by J. L. Ray
“Oh, that’ll certainly help,” the sergeant told him, and he was so busy congratulating himself on his foresight this time that he missed the twinkle in her eyes as she said it.
Phil held his hand over the bag and said, “Diaper, wipes.” Both items came up, and this time he had them hover in the air. He set the bag down and leaned over the carriage. Then he stood up. “Should I change him in the carriage?”
“Certainly. It’s a Golden Ball SBFS 1000 series.”
Phil just looked at her.
“It’s a top of the line Super-Baby Full-Size model. It turns into its own changing table, car seat, or crib, depending on what Mama and Daddy need. The spell set is on the side. Pick CT for changing table.”
Phil looked at the side of the carriage. Before he hit the button, he asked, “Should I take Newman out first?”
“It wouldn’t be very much use in a pinch if you had to do that, now, would it? Golden Ball makes all its products one hundred percent safe for the kiddies.”
Phil grinned, “Are you getting a kickback from the corporation?”
He got a genuine belly laugh from Sergeant Hubbard for the first time. “I ought to! As many children as I’ve had, I’ve probably funded more than a few CEOs at that company over the decades!”
Gingerly, Phil pressed the CT button. With a whirl of pink and blue, Newman was suddenly lying on an ogre-spawn sized changing table. Phil unbuttoned and carefully rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as the sergeant watched, bemused. “Right. What do I do first?”
“Blood and Bones. This is going to take a while, isn’t it?” the sergeant said.
“You are welcome to jump in and handle it yourself,” Phil told her dryly.
“No, no, I wouldn’t want to deprive you of a new and exciting experience,” she reassured him. “Those must be few and far between for an old hag like you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sergeant, the smell is about to make me pass out, so perhaps if you could just tell me? What do I do first?”
“Take the old diaper off,” she said as if it should be obvious, and really, that part should have been.
“Right,” Phil moved his hands in and found the safety pins the size of cutlery. He unfastened each pin, carefully removing them without coming in contact with Newman’s skin.
“Hang on,” the sergeant stopped Phil before he just pulled the old diaper away. “This is the tricky bit. You have to clean his bottom and get the diaper off in one move. You’ll lift his legs, give his bottom a good wiping with one cloth. You can put that in the diaper you are discarding. Then give him another wiping with a clean cloth.”
As she spoke, she saw Phil’s expression grow more and more horrified, but when she finished, Phil nodded and rehearsed the move, his face fixed in an expression of distaste.
“Hey,” the sergeant added, choking back laughter, “don’t let your face freeze like that!”
Phil shot her a darkling look before returning to his rehearsal. Once more, he worked through the movements she had outlined to him with his hands, but without actually touching the baby. Then he stopped and looked at the sergeant. “I need three hands to do this. Surely there is something that I am not seeing.”
She snickered. “Oh, you get used to it after the first dozen or so times.”
There was a brief, desperate pause, and then Phil continued to work, muttering as he moved. “Dozens of times? I think not…Ah. Just so. Now I have the clean wipe…Ah. And now I remove these.” He looked up at the sergeant and said, grimacing, “What do I do with the dirty diaper...afterwards?”
Against her will, Old Mother Hubbard sympathized. While there was no way she could remember the early years of most of her many children, she did remember her eldest born and her first dirty diaper. Little Daisy—so cute—so likely to have the runs. It was a wonder she’d had so many more after that first year with Little Daisy.
“As you finish and drop the second wipe in the dirty diaper, I will hold open the diaper genie and you can drop the diaper in.”
“The diaper genie?” He looked at her.
She pointed to a small, ornate bottle. “Jacques and Joe went in together and got the Kellys the diaper genie. Every diaper is magically recycled by the genie. It shows up laundered and folded in the designated diaper bag.” She shook her head. “I wish they’d had those when I was still having children. I spent of most of my ‘free’ time washing dirty diapers.” She added impressively, “By hand.”
