Must Be Magic (2 page)

“I
think changing that one part won't be harmful. But my liege,” Malthe added
quietly, “the dust will only work on you.”

Myghal
looked at his friends. He’d forgotten about that. If he used the dust, he’d
have to leave his two most valuable advisors—and friends—behind.

“Hurry!” Sirrin suddenly shouted.
“Here they come!”

Myghal looked up. Two Faeries,
with swords unsheathed, hovered over the parapet trying to land safely in the
wind. He was glad it had always been standard procedure to charm the dust
before it was shipped to the faeries so that they had limited use. They
couldn’t use it to transport and couldn’t use it against Pixies. Otherwise, he
and his friends would have been surrounded by faeries before they’d gone far
from his cell. Now, at least, they had a chance, however slim.

“He’s
right, Prince Myghal,” Malthe said. “Do it.”

“As soon as I’m gone, give
yourselves up,” Myghal shouted his orders. “They don’t have any reason to harm
you, and they know if they do, they’ll lose their shipments of dust.”

Sirrin
growled.

“You heard your Prince,” Malthe
said sternly.

But
before Sirrin could agree, the Faeries landed. One leaned into the wind, and
with a feral growl, charged.

Myghal
watched as Sirrin blocked the Faerie. He grabbed the guardsman’s slender wrist
in his huge hand, and Myghal heard a bone snap. Myghal started toward them, but
Malthe held him back.

“Hurry!”
his Chancellor shouted into his ear. “You have to go. I’ll keep Sirrin under
control.”

Myghal knew he had no choice. He
tossed the dust straight up and as it fell the wind whisked it around him, the
fine glittering crystals swirling around him in ever widening spirals. More
Faeries landed and raced toward him. He didn’t have time to recite the entire
incantation.

“Take me to the other half of my
heart!” he shouted.

Through the sparkling haze of the
dust as it enveloped him and his body began to disintegrate, he saw Malthe’s
eyes widen in horror at his abbreviated spell. By Malthe’s reaction, one would
have thought he’d bring about an end to civilization as they knew it by
shortening the incantation. Malthe was overreacting, as usual. What could go
wrong? Myghal would be taken to the one woman who would make the best
life-companion for him, and he for her.

Malthe and Sirrin had backed away
from him.

Myghal didn’t often use the dust
to transport himself and the sensation was unsettling. His stomach lurched, and
he felt as if every joint was being pulled apart. He knew he’d arrive in one
piece, wherever he landed, but the journey there was never something he looked
forward to.

Through the thickening haze, he
saw several Faeries capture Malthe and Sirrin. A couple of the guardsmen braved
the dust and reached in for him, but their hands went completely through his
now transparent body.

Then
everything went black.

Chapter Two

Kerry O’Neill bumped into the
Leprechaun when she turned around from hanging the latest sale price sign. He
caught her before she fell, his strong hands on her shoulders, and she clutched
his arms to regain her balance. Her eyes swept over him. She’d seen any number
of Leprechaun costumes since the first of March, but this one was the worst
yet. Aside from his eyes, which were the color of tender spring shoots flecked
with gold, he wasn’t wearing a speck of green.

He wore brown leather half-boots,
tan leggings, and a maroon tunic laced over a billowy sleeved shirt cinched in
with a brown belt. His long ash-blond hair fell in thick waves below his
shoulders, random strands in tiny braids decorated with beads and feathers. He
reminded Kerry of the elf in the
Lord of the Rings
movies…except that
his rugged face, height, and breadth was more than any elf could ever hope for.

“Are you all right?” He spoke
with a slight British accent in a deep resonant baritone.

“Fine, thanks.” Kerry found her
balance, removed her hands, and backed away, shrugging off his hold on her.
There was something achingly familiar about his touch, as if she belonged in
his arms and he belonged in hers. But she was certain she’d never seen him
before in her life.

