by J. L. Ray
“It is certainly a good story, “ Tooley began, but Bogey interrupted him.
“Yes, Mommy, it is a very good story.” He tapped his forehead. “But I’m not sure why you told it.”
Pernella sighed. “I ain’t not done yet, is why, ya goofballs. Listen up, cause this is where it gets interesting.”
Everyone leaned in toward Pernella, even though the portal gate separated the four by far more than the foot or so of space that seemed to lie between them.
“So here’s the thing. Last night, the dolly you sent over here to retrieve some merchandise—”
“Maybelle Sutherland,” Tooley clarified for Berry.
“Yeah, that chickee—”
“She’s going to bring me a guitar signed by Ace Frehely!” Bogey added.
“Don’t hold your breath, kid,” Pernella muttered before she continued. “Yeah, that chickee. So she’s not a pure-blood Natty.”
“So you said.” Tooley threw out his hands, “Then how did she get through portals working as a magic mule before last night?”
“That’s a good question, kid. I been askin’ myself the same one. How did she do it?” Pernella narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think that dame knows what she is, but I’ll tell you what I do know. Except for her age, she’s a dead ringer for your little Strawberry Shortcake there, your moll with the mysterious past and no memory and lots of power.”
Berry gave Tooley an anxious look. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble,” she told him.
“It’s all right, Berry. You helped me get away from Crystal Winkowski. Without you and the other two artifacts, I might not have made it out the door.”
“How did I help?” Berry asked him, bewildered and certain that she was more burden than aid.
“I couldn’t fail, could I? If I did, we’d both be caught,” he told her. They heard Bogey give a big sigh and a sniffle.
“I wish I could hug you both, right now!” he told them.
Pernella cackled. “That’s m’boys. A couple o’big softies. Those genes have to have come from your daddies.” Then she got serious. “Look, I’m thinking that maybe Berry and Miz Sutherland might be the twins of the story. When I realized Maybelle Sutherland was part witch, and I gave her my medallion so she could cross the border, I saw through a spell on her—an Antiquing Spell, and not a very strong one. So, she looked to be in her midyears, but underneath, she was much younger. I heard through the grapevine that the deal had gone down, oh, twenty-five or so years ago, so that fits what I heard. But that ain’t all.”
She looked a little embarrassed at this point, and hemmed and hawed a bit before continuing.
“Mother, you might as well tell us, so we know what we’re up against.”
“There’s more to the story. Apparently, Caridwen is planning to do more than just take a Natty child in payment for services rendered. That’s fairly common for the Fairie Realms, or at least it used to be. Most of us Supers have trouble having kids. It’s one o’the reasons the Bitches hate me and my boys so much.” The last was an aside directed at Berry.
Tooley added, “Mum wasn’t supposed to be the one to carry on the family line. It was supposed to have been one of her sisters. And boys...well...there are special circumstances with witch families.
“Well, it’s true. I never meant to have children at all. I wasn’t supposed to have ‘em. But your father,” she looked at Tooley, then at Bogart, “and your father. What a coupla hot potatoes.” She shook her head while her sons both tried to look elsewhere. Mother often waxed poetic about their dads, and both boys tried hard not to listen. No one wanted to know that much about a parent’s courting days. Ugh.
“Mum, what is Caridwen planning?” Tooley sounded exasperated.
His mother ducked her head and shrugged. “She’s part of faction that wants to attack the Geas, bring back the sister witches stuck in Mundania, take over Fairie and rule.” Tooley looked stunned though Bogey and Berry just nodded. Neither Being had the context to understand Pernella’s meaning. The next bit caught everyone’s attention. “To make this happen, Caridwen needed a special set of twins. These two, apparently.”
“What is special about me?” Berry asked, bewildered by the revelations and certain that they could not pertain to her.
“You’re a Changeling, ain’tcha?”
Berry blushed. Then she nodded. “I can feel her in me, trying to take over, but I can control her.”
Tooley had turned to look at her. “Is that why you trusted me so immediately?”
