Game of Stone

by R. L. King

  “I’m afraid not. My source tells me the window between the white piece activating and the commission of the crime is likely to be around a day, but he’s not at all sure. It could be shorter, longer, or variable—perhaps the worse the crime, the longer the interval. I don’t know. All I can do is keep checking them.”

  “Okay, Doc. Okay. I’m kinda on my own with this one—since there’s no way to connect Bob Pisani’s thefts or the arson case with Ralph’s suicide or Frank’s death, I can’t bring anybody in on it without tellin’ ’em things I think we’d all be better off if I didn’t. I mean, there’s the chess-piece angle, but who’s gonna believe magic chess pieces are makin’ people commit crimes?”

  “I sympathize, Detective. I’ll call you if I get anything else.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Stone put his mobile away and drove off. He had a few more things to do today, but he should probably stop by home and check the set again before he did them. As he turned the car back toward Palo Alto, he was already thinking about how to tweak the wards on the vault so they’d alert him if the pieces showed any magical activity.

  28

  Another two weeks passed, with no sign of activity from the white game pieces. Stone checked them several times a day even after he altered the wards on the vault to notify him if they displayed any magical traces, and wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or disappointed that they remained quiet and inert. Could it be that so many things had been happening to him lately that he felt odd when they weren’t happening?

  He drove out to the house in Encantada a couple of evenings after work. He’d called Lawrence Hathaway back to let him know he’d decided to keep the place, and spent a couple of hours one afternoon signing the various bits of paperwork required to take official ownership. He still couldn’t quite get his mind around the fact that he now owned actual real estate in the United States. Despite living in the country for nearly ten years, he’d never gotten around to buying a place of his own because a tiny corner of the back of his mind refused to acknowledge that the relocation was permanent. When you could traipse back and forth between continents in a few minutes’ time, it had hardly seemed necessary to make such a commitment.

  But still, he soon discovered that the house Adelaide Bonham had left him had a different effect on him than the acquisition of Desmond’s London place had. He already had an anchor in England with the house in Surrey—but now he had one in the States too. He’d tried to work through the feeling, to understand why it was so, but so far it hadn’t quite gelled.

  He hadn’t taken Verity with him on his more recent wanderings through the house; she was busy with her job and her own pursuits, and aside from that he’d been compelled toward solitude as he paced its halls, forming ideas of where he’d want to put things. He’d have to do a lot of shopping—as Verity had said, the kitchen would need all new appliances (even if they hadn’t been a particularly hideous shade of harvest gold, they were old enough he didn’t trust them to work properly)—and since his Palo Alto townhouse was a furnished rental, he’d added few of his own pieces to it. The interior would need a lot updates as well, but he held off on calling anyone with the thought that perhaps he could learn how to do some of the work himself.

  In his copious free time.

  With his world-class DIY skills.

  Perhaps not, then—but still, he had plenty of time to have someone in later. This wasn’t a project he needed to move fast on, since he had the lease on the townhouse for several more months yet before he’d have to sign a new one.

  The other reason he didn’t bring Verity with him during his trips was because he wanted to try to find the ghost.

  All right, it wasn’t a ghost. There weren’t ghosts—not as mundanes understood them anyway, though he had to admit that when you got down to it, the difference was merely one of semantics. Ghosts—the spirits of dead people who hung around on this plane after they were supposed to have gone on to whatever reward awaited them—didn’t exist, or at least if they did, they were keeping quiet enough about it that centuries of magical studies hadn’t managed to definitively prove their existence. What did exist, though, was what mages called “echoes”—leftover bits of psychic energy that remained when some people died.

  For whatever reason, mages rarely if ever created echoes—Stone had never heard a documented case of one, anyway. It had always seemed strange and counterintuitive to him; since mages typically had stronger minds than mundanes, it seemed only logical that they might stick around using sheer willpower after they died, refusing to pass on. But that wasn’t the way it happened. Every echo Stone had personally encountered or heard reliable stories about had been a mundane. Just another example of how magic could be perverse, he supposed.

  Echoes were rare in any case, and usually occurred when the living person either had unfinished business on Earth (an unsolved murder, say) or a particularly strong affinity for a specific location. For example, he’d once encountered a young man who’d haunted the meat-packing plant where he’d worked until he could tell his girlfriend he’d been murdered. Many of the old universities and manor houses in England were practically crawling with echoes, relatively speaking, though most of them didn’t interact with the living often anymore.

  Stone was convinced the feeling he’d had when he’d visited the house with Verity had indicated a resident echo. He hadn’t gotten around to researching the house’s history yet, to find out who’d owned it before Adelaide had, or who had rented it over the years, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to take a solitary walk or two through the place with the lights off and see what he could pick up.

  Unfortunately, though, after that first impression, he didn’t get any others. Even when he took a trip through with magical sight active, he didn’t spot anything. Ah, well—perhaps he’d been mistaken. He’d have plenty of time to find out, he supposed.

