by R. L. King
She nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
The process took only about five minutes, during which Jason could see nothing happening other than Stone staring in that unblinking, laser-like way of his into Verity’s eyes. Once he held up a hand and slowly passed it across Verity’s face from a distance of several inches away. For her part, Verity looked like she was trying to sit as still as she could, even though it was obvious this whole process was freaking her out more than she wanted to admit. When Stone finally switched off the stare and leaned back on the stool, she asked jokingly, “So, Doc, am I gonna live?”
Stone didn’t answer for several seconds; he appeared to be deep in thought. “Well,” he said softly, getting up. “This is a first for me. I’m honored. I’ve never had the privilege of identifying a new mage before.”
Verity’s eyes widened. “Then—I am—?”
“You are,” he said. “And if I’m any judge at all, you’ve got the potential for some pretty impressive ability, once you’re trained. It doesn’t surprise me, though, really—as I said, your mother was quite talented.”
She seemed stunned. Looking back and forth between Stone and Jason, she slowly got up out of the chair and rubbed her hand across her eyes. “Wow…” was all she could get out.
“Did you do the shielding?” Jason asked Stone. “Is she gonna be okay away from Susanna?”
He nodded. “I think so. It was very strange—that’s most of why it took so long to do it. The identification itself was easy. But—there’s definitely something trying to get into her head.”
“Something?” Verity asked. “You mean like—one of those Evil things?”
“I don’t think so. It’s not that specific. It seems more like a—force, or an aura, rather than an individual. Mind you, this is just wild speculation on my part, but if I had to qualify it, I’d say it’s something that just exists in the world that you’re susceptible to.”
“I don’t get it,” Jason said. “How could that be? You’re saying there’s something just floating around out there, and it makes some people crazy, but not others?”
“Essentially, yes. That’s my impression anyway—I could be dead wrong.”
“But whatever this is—it just showed up a few years ago? Could it have been around before? Did it show up and affect her, or did something happen with her—like maybe that doctor was right about puberty—that made her more vulnerable to it?”
Stone spread his hands in an ‘I don’t know’ gesture. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t get a handle on what it was. The best I could do was make an estimate of its magical—frequency, as it were—and put up some protections to block it from getting into her head.”
“And this is the thing you meant I’d have to renew every once in a while?” Verity asked.
“Yes. But with any luck you’ll be well enough along in your training before that happens that you’ll be able to take over the blocking yourself. Assuming,” he added, turning back to face her, “that you even want to be trained. There’s no requirement that you are. I’ll warn you—the training isn’t easy. At the beginning you’re likely to be bored senseless by some of it, and as it goes on, you’ll be doing things that could potentially be dangerous as you stretch your abilities and learn your limitations.”
“If I did—decide to go ahead with the training,” she said after a long pause, “How would it work? Would—you be the one doing it?”
“That’s something we can discuss,” Stone said. “It will have to be a mutual decision. Let’s not talk about that now, though. It’s something neither of us should decide quickly—you’ll need time to examine your other options. Right now, if we’re going to help the Forgotten and deal with the Evil, we’ll have to concentrate on that. There’s no way we could split our focus by beginning any sort of training now.”
She nodded, looking disappointed.
“What do we have to do?” Jason asked. “Where do we start?”
Stone sighed, sitting back down on the other end of the couch. “The way I see it, there are several problems we need to solve. The first, as I said before, is that we need to figure out somehow where our quarry is located—and how many of them there are. If there’s one top-level Evil running the entire area like some sort of district manager, then we’ll need to find out who that one has possessed, and where he or she is. Obviously, if what Lamar said is true and the more powerful ones seek out more powerful hosts, then likely this one will have protections in place that we’ll have to circumvent.”
“That’s problem number one,” Jason said. “What about the others?”
“Well…I would say the second one is that even if Verity can drive it out of its body, we have to figure out how either to destroy it, or contain it until it’s simply destroyed, or sent home because it can’t secure another host.”
“Or we can kill the host,” Jason pointed out.
“That won’t work,” Stone said, shaking his head. “Don’t you remember what Lamar said? They think the powerful ones are able to remain without a body for as long as a few days. If we kill the host, all we’ll be left with is a dead person—quite likely a dead person of considerable power and influence—and the need to resume our search again when the Evil finds a new host. That is, of course,” he added with a raised eyebrow, “if they haven’t tossed the lot of us in jail because we’ve murdered the Mayor or the Chief of Police or some such.”
“Okay,” Jason said. “Is that something you can do? Contain it, I mean?”
“I don’t know. It would require some experimentation, most likely with the lower level specimens.”
“Wait—you mean we’re gonna have to grab a DMW guy or something, and try to catch the thing that flies out of his head when Verity boots it out?”
“Crude, but accurate. And this will also give Verity some practice to determine whether she can control her power enough that she can use it at will. If she can’t learn to do that, then we might be in trouble—at the very least we’ll have to explore other options.”
Verity nodded. “I don’t know if I can do it when I want to. I’ve actually never tried. Like I said, I thought the first time was a fluke, and the second time I was doing it to save Jason.”
