Bedeviled Read online

“That’s so rank.”

  “It’s a hard, hard life.”

  “It’s so not fair. Amber wears makeup,” Eileen pointed out. “Her mom cares about how Amber looks.”

  “Hmm. Let’s call Amber’s mom. Maybe she’ll adopt you.”

  “Ha-ha.” Eileen slumped down into her seat so low she could barely look out the windshield. Nobody pouted better than a Donovan.

  Maggie steered the car toward Pacific Coast Highway and tried to ignore the deep sighs of depression coming from alongside her.

  “How was school?”

  “Same as always,” Eileen said with a dramatic groan. “Big building filled with boredom.”

  “Good to know some things don’t change.” Maggie narrowly avoided a near collision with a delivery truck whose driver was text-messaging someone—she hoped it was a driving school—and said, “Do you have your cell phone with you?”

  “Am I breathing?” Eileen dug the small dark red phone out of the pocket of her jeans and turned it on. “Why?”

  Maggie kept her gaze on traffic and headed for home. “I need you to call Sam’s Hardware. Get the number from Information. I have to reschedule the paint job.”

  “Thought you were doing it this morning.”

  “Something came up.” Understatement of the century.

  Eileen shrugged, got the number and dialed it, then handed Maggie the phone. She held it gingerly, half expecting it to shatter, as her steering wheel had.

  “Hardware,” a deep voice announced.

  “Hey, Sam? Maggie.”

  “Where were you?” he demanded. “Weren’t you supposed to be here this morning?”

  She winced, moved into the left lane and hit her blinker. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but something came up unexpectedly.”

  Had it ever.

  “It’s almost Thanksgiving, Maggie,” Sam announced, as if he were telling her something she didn’t know. “If I don’t get my Christmas scenes up soon, I’ll be the only shop on Main Street looking like the damn Grinch.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Would I let that happen to you?”

  “What’s wrong with your steering wheel?” Eileen asked.

  She glanced at her niece. “Nothing. An accident.”

  “You had an accident?” Sam blurted. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Sure, fine. She saw people getting eaten every day. She was good. Maggie pulled into the driveway of her house and turned off the engine. “Look, Sam, I’ll be there tomorrow morning for sure. Snowmen, elves, candles and wreaths, all designed to make you look like Father Christmas.”

  “Good, ’cause you know people won’t come in here and spend money unless I’m a nice guy, God damn it.”

  Maggie shook her head. Sam was grouchy, demanding and irritating, and everyone in town knew it. He also was the only hardware store for miles, since Castle Bay, California, was way too small to attract one of those giant home stores.

  But if Sam wanted to think of himself as a sweet-heart, she was willing to play into his delusions. Painting the wide bank of windows on his store was a two-hundred-dollar job.

  “Right, Got it. I’ll be there.” She hung up, gingerly handed the phone to Eileen and gently pulled up the emergency brake.

  “So who broke the steering wheel?”

  “Me,” she said. “And before you ask, I don’t know how. It just . . . happened.”

  “Well, that’s pretty weird.” Eileen picked up her backpack, opened her car door and got out, still talking. “You know, the average adult female uses only twenty percent of her body muscle mass.”

  Maggie sighed. Eileen loved a good statistic and was forever quoting some obscure data. She claimed to get most of her information off the Internet, like any other good cyber-friendly preteen, but Maggie thought she made up most of them. Climbing out of her car, she followed Eileen down the shaded drive to the back of the house.

  Normalcy seeped into her system as she listened to the everyday sounds of her neighborhood. The narrow street was crowded with trees so old they were tearing up the sidewalks. But every time the city tried to rip up the offending trees, the locals came out with lawn chairs, parked themselves beneath the giant maples and refused to move.

  The shade was thick, the lawns were tidy and the houses were old.

  Maggie’s place was almost a hundred years old. Her family had lived in the house for nearly sixty of those years, and her grandfather had done some pretty quirky remodeling. For example, the front door looked perfectly fine from the outside. Except for the fact that it didn’t open. Her grandfather had paneled right over the opening nearly twenty years ago. Why? Good question. One he’d never answered, along with why he’d thought turning his house into a miniature Winchester Mystery House was a good plan.

  But Grandpa had liked working with wood, and Grandma always said it kept him out of her hair.

  The house itself was wood-framed, California bungalow style, with a stone porch and wide windows. Ancient maple and oak trees studded the front and backyards and shaded both the main house and the guesthouse her grandfather built so that he could leave Grandma and still be around. He’d filled the guesthouse and the main house with what he always called “whimsy.”

  Maggie smiled to herself. Whimsy didn’t even come close. There were doors that opened into walls. A tiny staircase that went nowhere. Windows that didn’t open and secret passages that led from bedrooms to kitchens to living rooms. As kids, she and Nora had loved living here. There was always a new mystery to be uncovered, and they had spent hours discovering hidey-holes.

