Mismatched Pair

by J. L. Ray

  As she watched Baz’s recorded interview, the two featured interviewees seemed genuinely confused over the fact that their little picking and trading business constituted a Magical Felony, Class 2, that is, one that caused deaths but had only indirect involvement from the sellers in those deaths. Had they known exactly what they had sold to Heraphina in the first place, it would be a Class 1 offense, as premeditation would play into the charges, and no deal Azeem could have made would have kept them out of prison. They would have gone to Mundane prison since they didn’t need magical oversight, but that would have been cold comfort for them. However, their overtly sincere greed made it seem that they had been used by the dark fae traders to get dangerous goods into Mundane lands without any knowledge of the purpose of the products they accepted.

  “We was just a-hopin’ to get an offer for an FV show, maybe on FIAC, y’know, that Fairies In America Channel! They have so many good shows, and our’n would be unique!” Maybelle told Azeem.

  “Maybelle’s right. We just wanted to get our little bit o’fame and money is all,” Mickey mumbled.

  Luckily, Tony noticed that Mickey Sutherland spent most of his time with his mouth shut and let his wife do the talking. She felt quite certain that she could pull off Maybelle’s accent. While her fashion sense screamed middle-aged barfly, Miz Sutherland sounded like a couple of Tony’s former elementary school teachers, a verbal style she could mimic. However, Tony figured the odds of Baz passing for Southern Appalachian were slim to none. Baz had only been in human form since 1989, and he’d only been in the States since 2009. At that point, he had been sent to work in Minnesota by a Norwegian supervisor who had hoped that the New World might have a calming effect on the irascible detective. That hope had proved to be too high. Baz had a disconcerting habit of shifting when provoked to anger, and moving from Oslo to Minneapolis hadn’t altered his personality. Thinking of that had left Tony trying to come up with a nice way to tell Baz to keep his pretty mouth shut and let her do the talking on this op. She was pondering her wording when she suddenly focused again on what Maybelle was saying in the recording.

  “We had such big plans!” She had been rattling on about their idea for an FIAC show for a while, which was why Tony had checked out mentally. Maybelle’s imagination left a lot to be desired, especially good taste, so her thoughts on developing a fairyvision show had lulled Tony into inattention. Maybelle’s comments suddenly brought her back to the topic at hand. “All them ideas we had, I’ll swanee. I thought we’d get them fae to go in on it with us. Seemed like they could use the money! But them folks we was aworkin’ with, that ole tree hugger and his sad sack drunk of a friend, they didn’t want no attention, which put a real crimp in our plans to get on the FV. So we found us another group to trade with and mebbe get a chance to make our mark, y’know? That’s who we was meetin’ today.”

  Tony paused the picture and said to Baz, who was sitting behind her, “Hey, Baz, how many sets of fae smugglers are involved with the Sutherlands? Do you know?”

  She turned to look at him when she got no answer and soon found out why. After telling her he couldn’t even set his own call signal for his f-light, there he was, sitting inside what the Golden Ball Corporation, which had designed and now sold f-lights, jokingly called the Cone of Silence, after an old 1960s TV spy spoof. Inside his cone, where he had the music cranked up, he stood, attempting to wiggle his hips and throw an Elvis-styled sneer as he sang along to...hmm, looked like “Jailhouse Rock.”

  Tony stared for moment, muttering, “I’ve created a monster.” She stood up, got as close to the cone as possible, and waved her arms.

  Baz froze, mouth open, sneer in place, hips in a position that no one, not even a Changeling, could hold for long. He stood up straight and turned off the Cone. “First this Gapping Band music, and now the King. Truly, you have introduced me to marvelous things today, Detective. I owe you, oh, so many favors!” he spouted effusively as he reached out and grabbed her hand and shook it.

  “Well, good!” Tony told him, gingerly detaching her crushed hand from his extra large paw. “Hey, Baz, how many fae smuggling rings are the Sutherlands working with?”

