A Mate Worse Than Death (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

After leaving the interview room and picking up their personal items, Tony and

Phil went to Guard Edwina’s office, where she pulled up the visitor’s log and checked the listing. A month ago, a nymph had visited Adonis, and while the name listed wasn’t Serena Melinoe, neither Tony
nor Phil had any doubt at all that she was the one. Guard Edwina shook her head as she realized that somehow, that particular visitor had figured out a way to circumvent all the failsafes in place to keep a Being like Adonis from touching or being touched by a visitor. Because of his crimes, a conjugal visit would never have gotten approval from any authority. Yet somehow, that is exactly what had to have happened.

“I’m gonna find out who let that crap happen on my block and then I’m gonna rip that person a new one, right before I stuff the idiot in a cell myself,” Guard Edwina growled, her hand sitting on her gun and almost twitching with the urge to shoot someone for such a huge infraction of the rules for criminally insane prisoners.

Tony called the Lieutenant at that point, to make sure that he knew what they were up against. Serena seemed too amazingly ditzy to be capable of planning and executing so circuitous a plot against Monster-Mate and Mephistopheles, but apparently the dumb blonde act was exactly that, an act.

After returning to the hanger and retrieving Nick, they flew in silence for a short time, Tony too preoccupied even to fire up her favs list. Phil had been surprised by the extent of the obvious mental damage to his predecessor, despite knowing that Adonis had never been the most stable of Beings. Too many years of being passed back and forth from Persephone to Aphrodite. Still, the extent of his insanity had been quite frightening. After living so many years, perhaps the only thing older Beings still held onto was the self and the world one inhabited in the now. The Now had to count to keep from lingering in the Not-Now. To be so out of touch with that world and that self, to descend into such darkness--Phil couldn’t, no he wouldn’t, imagine what that was like.

Tony finally broke the silence. “So. What do you know about Serena?”

Phil thought for minute, then said to her. “She worked for Aphrodite first, so she has been with the dating service since the very beginning. I believe that she actually started when it did in 1989, at the beginning of the invocation of the Geas and before it was a dot com. I agreed to keep her on.”

“She’s older than I thought,” Tony murmured. She glanced back at Phil, “I guess most of you are older than I thought, huh?”

“A hit, a palpable hit,” Phil grinned and murmured back, quoting one of his favorite clients. “Your comments about age aside, she is relatively young for a Supernatural being. I have her application forms.” He held his hands up in between himself and Tony and muttered a few words. Between his hands, a viewer formed that showed the application file for Serena Melinoe. “Hmmm.”

“What?”

“She came over after the Geas was invoked.”

“Well, shit,” Tony turned back to look at Phil. “So the Geas could leave her alone if we don’t get her.”

“Or it might not.” He looked down at the display between his hands. “I had forgotten she originated in the Greek Isles when she came over.”

“Is that significant?”

“It means that she would have had contact with Aphrodite prior to working at Monster-Mate. The ‘Greek gods’ are the Greek gods because of their point of origin from Fairie.”

“Hmm. So Aphrodite asked for Adonis to take over for her. Their story is?”

“Ah, so that one does not make it into the school books? Unsurprising. Mundanes in the Americas are still more prudish than their European cousins.”

Tony sighed and told Phil, “You have a nice long chat with Melly about that some time. I’m sure that’ll be something that she studies in one of her cultural anthro classes. And I’d bet money that one is in the books here. It’s just not in mine. Enlighten me.”

Phil’s mouth twitched. “Well, then the quick version?”

“Any version would be nice at this point.”

“Aphrodite fell in love with a beautiful youth and used him as a sexual partner. When I say youth, I mean a twelve year old boy.” He felt Tony stiffen and shake her head. “Oh, it gets worse. Persephone wanted him, too. The two goddesses fought over him and finally compromised by passing him back and forth between them. From the age of thirteen on, he was passed back and forth between the two like a favorite toy.” He shook his head. “I always thought he had an unhealthy relationship with the two, and I stayed away from them all, both in Mundania and the Fairie Realms. He acquired enough power to break free, yet never seemed to choose to do so.”

