Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set: Alastair Stone Chronicles, Books 1 through 4

by R. L. King

  A couple seconds later, two men came around one of the shelves. They were both dressed in police uniforms. “It’s just the cops,” Jason said, relieved. “They’re—”

  “No!” Benny cut him off, eyes blazing. “You don’t know anything. Be quiet.”

  The two cops headed straight for the door to the little conference room, and pushed it open without knocking. They were both young, both looked formidable, and their expressions were identically cold and devoid of any kind of compassion or humanity. They swept the room with their gazes; oddly, they didn’t seem to notice or care that there were two people in the group who didn’t look like the rest of them. “Stand up, all of you,” the older of the two cops said. “Hands where we can see them.”

  The vagrants shuffled to their feet slowly. The old woman helped Frank up. Lissy remained in her seat, rocking and moaning. After a moment and a furtive gaze from the old woman, Stone and Jason rose as well.

  “We got a complaint about you people,” the cop said, his voice dripping with contempt. “I can see why. You’re stinkin’ the place to high heaven. You can’t just squat here all day and drive off all the regular citizens.”

  “Sorry, Officer,” Hector said meekly. He appeared to have recovered from his ‘episode.’ “We’ll clear out. Don’t want to cause anybody any trouble.”

  “Smart man,” the other cop said. His voice was as cold and uncaring as his partner’s. He laid a hand on his nightstick. “We don’t like bums around here. We find you hanging out in this place again, it’s not gonna go so nice for you, you know?”

  The first cop was examining each of the vagrants’ faces in turn. “One more thing—we’re looking for a guy. You guys squat on the street—maybe you’ve seen him. Maybe you tell us where you’ve seen him, we might look the other way, and you can stink up the library till tomorrow.”

  “What—what does he look like?” the old woman asked.

  “White, mid-20s, dirty-blond hair in a ponytail, athletic build, brown leather jacket,” the cop said. “No picture, but if you know of somebody like that, tell us now. He’s wanted.”

  Jason’s eyes came up for a second in a frank stare of amazement, but he quickly looked back down at his hands. The cop’s description—the one he’d uttered while staring straight at him—could have described his twin. Or himself. What the—?

  Next to him, Stone shifted his weight and nudged him almost imperceptibly. When Jason glanced at him, he shook his head once, his eyes still downcast.

  “What’s he wanted for?” Benny asked.

  “Murder,” said the cop. “You seen him?”

  The vagrants looked at each other, each one shaking his or her head. “Sorry, but we haven’t,” Hector said in his slow, gravelly voice. “We’ll keep an eye out, though. We see him, we’ll tell the nearest policeman. It’s dangerous enough for folks like us out there without murderers runnin’ around.”

  That seemed to satisfy the first cop, though the second one still looked like he’d like nothing better than to have an excuse to clout some heads with his nightstick. He pointed at Lissy. “What’s with the nutcase chick there?”

  “She doesn’t know anything, Officer,” the old woman said. “She’s—not right in the head. We look after her.”

  The cop sneered. “Might as well just drop her off at the nearest bughouse.” He started to say something else, but his partner touched his arm and motioned him out. Reluctantly, he moved toward the door.

  “I want to see you bums out of here by tonight,” the first cop said. “And I don’t want to see you back here anymore. The good citizens of this area deserve to be able to read in peace without being stunk up and creeped out by you loonies. Got it?”

  “We’ll be out, sir,” Hector assured him.

  The cop glared at him for a moment, as if trying to decide if he was giving any lip, then nodded once, turned on his heel, and followed his partner out. He tried to slam the door, but the pneumatic return prevented that. Instead, it closed with a soft click.

  For a long time, nobody moved. They barely breathed, except for Lissy and her moaning. Nearly two minutes passed in silence. Then, slowly, Lissy’s moaning began to cease, along with her rocking. She hunched over the table, sobbing quietly into her folded arms. As if that were some kind of signal, the vagrant group returned to their chairs. Jason let his breath out. “What—the hell —is going on here?” he demanded, spacing his words out with care.

