by J. L. Ray
Everything she said was a lie, excepting the comment about the portal being well masked. And it was well masked still, for it hadn’t been destroyed. It was very much a functional portal.
“What about a magical signature? Could ye suss out the maker of it?”
Cardiwen pouted and flounced just a bit, confident it would distract the dwarf. “Darn it all, it just wouldn’t hold. Every time I got a bead on the origin magic, it slipped away.” Had she tried to identify the maker, it would have done exactly that. She knew that because she was the maker.
Since that was exactly the description the GOOEN squad had given in their assessment, Dindle was satisfied.
“And the trap door?”
“Nullified!” Caridwen brushed her hands together.
“Done and dusted then!” He grinned at her and was about to escort her out, and maybe get her personal f-light contact, when Windle came in. He did a double take at the sight of the magical practitioner. Directing a scathing glance at his brother, he folded his arms over his broad chest and asked, “Is this the MP, then?”
“Yes, it is, brother. She has just finished her work, and I’m about to cut her a check for a tough job well-done,” Dindle replied smoothly, trying to cover the awkwardness of his brother’s obvious and curious disapproval.
“I need to speak to ye for a minute, brother,” Windle said pointedly. “If ye don’t mind, Madam?”
“I’m sure it can wait, brother,” Dindle said, drawling out the last word. The two had been arguing more and more violently since finding out that they had both dated a villain who had almost cost them their boss’s life.
“I’m sure it can’t, brother.” Windle folded his arms in a pose that told Dindle that there was no escaping whatever had his brother’s beard in a knot.
Dindle turned to Caridwen and, taking her hand, said, “I shall only be a moment, my dear, and then I’ll write you that check. Pardon me. My brother just can’t seem to get on without my help.”
“I’ll just read some of your brochures, shall I? Such a wonderful service you provide here,” she murmured huskily, a little of Caridwen sliding past Crystal’s earnest earth mother front.
Dindle all but purred in return before following his brother into a back room. “What d’ye want, ye git?”
“Did ye check her credentials, like the boss said?” Windle looked back through the door at the buxom woman who exactly fitted the dating pattern the brothers had developed over the years. “Or did ye just check her bust size?” Crystal bent over to pick up something she’d deliberately dropped, well aware that the brothers were watching her every move. “Blood and bones, would ye look at the arse?” Then he looked at his brother. “I’m guessing that’s the only thing ye checked, ye pratt.”
“Oh, give me more credit than that, puff face. O’ course, I checked her credentials, which are extensive and very good!” Dindle managed to sound convincing. He had spent too much time following up with Berthell and planning a dinner party as a way to get Miss Tony and Mephistopheles together to do more than a cursory check on the MP, but Crystal Winkowski did, indeed, have a fabulous professional reputation. He found out that she also had a bit of a gambling problem, both from Super poker nights and trips to the Indian reservation casinos, but he had not discovered exactly how bad it was.
Casinos and monitored games had controls in place to prevent the use of magic for manipulating the cards. When someone with enough Super blood to be an MP came to a casino, that Being usually had enough sense to refrain from trying to use tricks while playing cards. Poor Crystal hadn’t had the sense to play the games straight and had gotten in so much trouble that she had bumbled into Caridwen’s plans. But as Dindle had discovered, her gambling aside, as an MP, her reputation was impeccable.
“So you felt she was safe enough to leave in the boss’s office for an hour without supervision?” Windle asked dryly.
A small trickle of unease slid down Dindle’s back. He knew she was a cheat. But this was a job, not a card game, so he took heart and countered, “Well, I tell ye what, then. Let’s ask her for a demo of the work, shall we?”
Windle nodded. “That’ll do.”
Twenty minutes later, Caridwen had them convinced that she had destroyed the portal and sealed the hidden door so that no one and nothing could come through again. She took her check from Dindle and gave him a saucy wink and a flick of her hips, then gravely thanked Windle for following up and making certain that they would be satisfied with her work.