  He frowned and shook his head, “One of which I know.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Your video of Maybelle,” she shrugged. “She said in the interview that they were with a new group.”

  Baz frowned, then shrugged. “We must see to them both, yes? And we start with the ones we meet tonight.”

  Tony nodded, assuming that her nagging sense of unease had to do with having a new partner. There wasn’t much else they could do except go on with the operation. She nodded, then added, “So, you’re loving the King, I take it?” Baz nodded. “Then, given all that good will you have for me right now, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but when we get to the meeting, keep the sneer. It’s a good look for you! But keep your mouth shut, okay?”

  Chapter Four

  Like all good plans, theirs didn’t last much past the first five minutes of action although the two detectives got off to a good start by dressing for their roles.

  The real Maybelle Sutherland was closer to 50 than 30, but after looking at the footage of her, Tony quickly put together an outfit that resembled the one Maybelle had sported in the video and that helped her feel like she could channel Maybelle. The ankle length, low-rider, slim cut black jeans hugged every curve on Tony, and she topped them with a red angora off-the-shoulder sweater and under it, a spandex cami in black. On her feet, she added platform stilettos in black velvet. She only wished she had the red Louis Vuitton bag with her as it would have been right up Maybelle’s alley, but since that was back at the apartment and way too upmarket for the role she would play, she had a black and gray Chanel knock-off the size of a Yorkie as her handbag. It was only a bag, not a magical receptacle, but at least it looked right with the other clothes.

  “Wow. I’m glad Cal isn’t here to see this,” she muttered as she stared in the mirror. She preferred to only imagine his reaction to her Flashdance style. After accessorizing with giant gold hoop earrings and half a ton of jangling bracelets, she added a standard Golden Ball DeGlam spell to antique herself. It added years to her age, making her appear more of a contemporary of Maybelle. Unfortunately, the spell couldn’t do much with her voice, so she had to handle both the accent and the need to deepen her voice on her own.

  She had insisted that Baz let her pick his clothes as well. He had on a nice pair of jeans, but Tony had gotten them large enough to bag, which meant adding a belt and some boxers. Baz apparently went commando, which wasn’t a good look with baggin’ unless the man involved was looking to get picked up for indecent exposure. As it was, Tony barely got her eyes covered in time. Actually, she didn’t get her eyes covered in time, but she pretended. Anything else and she might have said something to make Baz a smug pain in the ass. As it was, once he got the boxers on and tried the jeans again, she had an immediate mutiny on her hands.

  “Mickey’s pants were loose, I remember that, of course, but why would anyone in his right mind wear this in public?” Baz asked Tony, a little panicked as he tried to cinch the belt to pull his pants in at his actual waist while Tony tried to explain that if he used a belt at all, it needed to cinch much lower—in a potentially painful area. “This makes no sense! No criminal can run away in such clothing! He would trip and fall and be caught easily, not to mention cutting off blood to his…” Baz blushed.

  Tony laughed. “What, Minnesota gansta wannabes and suburban teens don’t dress like this? I guess it must be too cold up there. Lucky you. Sure, this look has brought down a few folks, but you would be amazed at how fast some of these guys haul ass, even droopy-drawer ass.”

  Baz stood still. “I do not think it would hurt to have Mickey wear something more dignified.” He let go of the belt, which quickly slid south, showing the duck hunter boxers that were all they could find in the staging room for underwear,
for men anyway. If they had been working a vice case and Baz had been cross-dressing, he would have been spoilt for choice from what might have fit. Tony shook her head as an instant image of Baz in a Dr. Frank N. Furter costume popped into her head. She so needed that image gone! No, instead of fishnet thigh highs and a thong, Baz picked the duck drawers. Baz reached one desperate hand out and caught the jeans as they slid. “I cannot make this work.”

  “Hmmmm.” Tony went over the racks of clothing available and pushed through the hangers, eventually finding something else. She looked from the rack over to Baz. “So, you’re saying no to the baggin’ look with hoodie?”

