Be Careful What You Wish For Read online

  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