Game of Stone

by R. L. King

  “Verity?” He shot her a startled look. How did she even know he was here?

  “I know you have to get back up there, but I had to tell you. You were all great,” she said more loudly, taking in the others.

  Stone quickly introduced her as “a friend,” then turned back to her. “How did you—”

  “Know you were here? Easy. You took a phone call last week during one of our sessions. Didn’t mean to overhear, but—” Her grin turned to mock sternness. “How come you didn’t tell me? You know I’d have come out to support you and cheer.”

  Why hadn’t he told her? “Well…I suppose I was afraid it wouldn’t go well, and I didn’t want you to see me fall flat on my face in front of an audience. I’d have invited you to the next one—if there was a next one.”

  She pointed past him, where Radha and the others were trying to get his attention. “I think you have to get back up there. We’ll talk later.” She gripped his hand and squeezed. “Knock ’em dead, Doc.”

  The second set went every bit as well as the first. Stone knew the group was by no means ready for the big time—all of them missed notes occasionally, and once Radha forgot a lyric and had to ad-lib while Stone and the others did their best to draw attention away from her until she got back on track. Another time during a particularly energetic solo, Hook got into the music with a little too much enthusiasm, tossed his drumstick in the air, and missed the catch, so he had to play one-handed until he could scramble around and find a spare.

  The audience seemed not to even notice the hiccups. They kept on dancing and drinking, cheering loudly at the end of each song. They even clamored for an encore—something Stone could see from the looks on the others’ faces that they hadn’t been expecting. They basked in the applause a bit longer than strictly seemly, not because of their egos but rather because they had to do a quick consultation on what they were going to play for an encore. They finally settled on “Sympathy for the Devil,” and as the final chords died out and Radha thanked the audience for coming out and invited them to come to the next gig at Harley’s in Palo Alto, Stone stood there behind her, bathed in sweat, puffing with exertion, and once again grinning like a fool.

  Verity came back with a small crowd as most of the audience either left or went back to their drinks and conversations. She waited while Stone unplugged his Strat and put it back in its case—fortunately most of the sound equipment was part of the club’s usual setup so they didn’t have to take any of that down themselves.

  “Good job, everybody,” Hook said. “Fantastic job. I think that was one of our best shows ever.” He clapped Radha on the back, then Stone. “You two had them eating out of your hands.”

  Radha grinned. She was puffing as hard as Stone, and every bit as sweat-soaked. “Yeah, the energy was great tonight! Glad to have you on board, Alastair. Let’s do it again next month. Right now, though, I’ve got to take off. Prisha’s got a school thing tomorrow.”

  Hook and Cohen agreed, also citing family obligations. They all went back to taking down their instruments, with Radha helping Hook dismantle his drums.

  Stone headed over to the edge of the stage, where Verity waited, and hopped down. “So…what did you think?” he asked, keeping his tone light. “I suppose we weren’t complete rubbish.” He swiped his damp hair off his forehead. “Shall we go and get something to—”

  He stopped when he caught sight of her expression. “Verity—?”

  She was eyeing him like a starving woman looking at a juicy steak. Before he could say anything else, she leaned in closer to him. “I should go…” she said, an odd husky edge to her voice.

  “Why?”

  She swallowed. “Because I want you so much right now…”

  Startled, he froze. “You—”

  She still hadn’t taken her eyes off him; her gaze ran down from his face to where his snug black shirt clung to his chest, and then down further before coming back up to meet his eyes again. “Do you want it too?”

  And suddenly, all at once, he did. His heart, which had begun to slow as the energy of the music faded, thudded faster again. “I do, Verity…” he muttered. “I do. But—”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. My place is closer.”

  Stone didn’t object, though he probably should have. She didn’t look drunk—in fact, he hadn’t caught any alcohol on her breath when she’d leaned in. He quickly bid the others good night and followed her out of the club.

  She didn’t speak as he drove the BMW back to her apartment a couple of miles away, and neither did he. They barely made it inside the front door before she pushed him against the wall and shoved her hands up under his still-damp T-shirt. She leaned in and he met her halfway, bowing his head and pulling her into a hard, insistent kiss. She responded instantly, breaking free only long enough to pull off his shirt and toss it on the floor while he slipped off her jacket. Her hand came up and caressed the tattoo on his chest; with a flick of his mind he activated it and it began glowing, the bright colors bleeding out between her fingers.

  “I’ve wanted to get my hands on that ever since you got it…” she whispered. “God, you looked so hot up there tonight…”

  He didn’t even try to stop. He didn’t need to. This time there was no guilt, no hesitation. She wanted him and he wanted her, and that was all that mattered. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up; she kept up the kiss as her arms snaked around his neck and her legs locked around his waist. He wasn’t the strongest of men physically, but her slight weight seemed like nothing at all as he carried her back to her bedroom.

  Afterward, he lay next to her, the only light coming from his unmasked tattoo. He felt content now, all the wild energy from his performance—well, both of them—drained away to leave him spent and pleasantly drowsy.

