by J. L. Ray
“Noted,” Phil replied. “However, keep in mind that my own powers just tripled, at the very least, when we arrived. As long as we can get in and out quickly, this should be a piece of—”
“Hold!” A horrible screech right behind the two made them both start and then turn to see who was there. A witch was poking her broomstick at them, a gleeful smile on her face. She was dressed as a guard in full-legged rusty black pants and an Elizabethan jacket and collar that managed to make her look like some demented, cross-dressing Puritan in a pointy hat.
“I recognize you,” she crooned at Tooley. “I met you when you were just a brat! Your mother tricked the Council into letting her keep you, but one day you just disappeared. I heard you crossed over to Mundania.” She poked at him again with her broom. “I’ll bet the Council would pay me a pretty penny to bring you in and put you down!”
Before Tooley could talk, Phil broke in.
“Pardon me, have we met?” he asked her. She made eye-contact with him and two seconds later, was out cold on the ground.
“What...what did you do?”
“Oh, she isn’t dead.”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t care if she was. She was a horrible creature when I was younger, and she looks to have become worse now. I swear, I think she was salivating over the reward on my head.”
Phil shrugged. “It will be hours before she wakes, but we should move her so no one stumbles over her.”
“Right.” Tooley and Phil dragged the creature, none too gently, to the tent. A quick look under the back wall showed that tent held extra samples of wares being sold in the front. They tucked her up under the back of the tent, between two rolled up magic carpets. The carpets seemed to try to move away from her, but they might have imagined that. Certainly, she smelled badly enough that Phil was actually grateful when Tooley handed him a small bottle of anti-spell gel to wipe his hands.
“You just don’t know what type of magic that creature may have used,” he murmured to Phil as he squirted some into his hands.
“Hmmm. Right.” Phil shrugged and rubbed a bit between his palms. “Let me put a bit of glamour on the both of us so that no one else notices us.” He raised his right ring finger and pointed at each of them. “Very good. Now, which way to your family?”
“Follow me.”
Ducking and diving behind tents, they made their way to the end of the street, and then across a small clearing to the woods. Once there, they ran flat out, Tooley in front, following a path that only he could see. His mother had spelled the path for family only. When they reached her barrier, Tooley grabbed Phil’s hand and they slid through it and walked into the clearing. It was obvious from the amount of damage that a large struggle had occurred. The plants in Pernella’s garden were trampled and crushed, and the house had taken hits to its side—whole sections were knocked free and the house itself was open to the elements.
Tooley, chest heaving from his run, dropped to his knees, a keening noise rising from his chest. Phil reached over and grabbed his shoulder.
“Steady, child. They may yet live.”
Tooley turned burning eyes to him. “How? How?”
“Look over there.”
Off to one side and flanked by several suitcases that looked as if they’d been dropped in a rush to enter it, Pernella’s portal heaved and shimmered, its deep red colors roiling around itself.
“Well, I am very sorry to be the bearer of such bad tidings, especially to such a lovely family.” Caridwen had walked over to the desk in Anthony’s study and picked up a silver-framed photograph of the entire family. “And of course, this situation affects your extended family as well, doesn’t it?” She looked at Amanda. “I believe you have brothers and sisters, their families, aunts and uncles and their families? And then, of course, there are the grandparents, great aunts and uncles and their families as well. Oh my. There will be rather a lot of funerals soon, won’t there?”
Amanda stared at her, and for a moment Anthony thought she was going to start crying. He was a bit startled when instead he had to pull her bodily off of this Crystal Winkowski creature, who stood laughing the whole time.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered to his wife, “calm down. It will be all right.”
“Will it be all right, Anthony Newman?” Caridwen smiled at him. “Oh, I very much doubt it. Of course, you’ll be here, to mourn the family you lost. It will be all right for you. You are young. You can start again, with a younger woman.” She leaned forward to set the photo on the desk again, making sure that everyone in the room got a good view down her décolleté and blowing him a kiss.
