by R. L. King
Stone started to leave, then turned back. “Oh, and Stefan?”
“Yes?”
“I want your word that if I leave him with you and you don’t kill him, I won’t ever need to deal with him in any…other capacity.”
Kolinsky almost—almost—looked disappointed, but then he inclined his head, acknowledging Stone’s foresight. “Of course. You have my word.”
Stone nodded. “Right, then. I’ll be on my way. Good night, Stefan.” He glanced over at the floating Zack, then pointedly turned away and walked out of the shop.
He didn’t look back.
It was after ten o’clock when Stone got home. The message light on his phone blinked. He shrugged out of his coat and hit the button.
“Al, where the hell are you?” It was Jason, and he sounded agitated. “It’s a little after nine. Call me back when you get home.”
What now? Was Jason in some kind of trouble? It had been over an hour since he’d called. Stone snatched up the phone and punched in the number.
Jason answered on the first ring. “Yeah?” His voice sounded hurried and still agitated.
“Jason. What’s wrong?”
“Where have you been?”
“Had some business,” he said, frowning. “What’s going on?”
“It’s V. She called a little while ago. She and Sharra are coming back tomorrow.” A long pause. When Jason spoke again, his voice shook: “The Evil tried to kill her, Al. And I’m scared shitless that something’s gonna happen to her before they get back here.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They met at the usual bar in Palo Alto in less than half an hour. Jason got there first, and he jumped up from his beer as Stone came in. “Is there anything you can do from here?” he demanded. “To keep her safe?”
Stone waved him back to his seat. “Calm down, Jason. Give me the details. I can’t help you if I don’t know what we’re facing.”
With many false starts and bouts of nervous energy, Jason told Stone what Verity had told him earlier: how she’d felt like she was being followed, how the man had tried to push her in front of the subway train, and how she’d caught up with him and kicked the Evil out of him. By the time he finished, Stone was leaning forward, eyes wide and jaw tight. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Jason agreed. He swiped stray hair off his forehead and took another swig of his beer. “Al, they got so close—she could have been—”
Stone nodded. “Yes, she could have. But she wasn’t. Focus on that. It sounds like she did exactly what she was trained to do: she kept her head and used her magic to get herself out of a bad situation. I’m proud of her.” There was no hiding the fact that he’d gone pale, though.
“But they tried to kill her,” Jason insisted. “What makes you think they won’t do it again?”
“Well,” Stone said, “she’s expecting it now, so it’ll be harder. What did Sharra do?”
Jason forced himself to calm down. “Right. Sharra. V said that she told her. About the Evil. She kinda felt like she had to, after what happened.”
Stone nodded. “Not surprised. From everything I’ve heard about Sharra, she’s a level-headed sort. So she and Verity are both expecting it. That, and it sounds like Verity destroyed the Evil who tried to kill her. It’s entirely possible it was working alone.”
“But it’s also possible it wasn’t,” Jason protested. “More of them could be after her.” He slammed his fist down on the table hard enough to make his beer glass jump. “Damn it, I hate feeling so fucking helpless. She’s a whole country away and there’s not a damned thing I can do to help her.” He looked up. “Can you? Is there anything you can do—you know, magically?”
“Not at this point,” Stone said, shaking his head. He glanced at his watch. “It’s already getting close to eleven here, which means it’s almost two back there. What time did you say her plane was taking off?”
“Around seven a.m. tomorrow.”
“That means they’ve got to be at the airport in just a few hours. If I know Verity, they probably aren’t sleeping. Sharra will have protections around her home, so it won’t be easy for anyone to get in.” He didn’t look happy about the situation either. “I think we’ll just have to trust that she and Sharra can take care of themselves. So far they’ve done an admirable job at it.”
“So we just gotta sit here and wait.” Jason shook his head, staring down into his glass. Then he looked back up at Stone. “What do you think it means, Al? Why would they send somebody after her now?”
Stone took a long time to answer, thinking about Zack back at Kolinsky’s shop. “I think they’re on the move again,” he said at last. “I wasn’t sure before, but between the thefts and the kidnapping and now this attempt on Verity’s life, I think something’s happening.” He shook his head. “I’m puzzled, though. Some of this doesn’t make sense.”
“What? Do you know something else?”
“I had a little chat with our thief tonight.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “You found him?”
“With some help, yes. We set a trap, hoping to lure him in with some books he wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“And you caught him?”
Stone nodded. “But the odd thing was, he said he was specifically told not to steal from me.”
“But—” Jason protested.
“But he did,” Stone finished, nodding. “Apparently he decided to show a rare burst of initiative when he was in England. And apparently the people who hired him weren’t at all pleased with that.”
Jason looked confused. “Why wouldn’t they want your books, though? You’ve got to have one of the better libraries around, right? You were bound to have something that could help with whatever they were trying to do.”
“Unless they didn’t want me to know they were planning something,” Stone said.
Jason considered that, then nodded slowly. “If they were up to something, they wouldn’t want you to know about it because you’re one of the few people around who not only know what they are, but also have the power to fuck with their plans, right?”
