by R. L. King
“If it is the Evil,” Jason said, “I guess you gotta assume they do.” He stiffened for a moment, but said nothing. Stone caught his eye and raised an eyebrow, but he just shook his head once. He’d had a disturbing thought, but he didn’t feel comfortable sharing it with these mages he barely knew.
“What can we do, Alastair?” Walter asked. “What can we do to stop them?”
“If I knew that, we’d have done it already,” Stone said, getting up. “Jason and I need to be heading back home. Whoever’s behind the thefts, it looks like they got what they were looking for. You might consider augmenting the wards around your homes, but I doubt they’ll be back at this point.” He stood. “I’ll keep you up to date, and let you know if there’s anything you can do.”
“Wait,” Lavinia protested. “You’re just going to drop something like that on us and then leave?”
“I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “Do you?”
She didn’t answer for a moment; clearly she was trying to rally further protests, but she wasn’t successful. “I don’t like it,” she said at last. “Something that can take people over flawlessly, and there’s no way for even our kind to tell. It’s—”
“Frightening,” Stone finished, nodding. “Tell me about it. Remember, Jason and I have been on the front lines of this for more than a year. Be grateful that so far they haven’t shown much interest in this side of the world. Probably best if you don’t draw too much attention to yourselves, or that might change.”
That left her—and the others—without an answer.
Jason didn’t say much until they were back on the train toward Holmbury, and neither did Stone. The mage stared out the window, appearing to be deep in thought. Abruptly, he spoke without turning: “Jason, what was on your mind back there?”
He shrugged. “Just had one of those paranoid kind of thoughts I get sometimes. Probably nothing. Didn’t want to stir those guys up with it.”
“Suppose you stir me up with it,” Stone said, leaning back and facing Jason.
“Well,” he said, “If it is the Evil behind stealing these books, you guys think it’s because they want to study up on something, right? Probably something to do with summoning?”
Stone nodded. “It appears so, yes.”
“And that means they need to have a mage on their side, because if they don’t, they wouldn’t be able to make any sense out of that stuff. And you said you didn’t think they had any mages anymore, right?”
“Yes…” Stone leaned forward a little. “And—?”
“Well…I guess I’m thinking like a cop here, looking at motives and that kind of thing. Just bear with me, ’cause this might sound crazy, okay?”
Stone waited silently.
Jason plunged ahead. “There’s a mage missing. And her family’s missing, too. And we know—or at least we’re pretty damn sure—that the Evil can’t possess mages without their consent.”
Stone went still. He was beginning to see where Jason was going. “You’re suggesting,” he said in a soft monotone, “that the Evil might have—encouraged—Dr. Brandt to join them by threatening her family.”
“Yeah.” Jason nodded. “Keeping your family safe is about the strongest motivator there is. And they did all disappear on the same day.”
Stone sank back in his seat, the stiffness draining from him like water. “You may be right,” he said at last. “It fits. It doesn’t explain everything—such as why they’re suddenly so interested in summoning techniques, or where Mr. Darden fits into all of this, if he does at all. But if Pia Brandt is working with the Evil—”
“—Then maybe they are trying to build another portal,” Jason finished.
Stone nodded. He looked like someone had just popped him a good one in the jaw. “That makes me wonder something else, too.”
“What’s that?”
“When I checked my library for what was stolen—Daphne Weldon’s notebooks were still there. If they want to build another portal, that’s some of the most cutting-edge research available. Why wouldn’t they have taken it? And for that matter, why haven’t they tried to kill us? I’d think that whatever they’re trying to do, they wouldn’t want any chance that we might interfere with it.”
Jason sighed. “Strap in, Al. I think we just got back on the roller coaster again, and it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The first time Zack Beeley showed any ambition, it almost got him killed. He considered this an eminently valid reason to never do so again.
The few friends he had who knew about his abilities thought he was crazy: how could he be able to do what he could do and not use it? He could be rich! He could have whatever he wanted—all he had to do was find the right places to look, and he was in.
The problem was: the better the places, the more likely that something nasty waited on the other side.
Zack was what Alastair Stone would have called a “minor talent,” one of the hundreds of almost-mages who existed in the United States, flying under the radar of the more powerful practitioners for many reasons: either their talent was so limited that they couldn’t be taught any more, or they lacked the motivation necessary to truly advance in the study of magic.
Magic study was hard. Zack had tried it a few years ago, when he’d been a teenage runaway living with a collection of other teenage runaways in Los Angeles. He’d caught the eye of a raggedy old nutball who’d claimed to be able to cast spells, and damned if the old fart hadn’t been right. He’d taken Zack under his smelly wing and taught him a few skills, taking as his payment whatever Zack could manage to steal.
He lasted barely long enough for Zack to discover two things about himself: first, as a mage, he made a great doorstop. His power was sketchy, intermittent, and meager, and since Zack proved that he would much rather lounge around smoking pot than put in the rigorous study to see if he could get better, he never did.
The second thing he discovered was that even though he barely had enough magical firepower to get out of a reasonably robust paper bag, his failing had a single exception. And that was where all the trouble started.
