Mismatched Pair

by J. L. Ray

  Mismatched Pair

  Monster-Mate.com

  Book 2

  By

  J. L. Ray

  Copyright 2016 J. L. Ray

  Many thanks to all the folks who read A Mate Worse Than Death and encouraged me to continue writing. I had help with Mismatched Pair from Judy Clark and Michael Weiser, who read the earliest draft. I greatly appreciated all of their suggestions. My husband Jay did the largest amount of editing, and he did a fabulous job. Finally, I want to thank my students for reminding me of two of the most important aspects of the writing process—enjoy the topic and don’t try to edit alone. Despite thirty years as a writing instructor, I am quite sure that I made every mistake possible while putting this book together. Any final errors in the text are all mine.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter One

  “No! You can’t! I absolutely forbid it!”

  Tony stared at her mother for a minute, confused, then looked over at her father, who was shaking his head and holding up one hand as if to block it all out. She turned and looked at Mephistopheles, who shrugged. She gave him a frown and a nod, asking a question wordlessly. “A little help here?” is what she meant, but he just lifted his hands briefly as if to say, “What?”

  She gave him another look and murmured, “Really? No help at all?”

  Useless.

  Giving up on an assist from that quarter, she turned back to her parents and tried again. “Mama, I think we need to talk about this, okay?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” And with that, Amanda Newman stalked out of the room, leaving behind her husband, her stunned oldest daughter, and the Being who had given her daughter a ride to her parents’ home after she left the hospital.

  Tony turned back to her father, Anthony. “Uh, Dad?”

  “Antonia, until a few days ago, I didn’t know you had a twin either, so I can be of no help whatsoever.” He shook his head. “I wish I could.”

  They all stood for a moment, remembering that evening in the ICU —Tony, the victim of magical seizures, Mephistopheles frantically attempting spells to protect Tony from the onslaught of each seizure, and then the revelation from Amanda Newman that Tony’s three times great-grandmother Euphemia had been a witch who had made a deal with the coven’s leader to leave Fairie and marry into a Mundane family. That deal had involved trading a future twin daughter of the family for freedom, and in the end, that daughter was Tony’s younger twin, Adele. The bill had come due a long time down the proverbial road from Euphemia’s original deal with Caridwen, but lives in Fairie ran much longer than Mundane lives, and a deal was a deal. When a child of the house, Amanda, eventually gave birth to twin girls, Caridwen appeared and snatched the second-born before she was even a minute old.

  Other than Amanda, the Newmans had never even known of Adele’s existence and might never have known. That changed when Tony, working on a homicide under the Geas that keeps Supernatural creatures in Mundania in check, was directly exposed to the realm of Fairie. She manifested premonitions, a rare one of many types of magical powers that indicated Fairie blood. She had pretty much ignored the premonitions in order to get her job done until the seizures began. She had had no idea of the danger she was in from them, but she knew the ramifications of her job. When major crimes involving Supers occur in Mundania, the Supernatural Crimes Investigation Bureau has a limited amount of time to solve the crime before the magic of the Geas, like all good compulsion curses, reacts. In cases of major crimes by Supers, it would simply swat down anyone in the vicinity of the crime who harbored any guilt for that crime. Tony and her ogre partner Calvin Kelly had solved a lot of crimes. This one, however, had left its mark on Tony. The premonitions shifted to Visions accompanied by blackouts or seizures, and she had Seen her sister, the one she didn’t know she had. And her sister didn’t look happy or content or even well in those Visions. Tony knew that she had to find her, rescue her, and bring her home, to her parents and her other siblings, Alfred and Amelia, no matter what the cost. Unfortunately, she’d just hit a major roadblock—her mother.

  “Do you think you could find out why Mama doesn’t want me to go and look for Adele?” she said, trying to keep any accusation out of her voice. The whole issue of Amanda keeping her twin a secret for twenty-eight years had the entire family edging around each other, trying not to say or do the wrong thing. For the most part that had translated to staying out of each other’s way.

  “I’ll try, but perhaps you should go. Let me approach your mother without the pressure of having you here, waiting for an answer.” Anthony turned and gave Mephistopheles, Phil to his friends, a far from friendly look. “I’ll give you a ride back to your apartment, Antonia.”

  Tony chose to be oblivious to the look. While she wasn’t ready to call the three-thousand-year-old dark fae her boyfriend, especially since they had yet to manage an actual date, she also couldn’t deny the attraction between them, no matter how much she wanted to do exactly that. Life would be simpler if she walked away now—maybe too simple. She sighed. “That’s okay, Dad. No need. Dindle and Windle are outside with the limo.” She grinned, hoping to lighten the mood in the room. “They’re trying to make up for their psycho ex-girlfriend’s attempt to kill us all.”

  Her father snorted and shook his head. “Very well. I’ll call you later to see how you are.” He turned to walk them to the door. “I assume you are going to take some time off from work?”

