by R. L. King
“Not yet,” Charles yelled back. For all his tough appearance, he didn’t seem to be enjoying the motorcycle ride very much, his hands clenched in death-grips on the grab rail behind the seat. “Like I said, I was gonna contact her when the heat died down. I didn’t want to lead the cops straight to her.”
Jason nodded and turned his attention back to the freeway. By his reckoning they’d be on it for about twenty minutes if the traffic cooperated. He forced himself to keep his mind on the road and not think about his upcoming reunion with Verity and what he’d say to her.
Even so, he was so focused on what was up ahead that he almost missed the headlights bearing down on them fast. He moved over to the right lane to let the car pass.
It moved over too, and the lights got bigger. It wasn’t slowing down. “Shit,” he growled.
“What?” Charles was so busy holding on for dear life that he apparently wasn’t paying much attention to their surroundings. That, and he’d put his dark sunglasses back on, which meant he probably wasn’t seeing much anyway.
“Hang on tight!” Jason gave him a couple of seconds to firm up his grip, then dropped the bike down a gear and opened the throttle. He didn’t like pushing the Harley this far—Hogs were built more for cruising than racing, and he knew a couple of his jury-rigs wouldn’t survive sustained high speeds, but he didn’t really have a choice. He scanned the road ahead for an exit, but he didn’t see one coming up.
“What the hell are you doing?” Charles screamed in his ear. “Tryin’ to get us killed?” But at that point the fast-approaching car reached them and whipped over a lane, accelerating to pull up even with them. “Holy shit!”
Jason hunched down low over the bars and risked a quick glance to the side. Two figures hung out of the passenger-side windows of a battered old sedan, laughing and shrieking. One of them flung something at the bike, but fortunately his aim was bad and he missed. The car veered alarmingly toward Jason’s lane.
“Hang on!” Jason yelled. “This might get ugly fast!” Uttering a quick prayer to whatever gods looked after insane motorcyclists, he jerked the bars to the side, barely avoiding the sedan as it straddled the lane marker, half in Jason’s lane and half in its own.
“Faster!” Charles cried.
“This is as fast as we got!” Jason protested. He was almost on the shoulder now, but one quick look at all the debris there told him he didn’t want to stay there long. The last thing he needed now was to blow a tire—if that happened at this speed they’d be picking pieces of him and Charles up off the freeway in a baggie.
The guy in the back seat of the sedan shrieked again, a high keening war-whoop, and chucked something else at the Harley. This time it connected—an empty beer bottle smacked into Charles’ upper arm. His grip faltered for a moment, but he quickly clamped back down and leaned into Jason’s back. “Those guys are DMW!” he yelled. “Bad news!”
“Ya think?” Jason screamed back. He edged the bike back over into the lane, then risked another burst of speed to pull ahead of the sedan. If there wasn’t an exit soon, they were—
It had almost flashed by before he saw it: an open roadway to the right. The exit sign, normally reflective, had been spray-painted over so he didn’t see it in time, but that didn’t matter. He was going on sheer instinct now. He flung the bike to the right at the last possible moment, missing the guardrail by mere inches and sending a plume of dirt and sand flying up behind them. The car, unable to react as fast, shot past the turnoff. Jason could hear them screaming obscenities as they disappeared up the road.
He wanted to stop the bike right there on the exit, but he didn’t. Instead, he forced himself to keep going, hung a right onto the first available road and then down about another mile before he finally slowed and let the Harley roll to a stop. He switched off the headlight, but kept the bike running, just in case. He could feel Charles’ labored breathing behind him. “You okay?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Y-yeah.” Charles forced out between breaths. “Holy shit. Just—holy shit.”
“What the hell was that?” Jason demanded. “You guys always get crazy people tryin’ to run you off the road up here?”
Charles took a few more gasping breaths before answering, pulling off his shades and mopping his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. “None of the roads are safe anymore,” he said. “Especially at night. They don’t usually hit the freeways, but it happens. The DMW—Dead Men Walking. They fuck with people just ’cause they can—even the cops are scared of ’em. They do what they can, but—” he spread his arms in a gesture of futility. “Fact of life, man. You get used to it when you live around here.”
“So you don’t think they were after us, then? Specifically?” Jason twisted in the saddle so he could meet Charles’s eyes.
“I doubt it. They’re equal opportunity assholes. They hassle anybody they think they can get away with.”
Oddly, that reassured Jason a bit. At least it didn’t look like the car was going to take the next exit and turn around to try to find them. “So we just got lucky, is what you’re sayin’.”
“If you say so.” Charles took a deep breath. “You don’t have a car, do you? Somethin’ with four wheels?”
Jason’s answering smile was a little manic. “Sorry, man, what you see is what you get.”
“I was afraid of that.” He let the breath out slowly. “I don’t mind admittin’ I came close to needing a change of drawers there for a minute.”
“You and me both.” Jason looked around, trying to find a street sign. This area was outside what he’d memorized on his maps. “Do you know where we are?”
“Yeah. We’re actually not too far now. I can get us there from here.”
“But not on the freeway.”
Charles shook his head vehemently. “Man, you suggest getting back on that freeway again, and I’m walkin’ home. It’s safer.”
