by R. L. King
Damn it, you idiot, tell her you can’t. You’re gonna go talk to Dr. Stone tomorrow. Don’t make this worse! “Uh—sure. Depending on when, though.”
“Tomorrow night? You can take BART up—we’re not far from the station.” She smiled encouragingly. “Up to you, Ethan. I’m not going to force you. But I think you’ll really like it. And really get something out of it.”
He almost said no. He almost got up and walked out. But then he got another look at her—her eyes, her smile, her body—“Sure. Sounds like fun.”
Her smile turned to a grin. “Excellent.” She stroked his arm again, her fingers lingering. “I knew I could count on you, Ethan.” She stood up, and he thought she was going to leave. Instead, she said with a look of mischief and something more, “C’mon. I know a much better place to hang out than here.” Pause: “If you want to.”
“Yeah,” he said, getting up. “I want to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Stone showed up to teach his Monday morning class, but persuaded old Hubbard to take the afternoon one so he’d have more time to work on Adelaide’s house problem. His students all looked surprised; by now everyone had heard what had happened to him on Thursday night, and they were eyeing him like they expected him to fold up and collapse in the middle of the lecture. He assured them that he was alive, well, and fully functional, and pissed them all off by dropping a last-minute pop quiz on them near the end of the hour before reminding them of the finals schedule for the rest of the week.
He waited until lunchtime to call Stefan Kolinsky. He even answered the phone, which was rare. “Ah, yes,” the black mage said. “Come over whenever you like. I’ve unearthed some very interesting information for you. Have you had lunch? There’s a little place over on University I’ve been wanting to try...”
Of course Stone bought lunch, and of course Kolinsky let him. Kolinsky was clearly amused by making him wait for the information, but Stone did nothing to show his impatience. He made small talk and entertained Kolinsky with anecdotes about his Occult Studies students, not even fidgeting when the man decided he simply had to have one more glass of the excellent wine before they left. That was just the way he was, and there was no point in trying to change him.
It wasn’t until they were back at his East Palo Alto shop that he smiled at Stone across his old roll top desk. “Well, Alastair, I must tell you, you gave me quite an interesting research project. As I said, I had to dig back through some reference material that I haven’t looked at for many years. So I thank you for that.”
Stone waited, leaned back in his chair. He was fairly certain at this point that Kolinsky had found something good: the more he stalled, the better the data he’d come up with. Usually.
Kolinsky reached into a cubby on his desk and pulled out a yellowed sheaf of papers, which he spread out on the clear surface in front of him. “Your house was built near the turn of the twentieth century, 1901 to be precise, by a man named Edgar Bonham, Sr.” He glanced up to see if Stone showed any recognition.
“That would be Adelaide’s husband’s father, most likely,” he said. “She mentioned that her husband’s name was Edgar, but even given that he died many years ago, the ages would still be wrong for it to be him.”
Kolinsky nodded, making a note on a small pad. “Edgar Bonham, Sr. was an extremely wealthy man. His main business was steel, but he had his fingers in many pies: railroads, heavy industry, mining, that sort of thing. He was mostly a silent partner, which is why his name isn’t as well-known as some of the other industrial magnates of the era.” He looked through his sheaf of papers, extracted one, and held it out.
Stone took it and examined it. It was a wedding announcement. “Edgar married—Amelia Hastings, two years before the house was completed.”
“Yes.” Kolinsky took back the clipping and returned it to the stack. “Miss Hastings was apparently a rare beauty and quite sought after. Edgar won her hand and took her back with him to his home in Boston, but it quickly became apparent that the Eastern climate didn’t agree with her. She was always frail, but the winters and the pollution were simply too much for her. When she became increasingly more ill and at one point almost died, Edgar set out to build her a magnificent home in a climate more fitting to her constitution.”
Stone nodded. “All right—that explains why they came out here. But so far I’m not getting anything out of the ordinary from this.”
“And you won’t, until many years have passed,” Kolinsky said. He clucked in mock admonishment. “So impatient, Alastair. Let me tell the story. You know I’m a showman at heart.”
“Forgive me,” Stone said. “Take your time, Stefan. I’ve got nowhere to be for a while.”
“Thank you. So—the house was magnificent, yes, and Edgar’s money guaranteed that it was built as quickly as it could be. It was smaller than it is now—they added on to it many times during their marriage. Amelia flourished in the California climate, and by all accounts their time together was a very happy one. They had one child, a son, but it was a difficult birth and Amelia was not able to have any more children after that. She was heartbroken, but she still had Edgar and now she had her son as well, so her life was good.”
He riffled through the stack of papers again and took out a clipping, which he passed to Stone. “A few years after that, however, more tragedy struck for the family.”
Stone examined the clipping. It was an obituary: Edgar Sr. had been the victim of a freak accident at the age of 56, when an open car he was driving was hit by lightning during a storm. He looked up at Kolinsky. “He died young.”