“Sir, if at any time you have a question or an issue, don’t hesitate to call.” An extra twinkle lit her eye as she thought of the likely scenarios in which that portal might bring up a question or an issue. Oh, life was getting so interesting again, after hundreds of years of scheming, planning, and tedious, tedious waiting.
As she left the building, she grinned up at the sky. Her two escapees should be running to Mama Pernella about now, which would set in motion the next part of her plan. It was all going so very well. Too bad that O’Toole wouldn’t be hers after the final act. She had so enjoyed her...time with him. She gave her hips a little wiggle that caused a Natty nearby to be struck with a sudden case of lust. The Natty, a coal lobbyist, shook back her hair and headed on to her meeting with a senator, hoping that he found strip-mining coal as sexy as she did.
Caridwen headed back to Crystal’s Veil to pack up and move Theo to their new digs. She would miss this body, it so resembled the one she had in Fairie, though that had been luck. She hoped her new body would be just as much fun. But when her plans came to fruition, she wouldn’t need to hag-ride to go anywhere ever again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Naamah sat down at the table furthest from the bar and from any of the other patrons. She started fanning herself as Mephistopheles walked up with her hot toddy in one hand and two beers in the other.
Naamah stopped fanning herself. “Oh dear, why did I order a hot toddy? I have been rushing to get here, and I’m far too hot to drink that!”
Mephistopheles rolled his eyes, a habit he had picked up from Tony in a very short time. He pointed at the two beers. “Since neither Calvin nor I can drink those, you may as well help yourself.”
“Oh, thanks!” She downed one mug and set it down, concentrated for just a moment, then covered her mouth over a lady-like burp. “Oh, that is good ale. Did the Willow brew this?” When Phil nodded, she muttered, “What a shame. It’ll be a waste of a good brewer.” Then she asked him, “Why in the Realms did you order beers you can’t drink?”
Phil stared at her for a moment, then said. “When one is in a bar, one orders a drink. It is customary. A price for entering the territory.”
Calvin nodded, and added, “Okay, I get that. I was kinda wondering that myself after not being able to eat any of Naamah’s cookies, or lemon tarts, or home-made bread, or home-made jelly—”
Phil cut him off. “Yes, yes, it was a true sacrifice. I will take you to The Cupcakery myself when we return home.”
Naamah looked at Phil and smiled. “You think of Mundania as home, now, don’t you?”
“What?” he asked, the non sequitur confusing him momentarily. Warily he answered, “I suppose so. Why?”
“You know that old saying, home is where the heart is.”
Phil carefully moved on. “Naamah, not that I am displeased to see you again, old friend, but why have you rushed here so precipitously? And why did you interrupt us? I believe that we had those two, er, dead to rights and about to confess.”
“We?” Calvin rumbled out a laugh, then turned to look at Naamah, talking as quietly as an ogre could. “Phil jumped into the deep end of the pool, both feet first. I think we were on to something, but I dunno now.”
Phil turned to him, mildly indignant. “Are you telling me that my technique was faulty?”
“No, no,” Calvin put up both hands. “You’d have to have a technique to have a fault with it. I thought you were gonna be quiet and let me do the questioning. Y’
know, it is my job.”
Naamah laughed, delicately sipping the hot rum and lemon now that she had cooled off enough from the mad gallop to enjoy a hot drink again. “The Mephy I ran with never was good at following someone else’s lead. Although,” she cocked her head to one side and winked at them both, “I thought Miss Antonia had him well to heel the last time I saw him in Fairie.”
Phil tried not to respond, but she looked so happy that he laughed. “You are not wrong. I prefer to be in charge. I am sorry, Cal, for that.” Then he turned to Naamah, “But you have not told us why have you followed us here.”
“Oh, Blood and Bones, I really am getting forgetful,” she slapped one hand to her head in dismay, and then leaned forward. “After you left, a courier from the PTB showed up with a message from Lieutenant Azeem.”
“Is Tony safe?” Phil asked.
