Bedeviled (29 page)

Maggie couldn’t paint windows in weather like this—and a good thing, too, since she was in no mood to be painting happy, shiny scenes.

She tucked her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket and trudged on. Claire was still at her house, wanting to talk, but Maggie wasn’t ready for some best-friend bonding time. Not yet. Anger and betrayal still bubbled in her stomach and frothed through her veins, so it probably wasn’t a good idea to talk to anyone. Not for a while, anyway.

After listening to Bezel, she’d needed some time alone. Some thinking time. Some pissing, whining and wailing time. She wanted to kick something. She wanted to punch something until her knuckles bled.

And that thought startled Maggie right down to the bone. She’d never been a fighter. Had never felt the urge to smash and bash. One liners were her weapon of choice, and she’d been known to slice a snotty cashier or repair person to ribbons with her gift for sarcasm.

But punching?

“God, I am changing.” She felt it, of course. For the last three days she’d been training hard. Working her ass off . . . well, not literally, unfortunately, but even she had to admit that she was changing on some basic level.

Culhane had been right: She did feel different now. It was as if that first promise of power from the Faery dust had finally become a part of her. Or at least, more a part of her, sliding into every cell, sparking a strength and an energy she’d never known before. And finally the unexpected floating was down to a bare minimum.

Strength, energy, endurance. All good things. But this urge to fight had her worried. “What the hell else is that damned dust doing to me?”

Her words were snatched by a furious wind and tossed aside as if her question didn’t matter even to the heavens. Why that should surprise her, she didn’t know. It had already been made completely clear that Destiny was in the driver’s seat here. And Maggie was more or less along for the ride.

Which was just one more thing she didn’t like. She preferred control. Making her own decisions. Deciding who and what she was going to be. Suddenly being turned into something less than—or was that
more
than?—human was definitely not something she would have chosen for herself.

She stopped briefly on her walk to the beach and tipped her face back, letting the wind and the rain wash over her skin. Raindrops slid like tears across her cheeks, and the cold wind brushed them aside almost as quickly as they fell. Probably better that way, she told herself as she started walking again. She already looked like a crazy person out for a stroll in a winter storm. No sense looking like a
crying
crazy person on top of it.

Passing familiar stores, Maggie nodded through rain-streaked windows at the people within, and idly noted how many of her decorated windows she passed along the way. There was another painter in town, but she hadn’t really made much of a name for herself yet—and if she couldn’t figure out how to make a
jolly
-looking snowman, she never would—so Maggie’s own Christmas decorations were the majority of what she spotted.

It made her feel better, more settled, to look at the bright, cheerful holiday decorations she’d created. It was normalcy. It was
hers
as this Faery power could never be. These things she’d brought out of herself, from her mind, her imagination, her talent. This she’d
made
. The Fae thing had been done to her.

She stopped at the signal on the corner of Main and Pacific Coast Highway. Waiting in the pelting rain for the light to change, Maggie thought about just darting across the wide road, light or no light. But she wouldn’t. This was who she was, too, she realized. She was a person who would wait for the walk signal even if it were two in the morning. Even on a day like today, when there was no traffic and she was slowly turning into a wet ice cube, she would wait. Because it was the law. Because it was right. Because she couldn’t do anything else.

“Play by the rules, don’t you, Maggie?” she muttered as an errant raindrop sneaked beneath the collar of her jacket to roll down her spine like the tip of a cold finger. “And what does that get you, exactly? It gets you into the middle of a Faery war and feeling like you can’t back out, that’s what.”

She should have been a rule
breaker
. Should have walked on the wild side. Maybe then she’d have been too unpredictable for the Fates to screw with. With that thought in mind she actually stepped off the curb, ready to go crazy against the red light.

Naturally the light turned green almost instantly. Grumbling about that, she trotted across the street. Then she hit the sidewalk, made a quick right turn and walked toward the rock-lined jetty.