“Our third problem, though this one is easy to solve, relatively speaking,” Stone went on, “is that battling the hosts of these Evil is likely to require the sort of magic that I’m not used to performing.”
“Combat stuff, you mean,” Jason said.
“Exactly. I won’t be much use if I’m keeling over from exhaustion every time I cast a spell. Which means I’ll have to work on building some magical items to help me to channel energy more efficiently when casting those sorts of spells.”
“You can do that?”
“I can, but it will take some time. Remember, I told you before that white magic was ultimately more powerful than black, because we can cast permanent spells, and imbue objects with power to use later, so we don’t have to draw it from ourselves or other?”
Jason nodded. “I remember you did say that, yeah.”
“So,” Stone said, “I suppose the first item on my agenda is to get started working on those.”
“And what are we doing in the meantime?” Verity asked. “We’re going back to the Forgotten later today, right?”
Stone nodded. “Yes. We need to talk to them—find out if they’re willing to help out with this. If they’re not—and I certainly wouldn’t blame them—then things will be a great deal more difficult.” He sighed. “Actually, I think my first step before anything else is to secure better lodgings. Especially if Verity’s going to remain with us for a while, this place and its two bedrooms won’t work. It’s also not practical to do magic here—not enough room. Tell you what: I’m sure you two have a lot of catching up to do—why don’t you do that for the next couple of hours, and I’ll make some calls and see if I can’t locate a better place, at least temporarily. I wouldn’t leave the house if I were you, though—too much risk tha
t someone will spot you. I think for the duration of this little adventure, it would be best if we remained together as much as is practical.”
Jason nodded. He didn’t like feeling like he couldn’t go wherever he wanted, but Stone’s words made a lot of sense. Now that he had Verity back, he really didn’t want to take her out to the mall and get ambushed by a DMW hit squad.
“All right, then,” Stone said. “I’m off to my room to make those calls. If I can find a place quickly enough, we’ll go there and set up our base of operations. If not, we’ll head back to the Forgotten a bit early.”
This left Jason and Verity sitting in the front room. She leaned back in her chair with a loud sigh. “Well, I guess nobody ever promised us a normal life, huh?”
“You got that right,” he said.
“So…I’m gonna get to do magic,” she said, her big, dark eyes wide with wonder. She stared at her brother. “What do you think? Should I do it? Should I ask him to train me? This is all sounding so weird that I’m even saying it. ‘Do I want to let somebody train me in how to do magic’?”
Jason grinned. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve had a head start on you for getting used to weirdness. The funny part is how soon it all starts sounding normal. At first I thought the only thing I wanted to do was find you and head back to our boring, normal life in Ventura. But now—” He shrugged. “I dunno. This is all—kind of interesting, in a way. Freaky as hell, sure, but it’s a nice change of pace from fixing old motorcycles and getting tossed in jail for starting bar fights.”
“What do you think of him?” she asked, hooking a thumb toward the back room where Stone had disappeared. “Should I ask him to train me? You don’t think he’ll hit on me, do you? ’Cuz he’s kinda hot and all, but he’s old. That would be—”
Jason laughed. “If that’s all you’re worried about, I don’t think you need to be. He’s okay. He’s a magic nerd. Seems like magic’s all he’s interested in. That, and puzzles. If you showed up in front of him wearing a string bikini while he was in the middle of running some magical experiment, he wouldn’t even notice you except to ask you to bring him a candle or a dead frog or something.”
“Is he gay?”
“I don’t think so. He told me he had a ‘schoolboy crush’ on Mom back when he knew her. Which is also not something I want to think too hard about.” Now he looked at her. “By the way, speaking of that—when were you going to tell me?”
“Tell you—Oh.” She smiled and shrugged. “I dunno. You didn’t exactly come to see me, you know. I couldn’t really tell you much of anything, could I? And anyway, I’m not gay. I like guys, too—I just like girls more. And it was a lot safer in the halfway house to stick with girls, you know?” Her expression grew more serious. “You don’t—have a problem with that, do you?”
“Why does everybody keep asking me that?” he said, rolling his eyes. “V, I’m just glad to have you back safe—and having you safe and non-crazy is a huge bonus. At this point I wouldn’t care if you were into Russian circus midgets if it meant you had a shot at a halfway regular, normal life.”
She giggled. “Oh, good. Because I was really worried about how you’d react to the circus midgets. Maybe you’d better tell your friend to get a place with more rooms, so I can tell them it’s safe to come home now. Sergei and Natasha will be so happy to get out of that refrigerator box.”
Jason laughed again. It felt so good to be laughing, after the last few days of fear and death and nonstop weirdness. “I’d forgotten what a goofball you used to be.”
“And I’d forgotten what a dork you used to be,” she said, grinning. “I guess some things never change, huh?”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
When Stone returned an hour later, the two of them were sitting on the couch together, cheerfully making fun of an old black and white movie on the television. “Well,” he said, smiling. “Looks like the reunion went well.”
“Did you find anything?” Jason asked, turning down the volume.
