A Mate Worse Than Death (19 page)

In the old days, in Fairie, witches had frequently killed all of their male offspring if they had magic. Wizards are still about the only thing most witches truly fear. But only a very few males both and could wield their magic, and eventually, the various witch covens, which were actually family clans, realized that they were throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If they killed all the males, the coven lines died out. They had to breed with male nulls or magic holders in order to continue the various magic lines.

Quite a few coven lines had been caught on the Mundane side when the Geas went into effect, and the witches had proved to be a huge problem for the Supernatural Crimes Investigation divisions all over the world. They flew under the radar when it came to crime--keeping to the kinds of illegal acts that the Geas would ignore but that cops couldn’t. Their treatment of male children was one of those areas. They had to take care of them, raise them, and prepare them for a life reminiscent of that of a male praying mantis. The witches didn’t actually behead them, but after years that led to the witch producing at least six children or more, and once the sister had the number of daughters and at least one magic-carrier son, the coven shipped their sister’s former lover off to a retirement home to work puzzles and watch old shows until he died. Basically, the magic-holder males were b
reeding stock and nothing else.

Cal had assumed that there was a certain amount of cruelty in this, but now he really wondered. It looked to him like old Bernard was perfectly happy and, “Hey, Bernard! Hands to yourself,” Cal told him as he noticed those hands slipping up the leg and under the green velvet skirt next to him.

Bernard turned a bit red but pulled his hands and twined them as if he had to put them on lock down to keep them off his lady. Scarafina glared at Cal, but continued to answer the question. “Pineville is on the South Carolina, North Carolina border. I have a little business down there, making charms for Nattys,” she told them. “As soon as Herry offered us the apartment, we came on up. We just love being in the city. There’s so much to do!”

“Yeah,” Bernard said, staring at Scarafina’s cleavage. “So much to do here.”
Cal rolled his eyes. He might need some therapy after this interrogation. “So, Herafina didn’t mention why she was going out of town?”

“Of course she did. She finally took a real vacation at the family cabin from that horrible job at Monster-Mate,” Scarafina huffed. “She took a long weekend and went up to the cabin a week ago, but this time she has decided to take a whole week. She hasn’t had any vacation in all the years she has worked at that stupid company.”

Azeem and Cal looked at each other. Azeem asked, “Where is the cabin?”

“Past Charlottesville, near the Washington National Forest.”

Cal took out his f-light and held it up to her, “We’ll need the exact location.”

Scarafina got a sly look on her face, “Of course, Detective. I’ll make sure you find it.” She wiggled her hands at the f-light, and it pulsed for a minute.

Azeem growled and paced over to the chaise longue so that he sat directly by Bernard. The implicit threat of charging her
with something hung in the air.

“I am not doing anything wrong,” she told him, so angry she screeched it in a normal tone.

“Oh Sweetness! You might be getting a cold! Your throat sounds sore! Let me make you a nice, soothing drink for that,” and Bernard hopped up and went into the kitchen.

More quietly and back in character,
Scarafina repeated herself in a sweeter tone, “I am not doing anything wrong. He is perfectly happy with me.”

“Your relationships are none of our business,” Azeem told her with perfect dignity. “But Heraphina may be in some trouble, and I think we might be able to help her.”

Scarafina made a snorting noise. “Since when does anyone help a witch? Unless it’s to help her fall into an oven or a pot of boiling water!”

Cal made calming noises with his hands, “Hey, hey. We’re not the bad guys here.”

She gave him another green-eyed glare. “Ogre, for a witch, almost everyone is a bad guy.” She slumped a bit and grimaced, “Herry has been acting quite oddly. Asking for the strangest ingredients. If I didn’t know better...”


“What?” Azeem asked.

She looked up at their eager faces and shrugged off what had been a kind of defeated attitude that might have led her to confide. Then she cackled, “I suppose you’ll have to go to the cabin in the woods to find out, won’t you!” and she fell back against the chaise longue laughing. That brought Bernard out from the kitchen, and after one glance around the room, he shooed the two detectives toward the door.

