by J. L. Ray
No one in the United States could quite say he or she had been manipulated through magical means, but at the same time, given how long it took for minorities and women to attain important governmental roles throughout world politics, general consensus was that the Geas had done the job--going from disbelief and prejudice to full inclusion in just a few months screamed magical means. Americans just hadn’t been able to change their attitudes on anything that fast since the American Revolution. And of course, of late, most politicians acted like changing their minds indicated some kind of moral flaw, so the likelihood of magical influence was too great to deny. After a few years of watching politics in D.C. turn into a stalemate of epic proportions and tragic consequences, the influx of magical senators and representatives had ended a period of two-party dominance that had stalled the economy and stymied growth in every area. It really was tough for anyone to argue that the Great Change had been anything but a positive influence, at least for the United States.
As Tony and Phil walked to her local portal door, she realized that Glinda had left the trailing robes just a bit too long. The third time she tripped on them and nearly hit the ground, Phil reached out and caught her before she went down.
“I think the alterations on this are a bit off?” Phil murmured as Tony struggled with the hemline and pulled away from his arms.
She looked up and grimaced, “Glinda’s mind seemed like it was on something besides the job.” She ignored his sotto voce, “Tsk, tsk, jealousy is so unbecoming,” when she turned and realized that another cop coming down the hall was standing and staring at the two of them with a confused look on his face. “Hey, Joe,” she called to the Natty cop who worked with the SCIB, but partnered with a Giant. Joe didn’t get into the main precinct much because his partner had to stay on the outer perimeter of the city. They tended to work cases around the edges of the city and on the harbors nearby so that Jaques didn’t do too much structural harm in performing his duties. “How’s Jaques doing?”
Joe’s mouth worked for a second or two. “Is that Tony?” he finally got out.
“What?”
Phil was grinning during all this, but when Tony turned to him, he reminded her, “The look-away spell is much stronger for Naturals. Joe can hear you because you directly addressed him, but he doesn’t see you.”
Joe looked at Phil, then at the space Tony stood in. “Oh man, are you going out in magical gear? What you got, girl?”
“I’m in a godawful hair shirt or something, like I should start with the Gregorian chant. Apparently, it keeps Supers from noticing me, and Phil here says I’m invisible to Naturals.”
Joe grinned, “When you get back, see if you can keep that for a couple of days. My daughter’s got a date this weekend with a high school senior. I sure would like to ride along and make sure he’s as nice as she thinks he is!”
Tony shook her head and laughed, “Oh, Joe, that is the worst idea ever! You may want her to speak to you again one of these days. Besides,“ she added, for apparently not-so-little Tanisha’s benefit, “if she’s old enough to date, she’s old enough to decide who. And I’m sure you’ve done your job in teaching her a few littles moves for those times she may have overestimated her date’s better qualities.”
Joe nodded his head, “Oh yeah, I sure did. She’s got them all--crotch grab, eye-gouge, keys through the finger and punch.” Phil winced through the list. “Plus, on date night, Jaques said he wanted to drop by for a game of backgammon, so loverboy will get to meet Uncle Jaques.”
“Dude, you don’t need this cloak. But Tanisha may need some long-term therapy when she’s older!”
Joe laughed, but got serious. “Hey, watch your back in there. Remember to be nice to old, ugly people, and if something offers you advice, listen to it, no matter how weird!”
Tony nodded, then realized Joe couldn’t see her. “I’ve got Phil here as back up.”
Joe looked at him, eyes narrowed, and asked aggressively, “You’re not in the Bureau. Who are you?”
Phil raised his brows at Joe’s belligerent tone and answered arrogantly, “I am more than enough to take care of any need Detective Newman may have during this foray into the otherworlds.”
“Well, aren’t you special,” Joe started and Tony, sensing a high potential for bad outcomes for her buddy, interrupted.
