Mismatched Pair

by J. L. Ray

  Tooley’s mother had realized early in his life that he had high mpsi levels. Since he kept his sanity, he was no wizard, but instead, the most unusual of creatures, almost mythic, a male witch. Even in Mundania, he had enough power to manage a decent amount of magic. It was unfortunate that this Winkowski creature had access to a spell powerful enough to negate his will. But whatever spell or potion she was using, he seemed to have control over himself when she wasn’t with him or when she slept.

  He looked back at the door to the bathroom. It lay across the room from the bed, as far from it as the room allowed. The apartment she inhabited in the back of her shop contained a wealth of luxuries that the building’s exterior belied. Its plastic suburban front suggested mass-produced, badly made furniture sold in “room” collections as a unit. But she had led him, like a lamb to slaughter, into an Arabian nights boudoir. The apartment seemed to lack a proper kitchen or living room and instead was all large bedroom and decadent bed. Cushions lay in heaps around the room, jewel-toned colors embroidered in gold and silver thread. The four-poster bed, its top festooned with gauzy silver fabric, boasted those silky, soft sheets of bright red, and he flashed back to the sight of her spread out on the sheets, her white skin almost glowing against them, and he had to fight back a gag reflex. He had done things he’d had no control over, had been a spectator to his own actions, and he felt violated beyond words.

  He pushed up off the bed, suddenly worried that the long pauses in his plan to get the hell out of this place might be part of the spell—allowing him the hope of leaving without allowing him the momentum to do it. He could almost see that spell in his head, and he knew it was possible. He found his underpants and trousers in one corner and pulled them on quickly. His t-shirt, a lucky shirt he usually wore under his cloak to raise his spirits, he found in another corner. He had found the Kiss concert tee in a used clothing shop and had liked the picture of the band members. He’d sent some of the music to his little brother and had created a monster, a monster fan. He smiled at the memory of Bogey jumping around to “King of the Night Time World.” He missed his little brother. Then he suddenly realized that he had spaced out again and that the water in the bathroom had stopped. His breathing came out ragged and shallow as he frantically hunted for his cloak and shoes. He found them and was headed to the door when he heard a sound that made his blood run cold.

  A giggle.

  “Oh my sweet,” cooed her terrifying, beautiful voice. “Where are you going?”

  And just like that, his escape was over.

  She walked over, her silken black robe slipping off one pale shoulder as she picked her way through the tumbled pillows, her calves and ankles showing from the bottom of the short garment, which appeared to be all she had on. “You haven’t seen the prizes in my boxes yet. We’ll have to open them. I’m sure you’ll be surprised and pleased. They’re gifts for you.” She came over and tugged his shoes from his left hand and his cloak off his right arm. “You shan’t need these, pet. They can stay here.” Patting his cheek, she said, “Such a lovely little witch, you are. There are no others like you, sweet pet. You’re very special and you will help me do grand and wonderful things before I’m done with you. Let’s go look at the lovely toys I’ve bought for us. Then we’ll come back up later and celebrate, shall we?”

  She smiled at him and he wanted to spit at her, but he felt his mouth smiling and his throat catch at her beauty. He felt like two people inhabiting the same body, one real and one a fake version of himself, done up in the form of a body slave. He sent out tendrils of magic to see if he could break the hold she had on him. If she was Mundane and using a purchased spell, surely it couldn’t be powerful enough to compel him.

  “Naughty witchling,” she pouted at him, then gestured toward him with two fingers. He launched backward across the room, as if a giant hand had palmed his chest and thrown him with all its might. He landed against the wall hard enough to jar his entire body, though in this case, the pillows and padding from her decor kept him from serious concussion. And as he slowly picked himself up and walked back to her, obedient to the finger she crooked at him to make him follow, he realized that she had purchased no spells and was no Mundane. He had no idea how she had masked this earlier, but he was in the thrall of a powerful, perverted witch, one far more powerful than his mother, than he, than any witch he had ever met. If he could have, he would have wept. Instead he followed her, a horrible forced smile pasted on his face.

