Stone and a Hard Place

by R. L. King

  If only you knew. “It just seems odd that they’d do that rather than just jumping me. There were two of them, and at least the one I saw was bigger than I was. They wouldn’t have had any trouble with me if they’d attacked, rather than risking being seen messing about with my car. I’m not exactly that imposing.” Physically, anyway. Unless they knew he was more than he appeared to be, and they wanted to make sure they got their hits in before he could fight back.

  “But I don’t get it. What would they gain by it? What would make you a better target than someone else?”

  He shrugged. It didn’t hurt, which was nice. He decided that he really liked his happy pills, and wouldn’t forget to take them again no matter how preoccupied he got. “No idea. P’raps the combination of driving a nice car and parking in a remote area made them think I’d be easy money. There are plenty of people around there who drive nicer cars than I do, but most of them park them in more populated lots.” Of course this wasn’t what he really believed, but once again he had to come up with a plausible explanation that would satisfy Megan.

  “Maybe so,” she said, but she didn’t sound like she believed it either. “Oh—one other thing, before I forget. Tommy Langley was asking about you. I saw him at the cafeteria today. He said to tell you he hopes you heal up quick so your little group can all go out and get drunk again soon.” She rolled her eyes, clearly indicating her opinion of this activity.

  “I’ll get right on that,” he assured her.

  They settled back, ostensibly to watch the movie, but Stone’s mind was actually far away. Megan’s mention of Langley had sent it off in a different direction, reminding him of what had been going on up at Adelaide Bonham’s mansion. He wondered if she’d had any more incidents, and remembered that even if she had, his promise to Langley effectively prevented him from investigating them. His foggy brain then served up the absurd possibility that the thing in her house and what had happened to him could be linked, but the thought almost made him chuckle aloud. As far as he’d ever seen, frightening entities hiding in dusty old mansions didn’t hire thugs to beat up mages, no matter how powerful they might be otherwise.

  As he felt himself beginning to doze off against the soft cushions, he didn’t fight it. His last waking thoughts were that he was going to have to find another way to find out about Adelaide’s house, and somehow figure out who had jumped him. And why.

  And, just as a stray side thought, he wondered what Ethan was doing with his Friday night, and hoped his apprentice was having a more exciting time than he was.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ethan wasn’t at all sure he was doing the right thing, but at that moment he didn’t care.

  His head rested against the window in the back seat of a black SUV. Miguel was next to him, and in the front were Trina in the shotgun seat and Oliver driving. It was two a.m., and the music blasting from the SUV’s top-end stereo system mixed with the air coming in from the open front window to drive off the worst effects of the three shots of liquor he’d consumed back at the club.

  About an hour ago, Trina had looked around the Nightmare Room and abruptly announced, “This place is a snooze. Let’s get out of here.”

  Ethan, his lifetime of geekiness convincing him they were about to ditch him, felt a moment of panic, but then Trina smiled at him. “You want to see a real club, Ethan?”

  “Er—”

  “Yeah, none of this suburban crap,” Oliver agreed.

  “Come on,” Miguel urged. “Live a little. Get out from under old Stone’s boot.”

  One look into his mocking eyes, combined with the liquor, sealed the deal. “Yeah,” he said firmly. “Yeah, I would. Let’s go.”

  He wondered where they were taking him, and how he was going to get home, since he’d left his car parked down the street from Darkwave. But part of him didn’t care about that, either. For once in his life, he was going to actually do something spontaneous. If that meant having to catch BART back and use some of his savings to get a cab ride the rest of the way, then so be it. It wasn’t like he had anything else to spend it on.

  His mother didn’t have to know, and neither did Stone.

  The SUV flew up Highway 280, making good time in the sparse traffic. At first he thought they were going to Palo Alto, but they flashed by all the exits for that town and continued north. “So—” he ventured, “—where are we going? That club you mentioned up in San Francisco?”

  Trina shrugged. “Maybe. Getting kind of tired of that place, too.” She grinned, twisting in her seat to fix him with her captivating green gaze. “Hey, I know.”

  “What?” Oliver glanced sideways for a second, then turned back to watch the road.

  “Screw clubs. I’m sick of them anyway. Same old boring grind. Why don’t we show Ethan some real magic?”

  Ethan stiffened, his eyes widening. Going to clubs with these people was one thing, but he’d given his word to Stone that he wouldn’t get involved with any other magic. “Um—” he started, but they ignored him.