“Yes. I can tell what you feel. It helps her react to other animals in the wild.” Berry frowned. “I don’t remember much of that life, not in Fairie, just impressions of running in the forest and...and smelling prey. But I can smell things and hear things, taste things on the wind.”
“What are you, girlee?”
“A panther.”
“Ah. A big predator.”
Berry nodded, her head down, afraid to make eye contact and see fear or, worse, pity. But Tooley’s hand gently grasped her chin and he lifted her face up. When she looked into his eyes, all she saw was admiration.
“You are the bravest woman I have ever met.” He heard a little throat clearing behind him then smiled and added. “Other than my mother.”
Berry felt like the sun had come out from behind a cloud, and she smiled back. Then, looking at the two sitting across the Great Divide said resolutely, “Tell me what I can do to stop this witch, and I will do it.”
Pernella tapped the side of her head. “Well…I think, first of all, Tooley, you need to get in touch with those Sutherlands and meet up with Maybelle. Berry needs to be hidden while you meet so she don’t queer the deal. You need to break the news to that chickee, and since she’s livin’ a Natty life, I’m bettin’ she’s clueless to this whole story. You’ll have a real hard time convincin’ her that you’re on the square about it all. But you’ll need that chickee to get Caridwen under control.”
Tooley frowned. “Isn’t she still head of the Witches’ Council?”
Pernella shook her head. “Not going on these two hundred years. She made that deal and got in a lot of trouble. She fed the Council some baloney story, stringin’ ‘em along ‘til it got blown, and she had to take a powder. A few decades later, she started her rebel group, Witches Authority Hegemony.”
Berry looked confused again, so Tooley added for clarification, “She lied about the deal and made up a story, but someone found out and she had to leave the Council.”
“Ah,” Berry nodded.
“Who ratted her out, Mommy?” Bogey asked, surprising everyone by having followed the story very well.
“It was an outsider, not a witch. He’s pretty famous. I think she took him for a sucker and tried to run a sting and got caught. Only a sap would try to put one over on Mephistopheles. I heard she was totally off the track last time anyone in the Council had parley with her.” She snorted. “The name of her little gang woulda told anyone that. Who’s afraid of a bunch o’mugs called WAH?”
Tooley said grimly, “And you think she is behind this plan that involves Berry and her...her twin?”
“That’s about the long and short of it,” Pernella told him.
“Could she be in Mundania?”
Pernella shook her head. “She wasn’t when the Geas hit, and there’s no way the PTB would have let that nutjob through the legal portals. If she’s there, there’s only a couple of ways it could’ve happened.”
Tooley raised a brow.
“Well, you’re standing next to one. Supers shouldn’t be able to pass through illegal portals. Someone put some kind of dormancy spell on your Berry so she seemed dead, and then they used us to send her through an illegal gate.” A stray thought about their portal occurred to Pernella at that point, but before she could pursue it, Tooley interrupted.
“You don’t suppose we’ve sent any other Supers through, do you, Mum?” he asked, aghast.
Pernella pursed her lips. “I’m guessing we’d
have noticed boxes the right size for Beings. Plus, I’m guessing this was something the Willow did for his main customer, this Mistress dame you hired out to, and whoever that little chickee is, she must be someone connected to Caridwen. Well, I hope that’s the only time I get taken as a patsy. I’d hate to think I been sending over other Beings to be slaves to some of the dirtbags who manage to work slave rings under the radar.”
“What’s the other way Caridwen could be in Mundania, Mum?”
“Zombie,” his mother said shortly.
“A zombie?” Tooley was confused. A huge fan of George Romero’s work as well as The Walking Dead, a light comedy about the end of the world, he didn’t see how Caridwen could have used the brainless undead to come back.
Pernella nodded. “Oh yeah. One of the worst kinds of magic, but so weakened by the anti-magic force in Mundania, it ain’t even on the Geas’ radar.”
“How does it work?” Berry asked.
“The person who wants to travel finds a willing host who is already in Mudania. It’d have to be someone with magic.”
Tendrils of unease snaked down Tooley’s back.