“No problem. We’ll stick to city streets. Let’s get going.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The day after he finished Kolinsky’s wards, Stone’s classes kept him busy until mid-afternoon, and a student stopping by his office as he was preparing to leave meant it was nearly five o’clock by the time he left Palo Alto. Later than he’d wanted to start, but it was either go now or wait until tomorrow. He tossed his map in the front seat and set off toward Mountain View.
He’d gotten the address of the New Horizons halfway house from the telephone book earlier in the day. It was located in a working-class residential neighborhood off Middlefield Road, about halfway up a street lined with old houses that were mostly well-kept, but in need of repair. The house itself was a two-story Victorian, sturdy but unremarkable. He parked across the street, observing the place for a few moments. Aside from a teenage boy lounging on the front porch smoking a cigarette, he didn’t see anyone else around.
Leaning back in his seat, he reached out with his magical senses. He didn’t expect to notice much, if anything—even if there were faint traces he likely wouldn’t be able to spot them without getting closer, but he didn’t want to arouse any suspicions unnecessarily.
It hit him like a wall, and this time it was unmistakable. He stiffened.
Black magic.
Strong, and recent. Something bad had gone down in that house, and it had to have been within the last couple of days to be that strong.
Was it connected with the disappearance of Verity Thayer, or had he discovered something else going on at the house?
Either way, he’d need more information. Getting out of the car, he cast a simple little spell that made him look nondescript. He didn’t want to use much magic right now—putting up wards was tiring work, and even a night’s sleep hadn’t completely alleviated his fatigue from redoing Kolinsky’s yesterday—but with that kind of black magic around, he didn’t want to be recognized, either. He crossed the street, looking around as if trying to find something.
The kid on the front steps, an athletic-looking boy in a hoode
d sweatshirt and jeans, watched him as he approached, but said nothing. He stubbed out the cigarette.
Stone stopped at the foot of the steps. “Is this New Horizons?”
The kid nodded. “Yeah.”
“Mind if I ask you a couple of questions? I won’t get you in trouble for talking to me, will I?”
He snorted. “Who the fuck cares? C’mon.” He descended the steps and motioned Stone around the corner of the house. “Whaddya want?”
Stone was pleased he’d pegged the boy correctly: rebellious and bored. The suggestion that he might be in trouble for talking to strangers had made him more willing to do just that. “Listen—I’m looking for a friend who lives here. Her name is Verity Thayer. Do you know her?”
The kid frowned. “Yeah. She’s not here, though. They say she took off.”
“Took off?”
“Ran away or somethin’. Couple of days ago.” He looked troubled, like he didn’t believe it.
“Do you think that’s what she did?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe. You’re the second guy who’s asked about her today. You a cop?”
“No. As I said, just a friend. You say someone else was here, too?” That was unexpected. “Do you know who he was?”
“I didn’t really hear. I think he might be her brother or cousin or somethin’. Some kinda relative. That’s what the kid who saw him said.”
“When was this?”
“Earlier today. I dunno. He talked to Delancie and Charles. Maybe you could talk to one of them about it. I’d go for Charles. Delancie’s got a stick up his ass. And anyway, Charles and V were friends, I think.”
“Who’s Charles?”
“He’s one of the workers here. One of the few who’s not a prick.”
Stone nodded. If he could manage to talk to someone who worked here, maybe he could get some answers. “Do you think you could ask him to come out and talk to me?”
“He’s not here. I think he’s off shift for the day. Maybe come back tomorrow.” He glanced around. “Look, I gotta get back in before they miss me. That all?”
“No chance of getting inside to talk to anyone, I suppose?”
“Nah. Nobody gets in who isn’t an authorized visitor. You gotta sign a log and stuff.”
Stone pondered. For now, it wasn’t worth trying to subvert the system to get inside, but it might come to that if he couldn’t find anyone else willing to talk to him. “You don’t know where this Charles lives, do you?”
The kid looked at him like he was crazy. “Dude, they don’t tell us shit like that.”
“Do you at least know his last name?”
“Yeah, it’s Davis. But why not just come back tomorrow?”
Stone saw the boy was starting to get suspicious, so he nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s best. Thank you for your help.”
“Yeah, sure.” As Stone turned to go, he added, “Hey, dude?”
“Yes?”
“You—won’t tell ’em you saw me smoking, right? If you come back?”
Perhaps the boy wasn’t quite as rebellious as he’d thought. “Of course not,” he said. “I didn’t see a thing. And you won’t tell them I was here?”
The boy grinned. “Thanks, man. Nah, I won’t tell either. I hope you find V. She’s a good chick. Messed up, but cool. I hope nothin’ bad happened to her.”
“So do I,” Stone said.
Back in his car again, Stone considered his options and let his mind spin its wheels over the signs of black magic he’d encountered. They troubled him, mainly for how strong they’d been. Every bit of spellcasting left residue behind that another mage could identify if he or she looked for it, but it faded quickly. A little spell like he’d cast over himself back at New Horizons would already be fading minutes later, while most standard castings lingered for a couple of hours before the magical energy began to dissipate.
