by J. L. Ray
He looked at Tony for a long moment, still smiling at her. Then he spoke, “I need to sync that information to your f-light. Hold it out,” he told her as he put his hand up.
“Sync with what?” she asked when only she was holding out an f-light.
“I don’t actually need a device like an f-light, detective dear. I can operate without it, “ he told her. He put his hand up to her fairy-magic light and suddenly she felt a tingle and saw sparkles of magical data flowing from the palm of Mephistopheles’ hand into her device. The tingle started in the hand that held the f-light and slowly moved up her arm and to her face, ending at her lips. She couldn’t help it. She licked them. As soon as she did, the tingle headed way down south, reminding her that she hadn’t gotten past a first date in a long time. Mephistopheles, who watched her lick her lips and then go wide-eyed, stared into her eyes as he ended the transmission spell. The low light of his office had dilated her pupils so that her gray-green eyes looked black. For the second time, his look was so intense that she couldn’t seem to make herself break it. This just had to be glamour.
“Thanks, uhm” she paused as if not sure what she was going to say, not really sure what she was thanking him for, exactly, and completely freaked out that he was able to transfer data without an f-light. She had never seen that before.
“I’ve been called many names. But you can call me Phil,” he smiled at her slyly. “After all, we’ve already shared so much.”
On leaving Monster-Mate, the two detectives decided to head out on foot to the crime scene for a look in full daylight. Back out on the street, Cal finally worked up his nerve. “So, Tony, what the hell was all that?”
“All what?” she shrugged casually, but didn’t meet his eyes.
“Oh no ya don’t. Don’t even try that with me, sister. All” Cal waved his arms and a couple of passing pedestrians changed course and walked away from the sight of an ogre flailing his arms, “ of THAT, back there, with demon-boy.”
“Cal, he’s got to be, like, a couple of thousand years old at least. So demon-boy?” she smirked. “Probably not. Demon-great, great to the nth power granddaddy, more like.”
“Really? Now I’m just kinda queasy.”
“What?”
“If I hadn’t been in the room, I shudder to think how complicated this investigation would have gotten about five minutes ago.” He paused and tried to lighten his voice to mimic Mephistopheles, which so didn’t work, “We’ve already shared so much...” Cal looked down at her. “What the hell did that mean? What did you share? And by the way, for someone who hates all the crap that goes with dating, you looked like you were ready to jump on board that train!”
“I was...what?” she quit giggling from Cal’s attempt at mimicry, stopping dead in the street and turning to Cal, “I was trying to get information necessary to the investigation, Calvin Kelly. Period. End of discussion. It worked.”
She turned and started walking again, leaving Cal behind her for a moment, his jaw dropped. More pedestrians coming their way turned and changed direction. Open-mouthed ogres didn’t tend to attract spectators. Not sane ones, anyway. Cal clapped his jaw shut, causing yet another migration of passers-by to another route. He caught up to Tony in a couple of oversized strides.
“Since when do you wallow in denial?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Check your f-light.”
Tony gave him a confused look.
“Betchya 20 bucks that you have Lilith’s profile, her contact spectra, and good ole Phil’s contact spectra, too.”
Tony gave him a contemptuous look as she pulled up her f-light and found Lilith’s profile, her contact spectra, and something else. “Hah! I do not, in fact, have Mephistopheles’ contact spectra.”
Cal shook his head, “ But...”
Tony stood looking at him for a moment and then caved. “But I do have a message.”
“Which is?”
“Well,... a little unrepeatable. And...quite hard to picture. Without some visual aids. Lots of ‘em. Maybe an anatomy chart, too.” She turned the privacy-shielded image around for a better look at what only she could see.
Cal stuck out his hand to grab her f-light, but while not sentient, the f-light knew its owner and wasn’t particularly grabbable, a necessary feature for law enforcement, yet found on the standard model, also.
Tony slapped his hand away, “Naughty, naughty.”
“The message?”
