A Mate Worse Than Death (7 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Tony came from a reasonably wealthy family, no doubt. Both her father’s parents, the Newmans, and her mother’s parents, the Lamberts, were old money, and she had grown up in D.C., surrounded by the glitter of politics and embassy parties. And she had really, really hated it, a lot. In fact, her family background was one reason she had become a police officer. She loved her parents, but she had no intention of spending her time getting to know the right Naturals or other Beings or dressing in clothes that cost the kind of money that could have fed a typical family of four for a couple of weeks. One day soon she would inherit a large trust fund, and she had every intention of using a chunk of it in ways that would have Grandpere Lambert more than a little upset. She didn’t even want to think about Papa Newman’s reaction. So when she walked in the front door of Phil’s otherworld “house”, she was impressed, but she managed to keep her lower jaw reasonably close to her upper jaw. Mostly.

“Homey,” she murmured to him as she walked through the enormous gilt doors and into a huge rotunda. A table roughly the size the of a Volkswagon Beetle sat in the middle of the expanse of black and white marble tile, its gilt surface glinting like, “Hey, Phil, is that thing really solid gold?”

Phil hung his head. “I’d forgotten how over the top this place really is.” He looked at her sheepishly, “I do live a bit more simply in D.C. in a loft apartment. No gilt at all.”

She looked around the entry way, its walls awash in paintings that were hung in gilt frames, the stairs, twinned white marble climbing the left and right hand sides of the room, the rails all done in gilt. At the top of the stairs, more paintings set in, of course, more gilt frames.

She looked at Phil, wide-eyed, “You must be having shine withdrawal back home. Are you sure you don’t want to snag a few paintings to go?” She gestured at the Louis Vuitton tote that hung over her left shoulder. “Apparently, I could put the kitchen sink in here and never notice it.”

He shook his head at her. “Nice, very nice. Make fun of a poor old man who can’t take it with him.”

“Huh?”

“My dear, surely they covered this in one of you courses. Neither you nor I can take anything of this realm with us,” he looked around the painfully bright room and pursed his mouth. “Not that anything here would tempt me.”

“It’s your house,” Tony pointed out, hand on hip.

“It wasn’t always mine,” Phil admitted reluctantly. “After I moved in here, I left this area of the house alone to help discourage the riff-raff coming in for silly requests. If I made a deal with someone, it needed to be worthwhile.”

“You got this in one of your deals,” and this time her astonishment was all over her face.

“Don’t ask.”

“I’m leaving it for now--we have a deadline, literally. But don’t think I won’t be asking about this later.”

He shot her a look, “Over cocktails, perhaps? At my place? After we’ve had a long, slow--” and this time he ducked, which was good because the Vuitton tote had a motorcycle in it, somewhere.

Phil had wanted to go into his former home to to check on the location of the three fae whom Lt. Azeem had put on the contact list for his detectives. They went to what had been his library so that he could scry and determine their next destination.

“Did you know we would arrive near your home?” Tony asked. “I thought the portal was pretty random about exact location.”

Phil looked up from the large, elaborately carved ebony desk where he was working. He raised one brow, “Before the Geas, it was random, which certainly helped keep traffic between the worlds to a minimum. Now the door reads intent, which is why some beings are stuck permanently in Mundania and why some beings are able to move between the worlds.” He reached over to pull a glass bottle from a shelf behind him and poured the fluid from it into the large, shallow brass bowl in front of him on the table.

“So if you had bad intentions, it wouldn’t have let you through at all? But since we’re investigating a murder, it let you through with a one day pass?”

Phil grinned as he continued to work on the scrying spell in front of him. “Something like that,” he said to Tony without taking his eyes away from the bowl.

“I wonder--”

Phil interrupted her apologetically, “Darling woman, I would love to answer all your questions, but I am a tad bit busy here. Let me just finish this spell first, yes?”

“Oops, sorry,” Tony came closer and looked over his shoulder. He turned his head and looked at her. “Uhm, too close?”

“You are welcome to take over if you like. No? Then, yes, a little elbow room would be useful.”