“That would be my guess,” Stone said. “But I’d have assumed that would extend to you as well…and to Verity. In her own way, she’s as dangerous as I am—possibly even more so. She doesn’t have my raw power or my experience, but she does have the ability to remove the Evil from their hosts, in addition to becoming a formidable mage in her own right.”
“So getting rid of her might be on their agenda regardless,” Jason said, his expression going still.
“That’s the thing that puzzles me, though: getting rid of her without getting rid of me—or vice versa—wouldn’t be a bright move, strategically speaking. If they wanted to remove us from the equation, best to do it at the same time, or very close together. But I’m reasonably certain no one’s come after me recently. No near misses, no suspicious people hanging about—and from what the thief said, it sounds like they’re actively trying to avoid me.”
“Maybe V being away from us was too tempting for them to ignore,” Jason said.
“Possibly. But I wonder how they even found out she was there. She didn’t exactly broadcast her plans. I didn’t tell anyone where she was. Did you?”
“Of course not. Who would I tell? I don’t even think Marta knows where she went, just that she’s gone.”
Stone nodded. “Well, we’ll pick her up tomorrow and perhaps she’ll be able to shed some more light on the situation. In the meantime—I don’t suppose it will do me any good to suggest you go home and get some rest, will it?”
“Not a damn bit,” Jason said.
“Might as well come over, then. We can watch bad movies until we fall asleep in our chairs, and that way I won’t have to pick you up in the morning to go to the airport.”
When Verity and Sharra arrived in San Francisco, they found a vigilant Stone and Jason waiting for them just outside the gate. As soon as Verity caught sight of them she dropped her carry-on ba
g, ran over and flung her arms around Jason, gripping him in a hard hug.
“Hey, big bro. It’s good to be home.” She stepped away from him, eyed Stone like she was trying to decide whether to do it, and then hugged him as well.
“It’s good to see you two safe,” Stone said, returning the hug. “When Jason called me last night—”
“Yeah,” Verity said, pulling back, her expression sobering. “It was pretty scary, in more ways than one.”
“Let’s get your bags, and then I suggest we adjourn somewhere and compare notes.”
“Can that be someplace we can get breakfast?” Verity asked. “We were too nervous to eat before, and the food on the plane was pretty vile.”
They collected Verity’s and Sharra’s luggage at the baggage carousel and, with Jason and Stone playing porter, headed out to the car. Less than half an hour later they sat around a large table in the back corner of an IHOP Verity had spotted just off the freeway.
Keeping a watch on the waitress’s location, and fitting their stories in around her comings and goings, the four shared what they’d been doing since they’d parted company. Most of them already had the basics, since Stone, Jason, and Verity had been keeping in periodic communication while Verity was gone, but this was the first time they’d examined everything at once. Taken together, it began to look more chilling.
“I’m really sorry to get you all tangled up with this,” Verity told Sharra between mouthfuls of chocolate chip pancakes. “It’s not what I wanted. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get away for a while—so I didn’t have to think about the Evil. Now I’ve dragged you into the middle of it.”
Sharra shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m just glad I was there to help out.” She grinned. “I mean, not like you wouldn’t have dealt with it just fine yourself, but I didn’t think you wanted to explain to a crowd why you were hovering over the subway tracks.”
“Right, then,” Stone said. He wasn’t eating anything, and just had a cup of coffee in front of him. “I think now that we’re all up to date on what everyone’s experienced, we need to start putting things together.” He glanced over at Jason, who was busy packing away a large pile of hash browns and bacon. “May I borrow your notebook, since you seem otherwise occupied?”
Jason handed it over without comment, along with his ever-present stubby pencil.
“So,” Stone said, “Let’s start by figuring out what we know, as opposed to what we suspect.” He opened the notebook and began scribbling. “We know that at least one Evil tried to kill Verity. We also know that someone broke into several magical libraries, here and in England, and possibly elsewhere, to steal books.”
“Every group of books stolen had at least one about summoning in it,” Jason pointed out.
Stone wrote that down. “We know that Pia Brandt, her husband, her daughter, and another young man disappeared without a trace during the weekend of the Occult Symposium. We know that the father, the daughter, and the young man were all at Disneyland on the same day.”
Jason nodded. “And we know Pia Brandt is a magical researcher who’s really into portals.”
“Right,” Stone agreed. “Reminds me: Must ask Stefan how he’s doing on those translations. I think they’re going to be important to figuring out what they might be up to.”
“We don’t know for sure that it’s the Evil who’s kidnapped Dr. Brandt and the others, right?” Verity asked.
“Not for sure, no,” Stone said. He paused to think. “Ah—we also know that whoever hired the thief to steal the books, they were angry with him when they found out he’d stolen from me. Also, my library here wasn’t touched, even though he broke into Stefan’s shop when we laid the trap for him.”
“And we know what some of the people who hired the thief looked like,” Jason reminded him.
Stone jotted more notes down. “Right. An attractive ginger woman and a young boy who seemed far more interested in the books than your typical ten-year-old should be.”
“So you think those two were Evil,” Verity said, forking in more pancakes. She’d almost finished what was on her plate, and was eyeing what was left of Jason’s hash browns with improper interest.