“You have what you need? Good, then go.” And he turned back to the chaise.

Realizing that they would get nothing else from the two, who seemed ready to pick up from where they had to leave off when Azeem had knocked on the door, whether they were alone or had an audience, Cal and Azeem left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When Tony and Phil got back to the Bureau, Tony checked in with Old Mother Hubbard.

“Hi, Sergeant Hub, any word from Cal?”

The Sergeant dropped her head so that
her metal-rimmed glasses slid down her nose and looked over them at Tony, and then very pointedly at Phil.

Tony colored up a little because at this point, she seemed to keep losing track of the fact that he was a civilian and still a potential suspect, though really, she thought they had no reasons left to keep him
on that particular mental list.

“The Lieutenant has graciously allowed me to assist in this investigation,” Phil leaned forward and made eye-contact with the Sergeant. “I have a rather large investment in making sure the outcome meets the requirements of the Geas.”

Sergeant Hubbard continued to look at him over her glasses, a look that had quelled many a fight amongst her numerous progeny and brought more than one spouse to babbling apologies over the years of her various marriages. Phil’s charm certainly had met its match, but eventually the old woman snorted and pushed back her glasses before she turned to Tony.

“Well, little girl, about time you got back from your field trip,” she scolded. “The Lieutenant and Cal, your partner,” her verbal inflection underscored the words, “are on their way back from Heraphina’s apartment.”

“Have they got Heraphina?”
“If you will let me finish?” Tony nodded. “Heraphina is apparently up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her sister Scarafina was at the apartment with a young man.”

All three of them paused at that, since witches’ reproductive methods were well-known and the
butt of many Super comedians’ stand up jokes. Tony almost felt sorry for witches, in that sense, right up to the point where she had to bring in a witch for, well, any reason. The sheer nuisance involved in questioning a witch tended to end any empathy for them or their genetic plight although the more she considered that, the more she realized it ought to work the other way around and make her more empathic.

“Did they get a location? Should I head up there?”

“They went to check in with the McKneeleys, who are tailing Serena. If she doesn’t leave the offices of Monster-Mate soon, then they plan to meet with you here. Lieutenant Azeem left explicit instructions that you were to wait for him and Cal before you do anything,” and here Tony got another look from over the top of the glasses. “So you go wait for them. Am I clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Phil echoed her automatically, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Not you!” The Sergeant held out a hand in a stopping motion. “You are free to go.”

“What if I wish to stay?” Phil asked her pleasantly.

“What if I wish for a million dollars?” she replied as pleasantly. “Oh dear. I don’t think that is going to happen, either.” Much less pleasantly she added,
“Now beat it, demon.”

Tony frowned. “No, Sergeant, Mr. Akkadian has been instrumental in this case, and I need to take his statement.”

“His statement?”

“Uhm, yeah.”

Hubbard leaned back in her chair and folded her hands over her comfortably broad belly. “You want to take his...statement?”

Tony narrowed her eyes. “Yes.”

“Uh huh.” She paused for a good minute, watching them sweat, and then waved them on. “Go ahead.”

Tony walked through the door into the work room, red-faced and really annoyed. Phil followed her, mystified at her insistence that he come back. He had assumed she be thrilled finally to rid herself of his presence.

“I hope that won’t cause you any trouble later,” he murmured as they approached her desk. “I should have left.”

“Yeah,” Tony nodded her head. “Yeah, it’ll cause me trouble and yeah, you should have left, but what did you think I was going to do? Ditch you?” She turned to him, brow furrowed. “We are so close to solving these murders, but we’re closer to the deadline, too.” She slumped a bit. “If we have even a hope of getting this finished in time, then I think we need your help.”

As they got to her desk, he touched her arm and she turned to him as he told her, “You do know I would do anything I could to help you?”