He discovered it one day while working with Grover, the old nutball, in an abandoned warehouse. Grover was trying to teach Zack about how to make wards, and, as usual, failing. Zack simply couldn’t hold the patterns in his mind long enough to allow him to construct even the most feeble of wards. But what he did have, he found out when Grover put a couple joints behind a small ward and challenged Zack to disassemble it, was the ability to—well, for lack of a better description—make holes in wards, without disrupting them.
As Grover watched in half-stoned amazement, Zack focused his concentration like he’d never done before (he really wanted those joints, since he hadn’t had a smoke in two days), reached through the ward, and grabbed them.
This was destined to change Zack’s life in a lot of ways.
Grover didn’t last long after that: he got killed by a group of gang members a few weeks later, leaving Zack on his own. He hooked up with a couple of other minor talents, and one night while they were all high he let slip what he could do. Because his two friends had more foresight than Zack did (which wasn’t difficult), they immediately saw the possibilities and proceeded to explain them to him.
What followed was a couple months of a petty crime spree that involved hitting the homes and other hidey-holes of other minor practitioners who had wards up. Zack discovered that if he really focused hard, he could make a hole big enough to get his whole body through, though it never worked for anyone else. When he tried to hold it open so his friends could go through too, it collapsed in on itself and very nearly got them all caught. So they directed, and he did the deed. He stole haphazardly, often leaving valuable items and taking things that caught his magpie-like gaze.
And then his friends decided to get more ambitious. As it happened, there was a mage who lived in the Burbank area: a real heavy hitter, at least by their standards. One of Zack�
�s friends heard about him from a friend, and hatched an idea: maybe if Zack got through his wards, he might be able to grab some things that would make them all rich.
Zack was reluctant. Hell, he was scared. Still, his other thefts had gone off without a hitch, so he agreed to give it a shot. They told him what kinds of things to look for, stole a car to get them all there, and set him loose.
Everything went fine at first: the mage lived in a two-story house in an upscale neighborhood, and the wards focused around a detached garage behind the house. Zack made his usual hole in the ward—it was a little harder this time, as they felt tougher than anything he’d dealt with before—and stepped through into the dimness. He switched on his flashlight—
—Only to find the mage inside the room, working on something at his desk. His friends had been so caught up in their plans that they’d forgotten to check if anyone was inside.
Zack had no idea how he’d gotten out. The only thing that saved him was that the guy hadn’t seen him immediately, which gave Zack enough time to re-open the ward before he turned. Even so, he barely escaped with his life. He still bore a long scar on his right arm from where the mage had hit him with some kind of fire spell. He’d come flying out of the yard and, instead of running back to his friends who waited in the stolen car, he’d just run. Even his low-watt stoner brain had registered that if he went back to them, they’d want him to do it again.
He wasn’t going to do it again. Ever. Life was just too short, and he knew when the Universe was trying to send him a message. He might be a coward, but he’d be a living coward.
That lasted for two years. Until she found him, and made him the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse.
Trin stretched out on the chaise longue next to the pool like a languid cat. The New Mexico sun was just beginning its descent, taking with it the worst of the edge from the heat. She dangled one foot in the water and held a rolled joint between two fingers of her right hand. “Speak,” she said without looking at the man who stood behind her, waiting to be recognized.
The man was barely more than a boy, small and slim and weasel-faced, wearing faded jeans and a dark-blue T-shirt with a Coors logo. “I’m back, and I got what you wanted,” he said. His voice shook.
She twisted herself around. She did so hate toadies, but sometimes you had to put up with them. “Gold star for you. Let’s have your report.”
The young man moved over to stand in front of her, but he didn’t sit down. “I got twenty-two books all together,” he said. “I did what you said—took the ones you wanted and some others too. Random stuff.” He eyed the joint with naked longing.
Trin nodded. “Good. Did anyone see you?”
He snorted. “Nah. Well—maybe one old guy, for a second. But he couldn’t find me.”
“Let me see the books.”
“I’ll go get ’em.” He hurried away.
Sam, the boy, wandered into the back yard. “I see your plan is proceeding.”
“And very well, too. Finding Zack here was an unexpected advantage.”
Sam sat down. “Don’t get too complacent. You know as well as I do that things could go wrong at any stage. We’ve got what we need now. Don’t get greedy.”
Trin rolled her eyes and took another hit from the joint. She didn’t look like herself: an easy illusion spell had transformed her into the same redheaded knockout who had been dealing with Zack before, only this time she wore a tiny green bikini that barely contained her illusionary curves. “I think you’ve been in that kid body for so long that you’re starting to think like one. I’ve got this under control. Watch and learn.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed, his gaze full of so much hatred that even Trin had to back off a little. “Don’t patronize me. You’ll find it an unwise decision. Remember, the others still think that your host is unstable and untrustworthy. I could bring you down with a couple of phone calls.”
“And I, my dear little boy,” she said with a smirk, “Could reduce you to a pile of charred ash right there where you sit before you could get up. Don’t forget: unlike you, I actually have a host with power instead of one who should be in school having farting contests.”