  That weekend he went back through the portal to England. He checked in with Eddie, Ward, and Kerrick to discover, just as he’d expected, that both the magical and mundane ends of the renovation were coming along fine.

  “Coming to the pub with us tonight, Stone?” Eddie asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. If you’ve got everything in hand here, I think I’ll head back down to Surrey and work on a little project I’ve been meaning to get on with.”

  “Project?”

  “I’ve decided it’s about time I looked into a bit of my family history. I’ve never really been all that interested in the past, but I suppose I ought to know where I came from.”

  “Oh, right,” Eddie said airily, making an exaggerated hand gesture. “You lords o’ the manor who can trace your lineage back to King bloody ’Enry or summat.” He grinned. “Me, I got it easy—I barely knew who me dad was, let alone anybody before that.”

  “Sometimes I wish I didn’t either,” Stone muttered. “But anyway, I need to do it at some point.”

  “Want me to look into anything for you?” At Stone’s questioning glance, he shrugged. “Your family’s kind of a big deal in the magical world—I’m guessin’ there’s probably some bits about ’em in the archives. I’ve got a whole genealogical section back in London.”

  “Couldn’t hurt, I guess.” Stone wondered why it had never occurred to him that the London library might include data about his family. “Thanks, Eddie.”

  “No problem, mate—but I warn you: if I discover you’ve got royal blood, I ain’t gonna curtsey or nothin’.”

  “Thank the gods for small favors.”

  He’d asked Aubrey to look around for anything he could locate in the areas of the house not concealed by magic, and the old caretaker didn’t disappoint.

  “I found several boxes in the attic, sir,” he said when Stone swept in later that afternoon. “As you requested, I didn’t bring them down, but I can show you where they are.”

  “Thanks, Aubrey.” Stone had made it a point to order him not to try dragging a bunch of old boxes down from the attic; A
ubrey wasn’t getting any younger, and all that dust and exertion couldn’t be good for him. This time he’d actually listened, which told Stone he hadn’t been any more enthusiastic about the idea himself. “Just show me—I’ll stay up there for a while and sort through them.”

  They trooped upstairs to the house’s enormous, cluttered attic, and Aubrey led him to a stack of several boxes and old chests he’d dragged into a pile. “This is all I could find, but I haven’t checked everywhere. Shall I keep looking?”

  “No, this should be enough to be getting on with for a while. And I suspect most of it’s in the warded areas anyway. You go on—I’ll be fine here.”

  “Can I bring you anything, sir?”

  “No, no—I’m good. Oh—Aubrey, before you go?”

  Aubrey stopped and turned back. “Yes, sir?”

  “I’ve had you hunting around for all this old information, but I never asked you: did you know my grandfather? Did your father ever talk about him?”

  “Not…much, sir. I was very young when he died, and my father rarely spoke of him around me or my mother.”

  Stone thought he noticed a hint of reluctance in Aubrey’s tone. He shifted to magical sight, and the uneasy, muddy patches in the caretaker’s clear blue aura supported his suspicions. “There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

  “Sir…” Aubrey sighed. “I…suppose you could say that. You know I wouldn’t lie to you—my father did have very little to say about your grandfather. It wouldn’t have been seemly for him to carry tales of his employers—certainly not to his underage child.”

  “But he did say something.”

  “Yes, sir. Not to me, though. I sometimes overheard him talking with my mother, when they thought I was asleep.”

  Stone frowned. That sounded ominous. “What did he say?”

  Aubrey looked as if he’d rather be just about anywhere than where he currently was. He couldn’t meet Stone’s gaze. “It…wasn’t terribly complimentary, sir.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Go on—don’t worry about offending me. I’ve already had enough suspicions that my family haven’t exactly been saints.”

  Still, Aubrey looked like he’d rather not say it. He paced, clenching his fist around a large handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “According to my father, your grandfather was not…a kind man. He was a very powerful mage, but he had a frightful temper. He interacted almost exclusively with other mages, with the exception of the servants, whom he paid well but treated dreadfully. My father felt sorry for his wife—your grandmother. She grew terrified of him as the years went on, especially after your father was born.”

  Stone felt a chill. Why had he never thought to ask these questions before? “Did he…abuse her?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Aubrey still didn’t meet his gaze. “From what my father said, they didn’t have a happy marriage, though she was afraid to leave him because she knew he’d never let her see her son again. She died when your father was fairly young. Like you, he was an only child.”

  Stone’s flicked his gaze up at that, then shook his head and dropped it. That was one bit of information he didn’t feel compelled to share with the caretaker. “Did he treat my father well, at least?”

  Aubrey didn’t answer.

  “Did he?”

  “Sir…” Aubrey sighed. “By my father’s accounts, he was quite tyrannical with the boy. He had unrealistically high expectations, and did not react well when your father didn’t meet them. I’m honestly amazed your father grew into the man he became.” His expression softened. “I know he was hard on you, sir, but believe me—he loved you dearly and was very proud of you. He…simply didn’t have the…emotional vocabulary to show it.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “That’s hardly a phrase I’d ever expect myself to use, but…there you are.”

