by J. L. Ray
“You!” Bergfrid hissed. “You do not understand love so large, so overwhelming, that everything must be risked, that everything else pales into insignificance! You with your ‘shit friend’ and your safe partners! You are nothing! A Mundane Natural,” and at that she spit on the floor next to Tony’s chair, just missing her shoe. “What would you know of love spanning millennia? Spanning the Realms? Nothing!”
Tony sat through her histrionics, calmly drinking her tea and wondering if she needed to get the NASH out, just in case. But both Bergfrid’s diatribe and Tony’s reaction were abruptly interrupted by a howl that raised the hair on the back of Tony’s neck. The noise came from the detectives’ workroom, and it was followed by the clumping of boots that were stalking across the workroom’s linoleum floor and toward the breakroom where the two women sat, wide-eyed.
“Shit is about to hit the fan,” Tony whispered.
“I do not know what that means, but it sounds very bad.”
“Oh, you’ve got no idea.” She looked around the room. “Quick, into that cupboard!”
Bergfrid narrowed her eyes and sneered. “Vikings do not hide.”
“Suit yourself,” Tony commented as she opened the pantry door where various officers kept their favorite snacks. The tall pantry was filled with shelves but had enough room inside for both of them to stand. “There’s room. If you want?”
The howling grew louder, and Bergfrid broke and ran. Just as she did, Tony said, “Tea mugs!”
She darted back out and took them to the sink. Then she ran for the closet. The two just got the door shut when they heard the breakroom door slam open.
The howling stopped, replaced by angry muttering. “I can smell it. I can smell it. Someone has used one of the evidence charms and I can smell the spell working. Are you in here, my pretty? Are you in here? Shall I lock you back up in my evidence room?” The voice was deep and rough, and when it tried to coax, the urge to tell the truth would usually overcome the listener. Tony slipped a hand over Bergfrid’s mouth just in time, and grabbed Bergfrid’s other hand and put it on her mouth. Bergfrid nodded to show that she understood. The two stood there, hands on each other’s mouths to keep from talking, and once in while, caught a glimpse of the Being in the room through a crack in the door.
His baggy breeches were navy blue stitched with silver thread in intricate patterns. A loose linen shirt in the same color was belted on top of the pants with a wide silver sash, and a large scimitar hung from his waist. A thickly soled pair of black boots, the long point turned up at the front, made his heavy footsteps sound like the end of the world. On his head sat a black turban, and over most of his rough features, a thick, navy blue beard grew, one which hung down almost to his waist.
Bergfrid drew in a deep breath at the sight of him. He was famous in Fairie, the bugaboo of young, marriageable women throughout the Realms.
Unfortunately, that one intake of breath was enough to make him stop, turn, and smile at the cupboard. The smile was neither a comfort nor a reassurance. He began a slow walk to the door, his rumbling laughter sending chills down the spines of the two inside. He jerked the door open, and they tumbled out shrieking.
Tony got herself together first. Shrieking like this would get her ragged unmercifully if anyone she worked with heard her. Plus, she hadn’t set the charm off! Still—Bluebeard. Fuckin’ hell. She usually sent Cal to check out evidence boxes. Cal just thought the guy needed a visit to a salon and maybe a love life. “I heard all those stories, and I think he just keeps attracting the wrong kind of girl, am I right? He’ll be a nicer person if he just gets out from under that hair!” Cal told her over and over. “Some decent modern clothing, lose the scimitar, a good mani-pedi? No worries!” Unfortunately, Cal had yet to take the sergeant out for that mani- pedi, and his long, sharp fingernails were more terrifying than even the beard. Just as Bluebeard grabbed each woman by the scruff of the neck, his Super strength making it possible for him to shake the two like a couple of bad little puppies, Azeem’s roar halted everything.
When the room got quiet, Azeem, who was standing in the doorway, spoke. “Sergeant Bluebeard,” he purred, “what exactly do you think you’re doing?”
Tony grinned. When Azeem purred like that, heads rolled. Not literally, of course, the SCIB, more than anyone, had to play by the Geas’ rules. But even a headcase like Bluebeard knew and feared that particular purr.
