by King, R. L.
Finally Stone spoke softly: “Tell us about what happened twenty-seven years ago, if you would, Ms. Soren.” He sounded much better than he had earlier that day: he’d managed to organize his thoughts before dropping off to sleep again, but just barely. When he’d awakened the last vestiges of the pain were gone, though it appeared that he would carry the faint scars indefinitely.
She shrugged. “You might as well call me Edna. And there isn’t that much to tell, really.”
“How did you realize what was going on?”
“I sensed it, when the killings started. There was an unease in the general aura of the area. I was more active in those days: I’ve lived in Ojai all my life, and ever since I became aware I had my gifts, I felt they were given to me to protect the town.”
“Was there really only one killing?” Lopez asked. “In the newspaper articles we found, it mentioned a woman whose throat was cut, and a high-school boy who tried to stab another, but was discovered before he could finish.”
“There was another one that didn’t make the papers. A transient. They hushed it up, because it was extremely violent and extremely strange, and they didn’t want to disturb the public. They could get away with that a little more back then.”
“Extremely violent and strange?” Jason asked. “How so?”
“The victim disemboweled himself,” Edna said, her tone matter-of-fact. “Of course, they didn’t know that—how could they? He managed to unzip his gut with a carving knife and rip out half his innards before he died. People don’t do that to themselves.”
“Unless they’re possessed,” Jason said. He looked a little green.
“You got it. And who believes that? Besides me, I mean. That one came after the two boys. When I heard that story, I suspected something was up. I didn’t know what, but I’ve dealt with possession before. Naturally, they wrote it off as a bad drug trip and swept it under the rug.”
“So you’ve no idea who summoned this one?” Stone asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t even know it had a name until you mentioned Many Faces. I knew who you were talking about, of course—I read the papers and listen to the news. I recognized the same motivations.” She frowned at Stone, furrowing her wrinkled brow. “You said you found some sort of shrine, and a corrupted ley line section. I’d like to see that, if you could find it again.”
“Are you sure?” Lopez asked. “Al practically couldn’t function around it. It seems to have a thing against magic types.”
“I’m not like him,” she said, with some pride.
Stone didn’t take offense at that; in fact, he was only half-listening. The other half of his mind was going over what Many Faces had said during their conversation the previous night. “I think the same people summoned it both times,” he said suddenly. “And I’m not sure they had any idea what they were doing.”
They all stared at him. “What?” Jason asked. “Why do you think that?”
Speaking slowly, pausing to go over the words to make sure he was getting them right, he told them about Many Faces’ statements—about the “foolish children” and their “inexpert and imperfect” summoning, and about how they had “grown in age, if not in wisdom” and somehow obtained an “artifact of power.” He shook his head, addressing Edna. “He spoke of she of my masters’ blood. Am I wrong, or does that sound to you like someone who’s related to the dissident group who summoned it all those years ago?”
Edna didn’t answer for a long time. “It makes sense,” she finally admitted. “More sense than anything else I’ve heard. If there are still descendants of the Spanish in the area, it’s possible that the descendants of that group are still here, too. Of course, we don’t know how many of them there were.”
“So—a woman summoned it?” Jason asked. And to Edna: “Are there any other female magic types around here that you know of? Somebody who would have been here twenty-seven years ago and is still here?”
Edna shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of. There are people who claim to be magically talented, like that stupid woman who runs that ridiculous shop downtown, but all they do is put on a good show for the tourists.”
Stone was thinking again. “It mentioned that whoever the summoner was—and it sounds like there were more than one—they didn’t do it on purpose. That they didn’t know what they’d done, and didn’t direct it once it was here. I wonder—is it possible that they didn’t know they summoned it?”
“How would that work?” Jason asked. “How do you summon something and not know it?”
But Edna was nodding. “It is possible,” she said. “There are invocations that can summon things from other planes just by reading them aloud.” She fixed her beady gaze on Stone. “You’re sure it mentioned ‘she of my masters’ blood’?”
“Quite sure, yes.”
She stared into her lap and was silent for a few seconds. “From what you’ve told me of the shrine, and what was written on the rock tablets—blood was integral to this summoning. It sounds like there was a sacrifice to bring it into initial being, so any descendants of the summoners would be connected with it, if even in a small way.”
“But how would they summon it?” Stone asked. “Are you saying they had a formula? Or even its true name?”
“I don’t know,” she said, a little peevishly. “I don’t make a habit of summoning spirits of vengeance. But they might not have needed one. If the summoner was a direct descendant of the original summoners, it might have been waiting for someone to call it. We don’t know why it went away in the first place—that’s got to be lost to history. But if it wasn’t banished, but merely waiting for a new master to serve—”
“Right, right,” Stone said, warming to the idea. “And that’s how the summoning could have been ‘imperfect.’ It said its connection to the world was weak—that’s consistent with a botched summoning. If the blood descendant called it without a proper invocation, they might have gotten something, but not everything.”