“You’re at the wrong place,” she
told him, kneeling to replace the hammer in her toolbox that sat on the ground.
“The Leprechaun costume contest is across the street at Sir Plantsalot.”

His
gaze followed hers to the medieval themed garden nursery on the other side of
the thoroughfare. The false front was shaped and painted like a castle complete
with a turret at each end. The entrance and exit driveways were drawbridges
over the drainage ditch “moat”. Strands of colorful pennants ran from the tops
of the turrets to the ground. Larger pennants fluttered in the breeze from
poles in the cone-shaped tower roofs.

“I’m not a—” he began.

But Kerry didn’t care what he was
or wasn’t. She slammed the toolbox shut, drowning out whatever he was saying.
“They stole my idea. Somehow, they caught wind of the Leprechaun costume
contest I was planning for St. Patrick’s Day, and they stole it.”

Kerry picked up the toolbox and
brushed past him, once again all too aware of his physical presence. She
couldn’t understand her reaction, why her body was responding to him as if they
were lovers.

Shaking her head, she pushed
through the gate that led to the lawn and garden ornaments. The toolshed was in
the back. When she reached it, she opened the door, but the darkness within was
like a black abyss just waiting to swallow her up and crush her. She flipped
the switch a couple of times, but no flare of light filled the small shed. The
damn light bulb had blown again. Sweat broke out on her upper lip, and she set
the toolbox just inside the threshold, pushing it farther in with her foot.
Shutting the door, she turned around—only to collide with the Leprechaun again.

Once more she found herself in
his embrace, and her body immediately switched from an unnatural fear to a
natural arousal. Her heart raced and blood pounded through her. She didn’t know
why she was having such a disturbing physical reaction to him. Her hormones
didn’t normally go off the chart over every good-looking man she encountered.

Maybe
because it had been too long since she’d been with a man, but she didn’t have
time to deal with it. Ever since Sir Plantsalot moved in across the street six
months ago, with its extravagant display and double the area of her own
nursery, she’d been concentrating on trying to keep the business afloat. But it
had been an uphill battle. She extricated herself from his arms.

“I told
you, the contest is over there.” She backed away from him with a toss of her
head then looked him up and down again. “Tell you the truth, I don’t think you
have a very good chance of winning. You don’t look like a Leprechaun. You’re
not wearing green.”

“But
I’m not—”

Kerry didn’t wait to hear his
response. She strode off toward the greenhouse. She had too much work to do
without getting involved with a badly dressed Leprechaun…no matter how
attracted to him she was.

“…a
Leprechaun,” Myghal finished to empty air.

He
frowned as he watched her hurry down the path toward the transparent building
filled with all kinds of plants. He’d never considered his Heart Match could
possibly be in the Other Realm, the dimension where humans lived. It’d been a
long time since he’d walked among humans. Their world was too noisy and flashy,
their air too dirty. They were always rushing, yet they seemed to accomplish
little.

And how
was he supposed to carry a human woman back into Pixieland in the Faerie Realm
when he was out of dust and wasn’t sure he could get back himself?

But he found his gaze drawn to
the way her hips swayed in the tight blue leggings she wore. No, they were
called jeans, he suddenly remembered. He liked everything about her, from her
red-gold hair to her crystal blue eyes to the sprinkling of freckles across her
upturned nose. Twice, she had slammed into him, and twice, her generous breasts
had pressed against his chest. He’d seen her nipples tighten under the form-fitting
shirt she wore—T-shirt, it was called.

A dull
ache began in his balls as his cock responded to…her. He didn’t even know her
name.

She
didn’t seem to want anything to do with him and that went against what the dust
was supposed to do. His Heart Match was supposed to instantly recognize him as her
mate, as well. But she seemed to have other things on her mind. Like the
contest across the street.

She disappeared through the door,
and Myghal’s gaze drifted over the statuary inside the fence. An army of garden
gnomes—from small ones only as tall as a handspan to two in the back that were
about the right size for Gnomes—was spread out over most of the area, along
with bird baths, small benches, and flower pots. Too bad the Gnomes weren’t
real.

