queen.

  Despite the gleam of confidence in Culhane’s eyes when he looked at her, Maggie was afraid she just wasn’t up to the challenge of what he expected her to be. Yes, she was a strong, independent woman. A woman of the twenty-first century, master of her fate, captain of her soul, owner of her own business. But that didn’t make her queen material, now, did it?

  “I don’t suppose that prophecy of yours said how my ‘reign’ would turn out,” she said.

  “No. Only that you would be Queen. The rest of your fate is up to you. You must write your future, as we all must.”

  “Fabulous.”

  He smiled, apparently guessing where her muddled thoughts were taking her. “We make our futures what we will, Maggie. Fate twists our paths and some things are immutable.” Culhane shrugged his wide shoulders. “Your destiny was to become Queen. It is up to you what you make of it.”

  “But no pressure.”

  “You will be a great queen, Maggie. You’ve the heart for it. The strength for it.” He lifted one hand to tuck a strand of dark auburn hair behind her slightly pointy ear. “We make our own destinies. We forge the future, one decision at a time.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she admitted.

  “I am here with you, Maggie. We will work together.”

  Yes, she thought, but he’d spent two hundred years at Queen Mab’s side, too. And what had that gotten the former queen? Deposed and thrown out a window into the void between dimensions, that’s what.

  “Together? For how long?”

  One corner of his amazing mouth tipped up and something inside her fisted. “For as long as we will it. The Fae are immortal, Maggie. And you are quickly becoming completely Fae. Soon your mortality will drop away.”

  “Along with my humanity, huh?” She wrapped her arms around herself and scraped her paint-spattered hands up and down her arms to battle a sudden chill. “What if I don’t want to stop being human?”

  “In that, you’ve no choice at all,” he told her, lifting his chin and looking down at her with the fierce, proud expression she’d come to know so well. “You will be Fae. You must accept it and your new duties.”

  Maggie had already known that she had no way out. No way to backtrack and undo any of this. The only path open to her was the one that led straight ahead. Into unknown territory.

  “Being Queen requires the art of compromise,” he told her briskly. “Start with this. I suggest you give the banshee England. The Cree-An do not like the British. They think them unimaginative and old-world.”

  Maggie laughed shortly. “Faery prejudice?”

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” Culhane said, moving in even closer to her, crowding Maggie enough that she could feel heat pouring off his body and reaching for hers.

  “You say that,” she told him, taking a step back to put a little distance between herself and the delicious scent of Culhane. “But you really don’t get it. You can’t possibly. You’ve been alive for thousands of years, Culhane. I’m thirty. You’ve always been Fae. I’m human.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “You will learn, Maggie. You will be the queen destiny has named you.”

  “What if I don’t want to be?” she countered. She held her breath and risked looking directly into his eyes again. Oh God, how could she be expected to think when he looked as he did? When his eyes locked with hers? When his scent surrounded her so she couldn’t think straight? Shaking her head, she muttered, “What if all I want is to be me, Maggie Donovan, failed artist and glass painter extraordinaire?”

  His hands moved to cup her face, and Maggie felt that touch right down to the soles of her feet. Heat simmered and slid throughout her body like flames dancing on the surface of spilled gasoline. Oh, that wasn’t a good sign, she thought. Why did it have to be Culhane who could turn her into a puddle of needy goo? Why couldn’t she have fallen for a nice plumber? Why did it have to be a Fae Warrior who made her want to toss her panties into the air?

  “You are so much more than just Maggie Donovan. It is in your blood, your heart, your very soul.” He bent his head and his breath brushed her cheek. “You are the one, Maggie. The only one—”

  The one. The one for him? Or the one for Otherworld?

  Which did he mean? And how would she ever know for sure?

  At that moment, one corner of her mind whispered, did it matter? He was here. Right in front of her. Torturing her with his nearness, making her want things she knew she shouldn’t want. But maybe he was right, she thought as he drew nearer. Maybe she could do this. Maybe it was all meant to be. Otherworld. Him. Her. Them.

 
Maybe . . . She leaned into him. Her eyes closed, her breath caught, her insides went into a flash burn and Maggie felt herself wanting to believe. Wanting to let herself . . .

  “We’ve got a problem,” a woman announced, shattering the spell weaving itself between them.

  “Damn it!” Maggie hissed out a curse aimed at fate or whatever else was interrupting her when she’d finally decided to take that long, luscious leap into Culhane’s arms; then she looked past her warrior to see her sister, Nora, looking pretty pukey, leaning up against her Fae lover. Worry eclipsed whatever had been building inside her, so Maggie pushed away from Culhane and took a few steps toward her sister.

