by Jamel Cato
“Get to ya feet, Coalie,” the woman in the big rocking chair said.
I stood, trying not to show my disdain over the patch of mud I now had on one knee of my expensive jeans.
“What they call ya?” she asked.
“They call me Tiptree, Great Queen.”
She took a long drag of her cigarette while she evaluated me. Then she studied the back of Cleetus’s head for about ten seconds.
“What ya seekin’?”
“A temporary passage decree for your waypoints and the truth about the one the Townsfolk call Serenity Blakemore.”
Murmuring broke out in the crowd and the woman seated to the Queen’s right leaned over and whispered to her.
The Queen adjusted one foot, which made the duct tape attached to the heel of her house slipper visible. Everyone instantly fell silent and the whispering advisor pulled away.
“Ash claim you can see what the owl don’t see.”
“I can see everything in its true form. And I can see through glamours.”
“Dat right, Cleet?”
“Aye, my Queen,” he said without a Hillfolk accent, which I’m sure was the real communication.
The Queen touched the forearm of the old man. “What ole’ Luther carrin’?”
“A spiked mace with electromagnetic energy that reminds me of Uhuru Dust swirling around the fat end.”
The murmuring started again.
“Can ya see through clothes, Coalie?” asked the corpulent woman on the Queen’s left. She was missing two front teeth and her bulbous nose was so crooked medical students might study it in Anatomy class.
“I don’t want to start any fistfights, but I do wonder what the other half of your tattoo looks like under the golden waistband of your skirt.”
Her glamour smiled wide enough to show me it was missing three teeth, not two.
If a woman flirts with Preston Tiptree, he shall flirt back. I think that’s carved on the eleventh row of a stone tablet somewhere.
The Queen said, “You can pass through dee Points for the rest of dee moon cycle, but Sellie-Jo gotta tell ya her beauty secrets herself.”
“What about my service requirement? Ashley said I had to do eight hours.”
She stubbed out her cigarette in a chipped plastic ashtray. “You want mud on both ya fancy knees?”
“I respect your ways.”
“Then go on with our menfolk and find some’in heavy to chop or carry.”
CHAPTER 15
Traffic Court is the worst. The fines are steep, the system is structurally rigged against defendants, and in Philadelphia, the waiting line to pass through the metal detectors in the lobby of the Courthouse can stretch for three blocks.
The only thing that makes it slightly less tolerable is being defended by an expensive lawyer whose prestigious law firm makes regular campaign contributions to the Traffic Court judges when they’re up for election.
I was standing at the defendant’s table next to Mitchell Westerfield, my attorney and a powerful white man whom I had befriended when I rescued his adult sun from a bad situation.
Viola Crescent was at the prosecutor’s table with a lawyer from the Parking Authority.
The judge, seated behind a raised dais, examined Viola’s ticket. “You gave this taxpayer a snow route violation during the summer?”
“The Parking Authority routinely conducts snow preparation drills during the warm months, Your Honor,” said Viola’s barrister.
“Was it conducting one on the date of this ticket? And if so, why were there no similar citations issued to other motorists?”
“There was no drill on the date in question, Your Honor. However, our enforcement officer may have mistakenly believed there was.”
“Dismissed with prejudice,” the Judge declared while smiling at Mitchell.
Viola silently fumed.
After the dismissal, I gently tapped her on the shoulder while she was trying to bull her way through the line exiting the building.
She was angry when she spun around. “If you ever put that finger on me again, I’ll break it like a poodle in a pit bull obedience class.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to catch you before I lost you in the crowd.”
“Catch me on Tuesday when I’m back on patrol. This ain’t over.”
“Miss Crescent, please tell me what I did to you. I can’t make it right if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“It’s not me you did something to.”
That was the most civil thing she had ever said to me.
“Did I do something to someone you care about?”
She folded her arms while she contemplated. “Silvia Dunbar is my niece.”
“Oh,” I said sheepishly.
“Oh is right. Christmas was at my house that year.”
Silvia Dunbar was my former dentist and ex-girlfriend. I called her Silvia Hersheybar because she has magnificently dark skin, which I joyfully explored on many a night. She was smart, funny and beautiful. She would give me orgasmic muscle massages and illuminating conversation when I was stressed out or flummoxed by a case.
“That’s all you got to say?” Viola prodded.
“It wasn’t what it looked like.”
“It looked like your triflin’ ass embarrassed her in front of her whole family by being a no-show on Christmas and then breaking up with her by text message. She was sending out emails with wink emojis telling everybody to make sure they showed up because somebody might be on bended knee.”
