by King, R. L.
“My name is Lieutenant Peter Casner, sir. I’m with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.”
Stone froze, momentarily speechless.
“I’m calling in connection with Mr. Jason Thayer. Do you know him?”
“Of course I do. Is he all right?”
There was a pause. “Can you please tell me who you are, and how you know Mr. Thayer?”
The chill grew stronger. He leaned forward, propping himself against the counter. “I’m Alastair Stone. I’m a friend of his. What’s happened?”
“He’s—missing, Mr. Stone. We found two messages from you on the voicemail at his motel room, and we were hoping you might be able to provide us with some information about where he might be.”
“If I knew where he was, I wouldn’t have left two messages on his voicemail,” Stone said. He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. “How do you know he’s disappeared? He was supposed to be down there to visit some friends and attend a wedding. Perhaps he just decided to stay with them instead of coming back to his room.”
“We’ve spoken to his friends, sir. None of them saw him since the night before last.” There was the sound of papers shuffling. “On one of your messages, you said he’d made you curious about something. Can you tell me what that is?”
Stone considered. He couldn’t exactly tell the cop that Jason had found something supernatural afoot in sleepy Ojai. That was a one-way ticket to a tasteful room with bouncy walls. Or at the very least to being regarded from this point forward as a crackpot in the official police records.
Hmm...or was it?
“I don’t know, precisely. That’s why I was trying to contact him. I teach Occult Studies up here at Stanford, so likely he found some interesting local legend or ghost story he wanted to pass along.” Nothing like the truth—or at least some part of it—to save himself from being entangled in a big mess of lies later on. Not to mention getting that academic credential from a top-level university out there on the table. At least if he was going to be a crackpot, he’d be a respectable crackpot.
“Is there anything else you can tell us about where he might be, Mr. Stone?”
“Dr. Stone, actually.” Yeah, okay, pretentious as hell. But if he had to go down there and investigate—which was looking increasingly likely—he’d need all the frontloaded ‘I’m not a raving nutter’ cred he could muster to offset some of the questions he’d probably have to ask once he got there. “Sorry, but no. He didn’t tell me anything more than the name of his motel.” He frowned. “So you’re saying he just—didn’t turn up where he was supposed to be? He didn’t attend the wedding?”
“I’m not at liberty to give details about the case, sir. Do you mind if I leave my phone number with you, and if you hear from him or hear anything about his possible whereabouts, could you let us know?”
“Of course.” Stone’s voice trailed off, his mind already spinning. He jotted down Casner’s number on a nearby notepad. “Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir?”
“There’s more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there?”
“I can’t say, sir. I’m sorry. But please let us know if you hear from him.”
An hour later, Stone was on the road heading south. He could have performed a tracking ritual from his home, but finding someone that far away could get tricky, not to mention inaccurate. Even if he was able to pinpoint Jason’s location, what could he do with the information? Call up the local authorities and pass it along to them? He could see that working well: “Yes, officer. I’m—er—a psychic. And I got a vision of my friend who’s missing, in his car off the side of the road somewhere near a lot of trees.” Yeah, they’d pay all kinds of attention to that.
So, road trip it was.
It would have been faster if there’d been a portal nearby, but there wasn’t. Sometimes the mundane way was best anyway. Especially since he wanted to have his own car available.
He settled for weaving a small ‘disregard me’ spell around his big black BMW during the long dull stretches of 101 between Gilroy and Santa Barbara where there was very little traffic, cranking his favorite Queen CD to eleven, and opening up the car to somewhere north of a hundred miles per hour whenever he could get away with it. You didn’t do that when any other cars were around, because invariably the only other driver within ten miles of you on the freeway would suddenly decide he had to drift into your lane just as you came screaming up on him at nearly twice the speed limit (Stone thought it might be one of those things that highlighted magic’s twisted sense of humor), but if the road was clear, it made long trips go by a lot faster.
As he drove, he thought about what might be going on with Jason. What had he seen that had made him call Stone in the first place? Teasing about his skittishness around the supernatural notwithstanding, Jason had a pretty strong constitution when it came to dealing with the stranger end of the spectrum, once he’d allowed himself to admit it existed. He was also, thanks to the magical heritage he’d gotten from his mother, quite a bit tougher in the face of threats from the magical world than your garden-variety mundane. Magical powers got passed from same-sex parent to child, so Jason’s sister Verity ended up with the mojo, but Stone was becoming increasingly more convinced (especially given Jason’s odd ability to serve as a magical power battery) that the opposite-sex children weren’t quite as left out of the party as was commonly believed. That was part of what his current research was examining, and Jason had been serving as his favorite (and so far only) guinea pig.
He went over what he knew about the situation: Jason had driven down to Ojai a few days ago and checked into the Nest Motel. His friends had seen him two nights ago, after which he’d disappeared.
Had he returned to his room at all? Had something happened to him on the way back to the motel? Had he perhaps met a woman and gone off with her? No, that’s speculation. Stick to the facts. There was no point in indulging in flights of fancy, at least not until he had more data. The only other thing he could be sure of was that there was more going on here than a simple disappearance. Lieutenant Casner had clearly been trying to keep his voice even and give nothing away, but Stone was good enough at picking up conversational nuances that it had come through like a beacon that the cop was holding something back. What could it be?
