by R. L. King
“Trip this time,” he said. “Is David here?”
She shook her head. “No, and I’m beginning to get a bit worried, to be honest. He left early this morning and I haven’t heard from him since. He missed the lunch rush, and he never does that without calling.”
Stone frowned. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No, I don’t think so. You go on—he’ll probably be back any time now. He hasn’t been feeling too well lately—bit of insomnia, and he says he’s been having bad dreams. I’m guessing he just lost track of the time.”
Stone nodded, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. “All right, then. I should be back by your dinner shift—if he hasn’t shown up by then, I’ll help you look for him, all right?” He often wondered at the difficulties of maintaining a relationship with a mage when you weren’t one yourself. In his experiences with previous mundane girlfriends, there were a lot of things you couldn’t share. He supposed with enough love, though, it would be possible to surmount the differences. David and Marta, who had been together as long as Stone had known them, certainly exemplified that. They gave him hope that one of his relationships might someday work out.
“Thank you, Alastair. I’d appreciate it.” She waved him toward the back of the restaurant. “I won’t go down there with you, if that’s all right.”
“Of course.” He patted her hand as he passed her. “I’m sure he’s fine, Marta.”
She smiled faintly and nodded, but her worried look didn’t go away.
The trip through the portal was uneventful. It was dark when he emerged from the crypt in the graveyard that hid the portal’s other end; he hadn’t called to let Aubrey, his caretaker, know he was coming this time, so he had to tramp up to the house in the dark. The old man was surprised, but happy to see him—he’d been about to go to bed, but cheerfully came back downstairs to fix up a pot of tea and plate of cakes while Stone retrieved the items he’d come for.
“Not staying, then?” Aubrey asked, sounding like he already knew the answer.
Stone shook his head. “Can’t be away too long this time—expecting my friends back tomorrow. Might come back again soon, though. I thought about hitting Tolliver’s, but forgot about the time difference. Need to do that soon.” Tolliver’s, in London, was one of the world’s largest magical supply stores, with a far more varied selection of items than Madame Huan had available back in Palo Alto.
He spread out the items he’d gathered and looked them over: several old books, a small handful of colored crystals, an amulet with two blood-red stones set as the eyes of a silver bird’s skull, and a golden knife.
Aubrey chuckled when he saw them. “I’m not even going to ask you what you plan to do with all that.”
“Ah, right, I forgot to tell you—I’ve got an apprentice now.”
“Indeed?” The old man’s eyebrows went up. “I never thought I’d see that day come again.”
“Nor did I. But her mother was Lenore Thayer. Don’t know if you remember me ever mentioning Lenore, but she was Jason’s mother, too. The one I brought here a couple of weeks ago, remember?”
“Of course I remember, sir. Both of them.”
“Verity—that’s the girl—she’s almost eighteen, and she’s got quite a lot of potential.”
Aubrey smiled. “I wouldn’t expect you to take on anyone who didn’t, sir.”
They spent the next hour or so just chatting; Aubrey told him about the repairs he’d been doing on the house, and a lady he’d started seeing down in the village, and Stone talked at further length about Verity and what he planned to teach her. He didn’t say anything about the Evil or anything else that had been going on the past few weeks, nor did he mention their trip to Vermont.
After a time he glanced at his watch, then gathered up the items and began putting them in his bag. “And I’m afraid I’ll need to be off. Still have things to do tonight before it gets too late back in California.”
They said their goodbyes and Stone, now carrying a flashlight Aubrey had insisted he take, tromped back across the chilly fields to the cemetery and took the portal back to A Passage to India. One nice thing about traveling by portal was the lack of jet lag. It was also nice to get eight hours back on the return trip. He slung the bag over his shoulder and headed back upstairs and through the kitchen.
By this time the early edge of the dinner crowd had begun to arrive, and five or six couples and small groups were seated in the dining room. Marta leaned on the wall near the door to the kitchen, still looking concerned.
“Did he show up yet?” Stone asked, coming in.
She jumped, noticeably startled. “What? Oh. Alastair. You scared me.” She let her breath out, then shook her head. “No, he’s not back yet, and I really am getting worried now. This isn’t like him at all.”
Stone nodded, concerned too. “I assume you’ve already called all the places he’s likely to be. Do you know where he was supposed to be going?”
“Up to San Francisco. A restaurant up there was going out of business and he was hoping to pick up some fixtures. I called them—he arrived there early this morning and looked over the items until noon or so, but they don’t know where he went after that.”
“Odd...” Stone murmured. He’d known David and Marta for years—they were the original staid middle-aged British couple. It was highly unlikely David had gone off to do anything that would take this long without checking in with his partner. “Did he—” He stopped as the phone rang.
Marta, standing near it, held up a finger and picked it up. “Good evening, A Passage to India. May I help you?” She listened for a moment. “Yes, this is she.”
Stone watched her as she spoke. In the space of about ten seconds the expression on her long, bony face went from professional blandness to wide-eyed shock. Tears sprang to the corners of her eyes. “I—are you sure? When—Yes. Yes—thank you for letting me know. I’ll—I’ll be there shortly.” She lowered the receiver in a nerveless hand.
