Mismatched Pair

by J. L. Ray

  Berry hated lying to Tooley, he seemed like the one true thing in her life right now, but she turned her face up and nodded, saying as little as possible in hopes she would feel less guilty when he found out her true nature. “That’d be really nice, Tooley. I’d like that.” At least that part was true. She would have loved to live with Tooley’s family. Pernella was so different from the other witches in her life.

  “I’ll get back to you shortly, O’Toole. Cal?” Tony looked over at him. “I’m calling in some officers to escort you and Baz down to the cage.” Baz seemed to be in need of yet another net after getting his third wind.

  “Oh man, I was hoping we could avoid that. He’s gonna be hatin’ life when he comes to in there.”

  “I know, but without Azeem to order him to Change, I think that’s the best we can do. I knew he was strong, but…” She shook her head.

  Cal nodded. “Yeah, I can feel the magic coming off of him.” He added softly, so only Tony heard, “I think we need to talk to Azeem about the visa—Packlead may be important to the case. Look at my report. The second riddle.” He was interrupted by a question from Berry.

  “Do you have more than one cage?”

  Cal looked at Berry.

  “I think I’ll need one, too.” Her voice dropped an octave or so, the hint of a yowl behind her words. She moved away from O’Toole, her movements suddenly too fluid and boneless to pass for Natty. Baz’s agitation, added to her own rising emotion, had finally overridden her ability to control the Change. It was happening, happening fast.

  “Cal, I never thought I’d say this. Shoot my sister!”

  Cal got the net over her just as she shifted to panther form, her brownish red fur showing odd glints of bright pink.

  “Berry!” Tooley tried to touch her, but Cal pulled him back, his size overpowering Tooley’s frantic reaction.

  “Bad idea, buddy. She’s pretty worked up right now and may sink a claw in you through the net without realizing what she’s doing. Move back.” Tooley looked up at the ogre, who was holding him back as gently as he could. He nodded his assent. “And this day just gets weirder all the time,” Cal sighed.

  Tony called out, “Uniforms on their way,” and ended the signal. After a few moments thought, she started to signal her parents on her f-light but canceled the contact when Phil and Bergfrid suddenly came out of the office. She knew she would pay for this later, one way or another, but she just wasn’t ready to call and say, “Hey, I know you said to let it go, but my twin sister just fell into my lap. At work. As part of a crime investigation. And she’s got a guy, but he’s a suspect in a smuggling ring, so he may go to jail. Oh, and we’ll need to lay in a supply of kitty litter, a lot of kitty litter.” Yeah, that call was gonna be a real party. At least she had a good reason to put it off. “Okay. Great. You’re done. Are we all good now, Berg? No more homicidal urges?”

  “Only when you call me such a ridiculous name,” Bergfrid sneered.

  “Sorry! It’s a Southern thing.”

  Bergfrid looked at Phil, who shrugged and smiled. “Eventually, it starts to make sense.”

  “Very well.” She turned to Tony and said formally, “Mephistopheles and I have made a new deal. I am satisfied.”

  “Fabulous, I guess. Phil? We have trouble.”

  “Ah. A normal day, then.”

  Tony snorted, and Phil smiled at her. Her heart gave a little jump and she smiled back. Oh, for five minutes to apologize to him for not trusting him. Of course, she had known him for less than two weeks. Maybe it was less an apology and more an acknowledgement that she now knew the truth and could reconsider the whole issue of dating. He was still looking at her, waiting for her update. He raised a quizzical brow and she blushed. Very unprofessional to be thinking what she was thinking when the current situation could be summed up as “all hell is breaking loose” at the station.

  “We have two Changelings in the front office now, not one, in full-blown animism.”

  “Your twin?” Phil asked, surprised.

  Bergfrid muttered, “Hmph. Two of you. Twice as annoying, no doubt.”