The answer was: it could be anything. When you were dealing with the magical world, you weren’t limited by the normal restrictions of mundane life: things like drunken auto accidents, bar fights, and seduction by women rendered smoking hot by beer goggles. If only it were that easy, Stone wouldn’t be so apprehensive about what he was going to find. When you brought the spooky stuff into the equation, you could be dealing with anything from poltergeists to extradimensional abduction. And everything in between.
Slow down, Stone admonished himself, temporarily dropping the BMW’s camouflage magic as he blew past an ancient VW Beetle chugging along in the slow lane. It’s probably something perfectly mundane. In fact, you’ll probably get down there only to find he’s already shown up at his motel room, wanting to know what all the fuss was about. His mind drifted back to an old episode of The Twilight Zone he’d seen when he was younger, about a little girl who’d disappeared from her home. Her father’s friend, some sort of scientist, had immediately started poking around in search of portals to other dimensions instead of simply looking under the bed or in the closet. Of course, you thought it was perfectly normal to look for her in the other dimension...
None of this was doing him any good. He swapped out the Queen CD for Pink Floyd and settled back to cover the rest of the distance. He wouldn’t get any more information until he arrived in Ojai, and no amount of speculation was going to change that.
Even with magical assistance and only one brief stop in San Luis Obispo, it was still nearly ten p.m. when Stone arrived in Ojai. Traffic was quite sparse as he cruised up the main road into town. Since ther
e wasn’t much he’d be able to do tonight, he pulled in to a 24-hour restaurant, sat down at the counter, ordered a cup of coffee, and gave the middle-aged waitress his best charming smile. “I’m looking for a place called the Nest Motel. Can you help me?”
She smiled back (of course she did—Stone had long ago found that, at least in this country, the combination of his accent and an engaging grin was nearly foolproof against women of a certain age) and placed a steaming mug in front of him. “Sure. You’re not far. Just keep going toward town, and you’ll see it on the right in about half a mile.” She glanced around as if expecting to see someone with him. “Are you on vacation? Ojai’s beautiful this time of year.”
“No, just down here to—er—look up an old friend.”
“Well, I hope you enjoy yourself,” she said, smiling and moving off to greet a couple who’d just come in.
Stone sipped his coffee, thinking about how he would proceed tomorrow. It was probably too much to hope that he’d be able to get into Jason’s room at the Nest—even if he could talk the desk clerk or a maid into letting him in, he’d arouse too much suspicion if he was caught poking around the motel room of a guy who’d recently disappeared. He supposed the best place to start was to talk to Jason’s friends, assuming he could find them. Jason had never mentioned any of their names.
His gaze fell on a folded newspaper someone had left on the stool next to him. Idly he picked it up and spread it in front of him, glancing over the headlines. He expected to see typical small-town stuff: politics, high school sports, maybe a profile of some local philanthropist’s latest venture. Instead, a headline stretched over a photograph of a smiling teenage girl: Police Have Few Clues in Murder of Local Student.
Eyebrow raised, Stone unfolded the paper and skimmed the article. The sixteen-year-old girl’s body had been found just off someplace called Foothill Road by a pair of elderly dog-walkers early yesterday morning. Her throat had been cut, and it was estimated she had only been dead for a few hours before she was found.
“Terrible thing,” said a soft voice in front of him. He looked up to see the waitress refilling his cup. Her eyes cut down to the paper, and then back up to Stone. “Just terrible. She was a lovely girl. Lived here all her life.”
“I’m sorry,” Stone said.
“Everybody’s a little on edge,” she continued. “We just don’t have that kind of thing around here. But please—don’t let it upset your stay. I’m sure the police will find whoever did it soon.”
“I’m sure they will,” he murmured. The waitress moved off again and he continued leafing through the paper. He didn’t doubt that murders around here were rare, but especially in these times it was nearly inevitable that even a peaceful town like this would win the grim lottery at some point. Another thing you learned fast when you rubbed shoulders with the world of the supernatural was that it was often the sleepiest, most idyllic little towns that harbored the most horrific secrets. Even if that wasn’t true here (and he hadn’t heard anything on the mystical grapevine to indicate that it was), there were plenty of threats out there that were completely mundane in nature. All it took was for one of them to drift through town and cross paths with a target of opportunity.
The rest of the paper was more of what he’d expected, and his gaze slid over it without really taking in the ads, football scores, local news, and columns of classifieds. He was finishing his coffee and contemplating whether he wanted another refill when a thought occurred to him. He pulled the paper back over and leafed through it until he found what passed for the society page. It was full of small photos, each accompanied by a brief wedding, birth, anniversary, or funeral announcement, along with a short piece on the local high school’s twenty-five year reunion that had taken place the previous weekend.
Glancing over the wedding announcements, Stone soon nodded in triumph. Of the four on the page, only one featured a couple that was the correct age to have been Jason’s classmates: Edward Novak and Anneliese Nelson.
