by R. L. King
Only the fact that the diner had gotten much busier over the time they’d been there masked the loud clatter of Verity dropping her fork onto her nearly empty plate. “Mom was—?”
Jason patted her shoulder. “It’s okay. I understand how you’re feeling. I’ve spent the last few days in a perpetual state of ‘what the hell’s the next weird thing going to be?’ You get used to it after a while, but it’s a little hard at first.”
Verity looked like she wasn’t sure who she should be paying attention to. She darted her gaze back and forth between them and finally settled on Stone. “You’re saying that—our mom—was a mage? Like you?”
Again, Stone nodded. “Quite a good one, too.”
“I—never knew her. She died when I was a baby.” She stared down at her plate, then back up again. When she spoke again, she sounded uncertain. “Am I understanding you right? You said magic can get passed down? And that mothers pass it to daughters, usually?”
“Yes.”
“So—there’s a chance—?”
“There is. And from the look of my very preliminary once-over, a strong one. But I wouldn’t say for sure until I’ve had a chance to give you a proper examination.”
She cocked her head at him and gave him a sideways look. “Examination?”
“Don’t worry. It’s quite painless. It mostly involves you sitting in a chair and me running a few tests.”
She didn’t answer for a long time. Then she asked, “And if it’s true? If you find out I am one—then what?”
Stone shrugged. “Then it’s up to you. Being a mage isn’t something you simply wake up one day and discover. Even having the Talent doesn’t give you the ability to cast spells or perform any other sort of magical rituals. It takes years of study to be any good. I’ve been at it for over twenty years now, and I still have a lot to learn.”
“Where—do you study?”
“Generally you apprentice yourself to another mage. As I told Jason before, there are no ‘magic schools’ per se. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I don’t want to get your hopes up, and then find out that you don’t have the Talent. But I will say this—if it turns out that you do, it will make things easier on us.”
“Why is that?” Jason asked. He still looked like he was recovering from being gut-punched.
“Because it means I’ll be able to teach her to do her own blocking. She won’t need to depend on me, or Susanna, or anyone else to keep her mind safe. She’ll have control over it on her own.”
Verity was getting that ‘I’m not even daring to hope’ look again. “I—will?” she asked in a near-whisper. “You mean—whatever it is that’s messing me up won’t be able to do it anymore, and I’ll control that?”
“If you have magical talent and apply yourself, yes.” Stone waved to the waitress for the check. “If it turns out that you don’t, then I’ll do my best to put up the blocks myself. You’ll probably have to come back to me to have them renewed every once in a while, but either way, you should be able to live a normal life.”
Verity’s shoulders slumped a little and tears shone in her eyes. She swiped them away in frustration. “I can’t believe it,” she said softly. “Finally, after all this time…”
Stone paid the check and they got out of the diner. He walked fast toward the car, seemingly lost in thought, so Jason hung back to walk with Verity. “Do you—do you really think he can do it?” she asked him.
“I think so,” he said. “I’ve seen him do a lot of fairly amazing things. And some damn weird ones, too. He’s an odd guy, but so far everything he’s claimed to be able to do, he’s done.” He ruffled her hair. “A mage.” He shook his head. “That’s gonna be pretty freaky if it turns out to be true. It’s hard enough having a mage for a friend—now I’m gonna have one for a sister?”
“You’d better treat me right,” she said, laughing. “Or I’ll turn you into a frog!” Then she got serious. “I don’t know, Jason. This is all too weird. Why can’t things just be normal, like they used to be when we were back home?”
“I’ve been asking myself that a lot in the last few days,” he admitted. “I think we might be done with normal for a while, though, so we better get used to it.”
“Pick up the pace, you two!” Stone called. He’d already reached the car and was waiting impatiently for them to catch up.
“Yes, master,” Jason replied in his ‘Igor’ voice.
“If I end up being a mage and studying with him, I don’t have to call him ‘Master,’ do I?” Verity asked, wrinkling her nose. “‘Cause that would be creepy.”
“He’ll probably make you do his laundry, too,” he told her, keeping his face deadpan and ducking as she aimed a punch at his shoulder.
Chapter Forty
They arrived back at the house, and Stone waved Verity toward a chair in the living room. “We’d best get this sorted now, because it will affect some of the things we do going forward.”
Nervously, Verity took the indicated seat. “So—I don’t have to do anything?”
“Not a thing,” Stone assured her. He pulled up a stool in front of her and sat down on it, facing her and about as close as he’d been to Jason when he’d shielded his mind before they went into the Overworld.
“And it won’t hurt? Or feel weird?”
Stone shook his head. “No. And I won’t have to touch you in any way, if that concerned you.”
She looked relieved, and Jason knew from her expression that it had concerned her. “You—uh—want me to clear out?” he asked.
“No need. This won’t take long.”
Jason nodded and took a seat on the couch. “Uh—Al?”
He didn’t look up from what he was doing. “Yes?”
“Is there any chance that I—?”
He did look away then, facing Jason with a gentle, rueful smile as he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jason. No. I would have noticed when I did your shielding before our—return trip. You’re 100% non-magical.”