Phil’s eyes widened and he shuddered. Then he took a breath through his mouth, leaned back over Newman and, following the sergeant’s directions, managed to maneuver the enormous diaper mass over the top of the diaper genie, where it was sucked into the tiny opening of the bottle quite smartly. He had just turned back to Newman to put the fresh diaper on him when he found out a little something about boy babies and changing diapers. He stood there, helplessly, as an arc of urine rained down on his freshly washed head while the sergeant actually did fall out of her chair laughing and little Newman chortled away.
When it finally ended, Phil took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his closed eyes. He gave the sergeant a black look before carefully wiping Newman again and pinning the fresh diaper onto him, trying at the same time not to drip urine on the boy. The apron he had materialized was a fine Egyptian cotton. Plastic would have helped. The silky cotton had just soaked up the liquid and wicked it through to his once clean shirt and couture jeans.
“Well, Newman, I certainly hope you feel much better now.” He looked down at his own clothes, then back at the chortling baby. “I also hope this is not a sign of things to come. Perhaps in the future, we can pursue an acquaintance built more on trust and less on liquid expulsion?” Then Phil turned to Sergeant Hubbard. “I believe I would like to avail myself of your showers again. May I do so?” he asked, as calmly as if it wasn’t his second baby fluids dousing of the night.
“Why don’t you just…?” She flipped her hand around imitating his movements with the dirt on the floor earlier.
“Logically, I do know that I would be as clean,” he said frowning. “However, thousand year old habits die hard. I prefer soap and water.” He shrugged, reluctant to admit to a weakness to anyone, but fairly certain that the good sergeant would be sympathetic.
“I am sure that the Lieutenant would endorse this, so go ahead demon,” she laughed. She buzzed the door and called out as he opened it, “And hey, not bad for a complete novice.” She gave him a thumbs-up, and he nodded to her while attempting to smile. It didn’t quite work, but she managed to keep from laughing any more until the door shut behind him. She knew a nice person would have told him to have that second diaper ready to block potential pee. But where was the fun in being a nice person?
When Tony came out of the portal, Baz’s heart finally quit racing. He had been sitting there, watching the cloaked figure standing in front of the portal, when the opening had suddenly disappeared. Stunned, his mind raced as he sat wondering what he was going to say to Azeem when he got back and had to tell him that he’d lost his temporary partner in a Temporary Portal. He had a feeling he’d have been on the first plane back to Norway, if his old supervisor would even take him back. He’d spent the time waiting, first in the cab of the truck, trying to put the wires back together so that it would start. Then he’d jumped out and fiddled around with the engine, looking like he was making some kind of adjustment. The whole time he kept his eye on the cloaked figure, who stayed awfully calm. It was the only thing that gave Baz hope that Tony would reappear from Fairie. Baz kept checking his f-light, and as the last minute started ticking down, he felt sweat rolling from his brow. “On my ancestors’ lives, woman. You have got to come back.”
Suddenly, the area in front of the cloaked figure shimmered, and the portal began to appear—not form, but appear—in the exact spot it had been before Tony walked through it. Seconds later, a stack of boxes came through with a mud-spattered Tony sitting on the front like a masthead on the prow of a s
hip. He heard a voice echo through the warehouse, coming from the Fairie Realm, “Don’t forget my guitar, Miz Maybelle!”
Tony turned around and waved at the portal. “I sure won’t, Bogey!”
The cloaked figure trotted over to her. “Get off of the boxes. Now.”
Tony turned and looked at him from her higher vantage point on the stack. “Well. You’re welcome!” she said, sarcastically. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” the figure snapped. “I would thank you, but you’re getting some awfully nice merchandise without having to pay for it, this time, so you can thank yourself for being smart enough to follow through on this.”
Tony looked down at her mud-spattered clothes. “Oh, yeah, darlin’, that was a real party. Especially when the portal disappeared and I thought I was stuck there.” She snorted. “What the hell happened to it?” She couldn’t see under the hood, but she could tell the guy was glaring at her. He wasn’t going to say. She decided not to make a fuss and asked, “Okay, whatever, Mr. Personality. Which boxes do we take?”