“Then the person who wants to travel, say Caridwen for example, finds a safe haven to stash her body, runs the spell, and transfers into the host body. We used to call it being hag-ridden. The host can hold the traveler for up to fourteen days with no ill effects, depending on the mpsi of the traveler. The higher the traveler’s power, the longer she can protect the host. But when the traveler can’t keep the personalities separate anymore? The host dies and only the traveler is left, running the body.” Pernella wrinkled her nose. “Zombies because the brain of the original host is gone by the end, the soul has been lost, and if the traveler goes back to her own body and the host body hasn’t burnt out, the host body keeps moving, searching for something to take the place of the host. That’s where that whole eating brains thing started. The old host body is trying to find a new brain and it’s just running on ambient magic.”
Pernella looked at her eldest born, who looked mule-kicked right at that moment. “What’s the matter, kid? You look like you seen a ghost!”
“No. I think I’ve...seen a zombie, Mother. And it’s a magical practitioner calling itself Crystal Winkowski, but I think...I think it might be Caridwen.”
“Aw, the blighted Seven Hells,” his mother said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Calvin, dear, what is your plan?”
Cal looked at Naamah and Phil. “Well, when Sherlock here began his interrogation of Sammeal and the Willow, he wasn’t particularly subtle, but at the same time, he didn’t show all the cards we had.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Naamah asked.
“All you said,” Cal pointed at Phil with a ham sandwich that he had pulled out of the magic sack, because making big plans made him hungry, or at least it should have, “and tell me if I’m wrong here, is that we heard that they were partners. You never said nothin’ ‘bout bein’ no police.” He tilted his head. “Of course, you actually aren’t, but still, you’re sorta unofficial police, a police consultant. Anyway, they don’t know why we’re interested, do they?”
Phil nodded, an inkling of Cal’s plan spreading across his face as he said, “I see. They have no idea why we are interested.” He repeated Cal’s words, exasperating Naamah, who was still clueless.
“Oh, well, that makes it all clear. They have no idea why you two are interested,” she added sarcastically.
“Exactly!” Cal pointed at her with the sandwich and smiled. “So we tell them we’re here to talk to them about arranging to move some merchandise.”
Phil frowned. “What kind of merchandise?”
“Duh. What’ve they been movin’ that we’re tryin’ to stop, pal?”
“Ah. Changelings.”
“Or any other kind of Fairie Being lookin’ to get into Mundania the easy way, as opposed to applying for immigration and waiting a long time.”
Phil shrugged. “It is a fine plan, Calvin, but to make it work, we will need to deal with a couple of rather large issues. First of all, Sammeal has no idea about my connection to the police, but the Willow does.”
Cal slapped himself in the head, which caused a few of the patrons to look around nervously before descending back into their various glasses of liquid oblivion. “Yeah, yeah, I remember now from the report Tony wrote and the one you submitted to the lieutenant. Something about willow being used in her hair shirt?”
“Ah yes,” Naamah cut in. “They should have warned her of that when they gave it to her for concealment!”
“That was Glinda.”
“Ah.”
Cal looked from one to the other. “What d’ya mean?”
Naamah patted Cal’s hand. “Well, well. I doubt she was actively trying to get Tony killed, but she has had a thing for Mephistopheles for a rather long time.” She shot Phil a look. “And he had one for her, once upon a time.”
“Ah,” Cal nodded knowingly. Then he shook his head in confusion. “Nah. I don’t get it.” He looked at Phil. “You musta had a death wish then. But hey, the important thing is, we need an explanation for that last incident.” He leaned forward to Phil. “How about you were cooperating because you had to cooperate or serve time?”
“No, no. Any crime that would lead to time in jail would definitely take me out of the CEO job at Monster-Mate, and I am far too high profile in that job to fake having lost it. Even in Fairie, the company is famous.”
“How about you cooperated to keep that cushy job instead of dropping to one lower down the food chain than you’d like to do?”
“That will do. What crime?”
Cal thought for a moment. “Big enough to need to fall in line as a CI.” When Naamah looked puzzled he added, “A Confidential Informant.”
“Ah, a stool pigeon.”