She looked into his eyes for a moment, wondering how three days could turn her life upside down like this. She didn’t want him to leave because she was afraid that time might run out and suddenly, he’d just be gone, snuffed out by the Geas. How the hell had seeing his face become so crucial to her general well-being in so short a time? She didn’t want to feel this way, but there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it. Then she closed her eyes for a moment, pursed her lips, and nodded, opening them. “Yeah, I know you would. C’mon.” She sat at her desk and took out her f-light. “I want to see if there’s anything we’ve missed. I need to review the case file. Why don’t you record your impressions of Adonis from the interrogation while I do that? Maybe something will occur to you while you write. Happens to me all the time.”

“I could leave and give the old dragon up front a chance to yell at me again,” he told her.

She snorted. “I don’t think Nick, Nancy, or Shep would be as rude as the Sergeant is at times. Just stay. She’s working my last nerve with the whole mothering thing. I know the Supers appreciate it, but I have a perfectly good mother, thanks. Besides, I think the Lieutenant will wants to ask you some questions about Heraphina before we head up to bring her in. Grab a chair and sit.”

Phil reached over for Cal’s chair before she could tell him to take any chair but that one. She couldn’t blame him for going for it. It was large, mainly because it had to be to accommodate an ogre, and it was lined with fur, or grew fur, depending on who talked about the chair, Berthell or Cal. It was an attractive chair, no doubt. But most importantly, it was Cal’s chair, and that chair knew it was Cal’s.

As Phil put his hand on the armrest to pull it over, Tony cried, “Not tha
t one!” just a minute too late.

Phil jumped and then looked at the bleeding scratch on his hand. “Is that a Mage-e-boy Furr 2000?”

“Yup. And it’s Cal’s.”

“I should have assumed that. Even the furniture at your Bureau is trying
to get rid of me,” he muttered.

“That’s just Cal’s chair. Berthell won’t let him keep it at home because it won’t let her clean it. And it does that to anybody who touches it but Cal. Even t
he Lieutenant got a slap once.”

Phil quirked a lip. “Ah. I shall not take it personally, then.” He looked at Tony and gestured to the chair at a different, unoccupied desk. She nodded and he pulled that one over.

They worked in silence for a short while, Tony making notes in the glow of her f-light, Phil simply writing across a small portion of the desk, but without pen or paper. Anything he put down would appear in his records, and he could transfer it to f-light later for Tony to put in the official file. As they worked, occasionally Tony would make a noise of some kind and gesture at the open file on her viewer, paging backwards.

She looked over at Phil after doing one of those back and forth motions a few times. She put out a hand to stop him writing. He looked at her and smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and she caught her breath. Then she glanced at her view screen, which currently showed pictures of the crime scenes of Lilith and Signa En
gstrom, side by side, and she refocused on the job at hand. 


“I just remembered something that got Cal’s attention that first night, with Lilith,” she told him. “Look at her feet.” She made a pulling gesture at the screen with both hands over the picture
of Lilith’s body. That image enlarged and the cuts and abrasions on the feet became very clear. “Now, look at Engstrom’s feet.” She pulled over that image as well, and the viewer suddenly showed both sets of feet with fairly similar damage on them.

“What are those?” Phil murmured, leaning in closer to get inspect them. “And where are their shoes?”

A loud voice rumbled over their heads, “Y’know, I said the exact same thing myself, am I right, Tony?”

They both jumped and turned to find that while they had been absorbed in the viewer, Cal and the Lieutenant had walked in. Cal gave Phil a look that managed a balance between innocence and malevolence, and Phil acknowledged it. The Lieutenant had gone on to his office to check in with the Captain about jurisdictional privileges and
permission to follow one of their major suspects up near Skyline Drive.