“I’m checking,” he told her as he walked around and ran his f-light over an inventory mark on the side of each box. “Not this one,” he indicated a box on top in the back, “or this,” he checked the one next to it. “This one is yours,” he indicated the one in the middle, “and this one,” and he pointed to the tall one she was leaning on. Then he ran his f-light over the mark on the long box. He made a little choking noise. “N-not this one,” he stuttered. Then he turned to her. “Get your partner over here and get your boxes and get out!”
Tony raised one brow. “My, my. Now I’m all curious about what you’ve got in that box.”
“You know what curiosity did to the cat,” he told her snidely.
“That’s the best you’ve got?” Tony shook her head. “Oh well, I reckon I’ll just git over wonderin’ what’s in there.” She turned around and waved cheerily at Baz. “Hey sugar lump, come on over and help me carry this to the truck.”
Baz nodded, then turned and dropped the hood of the truck shut. “I think it’ll run now. I’ll drive it over to you.”
“Peachy!” She turned to see the cloaked figure glaring at her again, or at least she assumed he was. His features weren’t easy to see in the gloom from the hood, but his face looked a little familiar. She couldn’t quite place him, but she could look at mug shots as soon as she got back to the office.
Tony jumped down off the boxes and was immediately hit with a wave of dizziness. She grabbed the side of the long box near her waist to steady herself and the wave turned into a tsunami. She slumped to the ground, arms tight around her body, fighting nausea. Baz, who was busy making the truck drivable again, missed it. And the cloaked Being had turned away to review something on his f-light that he didn’t want the Sutherlands to see. Tony fought to control her symptoms. It was a little like her earlier premonitions, but at the same time, it differed in effect. She felt like she was in two places at the same time. She could see the warehouse, but it was as if she was looking at it through a wall and the wall was almost on top of her. She put her hands out expecting to feel smooth stone, but there was nothing there. She crawled away from the boxes and the spot where the Tempo had been and the double vision faded.
She hoped it was some side effect of the Tempo and not a new manifestation of her earlier seizures. As the cloaked Being turned back to her, she stood up quickly, holding herself very still until her vertigo subsided. “So… I guess we owe you some pink flamingoes. Do you want us to leave them now? Or bring them with us next time?” she asked him, a little breathlessly.
She could hear the grinding of his teeth as he answered, “I suppose you had better take them with you.”
“When should we be back for the next exchange?” she asked, her question punctuated by the sound of the moving truck’s engine starting.
He cut his eyes to one side, indicating a lie. “I’m not sure when we’ll be moving merchandise again, so let me call you.” Then he looked at the truck and his nostrils flared.
Tony looked over at Baz and then stepped a little closer to the angry figure beside her. “Y’know, I can make up for missing out on the flamingoes,” she cooed to him in a voice that suggested a very different type of merchandise.
He stammered, “I d-doubt I’m interested.”
“Really?” Tony murmured, then looked at her nails, which had a candy-apple red coat of varnish on them. “Because it’d be a right shame to let a chance to own Elvis’ pink Caddie go by without even trying to get in on it.”
The cloaked Being paused and for just a second, the cloak stopped fluttering in the absence of artificially created wind. “Elvis’ pink Caddie?” the creature murmured reverently. “Oh, my.” After a few moments of quiet, the Being finally spoke firmly, “I’ll have to contact you about that. Give me until tomorrow.”
“Sure thing, punkin,” she reached out and patted him on the arm.
He recoiled, “Don’t touch me, Natty.”
“What’re you so tetchy about?”
He folded his arms and hunched away from her. “Just don’t touch me.”
Tony put her hands up in a placatory gesture just as Baz pulled up beside her. “Well, I won’t then.” She looked at the boxes. “Do you need some help moving that big box somewhere? Would you like us to drop it off?”
He sneered as he told her, “Because you’ve done such a fine job thus far? No, really, I think I can manage. Besides, there’s no telling if the truck would start again, is there?”
“Hold on there, honey-pie. I need something from you.” She put a little extra emphasis on the word ‘need.’