“Sorry!” Tony backed away and watched as he held his arms out to the left and right sides of the bowl, like a band conductor, and began to move his hands while repeating a few words under his breath. In a few moments he said to her, “First name on the list?”

“Agrat Bat Mahlat,” Tony parsed the name carefully.

“Oh, dear.”

“That’s not promising.”

“What are the other names?”

“Sammeal, just Sammeal, no surname” she paused at his hiss of reaction, then continued, “and Naamah, again, just Naamah. Like rock stars or something.”

“Or something. Lovely,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “ I cannot believe Azeem wants you to try to talk to these three.”

“What’s the deal?”

“How about frying pan, fire, raging volcano?”

Tony sat on the edge of large, ornate chair. “Well, which is the frying pan? How about we work our way down?”

Phil nodded. “Frying pan would be Bat Mahlat. The fire would be Naamah, and the raging volcano, Sammeal.”

“I’m embarrassed to say that I have no clue who these folks are. Should I?”

Phil laughed, “Your father isn’t a rabbi, so I’m not surprised. In Mundania, they were most famous in B.C.E. for crimes against humans. But a couple of truly good holy men managed to send the two ladies through a portal in C.E. 1, around the 300s if I remember correctly.”

“Remember from a textbook?” Tony asked warily.

Phil gave her a look, “This is like a Mesopotamian High School Reunion movie for me, but without the singing, the dancing, or the bitchy cheerleaders. I am quite familiar with all the players in this game.” He paused a moment. “Actually, it may have bitchy cheerleaders after all.” He sighed. “This is disturbing.”

“I think I’m more disturbed to find out that you’ve seen any high school reunion movies, actually.”

“Research. On Naturals. For work, really.”

“Uh huh.” Tony grimaced, “It doesn’t matter where or when, all reunions are a suckfest,. So are they dark fae? And what about Sammeal?”

“Agrat Bat Mahlat and Naamah are dark fae and very much like Lilith, just without the extensive PR that Lilith had in the bad old days. She got blamed for a lot of their acts. She got quite bitter about it. That is probably how she ended up on the Mundane side of the portal at just the wrong time. There was another friend, Eisheth Zenunim. She isn’t on your list?”

Tony glanced down, even though it was a fairly short list. “No, she isn’t here on the list. Maybe she really isn’t here?”

Phil nodded. “She must have been on the other side when the Geas went into effect as well. Odd that I haven’t heard about her. I wonder if she got off the hook for misdeeds? She did do a rather important service that could have been considered a mark on the good side of the Geas checklist.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Perhaps not. Let’s cross that dark fae bridge when we get to it.”

“So Sammeal is the raging volcano? He is also dark fae?”

Phil shook his head, “He should be, but no, he is high in the light fae hierarchy.
I never have understood how he managed that. He is a real troublemaker all around. And he and Lilith were lovers off and on for quite some time.”

“Quite some time meaning...”

“Millennia, off and on.” Tony choked. “More off than on from what I remember, but honestly, I tried to stay out of such situations unless someone was coming to me to make a deal. The problem with immortality is that there is far too much time to brood over imagined slights or actual fights, and when the Beings involved have a lot of power as well?” he slapped his palms together. “A real mess all around.”

Tony sighed. “Hey, the clock is running for your time here. Does time here run like a day back in Mundania?”

“Close. We won’t know how close until we return, but it never varies more than a few hours, at least not now. Before the Geas? It was totally unpredictable.”

“Good to know. Shall we head for Agrat Bat Mahlat? Wow. She may a be a hot mess, but I love her name.”

Phil laughed, throwing out his arms, then nodded and looked back down at the bowl. “Oh dear. I shouldn’t have made that gesture.”

“Why?”

He looked up at her under his brows, “There is a fire sale at Maleficient’s Castle, everything half-price.” He raised his arms and changed gestures, muttering again. “Ah, here we are. That is one location.” He muttered some more, “Another, and,” he finished, “here is the last.” He snorted, “Three locations, three to question. The rule of threes.”

Tony nodded, “It’s a thing, right?”

