Mismatched Pair

by J. L. Ray

  “Well?” Crystal tugged at his arm. “What do you think?”

  Tooley struggled with an answer. What did she expect from him? “She is a gift for...me?” he asked, afraid of her answer. The woman in the box was attractive in a way that Crystal, with her lust spell, was not. He could not believe that Crystal meant for him to have her in a sexual way, but so far, all the boxes contained presents she had presented to him as personal gifts.

  Crystal’s smile grew menacing, so much so that he stepped back, both from her and the box, “Oh no, pet. Well...” She cocked her head to one side and considered. “Perhaps in some ways she is a gift for you.” She looked up at Tooley, her laughter rising as she said spitefully, “She is a ‘gift’ that I have for all of Mundania. I think that they will choke on her...eventually.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tony stood behind Baz, but she had turned to watch Cal and Phil as they walked out the door. She stared at the doorway, unhappy and lost in her own thoughts, until Baz’s hand grabbed her arm and startled her out of her reverie.

  “Baz!” she exclaimed, turning to him. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  He frowned. “I called your name three times and you didn’t respond, so I got your attention.” He looked at the door through which Tony’s partner and ex had walked. “You worry about your partner, yes?” And he looked at her, challenging her to admit that she was worried about Phil. She knew better than that.

  “Of course. I’m sure you’ve been checking in on Falk while he’s out with the Pox.”

  They both winced. Plaidpox could be fatal, though usually only in the very young or the very old. Skin disrupted by Plaidpox frequently never recovered. At best, sufferers frequently kept small areas of tartan discoloration for life. At worst, they died in a horrible fit of twitching, itching skin.

  “I have been.” He nodded. “Luckily, we did know quickly that Michael had been exposed, so he got treatment very soon after that. He’s being watched day and night in the quarantine ward at the hospital. The MP tells me that he should make a full recovery, but even so, he won’t be out for another two weeks.”

  “Wow.” Tony shook her head. “I wonder why he wasn’t inoculated?”

  Baz looked a little uncomfortable but told her, “His parents are part of an anti-magic religion. They didn’t have the children inoculated for many of the magical ailments that crossed over. He tried to catch up on his shots after he left home and joined the police force in Minnesota, but he wasn’t sure about that one. His grandmother took the children in for some of the shots when they lived with her for a brief period, but later his parents burnt the records. And Plaidpox shots cannot be given twice, or they do as much harm as good.”

  “I will never complain about my folks again,” Tony muttered, conscientiously adding, “Well, not much.”

  “What do your parents do to make you complain?” Baz asked her.

  “Oh, normally the usual. Try to get me to live like them and like what they like and do what they do. No big! It’s not like they’re abusive or stupid, at least not most of the time. Poor Falk.”

  Baz raised his eyebrows in agreement.

  “Still, there must be something to make you say that.”

  “Well…” Tony started to tell him, but realized that if she talked about Adele, she’d have to talk about being part witch. And while it was Glinda who thought that was a bad idea, and currently that little witch was on her shit-list of folks, after seeing the barely contained rage that Baz held toward Phil, it made her think that maybe the story should keep for a while. She finished as smoothly as she could after leaving a bit of a pause. “Before hearing about Michael Falk’s parents, I might have complained, but right now, being a trust fund baby with overprotective parents sounds pretty lame in comparison. I’m shutting up. They’re great.”

  Baz nodded. Then he looked back at the view screen. “Tony, as you suggested, I have been looking through the smuggling reports for the past few years, trying to find patterns.”

  “Did you find something?”

  “I see why the Lieutenant believes we have more than one smuggling ring.”

  Tony turned back to the screen. It wouldn’t do her any good to stare at the door that Phil and Cal had walked through. They weren’t likely to be back for some time, maybe not even today. She focused on the visuals in front of her.

  “What am I looking for?”