“So, do you suppose he has Stockholm syndrome?”

“I think that having spent his youth with two powerful Beings who used him sexually, he never had a chance at being a normal anything.” Phil shook his head, “And now we see the end result of all of that.”

“He’s a scary guy,” Tony agreed quietly.

“He is a victim, too,” Phil declared calmly, adding, “but that does not excuse his actions. And if he and Serena both served Aphrodite, either Aphrodite herself is connected to the plot, or Serena and Adonis have a long-term relationship that is the motivation for Serena to help him. However, I have to point out that there was no clear indication that she was involved with or knew what Adonis had been doing until right at the end when the Geas...well...when he was taken away to Lock Up.”

“Who had access to the office reports that might have implicated her?”

Tony felt Phil stiffen, then sag. “Yes, of course. Serena did. Serena has access to everything at Monster-Mate. Who would ever suspect such a child of anything so heinous?” She felt him heave a sigh. “Certainly, it would never have occurred to me or I would not have kept her on at M and M when I let most of the rest of the staff go to other assignments.”

Tony sat silently for a minute, thinking. Finally she said, “Do you really think Aphrodite is involved?”

“Why do you ask?”


“She got permission to leave Mundania and go back to Fairie from the Powers That Be. That’s pretty unusual, right?”

“Almost unheard of. Especially for a being who had so much power and had used it so ill in Mundania in the past. In fact,
she may be the only case I know of in which that boon was granted.” Phil shrugged. “I did not believe that it was possible. And for her to go back, the Powers That Be would have investigated her thoroughly before allowing the spellcasting.” He turned to Tony to make his point. “The Great Outing and the effects of the Geas allowed the Powers That Be to trap some of the worst creatures of Fairie here in Mundania where the Geas then controlled some of the worst of their actions. Compared to Fairie, Mundania lacks much in the way of serious magical charge, so many creatures here are comparatively powerless. Keeping them here is what you call a win-win situation, I believe. It is to the Fairie Realm’s benefit.”

Tony snorted and responded, “So that’s what happened to you? It doesn’t seem as much of a win for the Mundane side of that equation.” She thought for a second. “But that suggests that Aphrodite had to be at least reasonably clean to be able to pass muster with the PTB, or she wouldn’t have
been kicked through the gate.”

“They don’t actually kick people through.”

“You know what I mean,” Tony smiled.

“Yes, I suppose I do. ”

“I’m not a big fan of Aphrodite all of a sudden. I’d like to see her get a good swift kick.” She paused for a moment. “We can probably cross Aphrodite off the suspect list, but I’ll ask the Lieutenant.”

“I agree that she probably is not a part of this, but yes, there is no point in assuming.”

“There you go--you’re on to whole issue with the assuming thing now,” she smiled at the back of Nick’s head in front of her.

Cal and the Lieutenant had gotten Heraphina’s home address, an apartment in Georgetown. Its location made it a pricey kind of place for someone who worked as a receptionist, but the area near the university held a kind of bohemian air that appealed to some of the fae, especially witches.

“How is she paying for this place?” Cal muttered as they found a parking space nearby, thanks to the Super Bureau’s mandatory equipment, in this case a Meter Made, which would free up a space for a police vehicle by shifting the other vehicle into a limbo Realm. Nothing ever happened to the cars shifted out of Mundane space, and if the owner showed up looking for the car, then it would shift back by taking the place of another non-police vehicle nearby. While it had, at first, led to lots of cases of unnecessary tests for dementia or memory loss for the Mundane car owners, the general public adjusted to the new reality and got in the habit of looking in adjacent spots for the cars they’d left parked on side streets in parking space challenged cities.