Bluebeard quit shaking the women, but he still held them above the floor, his height allowing him to keep Bergfrid, and even Tony, in a position where they could not move, toes dangling above the linoleum.
“One of your detectives checked out evidence hours ago. I came by to see if he had finished, and I found my key. MY KEY IS BLACK!”
“Oh my,” Azeem said calmly. “Are you sure its magical charge hasn’t gone off? I mean, in twenty-six years of use, who knows what could happen. It might need recharging.”
“RECHARGING?”
Azeem winced. “Really, Nigel, stop yelling. I’m standing right here in the room with you. There’s no need to blow me down every time you open your mouth.”
Bluebeard’s chest puffed out. “Do not call me by that name! My name is BLUEBEARD.”
Azeem rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know. Scourge of faithless women across the Realms, blah, blah, blah. Now, why do you have my detective and her...” he looked at Tony who mouthed two letters at him, “…CI in such a ridiculous hold? Set them down at once.”
“I tell you, I smell MAGIC in here!” When Azeem chuffed, Bluebeard apologized for yelling again. “But I smell it, Lieutenant!”
Azeem sighed. “It always smells like magic in here, Ni—I mean, Bluebeard. Have you never noticed?”
Bluebeard looked left and then right. He pursed his mouth. “I suppose so. Hmph. Well, then. I suppose I’ll just…” He set Tony on her feet, then Bergfrid, but he still had a hold on their necks. “Which of you is Detective Newman?”
“That would be me,” Tony said and gave him the nicest smile she could manage. It wasn’t great, but it seemed to help.
“Ah. Yes. Well. Tell that ridiculous ogre of yours to return the evidence.” His voice got a little whiny and a little less scary. “And make him quit trying to get me to go to Salon Fae-ntastique! I am not cutting my beard!”
Tony started to correct him about which partner had checked out the evidence, but decided to let it go. “Yes, sir.”
He nodded and released her. Then he turned to Bergfrid. He sniffed her hair and frowned, but said, “My apologies, young lady.” He released her neck as well.
“You are forgiven,” she told him, adding a little curtsey that made him almost smile under all that navy facial hair.
“Very well, I’ll head back to the evidence locker. For now.” As he left, he turned back and added, “But all the evidence in that box better be there when it is returned.” He patted his cloth belt. “I have the inventory right here. I will know.”
He left, and everyone stood there for a minute basking in the more normal noise of rush hour traffic, coming through the open window. Then Azeem spoke.
“Would one of you like to tell me just what that was about?”
“Sir,” Tony began. “I’m not sure you’re going to believe this one. Even for an abnormal day at work this is extreme.”
“Try me,” he said between his teeth.
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Azeem escorted Bergfrid and Tony back to his office. Once there, Tony found it a little difficult to figure out where to start. She finally jumped right into the middle of the story, like any good Greek tragedy, though this particular story felt a lot more Wagnerian.
“Sergeant Bluebeard has an actual cause for grievance against Baz,” she told Azeem.
The lieutenant’s whiskers twitched, but Tony couldn’t read his reaction, so she continued.
“Baz was going through the items we retrieved during last night’s undercover op. As you said, they were mos
tly minor charms and spells. One of them was a Flying Pig spell.”
The lieutenant neither blinked nor twitched at this point, but went still as only a cat can.
“He, uhm, Baz, he was showing me the various charms and spells, explaining that they were mostly harmless items, which suggests very interesting ideas concerning the guy we met last night on the op,” she added hopefully. Lieutenant Azeem stayed quiet, so she continued. “I was asking about the charms, and he had the pig in his hand, the one that grants a wish that you think would never happen otherwise. I asked him what he would wish for if he could use that.”
Tony stopped and shot a look at Bergfrid. Then she took a deep breath and said, “He said he wished he could see Bergfrid again and find out why she betrayed him and hooked up with Mephistopheles.” She added, “Bergfrid and Baz were engaged back in the day, so that’s why he’s such a jerk about women sometimes.”