  “That’s the plan.” She shrugged. “The lieutenant made it pretty clear that he expects Cal and me both to take a break. We’ll see how long that lasts.” She turned to face her father as he opened the front door of the colonial home in Georgetown where she had grown up. “Cal’s okay with the idea of a break. Little Newman,” she grinned at her father as she mentioned her partner’s newborn, who had been given their family surname as a first name, “is apparently a handful.”

  “More like a wheelbarrow full,” murmured Phil in reference to the size of the baby ogre.

  “I expect he is,” said Anthony smoothly as he glared at Phil, “as are all new babies. Not that either of you know anything about that.” He managed to make that a bit of an insult as he continued to stare at Phil.

  “And happy to keep it that way,” Tony reassured her Dad, managing to avoid a glance at Phil as they stepped out onto the street.

  Anthony narrowed his eyes at the dark fae who seemed intent on dating his baby girl. “See that you do. For now.” With that, he shut the door behind them.

  “Well,” Phil took Tony’s arm companionably. “That was not the least bit awkward, was it?”

  “Which part? The one where Mama doesn’t want me
to find my long lost sister and practically slammed a door in my face? Or the part where my Daddy made it clear that he’d like to push you off a bridge, preferably into oncoming traffic?”

  Phil was quiet for minute as they walked over to where the dwarf brothers waited, Windle behind the wheel of the limo and Dindle beside the passenger door, ready to throw it open for them in true Hollywood style.

  As the head of Monster-Mate, a mageline dating service for Supers, Phil was not only entitled to a limo; sometimes, it was safer. Most Supers had a love-hate relationship with the dating service, and the limo came with lots of extra protection, both magic and Mundane tech. Since the dwarf brothers enjoyed making the most of their employer’s status, they frequently pushed him to use the limo rather than drive himself. And they really did feel guilty right now. They had both dated the nymph Serena, Monster-Mate’s head administrative assistant, who had turned out to be a wolf in sparkly, pink clothing. When they heard Tony was being released from the hospital, they had offered to drive her home. Since they also had bets going on when Tony and Phil would manage a real first date, they hoped getting Phil to use the limo would give them the inside scoop on the dating pool.

  As Tony and Phil approached the vehicle he mused, “Has your father been that specific about my possible demise? After three thousand years, most of my enemies assume I would be far more difficult to kill than that. And, of course, I assume he might want something poetic, perhaps a nice oubliette in which to shove me.”

  Dindle swooped over to open the door to the limo and bowed Tony into the vehicle in a move so over-the-top that she snorted with laughter, then slapped her hand over her nose.

  “Oopsy.”

  Phil leaned down and looked in on her with a grin. “It is good to hear you laugh. It feels like an age since you made that amusingly piggy sound.”

  Silence.

  “Adorable nose snort?”

  More silence, until Dindle took pity on his boss.

  He leaned forward and gestured again, “Into the car with you, sir, whilst your foot can still be retracted from your gob.”

  “Point taken,” Phil muttered as he slid in beside Tony and did his level best to charm her the rest of the way to her place.

  When they arrived at her apartment off of New Hampshire Avenue, Phil slid out behind Tony, meaning to follow her in. She quickly disabused him of the notion. Sticking her forefinger in his chest, she stopped him, tapping with each word for emphasis, “Oh, no you don’t.” She folded her arms. “The doctor said that I need rest.” She looked up into his face and almost changed her mind. He was giving her the most pitiful eyes he could manage, given the plans he had for later, and she realized at that moment that she had never seen a more fetching set of lashes on a man in all her twenty-eight years. She closed her own eyes for a moment and then tried to look elsewhere, hoping to shake off their effect.

  “I can help you rest,” he told her, his voice as innocent as he could make it. He wasn’t at all successful.

  “Really? I have a pretty good idea of your idea of rest, and I have an idea that you need to get those ideas...” she paused for a second, and then threw out her hands. “Okay, I lost my own train of thought in there somewhere, which ought to tell you that if you do make it upstairs with me, the only thing happening will be sleep—the kind with snores. And drool.”

  “I adore drool.”

  “I doubt this is the type you’d have in mind, Casanova. Beat it.”

  He reached out and took her hands and sighed.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I want to spend some time with you,” he said, and looked into her eyes again. She swallowed hard. He was rubbing her hands as he talked and she was so tired at this point that she could barely think. “Why do we not…go somewhere?”

  “Somewhere? What? Like a…a romantic getaway or something?”

  He nodded, this time looking down at the hands he was massaging. “Yes, like that. We can go anywhere you wish.” He looked back up her intently, as if her saying yes to this really mattered.

  She shook her head, puzzled by his earnestness. “Phil, let’s have that first date before anything else, okay? Spending a whole weekend together could be a disaster.”

  “Weekend?”

  She wrinkled her brow. “What were you thinking?”

  He pulled her hands to his chest and she stumbled up against him, though once there, she was perfectly happy to rest against him as he spoke. “You have two weeks off. I thought we might travel a bit.”

