Be Careful What You Wish For Page 13

  It was just too much. Her show with the I.C.U. gallery was probably finished since she couldn’t paint anymore without her subject walking off the page, she’d had no sleep the night before, and she’d almost been eaten by a monster. Also her hand—the one that the monster had used as a chew toy before it got loose—was throbbing like a rotten tooth.

  The physical pain on top of her emotional distress cracked Cass’s armor completely. As much as she hated to cry she simply couldn’t help herself.

  For a long time she was lost in her misery, too upset to care what she must look like or what Jake O’Shea must be thinking of her. All she knew was that she needed someone to hold on to and he was there. His arms felt warm and strong and comforting around her and he stroked her hair soothingly as she sobbed.

  Finally, though, she became aware of her situation—she was being held by a man she couldn’t stand and she was acting like a complete fool. In fact, she saw as she drew her head back, she’d cried a big wet spot all over his expensive charcoal suit. Oh, God, how embarrassing!

  “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly, stepping away from his embrace and swiping at her eyes. “I…I didn’t mean to get all girly on you there. I just…I didn’t get any sleep last night and my hand is killing me where that damn thing got at me.”

  “You’re injured?” O’Shea frowned in concern. “Let me see—maybe I can heal it.”

  “Uh, no. That’s okay, maybe later.” Cass took another hasty step back, feeling her cheeks get hot. “I mean first we’d better, you know, clean up in here. Don’t you think?” She gestured with her unhurt hand, keeping the hurt one behind her back. There was no way she was going to compound the embarrassment of crying all over him by losing further control of herself when he healed her.

  O’Shea shook his head.

  “Very well, we’ll deal with the matter at hand first but I’ll want to see that injury before I go.”

  “Fine.” Cass felt deeply relieved. Surely in the time it took to get everything back in order he would forget about her hurt hand and just leave her alone. At least she hoped so.

  “First things first,” O’Shea announced. He took a deep breath and faced the monster. “This is a nasty one,” he muttered, surveying the gaping mouth full of shark-like teeth and the glowing red eyes. “A lot of power went into it.”

  “I almost went into it too,” Cass reminded him. “The hard way. Do…do you have to uh wake it up again to get rid of it?”

  “Fortunately not. It will take some magic however. Since you seem to be sensitive to my power, you may want to stand well clear.” He shot her a piercing look which Cass tried to return without blushing. She stepped back as far as she could which wasn’t very far since the monster was taking up three fourths of the room and the children were taking up most of what was left. Crossing her arms under her breasts, she waited to see what O’Shea would do.

  He took a deep breath, his broad chest expanding until she thought the buttons on his tasteful suit jacket might pop. Then he expelled it all at once in a single strange word that came out as a roar.

  Cass clapped her hands over her ears and shivered as the surge of power left O’Shea, chilling her to the bone. This was cold magic, a word so harsh her brain apparently couldn’t translate it from the Gaelic dialect he was using.

  She couldn’t help comparing it to the soft, gentle warmth that had flowed through her when he healed her throat. She remembered the rising flood of desire that had engulfed her as his sensual mouth moved over the sensitive skin of her neck, of the way she’d nearly lost control just from…

  Stop it, Cass! she scolded herself. That’s the last thing you need to be thinking about right now. She tried to put the embarrassing memory out of her mind and concentrate on what was going on.

  As she watched, the black and purple paint monster began to shrink rapidly. It took up less and less of the room until it was confined to the table and finally, it ended up back on the white sheet of paper Derek had painted it on in the first place.

  O’Shea walked calmly up to the easel at the far end of the art table which was miraculously still standing, ripped off the piece of paper containing the painting of the monster, folded it, and tucked it neatly into his front breast pocket.

  Cass stared at him in surprise. “That’s it?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “For now, yes. Unless you’d like me to open a window onto the fiery pit this minute and finish disposing of it.”

  That didn’t sound like such a good idea to Cass.

  “Uh, no,” she mumbled, frowning. “I guess not. I just…I mean, the damn thing almost ate me. To see you just shrink it down and fold it up and put it in your pocket just seems so…so…”

  “Anticlimactic?” The corners of O’Shea’s mouth twitched in what might almost have been a smile. “Indeed, I can see why it would seem that way. But daemons are best dealt with in the Realm of the Fae where they can be contained. When they get out into your world they feed on your human imaginations and gain much more power and strength than they would otherwise have had.”

  Cass frowned. “You mean it was growing by feeding on our imaginations? And here I thought it was just bulking up on all the fiber from the art easels I was using to try and fend it off.”

  O’Shea looked thoughtful.

  “No, it definitely wasn’t the physical objects it was eating that made it grow to such enormous proportions so quickly. In fact, I’ve never heard of a soul-sucker gaining so much mass in such a short amount of time but I suppose it has to do with the fact that it had a lot of raw material to work with. The children to start with, because children always have fertile imaginations. But it probably fed mainly from you.”

  “Me?” Cass put a hand to her chest. “Why me?”

  “You’re a creative, talented woman. I’ve seen your work—it takes great depth of imagination to achieve what you’ve created,” O’Shea said. “To the soul-sucker that would have been a veritable feast.”