  Baz pointed to the f-light’s visual portal, which he had widened in order to pull up twenty different reports simultaneously, placing them side-by-side in two tiers, twelve in one and eight in the other. He gestured at the twelve in the first tier.

  “Here, you see petty deals that have happened over the past ten years, deals that the SCIB knows of because they were reported by witnesses. The buyer appears to be the one we met last night. In each instance, there is someone picked up from the scene who describes exactly that same Being in the flowing cloak, with one difference in every single description.” He turned to her. “When you heard the voice of the Being we worked with last night, what did he sound like to you?”

  “Old-school Brit. BBC stuff, y’know? Like that show about the guy who discovered King Tut’s tomb and the crap that happened to his family because of the fairy curse when he upset the burial site. God, that went on for so many seasons.”

  “A fiction story? I don’t watch those.”

  “No, no, more of a reality TV show. The curse was real, after all. Only, the show was, y’know, kind of stuffy, despite the drama. They needed a little Benny Hill in it.”

  “I do not know this show, but I had many British hunters try to kill me in my bear form,” Baz told her earnestly as she winced. “They talk too much when they hunt. It made evading them quite easy, actually.” He waved a hand back at the reports. “Your description of his voice sounds right to me as well.” He then pointed at the twelve reports on the left. “Each one of the petty deals describes the Being we saw, but each one gives him a different origin based on his accent. In fact, one person who watched the exchange thought he was a very masculine female.”

  “Huh. Odd.” Then she thought about something he said. “Was he dealing with the Sutherlands?”

  “That’s just it. He wasn’t. The buyers were different each time, and none of them were the Sutherlands. They all brought Mundane items for exchange. None of the reports mentions seeing anyone going through a Temporary portal, but that could be because none of those witnesses saw the entire exchange happen. In every case, the interactions began in the open and then the cloaked Being and his buyers went inside a building of some kind. Every witness states that the merchandise from Fairie was in there, but none of them ever entered the building, so their comments about the origins of the merchandise are useless.”

  “They made assumptions based on probability,” Tony summarized. “They were right, though.”

  “How were they right?”

  “The items were in the buildings because the Tempo was in the buildings. And the buyers must have gone through. It seems like that Fairie ring needs Mundanes to bring Fairie artifacts back. We just have to hope that they keep using the warehouse we just went to, and we need to keep it staked out to get the ring’s leader.”

  Baz thought for a moment, then laughed and grabbed Tony in a one-armed hug. Still in his chair, his head was at the same level as Tony’s. For about two seconds he laughed in triumph. Then he noticed the lack of response from Tony. He let go of her and leaned back, blushing.

  “Good choice,” she said, stepping back from him. “I’m assuming that’s just your exuberant personality overflowing. However, I want to remind you that there’s going to be no grabbing, hugging, or kissing in this partnership.”

  “I apologize! I forgot myself. I was just excited.”

  “Uh huh.” Tony turned back to the screen. “What about the other eight reports?”

  Baz turned back to those, relieved. He had forgotten himself. He needed to be more careful if he hoped to protect h
er from Mephistopheles. “Yes, there is a large discrepancy here between the other set and this first set.” He shook his head, bewildered. “There are twenty reports of smuggling activity that were substantiated by some kind of witness, yes? Of those twenty, twelve are our BBC fellow, and yet ours is the only report that gives him that exact accent. The other eleven were all identified differently by the witnesses, from Russian to…” he paused looking for a passage and then read to her from the report, “‘something kinda Europy, I think. Or maybe Australian. I get them mixed up.’ That one came from a derelict sleeping in a box outside of the warehouse that night.”

  “And the other eight?”

  “The other eight which have a report with witness corroboration are very different. Any items recovered from those were high-end magical artifacts. The vampire’s cross must have come through in a shipment from those smugglers.”

  “I thought that was Maybelle and Mickey?”