“Yes. And this is where things begin to get interesting.” Once again, he returned the clipping to the stack, then put the stack aside and pulled out a large, leather-bound book. “As I’m sure you’re aware given your line of work, many people—especially upper class people—have been interested in the supernatural over the years. They stage séances, consult mediums and Ouija boards, have their tarot or tea leaves or astrological charts read, all in the service of things like divining their futures, coercing the objects of their affection to reciprocate their feelings, attempting to contact dead loved ones, and so forth.”
Stone nodded. He taught a whole course on the occult in modern America and Europe. “It was mostly fake, though—sometimes a real mage would get down on his or her luck and resort to that sort of thing, but usually it was charlatans trying to make money from gullible people.”
“Indeed,” Kolinsky agreed. “But as you said, not always. Amelia Bonham had always had an interest in the spirit world and the supernatural, from the time she was a child, but everything I can find prior to her husband’s death indicated that she considered it merely a diversion, something to have fun with at parties and use to entertain her friends. There’s no indication that she believed in any of it.”
“That changed after her husband died?” Stone was beginning to get the first faint glimmering of an idea where this was going.
“Yes. She was utterly distraught at Edgar’s death, to the point where her friends and the servants began to think it would drive her mad. But then she found a purpose: she began reaching out to spiritualists and mediums in hope of finding someone who could help her contact her husband from beyond the grave. She refused to admit he was gone, and became obsessed with communicating with him.”
Stone nodded. “Let me guess—she actually managed to find herself someone who wasn’t a charlatan.”
“A woman named Selena Darklight—or at least that was what she called herself; her real name was apparently Mara Jones—contacted Amelia and told her that she might be able to help her.” He looked up at Stone. “Now, I’ll bet you can figure out where this went next.”
“They set up some sort of ritual to attempt to contact Edgar’s spirit?” Stone shrugged. “It wouldn’t work, though, even if this Selena Darklight was the real thing. You can’t contact dead loved ones using magic. It’s not possible.”
“Well,” Kolinsky said w
ith a little nod of agreement, “That is, of course, true. But Amelia didn’t know that—and Selena, despite being a bona fide mage, wasn’t exactly the most ethical person around. That, and she needed money. But you haven’t heard the best part of the whole thing.”
“And that is—?”
Kolinsky opened the leather book to a page he’d marked with a red silk ribbon. “This isn’t widely known at all—this is the part I had to dig through a lot of dusty piles of books to find, so I hope you appreciate it—but it seems that Amelia was one of us as well. Or at least had the potential to be.”
Stone stared. “Amelia was a mage?”
“Yes. And Selena saw that potential in her. Naturally, since she knew that it wasn’t possible to contact Edgar’s spirit per se, it was in her best interest to do all she could to extend the duration of their association as long as she could. And so she told Amelia about her potential and offered to train her. She convinced her that she’d have a much better chance of contacting Edgar directly than through a medium.”
“And hoped that in the meantime she could figure out some way of faking the contact,” Stone added.
“Exactly. Amelia proved to be a very quick and motivated study—naturally she had to keep her activities secret from everyone, but the house was large enough by then that it wasn’t difficult to do so. And as time passed, Amelia became an extremely talented black mage, with a strong specialization in rituals and spirit summoning.”
“Wait,” Stone said. “Don’t tell me, let me guess: Selena figured out a way to summon something up and pass it off as Edgar.”
Kolinsky raised an eyebrow and frowned. “Don’t get ahead of me, Alastair, though you are somewhat close to the truth. Because you see, Selena had plans. For many years she had sought to summon a particular spirit—you might even call it a demon, if you were inclined toward that sort of thing—and to harness it to her will. She was wise enough, though, to know that she didn’t possess sufficient power to do it herself, even though she knew its true name. Training Amelia at last gave her another potent mage to add to the casting. She arranged to have several other, less powerful mages—former students of hers—arrive, and Amelia thought they would at last be joining together to summoning Edgar’s spirit back into our world.”
Stone leaned forward, his gaze locked on Kolinsky.
“Things—didn’t go as well as Selena had hoped,” Kolinsky said. “This was the other part that was very difficult to find, mainly because most of the principals died that night.”
“Indeed...” Stone murmured.
“They attempted the summoning, but somehow lost control of it. My sources don’t say why—perhaps the demon had grown in power since Selena had last touched it, or perhaps someone in the circle lost their nerve. I don’t know.”
“Or perhaps Amelia was brighter than Selena gave her credit for, and realized that the ritual wasn’t what it had been billed as,” Stone said.
Kolinsky nodded. “Or that. But at any rate, they managed to open a gateway to its home, and to bring it over—but Selena couldn’t control it. My sources don’t report specifically what happened to it, but when it was all over, everyone but Amelia had disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Stone frowned. “Back into the demon’s home dimension?”
“Probably. The only one left to tell the tale was Amelia, and she wasn’t talking at the time. When the servants found her, she was wandering the halls of the house, speaking in gibberish. She was sent to an asylum for several years, where she later died. The account I’ve given you comes from one of the nurses there, who wrote down some of the things she said when she became a bit more lucid. The nurse didn’t believe them, of course, but she thought they were entertaining, and perhaps she could write them up as a story someday.”
