Mismatched Pair

by J. L. Ray

  Pernella stopped dead in her tracks. “Friend? Since when did you get friends? Except for the little bird you had with you before? Speaking of which, where is she?”

  Bogey set Tooley down and patted him on the head. Then he turned to Mephistopheles. “Hi there. My mother named me Bogart, but I like to be called Bogey.”

  “How do you do?” Phil held out his hand to shake that of the young giant with perfect aplomb. “My name is Mephistopheles, but I prefer to be called Phil.”

  “Wow! You’re just like me!”

  Pernella snorted, but in good humor. “Hah!”

  Phil turned to her. “Ah, the redoubtable Pernella Packlead. It is good to meet you, madam. Your children must give you great pleasure.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “And?”

  “What?”

  “I heard you don’t do nothin’ without gettin’ paid. Spill. What’re your terms, demon?”

  “Ah. Well. You will find that in Mudania, all bets are off, as they say here. Though a healthy level of suspicion will stand you in good stead.”

  “Huh?” Pernella hadn’t followed some of that.

  “I’ll get them set up all right, sir,” Tooley added an honorific, given that Phil had proven himself a good ally in Fairie. His use of the word “sir” did make Phil feel just a bit gnarled and ancient, but a quick brush of his hand down the lapel of his butter soft Zegna wool suit reminded him that no matter his real age, his fashion sense remained agile, lively, and, yes, faultless.

  “Very good. For now, though, we had best all go to the offices of the SCIB.” He turned to Pernella. “That is where the, er, bird friend of your son’s is now.”

  Pernella backed up, horrified, then ran back up to grab Bogey’s big hand and pull him away with her.

  “You ain’t takin’ us to no big house, see? We just got here, snitch.”

  Tooley looked embarrassed. “Mum, you were the one who said we should turn ourselves in.”

  “Oh yeah!” She cackled, took off her hat and rubbed her head sheepishly, then put the hat back on. “Sorry about that. Old habits, y’know?”

  “Certainly, madam. However, you misunderstand.” Phil pulled the pebbles out of his pocket. “You have visas to stay here, but since you left through your illegal portal, they have not been invoked. We shall have to go back to the SCIB to do so, immediately.” He handed the pebbles to Pernella and then asked, “How did you know your Tempo would allow you to pass through to Mundania?”

  “Whatd’ya mean?” Pernella asked, cagey about sharing information.

  “It’s okay, Mum,” Tooley said. “He’s an ally.”

  “All right, if you say so, kid.” She took a deep breath and turned to Phil. “When that Maybelle Sutherland dame showed up, and I copped to the fact that she wasn’t no pure-bred Natty, I figured there was something hinky going on with that portal of mine. Every time I thought about it, it kept nagging at me. Then, about the time I was figuring me and Bogey’d have to go on the lam, Bam!” Her audience jerked a bit. “I realized that the portal used to be tuned to send through anyone the PTB authorized to cross the Great Divide. Ya get me? Anyone. So’s, when I sto—uh—acquired the portal, I reset it to follow my instructions, but it must have still been set to let Supers travel both ways.” She held her hands out. “So you two just jumped without knowing all that?”

  Tooley shrugged. “It seemd like the only possibility.”

  “Son, I know I taught ya better than that. I mighta left that there for camouflage.” Tooley paled and his mother cackled again. “It’s good to know I still got stuff what to teach you, kiddo.”

  Phil turned to Tooley, “We had better get your family to the station. You are needed to plan tonight’s operation, as well, and Miss Berry awaits you there.”

  “Berry! I want to meet Berry in person!” Bogey grinned.

  “Indeed.” Phil smiled. “You can meet her sister, also.”

  “Maybelle Sutherland?” Pernella asked, her face a bit whiter than normal.

  “Not exactly. I am sure she will clear that misunderstanding up. Her name is Antonia Newman, and she works for the SCIB.”

  Pernella blanched. She turned to Tooley. “We gotta get to those twins, son. Now.”

  Tooley looked at Phil. “I don’t have a vehicle here.”