  “I am…” he paused and added emphasis, “I am saying no to these clothes.”

  “Okay,” Tony told him.

  Ten minutes later he stood next to her, his OshKosh overalls clipped on top of a long-sleeved Lynyrd Skynrd concert tee. He looked at her outfit, then at his.

  “Why do you look pretty and I look stupid?” he grumbled.

  “Pretty?” Tony looked down at the fuzzy red sweater. “I look like a 1980s reject. All I need is a sequined headband, leg warmers, and permed hair. Well,” she stuck out one leg and turned her foot left and then right, “except for these shoes. These are wicked cool.” She looked over at Baz. If he was going for dignity, well, the overalls weren’t really making that statement. But at least his pants were definitely in the upright and locked position. She tried to reassure him. “Hey, Maybelle is the voice—she does most of the talking—so it’s okay if she looks a little more put-together...in a cheap kind of way.” She turned to Baz and slapped him on the shoulder, “You, however, you need to hide that laser sharp brain of yours from these guys, so we dress you like you just fell off the collard truck. They’ll never know what hit them.”

  Baz sighed. “I still don’t know what you said, but we must go.” He fingered the overall snap, hooking his thumb in it. “This will have to do.”

  “Excellent! Now, let me put the DeGlamming spell on you to age you a bit.”

  Baz winced as the spell fell over him, and for the minute it took for the spell to take, she saw a bear’s muzzle superimposed on his humanoid face. The muzzle had gone gray during that minute, as had some of Baz’s hair.

  “What?” Baz asked her, as she had been staring hard.

  “Nothing, partner. Just making sure the spell worked,” she said. The double image had been a little freaky, but then freaky was a relative term at the SCIB.

  Five minutes later they were in the rental truck, driving a load of pink flamingoes to a warehouse not far from the Washington Dulles airport. It was there that the plans they had died a quick death.

  Baz drove up to the chain link fence next to the warehouse where he and Tony were supposed to meet their contact. While he stopped for a moment at a turn, Tony touched her ear. Her ear bug woke up and stretched, which tickled a little, but she managed not to giggle. “Home base, this is Florida Sunshine, we are about to enter.” She nodded at Baz to wake his ear bug.

  Azeem answered, “Florida Sunshine, you are a go to enter.”

  “Copy that,” Tony replied.

  Baz turned left and headed toward the gates in the fence that were five hundred feet away.

  The warehouse was abandoned. No company currently used it, but the gates had chains wrapped around them and a lock. As the detectives drove up, a figure in a long, flowing cloak stepped from the shadows and raised a hand to the chains. The chains simply vanished.

  “Huh,” Tony said.

  “They were probably never there in the first place,” Baz commented, then added, “and I’ll bet that’s a witch.”

  The cloaked figure gestured at the gates, which swung open to allow the truck through.

  “What a show off!” Tony muttered.

  “If we were really who we say we are, we would be impressed,” Baz said. “We should comment on this person’s prowess. This is the first time they have interacted, yes? They want to astound us with their tricks.”

  “Good point,” Tony said, and then shifted into her Maybelle voice, “I am just tickled pink with all this!” She looked over at Baz, “Too much?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, with a knowing air. He had understood her basic words but had no idea what she had said.

  They drove past the cloaked figure and into the complex. Suddenly a line of lights appeared in front of the truck, a line that ended in an arrow pointing to a building at the far end of the lot.

  “I reckon we’re supposed to be wowed by this, too,” Tony said in Maybelle mode.

  “I...reckon you are correct, wife,” Baz told her, trying to keep up with this new language.

  Tony smiled at Baz as he turned the truck down the corridor between buildings, following the runway lights to the structure they were apparently meant to approach. He pulled up to the wide doorways, which suddenly opened, and then he drove them inside. And that’s when both ear bugs died.

  “Home base, do you copy?” Tony kept to silent mode, but the ear bug, which should have sent her message on to the Lieutenant back at the office as well as the officers in the van parked one block away, didn’t respond. “Hey husband, we are on our own out here,” Tony told Baz calmly.

