by J. L. Ray
Tony heard muffled yelling and saw the giant look panicked.
“Sorry, Mommy,” he said, setting her down and patting her on the head, which did little more than crush her fedora. “I forgot not to squeeze so hard.”
His mother grumbled a bit, and pulling off her hat, she snapped her fingers at it, which popped it back into shape, even the feather, and slapped it onto her head.
“What gives, son?” she screeched out of the side of her mouth. “Where’s the bootleg?” Then she turned around and looked at Tony. “And say, what’s a filthy Natty dame doing hanging around my lawn?” To be fair, after getting up from the mud puddle, which appeared to be the result of Bogey’s earlier tears, Tony was pretty filthy, so that was probably a literal comment rather than a realmist comment. Tony stood still, trying to be invisible and figure out if the woman had a speech impediment or if she was addicted to film noir.
“Mommy, she couldn’t bring our stuff, and I was going to get the stuff for Too—“ Bogey slapped his hand on his mouth and rolled his eyes. Then he got a funny look on his face. “For that guy in Mundania, but Mommy! The gate is gone! It just went away.”
“What?” the witch mommy’s shriek almost took out Tony’s eardrum. Glinda would have been proud.
Tony moved forward, hoping she wasn’t about to make another stupid move. After stepping through the portal in the first damn place, she’d used up all her stupidity cards for the week. “Ma’am,” she said, “according to my watch it should be open another seven minutes. And as precious as this house and garden are, and they are quite lovely,” she poured on the polite Southern manners, “I reckon I’d like to git on home today.”
The witch had stared at her during the entire speech, an expression on her face that could have been suspicion or just normal witch bitchiness. It wasn’t always easy to tell the difference. “Bogart, come here, son.”
“What, Mommy?”
“Who’s the rube?” she asked Bogey.
“This is Maybelle, she must be the new employee that Too—”
His mother cut him off abruptly, and Tony realized he had almost named the walking cliché from the warehouse, twice now. Apparently “Mommy” didn’t want the guy’s name out there. “Cheese it, son. Go on, Bogey. Go to the shed and hoof them boxes to us. I’ll get that gate open.” She added, “Make it snappy.”
Bogey took off at a trot, which shook the ground enough to cause Tony to have to broaden her barefoot stance. If she’d been in the stilettos, she’d have been knocked off them.
“He’s a lovely—”
The witch interrupted her. “Can the small talk, sister.” Then she started cackling. “I crack myself up...sister...ha ha ha...”
Tony realized then that the old broad knew she was a witch, also, but kept her mouth shut. No need to push her luck with an old style gangster wannabe. For all she knew the broomstick was also a tommy gun.
The witch’s next actions had Tony on high alert, as she took her broomstick and stalked to the other side of Tony, back to the point where the Tempo had opened. Then she held the broomstick up and made circles in the air. They got broader and broader and faster and faster. She began muttering in a language that Tony didn’t recognize. It wasn’t the high-pitched language of Fairie, but it didn’t sound like a Mundane language. Of course, Tony was no polyglot, so maybe it was Mundane, or a dead Mundane language. It wasn’t Latin. That she could be sure of, having taken four years in high school.
“You got some serious nerve coming here, sister,” the witch told her in the smooth tones that Tony dreaded to hear more than a vicious cackle. In her experience, a slick tone in a witch usually preceded some dreadful act, like attempted murder.
“I reckon I don’t rightly know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” Tony tried.
“Hmmm,” the witch muttered and added under her breath, “maybe she doesn’t know...best to leave it alone. Have to help her get through, though…”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t catch that,” Tony tried to look as clueless as possible.
“Never mind, never mind,” the witch told her as Bogey came back, his arms loaded with several large items. “Here comes my boy,” she said, and the whole time she had continued to move the broom as if she was stirring a pot. Now there was movement in front of her. “And here comes the gate.”
Tony was shocked. Supposedly, at least according to her textbooks in college and SCIB training, it took great magic to open a Tempo, whether in Fairie or in Mundania. She’d never heard of a single witch managing one with just her broomstick. But the evidence was incontrovertible—the pulsing red portal was forming in front of her. As she watched, she realized it wasn’t forming at all—it was reappearing. It must have been there the whole time but had gone transparent for some reason.
“How did you...” Tony asked the witch, pausing because she wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking.
“It’s an old family recipe. Sorry, you’ll have to get your own. Now, how much time is left?”
Tony looked at her watch, “Three minutes!”
“Bogart, hand off the goods to Miz Maybelle. Hurry! That little doll’s gotta blow this joint in a coupla minutes!”
Unlike the uniform crates of pink flamingoes that were still sitting in the moving truck, Bogey set down a mix of boxes. There was one box that Tony knew she would not be able to carry. It was as long as she was tall, maybe longer, and almost two feet wide and deep. There were several other boxes of varying sizes and volumes, and she could only wonder how many dangerous magic items she was smuggling back in herself. This really wasn’t going to plan at all since some of the items would have to go on with the guy on the Mundane side for his “other clients.”
“How do I git this one through?” Tony pointed at the long box.