She blushed. “Okay, yeah, so not sharing that with you, so let that dream die.” She sighed, pocketed her f-light, and started walking again, confident that her partner’s curiosity would drag him along after her. “He is a potential suspect, I know. But I may play along with this,” she waved a hand around, “this, whatever this is with him. That’s all I was doing.”
Cal rolled his eyes, “Right. You going all goo-goo-eyed was all about playing along with the handsome homicide suspect.” She glared at him and he amended his comment. “Potential suspect. Who doesn’t need to use glamour, dahling. And is older than dirt.”
Tony narrowed her eyes and looked up him, “You got a better idea? He gave us a lot,” she heard Cal mutter in a low hum that almost resonated in her own chest, “He gave you a lot, actually,” but she forged on more loudly, “a lot of information, but he was holding some back, and I need to find out what that is. I can handle myself.”
Cal got quiet and then said to her, no teasing in his voice, “You know that he really is a very old Being, right?”
“Right?” she echoed in a questioning where-is-this-going voice.
“And he is dark fae, demonic, not a nice guy, y’know? Despite his rant about helping the Supernatural races fit in through love,” Cal drew out the last one-syllable word into two sarcastic syllables. “Look, kid. Don’t assume nothing about him, not good, not bad, not nothin’. Okay?”
Tony looked at Cal with a grin, “Look at you. You’re going all over-protective big ogre on me?”
Cal shook his head. “Berthell will eat my ears if anything happens to you. You know she wants to name our next spawn after you, right?”
“Not Antonia?” Tony asked, horrified.
“No, no, Newman. She really likes the name.”
Tony stood for a second, thinking over her dad’s reaction to finding out that ogre spawn sported the family name. Then she grinned, “I adore Berthell. I really do. And I would hate for her to have to make good on her promise to eat your ears.” Cal gave her a look, waiting for the punchline. “They are your best feature. Be more of a punishment for her than you.” And from long practice, Tony ducked, just in time. Unfortunately, a pedestrian who had been about to dodge around them caught the blow. Once again, walking traffic turned like a school of fish, avoiding the ogre ahead.
CHAPTER FIVE
The walk back to the crime scene took Cal and Tony past their favorite cupcake shop, but Tony dragged Cal on by without ducking in for a red velvet to-go.
“Berthell told me the doc gave you a hard time about your weight, so you need to watch it for a day or two.” When Cal started to whine, she gave him a narrow-eyed look. “If I got that from my doctor, it would take a good two months, not a few days, of backing off the tasty treats, so cry me a river, big man. I am not feeling sorry for you.”
Cal sighed and turned back to stare at a mother and daughter coming out of the cupcake shop with a large box. They caught his look and paused for a second, Natural instincts overcoming the past few decades of reasonably safe actual experience with Supers. They might know intellectually that they were safe, but deep down, their ids were screaming, “Run for your lives!” He waved at them and smiled and turned back around to see his partner shaking her head.
“What?”
“I know you have a really large sweet tooth---”
Cal interrupted her, leaning down with his mouth wide open and pointing to a large molar, “Ay think itz that one,” he told her gingerly as he stuck out his tongue and tried t
o identify it.
Tony raised one brow. “It’s a saying, Cal. It’s just a saying. You don’t have an actual sweet tooth.”
“Really? Oh man,” he turned and started walking again. “Berthell keeps threatening to pull it out if I don’t watch what I eat!”
Tony smirked, “I love Berthell.”
They arrived at the alley where Lilith’s body had been found. Two different uniformed officers were working this shift, both of them familiar with Cal and Tony, so they were waved through the barrier. The detectives paced down the alley slowly, looking down and around.
“That was a fairly quick walk from Monster-Mate’s offices,” Cal commented with obviously studied casualness.
“Uh huh,” Tony agreed equally casually. She added, “It’s near a lot of other things as well, like the cupcake shop, three of our favorite restaurants, the National Portrait Gallery, and ooh, the Spy Museum! Maybe Lilith was a spy!” She heard Cal’s wind up and ducked the headsmack. “Hey, that one could have actually hurt! Watch it.” She turned back to her scan of the floor of the alley.