“I suspect Heraphina still does some spellcasting on the side to help pay the rent on this place,” the Lieutenant told Cal as they got out of the vehicle. “Or perhaps she and her sisters are more financially solvent than most witches.” He stood for second by the police car, then said, “If she is at her apartment, there is a good chance she’ll try to run. Are you prepared to give chase?”

“On the ground, sure, Lieutenant. But what if she grabs her broom?”

“Ah. Good point.” The Lieutenant turned back to the police vehicle and popped the trunk. “There should be--yes, there is. Here. A T-Charm.” The T-Charms had been developed to take down broom-riding witches using a small, magic-controlled tornado that was set to the broom’s rider like a guided missile. Witches had become a nuisance in Mundania because so may had gotten caught on the wrong side of the Realms when the Great Outing happened. The T-Charm had been developed by police mages to help catch particularly egregious offenders, witches or the occasional and, happily, quite rare wizard. “Let’s go.”

The building, a relatively older one from the 1940s that had beautifully well-maintained wood floors and recently renovated exposed brick walls in the stairwell, had no elevator. It also had no Supersized doors, so Cal and the Lieutenant entered carefully and walked up three flights of stairs. All the while, Cal had to mind his head. He got conscientious about it once he’d banged it against the structure above him a few times.
Azeem simply went into a stalking crouch. The two entered the third floor hallway where Heraphina’s apartment should have been located. There was just one problem. The entire section of the building where her apartment should be seemed to have vanished.

Cal and the Lieutenant looked at each other, and for once, even Azeem was at a loss, jaw hanging open, ears down, tail flat.

“What the hell? This should be the floor, right?” Cal asked.

“I can honestly say that I have never seen such a thing in all my years on the force.” He stared at the empty space. It seemed to shimmer in the sunlight. “Yes, Cal. She must have gotten away. We’ll have to look for her elsewhere.” He turned back to the door that led to the stairwell.

“Uh, Lieutenant? What about--”

Azeem interrupted him, “Next of kin? Yes, detective, we’ll have to try the other sisters next. Now, come along, Cal.”

They went through the door, and Azeem stopped as soon as it had shut behind them. “She’s still there,” Azeem told Cal in a whisper.

“What? Still where?” he asked.

“The apartment has been spelled so that it looks like it is gone, but that wall faces the street where we parked. It was there, yes?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so, sir. I mean,” Cal scrunched his face and tried to bring up the memory. “We woulda noticed
a big gaping hole, am I right?”

Azeem nodded. “So if you aren’t here to see her, no worries. If you are, when you get to her door, no door, no walls, no apartment, no Heraphina. Only, that’s what she wants you to think, right?”

“Indeed. But we are on to her, and now she can’t escape.”

“Indeed,” Cal said, copying the Lieutenant and savoring the word. Tony said he needed to work on his diction, and when he had time and looked that up, he found out it meant word choices. Well, here he was, dealing with witches and word choices, all in the same day. He grinned. “So whadda we do, sir?”

“We’ll need a charm to counteract her spell. It isn’t standard issue, so I’ll call Glinda for a special request. Then we’ll have to stay here until it is delivered. I am afraid that if we leave, Heraphina will truly disappear.”

“So, we wait?”

“We wait.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

While they were waiting, Tony checked in with them on her f-light from Lock Up. Her news had both her partner and supervisor riled. Azeem’s tail flicked so hard he actually slapped Cal several times. The ogre found himself in the unenviable position of asking his boss to keep his flapping tail to himself. Azeem took it better than he expected. As Tony filled them in on her conversation with Adonis and her suspicions about Serena, Cal was a
ll but jumping out of his skin.

Once Azeem ended the conversation with Tony, Cal railed,“I gotta be the most gullible ogre on the face of the planet! That little nymph played me like a violin.” Then he grimaced, “I wonder if Heraphina is even involved in this whole plot? Are we wasting time here?
‘Cause we are seriously running low on time to waste, am I right?”