Bergfrid started to stay something but stopped as the lieutenant turned his stare on her. Tony was happy to see that something intimidated that woman. Bergfrid immediately shut the hell up; however, she didn’t look happy, and she turned her stare to Tony, who looked back at Azeem and continued.
“He looked really upset because this has apparently been eating at him for the past five hundred and twenty-five years. I felt sorry for him, and I reached over to pat his hand.” She swallowed. “It was the hand with the statue. I said something about talking to Bergfrid, and he said something about his true love, and then there was this kind of fizz, like touching a live wire, and then the statue...sorta...well... it disappeared.” Azeem’s whiskers twitched. In the spirit of full disclosure, Tony added, “There was a sound like a squealing pig, just before it disappeared in a puff of pink smoke.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Bergfrid drew in a large breath, ready to lambast Tony, when Azeem finally spoke.
“I’ll see what I can do about Sergeant Bluebeard,” he said mildly.
“Uhm, okay?” Tony replied.
He turned to Bergfrid, who had kept silent when he spoke. “And should I assume that you are Detective de Groot’s long lost love Bergfrid, and not a confidential informant?”
“I have not been lost!” she declared.
“A poor choice of words on my part, then. You are the one who he believes has broken his heart?”
Bergfrid stood in agitation and began pacing. “This is something that I did not know!” She turned to Tony and leaned into her menacingly. “Why have you not told me that Sebastian is angry with me?”
“I was telling you that when Bluebeard showed up and threw a monkey wrench in my plan to break it to you gently. Plus, you have that knife, so I was thinking it would be good to have some back up before you went all ninja Viking on my ass again.”
Bergfrid let out a little scream of frustration. “I am so tired of hearing all of your words and understanding only half of them! I want to go home!” She sat down abruptly and started crying.
Lieutenant Azeem looked at Tony from under his brow. She shrugged and got up and went to Bergfrid’s chair. If it had been her sister, she would have hugged her, but given the knife thing, she wasn’t exactly keen to get within chokehold distance. She began to pat Bergfrid on the shoulder. “There, there, Berg. I’m sorry about sounding like it’s all a joke to me. It’s not. I’m upset, too. But hey, I think that it’s all gonna be all right. You just need to give Baz your side of the story. You can tell him about making those bad deals and getting into the kind of, uhm…situation…that led to some poor decisions. Let him know you’ve been stuck in a true love sleep for the past five hundred years, waiting for him to call you.” Bergfrid kept crying, so Tony tried another tack. “I think Baz is still crazy over you, or he wouldn’t be so mad, would he?”
The crying slowed a bit, and Bergfrid looked up. Her tear-soaked face was still luminous, her nose slightly tinged with pink, her cheeks flushed and lovely. She was a picture of feminine beauty and misery right out of a painting by one of the Pre-Raphaelites. “Do you really think so?” she asked longingly.
“Sure!” Tony said, hoping she wasn’t lying to the woman. However, as long as the baby really was Baz’s, she had a feeling he would be a lot quicker to overlook whatever deal Bergfrid had made with Phil. She wasn’t thrilled that she couldn’t find out what that deal had entailed, but she would have bet money that it didn’t involve sex. Bergfrid, and more importantly Bergfrid’s knife, gave her the impression that she really wasn’t that kind of girl. Talking to her had made Tony realize, however, that Phil also had a compulsion on him that made it impossible to tell her anything about the situation with Bergfrid. And if that was true, well, she’d been a total ass to him about it. Of course, he could have told her that there was a compulsion, but she might have to give him a chance to explain that to her as well. There was crow to be eaten, but she was a big girl, and she’d take her share and enjoy it.
In the meantime, Bergfrid had quit crying and was looking at Tony like she’d just become her new bestie.
Bergfrid announced, “You are right, Detective. I will not give up! I will make sure that Sebastian knows as much as I can tell him. And if you could talk to your shit friend, Mephistopheles, perhaps we can tell him enough about what happened so that Baz will know that this baby is his, not Mephistopheles’.”