“Something’s off here,” Cal growled.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing.”
Silence.
“Okay, Cal, you win the mysterious award. Nothing as in....?”
“It’s an alley, Tony. What do we see in alleys?” Cal pointed at her.
She held up one hand and started counting off, “Okay, I’ll play. In an alley we see--garbage, garbage cans, rats, broken glass like the stuff that cut up Lilith’s feet...” she stopped adding and looked around. “Uh, no glass.”
“That’s weird.”
“You’re right, Cal. That’s weird. But what does it mean?”
“That pretty little demon really did a number on your brain.”
Silence. Flared nostril silence.
“Okay, Tony. Hell if I know what it means. I just know it’s weird.”
“Okay. It’s not much so far, but I’m surprised the Lieutenant hasn’t called us yet. We better go report.”
Cal grimaced, “This is gonna suck.”
“Understatement. From you. Makes for a nice change, Cal.”
Now that they had the victim’s identity, Cal and Tony could start delving into her background, try to see if they could find some lead on who might have killed her. Neither partner wanted to even say the word vampire in a report, but when they arrived at the station, Lt. Azeem took care of that for them.
“I want to know,” he growled at them, literally growled that is, since it’s hard to talk without a growl for a Sphinx, “why the first I know about the possible reemergence of vampires on this plane of existence comes from Dr. Caligari teasing me about bloodsuckers on my watch instead of from my lead detectives.” As he spoke, his mane fluffed out a little, letting the two detectives know that the shit really was likely to hit the fan if answers weren’t forthcoming.
Cal shot an answer before Tony could even start, “Because we were pursuing a hot lead on the vic’s id and we just got back and were on our way to give you a verbal, sir,” and he all but clicked his size 22 heels as he finished.
Tony turned what had been a despairing shake of her head over Cal’s ability to lie to a vehement nod of agreement when Lt. Azeem turned his eyes on her. She didn’t have trouble with most Beings, but the Lieutenant certainly had a way with a reprimand. She had a high level of respect for his temper. He got very loudly quiet in that mode, like the end of the world had already happened and whomever he was reprimanding just hadn’t quite figured that out yet.
“Sir, we have confirmation from both our chief coroner and the GOOEN squad that the victim, whom we have identified as one Lilith, a high, dark fae, was killed by a vampire attack.” She stopped, not quite sure how to go on. Especially when Lt.Azeem’s haunches suddenly slumped down to the floor and he started blinking back tears, his tail dropping hard to the floor.
“Sir, did you know the victim?” Cal asked.
“We, uh, we dated. A long, long time ago.”
After he didn’t elaborate, Tony gently asked, “Long ago meaning circa....?”
He looked over at her and smiled ruefully, “Long ago meaning Old Kingdom, Egypt. I was there, helping out a friend. You may be familiar with a little something the Pharaoh put up in my honor there, later. And no, I didn’t even know Lilith was in D.C. I thought she had a place in Persia. I mean Iran.” He shook his mane, “She must have moved since the Great Change. There is still a hard pocket of resistance to the current magical status quo of Mundania in some parts of the world, and that area is one of them. I guess she must have moved to the States at some point.” His amazingly long tongue flicked up to groom the tears off of his cheeks, and he shook his head. “It’s been quite a while since we even talked. I wish she had called me.” He stood again, so large that even sitting he had towered over Tony’s 5 foot 8 inch frame. “So how did you identify her?”
Cal cleared his throat and winced as he told his boss, “She had a profile on the Mageline dating service for Supers.”
“Monster-Mate?” the Lieutenant asked, and Cal and Tony shot each other a look.
“Yeah, boss,” Cal admitted, waiting for the eruption. Instead he got a soft purr.