Stone took it from her gently and hung it up. “Marta? What is it? What’s happened?”
She didn’t look at him. She stared down at the phone, as if she expected it to ring again and take back whatever news she’d just been given. “That—was the police,” she said in a monotone. “There’s been—an accident.”
Stone touched her arm. “What sort of accident? David—” Around them, the wait staff moved busily back and forth, bringing dishes out from the kitchen and returning trays laden with used plates. They glanced curiously at the two of them, but left them their privacy.
“He’s—gone, Alastair.” Her stoic British mask cracked and she began to cry into her hands. “It was—a head-on collision. He—he died instantly.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next few hours passed in a blur. Stone took Marta into the back room, away from the curious gazes of the customers and the restaurant’s staff, then hurried out to inform the chef of what had happened. The man, shocked, promised to take charge of the restaurant, closing it for the night after the current group of diners had finished.
Stone then drove the grieving woman to the police station, where a female officer named Lieutenant Garvey escorted them to a private area.
“What happened?” Marta said, struggling to maintain her composure. “David—who hit him? This can’t be happening...I don’t believe it...It’s—not possible.”
“I’m very sorry,” Garvey said gently. “I know this is shocking for you.” She paused a moment as if unsure of how to continue. “I’m afraid—we’re going to need someone to identify—”
“I’ll take care of that if you’d rather, Marta,” Stone murmured, squeezing her shoulder. She reached up and gripped his hand gratefully without looking at him.
Any doubt that they’d misidentified David was gone when another officer took Stone to the morgue and pulled back the sheet just enough to reveal the body’s face. The mage merely stared in silence at the portly, pale, balding figure on the roll-out slab, the man who had al
ways been so cheerful and seemed to enjoy everything about his life. The body displayed evidence of serious trauma, but Stone suspected that the worst of it was covered by the sheet. He nodded, and the officer covered David’s face, rolled the slab back in, and closed the door.
“I’m sorry,” the cop said gently.
He filled Stone in on the details as they drove back to the station. Apparently David had been driving south on Highway 1 around one o’clock and, according to witnesses, an oncoming car had suddenly veered into David’s path. David had tried to swerve to the right, but the witnesses reported that the other car had mirrored his actions—almost as if it had been trying to hit him. David’s car had plunged through the guardrail and plummeted over the edge to the rocks below.
“What about this other driver?” Stone asked, his mind still refusing to believe that anyone would be insane enough to do such a thing. “Are they sure it was deliberate? Perhaps he had a heart attack—something medical—”
“We’re still investigating,” the officer told him. “But several witnesses at the scene said it looked very deliberate to them—the car literally turned in the same direction and sped up to hit your friend’s car. The other driver was a young male—he died instantly as well. We won’t know more about his state until the autopsy results and the tox screens come back—some of that can take weeks. There were no tire tracks, so the other guy didn’t try to stop, and we can’t be sure until the forensics crew gets done, but there was no immediate evidence of a blown tire or anything else obvious like that.”
Stone grasped at straws now. “Some sort of car trouble?”
“We don’t know yet, sir,” he said, his voice sympathetic but businesslike. “There’s still a lot of investigation left to do.”
They arrived back at the station, and the cop escorted Stone back to the room where Marta was. At the moment, she was alone. They’d gotten her a cold drink and she clutched it in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, staring down into her lap.
“Marta...” Stone said softly.
“Alastair. Oh, God...please tell me they were wrong—that it wasn’t David. Please...”
He sat down next to her, head bowed. “I’m sorry, Marta. I’m so sorry...”
“They said some punk kid ran into him!” She looked up with surprising vehemence. “Probably on drugs, or drunk or something. And now David’s gone. He was happy, Alastair. We were happy. We were planning to take a trip back to India next year. Why did this have to happen—” Her momentary surge of energy fled and she began sobbing again.
Stone put his hand on her shoulder and sat there providing silent support. After a few moments he said quietly, “Do they need you to stay here? I could take you home—is there anyone you could call? I can stay with you, if you like—”
“You’re very kind, but—I’ll be all right. I’ll call Amita—she’s our chef Nikhil’s wife, and we’ve gotten close. If you’ll just take me back to the restaurant—”
“Of course.”
Amita and Nikhil were both waiting for them at A Passage to India when they arrived. The CLOSED sign hung on the door, but when Stone and Marta entered the two of them flung themselves at her, both of them sobbing almost as hard as she was.
Stone, still in shock but feeling awkward and suddenly out of place, said, “Marta, if you need anything—please don’t hesitate to call me. Any time. All right?”
She broke free of her two friends and hugged him. “Thank you, Alastair. Thank you for being there for me. I’ll—let you know if I hear anything else.” She fumbled in her purse and handed him a key. “I’ll be closing the restaurant indefinitely—I don’t know if I can bear running it on my own for a while—but this will get you inside if you should need—” She glanced toward the back, where the door leading to the portal was.