  “Great idea,” Miguel said, turning his electric grin on Ethan. “Give you some idea of what you’ll be able to do someday.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Jeez, Ethan, you worry more than anybody I’ve ever met,” Trina said. She was still smiling and there was a fondness in her tone, but also an edge of impatience, like she was growing tired of his constant hesitation. “It’s not like we’d ask you to join in or anything. I doubt you’re far enough along that you could anyway. We just want to show you what it looks like. Even Stone couldn’t object to that, could he? Most apprentices have seen all kinds of magic by the time they start their training. I know I did. Didn’t you?”

  “Not—really,” he admitted. “I kinda found out about it late.” His insides squirmed at her tone. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I just don’t want to get in trouble with Dr. Stone. If he kicks me out and says he won’t train me, then—”

  “Look,” Miguel said. “First, he doesn’t have to find out if you don’t tell him. Mages can’t read minds. If he tries to tell you he can, he’s full of shit. And second, we’re not gonna be doing anything wrong. Like Trin said, you’re not gonna be doing any magic. Just watching it.”

  “Come on, dude,” Oliver urged. “It’ll blow you away. Trust me. We can do some pretty cool shit when we get going. Don’t you want to see what you’ll be able to do someday?”

  Ethan considered. His mind was in turmoil: on the one hand, he was scared to death that Stone would somehow find out what he’d been up to and terminate his apprenticeship. That would effectively mean the end of his magical training, since even if Walter Yarborough agreed to go back to the original deal, there was no way Ethan was going to go that far away from Mom when she was so sick. On the other, maybe Miguel was right: it wasn’t like he was going to be performing any actual magic. And Stone didn’t have to find out. Ethan wasn’t going to see him until Monday at the earliest anyway, so even if he ended up with a hangover, he’d have the weekend to recover from it.

  And then there was Trina—or Trin, as her friends apparently called her.

  He wondered if he’d ever be close enough to her to call her Trin.

  She was smiling at him now, her eyes full of encouragement and mischief and—something else? No, that part was all in his mind. It had to be. She couldn’t be looking at him that way. But that was okay. The possibility that it might happen someday wasn’t as completely remote as it had been earlier that day.

  Take a chance, a little voice in the back of his head said. You’ll end up kicking yourself if you don’t.

  “Let’s do it,” he said, grinning.

  Trina nodded approvingly. “Good deal.”

  They drove into the heart of San Francisco, and after a time Oliver parked the SUV in front of what looked like a rotting, abandoned house. Ethan said nothing, but once again he was beginning to rethink his agreement.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” Miguel said, apparently picking up o
n his apprehension, “but wait till you see what we’ve done with the place.”

  They led him upstairs to the attic and he stared at their ritual area: at the black painted walls, the graffiti-style magical sigils, the circle laid out on the floor. “What do you think?” Trin asked.

  “Cool,” Ethan said, and he meant it. This was much cooler than Stone’s basement.

  “C’mon,” Oliver said. “Let’s get started.” Instead of grabbing ritual materials, though, he picked up a bottle of tequila from a rickety table and took a swig, then offered it to Trin. They passed it around; Ethan didn’t really want to drink more, but he wasn’t about to turn them down. When they finished the bottle they began constructing the circle. By that time, Ethan was feeling quite the buzz.

  When the circle was complete, the three of them took their places, leaving a fourth place for him. “Okay,” Trin said. “Here’s the deal. We all join hands, and we’ll start building up power. You don’t need to do anything yet except watch us magically and see what we’re doing. Once you think you have a handle on it, just see if you can step into the flow and channel some of the power yourself. If that works, you’ll feel it. Then concentrate on feeding more power in, adding to what’s already there. Think you can do that?”

  “I can do it,” he said. “But—you said I wasn’t going to be doing any magic.”

  “This isn’t really doing magic,” Trin said, waving a dismissive hand. “You aren’t going to be controlling anything, just helping us deal with the power. Simple stuff. Think you can handle it?”

  Ethan swallowed. He had no idea if he could, but Trin’s tone of challenge made him game to try. The alcohol was giving him courage. He nodded. “Yeah. I can handle it.”