  “Uh, thanks, I guess.” Cass felt her cheeks heating again and put her unhurt hand to her face.

  Jake O’Shea didn’t seem like the type of man to give false compliments so his analysis of her work really affected her, even though she tried to tell herself she didn’t care what he thought. Then she remembered that unless she got her wish fixed she wasn’t going to be doing any art—at least any painting—for the foreseeable future. And that meant her show at the I.C.U. was almost certainly cancelled.

  O’Shea must have seen the look on her face because he stopped straightening the few remaining wooden easels and came over to her.

  “What’s wrong, Cassandra?” he asked, his deep voice concerned.

  Cass gestured with her unhurt hand.

  “Oh, this stupid wish. The FG—my fairy godmother I mean—caught me off guard and granted it when she knew perfectly well I didn’t mean to say it. But now there’s nothing I can do about it because she had this little animal that looked like your cell phone creature—I think she called it a show-me. Anyway, she recorded my voice saying ‘I wish I could put some life into my painting’ or something like that and she told me it would hold up in court. So I don’t see how I’ll ever paint again—not if I don’t want what I’m painting to jump off the canvas and attack me.”

  O’Shea looked grim.

  “I don’t care what your fairy godmother told you, we can and will fight this in court. Just look at this.” He indicated the children, still frozen with looks of terror on their small faces. “Her magic has broken not one but two cardinal rules of wish granting—that the wish may not endanger its subject in any way and that it may not affect anyone besides the wisher. That alone should be enough to strip her of her wand.” He frowned. “If we can get the case before the right judge, of course.”

  Cass groaned. “You know, Jake…sorry, Counselor O’Shea,” she amended grudgingly. “I—”

  “Counselor O’Shea is rather formal considering what you and I have been through in the past
two days. You can call me Jake if it pleases you.” He gave her a piercing glance that made Cass want to squirm for some reason.

  “Okay, Jake then.” She nodded stiffly. “But the point is, I really don’t want to go back to your whacked-out court. I mean, what with nearly getting kidnapped by those ugly little trows, riding on that nightmare of a flying couch, getting rained on by angry fairy judges and being threatened by giant bumble bees, once was enough. More than enough, actually.”

  Jake, as she now felt free to think of him, shook his head.

  “I’m sorry the Realm was not to your liking but you must come back, Cassandra. Your rights are being trampled on and not only yours but all of the other godchildren assigned to your fairy godmother. You have to fight this until you win—until she is never able to hurt another person that has been entrusted to her care again.”

  He looked so fierce that Cass was almost afraid to disagree with him which made her mad. Who was he to tell her what she had to do? And what was the deal with the guilt trip about the FG’s other godchildren? Let them take care of themselves—Cass and her sisters certainly had been for the last twenty odd years.

  “I don’t have to do anything,” she pointed out, putting her unhurt hand on her hip. “But…” She bit her lip, thinking what this latest wish would do to her life. “I guess…I guess I’ll consider it. After all, I don’t want to go through the rest of my life not being able to paint for fear that my art will attack me.”

  Jake nodded as though she’d agreed with him completely. “Very well, I’ll begin drawing up the paperwork directly.”

  “I said I’ll consider it,” Cass reminded him. “You act like it’s a done deal—I don’t appreciate that.”

  Jake looked at her directly. “You have a great deal of passion for what you do, Cassandra. People with that kind of drive don’t abandon what they love because someone puts an obstacle in their way—they go after what they want. You love your art so you’ll fight for it.”

  “You talk like you know me.” Cass frowned at him.

  He arched an eyebrow at her. “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “Maybe the fact that I just met you yesterday,” Cass shot back. “You can’t just go making assumptions about me—what makes you think I’m so driven about my art?”

  “I saw it,” Jake said simply. “There’s an intensity about it that speaks louder than your words. A passion that won’t be contained.” His eyes caught hers and held them until Cass looked away from his piercing gaze in confusion. Her heart was pounding much too hard for comfort which made her angry all over again. Why did he affect her this way?

  “We can talk about all that later,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “Right now, can you unfreeze the kids so that I can get them cleaned up and back to the real world before the end of the class?”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t think it would be wise to bring them out of magical stasis without softening the memory of the soul-sucker a bit. I don’t usually like to do memory alterations on children but in this case I think it’s necessary.”

  Cass looked at him, surprised.

  “You can do that? Is that something all elves can do? Or is it a power appointed to you by the fairy court or what?”

  Jake sighed and knelt in front of the nearest child, the little girl who had been standing next to Amanda Simms when the entire incident began.

  “It’s not something every elf can do and it’s not a power granted by the court either. I am able to do…certain things because I am a Spell-singer.” He murmured something soft in Gaelic and blew gently into the little girl’s face before moving on to the next child.

  “You say that as though I should know what it means,” Cass pointed out. “But I’ve never heard the word before yesterday. Are you some special kind of elf or what?”

  “You could say that.” He was definitely keeping a tight lid on this for whatever reason but when he saw Cass watching him and waiting for more information he sighed and continued. “I am…my people are a dying breed. The high elves draw our power from the night and the Lady of the Evening Star. Most of us are healers because the Lady’s power lends itself to such.”