The exceptions were rituals, and anything that caused suffering or death. In both of those cases, the energy remained for much longer. If the ritual had been large enough or the human effect potent enough, the leftovers from those kinds of spells could last for weeks or longer, growing harder to locate over time, until they finally faded to nothing. When dealing with a location that was the site of long-term suffering, like a concentration camp or a mass murder, sometimes the remnants never completely went away, and became part of the area’s aura. Those kinds of traces were so strong that they were sometimes detectable even by sensitive mundanes, though usually only in the form of a heightened uneasiness or depression.
In the case of New Horizons, Stone was reasonably sure that whatever had caused the traces had happened recently—but he was also troubled, because it felt as if it might not have been an isolated incident. It was hard to separate more recent and powerful residue from the ongoing type, and he hadn’t had time to do a detailed analysis, but he thought perhaps whatever had happened to cause the latest reading might have just been the most recent in a series.
He wondered if Verity Thayer had really run away as the boy had reported, or if she had simply disappeared, and that was the cover story that they were telling. If the black-magic traces had been caused by her murder, then he’d have no way to prove it. It wasn’t exactly something he could take to the police. Not without being locked up himself, probably in a nice room with padded walls and soft music.
He was heading back to Palo Alto without really thinking about it; in absence of any other ideas, he figured he’d head home, grab a quick dinner, and then see if he could figure out how to reach Charles Davis. Maybe if he did, Davis could tell him about the other man who was looking for Verity. Was he a relative? If he was, then perhaps Stone could locate him and find out if Verity truly was the daughter of the woman he’d known all those years ago. He still thought it was a coincidence, but the name “Verity Thayer” was unusual enough that he was willing to take a chance on it. If it didn’t pan out, he’d figure out a way to anonymously make the police aware of the disappearances. They probably wouldn’t do anything about them, but at least he wouldn’t feel guilty about putting things together and keeping them to himself.
By the time he arrived home through the snarled traffic, it was after six p.m. Mrs. Olivera, his housekeeper, had left his dinner in the refrigerator—something he could pop in the microwave so as not to tax his nonexistent cooking skills—and he sat at the breakfast bar and picked at it while looking through the paper for new murders (he didn’t find any) and then consulted the phone book to see if he could find Charles Davis. He hoped the man wasn’t unlisted.
He found three Charles Davises in the area, along with five more “C. Davis” entries. Starting to feel like this was becoming an obsession, he put his plate in the sink and began calling the numbers.
He used the same pitch on all of those who answered: affecting an American accent, he stated that he was trying to locate an old friend who worked at New Horizons. Not the best cover story, but he wasn’t coming up with anything better so he went with it.
Of the eight, two didn’t answer, and four of them were obviously not the man he was seeking. He was beginning to wonder if the one he was looking for was unlisted, or perhaps lived somewhere outside the phone directory’s coverage area, when a young male voice answered. “Hello?”
“Yes, may I speak with Mr. Charles Davis, please?”
“He ain’t here right now.”
“Ah. Yes. Well, you might be able to help me. I’m an old friend of his. I was in the area, and thought I’d see if he wanted to have a beer. Does he still work at a place called…Near Horizons, or something like that?”
“New Horizons. Yeah. But like I said, he ain’t here. Said he was gonna go meet somebody, so I don’t know when he’ll be back. You want me to give him a message?”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll try back later. Thank you.” He hung up before the man could ask him his name.
All right, then: he’d found the right Charles Davis, but he wasn’t home. At this point, he had a couple o
f choices. The wisest one was probably to let the whole thing go until tomorrow, go back to New Horizons, and try to talk to Charles then.
The only problem was, if this was the Verity whose mother he’d known, she was missing. Or else she was dead, killed by whatever black magic had been strong enough to put out those kinds of traces. Either way, he felt like he owed it to Verity’s mother’s memory not to let her daughter disappear without a trace. If Charles Davis was the only avenue he had to finding out what had become of her, then better to find him sooner rather than later. Even if that meant taking some actions that, if he allowed himself to think them through, would probably look fairly obsessive and borderline insane.
Ah, well, he decided, it isn’t like I’ve never been accused of insanity before.
He grabbed his car keys and headed back out.
A little over an hour later he was back home, tired and still pumped up with adrenaline from what he’d done. It really was amazing sometimes what you could get away with using magic, when you applied a little ingenuity and were willing to take a few risks.
Charles Davis’s address had been in the book along with his phone number: he lived in a small, rundown apartment building in East Palo Alto, in a neighborhood that made Stone uncomfortable despite his magical protections. He parked the car a block away and put the blending spell on it, trying to look like he too blended in as he headed back toward the building.
The next part was the tricky bit, not because he had trouble with any of the spells, but because he was still tired from Kolinsky’s wards, and his plan would require him to keep two simultaneous spells going at the same time. Not for long; he figured if all went as planned he could do the whole job in less than a couple of minutes, but even so, maintaining two spells at once was somewhat akin to trying to solve two different math problems in his head simultaneously while reciting poetry. In other words, it would take all of his mental discipline to pull it off, and he wasn’t at his best. He needed to make this quick.