Sam all but seethed in his chair. “You could,” he said tightly, “but the others would hear of it. And they would end you. Enough squabbling. We both have our duties.”
She shrugged like it didn’t matter to her one way or the other and stretched again. She could get to like this place: it had belonged, up until a few days ago, to a local businessman of some wealth and repute who occupied it alone following his daughter’s departure for a distant college. The man was still there, of course, but it had taken only a brief conversation with him and another expendable soldier host to make him far more amenable to their plans. Trin and Sam were using the house as a temporary base, since it was situated close to one of the central permanent teleportation portals.
Zack came back in, burdened with two large tote bags that seemed almost too heavy for him. He dropped them next to Trin’s chair. “There ya go.”
Trin winced. Nobody would ever call her classically trained in magic or any kind of purist, but seeing potent magical tomes treated so cavalierly offended even her limited sensibilities. She dipped into the bag and pulled one out, glanced at the title, then set it aside. “Where are the interesting ones?”
“At the bottom,” he said. He rummaged in the other bag and came up with a smaller stack. “Even got a couple more that you weren’t expecting.” He eyed Trin and the joint with the hopeful expression of a puppy daring to think he might get a treat.
Trin didn’t respond, except to pick up the first of the smaller stack and page through it. She did this for each of them without comment until she reached the last one. Then her eyes came up, smoldering with rage, and settled on Zack. Even Sam noticed and leaned forward.
“What?” Zack asked, oblivious. “Those are what you wanted, right? They better be—it took me quite a while to find them. You should see some of those libraries. They don’t make a fuckin’ bit of sense the way they’re set up.”
For several seconds Trin merely pinned the weaselly little man with her gaze, struggling to get herself under control. She couldn’t kill him—not yet. As repugnant as he was, he had a rare talent that made him uniquely suitable for the kind of work they needed him to perform. She found it distasteful that a useless little stoner like Zack could somehow be gifted with an ability that allowed him to bypass wards, but the Universe being what it was, she had to work with what she could get. Once she’d gotten wind of him and his talents, it hadn’t been hard for her to put out her feelers and locate him. Convincing him to go along with the plan was harder: to make sure that she’d successfully bought his uncertain loyalty, she had offered him a payment of one million dollars for obtaining the books she wanted. She’d also, in the guise of the knockout redhead, heavily implied that there would be…other rewards if he did a good job and didn’t screw up. Trin was sure this little shit had never touched a woman in his life (identifying virgins and manipulating their insecurities was one of the joys of her life), and the eagerness with which he’d accepted her offer once she’d convinced him that no one would be waiting on the other sides of the wards he’d be breaking through bordered on unseemly. Trin found him thoroughly disgusting, and was glad that she had no intention of delivering either the money or any other promised rewards once Zack outlived his usefulness.
She’d chosen not to devote a soldier to him, as she wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t be caught and probably killed on his first trip out. In truth, she had no idea what Zack might find on the other side of those wards: mages didn’t mess around when it came to protecting their mystical storehouses. She figured if he was killed, then they weren’t any worse off than before, but if he managed to pull it off—
What she hadn’t counted on was his actually showing initiative, and that was why the little man currently had no idea that he was a hair’s breadth away from being turned into a pile of ash
es.
She held up the last book. “Where did you get this?” she asked in a low, deadly tone.
Zack tilted his head at it and grinned. “Oh, yeah. That one. That’s one of the extras.” He sounded proud of himself.
“Where. Did. You. Get. It?”
He shrugged. “Big old house in some little podunk town south of London. Heard about it in a pub, listening to a couple of other mages talkin’. Figured if it was that big it’d have a good library. Was, too. Took me a while to find it. That’s where the old guy almost saw me leavin’.”
Trin let out a loud sigh, her hand with the book dropping to her lap.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
“This is what I get for using fucking idiots to do jobs for me,” she said. She thrust it at him. “Look at it. Look at the bookplate.”
Sam took the book and opened it with care. He glanced inside, then at Trin, and finally up at Zack, his face very still. “Stone.”
She nodded. “He was in fucking Stone’s library. And somebody saw him.”
“Wait,” Zack said, confused. “You know this guy Stone?”
Trin looked up at him as if surprised and annoyed that he was still there. “You don’t ask questions. You answer them. And you do what I tell you. That’s what I’m paying you for. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure. So speaking of paying—”
“You’re not done yet. I also told you that you didn’t get paid until you were done.”
Sam narrowed his eyes at her, but she shook her head.
“And,” Trin added, “Your little bit of ‘initiative’ will come out of your fee.”
“What the hell?” Zack demanded. “You wanted books. I got you books. I got you extra books!”
Her eyes went chilled. “I didn’t ask you for extra books, Zack. Your fuckup might have caused me a lot of trouble. And if I have trouble, you have trouble. Do you understand? If it turns out you were seen, I will hunt you down and I will kill you. And don’t think I can’t. There’s nowhere you can go to hide from me. Do you understand?”