"Why can't I sit in the front?"
From the driver's seat, Peregrine turned and regarded her partner. "C'mon, Fields—you don't honestly expect a princess to sit in the back, do you?"
That was exactly what Fields expected. Didn't royals usually sit in the back when they were getting their regal butts chauffeured around the place? He was sure he'd seen that on TV. However, given his recent experiences in agency-royalty diplomacy—and the resultant bruising—he was a little hesitant to press the matter. "Well..."
"Plus, do you really want to put Embers back there with the prince? Given the outcome of their last encounter?"
Fields glanced uneasily at the lifeless figure of the caped, chiselled and comatose young man, belted into the seat alongside him. "I guess not. Although I still don't really see why we're bringing him with us."
Peregrine shrugged. "He's evidence. Plus, it just didn't feel right to leave him there."
"Honestly, Eel." From the coveted shotgun position, Embers turned and gave Fields a look of intense disapproval. "Of course we couldn't leave the poor fellow. For shame."
Fields slid a little further over to his own side. "I suspect I could have coped," he muttered. "Listen, how about if I drive then?"
Peregrine's face, usually so open and cheerful, instantly darkened. "Fields, pay very close attention to what I'm about to tell you, because I'm only going to say it once. I drive this car. Nobody else. Nobody. Not now, not ever. Never gonna happen. Never ever. Never has, never will. Ever. Are we clear?"
Briefly taken aback by the seriousness of her expression, it took a moment for Fields to realise this must be another of his strange new partner's attempts at humour. Grinning weakly, he pondered how best to respond. "Tell you what. How about—?"
"Are—we—CLEAR?" Peregrine barked, making him jump. Somehow, her face became even more intimidating.
He shifted uneasily in his seat. "Um, yeah. I guess."
As rapidly as it had disappeared, Peregrine's smile returned. "Excellent. I knew you'd understand, partner. Nothing personal. It's just this car and I go back a ways."
Given the car in question was an azure-blue 1973 Jaguar XJ12, Fields wasn't particularly surprised to hear it. He glanced over at his own stock-standard, agency-issue, steel-grey fridge-mobile, sitting forlornly in Featherstone's driveway. Peregrine had suggested they all ride together, so as to be able to brainstorm the case, and there had been no question—or discussion—as to whose car they would take. "I didn't think the Agency allowed the use of personal cars on the job."
Peregrine turned the ignition, and twelve cylinders of the finest in British engineering rumbled to life. "Just one of the perks of assignment to Section F, Fields. The, ah...unconventional nature of our work inclines head office to give us a little more latitude than the average agent. Plus, from time to time, it pays to have a car that's not quite average, either."
So far unimpressed with his time in his new role, Fields was somewhat encouraged to hear there may actually be some benefits. Not that he had any desire to drive his crappy Toyota on the job, but a man could certainly dream of better things. Things such as the immaculately preserved classic vehicle, upon whose plush leather seats his tenderised nether regions currently reposed.
"Very nice, Peregrine. Must cost you a bomb in fuel, though."
"Yeah, you'd think so," she replied, as they pulled away from the kerb. "It's been a while since I had to fill the old girl up, though."
"Yeah, right," scoffed Fields, as the big V12's acceleration pressed him back into his seat. "Like, what—half an hour?"
"Nah. It's more like seven years, actually,
"Seven years!"
"Yep. About seven." Peregrine turned to wink at her partner, while somehow managing to narrowly miss an oncoming garbage truck, to the accompaniment of delighted squeals from Embers. "Maybe seven and a half."
With a mild degree of a horror, the realisation hit Fields that he'd already been in Section F long enough for his first response to this preposterous statement to be a genuine "huh?" rather than an outraged "hah!"
"Huh?"
"She runs on plutonium, Fields."
"Plutonium!"
"Yep. Long story, but basically there was a case a few years back, where due to a little organisational snafu, we wound up taking an unplanned jaunt into the future. Or maybe it was an alternate Earth with more advanced technology than ours. Dunno, we never quite worked that one out. Anyways, while we were there, I managed to snag a few choice mods for old Pearl here. Lost my partner along the way, but don't worry—he wasn't the greatest partner, so I reckon it was probably a fair trade."