  Chapter Twelve

  Once they had come to an agreement that the undercover case would continue, the group, three detectives, one supervisor, and one baby, sat looking at each other as if waiting for a shoe to drop. Luckily, their immobility ended swiftly when the youngest member of the group realized that everyone else had something good to eat and let it be known that the injustice of that might just lead to the ingestion of fingers—his dad’s.

  Pulling his finger out of Newman’s hands, which had been busy maneuvering that finger toward little snapping jaws, Cal said, “I think I’ll take little Newman over to my desk and feed him. I need to visit my sweet Fluffy, anyway. She gets upset when I’m gone too long.”

  “Who is this Fluffy?” Baz asked.

  “That’s his chair,” Tony said.

  “His chair? He visits his chair?” Baz asked.

  “The Mage-E-Boy chair gets…disruptive if left without Cal for several days,” Azeem admitted, disruptive being admin-speak for ready to kick ass and take names. The chair had scratched more than one officer who had gotten too close when Cal had been working in the field for too many days in a row.

  Cal grinned at Baz and put Newman back in the carriage, maneuvering it around the various Beings in the room and eventually getting it out the door without knocking anything down or running over toes. He stuck his head in the door as he left. “I’ll swing back by before I go?” His question obviously contained a certain amount of worry for his colleagues, especially his partner.

  Tony waved him on. “I’ll come to your desk.” Then she turned back to Baz and the lieutenant. “What was in the boxes I brought back across the border between the Realms?”

  Azeem pulled up the screen for his f-light and flipped to the report. “Several magical items were in each box.” He sighed in frustration. “They are quite innocuous.”

  “In what way?” Tony asked.

  “None of them have a particularly powerful or negative function, nothing like the vampire artifact, for instance. That cross existed solely to focus the energy of belief onto the corpse of a Mundane Being, bringing it back from the dead to a half-life. Herafina altered it to work on a Changeling, of course, and it performed its job. That artifact is clearly dangerous, and it was a relief to regain possession of it after we caught Melinoe and send it to the PTB to be destroyed.” He paused and added as he reviewed the list, “These items are all simple and minor enhancement charms—enhanced strength, enhanced stamina, enhanced magic. They could be used for ill. Anything could, I suppose, but these aren’t particularly powerful spells, so if the wielder isn’t powerful in the first place, the enhancements won’t help.”

  “Like the ads that tell you a product helps do something 300% more but never says 300% more than what?” Tony said.

  “Yes, that is a fair comparison. If the wielder’s mpsi rating was 17, for instance, this enhancement spell would only take the wielder to just shy of 18. If the wielder’s mpsi rating was 1,000, then it would take the wielder of the spell to 1,060, which is a much larger jump, but still not that impressive a gain in basic power.”

  The three looked at each other, wondering why anyone had wasted the time to send those spells across at all.

  Baz broke the silence by asking, “What do we do next?”

  Tony answered both of them. “I have the ‘Maybelle’ f-light contact number that the smuggler in Mundania used to set up yesterday’s buy patched into my department f-light.” She grimaced and shrugged. “I mentioned the Elvis Caddie to the guy, a
nd he was interested, no doubt. But we’re really at the mercy of that smuggler—either he calls or not. If he is the Sutherland’s murderer…” She paused.

  Azeem interrupted her. “He’s not,” he told her flatly.

  She folded her arms. “You presented a thorough argument to convince us to stay on the case, but you didn’t say why you know our contact isn’t the killer.”

  Ignoring her return to a topic he thought he’d avoided, Azeem said, “We tried to follow the contact last night after you left the warehouse. He eluded observation. We got a partial picture of him from the security mage-net near the White House. But the Mundane security cameras registered nothing, not even the minivan he was driving, so once he passed by on Pennsylvania Avenue and ditched our tail, he was in the wind.”