  “It was them, but they were not working with our little friend with the cloak,” Baz said as he threw out his hands in billowing motions. “Last night would have been their first time running a shipment together. No, they described working with a different set of smugglers. Their contact in D.C. is a goblin half-breed. They had two Fairie contacts. One of them is a dryad, possibly a Japanese Cherry or Weeping Willow. The other is some kind of dark fae.”

  Tony got a very bad feeling, right in the pit of her stomach, one that was compounded by remembering a conversation the two of them had had earlier about a potential hamadryad involvement. But at the time she’d thought that there had to be more than one crooked Tree in Fairie. Now she just felt sick. “Dark fae, or just really, really in need of a bath?”

  “Hmm.” Baz read descriptions in several different reports. “He does seem to need a bath. As to light or dark? There’s no saying from these reports. Distinguishing between light and dark when the Being in question is not a specifically aligned race, like the goblins or the gnomes, is tricky at best.”

  “I need to get down to the portal, now.”

  Tony rushed from the room so quickly that it took Baz a moment to register where she was headed—right to Phil, unless the two Beings had already gone through the portal, which seemed likely at this point. He stood to go after her, but thought better of it. She might be rushing just to save Calvin trouble. He did not think she would be so receptive to Mephistopheles after hearing Baz’s story. In fact, he noticed that morning a greater degree of coolness from Tony to Mephistopheles than even last night. He had also noticed that Mephistopheles seemed intent on changing Tony’s mind. He would do everything he could to keep that from happening. He turned and looked at Lieutenant Azeem’s office. He should go and report what they had found to the lieutenant instead of rushing after Tony.

  Tony ran. She didn’t wait for the elevator, but rushed down the stairs, dragging her f-light out of her pocket and trying to contact Calvin as she went.

  She was almost to the door in the stairwell of the floor where the department’s official portal was housed when her light showed Cal was responding to her call. Unfortunately, the response was simply an automated reply.

  “Hi! You’ve reached Detective Calvin Kelly. I can’t speak right now, but if you’ll leave a message, I’ll be in touch real soon. You have a great day!”

  Tony went on to the area housing the portal, just to make sure that Cal hadn’t simply set his f-light to take messages early. She walked up to the officers assigned to guard the door to the portal. After the discovery at Monster-Mate’s offices, all official portals now required a guard detail around the clock.

  “Hey guys,” she greeted them. “Did Detective Kelly and a civilian consultant just go through the portal?”

  The younger police officer blushed and asked, “You mean Mephistopheles?”

  Tony controlled an eye-roll, but it was a close thing. “Yeah, Detective Kelly and Mephistopheles.”

  “Oh, yes. They left just five minutes ago,” the same young officer gushed, his blush fading a bit.

  The older woman working with him shook her head. “I don’t know what’s worse—baby-sitting the portal, or baby-sitting you, Franklin, you star-struck goof.”

  Officer Franklin’s blush returned. “I’m not star-struck,” he started, then he sighed. “Okay, maybe a little. But that was Mephistopheles, and he’s not just any fae! I would say, pound for pound, he’s probably the most noteworthy dark fae in Mundania.”

  “Are you kidding me? Seriously? Do you have any idea who you’re comparing him to? Come on!”

  Tony stood there for a moment as they argued over which fae in Mundania had the most name recognition, lost in thought as she considered the potential ramifications of what had occurred to her as she had listened to Baz’s review of the second set of smugglers. If the Willow and Sammeal were part of the Fairie ring bringing in more potent Fairie items to Mundania, they weren’t likely to roll over for Phil and Cal. Her partner and her—well, Phil—could be walking into a situation more fraught with immediate danger than they expected, and she had no way to contact them. Messages sent to Fairie didn’t get there without approval from the PTB’s Out-Realm Communications Office, and that meant a lot of paperwork.

  “What do you think, detective?” Office Franklin asked her, interrupting her thoughts.

  She looked at him blankly for a moment, before blurting out exactly what was in her head. “I think I need to talk to Lieutenant Azeem!”

  They looked at each other and nodded.