It didn’t even surprise her to realize where she was headed. Growing up in Castle Bay, Maggie had always gravitated toward the lighthouse. Maybe it was because of that day she’d nearly died here. Maybe it was the draw of that fine line she’d almost crossed that kept pulling at her. And, she thought now, maybe it was really the memory of Culhane saving her that drew her to this place subconsciously. But whatever the reason, this was where she came when she needed to think. To be by herself.

To just . . . be—and how New Agey and like Nora that sounded—she headed here.

The rush of the sea and the slap of waves against the rocks soothed her. The salt spray lifting into the air as wave met stone was like perfume, and the cold wind was an icy embrace. She’d always felt more powerful here, more sure of herself than anywhere else she’d ever been. Now, with all this newfound insight she was experiencing, she realized that the power she felt came from that day when she’d saved herself. When she’d refused to surrender and quietly die.

“Funny I never considered that before,” she whispered, hunching her shoulders against the wind that pushed her back one step for every two she made forward.

Now, with the Fae strength rushing through her system, that sense of power cresting inside her was incredible. She took long, purposeful strides down the concrete path that wended its way to the lighthouse, and as she walked the sea charged at her from both sides. Whitecaps churned on the water’s surface, and black clouds huddled overhead as if concentrating their attack. Thunder rolled like a freight train, needles of rain poked at her and lightning shone from behind the clouds.

The stone base of the lighthouse was right in front of her, a bright red door with a heavy brass lock at its center. She couldn’t get into the building itself, but that wasn’t what she needed. She needed to be out here, in the center of the storm, because nature’s rage so closely mirrored the storm inside her.

Here, with the wind and the sea howling, she felt free enough to shout out her own frustration without worrying about being overheard. Facing the ocean, the boiling clouds and the misty fog beginning to rise and twist around the rocks, she called out fiercely, “Damn you, Culhane. You should have told me.”

“Yes,” he said from right behind her. “I should have.”

Chapter Fifteen

“
W
hoa!” Maggie spun around so fast her sneakers squeaked on the wet cement, and she would have lost her balance completely if Culhane hadn’t stretched out one hand to grab her.

Quickly she shook him off and threw her wet hair out of her face. “I don’t want your damn help, you bastard. You’re sleeping with her. You’re Mab’s lover and you never bothered to
tell
me?”

“I wanted to.”

“Right. What stopped you? Oh yeah. Can’t really romance the new queen if she knows you’re diddling the old one!”

“That’s not why.” He sounded patient, damn him all the way to Faery hell and back again. What right did he have to be patient with her?

“Didn’t you think I deserved to know?” She gave in to the urge crowding her and slugged him in the stomach. For all the good it did. He didn’t even flinch. Apparently her power hadn’t grown strong enough to hurt a Fae warrior. “What am I to you? Just the pet human you need at the moment? Is that it? Is that all I am?

The rain didn’t touch him. He stood opposite her in the teeth of the storm, and it was as if he were standing under an invisible umbrella. The rain fell around him, beside him, but he wasn’t even damp.

Maggie felt her sodden hair hanging in strings around her face and thought she could have punched him again just for the fact that he looked so damn good, while she looked like a shipwreck survivor.

“Pet human?” He shook his head, and his black hair lifted as if from the kiss of the wind. Then his gaze settled on hers again, and Maggie was caught by the power in those pale green depths. “That’s what you believe? What you feel when we’re together? What I’ve
shown
you in the last week or more?”

“Oh, don’t get on your high Fae horse with me, buddy. What am I supposed to think?” It was a challenge. A demand for the whole truth and nothing but. She wanted to know, damn it. She didn’t want to guess anymore. Didn’t want to have to pretend that he didn’t matter.

That what they could have had if he hadn’t been a lying, cheating bastard didn’t matter.

He stared at her. His expression didn’t change; his eyes didn’t leave hers. All around them the storm raged on, but between them there was a stillness, an eerie calm that Maggie was in no condition to enjoy.

“I was at your house,” he said abruptly, and it wasn’t what she’d been expecting. “I overheard Bezel tell you. Saw your reaction and felt your pain.”

