Free Bedeviled by Maureen Child Page B

crap and turn on some of that charm you’re supposed to have.”
    Culhane grinned. “Charm, is it?”
    “Don’t quote me,” Bezel told him. “I don’t see any charm, trust me. But my wife says you could charm the pookas out of Ireland—though why anybody’d want to mess with a blasted pooka is beyond me.”
    “I knew Fontana liked me,” Culhane said, and enjoyed seeing the displeasure ripple across the pixie’s wrinkled face.
    “Yeah, well. Never said my wife had taste.”
    “Obvious enough that she doesn’t, since she married you.”
    “Ha-ha. Very funny. A comic warrior. What nobody should be without.”
    “You have a miserable disposition, Bezel. Did anyone besides me ever tell you that?”
    “Only everyone in Otherworld. I’m a pixie. It’s my job.”
    Irritating as he was, Bezel was right. They all had jobs to do. Duties to perform. And if Culhane didn’t get his mind back to business, they’d never get Maggie to the place she needed to be. Standing up again, he braced his feet wide apart, lifted his chin to the chill of the wind and narrowed his gaze on the woman across from him.
    Her jeans were too tight, straining across her bottom as she reached again, swiping red paint atop an already painted tree until it looked as though ribbons had been threaded through its branches. She bit her bottom lip, and just for a moment Culhane thought about biting it for her. Bezel was right about that, too.
    He did want Maggie Donovan.
    And sooner or later he’d have her.
    But for now . . .
    “So . . .” Bezel jabbed his pointy elbow into Culhane’s knee to get his attention.
    “What, you pestilential pixie?”
    “Hey, don’t matter one way or the other to me,” Bezel said with a shrug. “I just wondered what you were planning to do about that Baranca demon sneaking up behind your girl there.”
    “What?” Culhane’s gaze focused for a change not on Maggie, but on the tidily dressed “woman” coming up behind her as if to admire her painting. A human wouldn’t notice anything amiss. But Otherworlders—and some Demon Dusters—would know the woman for what she really was: a Baranca demon disguising herself as human. And since she was, at the moment, sneaking up on Maggie, Culhane could only think the demon had sensed the raw Fae power shimmering inside Maggie and was after it for itself.
    “By the halls of Ifreann . . .”
    “Looks like your girl’s not gonna last out the day.”
    “Oh, shut up.” Culhane spared him a quick glare, then shifted with a swift, blurred motion. He reappeared behind the Baranca only long enough to sweep her away. Hopefully Maggie hadn’t noticed a thing. It wouldn’t do to have her think he was watching her. He wanted her to trust him, damn it, and being a Fae stalker wasn’t going to get that done.
    He reappeared in the alley an instant later with one arm wrapped around the throat of a furious Baranca demon.
    “What’d you bring it here for?” Bezel shouted.
    “Let me go; you have no right!” The demon disguised as a woman stabbed one of its high heels at Culhane’s shin.
    Culhane sidestepped, ignored the pixie, tossed the demon to the trash-strewn asphalt and braced himself when the Baranca rolled quickly to its feet. It straightened its shirt, smoothed its slacks and sneered, “The woman is mine.”
    “You’re wrong.” Culhane swept in low and fast, taking the demon’s legs out from under it. It hit hard, but swiped out one clawed hand at his face. He dodged the blow, slipped his knife from the scabbard and stabbed it down into the center of the demon’s chest. Then he blew a stream of gold-dusted air at the demon and stood back while it exploded with a shriek of outrage.
    “Now I got demon dust all over my damn suit,” Bezel complained. “Did you have to kill it here?”
    Culhane wasn’t looking at him, though. Instead his gaze was fixed on Maggie, still painting, unaware of what had just happened.
    “Yeah.” Bezel shook his head in disgust.