  “It seems my twin is a Changeling. Who knows what all happened to her in Fairie?” Tony’s face was bleak as she thought about O’Toole’s comments. She had a pretty good idea of what had happened to him, and she wasn’t looking forward to taking his statement. Though rape was never easy to deal with, men sometimes wouldn’t even admit it had happened. Apparently, this O’Toole would talk—he just didn’t want to do it in front of her sister. Tony could understand that. She hoped he could get the help he’d need. It looked like her sister put a lot of faith in the guy, and she didn’t want to start her own relationship with her sister by having to incarcerate her sister’s friend, or boyfriend, or whatever.

  “Who is the other Changeling?” Bergfrid asked, her tone suggesting that the answer should not be Sebastian de Groot.

  Tony rubbed her neck with her left hand and admitted, “It’s Baz.” As Bergfrid started to run past her, she snagged the woman’s arm and slapped a handcuff on it, adroitly cuffing her to the bar on the desk used for subduing arrestees when they were brought in for questioning. She’d had a feeling Bergfrid would make a break for wherever her beloved was. “Nope! You are not going to go out there and make a totally crappy situation even worse.”

  “He needs me,” Bergfrid screeched at her, trying to pull her hand through the cuffs.

  “He needs to calm down. As do you. Again.” Tony rolled her head to loosen tight muscles and then suddenly jumped back to get away from Bergfrid, who had plunged forward to grab at her face. “Stop with the attacks already! You are a real one-note wonder, girlfriend. Try something besides violence. You are getting on my last shredded nerve.”

  “And you are driving me to insanity! How are you so calm? Do you even have a pulse? Do you even care what this Being just gave up, and gave up only so you would again consider being his lover?”

  Tony looked over at Phil, who shrugged, his color a little high. “Shut up, Bergfrid. What I chose to do, I chose to do.”

  “Do you deny that what you just did was for love?” she challenged.

  “I did it for many reasons,” he said, looking at the nails on his right hand as if bored.

  “You have lived here too long, Mephistopheles. You are almost as bland and emotionless as the object of your affection. If the two of you ever make love, you will probably forget what you are doing and fall asleep! I pity you!” She spit on the floor between them.

  “Okay, Berg, now that’s just unhygienic. And it’s getting to be a habit. You stop that.” She looked over at Phil and gave him a sweet, slow smile that turned into a chuckle. “We’ll talk later.”

  “I look forward to that talk.” He smiled back.

  Tony’s f-light signaled her, the tones of “Safe and Sound” rolling out. “Oh no.”

  “What is wrong?” Phil asked.

  “It’s my mother. I started to ring home about...y’know. Adele. Berry. Whatever she wants to be called. I didn’t delete the attempted call, so Mama’s checking in.”

  Phil knew why Amanda did not want Tony to investigate, and by then he had realized, if the death curse had been automatic, then Tony and all her siblings, cousins, maternal aunts and uncles and her mother, they’d be dead already, instantly and irrevocably. He had no idea how the curse was actually meant to work, as there were several options other than instant application. He had to hope that the current situation would at least delay the problem. Of course, he could not tell Tony that, but he could reassure her. “Surely she will not be able to blame you for anything. You did not try to find your sister. She simply showed up here.” Phil walked around a still seething Bergrid and stood next to Tony.

  Tony looked over at Bergfrid and said, “Excuse us.” She ignored the frustrated woman’s choked scream as she took Phil’s hand and pulled him away from Bergfrid’s general vicinity. “I need a minute alone with them on the phone. Go help the folks moving Baz and Berry to
the cages, okay?”

  He nodded and then decided to take a risk. He leaned forward and pressed his lips lightly to hers. He drew away quickly, but looked her in the eyes as he added, “That was for luck.”

  She pressed her lips together as if tasting his kiss. “Thanks.” Impulsively she leaned forward to return the kiss. It quickly shifted from a light touch to open-mouthed passion. Tony forgot the call and Phil didn’t want to do anything to make this stop. He ran his hands up under her jacket and blouse, feeling the skin at her waist as he pulled her to him and her hands slid around his back, pulling him even closer.

  A sardonic voice interrupted. “I take it back. Perhaps you might stay awake long enough to make love. But could you do it somewhere else?” Bergfrid tried to fold her arms and gave another frustrated scream when the handcuff interfered. “And get this off me!”