  “He’ll know the answer,” Franklin agreed.

  Tony waved at them, vaguely aware that they were talking at cross-purposes but not about to waste the time explaining. She ran back to the door, calling the lieutenant on her f-light as she ran.

  When Cal and Phil came through the portal to the Fairie Realm, they found that they had arrived in Phil’s Fairie home, the one he had left to pursue “clients” in Mundania in the 1970s and had not seen again until just over a week ago when he had traveled into Fairie with Tony, trying to find leads on a case involving a vampire. When Phil had come with Tony, they had landed in Phil’s housekeeper’s home, a short distance from the main house. This time Phil and Cal arrived in the main house, in Phil’s bedroom, which now sported an ogre-sized crack in the black marble floors.

  Calvin stood up slowly and stretched. “Man, that really hurt!” He stretched his arms, swinging them around and almost hitting Phil as he stood up.

  Ducking the swinging arms next to him, Phil told him, “I think that if you hit me in the head, it might hurt a great deal more. Could you…” He pantomimed putting his arms down.

  “Oh, sorry, sorry.” Cal grinned. “I almost ended this search before we started, am I right?”

  Phil’s sigh turned to a wince as Cal looked around the room.

  “Say, this is fancy! This reminds me of that place in Niagara Falls that Berthell and I went for our honeymoon.” He looked at the silk-covered bed. “Actually, it’s a little fancier than the one we stayed in, but the rooms they rent to ogres all have reinforced steel floors covered in pretty rugs, not marble.”

  Cal noticed that Phil’s face was scrunched up a bit.

  “Oh, sorry about the floor, man.” He looked behind him at the indention. “Kinda happens when I get portalled places, y’know?

  “It is not a problem,” Phil told him. “This room needs redecoration. If I am ever allowed to return, the very first thing I will do is change the décor in here.”

  Cal looked around. “Yeah, yeah. You’ll need to change this completely. Tony would totally hate this. I mean, have you seen Tony’s bedroom? This is nothing like...it...” Cal caught himself. “I guess you, uh, haven’t seen it, have you?”

  Phil shook his head, not sure he trusted himself to answer.

  “Just so you know, she hired Angel to come over and paint it for her, and I had to help with moving the furniture. That’s why I’ve seen it. Angel hadn’t had her last growth spurt then, and she didn’t need to be li
fting so much weight by herself.”

  “Ah.” Phil gave a very pointedly bare comment.

  “It’s a beautiful shade of blue,” Cal babbled, knowing he was making things worse and unable to stop. “Kinda blue-green, like the ocean, very relaxing. The bedding is all brown and white, and the furniture has a white finish with silver and cream table lamps. It feels like a spa in there.”

  Cal didn’t directly compare, but as he spoke, Phil looked around at the black marble floors and walls, the black velvet bedstead and red silk sheets on his bed. Any furniture, and there was very little in there, was black mahogany with red accents or material. The bedroom screamed a lot of things at those entering it, and most of what it screamed involved vigorous, loud sex. Relaxing retreat? Not the message coming from this room.

  “Hmm.” He looked at Cal. “My place in Mundania is very different from this.” He thought of it and realized, in a way, it was worse, more like a monk’s cell, even down to its lone twin bed and bland brown colors.

  The thought must have shown in his face, since Cal patted him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, buddy. She’ll come around. My bet is still on you two.” A sudden thought brought a smile to his face. “Maybe Angel and I can come over and redecorate your place in D.C.? She wants to be an interior designer, or at least, that’s the college plan this month! I’m hoping the Geas will allow it. And she and I have been watching home reno shows a lot lately,” His face fell as he said, “Especially now that even reruns of What Not to Wear are off the air.”

  Phil felt a curious warmth in his heart at the thought of having Tony’s partner fighting for their relationship. “Ah, well, we shall see how this case goes, shall we?” Phil nodded agreeably, adding, “In the meantime, we had better get started on that list. With whom should we talk first, detective?”