When Cal had walked in and seen the two heads together over Tony’s desk, her brown hair gleaming with red in the light next to Phil’s blue-black hair, for a moment he felt a pang of jealously. He and Tony worked cases like no other partners in D.C., and there she was, his partner, treating Snarkfest the Ancient like her best bud. But he had talked to Berthell about the whole situation, and she seemed to believe that old Mephistopheles might be just what the doctor ordered for their girl, and that Cal’s job, should he choose to quit being, as his Sweet Love put it, a complete centaur’s ass, was to make totally certain of that idea before Tony did anything hasty and s
tupid, like sleep with the guy.

Cal wasn’t certain about the last bit, but he had a feeling that even Mephistopheles couldn’t make that kind of time with his partner in just three days. She was way too picky about dating. That particular thought cheered him up so much, he sauntered over to break up the little party in front of him.

“Hey,” Cal rumbled, looking at the photos again, “Those are both of the vics, right?”

Tony turned in her chair and looked up at him. “Cal, sit down. My neck is cracking trying to talk to you from down here.” He rumbled, this time with laughter, and pulled his chair over, patting it as he did so to calm it down. “Hey, did someone upset Fluffy? She’s acting a little odd.”

Phil stared at him. “It has a gender?”

Cal stuck his nose in the air. “She’s a very delicate creature. Don’t insult her.”

Phil put up his hands, “Of course not, of course not.” He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that I’m the culprit. I didn’t realize what kind of chair...she is, and I tried to sit on her.”

Cal grinned an evil, ogre grin. “I guess that’s a mistake you won’t make again.” Then he turned to the viewer and the pictures. “Okay. So,” he pointed to the left image, “that is the view of Lilith’s feet that I asked you to take.” Then he pointed to the image from the Engstrom murder. “That image doesn’t have as clear a view of the feet.”



Tony agreed. “You were at the hospital, and Phil and I got back from Fairie after the scene was processed. I think the techs with the Lieutenant viewed our pics and tried to take similar images, but this is the closest.”

“They have similar cuts on their feet,” Cal said.

“Yes, and just like Lilith, Engstrom had on a really nice outfit, but she had no shoes and didn’t look as if she had run from the scene,” Tony told him, as she brought up the report the Lieutenant had written for the Engstrom crime scene.

“What woulda made those marks on their feet?” Cal mused. He got out his own f-light and pulled up the same set of images, then pulled them larger and larger until one foot from each victim sat in front of them, each one the size of a stove-top.

The three stared at the marks. Tony looked at each cut separately, then at the pattern on each foot.

“Hey Tony,” Cal put out a finger to one of the images, “look at this mark on the insole of Lilith’s foot.” Then he moved it to point at other image. “Then look at Engstrom’s insole.”


“Similar marks. Were they crossing through something?” Tony asked.

“I think we gotta see Dr. Caligari. He working today?”

“Why Dr. C., Cal?”

“I gotta theory, gorgeous. Let’s go talk to the Doc.”

Phil coughed into his hand, and they both looked up. “Shall I stay here?”


“You gotta stay here. You can’t come into an area with the physical evidence and compromise it,” Cal told him as Tony winced, thinking about that word, compromise, and all that might entail on this case.

“He’s right. You’ll have to wait her
e. We’ll be back. Finish your statement about Adonis.”

Phil nodded and the other two headed down to the pathology lab.

“So,” Cal began cautiously a
s they waited for the elevator.

“So,” Tony replied tightly, just knowing she was about to get another talk from Cal about the dangers of Mephistopheles. Because she figured Cal was probably right about this one, she steele
d herself for an I-told-you-so.

“How was the interview with Adonis?”

Since that was so not the question she expected at that moment from her partner, she stood for a moment, stunned. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Cal stepped in and turned to her. “You comin’ or you gonna walk the stairs?”

She shook it off and stepped into the elevator. “Let’s go.” She turned to him, “The interview was pretty awful, Cal. Adonis is essentially bat-shit crazy.”

“That bad, huh?”

She shook her head. “I felt like I needed a shower after that one. I mean, Sammeal was a piece of work, but really, he was just a garden variety pig compared to Adonis.”