A Mate Worse Than Death (6 page)

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 wan
t 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, softened 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.”

He grimaced at her nickname, then went very still as she turned to him, but he nodded, “Dienah, I should like nothing more than to sit down and talk old times with you over a glass of milk and your delicious,” his voice quivered as he pulled out the syllables, “really delicious cookies, but we have a murder investigation, and you know how it is. The Great Geas isn’t particularly patient. If we don’t solve it quickly...”

Dienah snarled at that, the personality shift so swift that it gave Tony emotive whiplash, “The Great Geas my sweet--”

“Now, now, Dienah. It protects as well as punishes.”

She curled a lip but then smiled, as suddenly happy again as she had been angry. “I will put together a, what do you call them in Mundania? Ah yes, a to-go bag.”

For a second Phil closed his eyes, but then he opened them and smiled, “Marvelous, marvelous. You are a treasure still.”

As she led them to the door, she looked back over her shoulder, “As if you didn’t know that. Silly demon.”

Twenty excruciating minutes later, the two waved furiously cheerful goodbyes to Dienah, who stood at the door of her thatched cottage, waving back as she saw them off. The cottage stood beneath huge evergreen trees of a type that Tony didn’t recognize, not that she considered herself some kind of Natty Bumpo naturalist. It was more a feeling of looking at them and thinking that they were only almost making sense to her eyes.

“So, what’s the deal with Dienah, anyway?”

Phil grimaced. “The deal?”

“She’s like, I don’t know, goblin Martha Stewart or something.

He barked out laughter.

“How come she could see me?”

“We spoke to each other in her presence. We cannot talk to one another if we are trying to use the cloaking spell.”

“Good to know,” Tony nodded. “Hey, other than making cookies that must be really God-awful yucky, which I guess would be points off for the Fairie Realm Martha Stewart award, why is she so dangerous?”

“Dienah did some...reprehensible things, and her punishment from the Powers That Be was to banish her from Mundania and put her in service to me as a housekeeper for a century. This, of course, was before we triggered the Geas, or she would have ended up in the FBI working on some missing child taskforce.”

Tony gulped. “She killed Natty kids back home?”

Phil nodded. “Remember the witch in Hansel and Gretel? Well,” and he gestured behind them with his thumb.

“So the story got it wrong? Not an actual witch, huh? Boy, that’s a first case of undeserved bad PR for the witch community.” She gasped and shook the to-go bag of cookies, “I know I can’t eat anything here that I didn’t bring with me, but, hey, you can’t eat these either!”

Phil smirked, “I believe that is exactly what I was trying to tell you. When we find a good spot far away from Dienah, we’ll need to dump these.” He looked at the bag, “I wouldn’t grasp that too closely to the actual foodstuffs in it.”

Tony looked at him, her gray-green eyes going wide.

“Don’t worry,” he told her smoothly, “the paper should hold long enough for us to dispose of the bag where Dienah won’t see it or smell it.”

They had gotten just around a bend in the path leading from the cottage when
a much larger house appeared a few hundred yards away.

“We can stop there, leave the cookies, and regroup before we continue on to the first stop on your list,” Phil told her as he started on to the house that definitely would rate the term mansion back in Tony’s world.

“Why are we stopping here? Who lives here?” she asked him.

He didn’t reply for a moment and then sighed. “No one lives here now. That was my house. Before.”

“Before what?”

“Before I moved to Mundania more permantly. I used to go back and forth to do...things, but when the Great Geas went into effect, I was on that side. I had to stay,” he looked forward at the house rather than make eye contact with her.

“That happened to a lot of folks, right? I mean, Cal was born on our side, like his kids, but Berthell told me her parents had come over for a little vacation in the Alps to do some sheep raiding when she was just a little spawn, but then the Geas hit them and they got stuck. And they actually died.” She looked at him, her eyes narrowed.

“What?”

“You had no idea that the Geas was coming?”

He sighed again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So how often do you travel back now?” she wondered out loud.

He looked over at
her, his beautiful mouth twisted in a lop-sided grin that made her catch her breath. “I don’t travel. I have not been here since your year of 1986.”

“Yikes. You haven’t been home since before I was born.” She didn’t notice his grimace as she thought over his dilemma. Then she looked at him, the question obvious on her face. “Why haven’t you come back?”

“I can’t be here for very long,” he looked over at her and added, “so we have to avoid Sleeping Spells, of course, but also any kind of involved, time-consuming games or riddles from some of the Beings you need to interrogate. If I stay more than a day, that would be bad.”

She stared at him as they continued toward his old home. “Define ‘bad’.”

She got the twisted grin again, but no eye contact, “No.”

She stared at him harder.

“I can feel that stare, and I said, no.”

She kept staring.

“And you truly say you have no fae blood?”

She kept staring.

He caved, “All right, all right.” He took a deep breath and spilled it, “If I stay more than a day, the Geas kills me.”

She paled and stopped walking. “Why in the hell did you agree to come on this trip? Does the Lieutenant know this? Shit!”

He stepped back from her, “You aren’t going to headbutt me again, are you?”

“Funny, funny man. Dammit.”

“That’s just it, Antonia, I’m not a man at all.” His head dropped and then he looked into her eyes. “I am fae. I am dark fae, and I am damned by the Great Geas to serve. For years I worked in another capacity. Now I am runnning Monster-Mate. And if Lieutenant Azeem needs me to do this, then I do this. The Geas is affected by his need to solve the case.”

She seemed stunned by some of this, though she knew, of course, that the largest effect of the worldwide announcement that fairy tales were true histories, and that the creatures in them had been living in her world for millennia, was that the worst of the creatures could not wreak havoc on the humans in the land they called Mundania. At least, not the kind of havoc they wanted to wreak. Once they came out into the open, the curse forced some types of good behavior on those who lived in the Mundane realm. If a creature broke that curse long enough to do extremely bad acts, extreme misuse of magic, rape, or murder, then the Supernatural Crimes Investigations branch had a very short space of time to work the crime and bring the criminal to Mundane justice. Otherwise, the Geas would exact its own justice, and sometimes that could go horribly awry.
Thus, the pressure to solve crimes involving Supers remained high and teams like Tony and Cal were especially prized by law enforcement.

Still, she couldn’t believe that Azeem, who claimed to be friends with Phil, allowed him, no, forced him, really, to back her up under these circumstances.

“We don’t have time to stop and regroup unless you have something at your old home that might be useful in speeding this along.” She frowned at him. “I am not going back to the Lieutenant and explain to him that I got his buddy killed while trying to questions suspects and family members.”

Mephistopheles went still for a moment, then turned to her, charm on full. “Why darling detective, I didn’t know you cared so much about my welfare.”

“I don’t. I care about the amount of paperwork it would generate if you bought the farm on my shift. Now, if you really insist on stopping at your house, move it. Your limited time’s awastin’,” she flipped her hands at him to shoo him along, and they hurried up at least one hundred granite steps into the large double doors at the front of the building.