Checking to make sure the chatty waitress was occupied, he pulled out a small notebook and jotted down their names, along with their best man and maid of honor. He folded up the paper, tossed it on the counter, and motioned for his check.
It didn’t take him long to find the Nest Motel: it was right off the main drag, a meandering, single-story place that looked old but well maintained. Stone checked in without asking the clerk any questions about Jason, and soon found himself in a small room tastefully decorated with framed photos of the local mountains.
On a whim, he sat down on the bed, closed his eyes, and reached out with his magical senses. The motel didn’t have that many rooms, but the odds that he had been given the same one that Jason had occupied were still fairly low. He was neither surprised nor terribly disappointed when he got nothing more than faint bits of random emotion, nothing different than he would have gotten in any similar place. If Jason had been here, he hadn’t done anything remarkable while in the room.
He unpacked and decided to make it an early night. With any luck at all, he’d call the police tomorrow and they’d tell him that Jason had turned up, all was well, and he could head home and finish up his spell research before the new quarter started in a couple of weeks.
Unfortunately, that was the kind of luck he didn’t often have.
He slept badly, haunted by uneasy dreams. Jason kept calling desperately to him for help, but he was unable to reach his friend, no matter how hard he tried. When Stone awoke early the next morning, he could barely remember the dreams.
Chapter Three
A phone call to the local police department confirmed what Stone had all but known to be true: Jason was still missing. He didn’t tell them he was in town; they’d find out soon enough, but he didn’t want to get called in to answer a bunch of questions—at least not until after he’d had a chance to chat with one or more of Jason’s friends.
He got a copy of the local phone book and located the names he’d found in the paper. As he suspected, neither Edward Novak nor the former Anneliese Nelson answered their phones: they were probably off enjoying the sights (or more likely, each other) on some balmy Hawaiian beach. He had better luck with the best man, a guy named Chris Merrill. The woman who answered the phone told Stone that he worked at one of the local hardware stores, and should be there now.
Merrill turned out to be a skinny young man of medium height, with longish brown hair and the tanned complexion of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun. Stone waited patiently while he helped an old woman pick out a bag of nails, then moved up. “Excuse me. Chris Merrill?”
Merrill turned. “Yeah, that’s me. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to chat with you for a few minutes, if you can spare them.”
“About what?” Brief suspicion drifted over the young man’s face.
“About your friend Jason Thayer.”
Merrill took a deep breath. “Are you a policeman, Mr.—”
“Stone. Alastair Stone. No. I’m a friend of Jason’s from up north. I understand he’s gone missing.”
Merrill nodded, frowning. “Yeah.” He tilted his head, looking troubled. “You’re from up north? You mean up in the Bay Area?”
“Yes.”
“And you came all the way down here? He’s only been missing for a couple of days…” He seemed to be trying to work that out.
Stone had to admit that the whole thing probably did look pretty odd from Merrill’s perspective: here was some strange British dude at least ten years older than Jason, claiming to be a good enough friend that he’d drive all the way down from the Bay Area to look for him. His reasons were none of Merrill’s business, though. “Yes,” he said. Sometimes the minimalist answer was the best. “So—do you have a few minutes to chat with me?”
“Uh—sure. Hold on, let me tell the boss I need a break, and we can go outside.”
He emerged
a couple of minutes later and joined Stone, who was leaning against a column outside the store watching the traffic going by. “So what do you want to know?”
“Jason came down here to attend a wedding, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell me what he was doing the night he disappeared? Were you with him then?”
“We all were,” Merrill said. “Well, all the guys, anyway. We were all at Eddie’s bachelor party.”
“Was that here in town?”
Merrill nodded. “Yeah. Anneliese—she’s the bride—woulda killed us all if we got strippers, so we just had a party—you know, barbecue, pornos, music, lots of booze. And a couple strippers,” he added with a sly chuckle. “But don’t tell Anneliese that. One of the guys’ parents has a nice spread up in the Arbolada with a pool, and they cleared out and let us have it for the night.” He grinned, remembering, but it was fleeting and quickly faded.
“The Arbolada?” Stone raised an eyebrow, noting Merrill’s change of mood.
Merrill waved vaguely. “Yeah, it’s a part of town. Lots of nice houses there.”
“How long was Jason there?”
“I dunno,” he said, shrugging. “I was a little out of it by that time, you know?”
“I suppose Jason was as well?”
“Everybody was. The booze was flowing free.”
“When he left—did he take his car?”
“Nah. The cops came to get it yesterday morning, Eddie said. That’s the guy whose parents own the house.”
“So he left without his car? That seems odd.”
“Not really. Eddie’s parents insisted everybody hand over their keys before we got started. Said they didn’t want to be responsible for anybody gettin’ hurt. Lotta guys slept it off at the house and left in the morning. Plus Jason’s always been kind of a straight arrow about stuff like that.”
“I see.” Stone pondered for a moment. “Did anyone see him leave? Did you talk with the others at all about this, after it was determined he was missing?”