“This is Mephistopheles,” she said, and reached out to grab Joe’s arm. The instant she touched him, the cloak’s spell ceased to work on him, and he saw the concern in her face. “He’s okay, and he’s, well, really old.”
Joe backed down immediately. Certain Beings had enough recognition that nothing else needed to be said. However, he looked at Phil, nodded, and reminded him,
“She’s an important asset to this district.” The implied threat came through.
“My dear sir,” Phil drawled, “she’s an important asset to more than the your district. I’ll bring our little lamb back intact.”
Joe stared at him for a moment, then nodded and looked over at Tony, “Talk to you later, yeah?”
She nodded and turned to pull Phil along. “Let’s get going. This thing is driving me nuts!” With that, she hiked the skirts of the cloak up as high as she could yet still maintain some semblance of dignity and then walked faster to the portal with Phil grinning as he followed behind her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Tony and Phil got to the portal’s Guardroom, Tony slowed to a halt, suddenly feeling a profound sense of dread that overcame the eagerness the trip had originally engendered. After they passed the uniformed cops on guard duty, they went into the Guardroom itself. Tony stopped at the coded entry and stood there, staring at the lock.
Phil smiled, “Forgotten the passcode, my dear?”
She took a deep, steadying breath. “Nope.”
“Lost your nerve?”
“Nope.”
“Changed your mind?”
“Hell, no,” she said and turned to look at the dark fae for whom this journey was a simple matter. “Do you get...premonitions?”
He sucked in a breath, “Yes, on occasion. Why?”
She shook her head and reached out to type in the code, then press her f-light to the keypad, after she dug it out from under 20 pounds of hair shirt. “What’s it like?”
“A premonition?”
She looked at him from under her brows.
“Yes, yes, stupid question,” he tilted his head to to one side and paused. “It feels like...like waking in the middle of the night to all the voices in your head that you can’t make stop. It feels like a holiday when the person you want to spend it with just died. It feels like something is trying to rip out of your belly and you can’t stop it.”
“Alien.”
He nodded, “Yes, unnatural and alien.”
She shook her head. “I meant the creature in the movie. Never mind. Crap.”
“You have had one? Just now?” he asked.
“Yep. And it feels like that, squared, “ she grimaced. “I’m having trouble standing up straight.” She started to open the door, which had gone to green after she put in the code.
Phil stuck out his hand and pressed the door shut. “We shouldn’t go.”
“The hell you say,” and Tony turned to punch in the code again, but Phil captured her hand and pulled it back to his chest. He looked down into her face in all earnestness.
“You have no fae blood in you?” he asked her.
“No,” she said vehemently, then amended, “not that I’d mind that, but seriously, my folks, my mom and dad, they have a long-time prejudice that my sibs and I are trying to change. I’m gonna say that they got it from their parents since all of my of grandparents seem to feel the same as they do. There is no way that there is any fae in either line. Why would you think I did? And why would it be a problem?”
He stood looking at her, searching her face as if he could see inside her head, and suddenly she flushed, uncomfortable with his scrutiny even though, for once, she felt no
overt sexual overtones, despite the intensity of his gaze.
“What?” she demanded, hoping he would let her hand out of a crushing grip and back off. She wasn’t comfortable this close to him. It felt too intimate, too warm. And she still felt the effects of the premonition. Her heart was racing, and she couldn’t seem to get a full breath. She didn’t want him to misinterpret it.
He shook his head and suddenly let go, causing her to fall backwards a bit from the pull of his grip. He reached for Tony again to steady her, since the robe seemed intent on dropping her on her ass. He caught both of her arms above the elbows and pulled her close. His look now had all the suggestive smolder she had come to expect from him, but despite that he told her in all seriousness, “Premonitions in Naturals don’t happen.”
“Ever?”
“Never.” Then he leaned in closer to whisper. “I have to suppose that one of your remote ancestors was a very bad boy or girl.” Tony couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of his wickedly sensual lips. “Because I don’t see anything when I look at you.”
