Beguiled (7 page)

“Is the child female?” Leanna asked, sliding a glance to Quinn.

“Why’re you asking him?” Nora wondered aloud, shooting her lover a quick, quizzical glance.

Leanna answered. “Because the males of our race decide the gender of the child.”

“Oh.” Nora let her breath slide out. “It’s that way for us, too.”

“Really?” Leanna leaned forward, curiosity stamped on her features. “Human men can
choose
the gender of their children?”

“Choose?” Nora looked at Quinn again. “No, they don’t
choose
, they just . . . you mean,” she narrowed her eyes on the huge male beside her, “Fae males can
actually
decide on a boy or girl?”

“Of course,” Leanna said. “So I ask again, which is your child?”

Quinn shifted uncomfortably, but said, “Male. He will be a warrior.”

“Of course,” Leanna said with a sigh that sounded bell-like. “The warrior class do prefer their own sort.”

“A boy?” Nora wasn’t listening right then. Instead, she was focused on the child within. A boy. She was having a little boy. She smiled to herself. If Quinn had bothered to ask her, she thought, she too would have chosen to have a son. After all, she had a daughter. What fun it would be to have one of each. To experience all of the different things a little boy would find fascinating and—“A
warrior
?”

Quinn nodded, laid one huge hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “He will be proud and strong and will one day take his place at the Conclave.”

“He’s not even born yet and you’re handing him a sword?”

Nora squirmed and shoved and finally managed to push herself out of the woman-eating couch. When she was standing on her own two feet, she turned her back on Leanna, glared at Quinn and said, “I sooo don’t think so.”

Chapter Four

“So anyway,” Eileen said a half hour later as she slid into a seat at the pedestal table in the kitchen, “all of the old myths and legends about Faeries are so far-off what Culhane and Quinn talk about, it’s funny.”

“Big surprise,” Bezel quipped from his post on a stool at the counter. He shifted position on his wide feet, then waved his long, skeletal fingers, producing a white china platter with magic. “Humans getting something wrong. Wow. Alert the media.”

Why she’d been so eager to get home, Maggie couldn’t remember. Used to be, she’d walk into the house where she and Nora were raised and instantly feel soothed, comforted. Especially this room. The only room in the house where her grandfather hadn’t been allowed to “tinker” with anything.

Grandpa had been a man who liked to keep busy, so he’d whiled away his retirement by turning the Donovan family home into a mini-Winchester Mystery House. There were doors that opened onto nothing. And a front door that had been paneled over on the inside. A set of stairs—more than thirty steps with risers no more than an inch high—designed in a zigzag fashion to rise two feet from the floor. And there were hidden passages linking the rooms together in a rabbitlike warren behind the walls.

But here in the kitchen, Gran had put her foot down. The walls were sunshine yellow, the cabinets were painted a gleaming white and the worn counters looked cozy instead of shabby. It was as if the walls themselves were imprinted with the warmth of family.

Here, in this house, everything she touched or saw reminded her of her grandparents. The scent of fresh cookies always brought back images of Gran, and glancing out the back window, she could see the guesthouse Grandpa had built himself so that he could leave home whenever he wanted and never be far away.

Now, Nora and Eileen—and Quinn, too—lived in that guesthouse and Maggie had the main house mostly to herself. Except for those times when Culhane was popping in and out or when Bezel the pixie came down from his tree house to raid Maggie’s stores of chocolate.

Though the place was a lot less soothing these days, what with everything crazy going on, she was at least at home. Where there were no demons masquerading as goth punk rockers. She hoped.

Eileen ignored Bezel, reached for a Double Stuf Oreo from the open package in front of her and took a bite, talking around the cookie. “It says here that the Fae kidnap humans all the time, but Bezel says that’s stupid—”

“
Why
would we want to clutter up Otherworld with you people?” he demanded.

“And according to Wikipedia,” Eileen went on as if the pixie hadn’t spoken, “a human who’s half-Fae is welcome in Otherworld, but Bezel says nobody likes a half-breed.”

Maggie slid a hard look at the pixie, who was now whistling and pretending to be invisible. “Nice. Thanks.”

Sheba, Maggie’s golden retriever, wandered in from the living room and lay down beneath Bezel’s stool, hoping the pixie would drop something edible. Instantly though, the dog started snoring.

“Am I a half-breed, too?” Eileen asked.

“No, you’re a quarter-breed,” Maggie said, “or maybe an eighth-breed. I hate math.” Which made her think back to Culhane’s talking about the Fae grandfather she’d never known.

When she and Nora were kids, their grandmother had always told them stories about the time when she was young and visiting Ireland and how she’d met a handsome man who’d whisked her off to Faeryland. She claimed to have lived there for several weeks, but when she’d come home, she’d actually been gone only overnight.

She’d also been pregnant. Of course, no one had believed her wild tales about a Faery lover. But she’d met Grandpa a few months later and married him. He adopted Nora and Maggie’s mom, and no one really thought about the past anymore—well, except for Gran. She’d never really gotten over that magical lover she’d known so briefly. So when Nora and Maggie were old enough, she’d told them everything she remembered about Otherworld and the Fae who lived there.

Nora had believed.

Maggie hadn’t.

She did now, though. She only wished she could have five minutes with Gran so she could apologize about ever doubting her.

“So the baby will be a quarter-breed, too?” Eileen asked.

“No,” Maggie said without really thinking about it, “since Quinn’s the father, it’ll be mostly Fae and . . .
what
?”

“Don’t expect me to be a babysitter,” Bezel grumbled.