He smiled. No self-respecting
Gnome would be caught in the clothing these wore. Red vests, blue trousers,
yellow shirts, purple caps. Gnomes dressed in browns and tans and dark greens
to blend in with the forest they lived in and the earth they worked in.

One of the two tall statues near
the fence caught his eye. It looked suspiciously like a Troll… Myghal strolled
through the stone army. No, not stone—concrete. The human words were coming
back to him slowly. He wandered near the suspect statue. That one looked like a
Troll because humans had no idea what Gnomes and Trolls really looked like.
Just as they had no idea how evil Faeries could be or they wouldn’t present
them as children’s playthings.

Satisfied that the statue was
only human error, Myghal turned around and headed toward the building where she
had gone. If it was what humans called St. Patrick’s Day here, then he had only
a few days before the Spring Equinox. Not much time to convince the human woman
that he was Prince of the Pixies, she was destined to be his Princess, and
discover a way to get them both back to Pixieland.

*
* * * *

Tredje, the Troll, sucked in a
deep breath when the Pixie Prince disappeared into the building. He punched the
Gnome next to him. “Do ye think the Pixie recognized us?”

Gomit
grunted. “Here, now. I don’t have to suffer that kind of abuse.”

Tredje
snarled. Neither of them was happy with the situation, and the other knew it.
When the old Faerie Queen—the present King’s great-grandmother—banished the
Trolls to live with other assorted earth-based kin in the Other Realm, they had
declared their independence from the Fae. Of course, the Fae still considered
them in their service. Fortunately, the Fae rarely visited the Other Realm
these days and seldom had need of Trolls.

But the Sprite messenger, tiny in
both realms and able to pass from one to the other in a body of water as small
as a dewdrop, had arrived a month ago and called on the Troll Thane and the
Gnome General. Through its ability to locate Faerie Realm folk that all Sprites
possessed, it had brought news that the Pixie Prince would soon pass into the
Other Realm to go to his Heart Match. Sprites were also able to pass through
the time continuum as well. This one had slipped through to see where the
Prince had gone and who he had gone to, then it had brought the news into this
realm before the Prince’s escape actually happened in the Faerie Realm.

The
Trolls and the Gnomes were to stop the Prince by any means necessary. It
happened that Tredje lived across the way from where the Prince would land, and
the General had chosen Gomit, so the two had been paired to carry out the
Faerie King’s mission. A sorrier warrior, Tredje had never seen. Still, a sorry
Gnome warrior could beat the best Pixie any day. And with the help of a Troll,
they’d soon be done with this assignment and Tredje could be back home under
his bridge sipping dandelion wine in no time at all.

Gomit
scratched behind his ear. “I don’t know. He looked at you a long time, but I
think we blend in well enough.”

Tredje
looked at the colorful clothes and little pointy hats he’d pilfered for them to
wear to match the other Gnome statues. Pitiful, what humans thought of Gnomes.

“Aye,
but Pixies have a sense about things, I’ll give’em that,” Tredje said and
tugged his beard.

“Do we
have a plan?”

Tredje
sighed. They’d been over it dozens of times while waiting for the Prince to
arrive, but the Gnome’s short term memory was shorter than he was.

It
would have been easier if they’d been able to snatch the woman before the Pixie
showed up, but the Pixie’s spell would have brought him to the exact spot where
they would have hidden the woman, so it had to be done after he arrived. “We
kidnap the woman until after the Equinox. With the woman out of the way, the
Pixie won’t be able to wed her and all will be well for King Norfe.”

“True,
true. But how do we get her?”

“We wait until dark. You know as
well as I do that she stays here until past sunset. Then we grab her.”

“And
where did we say we’d hide her?”

Tredje sighed heavily. The Gnome
was hopeless. “We’ll take her back to me bridge across the street. The Pixie
won’t think to look right under his nose.”