  She lay on her side, stroking his chest, playing with the tattoo’s light between her fingers. “I should apologize,” she said softly into the dimness. “But I’m not going to…”

  “Why would you apologize?” He turned his head and kissed her hair, which was now as damp as his own.

  “I feel like I’m…leading you on.”

  “You’re not. Believe me, you’re not. I’ve—”

  “What?” Her eyes glittered.

  “Let’s just say the thought has occurred to me a few times over the last few weeks.”

  “But you didn’t do anything about it.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to.”

  She sighed and turned a little away. “I—it’s—” She shook her head in frustration. “Hard to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  She was silent for a long time; she kept stroking his chest but didn’t look at him. “I want you, Alastair. I can’t deny that. Usually it’s not a big deal—when we’re having our lessons, I can get into the ‘student’ vibe and then anything else seems…weird, you know?”

  “Yes. I know.” He felt the same way. During magic sessions, it was easy to fit her into a neat cubbyhole of ‘apprentice’ so he could focus on teaching and shove the other thoughts away. Mostly, at least.

  “But other times—when we’re not doing magic—I don’t see you as my teacher. Not anymore.”

  “Yes.”

  “And tonight, when I saw you up on that stage—you were so into it, and you looked so sexy playing that guitar, with your shirt sticking to you…”

  He chuckled. “You didn’t notice all the notes I missed. Eric Clapton has nothing to worry about from me.”

  “That’s not it, though. It wasn’t how you played. It was how you looked. You were loving it. You were feeding off that crowd, and they were feeding off you. I…” Her voice took on an amused, guilty tone. “I kinda wanted to jump up on the stage, rip your clothes off, and do you right there in front of all of them.”

  “That would have been…memorable,” he said wryly. “Though I doubt it would get us invited back…”

  She sighed again. “You see what I mean, though. Sometime
s I just can’t help myself—I want you, and it’s hard to push that feeling away. But…”

  “But…?”

  “Well…don’t take this wrong, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  She turned back toward him again. “I want you. I love you. But…like I said before, I’m not sure I’m ready for any kind of…formal exclusive relationship. I’m not even sure I want one, to be honest.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you want me for your sexual plaything.” He covered her hand on his chest with his own, fond amusement lacing his tone. “You want to shag me, but you don’t want to take me home to…er…Jason.”

  She flipped her hand over so she could grip his. “No, silly. That’s not it either. It’s more than that. I do love you. I don’t know…maybe someday I could even see us together. If you wanted that, I mean.”

  “Verity…” He rolled to his side so he could face her, focusing on the glitter of her eyes in the dim light. “I understand. I do. And yes…someday, I could see that too. But I understand. I—well, to be honest, I feel the same way. I’ve got to settle down—someday. But…”

  “But you’re not the settling-down type.”

  “Well…no. Not yet, anyway. And besides, you’re young. You haven’t had as much time as I have to explore your options. I know you fancy women as well. The last thing I’d ever want to do is try to hold you down.”

  “I like it when you hold me down…” she murmured. He couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t have to—her sly smile came through in her tone.

  “Verity…”

  “No, I get it. And I appreciate it. And…you’re right.” She was silent for several seconds. “So…you’d be okay with that? With us…seeing each other, but…leaving our options open, too?”

  He pulled her into his arms. “Verity, I’m fine with whatever you want to do. You’ve…well, sort of crept up on me. I didn’t realize it until recently. But now that you have, I don’t want to let you go—in whatever way you want to define that. If you want to keep things going as they have been for a while, while you explore your options…that’s fine with me. Your apprenticeship will be over soon—you’re doing so well I doubt it will take the rest of the year, to be truthful—and then you’ve got to be free to get out in the world and work out what you want from life.”

  Leaning in to kiss her gently, he added, “If, sometime in the future, you decide you want to take things further…we’ll discuss it. If you don’t—” he shrugged one shoulder “—then I’m sure I’ll find a way to cope. But for now…” He pulled her closer. “Shall we just enjoy what we have, for as long as we both want it?”

  She relaxed into him. “I like that idea. But you have to invite me to your gigs from now on, okay? I promise not to attack you on stage. We’ll save that for the…encore.”

  “Brilliant. It will give me something to look forward to.”

  30

  Stone didn’t call Phoebe back.

  Over a month had passed since he’d last visited her. He kept the card with her phone number in his wallet, and more than once he pulled it out and contemplated making the call, but every time he’d put it back without doing so. He’d even thought about calling one of the other two contacts Kolinsky had given him—perhaps with someone different, the vision of Phoebe’s stricken face and ashen skin wouldn’t haunt him.

  He didn’t call them, either.

  The quarter at the University was drawing to a close, which meant he was busier than usual—not only teaching his courses, but attending meetings, conducting office hours, and answering students’ questions when they stopped him in the halls or on his way across campus. No more candidates for the open position had turned up, so he and Hubbard still had to take up the slack. Apparently, as much of an honor as the endowment from Adelaide Bonham was, it didn’t translate into a saner workload. Not yet, anyway.