“The cloak is working on you?”
This time he gave her a look from under his brows.
“You’re telling me you can see fae blood?”
He shrugged, “I can see fae essence. I don’t see anything in you. It must be very old and very diluted.” He smiled again and looked into her eyes as he spun a tale, “I see a lovely young lass in a mile of red velvet, backed against a rough castle wall by some handsome fae swain in midnight blue, her farthingale holding her tucked up skirts up while he--”
And at that point, Tony threw caution to the wind and headbutted him.
He dropped her arms and grabbed his head, “Ouch! What the hell?” He turned to her and glared from under his hand.
“If I want soft-core porn, I’ll pick up a well-written, interesting romance, buddy. Trust me, romance writers can do that so much better than you can. And me, I really do not give a shit if there is or is not fae in my background. I am what I am. But I need to know--is what I am, or what you think I am, going to be a problem in the Fairie or not? I need an actual, helpful answer, not your idea for your next couples ‘Mix and Meet’ night.”
Phil couldn’t help himself. He smiled and narrowed his eyes as if sizing her up for the red velvet in his portrait. “You are a delightful surprise.” He waved one hand when she started to protest, “To answer your question, I don’t know. I have never met a pure-bred Natural who had the Sight. It seems unlikely. So I don’t know what will happen.”
She frowned, “It wasn’t a Sight, by any means.”
He shook his head. “Semantics. What did you experience, other than trouble standing?”
She shook her head, “A profound sense of dread. I can’t--” her voice caught, “I can’t really give you much more than that.”
“Well, a Sight would have been more useful--there would be more details.” He shrugged again. “I think we should wait until Calvin can fulfill his duty as your partner and go in your stead.”
She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, “Murder trails go cold fast, and I have a vampire to find. Besides, the Geas won’t wait for Berthell to pop before it acts. And buddy, that’s your ass, right?”
He winced and then nodded. “Azeem told me about the vampire. You do realize you won’t find those in the otherworlds? They are from this realm, not that. They do not travel through portals. Not historically.”
She raised a brow, “I had Paranormal History courses in high school and in college, so yeah, I know vampires came from a magic native to this world that got twisted up by Catholicism in the early years of the Holy Roman Empire. That’s one of the reasons they’re so nasty--they’ve got no soul. Finding a vampire in one of the otherworlds, well, that isn’t even the point in going. The point in going is to find out who might be behind creating the vamp and directing its attack. They were supposed to have been wiped out in the early 20th century.”
“You know, the Powers That Be must have missed a few and left us all none the wiser.”
She gave him a look when he all but repeated both Cal’s and Dr. Caligari’s own statements. “Funny. I think I have heard that theory before. Let’s see if we can track down a lead to the actual source rather than assume because, y’know, assuming makes an ass out of u and me.”
He rolled his eyes and added in a tone guaranteed to piss her off, “You’re in charge detective. Completely and totally in charge. I do hope you brought some handcuffs.”
“Don’t make me headbutt you again,” and at his wince, she nodded and once again reached for the portal door.
CHAPTER NINE
Darkness--thick, visceral darkness pressed in on her. She felt Mephistopheles’ hand in hers, but as tightly as they held hands, she didn’t register a full sensation, as if she had slept on that hand and then tried to use it. The sensory deprivation lasted forever, or thirty seconds, depending on which of the two was asked. When it ended, Tony was crouched on the floor of what looked to be a storeroom, with Phil next to her, dragging in a breath.
Tony looked up at Phil, “I knew this was meant to be” she stopped to drag in a breath also, “a little painful, but that wasn’t really just a little.”
He nodded. “It never gets easier.”
She grinned, “You should know, old man.” And with that, she let go of his hand and started trying to get up despite the impediment of the hair shirt. While she dragged her knees off the long part she had landed on and then nearly face-planted, she missed Phil’s frowning reaction to her comment. She did hear him muttering.