“Oh, yes. It is not about her, but about your case,” she directed this to Calvin. “Research of the smuggling in Mudania suggested that there are two rings, at least, in your area. The contact that Tony and Sebastian de Groot met” her eyes cut to Phil, but she kept on with the message, “works for a smaller ring that traffics only in small, innocuous magicks, or did until recently. Excepting the boxes that came through this trip, which may have had more in them, he seems to be a lesser threat. The ones they most want are a more vicious group. They believe, from the research done, that Sammeal and the Willow are the contacts in Fairie, but they aren’t sure who the Mundane contact is.”
Calvin nodded. “Yeah, thanks to your Vision, that’s not news.”
“True, though it is good to have some Mundane confirmation. My visions are open to interpretation, as the two of you saw.” Here Naamah leaned forward. “However, Detective Newman decided that you needed to know that you had the right culprits, and she worried, because of the Sutherlands, you know, that these culprits might be desperate enough to kill at will in Fairie, without the Geas binding their actions.”
Calvin nodded, and looked over his shoulder at the Willow, who continued to pull the occasional beer and clean up the bar ahead of the evening crowd. Sammeal sat at the bar, drinking and glancing their way in what was meant to be a casual manner, but which failed completely in attempted nonchalance.
“So, jumping into an accusation like Phil was doing?”
“Yes, not, perhaps, the best idea. I am very much afraid that because you are here in Fairie, you two are far too vulnerable to magical interference!” Naamah told Cal.
“And by magical interference, what you mean is we could get killed easy, am I right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Naamah agreed. “You are right.”
“Y’know,” Cal told her, “this is one of those times when I wish we could just haul suspects into the station and question their asses without all this magical rigamarole to deal with. I fucking hate Fairie.”
“Oh, Calvin,” Naamah chided him, “it’s not that bad.” Then she looked around the room. “Well, yes, it can be. It has its moments. But I’m here to help you.”
“You took a rather large risk coming in here. Are you afraid that Sammeal will recognize you?” Phil asked softly, refraining from looking at Sammeal.
“Oh, no, not all. Think about it!” she grinned. “What did I look like the last time we had the whole gang together for a pig roast?”
“A barbeque” Cal said brightly to Phil. “Nice.”
“Actually, it was an animal sacrifice,” Phil drawled. “But I see what you mean, Naamah.” He looked over at her and smiled. “I must say, I much prefer you in this guise, the crone, rather than the maiden.”
“Crone, my sweet ass,” she glared at him, just a hint of her former temper showing through, but then she saw him laugh and laughed as well. “We are doing a marvelous job of confusing both of the suspects, but I must ask. What can I do to help you question them without scaring them off or causing them to commit some other act of mayhem?”
Calvin put his big hands on the table. “I think I have a plan.”
“All right. Listen up, ya mugs, this is a little complicated, and it started a long time ago in a land far, far away.”
Bogey clapped his hands. “I love Fairie tales, Mommy!”
Pernella rolled her eyes but patted her boy on the leg. He sat on the ground next to her while she perched on the rock where she could see into the portal. “Yeah, yeah, son. All right, already. Don’t interrupt your mother or we’ll be here all night, and we ain’t got time for that, savvy?”
“I will be as still as Jack the Giant Killer, when he waited for the giant to go to sleep.”
Pernella rolled her eyes again. She couldn’t figure out why Bogey liked that damn story so much. It gave her the heebies. Of course, so did Kiss.
“Right. So, where was I?”
“A long time ago in a land far, far away?” came from Berry, who ended in a tentative smile.
“That’s right doll-face. Thanks. So, in this Fairie land far away, there was a powerful fae chippy named Becuma, and she...” Pernella glanced over at Bogey and grimaced. “Y’know what? You don’t gotta hear all the hairy details. Let’s just say she got herself in trouble and had to leave Fairie for Mudania, and once there, she got herself in trouble again. Not that she ever knew she was in trouble, just wondered why everyone else was so ready to rub out little ol’ her. Not a lot in the old noodle, y’know?”
