Free Bedeviled by Maureen Child Page A

motion. He’d done what he could so far, but . . .
    Now that the older male had retreated back into his store, Maggie was standing precariously on a stepladder, working again. Going up on her toes, she reached out with her right hand to swipe a paint-laden brush across the glass. Culhane watched her turning a bare surface into a wintry scene and admired the talent behind that hand.
    She had depths to her that she didn’t share with others. He sensed it in her. Those depths revealed themselves in her painting, whether she knew it or not. He wondered, too, if she noticed that the silly painted creatures she created were all . . . lonely. Her snowmen were not standing in groups, but alone on hills. Sliding on sleds built for one. Decorating small Christmas trees by themselves.
    Nowhere in these images did he find couples, friends, solidarity. They were all singular creatures, and he felt a kinship with the painted faces. He understood the ease of alone. He knew what it was to keep to himself, to stand unaided in a world designed for mates. And he asked himself if Maggie, too, shared that sense of being an outsider, even among those she loved.
    “Hah!”
    Bezel’s triumphant shout shattered his thoughts, and Culhane turned one unamused eye on him. “What?”
    “Culhane the mighty is hungering after a mortal.”
    Irritated that the pixie had noticed what Culhane had thought he’d hidden, he muttered, “I hunger only for what she can do for Otherworld.”
    “Yeah, tell yourself that if you need to, Fenian. But I know what I see. Makes me wonder what Mab would think of this.”
    “Mab won’t find out.”
    “You’d better hope not.” The pixie’s gaze shot back to Maggie as her feet began to lift off the top rung of the ladder. “For the love of the goddess . . . would you look at that? Not got the brains of a tree squirrel. She’s going to get caught floating, and then what?”
    His harsh statement still ringing in the air, Bezel kicked at an empty soda can, and as it careened down the alley it made a nearly musical clatter.
    “She won’t get caught. Look, she’s already stopped it. Her concentration is improving.”
    “Damn well better or she won’t be any use to us at all.” Bezel laughed, and the sound was like nails scraping against iron. “Can’t you see it? She challenges Mab, the queen strikes out and your idiot painter floats herself at her. Oh, that’ll be great. I can see the victory parade now.”
    “It’s your job to train her, so if she fails, it’ll be your head.”
    Bezel swallowed hard and lifted one hand to his throat, as if checking that his head was still attached to his scrawny body. Satisfied, he bared a mouthful of teeth at Culhane, and the warrior wasn’t sure whether it was a threat or an attempt at a smile. Either way, he didn’t much care for it.
    “I’ll train her,” the pixie said. “But I can’t guarantee she’ll listen. You know what dealing with mortals is like. Even Faeries are flummoxed by them.”
    Culhane frowned. “I am not.”
    Bezel rocked back and forth on his long, wide feet. “Yeah, you ought to try telling that to somebody who can’t see you standing there with your tongue hanging out while you watch the part-Fae.”
    Culhane gave the little man a cold, hard stare. “If you value your tongue, you might want to try to restrain it.”
    “For the love of pixie children, why don’t you just bed the female, get it out of your system and then worry about training her?”
    “She’s not here for my pleasure,” Culhane warned, crouching until his gaze speared into the pixie’s so the little man wouldn’t make the mistake of not listening. “She’s here for Otherworld. She’s too important to us to risk scaring her off.” A wheezy chuckle burst from his throat.
    Bezel studied him, then curled his upper lip back to display even more of his jagged teeth. “If you don’t want to scare her off, then maybe you ought to dial back the ’great warrior’