“I did. Fortunately for us, I found another colleague who has a furnished rental property that will fit our needs nicely. Once I assured him I would do my very best to ensure that it wouldn’t get blown up by a faulty gas main, he agreed to let me take it on a month-to-month basis. I’m still on the lookout for something more permanent, but this will do nicely for now.”
“Blown up?” Verity asked, alarmed.
“Does it have a basement?” Jason asked at the same time, with a wicked glint in his eyes.
“I also took care of making some arrangements with my insurance company to cover some of the items I lost in the explosion,” Stone continued, ignoring them both, “And located us a rental vehicle until I can replace the Jaguar.”
“What, you don’t like my car?” Jason asked innocently.
“Explosion?” Verity asked again.
“Tell you later,” Jason told her. “His housekeeper tried to murder us a few days ago by blowing up his last house.”
She stared at him, then at Stone, wide-eyed and obviously not sure if they were pulling her leg. “Your—housekeeper—?”
Suddenly, something clicked in Jason’s mind. His joking expression turned dead serious. “Al—Mrs. Olivera—”
Stone nodded, looking equally serious. “I just had the same thought.” He sighed. “Really the only way they could have gotten in without setting off my defenses.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Verity demanded. “This is gonna get old in a hurry if you keep talking like I’m not even here.”
“Sorry,” Jason muttered. “We’re thinking now that one of the Evil must have possessed Mrs. Olivera and made her set that bomb. Remember how Lamar said sometimes they sacrifice the weak ones to do things they need done, or just to cause people to commit suicide so they can feed off the emotion?”
“And then, when it was finished with her,” Stone said sadly, “it simply caused her to have an accident that killed her. Perhaps it was even able to secure another body, if one was close enough.” He sighed, looking down. “What a waste…”
“Just a sec, though,” Jason said. “Didn’t Lamar say the Forgotten don’t think the Evil takes over people completely when it possesses them? Remember, he said it couldn’t, or else they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs?”
“Yes, but he also said that no one knows for sure,” Stone pointed out. “P’raps they’re capable of doing it either way. I really don’t know—it would definitely be something to study at some point. But for now, I think we’ll need to go on the assumption that they can choose to take people—at least some people—over completely if they need to. Possibly only for a limited amount of time, which is why the more powerful Evil use the weakest ones for their suicide missions.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Jason said. “Just makes this whole thing scarier, though.”
“Come on,” Stone said, grabbing his coat. “Get your stuff together and let’s take a look at the new place and pick up the car. I want to be as settled in as we can before heading back to Mountain View.”
The new house was near the border between Mountain View and Palo Alto. It was a nondescript, tan, single-story place in the ubiquitous California ranch style, with a two-car garage and a patch of lawn blanketed in fallen leaves from a mature tree. The neighborhood looked quiet and respectable; several of the nearby houses sported cheerful Halloween decorations in their front yards.
“How…suburban,” Jason said.
“Yes, well, beggars can’t be choosers, and at least it has three bedrooms and a large family room I can use for doing magic,” Stone reminded him. “It will do until I can find something more to my liking, and the two-car garage means we don’t have to keep our cars visible, in case anyone happens by who might recognize them.”
The inside was as nondescript as the outside, furnished in Early Middle-American Boring. “The two bedrooms at the end of the hall are yours,” Stone told them. “You can fight over who gets which one, but make it quick. I wa
nt to be out of here in fifteen minutes at most.”
They beat that by nearly ten minutes—they didn’t have much gear to stow. When they came back out front, Stone was installing their meager food stores in the refrigerator and cabinets. “Ready?”
Their next stop was the rental agency, where Stone revealed the “car” to be a beige van with tinted windows in the back. “Seriously, Al?” Jason asked, amused. “This one doesn’t look like your style either.”
“Right now, style isn’t nearly as important as blending in,” Stone reminded him. “These things are all over the place, so it’s likely we won’t be noticed. Plus, it’s got more room if we need to carry any of the Forgotten. I’ll get something more interesting again once we’ve sorted out our little problems.”
Jason, with Verity riding shotgun, followed Stone back to the house in the Ford and stashed it in the garage. Then they all piled into the van. “Where to now?”
“I want to stop at Madame Huan’s, and we should probably go back to her friend’s house and clean up the sand we left in his studio. And it’s early enough we probably have time to stop by the mall again—I’m guessing Verity might like to pick up a few more clothes.”
“I can do that?” she asked. She looked like she hadn’t thought about it, but now that she had, she was quickly warming to the idea. “I don’t have any money—”
“Don’t worry about that,” Stone said. “We’re not buying you fur coats or ostrich boots or anything. Just a few things to get you by until you can decide what you want to do.”
These stops ended up taking almost two hours between them, but by the time they were finished, Stone had a bag full of items he planned to use to make magical batteries and focusing objects, the ballet studio in Los Gatos was cleaned up and back in the state they’d found it, and Verity had picked out several new pairs of jeans, a few subversive black T-shirts, and a pair of black leather Doc Martens that Stone caught her eyeing longingly, and insisted she have despite her protest over the price. “This feels weird,” she told him as the salesperson rang up the purchases. “It’s like you’re my—sugar daddy or something.”