Jason sighed, not sure whether he was happy or dismayed to hear that. He supposed it didn’t matter, since it wasn’t going to happen either way. “Okay. Thanks for checking, I guess.”
“I’d have told you if I’d found something, but I saw no point in disappointing you.” He turned back to Verity. “All right then, let’s get this over with, shall we? I’ll go ahead and put up the block if I can—even if you have the Talent, you’ll need a bit of study and practice before you can do it on your own.”
She nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
The process took only about five minutes, during which Jason could see nothing happening other than Stone staring in that unblinking, laser-like way of his into Verity’s eyes. Once he held up a hand and slowly passed it across Verity’s face from a distance of several inches away. For her part, Verity looked like she was trying to sit as still as she could, even though it was obvious this whole process was freaking her out more than she wanted to admit. When Stone finally switched off the stare and leaned back on the stool, she asked jokingly, “So, Doc, am I gonna live?”
Stone didn’t answer for several seconds; he appeared to be deep in thought. “Well,” he said softly, getting up. “This is a first for me. I’m honored. I’ve never had the privilege of identifying a new mage before.”
Verity’s eyes widened. “Then—I am—?”
“You are,” he said. “And if I’m any judge at all, you’ve got the potential for some pretty impressive ability, once you’re trained. It doesn’t surprise me, though, really—as I said, your mother was quite talented.”
She seemed stunned. Looking back and forth between Stone and Jason, she slowly got up out of the chair and rubbed her hand across her eyes. “Wow…” was all she could get out.
“Did you do the shielding?” Jason asked Stone. “Is she gonna be okay away from Susanna?”
; He nodded. “I think so. It was very strange—that’s most of why it took so long to do it. The identification itself was easy. But—there’s definitely something trying to get into her head.”
“Something?” Verity asked. “You mean like—one of those Evil things?”
“I don’t think so. It’s not that specific. It seems more like a—force, or an aura, rather than an individual. Mind you, this is just wild speculation on my part, but if I had to qualify it, I’d say it’s something that just exists in the world that you’re susceptible to.”
“I don’t get it,” Jason said. “How could that be? You’re saying there’s something just floating around out there, and it makes some people crazy, but not others?”
“Essentially, yes. That’s my impression anyway—I could be dead wrong.”
“But whatever this is—it just showed up a few years ago? Could it have been around before? Did it show up and affect her, or did something happen with her—like maybe that doctor was right about puberty—that made her more vulnerable to it?”
Stone spread his hands in an ‘I don’t know’ gesture. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t get a handle on what it was. The best I could do was make an estimate of its magical—frequency, as it were—and put up some protections to block it from getting into her head.”
“And this is the thing you meant I’d have to renew every once in a while?” Verity asked.
“Yes. But with any luck you’ll be well enough along in your training before that happens that you’ll be able to take over the blocking yourself. Assuming,” he added, turning back to face her, “that you even want to be trained. There’s no requirement that you are. I’ll warn you—the training isn’t easy. At the beginning you’re likely to be bored senseless by some of it, and as it goes on, you’ll be doing things that could potentially be dangerous as you stretch your abilities and learn your limitations.”
“If I did—decide to go ahead with the training,” she said after a long pause, “How would it work? Would—you be the one doing it?”
“That’s something we can discuss,” Stone said. “It will have to be a mutual decision. Let’s not talk about that now, though. It’s something neither of us should decide quickly—you’ll need time to examine your other options. Right now, if we’re going to help the Forgotten and deal with the Evil, we’ll have to concentrate on that. There’s no way we could split our focus by beginning any sort of training now.”
She nodded, looking disappointed.
“What do we have to do?” Jason asked. “Where do we start?”
Stone sighed, sitting back down on the other end of the couch. “The way I see it, there are several problems we need to solve. The first, as I said before, is that we need to figure out somehow where our quarry is located—and how many of them there are. If there’s one top-level Evil running the entire area like some sort of district manager, then we’ll need to find out who that one has possessed, and where he or she is. Obviously, if what Lamar said is true and the more powerful ones seek out more powerful hosts, then likely this one will have protections in place that we’ll have to circumvent.”
“That’s problem number one,” Jason said. “What about the others?”
“Well…I would say the second one is that even if Verity can drive it out of its body, we have to figure out how either to destroy it, or contain it until it’s simply destroyed, or sent home because it can’t secure another host.”
“Or we can kill the host,” Jason pointed out.
“That won’t work,” Stone said, shaking his head. “Don’t you remember what Lamar said? They think the powerful ones are able to remain without a body for as long as a few days. If we kill the host, all we’ll be left with is a dead person—quite likely a dead person of considerable power and influence—and the need to resume our search again when the Evil finds a new host. That is, of course,” he added with a raised eyebrow, “if they haven’t tossed the lot of us in jail because we’ve murdered the Mayor or the Chief of Police or some such.”
“Okay,” Jason said. “Is that something you can do? Contain it, I mean?”
“I don’t know. It would require some experimentation, most likely with the lower level specimens.”