  Hector shrugged. “Cops aren’t safe. Never figure they are. Some of ’em are all right, but can’t never be sure.”

  Jason pointed at Lissy. “She knew. She knew they were coming, and she knew they were bad. What the hell are you people?” His gaze darted wildly around between them like a loose pinball. “How did they not see us? That’s—me they’re looking for. They described me perfectly. And they didn’t see me! I was sitting right under their noses and they didn’t see me!” He’d finally started getting his head around the fact that he was hanging around a guy who could shoot magic beams out of his hands, and now he had to accept weird psychic bums too? Where was all this going to end?

  “You better get out of here,” Benny said, ignoring his words. “Not safe for you either. I’d stay away from cops if I was you.”

  Jason was in danger of imminent mental overload again, and Stone must have noticed because he put a bracing hand on his shoulder. “He’s right, Jason. We’d best be on our way.” He reached inside his overcoat and withdrew the black kitten, who mewed sleepily in protest at being disturbed. He handed her back to the old woman. “I’m not sure exactly what you did,” he said softly. “I’d like very much to have a chance to discuss it with you, but I doubt you’d be amenable to that. Besides, I think it would be prudent for all of us to be on our way.”

  The old woman nodded, tucking the kitten back into a nest of blankets in one of her bags. She gathered them all up and arranged them on the table. The others were also rising and picking up their meager belongings.

  Deciding he wasn’t going to get any straight answers, Jason gave up trying. “Are you guys gonna be all right?” He realized, watching them, just how vulnerable they all looked. Even Hector, who still had the vestiges of a military bearing and physique, looked broken down and world-weary.

  “We’ll be all right,” the old woman said. She gave a wistful smile as she helped Lissy into her ragged coat. “We’ve been here too long anyway—I think we got a little settled, and that’s never good. Time to be moving on.” Behind her, Benny nodded.

  “Listen,” Stone said. “I have no idea what you did or how you did it, but I suspect strongly that if you hadn’t done it, Jason and I would be in a world of difficulty right about now. Whatever it was, we’re grateful. I hope you won’t think me rude or presumptuous, but—” He pulled out his wallet, withdrew several bills, and offered them to the old woman. “A bit of help for your travels,” he said. “Or—if you prefer—something to help keep your little friend in the bag there warm and fed.”

  Her watery blue eyes sparkled with tears as she accepted the bills. “Thank you,” she whispered, holding Stone’s hand in both of her wrinkled ones. She looked earnestly into his eyes, and then into Jason’s. “Please—be very careful who you trust. There are dangers everywhere these days, sometimes where you least expect them.”

  “Where you least expect them…” Lissy echoed dreamily. She reached out to pet the kitten, who was poking her head out of the bag.

  “Thanks,” Jason said. “Thanks a lot, you guys. Listen, if there’s anything I can ever do for you—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Hector said. “Heard it all before. Come on, crew. Let’s clear out before those guys come back. You two take care and stay safe.”

  Back in the car and heading toward Palo Alto, Jason was agitated. “Okay, so not only are we back at square one in our search, but things just got a lot worse. Apparently I’m wanted for murder, the only link we have to Susanna is heading away to who knows where, and what the hell was going on back there wi
th those guys? What did they do?” He glared at Stone. “You said there weren’t very many mages around. But it sure seemed to me like they…hid us, or something. Those cops didn’t notice us, I’m damn sure of that.”

  “That wasn’t magic,” Stone said. “At least not any kind I’ve ever had experience with.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “I don’t know.” Stone didn’t look at him; he was busy watching the road. “But I’d give a hell of a lot to find out. It’s obvious they—or at least one of them—did something to conceal us. And another one, the young girl, seemed to know that those policemen were coming before they arrived. How did she know that? Did you notice that she became more agitated as they got closer, and by the time they arrived she was nearly catatonic?”