  The white figurine set remained quiet. Despite the tweaks he’d made to the wards, Stone still checked it often throughout the day, whenever he got the chance. It lay in its padded wooden box, the four broken pieces dead and lifeless next to the glittering three that remained. He even checked in with Leo Blum again to make sure no odd crimes had turned up that he’d forgotten to mention, but the detective assured him that, as far as he knew, the crimes around the area were all of the normal and expected variety.

  The dreams weren’t helping—and even less so during the times when they weren’t dreams. The first time he woke up in the early hours of the morning, heart thudding, sweating, from a dream where he’d drained Verity to ash and reveled in the sensation of her power singing through his veins, it worried him. The second time—this time featuring one of his students that he’d spent an office hour with earlier that day—it scared him. But when he caught himself fantasizing about drawing power—just a little—from the barista at the shop where he got his morning coffee, it terrified him.

  And of course, the more he tried not to think about such things, the more the thoughts intruded into his daily life. It was like trying not to think of a purple zebra—everywhere he looked, purple zebras with enticing auras paraded in front of him.

  Stop it, he told himself. You don’t need it. You haven’t even been doing much magic lately.

  That was true. Aside from checking the white figurines, popping back over to England a couple times to catch up on Ward and Eddie’s progress, and occasionally snatching glances at passing auras, he hadn’t been performing any other magic that would require an expenditure of power. He tried to convince himself it was because he didn’t need to do any magic right now, but he knew the truth.

  Verity glanced at him sideways one evening when she’d come over to fix dinner before a magic lesson. “You okay?” she asked, stirring a steaming pot of pasta.

  “Why do you ask?”

  The two of them hadn’t spent the night together again since the Cardinal Sin gig; they’d both been busy, and Stone had barely even found time to fit in magic sessions—the last couple of which had involved a lot of magic on her part and very little on his—four times in the last two weeks.

  She put a lid on the pot and paused to study him more closely before opening the refrigerator. “You look tired.”

  “It’s getting to be the end of the quarter. Got a lot to do.”

  She didn’t reply then, focusing on finishing up the meal preparation while Stone sat at the dining table grading essays. But when she brought the serving dish to the table, she stopped next to him. “You’re not fooling me, you know.”

  “About what?” He put his pen down but didn’t look at her.

  “You’ve got something on your mind. Something that’s bothering you. And I’ll bet you next week’s pay that it doesn’t have anything to do with your job.”

  “I’m fine,” he assured her. He indicated the dish. “That smells wonderful, by the way. Is it a new one?”

  “Don’t change the subject.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Look at me, will you?”

  He raised his gaze and met hers squarely. “I’m fine,” he repeated, perhaps a bit more firmly than he’d intended.

  “You want to know why I know you’re lying?”

  “Suppose you tell me.”

  She dropped into the chair across from him. “Two reasons. One: your aura’s giving you away, which isn’t like you at all. And two: I just watched you get up and get a bottle of wine.”

  “So?”

  “So, you never get up and get anything. You always use magic.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why aren’t you using magic?”

  “I don’t need magic for everything,” he protested. “I’ve been getting lazy. I can drag my arse out of my chair long enough to grab wine.”

  She paused in the act of setting down another serving dish. “Wait a sec. This is about taking power, isn’t it? It’s been over a month since we went up to SF to find that guy. Have you not—”

  “Verity—” Warning crept into his tone.

  She either didn’t catch it or, m
ore likely, she ignored it. “You haven’t gotten any new power since then, have you?”

  “Apprentice—”

  She glared at him. “Don’t ‘apprentice’ me, Doc. We’ve come a little farther than that by now, don’t you think? Why aren’t you taking power? Are you afraid you’ll hurt somebody? That what happened last time will happen again?” She pushed the serving dish toward him and nodded at it.

  Stone served himself almost by rote, looking past her instead of at her. He started to say something, then let his breath out. “I’ll do it. I’ve—just had no need to lately.”

  “What are you talking about, no need? You need power to do magic. You have to get it from somewhere. You can’t leave yourself defenseless.”

  “I’m not defenseless,” he snapped. “And it’s hardly as if threats are popping out at me around every corner.”

  “What about that case of yours? The figurines? Has anything happened with those?”

  “No. Not in quite some time. It’s entirely possible nothing will.”

  “Possible—but you don’t know that. And if it does and you don’t have any power, what then? Are you just going to start getting it from people on the street?”

  “Verity, that’s enough,” he ordered. “You’re right—we might have moved a bit beyond master and apprentice in some areas of our lives…but not this one. Until I release you from your apprenticeship, you gave me your word you would obey my wishes regarding magical issues. So I’m telling you—this isn’t your concern.”

  Her glare sharpened. “You gave me your word you wouldn’t lie to me, too.”

  He drew breath, winding up to snap at her again, but then stopped and let it out. “You’re right,” he said softly, staring at his plate. “I did. I’m sorry. But the fact remains: I don’t need you as my minder. I’ll make my own decisions about how I want to deal with my…situation. Trust me—I’ll be fine. I’ve got…resources I can consult.”

  “Then you should do it,” she said stubbornly.

  “I will. In my own time. Now—can we change the subject and get on with eating? I’ve got quite a full session planned for tonight, so I want to get to it.”