“But what about the artifact?” Jason asked. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“Who knows?” Stone said, shrugging. “Perhaps in the meantime she got hold of something that allowed her to do the summoning properly, but she still didn’t know she was doing it.”
Lopez sighed. “That’s all well and good,” he said, “But it still doesn’t tell us who it is, or how to get rid of this thing.”
“And,” Jason said, “It doesn’t explain why they’d do it. I mean, okay, maybe you can call up something without knowing you’re doing it if you’ve got the right genetics, but think about it: how many people do you know who just sit around chanting things that even might be calls for ancient vengeance demons? You know: ‘Hey, it’s Saturday! Let’s all hold hands and summon Satan! Then we’ll have pie!’ I’m not buying it.”
Stone nodded, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve a point there. If there was more than one person involved, then they had to be doing something that approximated a summoning. Even with the blood connection, there’s got to be more to it than looking in a mirror and saying ‘Bloody Mary’ three times.”
Lopez leaned forward. “Okay, let’s look at our evidence, or at least what we’re pretty sure of. I can’t help with any of this magic stuff, but evidence examination I know.” He pulled out a notebook from his back pocket and began jotting things down as he spoke. “You’re saying that whoever summoned this thing did it twenty-seven years ago, didn’t know what they did, and they didn’t do it right, yeah?”
“Right,” Stone said, nodding.
Lopez finished writing that down. “You said at least one of the group is probably a blood descendant of one of the people who summoned it originally back hundreds of years ago.”
“Yes,” Stone said. “Though that probably isn’t much help, since I doubt anyone’s traced the lineage, and after all these years it could have drifted so much that we’re not
necessarily looking for someone Chumash. Hell, by now their family could be Polish or Mongolian or Japanese for all we know. We—” He stopped a moment.
Jason tilted his head. “Al?”
Stone held up a hand. Something he’d said had tripped a distant memory in his mind, but it was fleeting and every time he tried to chase it down, it flitted maddeningly away. “Never mind,” he said at last, frustrated. “I thought I had something, but it’s gone now. Please continue, Stan.”
Lopez consulted his notebook. “Okay, so let’s see. We also know that at least one of the group is female, because of the ‘she of my master’s blood’ thing.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “And if we make the assumption that both the old summoning and the recent one happened in Ojai, then we’re looking for somebody who lived here back then and still does.”
“Or someone who went away and came back,” Lopez added.
Stone addressed Edna: “You said you didn’t know of any female mages in the area. Is it possible they’re simply keeping quiet about their power, like you do? Does anyone know about you?”
“Does it even have to be a mage?” Jason interrupted. Then, to Edna: “You said that there were ways to summon something by just reading something off a piece of paper, or out of a book. Do you have to be magically talented to do that? Could I do it, or Stan? Or does the power have to be there somewhere in the first place?”
Edna thought about that. She looked at Stone first. “Like I said, I don’t know of any female practitioners in the valley, but I don’t honestly go around checking that often. In fact, the only magical person of any power at all that I knew of in the valley died last year. He was a friend of mine. Cranky old bird, but I’m a cranky old bird too, so we got along. I got a fair bit of his library before his idiot heirs gave it all away to Bart’s.” To Jason, she added, “As far as I know, it’s possible to do a summoning without any magical ability if it’s written up properly by someone who does have some, but I’ve never seen or heard of a case where it’s happened.”
Lopez jotted all of this down in his notebook. He glanced up. “Al, you mentioned ‘stupid children’ or something, didn’t you?”
“Foolish children,” Stone confirmed. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Just thinking, wondering: do you think that meant real children? Or is he just so old that he’d think of all of us as children?”
“Wait,” Jason protested. “You’re saying it might have been kids who summoned it?”
“Age wouldn’t matter,” Edna said. “Even though most magical people don’t come into their powers until around puberty or even later, that doesn’t mean the potential isn’t there. Especially if the child was related by blood to the original summoners. And teenagers, with all their passions and their emotions so close to the surface—it’s definitely possible. Especially for this kind of summoning, which is all about passion. But that still doesn’t help us—” Her gaze darted to her left. “Hey, are you sick?”
Stone had sat suddenly upright on the couch, swinging his legs around until he was leaning forward. His eyes burned with an odd intensity. “Teenagers,” he whispered.
“Huh?” Jason stared at him, confused.
“Teenagers!” he said again, louder. And then more softly: “Japanese...I wonder...”
Edna glared at him. “Is your fever coming back? Maybe we should—”
He held up an abrupt hand. “Quiet, please. I’m trying to put something together.” He closed his eyes and began tracing something in the air, like a schoolchild trying to solve a math problem. After a few seconds of this he opened his eyes again. “The numbers work, at least,” he said triumphantly. “It’s probably nothing, but at least it’s a lead.” He sounded like he was talking to himself, and no longer even seemed aware that the others were in the room.