  “And don’t forget the other dude with the pencils,” Jason said. He’d decided that there was no upper bound to the number of things that were going to freak him out today—he’d just have to roll with it. “What was that thing he gave you? You looked like you thought it was more than a page of scribbles.”

  Stone rummaged in the pocket of his overcoat, took out the page, and handed it over. Jason smoothed it out and looked at it, perplexed. “It looks like Picasso exploded and started writing in Norse runes, or Chinese or something. Weird little pictures and a lot of writing I can’t read. Can you?”

  “Not specifically,” Stone said. “But I don’t think it’s Norse or Chinese. It’s more the intent I can sense, rather than actually reading the content. As strange as it might sound—and I’ll have to study it a bit more to be sure—it looks like our artistic friend has given us—how do I put it?—the essence of Susanna.”

  “The hell?” Jason turned the paper in his hands, looking at it from different orientations. “I don’t see anything here that looks like a woman, or a name, or anything. That might be an eye right there,” he said, pointing. “Damned if I can tell.” He glanced at Stone. “So let’s assume you’re right for a minute. What good is having the ‘essence of Susanna’? Does that mean you can—I dunno—talk to her or something? Magically?”

  Stone shook his head. “No. But it might mean I can find her.”

  That perked Jason up; he’d thought that avenue was pretty much lost with the exit of the vagrant group. “How?”

  Stone took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll explain, but it will take some time. First I need to go pick up a few things. I trust you’ve lost your desire to go to the police station to look for news?”

  Jason hadn’t thought about that. “If I’m wanted…yeah, walking in there might not be the best idea.”

  “I rather wonder if you are, though,” Stone mused.

  “Huh? That cop said I was, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but…” Stone shook his head. “For now, we’ll be prudent and avoid the police.” He paused, thinking. “I suppose if they’re looking for you for murder, they must think that you killed those gang members at the warehouse.”

  Jason nodded. “The newspaper said all they found was charred bodies, though, and it’s not like they could find shell casings or anything. How would they even know? I doubt they’ve even identified the bodies yet. That kind of thing can take weeks, depending on how badly burned the corpses are.”

  “You sound like you speak from experience,” Stone said.

  “Yeah…cop family.” Something had been nagging at the back of Jason’s mind, and Stone’s words finally triggered it. “You know, I think there was something wrong with those guys at the library.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  Jason thought about it. “Well…this area’s pretty decent, right? Even with things as crappy as they are now?”

  Stone shrugged. “I suppose so, yes.”

  “I’ve seen some bad cops in my time. It sometimes happens, especially for the low-level guys who don’t make that much money, that they’ll go on the take or fall a little too much in love with their power. You know, hassle the citizens, scare teenagers, that kind of thing.”

  Stone nodded. “Yes, and? I’d say those two were throwing their weight around quite effectively.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the thing. They were too nasty. Especially since there were two of them. Bad cops, the ones who really like to bully people—you don’t usually see ’em partnered up like that. Like I said, they’re around, but they’re not that common, and the chance of two being together is pretty low. Most police departments will look the other way for a certain amount of that kind of thing, but if they get too many reports of police brutality against the same guys, they have to investigate it. And that’s especially true in areas like this. Poor people don’t tend to report cops for brutality, but middle-aged rich white people? Hell yeah.”

  Stone thought about that. “You might have a point,” he conceded. “But I don’t see what it—”

  “I don’t either,” Jason said. “I’m just thinking out loud. And I’m not gonna call up the department and file a complaint or anything. But it just kind of reminded me of something Charles said. He told me it didn’t used to be like this when he was younger. That the whole area has just gotten meaner in the past few years. I guess that could apply to cops too.”

  “I guess it could,” Stone agreed.

  “Where are we going, by the way?”