“What do you want? A medal for eavesdropping? A prize for staying in the shadows and saying nothing?
Again?
Besides, I wasn’t in pain,” she lied. “I was pissed. Still am.”

“As you should be,” he acknowledged, which only pissed her off further. “But you should also realize that I didn’t tell you everything for a reason.”

“Oh,” she said, folding her cold, wet arms over her chest. “This should be good.”

“I have been trapped by my oath to the queen for two hundred years.” His voice was thick with an emotion that sounded a lot like bottled fury. “It is not by choice that I became Mab’s lover. She chooses a warrior to serve her when she likes. And it’s not by choice that I have stayed.”

She swallowed the knot in her throat and fought to stand there, to hear him out, though it was harder listening to him than she’d thought it would be. Unbidden, images of him and Mab together, limbs tangled in the night, came to her, and she brutally shut them down. “Then why?”

He shrugged. “She is queen. She commands. We obey. It’s always been this way. But it doesn’t have to remain so.”

“Which is where I come in.” Her voice sounded bitter, even to her. “So when I’m queen, do you do your duty by me? Is that the reason for the slow, hot looks? For the whispers, for the
seduction
? Are you getting used to the idea of having to sleep with me? Working up to it slowly so it won’t be a task you hate? Because let me tell you, that just turns a girl on to know that a guy’s put her on his to-do list.”

Anger flashed across his features, and his eyes burned with a darkness she’d never seen there before. Reaching for her, he grabbed hold of her shoulders, gave her a shake, then loomed over her so that she had to tip her head back to meet his gaze.

“Do you really believe I
don’t
want you? You can say that to me? When you know what you do to me with a look?” His hands tightened on her. “Do you not remember what we felt with that kiss? It haunts me.
You
haunt me.”

Maggie squirmed in his grasp, fighting to get free. She didn’t want to be sucked back in by sweet lies or soulful looks. She wanted to hang on to the rage that was choking her.

“Don’t you know that I have spent your lifetime waiting for you?”

She finally wrenched free, though she knew it was only because he released her. Pushing sodden hair out of her eyes, she demanded, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ve watched over you—watched you—your whole life. You know about that time here.”

When he’d pulled her from the water the day she nearly drowned. “Yes . . .”

His voice dropped so low that it was nearly lost in the pulsing roar of the sea. “We’ve met other times. Other places.”

She shook her head. She understood why she hadn’t been able to recall him on that day she’d nearly died; the shock and fear alone were enough to jumble memories. But other times? No. She would have remembered him. Would have remembered the feelings that dazzled her body whenever he touched her.

“When you were a girl,” he said, as if sensing her disbelief, “you took a trip to Ireland.”

Frowning, Maggie nodded. “Gran and Grandpa took Nora and me there when we were teenagers. I was fifteen. But what’s that got to do with anything?”

Sighing now, Culhane lifted one hand and, when she would have stepped back, frowned at her to hold her in place. Then, gently, he touched her forehead with the tips of his fingers.

Images flew into Maggie’s mind as if they’d been hiding behind a locked door that had suddenly been thrown open. They flooded her senses, stole her breath, and she was helpless to do anything but stand as an observer and watch.

County Kerry. That was where they’d gone, where Gran had once met the Faery lover who had started this whole Donovan family saga. One day her grandparents had taken Nora into Tralee for some shopping, but Maggie had stayed at the cottage they’d rented for the month.

She took a walk across fields so green and rich the color was almost alive. In the bright sunlight she sat beside the circle of tumbled stones that Gran had shown her the day before.

“Here,” she’d said, “is where we met, where he found me.” And so Maggie had gone there, and her teenage heart had longed to find magic herself.

That was when she saw him: a boy about her age, with long black hair, pale green eyes and a smile that stripped her of breath even from a distance. He’d come out of nowhere and walked through the Faery ring to her side as if nothing else in the world existed.

Heart pounding, breath held, Maggie watched him, and when he was close enough he reached down for her hand and pulled her to her feet. The Irish wind caressed her as he smiled, and everything inside her exploded with light.