  “So you’re really a doctor, uh, healer, not a lawyer?” Cass watched him, her arms crossed under her breasts as he continued to treat the affected children. Already the little girl he’d attended to first was yawning and rubbing her eyes as though just awakening from a deep sleep.

  “No, I am a lawyer as you put it,” Jake said shortly. “I chose the path of the warrior over that of the healer, much to my family’s chagrin. Well.” He straightened up, having finished the last child. “That should be all of them. Will you be all right now?”

  “Yes, I think so.” Cass surveyed the mess the paint monster had left in the room, not to mention the fact that over half the yawning, sleepy kids had wet pants. “I don’t suppose your, uh, Spell-singer magic is any good at cleaning things up is it?” she asked without much hope. “I mean, it’s probably only good for big things like slaying monsters and shrinking daemons and stuff like that, huh?”

  “A housekeeping spell? I think I can manage that.”

  Jake’s mouth twitched again and she thought once more what an excellent subject he would make for a portrait or a sculpture. Then he uttered a word that sounded brisk and no-nonsense inside Cass’s head and suddenly the room looked exactly as it had before the entire mess with the living painting had started. The floor was clean and the spilled paint was magically back in its pots. Even the easels that the monster had eaten were back in place.

  Best of all, everybody’s pants were suddenly dry.

  Cass gasped in amazement and looked to see if any of the children had noticed. Luckily, most of them still seemed dazed and sleepy. Good, maybe she could get them back to their places before the bell rang. She clapped her hands sharply to get their attention and winced at the sudden pain in her hurt palm. Hastily, she put it back behind her back.

  “Okay, kids, back to work. Let’s finish those pictures so you can show them to your parents,” she said, using her best teacher voice. There were a few mumbled replies of, “Yes, Miss Swann,” and the students wandered back to their easels and began picking up their brushes. Soon they were all painting quietly and Cass thought with satisfaction that no one who entered the classroom now would ever guess that they had narrowly escaped becoming student-flavored soul-sucker snacks just a few minutes before.

  She turned to Jake, feeling reluctant gratitude for the tall elf.

  “Thanks,” she said stiffly. “That would have been a real pain to clean up. And… thanks for saving my life too…again.”

  He nodded, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “I would have been here sooner if I could have. Forgive the delay.”

  “No it’s…I should have listened to you and called you by your right name.” Cass cleared her throat uneasily. “From now on I’ll remember that.”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t have to. I will consider ‘Jake’ as your second name for me and answer to it accordingly.”

  Cass frowned. “Second name?”

  “What you humans call a nick-name, I believe,” Jake said. “As I told you, in the Realm of the Fae, names hold power. A second name is usually used to denote affection or trust between lovers but in your case, I think it denotes something like pure human stubbornness.” One corner of his mouth quirked up, taking some of the sting out of his words.

  “Um, okay.” Cass nodded feeling her cheeks burn for some reason. “Well, I—”

  “Miss Swann, is this your boyfriend?” It was Amanda Simms again, looking up with wide eyes at Jake.

  “No, of course no—” Cass started to say but Jake cut her off.

  “Well, I am a friend of Miss Swann and I am also male—a boy if you will. But we are not lovers, if that’s what you’re asking,” he told Amanda.

  “I’m sure that’s not what she was asking,” Cass hissed, throwing the big elf a warning look.
“Amanda, I think it’s time you got back to your painting. It’s almost time to go home—don’t you want to finish it before you leave?”

  But Jake was apparently much more fascinating than any painting, at least to the nosey Amanda. She looked up at him, curiosity filling her chubby face.

  “Do you like Miss Swann because of her boobs?” she wanted to know.

  “Amanda!” Cass gasped. “Just ignore her,” she told Josh. “You know how kids are.” But to her horror, he actually answered the question.

  “I think Miss Swann has many excellent qualities,” he said, smiling at the little girl. “Not the least of which are her fine endowments. She’s also quite a talented artist.”

  “Is en…endowmints another word for boobs?” Amanda wanted to know.

  Jake nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  “Don’t encourage her!” Cass told him, her face flaming. “Amanda, go paint!”

  But Amanda had found an adult who would answer her questions and she wasn’t about to be stopped.

  “So why do boys like big boobs? I mean breasts?” she asked Jake.

  He looked thoughtful.

  “Well, I suppose—”

  “Stop! Don’t you dare answer that!” Cass put up a hand and glared at him. “And that’s enough, Amanda,” she said, turning to her student. “What in the world would make you ask something like that?”

  Amanda shrugged. “I dunno. But that’s what my mom said about her last boyfriend—she said he just liked her boobs. Miss Swann, I hope I have big boobs like you when I grow up.”

  You better hope you do, sweetheart because you’re not gonna get by on tact, that’s for sure! Cass thought.

  Aloud she said, “That’s enough about boobs. Go back and get your painting. It’s almost time to go.”

  She raised her voice so that all the children could hear her, deciding that ending class five minutes early was better than exposing any more of the students to Jake’s frank appraisal of her “endowments.” She shooed them out the art room door and turned to face the big elf, her cheeks still hot.