“Do not fret, Detective Kelly. I am sure that we are ahead of any potential...deadline.” Both Beings winced. “I am also quite sure that Heraphina is involved. I believe that she has realiz
ed that Serena is ready to sell her out to cover her own involvement. Heraphina is a pawn in all of this.”

Cal paled to a pastier yellow shade than normal, “That’s bad. That’s really, really bad. Witches get very angry over shit like this. Pied Piper of Hamlin angry, French Revolution angry, bringing back shoulder pads for women’s suits angry, y’know?”

Azeem stared at his detective, fascinated by the low-voiced diatribe as they still sat in the stairwell, awaiting the Visi-Charm to bring back the apartment to a visible spectrum. “You have been watching
What Not to Wear
reruns again, haven’t you?” Azeem asked.

“Berthell! Berthell has been watching--I just watch to keep her company!” Cal whispered furiously. “Sure, it’s a great show. And I am totally aware that Clinton is not even a distant relative. I get coincidence, y’know? I mean, I love the show now, but it’s Berthell who got me started.”

“Of course,” Azeem agreed.

“What?”

“I’m sure Berthell got you started on it.”

Cal narrowed his eyes. “I wonder how much longer before the charm gets here.”

“Oh, any time now.”

“Wha
t about Serena?”

“She thinks she has us duped. Mephistopheles did not tell her where
he was going, simply that he was going out of town. She doesn’t know that he has been to see Adonis. As long as Adonis has no one to contact her...”

The Lieutenant paused. “Yes, I see where this could become an issue.” He paused a minute longer. “I’ll call in a stakeout on Serena--have her tailed.”

Cal looked thoughtful. “Who you got?”

“The McKneeleys are back.”

Cal grinned, “About time! I know St. Patrick’s Day is a big thing for them, but a two week bender? In Ireland?”

The Lieutenant just looked at him and suddenly Cal remembered he was
with his boss, not his partner.

“Uh, sorry, sir.”

Azeem looked at him another thirty seconds before he nodded and broke eye contact, having established dominance. He took out his f-light and contacted the desk sergeant, Old Mother Hubbard. “This is Azeem. I need to have the McKneeleys follow Serena Melinoe at Monster-Mate.” He listened for a moment. “Starting as soon as they can get their tails over to that office. Yes. They can play it however they like, but they need to be there an hour ago.” He closed the line.

“They still undercover?”

Azeem nodded. “Connected to the Irish Leprechauns’ Mob as runners and informants, and their covers are still intact, which is why they were in Ireland for two weeks, to maintain their cover with that bunch of hooligans. I’d like to keep things that way and keep them alive, so refrain from any conversations about the McKneeleys that might compromise their usefulness.” He paused and added dryly, “Or get them caught in some Irish rat trap, yes?”

Cal nodded a bit shamefaced as he admitted, “Sorry sir, I lost track of the cover.”
“You’re in Homicide, no
t Vice. But Lieutenant O’Neill is very kind about loaning his officers for side jobs, if it doesn’t compromise their current cases. This should not. The death of old Bane of Limerick has the entire D.C. clan in flux right now. The three could claim they were tracking Monster-Mate or Serena for someone in one faction or the other and everyone would be satisfied. Besides, I can’t call in Anderson and Perrault on this. Stealth and giants don’t work. And Detectives de Groot and Falk are on another case right now.

Cal grimaced but said nothing. He knew Joe Anderson could follow a tail, no problem, but Jaques Perrault wasn’t the most practical choice for Homicide. Still, the big guy had a good arrest record. He didn’t know about De Groot and Falk, who were still too new to the department to get a good idea of their approach. All Cal knew was that, usually, he and Tony worked cases on their own, and so far they had solved those cases within the allowable period. No Geas-induced smackdowns had occurred on their watch. He had a bad feeling that this might be the end of their long run of cracked cases. And given the time his partner was spending with one of the potential recipients of Geas “justice”, he also had a feeling Tony wouldn’t be okay with that. As much as he disliked Phil, he just knew that if that Being got caught up in the fry from the Geas, Tony wouldn’t be able to let it go. He had heard of humans leaving their SCI divisions over situations like this, and he didn’t want their partnership to become another statistic.