“Bogart!” the witch barked. “Stack the little boxes on the long box, and we’ll put Miz Maybelle on top. She can ride through the gate with her hands on the stack, and you can shove her through.”
“I will help my friend!” Bogart nodded and stacked the boxes.
Tony looked at her watch and warned them, “One minute!”
Bogart looked up, “Ready!”
Tony walked over to the front of the stack and put her hands on the box on top.
“Hold on, sister,” the witch cackled again as she started patting her pockets down.
“We don’t have much time, sugar!” Tony told her.
The witch nodded, then smiled and pulled a medallion out of her front pocket. “Ah ha! Here we go.” She started to put the leather necklace the medallion hung from over Tony’s neck, and Tony stopped her.
“What the hell is that?” her accent slipped a bit and the witch smiled at her.
“This’ll get you through the portal intact, more or less.” Tony stared at the witch, but with no time to really question, she went with her gut, which was screaming “GO!” She nodded and the witch slung the necklace over her head. “Now, I mean it. Hold on to the boxes. It might be better if you just sat on the long box and touched the rest,” the witch told her. “They need your touch to get through, one way or the other. Bogart can shove you into the opening and on to Mundania.”
Tony shrugged and sat on the long box and leaned over, managing to get a muddy finger, foot, or elbow touching the rest of the boxes. The boxes lurched forward as Bogart pushed them and just as Tony went through, the last thing she heard was Mommy Witch chastising her rather large boy.
“Bogey! Ya big lug! You’re tearing up my petunia patch!”
“Sorry, Mommy.”
Chapter Six
Azeem was gearing up to head to the warehouse when his f-light started pinging. He glared at it, growling out, “Report!”
“We see movement at the warehouse, sir,” the officer told him. “The two guards are…oh.”
“Oh?” Azeem hissed. “Oh, what?”
“They just…disappeared, sir. They must have been an illusion.”
Azeem dropped his head and the
others in the room looked at one another. The surveillance team could have gone to the warehouse at any time, if they had checked for a magical signature indicating illusion. There were a lot of new trainees on the current SCIB operations team, the ones who did magical and technological support, but still, this was a fairly large mistake. The senior officer, Briggs, broke in again with more news.
“The doors are opening, and I think the detectives are coming out.”
“Can you contact either of them?” Azeem asked.
“Negative, sir. The ear bugs are dead, not dormant. We’ll have to wait for a visual confirmation.”
“I may be able to help with that,” Azeem told them and then looked over at Phil. “What do you have?”
“She is in the Mundane Realm once more, Azeem.” Phil took a big breath. “She seems to be well. Normal. Perhaps she suffered no ill effects from crossing into Fairie.” He paused, frowning. “It must have been a Temporary Portal,” he finally said, but in a tone of disbelief. That shouldn’t have worked, at least not the return trip, not with her witch heritage. Those only worked both ways for Naturals, at least until this incident.
“Yes,” Azeem answered shortly, but turned back to his f-light and his officers. “I want a report, full details on any movement. Sync any video or audio or spirito movement directly to my f-light. If a mouse farts, I want to know.”
Phil raised his eyebrows.
“What?” said Azeem.
“Being a police officer suits you, old friend.”
Azeem harrumphed, trying not to look too pleased. Then he said to Cal, “Go home—take Newman back and get some rest.”
“Sir, I’m giving Berthell a little R&R from the baby, and I’m pretty sure she would be upset if I came back with only part of this story to tell.”
“You shouldn’t be telling her any stories about your job,” Azeem said rather primly, but then they all laughed. If the laughter seemed a bit on edge, well, they had all been up and down the roller coaster for the last ten minutes.
“Hey, half the time, telling Berthell about a case is how I get it solved,” Cal snorted.
Azeem’s attention had gone back to the f-light, which was reporting to him, but on silent mode now. When he realized that both Cal and Phil were watching him, he paused the data flow and told them, “The warehouse door opened a few minutes ago. Then the truck came out with Baz driving it and Tony riding shotgun.” He looked puzzled. “I don’t know what they’re bringing back or why it entailed Tony going into Fairie, but the truck is riding as low as it did before they went into the warehouse. Whatever they have is quite heavy.”
“I assume we shall find out when they return.” Phil ran a hand down his beard, smoothing it into place, a nervous habit he’d all but broken himself of, until he met Tony.
Azeem frowned, then looked at Phil. “We shall find out. You will need to go back up front and wait with the desk sergeant. You can’t really be a part of this.”
“That is too bad. Good Sergeant Hubbard loathes me,” Phil pointed out matter-of-factly.
“Hey, not as much as she did before tonight!” Cal reminded him enthusiastically. “After the assist with my little Mannie, she warmed up quite a bit. Am I right?”
“From frigid to cold. Yes, I suppose you could say that she has ‘warmed up’ a bit.”
“Go and help her with the baby! Women go nuts over men with babies.”
Phil gave him a long look. Then he looked down at his newly cleaned self. Then he looked at Cal again.
Cal held out his hands in placation. “All you gotta do is stay out of missile range if he’s just eaten, dude. Should be a piece of cake. I mean, he has just eaten. He already spit-up too, am I right?” Cal winced as he realized that, of course, Phil knew he was right. Phil had worn it. “The little guy’s done with that for at least another hour or two. You can’t lose!”