While her boys had no problem following Pernella’s bizarre mix of peasant fae and crime noir, Berry looked bewildered.
“Rub out? Noodle? Her noodle was lacking? What type of noodle did she prepare?” Berry looked at Tooley.
“Rub out meant to kill her. And when Mother says noodle, she means the woman’s head, and that she wasn’t very smart.”
Pernella cackled. “Rub out, snuff, knock her off, fit her with cement shoes, you name it. Yeah, some of them wanted her offed, but maybe it wasn’t that she was stupid. Let’s just say, to Becuma, only Becuma was important. Everything else was moot. And Becuma expected it all to go her way, see? If there was honey in the honey pot, she got the first swipe, ya get me?”
Berry nodded. “She was selfish.”
“Nah, nah, not even that. It was like to her, no one else even existed. No one else should even want to have anything that she wanted. She had a screw loose is what I’m sayin’, girlee. She was bat-shit crazy.”
“Yes,” Berry nodded. “I understand.”
“So this Becuma chippy, she comes to Mundania and gets herself in trouble over on one continent, Africa or sumpin’. No, no, the continent of Ireland,” she corrected herself.
Tooley looked up at the sky and then back at his mother. “Ireland is an island, and part of Europe, a country in Europe.”
“Yeah, yeah, what the kid here says,” she agreed. “You know me, not much for book learnin’. I been readin’ up on Mundania, but they sure got a lot of little countries over there. I guess we got our fair share here, too.” She shook her head. “I’m losing my thread. So this Becuma, she gets herself kicked out of Ireland and goes to France and stirs up some trouble there. She gets herself in with this family, the Lamberts, and she falls for one of them, but, and here’s the kicker. A sister of our clan, the Packleads, comes over and takes her fellow right out from under her nose!”
Pernella looked around triumphantly, but when the others just looked confused, she shook her head in disgust and continued.
“One of our clan nicked her fella—that Natty Lambert fell for old Euphemia over this Becuma chippy, and Becuma don’t like it when other Beings take what she wants. So she rats out this other witch, Euphemia to the Witches’ Council. The head witch then, Caridwen, she cuts a deal with Euphemia for the second-born of a set of twin girls, whenever that happens. What Euphemia don’t know at the time is that Caridwen is in cahoots with Becuma. As powerful as Caridwen is, Becuma is twice as powerful, even in Mundania. Thing is, this Becuma, she don’t want power, she just wants her way. She didn’t like losing that man in Mundania. Caridwen uses that
and talks her into lending her power to this contract, so that when them twins is born, they’ll carry latent power that they don’t even know they have. And Caridwen, she’s got plans for them twins, plans she uses Becuma to fix, which is easy cause the dame is so screwy, she’d never suspect anyone of pulling a fast one on her.”
“What does Becuma get? The power she imbued the contract with must be worth quite a bit of payback. How did Caridwen repay her?” Tooley asked, looking puzzled.
His mother looked at him and shrugged. “Besides some sweet revenge? I got no idea, kid, none at all. Becuma wanted that Frenchie what married Euphemia and he’s long dead by now, Natties having such a short life-span and all, so I’m not sure what good all this did old Becuma Fair-Skin, other than revenge on the witch clan that took her man. Dollars to donuts, she’d be ripe for that kind of flimflam, but I still can’t finger why that little chippy would be willing to play a long game like this. She was more of the ‘eye for an eye’ type, if y’know what I mean. The long game, that’s for folks what live beyond the present, and Becuma never seemed to think five minutes ahead of the game.” Pernella shook her head.
“How do you know all of this, Mother?”
Pernella cackled. “I may be on the outs with the Witches Council now, but our family line was high up in the order back in them days. We had all the rap. And Euphemia, she’s a legend in our clan. To some she’s a hero, and to others a cautionary tale.” She shrugged. “Me? I like that dame’s style, excepting the part where she sells out her descendants.”
