Balance of Power: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 25)

by R. L. King

  “Not exactly. It’s possible to hide magic, of course. Remember the tome Deirdre had? As powerful as it was, the reason nobody discovered it for all those years was because it was stored in a container that blocked its aura. Those are rare, but they exist. And…” he added more slowly, “…I know there are alchemical ways to temporarily block magic.” He didn’t want to go into what had happened with his grandmother in Windermere, since even Verity didn’t know all the details, but he shivered a little at the memory.

  “Okay,” Jason said, “then how is this different?”

  “Because it wasn’t a container. It was an object that wasn’t detectable as any kind of magic. If I hadn’t accidentally brought those other items close enough for it to interfere with them, I’d never have noticed it.”

  “So, you’re saying as long as it wasn’t near any magic items, it just looked like any other mundane thing?” Amber asked.

  “Yes, apparently. Not near any magic items and also not near anyone who could detect magic items. I want to do a bit more research into Mr. Hiram Drummond’s history, but I’ll bet my house he was nothing but a wealthy, eccentric mundane collector.” He glanced at Jason, who was suddenly looking troubled. “Problem? You’re not going to go all law-enforcement on me for nicking it, are you?”

  “No.” He appeared to be trying to get his mind around something. “But Al…doesn’t it bother you that your colleague got hurt because that thing wasn’t where it was supposed to be?”

  “No, because I don’t think it would have mattered. The thief didn’t have any idea the item was missing when he struck Mr. Greene. I think the only thing that would have happened differently if I hadn’t taken it was that he’d have made off with it successfully. If he knew what he was looking for, it was in plain view.”

  “I guess…” Jason didn’t sound convinced, but he finally nodded. “Yeah. I see what you’re saying, and you’re probably right. So…now what? Are you going to tell the police you have the item?”

  “Of course not. I told you—I need to do a lot more study, both of the thing itself and its history. It’s quite obvious to me that it’s not the only component of whatever this is.”

  “How do you know that?” Verity asked.

  “Because of the two holes in the bottom. I suspect it’s meant to join up with at least one other thing, though I haven’t any idea what it might be.” He pulled out his phone again and showed them the photos he’d snapped.

  “Yeah, I see what you mean,” Amber said. “It looks like it’s supposed to fit onto something else. But you didn’t see anything like that with the rest of the stuff?”

  “No, but as I said, I didn’t do a thorough search.”

  “Where’s the pyramid now?” Verity finished her wine and poured another glass. “Is it at your house?”

  “It’s in Desmond’s vault in Caventhorne. Easy enough to get to when I want to look at it, but I don’t want to take chances on anyone trying to break in to the house here and steal it.”

  “They wouldn’t have much success, would they?” Amber asked. “Isn’t your house warded all to hell?”

  “Well…yes.”

  “So isn’t it kind of a pain to have to go down to Sunnyvale every time you want to look at it?”

  Stone mentally kicked himself again. By this point, he’d fully acclimated to his ley-line travel method, but he had to keep reminding himself that he hadn’t shared the knowledge with his friends. As far as they knew, he still needed to use the portal at A Passage to India when he wanted to return to England. “It is, but it’s safer there than it would be here. Plus, nobody would suspect it’s there.”

  “Nobody would suspect you have it, either, right?” Amber asked. “I mean, they found Greene inside the room, but that wouldn’t necessarily lead them to you.”

  “Likely not.” A slight chill rippled through Stone as he remembered another detail Detective Bertola had told him. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Verity narrowed her eyes.

  “There was a log sheet outside the storeroom. Kelso made me sign in before I entered. But when they found Greene injured, the log was missing.”

  “So the thief knows who else was in there,” Amber said. “That’s not good.”

  “Well…my signature isn’t exactly legible, so they wouldn’t know right away. They—oh, bloody hell.”

  “What?”

  “Greene told me somebody else was in there between the time I left and he arrived. Dr. Inouye from the Anthropology department. And her signature isn’t illegible.”

  Jason frowned. “You don’t think the thief would think she took it, do you?”

  “No idea. Obviously he didn’t find it, because it wasn’t there. The question is, does he attribute his failure to not looking hard enough, or does he think someone else took it?”

  “Or maybe that it was never there in the first place,” Amber said.

  “Yeah,” Verity agreed. “I guess it’s possible he might suspect Mr. Drummond’s relatives removed it before sending the rest of the stuff over.”

  “I’m wondering about something, though,” Jason mused. His gaze was unfocused, fixed somewhere far away.

  “What?” Stone asked.

  “Well…how did the guy know about the thing in the first place?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said this Drummond guy was an old collector, right? So he probably had this stuff stored away for a long time?”

  “Yes…I believe so.”

  Jason drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table. “So why now? Why would somebody go after it now, instead of when Drummond still had it? You said you think he was a mundane, right?”

  “I’m not certain, but I strongly suspect he was. Otherwise, I’d have likely at least heard of him in passing.” Stone had no idea where his friend was going, but Jason had good instincts. “What are you getting at?”