  “Stanford,” he said. “I need to pick up a couple of things from my office, and then we’re off to a little shop near downtown for a few more things.”

  “What kind of things? I mean, no offense, but your dry cleaning can probably wait.”

  Stone chuckled. “No dry cleaning,” he assured him. “Just keep your head down and try not to look like a potential murderer, all right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Stone’s office was in an old, vine-covered building far off the main campus core. It was even more cluttered than his living room, filled from floor to ceiling with stacks of musty books, strange-looking items, and drifts of papers that nearly obscured the wooden desk beneath them.

  He rummaged around in a desk drawer, grabbed a bag from a nearby shelf, and started tossing items into it. There seemed to be some method to what he was doing, but Jason sure as hell didn’t see what it was. He kept quiet, contenting himself with trying to take in as much of the place as he could. It wasn’t every day you got to see the office of an Occult Studies professor, after all, even one that wasn’t a real mage in his spare time.

  “Done,” Stone said after five minutes. “Come on, I want to get going on this before it gets to be too late. It’s not going to be quick in any case.”

  This time, he drove into downtown Palo Alto. “Never easy to park here,” he remarked as he negotiated the tight traffic and looked around for a space. “Sometimes I find myself wishing that magic could help me find a spot, but sadly it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Uh…yeah.” Jason was getting hungry, but Stone hadn’t mentioned anything about lunch, so he didn’t either. “So where are we going, anyway?”

  “Little shop near here,” Stone said. “Let me pick up what I’m after, then we can grab a quick late lunch—there’s a good noodle house next door—and then back home. I should be able to get everything set up in a couple of hours.”

  Jason wasn’t sure if Stone was being deliberately cryptic, or if his mind was just moving so fast that he’d forgotten that not everybody had boarded his train of thought. Either way, he decided he’d see soon enough. At least things were relatively normal for the moment.

  They found a parking spot after a few more minutes of cruising, and Stone led him up a block and then down another one to a row of shops that looked like they’d been around for a long time. Jason looked at them, perplexed: there was the noodle house he’d referred to, a dry cleaner, an insurance agent’s office, and a clothing store that looked like it catered to ladies older than the old vagrant woman, whose fashion sense had stopped evolving thirty years ago. “Uh…” he said.

  Stone didn’t an
swer, but headed for an unmarked door between the insurance agent and the noodle house. Waving at Jason to follow, he disappeared through it and descended a steep flight of stairs to another door. Carefully lettered on it was Huan’s Antiquities, along with some Chinese script below. When he opened it, a soft bell tinkled somewhere in the distance.

  “What is this place?” Jason whispered, looking around. They were standing in a large, dimly lit room stuffed to the ceiling with…things. He suspected this was where Stone shopped for all the weird junk in his living room and his office. He couldn’t begin to take it all in at once; there was no order or apparent arrangement to the objects haphazardly scattered around. The place looked like the attic of someone who spent a lot of time at upscale garage sales.

  “This,” Stone replied, “is the premier magical supply store for this part of the Bay Area. You won’t find a finer one outside San Francisco. But don’t tell Madame Huan I told you that, or she’ll raise her prices.”

  Jason looked skeptical as he peered around, trying to make sense out of the eclectic items. Broken furniture was stacked next to dusty old lamps, toys from bygone days, books, sculpture, ancient rusting appliances—everywhere he looked was something different. “Uh—this stuff is magical? It looks like junk to me.”

  Stone grinned. “Ah, but this isn’t where the good stuff is. Just wait—she should be out soon. You don’t rush Madame Huan.”

  Jason started wandering up and down the narrow aisles, and after a couple of minutes he heard the melodious tinkle of a beaded curtain being swished aside. He hurried back to Stone in time to see a tiny Asian woman of indeterminate age moving toward him.

  “Well, well,” she said, smiling. She didn’t have a trace of an Asian accent. “Alastair Stone. I haven’t seen you in a while.”