“Indeed. It is a thing. There is power in numbers. We will follow the order and go to the three names and hope that, in the end, we have something to show for it. Let us go. We will need that motorcycle,” he said to Tony’s back as she headed to the door as quickly as she could.

She turned her head, “I just hope I can keep this stupid robe out of the way.” She turned her head. “I’m going to have a long talk with Glinda when I get back!”

She missed Phil’s reply, and he meant her to miss it, “As will I, my sweet, as will I.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Getting the motorcycle out of the Vuitton tote bag entailed fewer issues than Tony had anticipated. Once she dug around and found the front wheel, she started pulling it out, and weirdly, though it looked full-sized as it came out and the bag didn’t look any different, the machine came out of the bag without ripping it in any way.

Tony sighed as she and Phil dropped the Harley Davidson Switchback to the ground, and she patted the bag. “I would never spend this kind of money on a designer tote, but it would be criminal to shred it,” she pointed out as Phil walked around the bright orange bike, looking it over and tugging on his beard as he admired it. “How the hell does that bag trick work?” As Phil started to reply, an evil grin on his face, she stopped him, “No, no, don’t say it. I know--it’s magic!” and she fluttered her hands in the air as she drew the word out. “I’ll try not to leave an opening a Mack truck could drive through if you’ll refrain from taking those openings when my mouth gets away from me.”

Phil’s grin raised its evil quotient a few more notches, “Oh my dear, I live to see your mouth get away from you. Preferably on me. Anywhere on me will do.”

Tony stared at him from under her brows. “I knew that I couldn’t bring my gun here, but this is the first time I actually regret that rule.”

“Temper, temper,” Phil murmured as he completed another circle around the bike. “Oh my. This is a work of art.” He squatted down to look at the engine more closely.

Tony shook her head, “Really? Stereotype much? Well, we’ll see if you still feel that way after you hear it for a while.” She reached into the tote and brought out two hybrid half helmets. One had pink decals and the other had blue. “Speaking of stereotypes, I wonder which is for who?”

“For whom.”

“Don’t be a grammar nerd. Here.”

“Blue is for girls,” he told her as she held out the wrong helmet.

“Huh?”

“Look at the sizes.”

“Ah, the pink one is for the Big Head.”

The grin came back, “So appropriate. You have no idea.”

“If you’ll quit with the truly cheap quips and get this show on the road, we can get back before the Geas kills you. We can get back to my gun. And then I can shoot you, maybe right in the Big Head.”

“I think you would consider it a work of art and feel it to be a criminal act to do such a thing.”

Phil ignored the raspberry Tony blew and climbed onto the seat. Then he waved his hand. Suddenly his ridiculously expensive jeans and button-down transmuted into black riding leather. Tony, still a little pissed, did her best not to give in to the drool-factor at the sight of him in all that tight, tasty leather. The biker gear could have looked silly, but his wicked face made it seem natural. He looked like a Hell’s Angels bad boy, only with cleaner, better groomed hair and a very modern colored bike. And no tats. Or scars. So basically, he looked like a Hollywood version of a bad boy. As he pulled his hair back and tied it up, she carefully slid onto the seat behind him, getting an eyeful of the way the leather pants hugged his perfect ass. She cleared her throat and told him, “I’m going to keep the robe out of your way and out of the bike engine by tucking it in between us.”

“Coward.”

“What?”

“Have you ever heard the term bundling?”

“Sure--before f-lights, information companies did that with the old Internet, and other, like, programmable information sources. Cell phones and such.”

“You are so young that it makes my face hurt.”

“What? What did you mean?”

He turned his head to look at her,
“I referred to a courtship practice from several centuries ago.”

She winced, “That just lacks all that is sexy.”

“Ah, you’ve heard of it then?”

“No, I mean referring to your life in terms of centuries ago...now, how old are you?” She grinned when he turned his head back around and tossed his hair in a huff.