He turned back around, contempt dripping from his voice. “What do you want, Natty trollop?”
“Oooh. Naughty, naughty. That’s not a very nice word.” She wagged one finger at him. “And that’s not what I need.” She pressed the word again since it seemed to make him uncomfortable. “I need m’shoes back.”
He reached inside his robe and pulled out the velvet platform stilettos. Then he tossed them at her.
“Sweetie, that is no way to treat a well-made shoe.”
“I am not your sweet pea, your sugar lump, your ‘punkin’, or your honey-pie,” he grated out, and though the hood covered most of his features, she saw his nostrils flaring.
“Well, how about my partner? Are you my partner, Gandalf?” she asked as sweetly as she could, unable to resist needling him with the image that popped into her head every time she looked at his silly cloak.
For a second he made no reply. Then he said, “We shall see.” For just a second, Tony thought she had heard a hint of laughter in his voice, but she must have imagined it, because as soon as he replied, he turned his back to the couple as they loaded their boxes. They were hampered by having to mask Baz’s Changeling strength, as he had carried most of the weight of the boxes, but the charade was aided by not having to move the long one that had been the base of the stack. It weighed far more than the rest of the boxes. They finished and left the warehouse through the doors they’d entered, the cloaked figure still standing with his back to them, fabric billowing in the non-existent wind.
Chapter Seven
As they drove through the warehouse doors, both detectives’ f-lights switched back to full-function, signaling that they were receiving incoming calls.
“They must have eyes on,” Tony said. “The ear bugs going dead would have made everyone really nervous.” She looked at Baz, who was driving. “I’m answering. Get us back to the station.” She signaled loudspeaker so the f-light would be audible to Baz, but left off the visual so as not to distract her driver.
“Tony!” Azeem’s voice was loud. “Report!”
“Sir, we had a little glitch on this side.”
“What do you mean, glitch?”
“Do we still have Mickey and Maybelle in custody?”
There was silence for a moment. Then Azeem coughed. “We let them out on bail because they were co
operating.” His voice dropped to a lower register. “Why?”
“You may want to send someone out to bring them back in to the station and hold them. They played us.”
“How so?”
Tony sighed. “We’ll be there soon. I’m going to have to change clothes, so Baz’ll come give you his report and then I’ll give mine. Just—go ahead and bring the Sutherlands back in. We’ve got some questions.”
“We’re on it.”
Baz parked the moving truck in the loading dock area of the D.C. central station. Officers were waiting to take possession of the content, the items Tony had brought back from Fairie as well as the crates of flamingoes.
“Go on and change out of the muddy clothes,” Baz told Tony. “I will report to the Lieutenant.”
Tony patted his arm, “Thanks, dude. Potentially magic mud...ugh. Plus, the mud’s dry now, and it’s really gross smelling.”
He nodded, “I noticed!” He sniffed and frowned, “You smell like giant.”
“I’ll tell you all about it in a few.”
“Hurry. I think that the Lieutenant is upset.”
Tony grinned at Baz as she walked backwards from him toward the entry. “Ya think?”
“I could hear his tail lashing over the f-light,” Baz told her and he shook his head gloomily. “We are in trouble.”
“Nah,” she said and turned around to hustle. “He’s a big pussycat.” Baz’s startled laugh followed her through the back entrance.
Baz headed up to Azeem’s office, his heavy boots thudding as he moved his bulky frame as quickly as possible. While Baz was not as large as Cal, for instance, like most large predator Changelings, his bone structure was thicker and heavier than his size suggested. Changelings changed form, and the form they changed to shifted their bone structure around in a wide variety of ways. Because of this, the larger the animal, the heavier the bones. Some, like Baz, couldn’t swim all that well because their bone mass made them brick heavy in deep water. He also found it a bit difficult to sneak up on other Beings, even in his bear form. So he wasn’t at all surprised when he walked up to Azeem’s door and heard, “Get your ass in here, Detective de Groot!” Azeem had probably heard his footsteps a good two minutes before he got to the door.