“God forbid,” Maggie said solemnly as she stared at the hideously ugly pixie whipping up dinner in her kitchen. Bezel stood three feet tall, had wispy silver hair and an even wispier silver beard. His blue eyes blazed in a face so wrinkled he looked like a shar-pei puppy, and the green velvet suit he wore had been made by the wife he never stopped talking about, Fontana.

The very same wife who had tossed his ugly pixie ass out of Otherworld for spending “too much time with humans,” therefore ensuring that he would spend even
more
time with them. Now he was living in a magically built tree house in the oak out back and quite literally
whipping
up dinner nearly every night.

He wasn’t much of a cook—traditionally speaking, with a stove and, say, pans—but the little pain in her ass could really magic up some great meals.

“I’m just saying,” he continued, as if Maggie hadn’t spoken at all, “I don’t mind helping out around here—mostly because if you keep cooking, I’ll
die
. And watching over the kid once in a while is okay, ’cause she doesn’t bug too bad. But no babies.”

“How’d you find out about Nora’s baby?” Maggie demanded.

“I told him,” Eileen said. “Mom explained this morning before I went to school.”

“She told you about the baby already?” Had Maggie been the last one to know? Even Bezel knew before she did? How was that fair? Well, just went to prove, being Queen didn’t bring many perks.

“Well,
duh
.” Eileen grabbed another cookie from the open bag on the table. “Thirty-five percent of parents try to hide the coming of a sibling,” she pronounced. “It never ends well.”

Bezel lifted both silver eyebrows, then shook his head and went back to muttering some incantation over the white china platter on the counter in front of him.

Leaving him out of this for the moment, which she tried to do as often as possible, Maggie studied her niece. Twelve years old, Eileen had the Donovan blue eyes, dark red hair that hung just past her shoulders and pale skin softly dotted with freckles. Maggie couldn’t have loved her more. “So are you okay about the baby?”

Eileen thought about it for a second or two, then shrugged and smiled. “Sure. It’s good for Mom to have a baby, since I’m practically grown.”

“You’re twelve,” Maggie reminded her, making another grab for the cookie bag herself.

“I’ll be thirteen in nine months. That’s practically tomorrow.”

God, it really was. As fast as time was moving lately, Eileen could be a grandmother by next week. Maggie’s head hurt and the cookies weren’t helping.

“After dinner, can somebody come over?”

“On a school night?” Maggie countered, already shaking her head. “Your mom would kill me.”

“She’s in Otherworld, remember?”

Maggie narrowed her gaze on Eileen. God, was the sneaky maneuvering—trademarks of teenager-hood—starting already? “Somebody
who
?” she asked, remembering the boy who’d been so intent on hiding from her.

Eileen smiled and got a dreamy look to her eyes that she usually reserved for her favorite actor on
Supernatural
, Jensen Ackles. Oh boy.

“Is this about Devon?”

Eileen didn’t answer, instead concentrating on licking the thick white icing between the two chocolate cookies.

That more than anything spiked Maggie’s internal radar. Donovan women were
rarely
quiet. Which meant that either Devon was getting her to be quiet or Eileen had already reached the hormonal stage where she wanted to shut her family out of her life. Oh, please not that.

“If I told you it was Amber who wanted to come over, that would be okay?” she asked, clearly unable to keep quiet for long.

“Still a school night, and besides, it’s not Amber, is it?”

She smiled. “Not so much.”

“Then who?”

“Devon, okay? It’s Devon,” Eileen grumbled to herself as she finished off her cookie and grabbed another one. “But it’s not like I was trying to sneak out to see him. I wanted him to come over here where you could interrogate him and humiliate me. See the trust I have in you?”

“Touching. Truly.” And it went without saying that she
would
be interrogating good ol’ Devon at the first opportunity.

Eileen sighed and pouted. At the same time. “You’re my aunt. You’re supposed to be the fun one who spoils me.”

“Uh-huh,” Maggie said, folding up the cookie bag before she could eat another one herself. Yes, since she’d gotten all the Fae power dumped into her system, her metabolism had been excellent. But why push the envelope?

“You know I love you, sweetie,” Maggie said. “But when it comes to boys and you? Nobody’s the ‘fun’ one.”

“My life sucks,” Eileen complained.

“I hear that,” Bezel seconded.

“What’s for dinner?” Maggie demanded.

Bezel sniffed. “Torkian beast.”

Maggie frowned. “What?”

“Think roast beef but better.”

He always said that. Like everything in Otherworld was superior to Earth. He even insisted their version of hell,
Ifreann
, was scarier. But Maggie had her doubts. She’d been to weekend religious classes when she was a kid. She’d been taught by nuns, and nobody did hell better than Catholics.

“Is it endangered?” Eileen asked.

Bezel laughed and the sound was like a dry paper towel against cloth. Raspy and irritating.

“
Ifreann
take me,” he admitted. “For humans, you’re pretty entertaining.”

“Aunt Maggie’s not all human anymore,” Eileen reminded him. “And she’s Queen.”

Bezel’s gaze moved over her paint-stained jeans, green-streaked hair and spattered hands. “Yeah. I’m getting that royal vibe.”

“And, I’m not
all
human, either,” Eileen reminded him proudly. “I’m part-Fae, too.”

Which brought Maggie back once more to thoughts of the grandfather she’d just found out was alive and well and living in Otherworld. When she told Nora about him, her sister was going to want to search for GrandFae and Maggie wasn’t sure that was a good idea. After all, they might not have guessed that he was still around, but she was betting he had known about
them
. Which made her wonder just why the hell he’d never come around.

“It’s ready!” Bezel announced, and jumped off his stool, carrying his platter of, Maggie had to admit, great-smelling roast Torkian. So she put off thoughts of her grandfather in favor of a hot meal she hadn’t had to cook herself.

God knew, there’d be plenty of time later to worry.