  “There I am…” Stone murmured under his breath. He glanced up. “Thank you, Aubrey. I know that wasn’t easy for you, but I appreciate it. I expect my little project here is going to be full of the sorts of surprises I’d rather avoid, but…I suppose I can’t avoid them forever, can I?” And they couldn’t be any worse than what I’ve already discovered, right?

  “You can, sir.” Aubrey’s tone was gentle. “Is there anything to be gained from opening old wounds?”

  “Maybe not—but after finding out my own father was a black mage for almost all of my life and I never knew it, I think I’m tired of secrets.”

  A twinge of guilt hit him when he thought about all the secrets he was keeping from Aubrey—a man he trusted more than almost anyone else on Earth—but it couldn’t be helped. Nothing good would come of telling Aubrey he himself had followed in his father’s footsteps and gone black—especially since the old man would almost certainly make the same offer he’d made to Orion Stone if he knew. Stone would die, or at least give up his magic, before he’d allow himself to take power from Aubrey. “Anyway, I should get on with this. I’ve got something going on tonight back in California, so I need to leave soon.”

  Aubrey took the hint and made himself scarce, though not without a couple of worried looks back over his shoulder as he departed.

  29

  Despite spending several hours poring through the dusty boxes and chests Aubrey had located, Stone hadn’t found anything that interested him. Sure, the old photos, newspaper clippings, business records, and other ephemera might be enlightening—somewhat, anyway—but he’d been hoping to find something a bit more personal, and perhaps a bit older. Most of what he’d found had centered around his grandfather and great-grandfather’s time periods and had been nothing more than the dry, day-to-day sort of information that genealogists might salivate over but that he found dull.

  These bits convinced him more than ever of something, however: if more compelling information—the kind that would tell him what kind of people his ancestors had truly been—existed, it wasn’t moldering in old boxes in the attic. It had to be put away somewhere in the hidden parts of the house, perhaps even someplace his own father hadn’t known about.

  He didn’t have time to go hunting for it now, though—he had to get home. He had things to do.

  “I have no idea why I agreed to this,” Stone muttered.

  Gerry Hook patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Just don’t get stage fright, okay?”

  They stood in the back of the Bull Moose Bar and Grille in Mountain View, waiting for The Cardinal Sin’s set to begin. Stone was on his second Guinness, which, like the first, had done nothing to take the edge off his sudden attack of nerves. Playing at the couple of practices they’d had over the past two weeks had been fine. Hell, even playing in front of the Forgotten back in West Virginia had been fine. They were friends, and they wouldn’t have cared if he sucked. But the Bull Moose was actually paying them to perform. Sure, it was paying in beers and free meals after the set, but still—it was different. “I’ll try not to—but if they chuck things at me, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Hook chuckled. “Just pretend you’re lecturing to your students. Turn on the charm and make love to the audience. Radha will do most of the heavy lifting.”

  “I’m not sure what I should think of the fact that you compare my lecturing style with ‘making love to the audience’…”

  “Come on—we’re up. You’ll be fine. Trust me.”

  And he was right. Stone’s butterflies lasted until he hit the first chord of “Highway to Hell,” and then he was off and running. His initial embarrassment at finally living his adolescent dream at almost forty melted away, leaving behind a sense of exhilaration even better than the one he got during his more dramatic classroom lectures. The only things that could compare with it were magic and good sex.

  As the set went on, he began to put a bit more into his performance, playing off Radha as she belted out the songs in her bluesy, in-your-face voice. His years as a popular professor had honed his showmanship skills; he fed off the audience’s growing energy and so did Radh
a. About halfway through, he shifted to magical sight so he could watch the wild colors of the crowd’s mingled auras, using their cues to help him respond to them and give them what they wanted. By the time the band finished the first set and left the stage for a brief break to the sound of enthusiastic applause and cheers, his heart was pounding, his T-shirt and hair damp with sweat, and he was grinning like a teenage idiot.

  Radha gripped his arm as they headed to the back of the bar for beers before their final set. “You were awesome,” she said, matching his grin.

  “You were,” Gerry Hook agreed. “See—I told you you’ve got presence. You and Radha lit up the place.”

  “You all made it easy,” Stone said, puffing between drinks of Guinness. “I was terrified until we got up there.”

  “Hey, whatever it takes. You keep that up and between the two of you, we might start getting some bigger gigs.”

  Stone leaned against the bar and watched the small crowd as he finished his drink. To his surprise, he noticed a couple of attractive women eyeing him—at least he thought they were. He supposed they could have been looking at one of the others since he and the rest of the band were all standing fairly close to each other, but then one of them caught him watching and the smile she gave him left no doubt as to its intent. He returned her smile, shrugged, and was about to turn back to his drink when his gaze, sweeping over the rest of the crowd, fell on a familiar face.

  Before he had time to be startled, Verity had worked her way to the back and was grinning at him. “Doc! You were fantastic!” She wore her clubbing gear, a black leather jacket and black miniskirt, but she’d swapped her combat boots for a high-heeled black pair.