The Baroness, Part 71.

Midway down the long, dank, grey, main corridor of Herringcarp Asylum, immediately after the events of UT #357, Part 1, The Hooded Hood and the Council of Archvillains

Elizabeth Zemo hurried to catch up with the cloaked emissary of the Great Houses. “Magister de Soth? Asteroth?”

He slowed his pace, but continued toward the exit from the asylum. “Yes, ‘Lizabeth?” deliberately slurring her name to demonstrate his unconcern with her.

“Just a moment of your time. I require, that is, I would uh, appreciate a small service from you. A favor for a favor, as it were.”

The elder de Soth paused, and turned to address the Baroness in a dismissive tone. “I had heard you are in no situation to provide a favor, and in any case, I shall be gone from this plane long before you can make good on your pledge. Do not keep me from my tasks.”

Elizabeth caught her breath and gave the warlock her own brand of muted contempt. “You should know of all people the value of magical reciprocity, Asteroth. And this request should only be a minor distraction for a few seconds. I need a simple spell, one to ward my properties against a single man.”

“You need not ask my efforts for that, then – unless this trespasser is something more than a man.

“Fine. It’s my grandfather, Baron Otto. I need him banished from all my backup lairs, corporations and laboratories. I cannot succeed while fighting his interference!” she shouted.

“Baron Otto? Banishing the unalive requires extraordinary power, Elizabeth. While the undead require invitations to enter a tenement, the unalive may freely pass. That working would be far beyond the compensation of a favor.” He turned to proceed on his way.

“Wait! But you must . . . .” The Baroness’ mind worked at triple speed. “Asteroth!” she shouted at his retreating form. “There is a better way.”

He halted to dismiss her, but before he could begin, Elizabeth blurted, “An aversion spell. Don’t block him, just make him nauseous or something.”

The wizard’s lips twisted, first in contemplation, and then in evil joy. A chill ran up and down the hallway. “To plague Baron Otto, I will gladly forego payment. . But a spell against the unalive requires focus materials. Have you some toenail clippings, perhaps? A lock of hair? His soiled underwear would be particularly efficacious.” The master warlock bared his teeth in a macabre approximation of a grin.

“I see we have been thinking along the same lines. Fortunately, I have kept a few such items at ITC. Let me make a call, and I will have them transported to your home by the time you return.”

“Very well, Your Excellency. I will be pleased to assist you. And, if I may, I may extend the aversion spell beyond your own properties.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t affect me and mine, de Soth.”

A few hours later, in Parody Plaza

Baron Ottokar Zemo had decided that a hot coffee and some cake would relieve the sting of the day’s catastrophes and give him the tranquility to consider whose dungeon he would select to squat in while his granddaughter found him a new residence. So, he had repaired to the Bean and Donut Coffee Shop for coffee and pastry, and had just received his order from Violet, the Part-Time Cat and part-time waitress. His first sip of coffee went down well, but the second seemed a little off. He nibbled the Danish pastry to forget about the coffee for a moment. Instead, his stomach gave off a growl, and his bowels suddenly began to churn. A pale chartreuse color suffused his normally cadaverous face.

He raised his hand to summon the waitress for a scolding, but then a wave of nausea swept up from his stomach and threatened Chagrined, he rose unsteadily from the table and stumbled as fast as he could out the door, while Violet stared at the retreating aristocrat who had just stiffed her for the check.

Half a block away, the Baron held onto a lamppost like a drunkard after a night of gin and beer, and gasped as the nausea subsided. He had left his overcoat in the coffee shop, but had a strange reluctance to retrieve it. “Quatsch,” he muttered. “I can get another one.” As he steadied and let loose of the lamppost, a stray drop of rain struck his neck. “Hmmph. I’d better find a dungeon. Perhaps Mahssus the troll will host me.”

The Baron reached into his pocket to retrieve his telephone and message Ueber-Dueber, the car service – and then he realized that the phone was in his overcoat. Sighing (to the extent the unalive can do so), he trudged back towards the Bean and Donut. Three doors away, a surge of alimentary unrest washed over him. Puzzled, the Baron halted, looked around for any noisome trash and found none, and decided to skip the coffee shop and his overcoat until the morrow. Instead, checking to confirm his wallet was still in his breast pocket, he began looking for cabs. The rain began pattering down.

Three hours later, the Baron was soaked to the skin, mud-spattered, and somewhat disoriented as he staggered up the hill to Pierce Heights. He had never seen Mahsuss the troll; the moment he stepped up to the doorway his vitals began somersaults. He had cabbed to the Ritz-Parody Hotel, where Ozem Galactic maintained a pied-a-terre, and two minutes after entering the lobby he had had to rush to the restroom, where he attempted to regurgitate the entirely incorporeal contents of his stomach. No matter where he approached, the moment he arrived at any possible refuge his body informed him quite firmly that it could not bear to remain there. In a moment of fevered clarity, it seemed to him that he was recapitulating the medieval canard of the Wandering Jew.

In desperation, he rang the bell at the Wooster Mansion, forcing down his revulsion with the last of his willpower. The maid opened the door a crack, and chided him, “We don’t take in the homeless here. Try the Zero Street Shelter.”

“Urggh. It’s me, Baaa –Baron Otto. Arrk.”

“You’re Baron Otto? Wait here, I’ll fetch the mistress.”

The Baron stood at the doorway, where a defective gutter above sluiced chilly water down upon him, making him look even more like a drowned, gray rat.

The front door opened. “Otto! Darling! I told you never to come here. What has happened to you?” Agnes Wooster stepped forward to embrace her lover, and then relented. She had no love for the damp.

“Agnes,. Liebchen, you are my only refuge. A terrible spell has been cast upon me. I can rest nowhere, eat nowhere, pause nowhere, without a horrible sickness consuming me. You must take me in.”

“Otto, my only love, we’ll find a place for you somewhere, even if not here. Come in for a moment and get dry.” The matriarch of the Wooster clan steeled herself and gave the sopping-wet Baron a peck on the cheek. He brightened for a moment and stepped into the foyer.

The Baron went rigid for a moment, expecting another crescendo of unease. But nothing changed. He would have wept with relief, save that an officer would never betray such weakness. He did manage a small appreciation. “Thank you, my edelweiss. It seems love can avert even the most evil of spells.”

Agnes Wooster began to respond, and then she stared at her paramour. “Otto, sweetest. Is it a problem now that, that you seem to be becoming, well, transparent?”

The Baron involuntarily glanced at the mirror in the foyer, which did not show his figure. Nothing wrong there. Then he stared at his right hand. The leather glove was now a mere ghostly wrapping, his quasi-flesh was fading, and the outline of his ectoplasmic bones was fading as well. “Mein Gott! I spoke too soon!”

Playing the part of Baroness Elizabeth Zemo