  Eileen handed Maggie her backpack. “I’m gonna go get my sweatshirt from home; then I’ll be right back.” She stopped, looked over her shoulder and said, “We do have cookies, right?”

  Maggie laughed. “Am I alive?”

  Eileen nodded and raced across the yard.

  “Hey,” Maggie yelled. “Want hot chocolate?”

  “With cookies?”

  “Of course!” Maggie shook her head. When had she not had cookies? She unlocked her back door, stepped into the quiet of her kitchen and took a breath. The room was cozy, with plenty of space. This was the one place in either house that Grandpa hadn’t been allowed to putter in. So the counters, cabinets and floors were all just as they should be—no surprises.

  There was a pedestal table in the center of the room and four chairs drawn up to it. The walls were a bright yellow that made even a dark day like today seem a little brighter. Maggie smiled to herself and felt a calm begin to seep into her bones. Good to be home. With Eileen. Dealing with hot chocolate and cookies.

  If she just kept moving and didn’t stop to think, maybe she could stop remembering that scene in Joe’s office. Glancing down at her fingers she noticed that the glow thing was fading, and she hoped that when it went it took the memories along with it. Dropping her purse onto the pedestal table, she headed for the refrigerator to get the milk for hot chocolate.

  That was when she felt it.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Two

  Fear grabbed the base of Maggie’s throat, and she took in the cold air drifting from the fridge in small, desperate gulps. The back door hadn’t opened, so she knew it wasn’t Eileen in the room with her. God, she didn’t want to look behind her. What if it was another one of those things?

  What if something had followed her?

  God. What if it planned to eat her and then get Eileen?

  No way.

  Nobody was going to mess with her niece. Poor old boring Joe was one thing. But Eileen was just a kid—and, until Nora got home, hers to protect.

  She couldn’t just stand here in front of an open refrigerator for the rest of her life, Maggie told herself firmly. Eileen notwithstanding, it was damn cold. So she did the only thing she could think of: She reached in, grabbed the brand-new, unopened gallon jug of milk and spun around abruptly, ready to swing that heavy jug at . . . a hunk?

  “Holy hot guy, Batman.”

 
“What?”

  She’d scream in a minute or so, but first . . . wow. Even his deep voice was gorgeous. His gaze met hers, and Maggie felt something almost electric zap through her like a lightning bolt. Then it was gone again, as though somebody had turned off her switch. Just as well. She really didn’t need another man at the moment. Especially one who looked like a pirate right off the cover of a romance novel. And, let’s not forget . . . a burglar.

  “Get out,” she ordered, but her voice came out in a strangled whisper.

  He frowned at her, and even frowning, he was the kind of guy women probably tossed their bras and panties at. Her hormones did a quick two-step before she smacked them back into line. It wasn’t easy.

  He was tall enough that his head nearly hit the ceiling. His long black hair framed a face that looked tough and mean and sort of familiar somehow. Which was weird, because if she’d ever run into this guy before, she sooo would have remembered. He was wearing a dark green shirt tucked into brown suede pants. His knee-high, dark brown leather boots were flat soled and were stitched with what looked like gold thread. Around his waist there was a wide leather belt with a knife sheathed in a scabbard.

  Okay, gorgeous and clearly dangerous.

  But it was his eyes that grabbed her. They were pale, pale green. The eyes she’d seen when those visions had raced through her mind earlier.

  “What the hell is going on with me today?”

  “Maggie Donovan?”

  “How do you know me? How’d you get in here?” Cold air was still wafting out from behind her, sending a chill over her backside that seeped right down into her bones. Weird, because there was a wall of heat coming from her gorgeous intruder that was blasting her from the front.

  Could she simultaneously combust and freeze?

  “We must talk,” he told her. “It’s your time.”

  “My time? My time for what? No, never mind. Don’t want to know. Just get out. I have a dog. . . .” Just where the hell was her dog, anyway? “She doesn’t like intruders. She’ll bite your ass.” Hmm. Hormone issues again. Her grip on the milk jug tightened, and she really hoped she didn’t break it before she could use it like a weapon.

  “You talk too much.”

  “Thanks so much for your input. Maybe you didn’t hear me tell you to get out. I’ve got a silent alarm that goes directly to the police station.” Yes, a lie, but Maggie wasn’t very concerned about playing fair with an intruder. “They’re probably on the way right now, so don’t even try to hurt me.”

  “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you.”

  “Oh, I bet you tell that to all your victims.”

  “Can’t you be silent?”

  “Why should I be? It’s my house, and you’re awfully snotty for a pretty burglar.”

  “Snotty?” He snarled the word. “Do you know who I am?”

  “No. That’s the point. I don’t know who the hell you are, or why you’re in my house or even why my dog isn’t here chewing on you!”