  Tony stepped back from Phil and ran a hand across her mouth, catching some moisture. She shook her head, laughing. “Go out front. Go!” She put shaking hands to her face. “I forget every time I touch you how much I...” He stood poised to leave, his avid gaze drinking in her reaction. “Just go. Later!”

  “I will hold you to that,” he murmured, low enough to escape the hearing of Bergfrid. Then he went back out to the reception desk.

  By this time, the f-light had taken a message. Tony played it. It was audio only, so her mother didn’t seem particularly worried, only hopeful that Tony was less determined to go against her wishes than the last time they had talked. “Hello, my dear. I saw you tried to call. I hope we’re…okay, you know? I’m so glad you called. Are you okay? Are you out for dinner? Do you want to come by the house before we retire for the evening? Daddy has a new client he’s meeting in the morning, and he needs to get to bed soon. Signal back, okay?”

  Tony dropped her head back. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Bergfrid finally sat down in the chair next to the desk to which she was cuffed. At that angle, she could fold her arms. She took great delight in doing so. “For the first time this evening, I feel as though my problems are much smaller than those of another in the room. I wonder how you will handle this, clever little Natty.”

  “You and me both, sister. You and me both.”

  “How did this happen?”

  The tone of voice was mild, but Azeem felt the weight of the disappointment behind the words. His tail drooped a bit. “I believe that one of my detectives, the Changeling Sebastian de Groot, must have accidentally invoked a minor spell. He had checked it out of evidence and was reviewing the inventory.”

  “Accidentally invoked a spell? I haven’t heard a story that good since Prince Frederick ‘accidentally’ screwed the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood and got her with child,” a different voice cut in, and the lieutenant was relieved by the humor in its reaction. Humor in the face of such stupid mistakes made it much more likely that the Powers That Be would find a way to resolve the situation before anything worse happened.

  “He was explaining how the spell worked to his Natty partner. Well, we thought she was a pure-bred Natural. It now seems she is part witch.”

  The chuckles in reaction to this explanation rolled out of the opaque mist that the PTB used when meeting anyone who was not a member of the council. The council members could see out, but the petitioner couldn’t see in. In addition to keeping the members’ identities secret, the mist also made the petitioner instantly uncomfortable and on the defensive. While the PTB weren’t a cruel lot, most were on the council because they believed strongly in the need to strike a balance for those Fairie Beings in Mundania and the Natural Mundanians who had to host them. Remaining anonymous helped to keep the Supers who were being interviewed honest. Why lie when one never knew who was listening? Some Supers could smell a lie, and some could taste it, and some just read body language better than others. What the petitioners didn’t realize was the third purpose of the opaque mist. Inhaling it invoked a spell of forgetting, so that those who came didn’t even remember the mist existed. Every Being who had an audience with the Powers That Be was again surprised by the mist, no matter how many times that Being had been summoned.

  “No harm was meant by invoking the spell. In fact, I believe that great good will come of this situation, eventually.” Azeem sat up a little straighter. “I would like to ask you, Gentle Beings, to consider allowing the female to stay in Mundania so that she can reconcile with her mate. They have a kit on the way, and there is much work to be done on their relationship before the child is born.”

  This statement apparently caused a bit of a stir amongst the Beings. The mist swirled around them, indicating that they were moving around. Azeem could hear murmuring voices, but no specific words. The mist blocked his ability to hear speech that they wished to keep amongst themselves.

  Finally the mist calmed down and the murmuring voices quieted. The voice that Azeem had come to think of as the Senior Being, the one who had asked him about Baz and Bergfrid, began to speak.

  “We will consider the plight of the two lovers, separated for so long and still un-reconciled. Should they find reconciliation impossible to achieve, then they shall be separated by the physical Realms once more. But where they stay...that is not a decision to make in haste, Azeem al-Sahraa. We will give our decision in three days time, before the cock crows.”