  “So despite all the discussion this morning, we might as well try to find out who killed the Sutherlands while we wait for the drama queen from last night to call,” Tony pointed out.

  Azeem roared, “NO!”

  For a few seconds, it felt as if the entire station had stopped, maybe the entire Realm. Tony had never heard Azeem roar like that, full throated and thunderous, not even in the face of extreme provocation. She was afraid to move. She looked over at the lieutenant, who seemed as stunned himself by his reaction as any of his subordinates.

  “I...sir, I...” Tony tried to figure out what she was trying to ask.

  Baz interrupted her, more smoothly than she would have thought him able. “You are under a compulsion?” he asked Azeem.

  Hesitantly, Azeem nodded.

  Tony heaved a sigh. That made sense. He literally could not tell them anything about whatever was covered by the spell.

  “It has something to do with the Sutherlands’ murders?” Tony added to the awkward game of twenty questions.

  Azeem nodded, more confident now that nodding and shaking his head would not lead to his own death.

  “This is how you’re certain that we can continue the undercover assignment without discovery from the Fairie ring?” Baz added.

  Azeem nodded.

  “You want to hand me the last cupcake?” Cal’s voice drifted in through the door. When everyone turned to stare at him, he bounced his spawn in his arms as he held the bottle and Newman sucked it dry. “What? I figured if the Lieutenant had lost his voice, this might be a good time to ask.”

  “Do not give him the cupcake,” Tony told the lieutenant. “He’s on a diet.” She turned around and gave Cal a look. “Don’t make me call Berthell.”

  “Ah, Seven Hells. I’m going already.” He turned back toward the detectives’ desks, jiggling Newman as he walked. “Don’t you worry little Mannie. One day you and your Da will go down to The Cupcakery together, just us guys, and we’ll have a contest and see who can eat the most cakes. We’ll bring Junior, too.”

  Tony turned back and found Baz and Azeem giving her a look. “What? He’s got to pass the PT tests next month and he was getting a baby gut during Berthell’s last trimester. He’s a nervous eater.” They kept staring. “I’m supposed to let him know when he’s eating too many sweets! Trust me. Saying that I’ll tell Berthell is really just code for time to stop overeating.” She made a face. “Or have Berthell kick his ass later after I tattle on him.” She paused while they both stared. “Okay, okay. That kinda sucks. I suck. I admit it.”

  “Are all female partners so bossy?” Baz wondered.

  A sinfully familiar voice answered. “Just take out the word ‘partners’ and you’ll have the perfect question.”

  Baz stood up, growling, and turned to Mephistopheles, who leaned casually in the doorway vacated by Cal and stared back at Baz, seemingly unperturbed.

  Turning his icy stare from Baz to Azeem, Phil asked, “You called?”

  “I did,” Azeem said. “I wondered if you would be willing to assist us in this case.”

  “I will not work with this djevel.” Baz’s voice started low and got louder as he finished the sentence.

  For the second time that morning, the office rang with the startling sound of Azeem’s most ferocious roar. This time, however, he followed up by leaping over his desk and pouncing on Baz, taking him to the floor and placing a paw on his neck in an act of dominance. Looking up at Tony and Phil, his tail lashing furiously, he hissed, “Leave us.”

  They withdrew, quickly.

  Tony started toward the open office where Cal sat in Fluffy while feeding Newman a second bottle, but before she took more than a few steps from the office, Phil grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face him, or at least, that was his intent. As he tugged on Tony to face him, she swept one leg around behind his and knocked him off his feet so that he was dumped flat on his back.

  “Don’t grab me,” Tony said pointedly, glaring down at him as he lay there and waited for air to come back into his lungs.

  He waved one hand feebly in the air and suddenly took a deep breath that sounded shockingly loud. “Sorry...did not mean to...be...pushy.”