  “Nora? What’s wrong? What’s going on?” She looked up and down the empty street again and demanded, “And where did the rest of the world go?”

  “They did not go anywhere,” Culhane grumbled, glaring at the other Fae male even as he fisted his hand around the silver-bladed knife tucked into his belt. “Quinn has enchanted all of us, which he should not have done. Using magic in this world is always dangerous. You call attention where none should be drawn.”

  “Better than having people watch me float,” Nora muttered, and swallowed hard, lifting one hand to her mouth. “Oh God, my moons are soooo out of phase.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes and fought for patience. Nora had always been the one in the family to depend on fortune-tellers, horoscopes, spiritual advisers and the cleansing of her auras. Since discovering that she was part-Fae, her fascination with all things mystical had only gotten worse. But at the moment, Nora just looked awful.

  “God, Nora, you look crappy.”

  Nora gave her a tight grimace.

  “What kind of disease did you pick up in Otherworld, anyway? It’s been nearly a week and you’re still no better. What is going on here?” Maggie looked from Nora to Culhane to Quinn. Impatience simmered and battled with the fear that she was the only one who didn’t know what was happening. “If I’m the damn Queen, somebody talk to me.”

  “Get off me, Your Freaking Majesty,” Nora snapped. “I’m feeling pukey and pregnant right now, so just back off.”

  “Pregnant?” Maggie shook her head and blinked at her sister. “You’re pregnant?”

  “I am proud,” Quinn announced.

  “I’m sick,” Nora moaned.

  “I’m speechless,” Culhane added.

  “Well, I’m not,” Maggie yelled, turning on him. “If Faery sperm is that fast acting, you can just keep your sexy Fae body far, far away from me!”

  Chapter Two

  A month ago, Maggie’s life had been falling into a rut. She even remembered resenting that fact. Now, in retrospect, that rut looked damn inviting. She had her house in a small town on the California coast. She had a sister, a niece and a dog devoted to sleeping its life away. She had a good business, painting signs and holiday decorations on storefront windows and enough time to paint the landscapes and portraits that fed her soul. Mostly, what she’d had in her life was all normal.

  Now, not so much.

  And as an extra, added bonus, it seemed she was going to have a Fae niece or nephew, on top of everything else.

  The knots in her stomach twisted even tighter. “This is so not what I needed to hear today.”

  “How do you think I feel?” Nora said, leaning against her lover, Quinn Terhune. The tall, blond Fae Warrior, who looked like an ancient Viking, draped one arm around her shoulder and bent nearly in half to press a kiss to the top of her head.

  “Did you know about this?” Maggie asked, turning on Culhane.

  “No, I did not.” His gaze was fixed on his fellow warrior, but Quinn was too wrapped up in Nora to notice.

  Maggie’s head was spinning. She didn’t know what to make of this latest situation, what to think, what to do. Nora had leaped into the whole Fae heritage thing with both feet the minute she’d heard about it. She had been thrilled to discover that their grandmother’s stories about the Fae lover who had impregnated her were all true. Nora had been eager to explore her roots and had fallen hard for Quinn, the warrior Culhane had once assigned to watch over her.

  Apparently though, she’d moved from concentrating on her roots to sprouting a whole new branch.

  Nora’s daughter, Eileen, was even more into this stuff. She spent half her time on the Internet, researching the Fae, and the rest of her time was spent campaigning for Maggie to use her powers as Queen to make Eileen a full-Fae. Maggie didn’t even know if that was possible and wouldn’t do it even if it were.

  Eileen and Nora looked at the new things in their lives and saw only the magic. Maggie, on the other hand, had been faced with some of the less-pleasant aspects of dealing with the Fae.

  Heck, she was barely healed from her fight with Mab. And Mab wasn’t really dead. She wasn’t even actually gone. She was just . . . away. And one of these days, Maggie knew the tiny blond queen with the mad eyes would come back. And Maggie and her family would be on the top of Mab’s hit list.

  Yet no one else seemed to be worried.

  Oh, no. She was the only Donovan woman who was fighting the whole Fae invasion thing tooth and nail. To everybody else, magic looked like a good time and Otherworld was just a great vacation spot. Amazing, Maggie thought, that she had become the voice of reason in the family. How was she supposed to protect her family when they kept getting pulled deeper and deeper into Otherworld?

  “Maggie!” Nora’s voice was sharp and loud. “Hello? I’m having a problem here.”