Lieutenant Azeem, who had just taken a sip of coffee, spewed liquid over his desk and started coughing. When both women started to come over to help him, he held up one paw to keep them back. When he finished coughing, he sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.
“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he seemed to mutter, but Tony wouldn’t have sworn to it. Then, much louder, he said, “Ladies, as interesting and important,” he tilted his head toward Bergfrid, “as this story is, this is a police facility. We have a case to work, and this is not the case.” He turned to Bergfrid. “I am going to place yet another call to the Powers That Be and find out what the Geas is spelled to do with someone in your...situation. I would be most unhappy if Sebastian came back and found that he had regained and lost his fiancé and his child in the same day.” He turned to Tony. “You are going to go join Baz, soon. There’s been some movement, and the suspects returned to the warehouse, but they seem to be on the move again. You need to join the team when the suspects arrive at their destination, so wait for that call and be ready to go.”
“Yes, sir,” Tony said.
As she was leaving, he called out, “Oh, and Detective Newman?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t touch anything else in the evidence box. I don’t think we need any more reasons for Sergeant Bluebeard or the Geas to kill anyone at SCIB today, eh?’
“Uhm...no, sir.”
“But keep in mind, we need to have your mpsi levels checked, and soon.”
“Why, sir?” Tony dreaded his answer.
“Those aren’t very powerful spells and charms. That Flying Pig shouldn’t have had the juice to pull someone out of a five hundred year sleep and certainly not across Realms. I believe that you’re the reason the spell was able to do what it did. And that’s something we need to understand.”
Tony paled. “Yes, sir,” she replied, subdued.
While Sammeal slept off his beer, the Willow cleared the bar of its regulars and closed it down. Then he led Phil, Cal, and Naamah to a table.
“All right then, let’s set this up.” The Willow wasn’t enthusiastic, but he recognized the inevitable when it stared him in the face. The demon knew what they were up to, and the subtext here was that either they helped him move his client, or he’d turn them in. The Willow could respect that even if he didn’t like it. He could only hope that Mephistopheles really was still running side rackets. Otherwise, this might be the end of the run he and Sammeal had been having since they’d been working for Herself. He’d almost be relieved if it was. He hadn’t heard from Caridwen in over a week, not since her last order, and she usually kept a firm hand on their reins. If she realized that
they were planning on using this new witch and her Tempo, one that she’d sent them to for this last shipment, to move items on their own...that would be bad. He had kept Sammeal unaware of that part of the operation and of the sideline of merchandise he’d been moving through Caridwen’s portal, to protect both of them. Sammeal couldn’t spill a secret he didn’t know. But the Willow wasn’t sure how much longer he could do all the heavy lifting in both the relationship and the business. He was so tired. He glanced over at Sammeal, who had curled up on top of the wooden bar and was gently snoring. He rolled his eyes and turned back to the group in front of him.
“So, the old bitch is the client then?” he asked.
Naamah almost climbed across the table to launch herself at him before Cal dragged her back.
“Her name is Esmeralda Jones, and she is Changeling. A goose,” Phil added smoothly. “She had been...uh...bird-napped by a giant over in the Sky Realms.”
The Willow nodded. The giants who lived there had gotten obsessed with a Mundane fairy tale about a giant that had a goose that laid golden eggs. Since giants tended toward obsessive collections of shiny things, rather like Mundane magpies, only larger and more likely to grind bones to make bread meal, it wasn’t unbelievable that a giant had kidnapped a Changeling whose creature form was a goose.
“And the two of ye are old friends, are ye?” The Willow asked, trying to establish how Phil would know he had a client.
“I have a system for clients on this side to contact me. And usually, it isn’t concerning immigration. This is a first for me,” Phil said.
“Ah. So that’s why we’ve been honored wit’ your presence then, is it?”
Phil’s face went very cold as he looked at the sarcastic barkeeper. After a moment or two he carefully told him, “Hamadryad, for all your power here, in your tree, just exactly how do you think I became who I am?” As he spoke, he reached over and put one hand on the Willow’s arm, and though neither Cal nor Naamah saw anything, the Willow leapt back out of his chair, shaking his arm as if it were on fire.