  Tony stood, fighting the urge to apologize or help him up. She needed to stick to her decision to stay away from Mephistopheles, but he looked so pitiful lying on the floor, gasping like a fish.

  “Are you okay?” Her voice slipped a notch, from glacial to something like January in Michigan.

  “Getting there...really. Almost...normal,” Phil told her, only exaggerating a little in an attempt to win her sympathy. “Excellent reflexes,” he added.

  “What?” she asked, wondering why his reflexes had anything to do with anything.

  “You have...excellent reflexes,” he clarified.

  “Oh.”

  “A bit premature, but excellent.”

  “What do you mean premature?”

  Phil sighed and sat up. He held out a hand for help up, which she ignored, telling herself, best not to touch the pretty demon.

  He shook his head at her and pushed himself up off the floor, groaning a bit.

  “What’s the matter, old man, not spry enough to get up on your own?” Tony asked him.

  “That was needlessly cruel,” Phil said, grinning. “I had hoped to get a chance to apologize to you without an audience.” Phil brushed off his Canali classic gray wool suit and turned to block the sight of them talking from both the lieutenant’s office door and the detectives’ room and Cal. “I am sorry about last night, all of last night.” He paused. “Well, not for dinner or conversation. For the rest of it.”

  She looked at him, blank-faced as she considered his apology. He had his sad face on, and she was fighting hard to keep from falling for it. He had turned on his considerable, practiced charm and had taken one of her hands in his, folding the other over it so that her hand was enveloped in the warmth of his. He brought the hand up to his lips for a kiss and she jerked it back to her side.

  “Too much?” Phil sighed again. “I never quite know when to quit.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What?” He looked surprised.

  “That’s really not much of an apology. If you think that’s enough to...to just forget about getting inexplicable ultimatums from you about how I do my job and then forget the look you gave me when Baz kissed me without any invitation on my part—”

  “What?” Phil’s voice cut through her comment, sharp and hard, like the blade of a knife.

  Tony looked confused, then said, “You didn’t explain the ultimatum. What makes you think you have the right to tell me how I do my job?”

  “Sebastian de Groot assaulted you?”

  Tony got a good look at Phil’s eyes, taken aback by the fury she saw in them. She glanced over at the Lieutenant Azeems’s office, which was ominously quiet except for the occasional growling sound that oozed around the edges of the doorway. Then she grabbed Phil’s arm and pulled him toward the hallway and the elevator. Once they were in the hall, she stopped. She dropped his arm, but Phil reached out and put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  “Did de Groot harm you?”

  She rolled
those eyes. “No. He didn’t. He was obviously trying to piss you off and it equally obviously worked because—look at you. I all but see steam coming out of your ears.” She shook her head, disgusted. “Seriously? Is this just jealousy?”

  “He kissed you without your consent.” Phil’s voice carried its own chill. “That is assault.”

  “I’m going to call it a bad idea he put into play, which backfired,” Tony said narrowly, “and he has apologized, properly, with remorse and very little charm. You should try it sometime. I forgave him.” She emphasized the last pronoun. “In the meantime, you need to realize that my life is not your call, one way or another. Let. It. Go. Now.”

  Phil’s eyes searched hers, and he realized that he was not helping himself, so he nodded slowly, still grinding his teeth, just a little. He also realized that they were alone, so he could try what he had started when he unwisely grabbed Tony’s arm, thinking to pull her to the hall for a quick conversation and instead found out that she had done quite well in hand-to-hand combat training.

  “Can we talk?” he asked, as calmly as he could after the conversation they had just had.

  “About what?”

  “About trust.”

  “If that means you’re going to tell me why you don’t want me to work with Baz, then talk on.” She looked him in the eye, wondering if he was going to tell her what made this temporary partnership such a problem, hoping he trusted her with the story. “I’m still interested in knowing why.” She hoped he heard the subtext in there. She was honest enough with herself to know that she was still interested in him, just not in being ordered around.