Beguiled (3 page)

“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 are 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.

“Don’t start with me, Culhane,” she snapped. Her head was pounding, her stomach was a little jumpy and now she not only had to paint two more windows, but she had to be at the school by two to pick up her niece.

“Nora’s pregnancy changes things,” Culhane told her, taking her upper arm in a firm grip.

Heat poured from his hand through her skin to slide along her veins. Her blood was sizzling, as if she’d been slapped by a sudden, inexplicable fever. Her skin felt raw and sensitive, her nipples went hard and somewhere low inside her, need awoke with an urgency that left her almost breathless.

For weeks, she’d been lusting after Culhane. His teasing smiles, his pale, nearly magic eyes, his tendency to snap out orders and expect them to be followed. He’d helped her, tormented her, irritated her and somehow had become an integral part of her life. She barely remembered a time when he hadn’t been there. Worse, she didn’t
want
to.

He’d confessed once that he’d been watching over her throughout her life. He had even awakened long-buried memories for her so that she could recall the stormy night he’d saved her from drowning, the shining day in Ireland when he’d given Maggie her first kiss. And she wondered whether there were more buried memories. Times when she and Culhane had touched or spoken or loved. And would he show them to her one day? Would he dole them out to her like treats to a well-behaved child?

There was so much between them, most of which remained unspoken. Culhane had slipped into her heart and everything in her wanted to embrace that. But Maggie couldn’t quite bring herself to trust him. Hence, the locked-knee thing.

“You think? Nora’s
pregnant
with a Fae baby! Of course, this changes everything!” Deliberately, she looked away from him to let her gaze slide across the Christmas scene she’d nearly completed on Barb’s windows. “I just don’t know what they’re changing
into
.” Even while her stomach twisted into a knot of worry over her sister and what could possibly happen next, a different corner of her mind clung to the everyday facts of life. To the fact that she had to finish up here and get over to the real estate office and then the art boutique to decorate their windows before getting Eileen at school. Thank God, her last job for the day was a small shop with one window.

“When news of Nora’s pregnancy spreads through Otherworld, some won’t be happy about it.”

“What does that mean?”

He scrubbed one hand across his jaw. “There is talk about removing the half-Fae from the throne.”

“Me?”
Maggie swallowed hard and forced a deep breath into suddenly straining lungs. It was one thing for her to be a little ambiguous about this queen thing. It was something else to realize that maybe there were a few Fae planning on staging a coup.