“Well at least she had the guts to get out there and keep trying,” Lt. Azeem shook his head. “Look, pick this up tomorrow. In the morning, I’ll give you some more names to look into. We should hold off on notification of her friends until you question potential suspects. She had no next of kin, and if she was going to the singles service, I have to assume no mate.” His lips tightened as he added, his normal growl even deeper, “I want to find what did this. If it really is a vampire...” he shook his head and trailed off without finishing.
Somehow, they were both relieved to go home to bed without hearing the end of that sentence, especially Tony. This was not the vacation day she had hoped to have--dead high fae, potential vampire kill, the first in over 80 years according to the records, her Lieutenant upset over a dead former lover, and to top it off, a grinning demon in an uber haute couture suit who seemed to be able to give her instant brain freeze every time he opened his mouth. She tried to put the thought of that mouth and all it might be able to do right out of her head when she got home, but her subconscious betrayed her. She dreamed of purple and black and tempting, warm lips whispering in her ear.
The next day Lt. Azeem was waiting for Cal and Tony by their desks. He caught Tony first as she came in the door at 7 a.m. He gestured her over and waved one large paw at a stack of paper on her desk, his mane ruffed out enough to signal to those who knew his moods that he was excited.
“I have some information here that won’t be on any server you can check. I printed out some of the local contact information you’ll need, and I also pulled some of Lilith’s prior residences and names of potential interested parties.”
Tony swallowed and carefully asked her question, “Former partners?”
The Lieutenant coughed out a leonine laugh, “You mean former lovers? Sure. Also, some past enemies.”
Tony nodded, trying to be totally sophisticated about the idea of her Lieutenant and some random fae, but it was too much like picturing her parents. Urgh. So she focused on looking at individual papers. “Uh, boss?” she asked,”Some of these are long distance.”
“Yes?”
“No, I mean, like, really long distance,” she said.
“Yes?”
“So I have permission for contact between planes of existence?” she almost whispered at the idea of such access.
“Cal has permission. They won’t answer you.”
“They?”
“The Beings to question in Fairie. Hand those off to Cal, for now. Maybe you can go another time,” and the Lieutenant all but patted her on the head while she tried not to be too disappointed. Very few Nattys got the chance to see or hear the other realms. They saw plenty of crossover from the Supers who had come over and then outed themselves, but they rarely cross
ed over themselves, and if they did, well, let’s just say the trip rarely featured a round-trip ticket. Tony figured she should have been glad to let Cal handle it, but she had always been fascinated by the idea of the otherworlds. She felt like she needed to see the other side, or an other side.
By the time that Cal got in, at almost 8 a.m., Tony had had time to review the list and divvy up the calls.
“You sleeping in these days?” she arched a brow at him as he dropped into his Mage-E-Boy chair, which despite being magically reinforced to hold a full-grown ogre, moaned its displeasure. His parents had brought it over from Fairie, and he loved it, but Berthell had wanted it out of her house. She claimed it backtalked her.
Cal shook his head and slumped over the desk after he gave his chair a pat to try to calm it down. “Berthell isn’t sleeping well. I will be so glad when Newman pops!”
Tony looked at him, a dawning look of horror on her face. “Pops? POPS?”
Cal shook both hands at her, open-palmed, in an attempt to calm her down, “Not that kind of--look, he’ll come out, okay? Ogres, well, we say--Pop!”
Tony stared at him, bug-eyed. Then she muttered, “And you wonder why I don’t want a date with a guy. That might lead to...”she threw out her hands, “Pop!”
Cal mustered up a strained smile and tried to change the subject, “Whatcha got there, pard?”
Tony stared at him a minute, then decided to let it go, “I’ve got a list of contacts from Lt. Azeem. Some are Mundanes, and some are living on other planes of existence. Guess who gets which list?”
Cal shook his head, “Don’t be sore, kid. It is what it is. The Ones who didn’t come over don’t, well, they ain’t got...”
“What, Cal?”
“They don’t play well with others, if you know what I mean. They make the GOOENsters look like Sunday school teachers, y’know?”
Tony cracked her first smile of the day. “I’d pay good money to see a GOOEN teach Sunday school.”