“What?” Cal grinned.
“I have a friend who’s a big fan of hardbroiled detective novels,” she said.
Cal rumbled out a laugh. “Hardboiled, not broiled. But it’s a picture!”
“Oops.”
“Yeah, so Phil turns stoolie here to keep out his sweet digs and CEO job. Maybe he tried to smuggle in something from Fairie?”
Phil, whose face had soured from being called a stoolie, suddenly smiled. “Gilt.”
“Huh? Well, yeah, you got guilt issues,” Cal agreed.
“Not guilt, the other…g-i-l-t. My house here, you saw the foyer?”
“Dude! That was some serious shiny shit in the hallway.”
Phil winced at Cal’s description. “Tony thought it was all gilt. It is actually solid gold.”
Cal’s eyes got big. “College funds for the kids...” he muttered.
“My dear ogre, any one of those frames would buy an education for all four of your spawn. But I don’t think that will work.”
“Why not?” Cal asked a bit wistfully.
“Smuggling something that is neither alive nor magically active would not be...” Phil paused, his face enigmatic, “impossible for me to manage on my own. Smuggling a Being over, now that would be a challenge. ” Cal started to ask and Phil shook his head. A demon stuck in Mundania needed a few secrets. “But that is not the only issue. They smuggle Changelings for a reason. We want to catch them at it, so we will need someone to be our merchandise. We shall have to find a Changeling here in Fairie, or else someone who could pass for a Changeling, who is willing to risk helping us in this endeavor. Have you any idea who to bring into this mess? And make no mistake, this could become quite a mess,” he added gloomily.
Cal scrunched up his face, looking around and trying to decide. His eyes landed on Naamah and widened. He looked over at Phil and then tilted his head toward her and shrugged.
“No, no Calvin. It would be dangerous, especially if the sting went so far as actually taking her over the Divide.” Phil’s olive skin actually paled. “The Geas might pick up on her and destroy her.”
“Mephistopheles the Akkadian!”
A hissing whisper cut through their low-voiced argument.
Both men stopped and turned to Naamah, who had her hands on hips, an indignant gesture partially lost since she was seated, but nonetheless one which carried the menace of a woman who had been married a myriad of times and who had raised more than a few children. “Don’t you dare try to mollycoddle me! If you need to use me for a police...uhm, what do you call it?”
“A sting operation,” Calvin told her quietly, grinning at Phil as he did so.
“Right, a sting operation. Well, I would be happy to help! I may be old, but only a few centuries older than you! Don’t you patronize me!” Despite keeping her voice low, Naamah put a lot of vigor into it.
“My dear old friend,” Phil began, hoping to make her see reason, “I am not patronizing you. If anything, I know that of the two of us, you are the far more dangerous one. I just do not care for the idea of your putting yourself at risk.”
“Someone’s got to do it, and it might as well be me.” She put a hand on Phil’s arm. “My dear, I am so tired of being afflicted with these ridiculous Visions and Sights, visiting those portents and signs on other people, who go off and have grand adventures, while I simply sit on the sidelines, eating my turnip soup and potato frittata.”
“You had frittata?” Cal murmured wistfully.
“As your partner might say, Calvin, that is so not the point,” Phil snapped, imitating Tony’s voice. “Naamah, surely there is someone else—”
“Not someone who is right here, and right now ready to do the job,” Naamah replied briskly.
“And not someone who can easily hold her own with those two bums,” Calvin pointed out in a reasonable voice.
Phil sat for a moment looking from one to the other. Then he sighed and slumped ever so slightly, his normally tight posture defeated. “I suppose you are both right.” He sat back up. “We need to plan.”
“Do you suppose we ought to go somewhere else? Aren’t we going to make those two suspicious?” Naamah said.
“As far as they know, we’re just sitting here getting our plan together to approach them. We can take a little longer,” Calvin replied. He took a decisive bite of his sandwich but had to chew and swallow before continuing. “Okay. So here’s the deal. We’re here because someone over in Mundania said that the proprietor of this bar was the guy to see about moving a kind of special merchandise across the Divide.”