As this little monologue raised more questions than Fields' reeling brain quite knew what to do with, it simply picked one at random. "Pearl?"
Peregrine gave the steering wheel an affectionate pat, as with a throaty growl the Jag accelerated past a school bus, and with Embers giving the schoolchildren a regal wave, veered onto a highway on-ramp. "I named her after a great-aunt of mine. Yep, good old Auntie Pearl—looked like a grand old dame but she was a real goer after a sherry or three. Hair was the same shade of blue, too."
Having regained a modicum of composure, Fields' brain filed that nugget firmly under 'meh' before turning to more pressing issues. "Yeah, but plutonium? Are you telling me this sucker is nuclear?"
"Sure is. But don't worry. The crew in the black-market shop I took her to really seemed to know what they were doing. They crapped on about all this fancy stuff like neutron flux density, fission chamber, isotope enrichment, lethal dose, core meltdown—you know, that kind of thing. I'm sure it's totally safe."
While positive he and Peregrine had very different ideas as to what constituted 'safe', Fields decided to give her the benefit of the doubt on this occasion, primarily because after having driven a nuclear-powered Jag for seven (and a half) years she was clearly neither glowing nor dead. He shook his head.
"Peregrine, when this case is over, you and I really need to have a long talk."
"Ha! As long as there's beer involved, I'm in. Anyway, speaking of the case, what are your thoughts?"
Fields primary thought was he should have listened to his mother and become an optometrist, but he was pretty sure that wasn't what Peregrine meant. "I think some seriously strange shit is going down. And I've got a bad feeling it's far from over."
"Okay—interesting. But not really very helpful. Any theories on what Featherstone is up to?"
With a conscious effort, Fields tried to shut out the utter weirdness—and the associated aches and pains—of the previous few hours, in order to give the investigative part of his brain a chance to actually function.
"Well, it seems pretty clear he's got a thing for princesses. What with the wooing and the flowers and everything. Seems to me he's a little tired of the single life and is using his smarts to do something about it. I think he's auditioning fantasy girls, until he finds the right one. Or at least one who's receptive to a little wooing."
"Yep," agreed Peregrine. "And killing the ones who aren't."
"Killing?" echoed Embers faintly. "Oh dear."
Peregrine gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Don't worry, kiddo. You're with us now. What could possibly go wrong?"
Both Embers and Fields let that one slide.
"Doesn't really explain the witch, though," Peregrine continued. "What's that about?"
"Hmm." Fields rubbed his chin. "Maybe, given his lack of wooing success, Featherstone thought he'd better lower his standards?"
Embers emitted another one of her princess-style snorts. "Oh, Eel. I find it a little difficult to believe the fellow could lower his standards quite that far. Did I not mention the wartiness?"
"Okay, maybe a mistake, then?" suggested Fields. "Presumably pulling hot princesses from other universes isn't easy—maybe the witch was in the vicinity of Featherstone's next extraction and he just kind of, you know—missed? They do tend to hang out together. Or at least they do in stories."
"Yeah, I guess." Peregrine seemed less than convinced. "And I s'pose the same thing could apply with the prince. They hang around with princesses even more than witches do."
"Yeah. Or maybe"—Fields cleared his throat—"Featherstone might kind of like, ah...a bet each way."
"Huh?"
"You know. He might be cross-platform compatible. Rooting for both teams. Rated E for every—"
"Fields, are you trying to say he might be bisexual?"
"Well...yeah."
Peregrine nodded slowly. "Interesting—I like it."
Catching a glimpse of a road-sign, as they tore past at a speed that made him profoundly glad he couldn't see the speedometer, Fields realised they were approaching the outskirts of the city. In this brief moment of calm, he managed to voice the question he'd been meaning to ask ever since he'd gotten into the car. "Where are we going, anyway?"
"Partner, we can theorise as much as we like, but to get the real answers we need to find Featherstone."
"Obviously. But how exactly are we going to do that?"
Even though he could only see her eyes in the rear-view mirror, Fields was already familiar enough with Peregrine's expressions to realise she was grinning. His heart sank.
"Well," she replied, "I know this entity."