This time it was Amanda who grabbed his arms to keep him from walking over to slap the creature.
Both of them calmed when Quintus Kepplewhite spoke, his voice soothing them even as it irritated Caridwen. Every time he spoke, she had the urge to slap at her skin, as if she was being bitten by horseflies. She settled for glaring at the unicorn, whose purity was ever at odds with her wickedness.
“You can tell your mistress,” he put a wealth of contempt into the last word, “that she will not be able to collect the blood price from this family, not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”
Caridwen turned angry eyes to the unicorn, though inside, she couldn’t have been happier. “And why is that, you glorified goat?”
Kepplewhite snorted. “You may be able to upset the equilibrium of desperate parents, but don’t think to distract me with your prurient insults, licentious creature. Because of the arbitration clause in Caridwen’s contract, she will lose. We have precedent that proves the Rule of Contract, post-Geas, will favor our petition. It will nullify contracts between Fairie folk and Mundane folk made pre-Geas.”
Caridwen smiled and put both hands up to her face as she giggled. “My mistress,” she stressed the word, enjoying her disguise all the more, “would be so upset, were it not that her contract was not made Fairie folk to Mundane folk, but Fairie folk to Fairie folk. Witch Euphemia was of Fairie and in Fairie when the contract was signed in blood.”
“That’s not true!” Amanda said, her voice ringing.
“Of course it is,” Caridwen told her, almost adding that she had been present before she realized that she still rode the body of Crystal. It wasn’t true, of course, and the deal had been made in Mundania. She only claimed that because she wanted to see if she could force these sanctimonious Natties to turn over both daughters. If they thought that the only way they could save all of the family’s offspring was to sacrifice both sisters, well all the more guilt to go round for the parents. “My mistress told me when and where it happened.”
Amanda said evenly, “Euphemia’s diary tells me that she discussed it in Fairie, but that the actual ceremony happened after she found her mate, in France, and decided it would be worth the price to spend her life with this Natural.” Amanda stood tall, her head held high, and faced down Crystal, who stood flexing hands with their red-tipped nails as if she was ready to leap on Amanda. Anthony had never been so proud of his wife in all his life. “The deal happened in Mundania. It is null and void.” Amanda wasn’t entirely certain of that, but she knew enough about law to know that bravado sometimes won the case.
Caridwen, who had foreseen all of this, put her hands up to her face to conceal her glee. It didn’t matter if her first plan didn’t work. Adele was her real plan. She couldn’t let the Newmans and that disgusting glorified horse know that they had self-righteously leapt right into her trap. When she was done, they’d be glad to let Adele go. Along with their guilt, she would have their hate for the daughter, like a cherry on top of the spell. She could feel Crystal’s features roiling under the impact of her own emotions, and she could not allow the Beings in the room to see that there was more to Crystal than running errands for the assumedly Fairie-bound Caridwen. She was not supposed to be here, and her time in Mundania was almost up. Through extreme force of will, the will that had sustained her through nearly two hundred years of planning, she forced Crystal’s fea
tures back into place. She took her hands down and glared at the room in general.
“We shall see about that,” she promised and headed for the door. “You will hear from Caridwen again, and soon.”
She could not afford to take the family to court. It would be too easy for the Court of the Rules of Contract to see beyond her actions to her intent, and then the plans that she had made with Becuma would be destroyed. If they had not found the loophole that nullified the contract, that had actually already nullified it, truth be told, then she would have “bargained” with them—offered to take both twins and leave everyone alive. Instead, the smart little Natties had found at least part of the truth, and now she could put in effect her Plan B, one that would drag little Adele further down the path to darkness and away from her family forever. She had to stifle the urge to laugh, so as she exited the room, she hissed at the unicorn, just a little, hoping to cover the excitement coursing through her. Adele knew what she had to do and that she had no choice in any matter, except in how slow and ugly her final death would be if she did not obey Caridwen.