With that, Azeem and Cal looked at Phil in a way that made it clear that it was time for him to go back out front, so he did.
Phil tried to go back to the intake area as quietly as possible. He had a feeling that the sergeant would find it amusing that he was kicked out of the back room, and he was right. He had just turned to very carefully ease the door into its jamb when he heard hearty laughter.
“Back up front with the rest of the criminals?” Sergeant Hubbard asked him archly.
“Since the only Beings in this room are you and little Mannie,” Phil told her smoothly, “and since we are none of us currently up on charges, I find your comment confusing. My dear Sergeant, if you find my presence overwhelming, and trust me, many Beings do, especially ladies, I can go wait in my car. In the cold.”
Hubbard gave him a narrow-eyed glare, but then Mannie, who was as tucked in beside her as a newborn ogre-spawn in a baby carriage the size of an economy car could be, made some gurgling noises and reached toward the general area that Phil’s voice had originated from.
“Huh. No accounting for taste.” She looked over at Phil. “The little guy’s been a bit fussy. He seems to want you. You should come over here and see what’s up with him.”
Phil raised an eyebrow.
“Come on, demon, or you can go out and wait in the cold.”
“If you insist,” he drawled and walked over to see the baby.
Newman reacted instantly. First, he seemed overwhelmingly happy. Then, his face screwed up in concentration as he grunted a bit. Then he started crying as if his heart would break. Finally, Phil and Sergeant Hubbard turned to each other, a dawning look of horror on their faces as they realized exactly what had just happened. The smell, which was rapidly approaching nuclear meltdown level, was a dead giveaway.
“I believe,” Phil began, then choked, just a little, on the fumes, “I believe that he needs a diaper change.” His eyes watering profusely, he began coughing into his sleeve.
Eschewing the baby talk, the sergeant leaned over and looked Newman squarely in the eye. “Is that right, young man?”
The baby chortled, waving his hands around.
Sergeant Hubbard looked over at Phil, who was recovering from a coughing fit.
Before she could open her mouth, Phil had both hands up, backing away. “Oh, no. No. No! I have never before and plan never, ever at all to do such a thing. It would be dangerous. It would endanger the child’s life for me to attempt this.” He gave Hubbard the most piteous look he could muster. Unfortunately, a mother of two hundred and thirty-five children and a legion of grands, great-grands and more, had long ago become immune to such pleas. No one put anything over on Old Mother Hubbard. That’s why she’d gotten the desk sergeant job in the first place—that and a run in with the Pied Piper after the Geas took effect. Nobody messed with the Hub’s children and got away with it. Unfortunately, the Geas had expected her to allow the police to take care of such business, so her penance was to become one of the police.
“Look, demon. I can’t be preoccupied for ten minutes or more, and that’s how long it’s going to take to change the ogre. Plus, I can’t pick him up.” She folded her arms, certain that she had trumped any arguments.
“I can,” Phil waved his hands, “flip him around for you as needed.”
“Good,” the sergeant said. “Then you can flip him around as you need. Because make no mistake, you are doing this. I expect it. Cal would expect it.” As he opened his mouth to argue, she added, “Tony would expect it and would probably be even stupider over your worthless ass. Y’know, chicks dig guys who take care of babies.” She muttered darkly, “Not that it ever did me any good…” When she saw Phil’s face, she downplayed her comment. “Different situation. Uh, situations. Well,” she waved her hands, trying to move the fumes away, “anyhoo—water under the bridge. The important thing is, it’s a very attractive feature in a potential mate.” She dug out a handkerchief and began wiping her eyes.
As the sergeant had managed to reproduce the very idea that Phil had heard from Cal, he saw his immediate future, and it involved a diaper almost big enough
to make himself a pair of trousers. He took a deep breath and looked at Newman. “Newman. We shall do this, together.” Not much of a pep talk, but it had been more for him more than the baby. “What do I need?” he asked the sergeant.
“First, get the diaper bag.”
“Diaper bag?”
“The blue thing.”
“The one covered in unicorns and rainbows? Stars in the heavens, it is hideous,” Phil said.
After a moment of silence, he looked at Sergeant Hubbard, who was gazing at him over the tops of her glasses. “It is a present from you to the Kellys, is it not?”
“Yes, it is.” She glared at him.
He sighed, and then stuck his hand into the bag. He had his whole arm in it, digging around. “This is quite...”
“Spacious, roomy, handy,” Sergeant Hubbard chimed in.
“Annoying!” Phil pulled his arm out. “How does anyone find anything in this...never mind.” He held a hand out over the opening of the bag. “I want...what do I want, Sergeant?”
“Really? You don’t know?”
“Really. I have never done this. I do not know.”
“Diapers, wipes.” She hummed a moment. “No, I don’t think he has a rash, so no diaper rash medicine.”
Phil’s eyes had widened at that last item. He turned and looked at his own clothing and ran one hand down in front of his torso. A full body apron appeared. On the front it had a photo of Phil and said, “Kiss the nanny!”