  Phil waved one hand casually. “I will have one here soon.” He put one hand to his ear. “Elmore? Pick up! Ah. There you are. I am at this location.” He closed his eyes and projected a visual to his assistant’s f-light. “Please send the limo—oh, no, never mind. No, not my usual. Send the EX-LarC Limo.” He paused. “As soon as possible. Time is of the essence and all that.”

  He turned back to the family waiting for him and saw Tooley lifting an eyebrow.

  “What is an Ex-LarC?” he asked.

  “Ah. Extra Large Client Limousine.”

  “Limos, huh? I thought you had to go legit here, what with the Geas and all?” Pernella said.

  “I work for a...well, a dating service.” When Pernella laughed so hard that she began crying, he sighed and handed her a snowy handkerchief from his pocket. “Luckily, we have a wide variety of Supernatural clients, and I have access to a limousine built for the largest of the Super species.” He nodded at Bogart.

  “I get to ride in a limo? Like a rock star?”

  Phil had a flashback to the 1970s, rockers and groupies, clients of his, riding around in limos, smoking, drinking, snorting coke. “Very much like that.” He managed to say it with a straight face.

  While they waited the ten minutes or so for Dindle to arrive, Phil and Tooley let Pernella know what had been going on. She remained strangely quiet and seemed eager to get to the station. She was the first through the doors when Dindle showed up, and on the way over, Phil noticed that she was leaning forward, as if she might get there faster through sheer force of will. He started to ask, but instead, just watched. Witches were an odd lot. Reviled and discriminated against for millennia, both in Fairie and in Mundania, they tended to a clannishness so ingrained they made Mundanian Scots and American hillbillies seem positively welcoming to outsiders. It appeared that she might know why Naamah had a vision indicating the need to find her to end this case. He might get nothing from her if he asked, so he decided to keep an eye on her, at least until this evening’s operation. He hoped that sheer sentimentality was not getting the best of him. He wanted this little family to survive, but perhaps they were not what they seemed. Perhaps, Tony had been duped by masters of graft. More likely, old Pernella, who had once been on the Witches Council herself, knew more than she was telling. No, he would keep on eye on her, for now.

  After the two Supers had left on their rescue mission, Tony, Berry, and Azeem had gone up to one of the conference rooms to start on details for the night’s mission. Cal joined them soon after, and as the three officers talked, they lost track of the fact that Berry was sitting in the room with them. She had curled up in a chair in the back corner, pulling her knees up to her chest and keeping her bright pink head down. She had survived years around Caridwen by disappearing into the shadows. Being Changed to feline had added to her ability to blend in unnoticed. She absorbed the details of her sister’s plan, silently planning her own move. Her every instinct fought her on this, but Caridwen had made one thing completely clear: if Caridwen herself did not manage to convince the family to send both her and Tony back to Fairie to “save” the rest of the Lambert family line, then it was Berry’s job to get her twin sister and take her to Fairie.

  Caridwen had proven that she could make her way to Mundania undetected by using a very old and very dangerous technique—riding the body of a Natty in Mundania. The technique usually burnt out the body within weeks, and the hag riding the Natty sometimes came out very damaged as well. Berry snorted to herself at the idea that Caridwen could become even more damaged. She sobered a bit as she thought of Caridwen’s final words to her before setting the spell that left her so confused that she hadn’t known her own name wh
en she woke in Mundania.

  “If I fail, and if you don’t get your pretty sister and bring her back to Fairie,” Caridwen’s husky tones took on a shrill note, “then I will expend every ounce of power I have left and go to Mundania and hag-ride your dear old mother. I will use her body to torment every single relative you have there, and the entire Lambert line will all die in the end. All it will take is a nice batch of cookies from Auntie Amanda.” She had reached over and pulled the girl to her. “Dear, sweet Adele. I will make your family desperate to end their own lives, if you do not do as I say.”

  Adele had turned her head from side to side, trying not to look into Caridwen’s eyes, but finally the witch had grabbed her chin and yanked her around so that she had to look deeply into the face of madness.

  “That’s right, child. See me.” She stared into Adele’s distressed gaze. “I will have your cooperation. You will dance this final dance. And when it is over, if you have done your part faithfully, perhaps I’ll let you live as my pet...” She let go of Adele’s chin and stroked one hand down her slim neck, then gripped it, hard, in a choking hold. “Follow my orders, child.”