  “I think I see what you mean,” Verity said eagerly. “You think if the guy was a mundane, and the thief easily broke into the locked and guarded storeroom without a trace, why didn’t he just break into wherever Drummond was storing the stuff?”

  “Yes,” Amber added. “If you’re right and the only reason Greene got hurt was because the guy was surprised he was in there at all, it sounded like he wanted to get in and out of the storeroom with this pyramid thing without anybody knowing. Right?”

  “Yes…” Stone wasn’t used to feeling like the slow end of the discussion, but he still wasn’t following where they all seemed to be going.

  “So he must have known—or strongly suspected—it was in there,” Jason said. “How would that have been possible? You said hardly anybody knew about the collection being stored on campus, right, Al?”

  “Yes. Dr. Martinez said that aside from a few of us from the department, nobody knew anything about it. Not because it was particularly valuable, but mostly because not many people would care.”

  “What about the people who delivered it?” Verity asked.

  Stone shrugged. “Maybe—but I’m sure the collection was boxed up. Delivery people don’t generally get detailed information about what’s in the boxes they deliver. The manifest probably just said ‘art objects’ or something.”

  “Then how would the thief have…wait!” Jason flashed a sudden, triumphant grin. “You said they’re auctioning the stuff in a couple weeks, right?”

  “Up in San Francisco, yes.”

  “So somebody at the auction place had to have a list of the items, right? They must have catalogued them already. Did the stuff you saw have little numbered tags on them?”

  His words energized Stone so much that he didn’t even feel embarrassed it had taken him this long to catch on. “Yes, they did! That’s got to be it! I saw the tags but didn’t think anything of them at the time, but now I’m sure you’re right. They’d have needed time to create the catalog and make it available to the people doing the bidding, which means the auction people must have gone through the collection
before it was stored at the University.”

  “So you think somebody inside the auction organization might be in on this?” Verity asked.

  “Possibly. Serious collectors—both mundane and magical—have been known to pay key people to slip them information about items coming up for sale. Antique dealers, auction personnel…it’s not at all uncommon, and for the most part it’s not even illegal. Why would anyone care about someone getting a heads-up about an object coming up for sale? In most cases, the collector simply shows up at the auction or sends an assistant, and they buy the thing legitimately.”

  “So why didn’t they do that this time?” Idly, Verity began using magic to gather the empty plates into a stack in the middle of the table.

  “Maybe they didn’t want anybody to know they were interested in that specific item,” Amber said. “My guess is if they pay these people to watch auctions, they’re not looking for anything specific—just anything that might be interesting. The person they paid probably didn’t even know what they were looking for, but just passed along the catalog for early peek.”

  “You could be right,” Stone said. “If the item is particularly valuable or interesting to mages, the thief or whoever hired him wouldn’t want to take the chance of any other mages finding out. Especially since a number of powerful mages are also quite wealthy, which could lead to a bidding war. They wouldn’t want that—not only because they wouldn’t want to have to pay extra, but because it’s bound to raise attention in the wrong places.”

  “But wait a minute,” Amber said, eyes narrowed as she rubbed her chin. “Now you’re saying there might be multiple mages interested in this thing? That doesn’t make sense. If it’s been buried in some guy’s collection for years, are you saying there’s more than one mage actively keeping an eye out for it? And yet you’ve never even heard of it?”

  “That’s a good point.” Some of Stone’s ardor dimmed at her words. “And I haven’t heard of it. There are a few lost magical items that every powerful mage knows about, and most of us are at least passingly keeping an eye out for them even though they probably don’t exist anymore. But I’ve never heard even a whisper about this one. I’m planning to check with Eddie, to see if he remembers anything from the library, and Stefan and Madame Huan. But you’re right. So why—” He stabbed a finger up as a snatch of conversation came back to him. “Hold on! Back when Martinez first told us about the collection and the auction, she mentioned they’d put out an online catalog!” Whirling on Jason, he said, “May I borrow your laptop?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

  “Why not?”

  Jason shook his head. “Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but I’ve been learning a lot from Gina about the internet and how easy it is to trace stuff if you’re not careful. If somebody is watching this pyramid thing—and especially now, since it’s missing—it’s possible they might have somebody keeping an eye on the traffic to the auction site. You know, checking to see who might be interested in it. Even the cops, possibly, if they figure out what’s missing.”

  Stone frowned. “You’re having me on. They can do that?”

  “Sure they can,” Amber said. “Don’t know if they actually are, of course, but the authorities can definitely keep an eye on which IP addresses show up in searches for stuff they’re interested in.”

  Stone felt like he knew now how his mundane friends must feel when he started tossing around specialized magical terms. “IP address?”

  Jason chuckled. “Think of it as an identifier for something connected to the internet. If we do a search from here and somebody’s watching, they’ll know it was us. And since you and I are known to be associates, that could lead to some uncomfortable questions.”

  “Damn.” Stone sighed. “So is there a way around it?”

  “Sure. But you’ll have to wait till tomorrow. I can ask Gina to look into it. She’s got all kinds of ways to spoof that stuff. Come by the office and we’ll do it then.”