“Wait—you mean we’re gonna have to grab a DMW guy or something, and try to catch the thing that flies out of his head when Verity boots it out?”
“Crude, but accurate. And this will also give Verity some practice to determine whether she can control her power enough that she can use it at will. If she can’t learn to do that, then we might be in trouble—at the very least we’ll have to explore other options.”
Verity nodded. “I don’t know if I can do it when I want to. I’ve actually never tried. Like I said, I thought the first time was a fluke, and the second time I was doing it to save Jason.”
“Our third problem, though this one is easy to solve, relatively speaking,” Stone went on, “is that battling the hosts of these Evil is likely to require the sort of magic that I’m not used to performing.”
“Combat stuff, you mean,” Jason said.
“Exactly. I won’t be much use if I’m keeling over from exhaustion every time I cast a spell. Which means I’ll have to work on building some magical items to help me to channel energy more efficiently when casting those sorts of spells.”
“You can do that?”
“I can, but it will take some time. Remember, I told you before that white magic was ultimately more powerful than black, because we can cast permanent spells, and imbue objects with power to use later, so we don’t have to draw it from ourselves or other?”
Jason nodded. “I remember you did say that, yeah.”
“So,” Stone said, “I suppose the first item on my agenda is to get started working on those.”
“And what are we doing in the meantime?” Verity asked. “We’re going back to the Forgotten later today, right?”
Stone nodded. “Yes. We need to talk to them—find out if they’re willing to help out with this. If they’re not—and I certainly wouldn’t blame them—then things will be a great deal more difficult.” He sighed. “Actually, I think my first step before anything else is to secure better lodgings. Especially if Verity’s going to remain with us for a while, this place and its two bedrooms won’t work. It’s also not practical to do magic here—not enough room. Tell you what: I’m sure you two have a lot of catching up to do—why don’t you do that for the next couple of hours, and I’ll make some calls and see if I can’t locate a better place, at least temporarily. I wouldn’t leave the house if I were you, though—too much risk that someone will spot you. I think for the duration of this little adventure, it would be best if we remained together as much as is practical.”
Jason nodded. He didn’t like feeling like he couldn’t go wherever he wanted, but Stone’s words made a lot of sense. Now that he had Verity back, he really didn’t want to take her out to the mall and get ambushed by a DMW hit squad.
“All right, then,” Stone said. “I’m off to my room to make those calls. If I can find a place quickly enough, we’ll go there and set up our base of operations. If not, we’ll head back to the Forgotten a bit early.”
This left Jason and Verity sitting in the front room. She leaned back in her chair with a loud sigh. “Well, I guess nobody ever promised us a normal life, huh?”
“You got that right,” he said.
“So…I’m gonna get to do magic,” she said, her big, dark eyes wide with wonder. She stared at her brother. “What do you think? Should I do it? Should I ask him to train me? This is all sounding so weird that I’m even saying it. ‘Do I want to let somebody train me in how to do magic’?”
Jason grinned. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve had a head start on you for getting used to weirdness. The funny part is how soon it all starts sounding normal. At first I thought the only thing I wanted to do was find you a
nd head back to our boring, normal life in Ventura. But now—” He shrugged. “I dunno. This is all—kind of interesting, in a way. Freaky as hell, sure, but it’s a nice change of pace from fixing old motorcycles and getting tossed in jail for starting bar fights.”
“What do you think of him?” she asked, hooking a thumb toward the back room where Stone had disappeared. “Should I ask him to train me? You don’t think he’ll hit on me, do you? ’Cuz he’s kinda hot and all, but he’s old. That would be—”
Jason laughed. “If that’s all you’re worried about, I don’t think you need to be. He’s okay. He’s a magic nerd. Seems like magic’s all he’s interested in. That, and puzzles. If you showed up in front of him wearing a string bikini while he was in the middle of running some magical experiment, he wouldn’t even notice you except to ask you to bring him a candle or a dead frog or something.”
“Is he gay?”
“I don’t think so. He told me he had a ‘schoolboy crush’ on Mom back when he knew her. Which is also not something I want to think too hard about.” Now he looked at her. “By the way, speaking of that—when were you going to tell me?”
“Tell you—Oh.” She smiled and shrugged. “I dunno. You didn’t exactly come to see me, you know. I couldn’t really tell you much of anything, could I? And anyway, I’m not gay. I like guys, too—I just like girls more. And it was a lot safer in the halfway house to stick with girls, you know?” Her expression grew more serious. “You don’t—have a problem with that, do you?”
“Why does everybody keep asking me that?” he said, rolling his eyes. “V, I’m just glad to have you back safe—and having you safe and non-crazy is a huge bonus. At this point I wouldn’t care if you were into Russian circus midgets if it meant you had a shot at a halfway regular, normal life.”
She giggled. “Oh, good. Because I was really worried about how you’d react to the circus midgets. Maybe you’d better tell your friend to get a place with more rooms, so I can tell them it’s safe to come home now. Sergei and Natasha will be so happy to get out of that refrigerator box.”