For a long time, Stone was silent, staring at nothing. Finally, he said, “So—what do you think happened to the demon?”
“The question is—what do you think?” Kolinsky asked. “You’re the one who’s been to the house.”
“I think it’s still there,” he said in a monotone.
“Indeed?”
He nodded. “That’s got to be it. I felt something—very powerful, very malevolent, the first time I was out there, but then the next time it was less so. I think it’s hiding from me.” He got up and began pacing. “Stefan—you know more about summoning rituals than I do. Could it still be there? If Selena’s ritual had gone awry, would it have been easier for them to—contain it somehow—than to send it back?”
“Yes, of course,” Kolinsky said. He swiveled his chair around to watch Stone. “Are you saying that you think they imprisoned it in the house for all these years?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Stone pointed out. “I doubt old Adelaide and Iona are out there summoning demons in between episodes of Murder, She Wrote. If it’s been there all this time, p’raps something’s happened to weaken its prison. Or else it’s just weakening on its own, after all these years.”
Kolinsky pondered. “So what do you propose to do about it, then? I have great respect for your abilities, Alastair, but I don’t think you’re strong enough to send something that powerful back on your own. Especially not when you aren’t at your best due to your injuries.”
“I know,” Stone muttered. “I know. But I have to do something.”
“I think the best you can hope for is to fortify its prison again, long enough for you to buy some time and possibly enlist some help. You’re going to need a powerful circle to send it back, I think. Unless—”
“Unless what?” Stone’s gaze came up quickly.
“Well…” Kolinsky said, “unless you can somehow get hold of its true name. Then you might have a chance, given that it’s already partially imprisoned. You wouldn’t have to fight all of it—merely close the door between the dimensions, and shut the part of it that’s here it back in its own domain with the rest of it.”
Stone shook his head. “And finding that is about as likely as my being crowned King of England. I don’t suppose you have any reference books lying about that might contain that kind of information?”
“I fear not, Your Majesty,” Kolinsky said with a rueful smile. “In any case, I don’t envy you your task, Alastair. I wish you luck and success, but I don’t envy you.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help?” Stone asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Alas, no. My forte is research, not action. I’ll leave that for younger—and braver—mages than I.”
Stone didn’t even try to argue with him, since he’d already known the answer. At least old Stefan was honest. “All right, then: just a couple of other questions, and then I’ll leave you to whatever it is you were doing.”
Kolinsky inclined his head.
“If I’m right—if this thing is imprisoned and its prison is starting to fray, how fast do you think that will happen? And will having a lot of mundane people in proximity to it cause the process to accelerate?”
“Ah,” Kolinsky said, smiling a little. “Of course. I hadn’t put it together until you said that. The charity ball.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I received an invitation. Naturally I declined, but—”
“Well?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I couldn’t say. It’s possible that if it senses all that energy nearby it might redouble its efforts to break through, but it’s also possible that if it wants to break through surreptitiously, it might go quiet while the house is heavily occupied. Or, it might simply continue as before.”
“So in other words, you have no idea.”
“I believe that’s what I said, yes.”
Stone sighed. “All right. Thank you, Stefan. I owe you a big one for this. I’m sure you’ll come up with some creative way to collect, but I’d ask that you wait until after next week. I think I’m going to have plenty to occupy my mind until then.”
“Of course. It was a pleasure, as always.” He made a lit
tle half-bow in his chair.
Stone had made it halfway across the room toward the door when he remembered something. “Oh—Stefan?”
“Yes?”
“One more thing. Sorry, but I’d forgotten about it in the middle of all the rest of this.” He turned and came back over. “I know you’re fairly familiar with the—er—darker side of the magical community. I’m wondering if perhaps you might be able to help me identify some of them.”
Kolinsky tilted his head. “Identify?”
“Long story. There were three of them. They were working together—all of them fairly young. Two men and a woman. I didn’t get a good look at them, but they seemed to know who I was.”
“Well, you are one of the more accomplished practitioners in the area.” Kolinsky said with an arch little smile. “Any particular reason you want to know about them?”
“They tried to kill me Saturday night. And they’re interested in the house. I have no idea how they might have found out about the demon, but I caught them outside with a circle, trying to contact it.”
“Interesting...” Kolinsky thought about it for a moment, then quirked an eyebrow at Stone. “This is, of course, a separate arrangement?”
“Of course.”
Kolinsky pondered. “I don’t know their names, but I think I’ve heard of them. If they’re the same ones you’re referring to, they arrived in the area a couple of years ago. I believe they’re based out of San Francisco, and they spend much of their time there, which is why I don’t have more to give you.” He looked disapproving. “They’re arrogant, hedonistic, lacking in discipline—nothing to speak of separately, but they have an unusual rapport that makes them dangerous when together. I believe they refer to themselves as The Trio, or The Three, or some ridiculous thing like that.”
“The Three.” Ah, youth and their pretentiousness. “Are you sure you don’t have names?”