  Stone didn’t want to wait, but he also didn’t want the mundane authorities deciding he was a person of interest in the theft—especially since they weren’t even convinced yet that there’d been a theft.

  “All right,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t have any classes tomorrow, so we can get started right away, if you’re willing. In the meantime, I’ll investigate some other angles. If you’ll forgive me, I think I want to get started on this. Time may be of the essence. Thank you for a lovely dinner, all of you.”

  Verity grinned, making a shooing motion. “Go. We’re used to you by now.”

  7

  On his drive home, Stone made a mental list of his next steps. There were a lot of them. He wished Kolinsky could have taught him time travel in addition to ley-line travel, because it would make the whole thing easier if he could do them all at once.

  Since he couldn’t do them all at once, he’d need to prioritize each one based on three factors: how time-sensitive it was, how suspicious he’d look if he did it personally, and whether he could delegate it to someone else. By the time he reached Encantada, his mental list consisted of six items:

  Talk to Kelso

  Talk to Eddie and Ward about the pyramid and any other items potentially connected to it

  Talk to Kolinsky (and/or Madame Huan?) about same

  Check the online auction catalog

  Look into Hiram Drummond’s history

  Adjust the wards around the house in case the thief decides to break in

  He debated talking to Leo Blum, but put that aside for the moment. He didn’t think Blum could get him anything he didn’t already have, and didn’t want to drag him into it unless it became necessary.

  It was only ten p.m. and he wasn’t tired in the slightest. He patted Raider on the head as he breezed by, his mind far away, then paused in the living room to send a text to Eddie. He didn’t expect an answer, and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get one. The librarian was a night owl, but it was six a.m. in London and he’d no doubt be asleep by now.

  Brimming with restless energy and nowhere to spend it, Stone decided to update the wards around the house now. His place had enough land around it, not to mention being surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, that it would be unlikely anybody would see him poking around the perimeter this late. He headed back outside, ignoring Raider’s quizzical look.

  Normally, Stone protected the house with relatively simple wards—far simpler than the potent ones surrounding his Surrey house, the Desmond house in London, and Caventhorne. He was proud of the design, though: they incorporated a version of the disregarding spell to make them unobtrusive, so even other mages would need to be looking for them specifically in order to notice them. He’d added a component to let him know if anyone passed any of the house’s thresholds, but as yet hadn’t supplemented it to take any action against potential housebreakers. That was his job, once informed of their presence. Besides, even if they got inside, they’d never get into his workroom or his library. Mundanes wouldn’t even see them, let alone know they existed.

  But if the mage who’d broken into the storeroom, and who had the log list, figured out he’d been in there before them, it was possible they might think he’d taken it. If they knew who he was, they might not take the chance of trying to break in to his place, but not everybody in the magical world knew who he was.

  After a few moments’ thought and a bit more pacing, he finally decided on the simple approach. He hurried upstairs to his attic workroom to gather components, then spent the next couple hours adjusting the threshold wards to not only inform him if anyone broke in, but to implant a subtle mental compulsion to stay in the area. It probably wouldn’t hold for too long, but it didn’t need to. It only needed to hold long enough for Stone to return to the house and catch them. He could easily have made the ward more unforgiving—everything from rendering the thief unconscious to killing them—but he didn’t want to go there. Yet, anyway. Whatever this pyramid thing was, he
had no proof yet that it was anything worth hurting anyone else over.

  Even after Calanar, wards still tired Stone. Creating and modifying them wasn’t as much a question of raw power as mental horsepower, and his time on Calanar hadn’t upgraded his brain. It was just as well, he supposed, since he couldn’t do anything else tonight.

  But still, when he crawled into bed with Raider, his spinning thoughts made it hard to fall asleep.

  When his phone buzzed, it was still dark. He fumbled for it, yawning. Three a.m.

  His mind cleared instantly when he saw the text’s sender.

  Sorry, slept in a bit. What’s so important?

  Eddie. Of course—it was eleven where he was. Can I ring you?

  Figured you would.

  Stone punched his number, sitting on the edge of the bed. Raider instantly curled up next to him as if to say That’s far enough, human.

  Eddie answered on the first ring. “Isn’t it three in the mornin’ there?”

  “It is.”

  “Don’t tell me—you’ve got yerself a new puzzle.”

  Stone chuckled. “Does it always have to be a puzzle?”

  “With you? It’s a damn good bet.”

  “Well, you’d win that bet. Do you have a few minutes? This one will take some time.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just potterin’ around at the Library, gatherin’ some information for a few folks from my backlog. Easy stuff. Can do it in my sleep.”

  Stone gave Eddie the whole story of the collection and the break-in. He wanted to get up and pace, but Raider had moved his head onto his leg and was purring contentedly. Cats made their own gravity, so he stayed put.

  “Blimey,” Eddie said with a soft whistle. “That’s…quite a story. Is your friend gonna be all right?”

  “He should be, yes. He took a nasty knock, but he’s young and strong.”

  “That’s good, at least. So what do you want from me?”

  “A couple of things, if you wouldn’t mind. First, do you remember ever seeing anything about this object?”