Crystal turned back to the look into the room where Anthony had just started to follow her to make sure she left.
“You’ll be sorry, when this is over, that you didn’t get a chance to hear my proposal for a renegotiated contract,” she told them, her voice flat, devoid of emotion. Her words sent a chill down Amanda’s spine, but Kepplewhite spoke up.
“So you admit the contract is voided?”
She hissed at the unicorn again, barely keeping the laughter out of her performance.
“Then get out, you wretched creature. Report to your mistress and tell her that we shall see her in court if she insists on it.”
Crystal swept out, managing to knock a vase off of the entryway table as left, the sound of it shattering on the foyer floor as loud as the slam of the door.
“I hated that vase.” Amanda had come out of the library to watch the woman leave. “I suppose she wouldn’t have done that had she known.”
She started to the pantry to get a broom and dustpan, but Anthony held out a hand to stop her. “Go sit down and let me take care of this.”
“Yes, come with me, Mrs. Newman,” Kepplewhite told her. “We’ll need to look at the diary to confirm what you said. Well done, by the way. You obviously know your way around a courtroom.”
She smiled a bit absently. “I fill in for Anthony’s clerk when he’s out of the office or the cases pile up. I like to watch him in court.”
Kepplewhite looked at Anthony and mouthed, “Shock.”
Anthony nodded. “Dear, I shall make a nice pot of tea while I’m in the kitchen.”
Amanda looked up at that. “I’m not that bad off, am I?”
“It’s not every morning one meets both a kidnapped daughter and one of her kidnappers all in the same day.” He hugged her. “Get that diary and let’s get this sorted.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Where the hell are we, son?” Pernella tried to pull up a witchball of light to get a look-see, but what came up in her hand looked more like the end of a matchstick than her usual melon-sized luminescence. She shook her head, wishing she still that that medallion.
“I don’t know where we are, Mommy, but I am a little afraid.” Bogey’s voice quivered on the end. “The bad ladies almost got us, didn’t they?”
Pernella cackled, “A miss is as good as a mile, sonny. They almost got us. They missed! I saw their faces as I was pushing you through the portal. They were fit to be tied!” She cackled again, choking a little at the end, because as much as it had tickled her to put one over on those vicious old biddies, they had almost gotten her baby and her heart was still racing with fear. The only thing that had saved the two of them was her portal and her sudden realization of the idea that kept poking at her until it finally dawned on her while talking to Bogey. Because the portal had been one of the PTB’s before she snagged it and she had reworked the spell to respond to her, she realized that she and Bogey could apparently travel through that portal to Mundania. Her portal was no Tempo, but even she had kinda forgotten that. She started cackling.
“Mommy,” Bogey asked, “are you okay?”
She reached over with her free hand and took hold of as much of Bogey’s as she could manage. “Sure, kiddo! Everything’s jake now. But, we got work to do. Now, we gotta find your brother. He’s probably pitchin’ a fit over that message and tryin’ to get to us. Lemme see what I can do about this light situation. Sit here and don’t move.”
Walking slowly with her handful of weak light outstretched, she saw that she was in some kind of building. It had very tall ceilings but didn’t seem to be a place for people to live. There were no room divisions, no fireplaces. She walked to one far wall that seemed to be made of a bizarre stone that had been painted. She almost ran into a set of stairs. The stairs, made of some kind of metal, were strangely open and went up to a ledge that went all around the building, which she knew because she went up the stairs and paced around that ledge, hoping to find windows. Unfortunately, there were none. She went back down to the ground floor, her shoes ringing on the metal.
“Mom! Mommy!”
“What, son?”
“I think I found a door.”
“Stay there and wait for me!”
“Okey-dokey. I won’t go nowhere without you.”
“That’s my boy.” Pernella trotted over to him, her wing-tip shoes tapping on the concrete floor. “Okay, this is odd.” She held her hand up to look at the huge doors that were taller even than her son.