His dark thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a flying monkey from the armory, bringing Glinda’s Visi-Charm to the Lieutenant. The creature came in through a window in the stairwell, which the Lieutenant had left open. It dropped the charm into Azeem’s hand, then leaped back through the window and was gone. Cal gave a little shake. He had seen The Wizard of Oz a couple of times with his kids, so working with the monkeys always gave him the heebie-jeebies. He knew that the movie was full of Baum’s own propaganda from the time he spent trapped in Fairie before he got home and wrote his popular “fiction” novels, but despite knowing that the monkeys wouldn’t start grabbing Beings and flying around with them, he instinctively ducked whenever he saw one.

The Lieutenant turned the charm over in his paw and found the trigger for it. He nodded, then gestured to Cal. “I have called in for uniformed officers to be placed in a two block radius in case she stays on the ground. The T-Charm is ready to activate,” and he handed that to Cal. “If she takes to the air, it is your job to knock her to the ground.” Cal tried to keep a look of terror off of his face, and he must have only partially succeeded since the Lieutenant grinned and patted him with one paw. “You’ll be fine, Detective. Just another perpetrator.”

“Yeah,” Cal agreed, trying to smile. “Just another perp, sir.”

They opened the door and entered the hallway as silently as two large Beings could. Then Azeem hit the trigger for the Visi-Charm and tossed it at the area that seemed like empty space. As he ducked, he pulled Cal down with him. Cal was so intent on being ready to throw the T-Charm that he’d forgotten to duck for the first one. Once Heraphina realized that her invisibility spell wasn’t working, she might start throwing hexes and curses. Best to not be standing tall when those came flying.

But in the minute or so after the Visi-Charm nullified the invisibility spell, nothing happened, other than the reappearance of a wall and a door. The two detectives stood there, waiting for some reaction. When none came, they looked at each other and went to the door of the apartment. Azeem knocked. “Heraphina Caster, this the the Supernatural Crimes Investigation Bureau. Open the door.” Nothing. Azeem nodded to Cal, who felt like he was about to hyperventilate. He nodded back to the Lieutenant, then backed up a few steps, leaned down to concentrate his body mass, and ran at the door. It banged open just as he got to it, and he went flying through the door and landed on a couch, busting it to pieces.

The witch standing there wasn’t Heraphina. It was Scarafina, the prettiest sister of their familial group. And she looked very, very pissed off. Especially when Cal crawled off the top of a handsome fellow who had apparently been on Scarafina’s couch when Cal demolished it. That fellow on it sat up carefully, looking a bit crushed and dazed.

“Oh Sugar Pie! Honey Bunch!” Scarafina darted over to him and led him to a chaise longue by the window. “Are you okay?” she asked in dulcet tones as she ran her hands up and down his body. She probably meant to check him for broken bones, but to Azeem and Cal, it looked less like a medical check and more like an excuse to feel the guy up.

“I’m...I’m fine, I guess,” he said to her, shaking his head to get some of the couch’s stuffing out of his golden curls. “What happened, Sweetness?” he asked her.

“I woke up with a, an,” he looked over at Cal and winced, “an ogre on top of me.”

Cal and Azeem gave each other a look. Apparently, the sister here went for looks over brains, any brains at all.

“It’s okay, little Num Num,” she muttered and brushed back his curls while chanting under her breath. Just like that, he was out, asleep. She lay his head back carefully on the back of the chaise longue. Then she turned around and glared at the two officers.

“What is this all about?” she screeched, knowing that her paramour would not wake and hear her regular voice.

“This apartment is registered to Heraphina Caster,” Azeem told her. “We need to speak to her.”