“Quite probably,” Stone said. “Though they don’t sound at all familiar. I haven’t heard of the Evil possessing children before; especially with the more powerful ones, they seem to prefer host bodies with more options available.” He looked over what he’d written down. “It sounds like we’re getting into the realm of speculation now, so let’s move on to what we strongly suspect. I’ll start by saying that I believe that the Evil must have at least one black mage working with them. Probably possessed. And likely it’s that redhead.”
“Why not the boy?” Jason asked. “If he’s that smart, maybe—”
Stone shook his head. “Not to be boastful, but I was a bit of a child prodigy, magic-wise, and I didn’t start my apprenticeship until I was fifteen. I’ve never heard of a ten-year-old manifesting more than spotty magical talent, and even with extensive training he wouldn’t have enough ability to be of much help to them. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’d say it’s far more likely it’s the woman.”
“Okay,” Jason said, nodding. “Next question: do you know who she is? I know you don’t know every mage in the country, but if she really was that young and hot, wouldn’t she get noticed?”
“I’ve never heard of anybody like that,” Sharra said. “That’s not really my type, but if she’d showed up at any of the gatherings I’ve attended, I’m sure I would have noticed her.”
“I’ll ask Stefan when I ask him about the translations,” Stone said, jotting down more notes.
“Any idea what they want with all the books on summoning?” Verity asked.
“Not yet,” Stone said. “Our working theory is that they’re exploring multiple angles, in case the whole portal thing doesn’t work out. But I’ve no real idea. Obviously they’re very interested, or they wouldn’t have risked stealing all those books from some extremely well protected locations.”
“So what do we do now?” Jason finished his hash browns and started on his eggs. “It still sounds like we’ve got a bunch of pieces of information that don’t fit together very well and not much to do with them. You don’t want to go after the Evil, do you?”
“Even if I did, I wouldn’t know where to start,” Stone said, shaking his head. “I’m sure the woman and the boy aren’t anywhere near New Mexico anymore, so there’s no point in trying to find them there. The only real lead we have is Dr. Brandt’s papers. I’m hoping one of them will contain something that might lead us to an idea. Aside from that, check with your police contacts to see if anything’s turned up about any of the missing people. And all of you—be careful. We don’t know that the attack on Verity was planned. It may have just been a crime of opportunity, but the coincidence just seems a bit too much to believe. Why choose her over all the other possible victims?”
“One thing I don’t get,” Verity said. “From everything we’ve heard about the powerful Evil, they don’t work very well together. Lamar and Marilee and the other Forgotten we’ve talked to all think that they stake out their own areas of influence and they can’t stand to be around each other very much. But this all sounds way too coordinated for just one Evil, even if it’s a mage. Do you think they’re working together?”
Stone thought about that a long time before answering. “I hope not,” he said at last. “But I agree with you: it certainly sounds like they might have forged some kind of temporary alliance. I suppose desperation can make strange bedfellows.”
“Great,” Jason said. “Like it wasn’t bad enough fighting one big nasty Evil. Now we gotta fight all of ’em.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“FUCK!”
Trin flung the portable phone across the room so hard it dented the wall. She’d missed pitching it through the window by less than a foot. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!”
Sam appeared in the doorway. “Is there a
problem?”
She whirled and glared at him, for a second or two looking like she was tempted to unleash one of her more devastating spells on his smarmy little-kid face and knock that smirk off for good. She stopped, took several deep breaths, and got herself under control before answering him. “Yes. There’s a problem. Contrary to what some people might believe, I don’t just scream profanity because I like the way it sounds.”
Sam wasn’t entirely sure he believed that, given his past association with her, but he decided (probably wisely) not to mention this fact. Instead, he asked in a noncommittal tone: “What happened?”
“What happened,” she growled, taking another pause for deep breaths, “is that we work with fucking morons. I don’t know how we’re ever supposed to get anything fucking done when we can’t count on anybody to do their fucking jobs.”
Sam didn’t reply, but simply waited. His disapproval of her unstable ways was growing; he was beginning to believe that once the group of them had accomplished their plans, she would need to be dealt with. None of them liked removing one of their number—the leaders—from a host, because it resulted in a significant loss of potency: far more, relatively speaking, than it did with the weak ones. Sam himself was still dealing with the loss he’d experienced when forced to vacate the mage woman and occupy the body of this child. He remembered what it was like to have power: the mage woman (what was the host’s name? Trixie? Brandi? He couldn’t even remember, except that it was something stupid) wasn’t as powerful as Trin—not even close. But still, she’d been strong in magic and good at hiding her power so people would overlook her. She had been all too willing to accept the Others’ promises of greater power and pleasure, and equally willing to convince her lesser-powered boyfriend to join up as well. It had been an excellent match.
But now, he—once one of the strongest of the Others’ remaining leaders, and still one of its shrewdest—was trapped in this undersized, useless form. He could switch again, but that would entail yet another significant loss of power. Probably so much that the others would lose sufficient respect for him that they’d no longer give the same regard to his ideas and suggestions. He couldn’t afford that: not now, not when they were on the cusp of implementing their last-ditch plan to re-establish the connection with their home.