  Adele had turned her eyes away from the vicious beauty in front of her and looked down at her feet as she felt herself slipping into the statsis spell that allowed Caridwen to smuggle her “daughter” through Pernella’s portal without that old witch knowing she was dealing in Fairie flesh. In two minutes, Adele was out. Two weeks later, she woke in Mundania.

  Berry shuddered, remembering her last moments as that other girl. After only one day as Berry, she could barely stand to think of her life before coming to Mundania. She looked over at Tony and her colleagues, and for the first time she felt a stab of palpable envy. What would it be like to live like that, where no one waited for an excuse to slap, or pinch, or punch? To cut, or rip, or tear? To think that no one used words as a weapon or threatened other types of torture? Berry scrubbed at her face, trying to stop images from her past from playing in her head. She forced herself to concentrate on the discussion in front of her, not only to finish planning, but to shut out her own demons, none of which were as attractive and loving as her sister’s single one.

  “So, we agree?” Cal asked. “I mean, we can’t use a lot of tech in Fairie because the PTB don’t like it, but an f-light on passive record ought to be okay, am I right?”

  “I think so. Sir?”

  Azeem was gazing off in the distance, a tiny frown marring his leonine face.

  “Sir?”

  He started. “Uhm. F-lights, passive record. Yes. I think that should be fine.”

  Cal gave Tony a look. She winked on the side turned away from Azeem and mouthed, “Later.”

  Cal’s brows went up at the suggested secret, and he nodded as if in reply to Azeem. “Great then. We get the whole deal on f-light, which is admissible in a court here. What about with the PTB?” Azeem seemed checked out again. “Sir?”

  “What?”

  “How do the PTB feel?”

  “How do they feel?” Azeem sounded puzzled and worried at the same time.

  “About f-light evidence?”

  “Oh, oh yes. Of course.” He brushed his tongue over his paw and rubbed it over his face. “My apologies. I really didn’t sleep enough last night. I...I seem to be having trouble concentrating.”

  Tony managed not to snort, but Cal caught her eye roll. He was dying to find out what this was about.

  “Sir?” he asked Azeem. “Could you check with your PTB contact about that?”

  “About...f-light evidence.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Azeem looked relieved to have an excuse to leave the room. “Yes, of course. I’ll be back shortly.”

  They gave it a few seconds after he left, and then Cal leaned forward on the conference table. “Okay, partner, give! Who the hell is that and where is Lieutenant Azeem?”

  Tony grinned. “I know, right?” She looked over at Berry, who seemed to napping, despite being twisted up like a slim, Natty pretzel in a very uncomfortable conference room chair. Still in her Fairie clothes, which she refused to change for Mudane apparel, Berry’s sword hung incongruously from the side of the chair. “I called this morning, and it was early, but you know. Lieutenant Azeem, right? He’s always here, working.”

  “Yeah, yeah, so what?”

  “When I called, he was still at home—in bed. I had it on Aud/Viz at first because I just assumed...” They both cackled. “I felt like an ass when I realized he was still at home in bed. But as I shut down viz, I saw someone else in the bed, and Cal, I think I heard Naamah!”

  Cal hooted and danced around. The sound aroused Berry from her dark thoughts, and she jumped up, sword pulled and aimed at Calvin.

  “Hang on there, little sister!” Tony stepped in front of her partner. “He’s one of the good guys, maybe even one of the best! Don’t hurt my partner!”

  “I’m gonna hold you to that ‘one of the best’ comment!” Cal quipped.

  “I’m gonna hold you to it, too, big guy,” Tony said. “And I don’t just mean at eating cupcakes!”

  As the two stood and joked in the face of naked steel, Berry’s heart rate slowed and she realized she was over-reacting. This was Mundania, where ogres acted like gentlemen. She wondered what gentlemen acted like. Ogres, perhaps?

  “Do you have your plan?”

  “Almost,” Tony told her. She walked over to her sister and touched the sword in her hand. “Do you want to leave this in my locker or something?” The sheer panic in her sister’s eyes made her backtrack. “Oh, hey, never mind. I just remembered that my locker is full. I need to clean it up a little. You’ll have to wear it around for today, anyway.”