She cackled. “Heraphina went to the family cabin for the weekend so I could borrow the apartment.” She gestured to the man, “As you can see, I am a little busy.”
Cal tried very hard not to crack a grin. He knew better than to laugh at a wi
tch. That led to warts, lots and lots of warts. His hand started up toward his face, but he twitched it back down. He could hear Tony in his head. Maybe this wasn’t the bad sister.

“With what, exactly, are you busy?” Azeem asked, and even Cal couldn’t blame the witch for the cackle that followed the question.

“You need to get out more, police Sphinx, if you have to ask that question,” she told him as she reached over and stroked a hand over the man’s body suggestively.

Azeem’s tail twitched. “This looks like kidnapping to me. Doesn’t it look like that to you, Detective?”

Cal wanted to babble “No!” and leave the old witch to her paramour, but he harnessed that paranoia and nodded thoughtfully instead of running out the door. “Yes, sir. It looks like assault. She had to put the guy out to keep him here.”

“What!” she screeched. “What are you talking about? He doesn’t know anything about anything! He’s a simple creature. I didn’t want to bother him with this. He wants to be here!”

“Then wake him,“Azeem told her calmly.

She glared, but few Beings won a stare-down contest with a Sphinx, and she blinked first.

“Very well,” she grumbled. She smoothed her garments, which were actually quite nice. Most witches went for the stereotypical rusty, black, draping garments that hid everything about them. Scarafina had on a deep purple bustier, so dark it was almost black, but the purple highlights gleamed in the light. Her bodice was tricked out with silver threads that depicted the zodiac signs. Her skirt, instead of being a shapeless black sack that fell to her feet, was a poison green velvet that ended a good six inches above her quite lovely knees. Her surprisingly excellent legs were encased in black fishnet stockings and her feet, Cal noticed, in peep-toe, platform stiletto pumps, the same poison green, and easily five inches high. He had to give her snaps for rocking a pair of shoes that totally awesome.

She turned to the beautiful man lying on the chaise longue and touched his brow, muttering a few words as she did so. Then she leaned over and proceed
ed to kiss him like she was auditioning for some kind of witchy porn film.

Cal lost some of his paranoia in an attempt to avoid seeing any more of her moves, “Okay, okay, break it up, there. Get a room.”

Scarafina growled at him as she turned away from the doe-eyed man blinking awake beside her, “We had a whole apartment before you crashed in. Now what do you want?” Her voice was back to a higher-pitched, breathless, baby-doll cadence, reminiscent of the women in anime cartoons. It just didn’t convey the kind of menace that normally exuded from the cackling of witches. Cal guffawed before he could stop himself, but her narrow-eyed glare stopped him. His hand drifted up to his face again.

Azeem nodded to Cal to take the lead, and he decisively moved his hand back to his side and away from his face. “When did you and, uh, your boyfriend get here?”

“Last night. Late last night. Herry called me and told me I could take the apartment for a week or so while she was on vacation from Monster-Mate,” Scarafina told them. “Bernard and I came up from Pineville, and it’s a long drive.” Scarafina’s companion, Bernard, stared at her the whole time she spoke, a look of blatant adoration on his otherwise vacant face.

Scarafina lacked the usual look of most witches. While in general, and because of extreme inbreeding, they tended toward having a hooked nose and curving chin, narrow eyes set under exaggerated occipital ridges, and an unfortunate number of facial moles that were generally mislabeled warts, Scarafina had only the narrow eyes. Her brows were fairly open, her chin simply sharp, and her nose straight though large. She did have the typical bright green eyes, but unlike most of her sisters, her inky black hair was silky and long instead of short, tangled and full of split ends. Basically, Scarafina was the sister who would continue the family line. If rumor was true, then Bernard, while not directly related, was one of the few boys born to a witch. He might or might not have any magic-holding ability, but he looked to be typical male progeny--he could pass magic on, but couldn’t do a thing with it himself. If he had been born a wizard, then, in all probability, he wouldn’t have survived infancy.