I mean, technically, that is what happened. But it’s not what I ever wanted to happen. I’d missed the flight that would have put me back in the States by Christmas Eve because I was in South Africa trying to save children by stopping the Msakayeya Snatchers. I had tried to reach out to Silvia many times, but I didn’t learn until weeks later that someone working with the Austrian Tryvodyn was blocking my communications. Whoever it was had sent my ideal soulmate a breakup text with pictures of me sharing laughs and Bekezo beer with women who had skin every bit as ebony.
I begged Sil to take me back, but she refused after I answered honestly when she asked me if a life with me would regularly involve periods of worry while I was out chasing shadows.
The truly unfortunate part is that I really did have a plan to go down on a knee that Christmas.
“I guess I’ll see you on Tuesday,” I said as I pushed my way toward the door and away from the consequences of my choices.
CHAPTER 16
“How was West Virginia?” Eve asked.
“Hilly.”
“Did you leave the drugstores with any condoms for the locals?”
“I was a Boy Scout. I spent the entire trip diligently focused on the plan. I should get a discipline award from the National Bachelors Association.”
“You didn’t sleep with Ashley?”
“Nope. It was strictly business between us.”
“The same way you said it was strictly business with Jasmine?”
“What’s the status of our IRS Audit?”
“The auditor will be here on Wednesday. I told him you will be away on business, but I will be available by phone anytime to electronically provide anything he needs.”
“You’re the best.”
“The Parking Authority refunded your credit card the citation fees on twenty-four different tickets. Mitchell is really worth his weight in gold.”
“That he is.”
“Did you find out what Viola Crescent has against you?”
“She didn’t like one of my Christmas gifts.”
She squinted at me. “I guess we can discuss it later when you’re not being so evasive.”
“I’m not being evasive.”
“Who is Elly-Jane?”
I shifted in my desk chair. “Who?”
“I’m quite sure I enunciated clearly. She’s been sending you flirtatious emails and text messages.”
Eve had cloud access to all my messages. I should have known I was being ba
ited.
Elly-Jane was the woman at The Gheecie Court who had asked me if I could see through clothes. She had come over to chat with me while Cleetus and I were chopping firewood. She’d heard I had some questions about the traveling midwives of Appalachia and could probably help me out since she was The Gheecie Court’s Matron of Fertility. Her glamour of a heavyset woman in need of dental work was nothing to write home about, but her true form was a gorgeous, raven- haired showstopper. I’d nearly lost a foot when she had strategically leaned over a tree stump.
“She’s a woman I met in Carghill County.”
“Did she give you a Discipline Award?”
“I’m being evasive because I don’t want you to be devastated if it turns out Serenity is someone unworthy of your admiration. I’ve already discovered several things that have given me some concerns.”
“Tell me everything.”
I did.
When I was done, she said, “I think we should do a full workup on the Queen. There’s something there and her history won’t be as closely guarded as Serenity’s and Ashley’s.”
“Makes sense. Will you take care of that?”
“Consider it done. What are your next moves?”
“I’m going to follow-up on Byron and then go to India to ask Ramachandran about the bees.”
She didn’t offer to make flight arrangements because she knew I would be taking a means of travel that would foil anyone who might be following me.
CHAPTER 17
I drove out to Fairmount Park and used a crowbar to break into a mansion that had once been the home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Philadelphia is chock full of such historical sites. But unlike the others, this site had been closed to the public for more than fifty years because as soon as The National Park Service fixed one problem with the structure, another immediately arose.
I searched around the darkened interior with the pale light from my Astral lamp until I found who I was looking for.
A reptilian, eight-foot-tall demon with more than a hundred eyes spread around its body smiled at me from a tearoom. Byron was sitting on a chair behind the creature, encircled by an impenetrable zodiac ward. Darlene’s boyfriend was alive, but he was glassy eyed and staring off into the distance.
“Greetings, Preston Thelonious Tiptree,” the demon said.
“Hello, Parsenon.”
I had battled the demon several times. Maybe it was more apt to say I had survived confrontations with him, because I never felt victorious at the end.
“I sent the mortal who was following you down a false trail in pursuit of a minion who looks like you from a distance. It will be hours before thirst makes him give up.”
“What is the price for Byron’s freedom?”
“It was me who sent that breakup message to Silvia Dunbar.”
I felt a spark of anger. “I’m here to discuss Byron’s release and nothing else.”
“We are discussing Byron’s release.”
“In what way?”
“If you had married Silvia, you would have gotten over Darlene. And if you have gotten over Darlene, you would not have been willing to save Byron. And not saving Byron would disrupt my grand plan.”