“Never mind. That robe certainly acts as a chaperone. I can hardly tell you are behind me.” Phil punched the electric starter. The bike roared to sudden life, and Tony gasped and clutched his waist. Luckily, she couldn’t see the smile on his face as he deliberate gunned the bike a little harder than necessary, throwing her against him again. “That’s better, “ he murmured to himself as they rolled down the tree-lined drive.

The ride to Agrat Bat Mahlat’s location passed as quietly as anything could that involved being on a Harley. As they got close to her territory, they tooled up a silvery path that was lined with rosy lights hung between golden poles resembling oversized candelabra. At the end of the silver path on which they rode sat a white marble building, obviously either modeled on the Greek Parthenon or, given the Beings they had come to investigate, the actual model for the one in Mundania.

Phil stopped at the front of the building, and as he cut the engine, they sat in ear-ringing silence.

“Now what?” Tony asked, suddenly reluctant to get off the machine she had been cursing under her breath for miles.

Phil turned his head and asked her, “What do you usually do?”

“Knock on doors, ask questions, take notes--good old-fashioned police work. But look,” she nodded at the building, “no doors.”

Phil smiled at her, and she dropped her arms from his waist as she suddenly realized that she was still holding him tightly. “I’ll knock in my own way,” he told her as she disentangled herself from him and slid off of the bike, careful to keep the robe away from the hot exhaust pipes. “Remember, when we are with her, she’ll see and hear only me as long as you don’t touch or talk to her and as long as I don’t talk to you.”

“Right.”

Phil got off the bike, but he didn’t change back to a suit. He began to walk up the steps to the column but paused and looked back when he realized that he was the only one moving. He lo
oked at Tony and raised a brow.

“Just getting the robe settled,” she lied, mentally kicking herself for watching Phil’s truly world’s class ass instead of her own. Then she made shooing motions, “Go on, go on, right behind you,” she told him as she scooted up the steps after him.

He turned and continued up. When they reached the columns, he stopped and Tony just managed not to knock him down. The columns were wide, and between every other column stood a marble statue. Tony only had time to get a swift impression that each statue was unique when Phil acted. He held out a hand, palm flat and facing the interior of the building, then intoned, “I ask for a favor. May I have speech with Agrat Bat Mahlat, Queen of Illusion, Mother of Kings?”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then one of the marble statues began to move very stiffly from its styliz
ed pose and walk robotically toward them. The statue, that of a young, handsome, naked, and ridiculously well-endowed male, stopped in front of them. 
“Agrat Bat Mahlat asks who calls her from her slumber?” the creature said to them, its voice that of a young man instead of the robotic tones Tony had expected based on its movement.

“Her old friend Mephistopheles comes bearing sad news for her.”

The statue tilted its head, the movement disturbingly alien from a thing that so resembled a human, yet was not. “She will come. You may wait here,” and suddenly, instead of standing in a version of the Parthenon, Tony looked around to find herself in a room that felt like it came from descriptions in The Arabian Nights. The marble floors were strewn with brightly colored pillows arranged around tables that suggested areas to gather in small groups. At the front of the room, two more statues flanked a large golden throne on which sat a regal figure. She turned a graceful arm and gestured at Phil.

“Come forward Mephistopheles, old friend, and tell me your news.”

Phil went forward and bowed in the manner of the Court of the Sun King, the Mundane one, and managed to pull that off despite the tight leather. Tony noticed that Queen Agrat seem to be enjoying the view from the front as much as she had the view from the back, but she kept her thoughts to herself. As Mephistopheles straightened, he looked into the face of one he had known for more than two thousand years. Agrat Bat Mahlat could well have passed for a woman younger than Tony. Her light brown skin showed no wrinkles at all. She smiled at Phil and gestured to her feet, “Sit by me my friend, and tell me why you are here.”

Phil shook one finger at her admonishingly, “Now my dear Agrat, we two have been around the block more than a few hundred years together. My days of sitting at your feet ended in the last epoch.”

