Beguiled by Maureen Child Read Free Book Online Page B

them. Still, they were always impressive in an argument.
    “Finally!” Maggie crowed as the driver in front of her finished tying up traffic. She stepped on the gas again, but she didn’t get far. Two pedestrians leaped off the curb to cross the street and Maggie slammed on the brakes to avoid running them down.
    “Anyway,” Eileen said, unfolding the papers, “I was reading about Otherworld again and you know how Culhane says the humans have gotten everything wrong about the Fae? Well, I think he’s right.”
    “He’ll love hearing that,” Maggie muttered as she stuck out her tongue at the jaywalkers, who had slowed her down enough that she got caught at another red light. The car beside her shuddered from the power of its stereo blasting out on a frequency that caused what felt like small earthquakes. The bass boomed and the pounding of the drums seemed to echo in Maggie’s mind. She turned her head to scowl at the guy responsible for the hideous sound machine and shrieked a little.
    “Holy crap!”
    It wasn’t a guy ; it was a demon. Green skin, black eyes and two mouths, it was using both of them to sneer at her as it lifted a middle finger in a silent salute.
    Eileen looked past her. “Whoa.”
    In an instant, the demon’s human disguise glamour was back in place and he looked like nothing more than a twenty-year-old weirdo with spiky hair and several piercings jutting through his eyebrows and nose. Tough call on which of his images was the yuckier.
    “Demon?” Eileen asked.
    “Oh yeah,” Maggie told her as the light changed to green. She just sat there, watching the demon in the beat-up car peel out. Well, until the driver behind her started honking.
    Grumbling about the traffic, she stepped on the gas and headed for home.

    “In six of your months,” Leanna said with a smile, “you will have a Fae child.”
    “Only six?” Nora smiled past the wave of nausea and laid the flat of her hand against her abdomen. Was she imagining it, or was the baby moving already? So very different. When she was pregnant with Eileen, it was forever before she felt the baby stirring. But clearly, this pregnancy was going to be nothing like her first one.
    “That’s great,” she said, though she felt a quick thrill of—not fear exactly, but maybe . . . okay, fear. She was having a Fae baby. Who knew what that would mean? Of course, that’s why Quinn had brought her to Otherworld. So she could get some answers to her questions. “Three months shorter than I was expecting.”
    “Fae children develop much more quickly,” Leanna told her with just a touch of smugness; then the lovely Fae female sat down on a pale lavender chair that seemed to enfold itself around her.
    Nora managed to stifle a shiver. It was bad enough sitting on this silver couch that continually shifted and moved beneath her like something alive. Sure, it was comfy, but she preferred her furniture to be inanimate.
    The place was beautiful, but then, everything in Otherworld was pretty. Mostly. It was the differences that kept Nora off balance. Like the quivering couch and the way her hostess waved one hand in the air and produced a tray filled with fragile-looking glasses shaped like delicate tulips and a bottle of some honey-colored liquid.
    Not the kind of thing she was used to, even if she did try, unlike her sister, Maggie, to keep an open mind to the supernatural.
    “Are you all right?” Quinn’s deep voice rumbled from close by and he reached over to slide his big hand up and down her spine. Nora leaned into his touch. This was worth it. He made it all worth it.
    “I’m fine,” she said, straightening up a little and moving closer to the edge of that couch. She was half convinced it would try to swallow her soon. “Really, sweetie, I’m good. I’m just . . .”
    Feeling out of place? Couldn’t really say that since Leanna was a friend of Quinn’s. But Nora didn’t think she’d ever be able to relax in such a completely elegant