“You had this planned before Byron and Darlene even met?”
“Some scholars of the occult believe your sight is a genetic inheritance from an ancestor who mated with a Seer demon like me. Who knows, maybe you have some of my blood running in your veins.”
A few of those same scholars believe that certain eyes on a Seer demon can view the past and future.
“What is the price?”
“Money, power and respect.”
“You want a ransom?”
That would be unusual.
“What I demand is that you deliver the urn to me once you take it from Garrison Peakes.”
“How long do I have?”
“Deadlines are pointless because they will not change coming events. When the time arrives, I shall appear to collect my bounty.”
“I have your word that you will release Byron unharmed if I give you the urn?”
“You do.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Byron and Darlene will be reunited one way or another. You can honor our arrangement and reunite them in life, or you can attempt to betray me and reunite them in death. Then I will consume the rest of your family. We both know there are not enough Silvia Dunbars in the world to pull you through that.”
CHAPTER 18
“Piss off,” Stanella Dane said. “Arthur is a married man. What sort of girl do you take me for?”
“The kind who wants to go home.”
“We’re on to blackmail now?”
We were in the office of her Smoothie shop. I had just asked her to tell me what happened in the UK that left Art Carini with the best memories of his life. Stanella was playing the how-dare-you card, but I knew there were only two things that would motivate a middle-aged man to lose weight.
“I would never blackmail you. You have my word I’m going to get you home whether you tell me the truth or not. What I’m asking for now is help from a friend.”
“I thought Arthur was your friend.”
“He is. But Art has a lot of friends, and some of them don’t have my best interests at heart.”
“He thinks the world of you.”
“And I think the world of you.”
She turned away from me and ruminated. “Her name was Caroline. She was the Chief Confidential Assistant to the Foreign Secretary. The power behind the power so to speak. She taught him everything he knows about politics and such.”
“Was she the one who helped him establish his lobbying practice and The Library of Truth?”
“He didn’t say, but if she’s the Chica who taught him those bits n’ bobs in the starkers then she’s a top lass with me. Brilliant what a bloke his size can do with his bellend.”
“TMI.”
“Bit late for that.”
“Was there anything else? Did he tell you anything about Serenity?”
“No.”
“Okay, thank you. I need one more favor.”
“More Zeus Juice?”
“I need to use the Gate.”
“Again? I’m still tits up from your last holiday.”
Stanella is a Gate Maven, which is a member of a small order of women who have the supernatural ability to instantly transport people and objects vast distances through time and space compression portals to which they were individually bound. They were permitted to collect reasonable tolls for the use of their gates so long as one half of the toll was remitted to the pantheon which had created the portal. She had been expelled from the United Kingdom and the Order of Gate Mavens for collecting excessive and unreported tolls on the waypoint she was bound to in Newcastle. One of those unreported tolls was a collection of Gypsy recipes that could be blended into smoothies to achieve unnatural gains in intelligence, strength, tracking and, most popular of all, weight loss. I’d met her through a friend of a friend and had come to her rescue by providing the loan she needed to open her smoothie shop near my office. The only interest I charged was occasional usage of the Uhura Portal that was disguised in the back of her shop as a walk-in refrigerator.
Transporting people required a lot of mental and physical energy. The further the distance, the more energy that was required. It sometimes took hours or a full day to recover. Before the prior week, I rarely asked to use the Gate. But my recent need to travel without being followed by the various knuckle draggers that Garrison, Jasmine and Ashley had shadowing me changed that.
“I promise this is almost over,” I said.
“If I had a pence for each time some wanker whispered that down to me, I could have opened my store on Downing Street without being stuck here listening to pond-jumpers say dude and cool every third word. Off with ya. Where to?”
“Chandigarh, India.”
“Bloody hell!”
CHAPTER 19
I was strolling in an area that looked like an African Savanah with the mild-mannered, fifty-two-year-old conservationist and former bioengineering professor.
“How do you know the Goddess?” he asked me in English.
To facilitate a fruitful discussion, I had petitioned a Hindu Goddess I knew from a previous case to reach out to Ramachandran on my behalf.
“I met her when I was trying to get in touch with Gaia.”
“She thinks highly of your chakras.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“She sent one of her beautiful daughters to prepare me for your visit.”
“Was it Chandra or Sajala?”
“Chandra.”
“What did she say I wanted?”
“She said you wanted words of truth to counterbalance the visions of truth your eyes can see.”
Just then, an enormous tiger padded up to Ramachandran. It weighed at least five hundred pounds.