Agrat Bat Mahlat pouted, her lips full and luscious. She dipped her head down and looked up at him, her brown eyes framed by long thick lashes, her thick, tightly curling black hair shielding her face in a calculated pose so that she had to toss her head and shake her hair back to see better. Safe in her look-away spelled hair cloak, Tony rolled her eyes as Agrat pouted, “So surly and mean to me. I just want those beautiful lips closer to my--”

He broke in kindly, “My dear, this isn’t really a social call. And you know I am not allowed enough time in this world to come even close to doing justice to the Glory that is your wonderful--”

This time she interrupted him, and her languorous posing and seductive phrasing disappeared, replaced with a brisk, pragmatic demeanor. “Whatever, darling. If you don’t want it, you don’t. What is so important that you risk death to come here to me when all you come here to do is to see me, to talk to me, and nothing more interesting?” She lifted a brow and ran a hand down her body to make sure he caught her full meaning.

Phil resisted the urge to gauge Tony’s reaction to the comment. He could feel Tony’s attraction to him and had hoped she was more than a bit jealous of the Beings who kept making it clear that his past with them went a lot deeper than friendship. And wetter. He worried about that list they were here to pursue. Agrat was the least objectionable of his prior associations in Fairie. However, since he could not change his past, no matter how Tony reacted to it, he had to hope he could move her past anything that pissed her off too much. The thought of losing her interest had become distasteful. Of course, the thought of dying because of a misunderstanding from the Geas was also distasteful. He sighed.

“Queen Agrat, I come to tell you of the death of one of your sister Queens.”

Agrat Bat Mahlat paled and leaned forward, focused entirely on Mephistopheles. “WHO?” she demanded, her voice taking on the echoing roundness that Tony associated with the GOOEN squad. “WHO is dead in that awful land?”

“Lilith.”

Agrat Bat Mahlat leaned back in her throne. Her body sank in on itself as if the news had pulled the air from her lungs. She looked down at her hands, turning the palms up, and suddenly her hands, her entire body began to change. She aged decades before their eyes.

Phil leaned forward and grabbed one of her hands, “Dear Queen, are you all right?”

She turned now rheumy eyes set in sunken sockets to him. “This news makes me want to feel my age. I want to feel the years and believe that she lived a long and happy life.” She shook her head slowly. “A long life, I can attest to. Happy, well, that I do not think that possible. Leave me.”

Tony worked up her courage and spoke to Phil. Despite having not once been acknowledged by the Queen, she couldn’t quite believe that only Phil could see her or hear her. She realized that she couldn’t leave all of the questioning to him. It was her job, not his. “We can’t leave until you ask her a couple of questions. Can you manage that and keep your clothes on? Or are you gonna have to get in a quickie to keep the conversation going?”

Phil just managed to choke back a response. He hoped that was jealously talking, but truly, Agrat was distraught. Agrat heard the choking sound and looked up at Phil. “You have delivered your news. You may leave now,“ she told him more forcefully, and as she said so, the two marble statues to each side, those of twins, large, male, imposingly muscular, and, of course, imposingly naked, came forward as if to move Phil along.

“Tell her it was murder. Ask her when she last saw or talked to the vic.”

Phil held out a hand in supplication to Agrat Bat Mahlat, “Please, I must ask you some questions first. May I?”

She grimaced, then waved the statues back. At that moment, she transformed physically back to the beautiful temptress who had first greeted them, rather than the ancient crone she had become in her grief.

“Geez. She got over that pretty fast.”

Phil kept his face as still as he could. His darling Tony would get them both killed if he didn’t. Agrat Bat Mahlat’s ability to control her legendary temper had not improved very much with age when last he knew her. He had to assume some rules of the universe were a constant.

“Why do you wish to ask me questions?” Agrat asked him.

“Lilith was murdered,” he told her.

Behind him he heard Tony say, “Okay, I can’t be sure because I can’t fully read her reaction, but my gut tells me she didn’t know. Her face didn’t change, but her body flinched.”

Agrat told Phil carefully, “You may ask me three questions.”

“Oh crap. Rule of three. Okay, okay. First, have her describe the last time she spoke to or saw Lilith. What happened and what did they discuss?”

Phil repeated the wording closely, noting that Tony had worked in a statement and then phrased the question as something open-ended to get the most information.