  Cal raised his brows since he had seen her nearly empty locker recently. Then he looked at Berry and realized that it was all about making sure she felt safe.

  “Yeah—that Tony. What a clothes horse.” He flipped a hand in an imitation of his favorite reality TV show host from What Not To Wear.

  “A...a what?” Berry looked at him, confused, which cracked him up as Tony had the exact some look on her face.

  “He’s pulling your leg, sis.”

  Berry looked at her leg and then at the ogre. “There are many instances when I do not know what you are saying.”

  Tony snorted. “It’ll get better the longer you’re here. O’Toole can help you. He’s fluent!”

  Berry looked uncomfortable, though not for the reasons that Tony supposed. Berry knew she wouldn’t be in Mundania long enough to learn how to speak this odd version of English that Tony spoke, or to learn anything from her one true friend Tooley, and it broke the last pieces of her heart. She nodded past the lump in her throat and then said, “Washroom? I need to—”

  “Sure! Just down the hall.” Tony watched her sister go out the door. “Did she seem a little off to you?”

  “Gorgeous, I don’t know her version of ‘on,’ yet, so I got no idea. Ya think?”

  “Something’s wrong.” Tony was frowning when she turned back to her partner. “When this is over, I’m going to take the two weeks vacay I should be on now and hang out with Berry.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Speakin’ of which,” he nodded back at a pile of paperwork on the table, “let’s get this SCAT plan together.”

  “I hate working with SCAT. They’re actually worse than the GOOENsters in some ways.”

  S.C.A.T., or the Supernatural Cross-Action Teams, were combined groups of officers from SCIB and the PTB. They worked in a paramilitary fashion and were able to assemble quickly via portals to areas either in Fairie or Mundania when a larger show of force was needed to deal with a cross-Divide criminal issue. The folks who got onto the teams earned a reputation for extreme efficacy and equally extreme attitude. No regular SCIB detective or beat cop enjoyed working with them as a group, but the SCAT who came out of Mundania’s SCIB branch tended to be a bit less egotistical than the Fairie team members.

  Cal grimaced an agreement but added, �
�Yeah, they’re a pain, but this time my ass may be on the line, not to mention your pretty demon’s.” He grinned as she threw a pencil at him. “SCAT may act like a bunch of prima donnas, but they usually come through in the end. I guess I’ll put up with their shit for that kind of record.”

  “Yeah. I want you two in and out of this sting as quickly as possible.” Tony pulled out the basic timeline the lieutenant must have worked on last night, presumably with Naamah. She mused, “Isn’t it odd to you that you and Phil were working with Naamah in Fairie, and then she turns out to be working for the PTB and she never said a word to you?”

  “Nah. Why would it be odd?” Cal cocked his big head to one side.

  “I know there are rules about telling folks you work for them, but I don’t know. It just seems odd.”

  “Hey, when it comes to Fairie, rules are all there are.”

  Tony shrugged. “Fairie is full of rules, so maybe Naamah could help you, and give you riddles, and volunteer to be bait, but she couldn’t tell you she is affiliated with the PTB. It’s weird. And the lieutenant apparently doesn’t want us to know he’s...well, whatever he’s doing with her.” She wagged her eyebrows at Cal who wagged his unibrow back.

  The two hadn’t heard Azeem come in on soft paws. When he cleared his throat behind them to announce his presence, and Tony shot a stricken gaze at Cal, closed her eyes, and asked, “Too much to hope you didn’t hear that, sir, huh?”

  The soft purring reply was not reassuring. “Detective, I’ve been standing behind the two of you for several minutes. I believe I need to clarify a few things.”

  The detectives turned around to face the lieutenant, and he chuckled at the sight of their faces. “Naamah will be here shortly to talk to you and liaison with the SCAT you are putting together. You need to confirm the skill sets your team will require. I can tell you that she has been...affiliated with the PTB for some time now, and that she will be moving over to Mundania in a liaison capacity for the near future. I will also tell you that you should use audio only to contact me for the foreseeable future.” The dignity in the last comment had Tony stammering an attempted apology. “Detective, it is quite all right.” He grinned. “However, my circumstances have changed for the present, and I would prefer that you assume that I am going home at the end of the work day, not staying here, working through the night.”