  “Phil…” This time she sighed. She pulled her hands out of his, reluctantly pressing off of him and back on her own very tired feet. Who knew that standing and walking could wear a body out after lying around for a few days? “Phil, two weeks? That’s too much, too fast. Okay? We still barely know each other.” Before he could protest, she added, “And I need to look for my sister, right after I get some sleep. So…” She reached up and slid her hand onto his jaw and pulled his face down for a kiss. “We’ll see,” she murmured, when they came up for air. She looked into his eyes and almost changed her mind. No doubt about it. Three thousand years meant a lot of time building skills, and kissing had to have been a high priority for Phil. But he must have realized that she needed some time. She saw capitulation in his stance.

  “May I call you later?”

  “Sure, handsome.” She patted his cheek. When he brightened up at her answer, she grinned and added, “I might even answer.”

  Phil waved to Tony as she looked back from the entry to her apartment building. As soon as she was through, he slid into the limo and made a quick call. “It appears that the, er, ball is in your court,” he said, and ended the transmission.

  Though she’d gotten home late in the afternoon, Tony fell deeply asleep, missing several f-light messages, some she might have wanted to take. But the caller Tony would have most wanted to speak to left no message when she called.

  After Tony left, her father went back to the master bedroom where Amanda had taken refuge.

  “My love,” he said to her, trying to keep his tone soft and neutral. “Can you tell me what is wrong?”

  Amanda had stretched out on the chaise longue in their bedroom, a handkerchief against her face and a thousand-mile stare on her face. For a moment he thought she was going to ignore him, but after the most painful pause he had ever felt in his life, she looked at him, fresh tears brimming in her eyes.

  “She can’t go after her sister. None of us can.”

  Anthony watched as tears rolled down his wife’s face. Gently he asked her, “Why not?”

  She took a deep, calming breath and wiped her cheeks. “It is part of the deal, written in my ancestor’s diary. According to Euphemia Lambert, any attempts to retrieve the child by her family will bring down a death curse on that family. All the current children of the line will die, youngest to oldest, one at a time, and nothing will stop that curse.”

  Anthony dropped to the chair opposite her, his knees giving way.

  Amanda continued, “If Antonia knows, it will make her all the more determined to find a way to break the curse and find Adele.” She looked over at her husband. “She gets her stubborn streak from you.”

  Anthony shook his head at their old joke. “She gets it from you, wife.” He paused for a moment and then asked wearily, “What can we do?”

  “I’ve talked to Lieutenant Azeem already.”

  Anthony tried not to be upset that his wife had spoken to their daughter’s supervisor before talking to her own husband and the father of their children, including the one he only just learned he had. Amanda read his hurt in his silence.

  “I planned to talk to you next. Antonia surprised me by coming here from the hospital first.” She leaned over and stretched a hand out to grab his hand. “I want him to put her back to work, to distract her while we decide how to handle this, how to tell her the truth and figure out a way to stop her from trying anyway.” She let go of his hand and leaned back in the chaise, shutt
ing her eyes wearily. “I don’t know what to do as yet.” She looked back over at her husband. “You’ll not like whom else I contacted. And he was the first one, actually.”

  He raised one brow and she blushed.

  “Not that damned playboy demon!”

  “Anthony, he’s three thousand years old. He’s hardly a boy, and I believe that he’s quite serious about Antonia.” She rolled her head from side to side. “I had hoped…with his knowledge of Fairie, I had hoped he would have some idea.” She dropped her head back against the cushions as if her neck would no longer hold it up. “Even though he doesn’t have an answer, he may come up with someone who does.” She added faintly, “And in the meantime, he can distract her.”

  Anthony twitched a bit at that, but kept his mouth shut. If Amanda thought they could trust the damned fellow, then perhaps they could. It didn’t mean he had to like it—or Mephistopheles.

  “Let’s call her,” he suggested.

  “Separately,” Amanda added. “For now, we present ourselves as a house divided, my dear.”

  “As you wish,” he said. He stood and moved over next to her on the chaise, pulling her into his arms. “As long as it’s only a pretense that we are divided,” he added, whispering into her ear.

  She stood in the tiny bathroom connected to her workspace and pulled out her f-light. For a second, she contemplated the device. It reminded her of her old wand, the one that had disappeared when the Great Geas was invoked. The thought of the Geas stiffened her resolve, and she made the call. When she got no answer, she tapped an ending with one sparkling silver nail, leaving no message. Okay. She had tried. At the very least, she had tried. But as she left the small, private space, she didn’t meet her own eyes in the mirror.

  “Crap!” Tony rolled over and grabbed her f-light. When she woke, the light coming in the bow window of her second floor apartment told her that she was late for work by more than a few hours. She had automatically grabbed for her f-light, expecting to find a message from Cal, Sergeant Hubbard, or even worse, one from the Lieutenant. As she barked, “Messages!” she saw the hospital tag that she had cut off her arm yesterday before falling into her own bed with her own pillows and blankets. She laughed as she dropped the f-light on the bed, realizing that she wasn’t late for work. Then her retrieved messages spun in front of her in hover mode.