“I think they slide.”
“They’re awfully big...” Pernella tapped her cheek. “I wonder if a giant lives here?” She looked around, curious but not worried. No matter what structure they had landed in, they were in Mundania, so any giant they met was under the dominion of the Geas’ rules. It wasn’t likely that she and Bogart were in danger from another creature of Fairie—from the Geas, maybe, but not from the Supers. “Well, we might as well open these, eh? And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you,’ son. Your old mother isn’t up to this job. She needs some help.”
Bogey’s chest swelled with pride. “I will help you, Mommy.” He took a handle and pulled.
Pernella grinned at him fondly. “Pull the other way, son.”
“Oh.” He grinned back. “I thought maybe I lost some of my strength here, too! It would not move!”
He pulled in the other direction and the big sliding door moved back with a high screeching sound. Pernella and Bogart stood blinking and looking around in the light that poured in from the doorway. The building they stood in sat in the middle of a large area of what Pernella recognized as macadam, or pavement. The macadam surrounded several other buildings like theirs, big boxes built with those fake, square rocks. A fence in some kind of metal went around the four buildings that she could see.
In the distance, an airplane that had just taken off from Dulles flashed silver in the morning light as it climbed.
“Is that an airplane?” Bogart breathed out heavily, a new obsession about to bloom.
“I do believe it is,” Pernella agreed, watching it in awe herself. Those Natties might not have Fairie magic, but this technology shit was the cat’s meow. “We made it, son.”
Bogart picked his mother up and gave her a big hug. She wrapped as much of her arms around him as she could and squeezed back.
“Okay, kid,” she wheezed as she thumped him to let her down, which he promptly did. “Time to find your brother. Lemme see what I got in our go-bag,” which was what Tooley had called the carpetbag when he gave it to her. “This is for when you have got to go. If you don’t grab anything else, Mum, grab this,” he had told her. She reached into the carpetbag, the only bag that had made it through the portal with them, and pulled out a packet of papers. “Let’s see, he gave us some cash. I hope it’s the local currency.” She rubbed it. “How odd. Paper.” She shrugged and pulled out more from the packet. “Now we’re talkin’—his addre
ss and f-light information.”
“Are we gonna have f-lights?” Bogey asked in excited wonder. Tooley had told him about the devices, and he had wanted one ever since then.
Pernella stuck her hand back in the go-bag and pulled out two f-lights. “I do believe your big brother has got you a little present, son.” She held the f-lights up. One was a plain black model, utilitarian and simple. The other was shaped like a Fender Stratocaster. “I think this one must be yours,” she said as she held out the plain one to Bogart, who grinned. She shook her head. “Nah—it must be this one.” She held up the guitar model and Bogart clapped his hands before he took it.
“I have the best big brother in the world!”
She smiled. Then she turned back to the warehouse. The light from the open doors revealed that the structure in which they had arrived was completely open and empty. It lacked interior windows of any kind. It also lacked any other features other than the small, slim platform the lined the sides of the building about fifteen feet up from the floor. She could see her portal, still open in the middle of the floor. “I suppose I had better shut that.” She had set it to go into its stealth mode after she and Bogart left, so even if the Witches Council had seen them leave, they would have assumed the portal had shut. It was odd that it was still running. She was even more surprised when the portal suddenly spat out two more people and as equally relieved as surprised when one of them turned out to be her son O’Toole.
“Tooley!” Bogey pounded across the concrete floor, making the metal catwalks vibrate as he ran. He scooped his brother up in a big hug, while the Being who had come through with him stood to one side, smiling.
Pernella came running over as soon as she recognized the other Being. “Hey, you! Demon. Get away from my boys!” She was aiming her finger at him, obviously working up an incantation.
“Bogey! Bogey, I love you, but put me down!” Tooley was struggling in his brother’s arms, trying to turn around so he could see what was happening. “Mum! Mother! He’s a...a...well, a friend, I guess.”