“What?” she asked, turning around as she finally got herself up on her feet and not on the hem of the unfortunately necessary article of magic. “Did you say something?”
He glowered and then shook his head. “Let’s get going. As you said, murder trails go cold quickly.”
A loud, happy voice chimed in, “He said he is not that old, but actually, he is.”
Tony and Phil both turned from the corner of the storeroom where they had arrived after coming through the portal and looked at the short woman standing between two sets of shelves filled with food. The woman’s position blocked the exit from the storeroom.
“Well,” she added, a little less happy sounding, “Mephistopheles, if you are going to just drop into my house with no warning and accompanied by a human no less, it would be polite to at least say hello. I spent enough time on your bed to merit that!”
By this time Tony had registered the fact that, rather than being short, the middle-aged woman in front of her was actually a goblin. She seemed completely unaffected by the cloak’s look-away spell, as she could obviously see Tony standing in front of her. The goblin woman had a remarkably lovely face, but with the rather large, prominent nose common to the race. Tony had a sudden flash of the woman on a round dais bed with black satin sheets and tried very hard to shake it off. She gave Phil a look.
As all of this occurred to Tony, Phil had turned to her and hastily added, “And when Dienah says ‘time on my bed’, she means changing the linens for me. As my housekeeper. For over a century.”
Tony pushed back the inexplicable feeling of relief that she wasn’t meeting yet another one of Phil’s conquests and shook her head, “Not my business one way or another.” Then she thought about it, “For a century?”
Dienah preened, “Hard to believe I’m well into my third hundreds! It is all in the right product, dear. In fact, I can lay my hands on something to help with those crows feet you are working on--”
Tony interrupted her, “Oh, that’s okay. I’m fond of them.” She then realized that she was potentially angering an inhabitant of Fairie in her first two minutes in the realm, which went against the first commandment of travel for Naturals and amended her remark. “Actually, I was trying to picture cleaning house for someone else for a hundred years. Especially this guy! You must be very, very patient.”
Dienah, who had looked like she was taking offense at the refusal of the cream, softe
ned immediately and simpered, “Oh yes, I’m very patient, especially for a goblin! Everyone tells me, ‘Dienah, you are almost gnomish in your patience! How do you do it?’ Especially when I had to work for Mephistopheles all those years. My dear, the stories I could tell!”
Suddenly Phil swooped down for a big hug that essentially cut off Dienah’s oxygen supply for a few moments. “So very good to see you again, Dienah. I was simply stunned by how well you look. I hope that freedom agrees with you.” He swung her around so he was facing Tony. He seemed to be trying to tell her something without saying it out loud to Dienah. He was saying something about...oh.
Tony mouthed back, “Very dangerous creature?”
He nodded and added, “Careful!”
Dienah had been trying to pull out of the hug since the end of Phil’s comments to her, like a cat that really didn’t want to picked up. Phil stepped back from her and Tony noted that his step back left him room to pull a weapon. Five minutes into an otherworld and already they were in danger. From a housekeeper. It just didn’t seem fair.
Dienah pulled down her bodice while straightening her neckline and fluffing her hair. “Well, I think someone missed my cookies more than he’ll ever admit.”
Before Dienah could turn around and see her, Tony mouthed at Phil, “Cookies? Dangerous?”
He grinned a pained smile at Dienah and said, “Ah yes, your cookies. There are none like them in all the worlds,” and when Dienah turned to Tony to preen some more he shook his head and drew a finger across his throat, as Dienah told her, “I have just finished a large batch and they are cooling as we speak! Come on and have some.”
Phil’s gesturing grew more urgent, so Tony improvised, “I would so love to taste your cookies, but as you know, human women have to watch their weight all the time! We gain it so quickly! And I ate right before we came.”
Dienah nodded, “I have heard that. So sad. But I’m sure that Mephy wants a cookie.”