  Azeem cleared his throat. “I...uhm...I live in the city, and there aren’t a lot of chicken farms in downtown Washington D.C. Could you, perhaps—”

  The voice interrupted him, its annoyance quite clear, “Yes, yes. I understand.” The voice took on more of a singsong tone and said, “Look for the answer at the third sunrise you experience after leaving us.”

  Azeem dipped his head and stood up on all four legs, beginning to turn back to the exit, when he was abruptly stopped.

  “That is not the only reason you were summoned, Lieutenant. Hold here.”

  Azeem turned back around. Naamah stepped out of the mist and walked forward to him. She was not in her crone form, but in that of a matron, past her youth, yet still in the flush of womanly power, her body firm and athletic, her hair vibrantly red. When she reached Azeem, she threw her arms around his neck and buried her head in the mane surrounding his more human face.

  “Hello, my dear. How are you?” she asked him.

  “Naamah. Beloved. I have missed you!” He turned his face to hers and kissed her. A throat clearing stopped him, and he looked up at the mist.

  “Naamah has asked to step down from the council and has forced the issue by revealing her placement on it to another. That is, to you.” If a voice could be said to be frowning, it was this one. “Naamah. Your request will be granted. You are off of the council, effective immediately. We regret the precipitousness of the action, but your choice to reveal yourself voided the contract you had with the Powers That Be.”

  “Yes, I know. I have been in contact with Azeem, and hoping to rejoin him. I would petition to move to Mundania, my friends.”

  Azeem looked both happy and shocked. “But your work as a Seer? You can’t work as effectively in Mundania. You won’t have the same power there.”

  She turned from the mist to look at Azeem. “I find I am tired of talking in riddles and wish to have some good, clean fun. I think working for you might give me that.”

  “We cannot promise you the option of moving to Mudania,” came one of the voices from the mist.

  “I know you can’t promise, dearie,” Naamah said with a smile, “but you see, I had a little vision, so I’m not terribly worried about the outcome. I think I’ll be happy.” She got serious then. “In the meantime, I wanted to know if little Midge is all right. She proved herself on this mission as a courier, and I want to make sure no lasting harm has come to her.”

  A different voice added, “Midge is recovering nicely. She appears to have taken out a goblin horde all on her own. She will be a formidable addition to our permanent stable of couriers.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” Naamah clapped her hands and
then turned to Azeem. “Well, I do need to stay in Fairie for now since I have volunteered to be bait in the trap for the smugglers that your clever department plans to catch tomorrow.”

  “You’re doing WHAT?” Azeem roared. Even as he remembered where he was, he didn’t tone down his volume. “What has Calvin Kelly talked you into?”

  “Azeem Al-Sahraa, please! Observe the rules of etiquette,” a fussy voice came out of the mist.

  Another broke in, “Oh, get over yourself, you dried up old fuss-budget. I want to hear this!”

  “Well, I never!”

  “Yes, and that’s the problem with you. You really should, you know. All work and no play,” the other voice laughed.

  “Please continue,” a different voice said, obviously meaning Azeem and Naamah.

  Naamah had her hand over her mouth, giggling like mad. She whispered to Azeem, “They absolutely adore each other, but you’d only know it if you saw them. Of course, as soon as I leave the council officially, I’ll forget names and faces, but I shall remember the fun we had.”

  Azeem shook his mane. “Naamah. What do you mean when you say you volunteered to be the bait for the trap? What has Calvin done?”

  “Oh, pish tosh. It was my own decision. They needed a Changeling, and I can fake that well enough.” She turned from Azeem to the face the PTB, whom she could see through the mist, for now. “This particular Fairie ring is smuggling Changelings into Mundania for an underground slave trade. It must be stopped. When I followed Detective Kelly and Mephistopheles on Midge to The Willow, I agreed to act in this role.”

  “How could Calvin do this?” Azeem muttered.

  “Now, that delightful Calvin Kelly was aided by Mephistopheles, but really Azeem, if we are going to be a couple, you’ll need to get accustomed to my being a free agent. I do as I will.” Her voice rang as she said the last sentence, a gentle reminder that once upon a time, she had reigned on Earth as one of the four Queens of Hell.