  He put his hand up to his ear, “Yes, I believe we are.” He looked at her intently, “These smugglers may be protecting themselves from the Sutherlands.”

  “Their plans to be FV reality stars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this old girl don’t have any reason to suspect a thing, since she don’t have no bugs on her!” Tony told him solemnly; then she shocked Baz when she giggled and leaned over and kissed him. He realized her purpose a moment later.

  “Ahem.” Someone was standing at her window, trying to get her attention, and Tony put a little extra into the kiss she had going with Baz. She noticed that he seemed to be enthusiastically returning the favor and that they were putting on a bit more of a show than she’d planned.

  “Madame! Mrs. Sutherland! Please, give me your attention, Madame,” the voice, stodgy and heavily upper class British, the kind that suggested a person was attempting to talk around a plum, sounded just a bit desperate.

  Tony pulled away from Baz’s surprisingly skillful lips with a little popping sound and pushed his hands out from under the sweater. “Now, now, sugar,” she told Baz a bit breathlessly, “plenty of time for pleasure after business!” She turned around to the cloaked figure as she straightened out her top. “Sorry, honey, my better half gets a little carried away at times!”

  “Let him get carried away on his own time! We have a short window in which to make this exchange and you are late. You know you have to make the run through the portal and back within the designated timeframe to escape the attention of the authorities.” His euphemism covered a lot of ground—the PTB, the SCIB, and the Geas. “I explained that in our last conversation.”

  That was the point at which Tony and Baz realized that the Sutherlands, who had come across as the most innocently guilty babes in the big, black woods, had actually set the SCIB up to be discovered by the smugglers. There had been no mention made by the couple of actually going through any kind of portal, and any portal that they could go through would be a temporary portal, and something that only Natties could cross both ways because of the Geas. At least the detective now had an idea of how the magical items had been brought into Mundania. Somehow, the smugglers were using the Natties as a conduit. Unfortunately, that didn’t help either Tony or Baz, who would not have a free pass through a portal carrying Fairie items since neither one officially counted as purely Mundane. Unless the two detectives could pull a hat out of a rabbit, so to speak, and fake their way through this situation, they were sure to be made.

  “I remember what you said, honey, of course.” Tony patted the shoulder that was by her window, but the cloaked figure jerked back from her, as if repulsed by her touch.

  “Come along,” he told her. “The two of you will need to drive the truck through the portal an
d then bring it back after my contact in Fairie has unloaded the merchandise and replaced it with his.” He turned and pointed ahead into the dim light of the empty warehouse. “The portal is ahead of us. I will guide you to it.”

  “You go ahead, sweet pea. We’ll be right behind you.” She turned to Baz and whispered, “The Sutherlands lied. They lied a lot. They knew we’d send a team with Supers on it and this would happen.”

  “I think I know what to do.”

  “What?” Tony hissed, looking over at the mysterious figure, who had stopped and was obviously waiting impatiently for them to get the truck moving.

  “We have to stall so that the portal closes.”

  “Apparently, they can’t keep this Tempo open long.” She nodded. Legal portals had predictable rules set up and overseen by the magic of the PTB. But Tempos still came with surprises—like a CrackerJack box, only not as pleasant. And since the Geas had triggered, one reliable constant on both sides of the Divide was that only legal portals allowed Supers passage from Fairie. It was why the Tempo in the Monster-Mate director’s office had caused such a stink. When Serena Melinoe jumped through the portal to Fairie, she shouldn’t have been able to use it to travel back with Changelings to attack Tony and Mephistopheles. That she had done so suggested a change in the basic magic of division between the realms, but because the portal seemed to have vanished, there was no chance to study it and ascertain how that Tempo worked.

  Baz said grimly, “I do not know what type of fae blood you possess, or how much; that is your business. But likely you cannot return through the Tempo any more than I can. Those only work for pure Mundanes.”

  “Shit.”