  “I’ve never known a female like you.”

  “Am I supposed to care?” she snapped. Her gaze whipped around the kitchen as she wondered if the walls were somehow shrinking. He seemed to be taking up a lot of space. “You need to get the hell out of my house.”

  He planted both hands on his hips and braced those incredibly long legs of his wide apart. Damn.

  “I felt the power shift this morning. It’s finally happened, and it’s time for you to accept your destiny.”

  She shook her head. “Are you serious? A burglar wants to talk about my destiny? I don’t have a destiny. I’m pretty much a destiny-free zone.”

  “Burglar?” he repeated, fury filling his features with a dark red flush that only made his eyes look paler, more haunting. “You believe I’m a thief?”

  “What’m I supposed to think? I didn’t invite you in. Yet here you are, and you’re carrying a knife.” Maybe she shouldn’t have brought that up.

  “You insult me.”

  “Oh, I insulted you?” Maggie muttered, then told herself to stop talking to the man. Did she really want to go out of her way to anger an armed intruder? Was that really the wise choice here?

  “You try me, Maggie Donovan.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He frowned again, and she noticed how easily his features shifted into that expression.

  “I will start again. I’ve come to talk to you. It’s your time, and you must—”

  “The only must around here is you leaving. I don’t have to talk to you. Who the hell are you?”

  “I am—”

  “And what do you mean, my time?” Her arm was starting to hurt with the weight of the gallon milk jug dragging on her. But she couldn’t put it down. Some kind of weapon was better than nothing.

  “If you could stop talking for a moment, I could explain—”

  “Explain what? How I wandered into the Twilight Zone? I don’t think so. You’re a part of this screwy mess somehow, aren’t you? So why would I listen to you? And by the way, why do you have a knife, and how did you get in here anyway? What the hell is happening to me?”

  “Maggie?” Eileen’s voice.

  Instantly the gorgeous giant spun around, going into a deep crouch and pulling the knife at his belt free all in one fluid motion.

  Maggie saw light glitter dangerously on the silver blade and did the first thing that popped into her mind: She swung the milk jug in a wide arc and slammed it into the back of the guy’s head.

  He dropped like a stone. Milk erupted into a geyser as the plastic shattered, and the white wave coated her, him, and splashed across Eileen’s face as well.

  “Wow,” her niece said, smiling at her with pride as she wiped milk from her face. “That was amazing. Who’s he?”

  “I don’t know.” But now that he was unconscious, Maggie took her first steady breath in quite a while. Still, she had to admit that even out cold and covered in milk, he was quite the honey. Too bad he was some kind of criminal.

  Maggie was still shaking when her less-than-alert “watchdog,” Sheba, a golden retriever who’d never met a snack she didn’t want, sauntered into the room, walked up to the fallen giant and began to lick the milk off his face.

  “Oh,” Maggie told her, “thanks so much for your help.”

  Culhane woke up to find himself tied into a chair, with Maggie Donovan and a child looking down at him. A yellow dog was stretched out atop his feet.

  He couldn’t even recall the last time he’d been taken down in a battle. And yet this one mortal woman had done just that. Not only had she caught him unaware, but she’d knocked him out and tied him up. She was definitely ready to answer the call of fate.

  Taking a breath, he shook his still-wet hair back from his face and accused, “You hit me.”

  “You pulled a knife on my niece! Not to mention the whole breaking-and-entering thing,” she pointed out, dropping one arm around the girl, who’d come to the door behind him unnoticed.

  Bad enough that he’d been so distracted by this woman that he hadn’t heard the child’s approach. But to have this female insinuate that he would have harmed the girl was an insult he would not accept.

  Culhane glared at her. “I am a Fenian warrior for the Fae of Otherworld. I do not harm children.”

  She blinked at him. “You’re a what for who?”

  “Fae,” the girl said, nudging her aunt with an elbow even as she looked at Culhane with sharper interest. “Isn’t that like Faeries?”

  “Oh,” Maggie murmured, looking at him a little differently. “Now, that’s a shame.”

  Culhane muttered a curse.

  “What’s a Fenian, though?”

  “We don’t care,” Maggie told her.

  Still feeling the insult and the humiliation of his situation, Culhane ignored the interplay between the two females and looked at the girl. Her eyes were wide and interested, but there was more there, too, he thought. A stillness. A watchfulness. And temper, along with
a courage that outmatched her years. That he understood and admired. He met that young gaze and gave her a formal nod. “I wouldn’t have harmed you.”

  She studied him for a long moment or two, and Culhane waited for her to make up her mind about him. Finally she shrugged and said, “It’s okay. I believe you.”

  “Well, I don’t,” her aunt said, and Culhane’s gaze slid back to the woman who was the reason for his presence in this place.

  There was temper in her eyes, as well. He found it less admirable in her than in her niece.