“Al, what the hell are you talking about?” Jason demanded. “Want to pull into a station one of these days so we can board your train of thought?”
Stone paused to gather himself for a moment before answering. “The night I had dinner with Lindsey, she mentioned that when she was a little girl, she had a babysitter she quite liked because she belonged to some sort of ‘witch club,’ and she let Lindsey wear her green robe. I didn’t think anything of it at the time—like I said, it’s probably nothing—but what made me think of it was when I said the family could be Japanese by now. The babysitter was Japanese.”
Jason frowned. “That’s pretty sketchy. You think this girl is the summoner?”
“Not necessarily. But Lindsey said there was a group of them.” He paused a moment, racking his brain to try to recall what she’d told him while not allowing himself to think too hard about anything else from that night. “She said it was all about fairies and magic wands and that sort of thing—and that they got together to cast spells and make love potions.”
Edna looked skeptical. “If the girls were in high school at the time, then that would make them—”
“—Early to mid-forties now,” Lopez said. “I agree with Jason: it’s pretty sketchy. How would we even find out who they are? We can’t exactly take out an ad in the classifieds: ‘Wanted, Witch Club members from nearly thirty years ago.’” He turned toward Stone. “Did she tell you this babysitter’s name?”
Stone pondered. “I don’t think so. All she said was that her nickname was something like Nikki, or—no, it was Mickey. Lindsey said she used to call her ‘Mickey Mouse.’”
“Let’s check the yearbooks,” Jason said. “They’ve got to have them at the library. This area’s mostly white and Hispanic—I don’t think you’ll find a lot of Japanese kids, especially not that long ago. Shouldn’t be too hard to at least narrow it down.”
“Assuming you’re even right,” Lopez said, “What then?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m still working this out as I go along.” He settled back onto the sofa. “Edna—what do you think?”
“I think you’re all crazy,” she said frankly. “But you’re right—it could be possible, and I’m not comin’ up with anything else either. See where this goes, and if it pans out then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
“Do you think you can get rid of it again?” Lopez asked her. “Like you did last time?”
“No way,” she said. “For one thing, I’m not anywhere near as strong as I was nearly thirty years ago. And for another—I didn’t even get rid of it then. Like I said before, I just kind of gave it a time-out.”
“What about if you two worked together?” Jason said, pointing at Stone.
She gave Stone a critical look and shrugged. “I don’t know if we can. Our magic comes from completely different places. It’s possible, though. I’ll want to see those tablets if I can. I can’t read ’em, of course, but maybe I can get something from them if I can get close.”
“We can do that tomorrow,” Stone said. “I warn you, though: it’s a bit of a hike. Are you sure you’re up to—”
“Don’t you worry about me, boy,” she said with pride in her tone. “I might be old, but like I said, I’m a tough old bird. Who do you think keeps things repaired around here, wood sprites?”
“I don’t think we should split up,” Lopez said. “I wouldn’t want to go near those tablets without you around, Al, in case Faces gets nasty again. And I doubt you could find the place on your own anyway. Normally I’d say send Jason to look for the yearbooks, but—”
“No, we’ll stay together,” Stone said. To Edna, he said. “May we stay the night here?”
“I figured you would. Can’t go out like that in the middle of the night.”
He nodded, and his expression sobered. “After we’re gone, you might want to look around a bit. I suspect you might find bodies somewhere near here. My working theory is that Faces requires them to summon or sustain his smaller minions, and those were definitely in evidence last night.”
“Great,” she said, letting out a loud sigh. “Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t just move to Hawaii and get it over with.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Early the next morning, Lopez brought the truck around, and they prepared to head back to Ojai. While he and Jason loaded up the gear, Stone took Edna aside.
“I realized I hadn’t thanked you for what you did,” he said. He’d reclaimed his black overcoat; he stood now with his hands in its pockets, looking out over the parking lot where he’d come so close to death only a short time ago. It was already shaping up to be a beautiful day, the sun rising above the trees into a brilliant blue sky without a single cloud.
Edna shrugged. “Too much death around here lately,” she said. “If you can do something about it, least I can do is help by keeping your fool head alive long enough to figure it out.”
He chuckled mirthlessly. “I know you don’t think much of me, Edna, but I promise: I’ll do whatever I can to deal with Many Faces and end this once and for all.”
“It’s not you personally I don’t think much of,” she said, looking out over the parking lot. “It’s your kind. That attitude. Your type thinks magic is all about formulas and study and imposing your will. The type who thinks they make things happen.”
She turned to him, and her expression was odd. “Your kind are the ones who cause the problems that my kind has to clean up. I haven’t seen a damn one of you who has half the wisdom to steer all that power. You’re like a mouse riding a runaway bull. Doesn’t matter how smart that mouse is, or how much he thinks he can control that bull—maybe he can, for a while. But if he loses control, then things break. And whatever gets in the bull’s way gets trampled.”