  “Yeah, I get it.” Maggie shot Culhane a dirty look because she was sure he’d known all about this pregnancy. He knew everything else that went on, didn’t he? But the warrior wasn’t important at the moment—she’d deal with him later. For now, she looked at her sister. “Are you okay with this?”

  Nora’s milk white complexion paled even further, but her mouth curved into a half smile. “I really am, Mags,” she said, then swallowed hard. “You know I love being pregnant. But this one’s a little different—”

  “I’ll say,” Maggie muttered.

  Nora continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “So Quinn’s taking me to see someone because I just feel so . . .”

  Well, that got Maggie’s attention.

  “Nora, you can’t go to a doctor. They’ll do a blood test, and God knows what they’ll find,” Maggie said, her mind building an image of Nora on the front page of a grocery store tabloid with a headline that read WOMAN PREGNANT WITH FAIRY—complete with sketches of a baby with wings. Oh God, would it have wings? Female Fae could fly, but she’d never seen wings on Mab, and—so not important at the moment.

  Determinedly, she shook that disturbing little vision away. “And even if your blood test isn’t all wonky, what happens if you float in front of the doctor?”

  “Not a mortal doctor.” Quinn looked horrified at the idea. Think you I would allow one of your medieval torturers to put his hands on my woman?”

  Medieval? Well, to the millennia-old Fae, that’s probably just what human doctors looked like, Maggie guessed; then she realized what else he’d said. His woman. Not a huge surprise, Maggie thought, since Quinn and Nora had practically been joined at the hip for the last few weeks—not to mention the months they’d spent together in Otherworld. But still, seeing Quinn’s obvious protectiveness toward Nora made Maggie feel just a little bit . . . jealous. And she couldn’t help sliding a sideways glance at Culhane. But he wasn’t looking at her; he was still glaring at his fellow warrior with a fierceness that would have made Maggie’s knees quiver if it had been aimed at her.

  Quinn spoke again, his deep voice rolling out around them like thunder. “I’m taking Nora to Otherworld.” He stared hard, first at Maggie, then at Culhane, as if daring either of them to challenge him. When they didn’t, he continued. “The Fae women can tell her much about carrying a Fae child.”

  Sounded like a good idea to Maggie. Still, she had to ask. “Why don’t you take her to a Fae doctor or something?”

  “There ar
e no Fae doctors,” Culhane muttered. “We do not become ill.”

  “Oh. Well, how nice for you.” Imagine that. Never getting sick. Not to mention not aging. She already knew Culhane was thousands of years old and didn’t look a day over thirty-five. That thought had given her a few sleepless nights, planning Botox injections and maybe a facelift in a few years, but now that she was turning Fae, she probably wouldn’t need to worry about that, would she? Oh God. Now she’d worry about that.

  Who needed to live forever?

  Back burner, she told herself. Stay in the now. And at the moment, she wasn’t real thrilled with the idea of her sister spending even more time in the Faery dimension. After all, a few weeks in Otherworld had gotten Nora into this mess in the first place. What choice did they have, though?

  “I need you to pick Eileen up from school,” Nora was saying.

  “What? Oh. Right. Of course. Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s early day. She’s out of class at two,” Nora said.

  Maggie glanced at her wristwatch. Eleven o’clock now; she might be able to squeeze in her other two windows before picking Eileen up. “I’ll take care of it. But you’re coming back, right? No long vacation this time?”

  “I’ll be back tonight,” Nora said, then turned her face into Quinn’s chest.The warrior wrapped his arms around her and nodded to Maggie and Culhane. Their outlines blurred, shimmered briefly and they were gone.

  “I need to learn how to do that,” Maggie muttered. But then there were lots of things she had to learn. Damn it.

  With Quinn’s enchantment gone, suddenly the sounds of the street rose up around them again, the noise level horrific after the hushed silence Quinn’s spell had provided. Maggie winced as the growl of skateboard wheels reached her, a car horn blared repeatedly and from somewhere nearby, a radio blasted out a classic Rolling Stones tune.

  “Maggie—”

  He was still beside her. The Fae Warrior she spent far too much time thinking about. But Maggie was in no mood at the moment to pick up where they’d left off. In fact, she was starting to think that Nora’s interrupting what might have been a toe-curling kiss had been a very good thing. She had to stay focused. Not just on her life here, in Castle Bay, but on her new duties as Queen, and keeping her family safe as Otherworld interfered with their normal lives. And if that meant locking her knees together whenever Culhane was around, well then, she’d just have to find a way to live with that.