He nodded, pocketing the key. “Thank you, Marta.” Gently, he kissed her forehead and, knowing now that his friend was in good hands, saw himself out.
When Jason and Verity arrived the following day and knocked on the door to Stone’s townhouse, there was no answer at first. Finally, after several knocks, Jason heard the mage’s listless voice call, “It’s open.”
“Hey, Al!” Jason called as he came through the doorway. “We’re back. Did you miss—” He stopped, taking in the scene.
Stone sat slumped in a chair in the living room, a half-finished drink on the table along with a half-empty bottle that suggested it hadn’t been his first. Unshaven and tousle-haired, he wore an old Pink Floyd concert T-shirt and jeans that looked like he’d slept in them—except that he looked like he hadn’t slept. He didn’t look up as they came in.
Jason stared. “Al? Are you okay?”
“Not really.”
Verity dropped down next to him. “What happened?”
“Did something go wrong in England?” Jason asked, frowning. “The gateway—”
“David’s dead.” Stone still hadn’t looked at them. His voice was low and only barely intelligible.
“David?” Verity asked, confused. “Who’s—”
“The guy at the restaurant?” Jason demanded, shocked. “Your friend the mage?”
Stone nodded.
Verity’s eyes widened. “What happened?” she asked again.
In a monotone and still without looking up, Stone gave them the short version of recent events. They both listened silently, staring at him in shock.
“So it was deliberate?” Jason asked when he finished.
“That’s what they think.”
“Who’d want to murder a nice guy who runs a restaurant?” Verity asked.
Stone shrugged. “Who would want to murder a nice middle-aged lady mage who never bothered anybody?” His tone was bitter. He reached over, picked up his glass with a somewhat unsteady hand, and drained it.
“You think the Evil were involved?” Jason’s eyes narrowed. “That’s reaching a little, isn’t it, without more evidence?”
“Who knows?” Stone let the empty glass slip from his hands and fall to the floor. “Not thinking too clearly at the moment, as you might have guessed.”
Jason and Verity said nothing for several moments, both of them unsure of what to say. Verity picked up the glass and set it back on the table.
Finally Stone glanced up. “Trip all right?”
“Yeah.” Jason waved vaguely at the window. “Truck’s out front—we’ll need to take it over to the apartment and unload it so we can get it back to the rental place.” He took a deep breath. “Why don’t we do that, and you go get some sleep. Have you been sitting here all night?”
Stone shrugged.
Verity got up, picked up the bottle from the table, and put it back in the liquor cabinet. “Come on,” she said gently. “This isn’t gonna help. You want us to stay?”
Again the mage shrugged. “Do what you like. I’ll be all right.”
Jason wasn’t sure he wanted to leave Stone in this state, but finally he sighed. “Okay. We’ll go do that and then come back here. Get some rest—we’ll take you out to dinner when we get back, okay?”
When Stone didn’t answer, Jason motioned for Verity to follow him and they left the townhouse, locking the door behind them.
It took them a two hours and the help of a couple of their new neighbors to unload the truck at the apartment and then return it to the agency. They didn’t talk much while working, but once they were back in Jason’s car and heading back to Stone’s place, Verity turned to her brother. “Have you ever seen him like that before?”
Jason shook his head. “But remember, he’s had it damn rough these last couple of weeks.”
They picked up a paper to see if there was anything new about the story; they found it in the local news section and most of it matched what Stone had already told them, but there was one bit of new information. “Hey, listen to this!” Verity said, then read a portion of the article aloud:
The driver of the other car was identified as Sammy Delgado, 19, of San Jose. Tests for drug
and alcohol intoxication are pending, but a police spokesman, speaking on conditions of anonymity, stated that Delgado was a suspected member of the street gang ‘Dead Men Walking’. There is no known connection between Delgado and David Halloran.
Jason stared at her. “DMW? No way.”
“Jason, watch the road,” she ordered, pointing. “So I guess Dr. Stone wasn’t crazy after all. Sounds like the Evil were involved. Come on, let’s get back and tell him.”
“If he hasn’t drunk himself into a stupor by now.”
Stone looked quite a bit more like himself when they got back to the townhouse. They found in him in the upstairs study, a book open on his left as he dashed off notes in a notebook on his right. He’d shaved and straightened up his hair, though he still wore the same clothes. He glanced up as they appeared in the doorway. “All moved in, then?”
“Nah. Just piled the boxes up for now. You doing any better?”
He shrugged. “I’ll be all right. Last night was just—a bit of a shock, especially after what happened with Eleanor.”
Jason sighed, tossing the folded paper on his desk. “We’ve got another shock for you, if you haven’t seen it yet.”
Stone picked up the paper and glanced over the article. Jason could tell he’d reached the part about Sammy Delgado’s gang affiliation because he froze. He lowered the paper with deliberate slowness and regarded them with no expression. “The man who killed David was DMW.”
Verity nodded. “Looks like you were right about the Evil after all.”
“So it would appear,” Stone agreed. He closed the notebook and the other book and leaned back in his chair. “But why would they kill David? He didn’t even know anything about the Evil. He wasn’t any sort of threat to them.”