  “Good. Let’s get started, then.” She held out her hand for Ethan to take it. He did, and grasped Miguel’s on the other side. Slowly, the three of them began to chant, and Ethan shifted to magical sight. He could see the pattern already beginning to grow, very simple and rudimentary at first, but taking on power and complexity as he watched them weave bits of themselves into its structure. It took him a while, but eventually he thought he grasped what they were trying to do, and gently reached out to take part of it and begin weaving his own power into the tapestry.

  “Good, good,” Trina murmured, nodding. “Just keep that up, and when you’re in, start feeding power in.”

  Ethan did as he was told. The pattern continued to build until it became a thing of beauty, complex and mathematical like some kind of perfect equation. He almost lost control of his part of it when he grew enraptured with just watching the way it moved and shifted as the participants made small adjustments to variables. He’d always loved math in school and had been good at it—this was like math made tangible.

  “Careful, Ethan,” Trin said, smiling. “You’re starting to lose it. Don’t stare at the pretty lights. Be the pretty lights.”

  He snapped his attention back and fell once more into the pattern. He let it sing through him until at long last the others began to draw back, slowly dismantling it until it faded to nothingness. Oddly, he was sad watching it go.

  “So, what’d you think of that?” Trin asked.

  “That was—the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, and he meant it. He wondered if Stone was ever going to show him things like that, or if he even could without more mages to participate.

  “Yeah, we get that a lot,” she said, amused. Oliver was already fetching another bottle of liquor, and Miguel was digging some pot and rolling papers out of a cigar box. “C’mon. Sit down and we’ll just talk for a while. Takes some time to come down off a magical high like that. Let’s go for something a little more conventional.”

  They all settled back and began passing around the bottle and the joint. Ethan was hesitant at first, but after sharing that amazing ritual with these three, he felt a kind of oneness with them. He didn’t want to be excluded from their group. He barely noticed or cared that when the bottle went around, the other three were actually drinking very little, and hardly touching the joint at all. Eventually, Miguel and Oliver got up and drifted out of the room, leaving him alone with Trin.

  She lounged back on the pile of pillows they’d scattered on the floor, reaching out to run her nail gently down Ethan’s cheek. “Pretty fucking amazing night, huh?”

  “Totally,” he agreed, lying back next to her. His mind floated on a cloud; he felt like when he spoke, his voice was coming from another place.

  “I’m really glad we could share that with you. I love seeing new mages discover things.” She rolled over on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “I hope you can come back and do it again.”

  “Oh, yeah...” he whispered. “I really want to do that.”

  “Great,” she said, smiling. She paused for a long time, and then said softly, “Hey, Ethan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was wondering if maybe you could tell me something.”

  “Anything.”

  She reached over and stroked his chest with her fingernail. “I heard that Dr. Stone is doing something at this old house down by where you live. Do you know anything about that?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Sure.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been there,” he said proudly.

  “Really? That’s great. So what’s the deal with it?”

  A little suspicion poked its way up through his alcohol- and marijuana-fueled fog. “Why?”

  She kissed the tip of his nose. “No real reason. It just sounded cool, is all. A haunted house.”

  He grinned. “Don’t know if it’s haunted. There’s something in there, though. Something big, Dr. Stone says.”

  “Does he know what?”

  “Not yet. He’s trying to find it.”

  “But he hasn’t yet?”

  “Not yet...”

  She nodded. “Just curious—where is this house?”

  “It’s in Los Gatos. Up in the hills...it’s really big. Huge,” he added with a big, goofy grin. He could feel himself beginning to float off on a brightly colored cloud with Trina’s face on it. “Really huge...with these old ladies. Nice old ladies...”

  “That’s great, Ethan. Thanks. It sounds like it’s a pretty cool place.” She stroked his hair. “You go on to sleep now. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go back.”

  “Okay...” he whispered. His words were slurred now. “You know what? I really like you, Trina...”

  “I like you too, Ethan. Now go to sleep.”

  He slipped into deep slumber, the big, goofy grin still plastered on his face.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Stone couldn’t get Adelaide Bonham and her haunted house out of his mind.

  He woke up the next morning stretched out on the couch with a blanket over him. Megan was gone, but she’d left a note saying to call if he needed her, the Chinese leftovers were in the fridge, and thanks for a night of torrid and acrobatic passion which he probably didn’t remember a bit of. He chuckled and pocketed the note.

  After a breakfast of painkillers and cold kung pao chicken, he dragged himself upstairs for a shower and a change of clothes, then went down to the basement and retrieved the items he’d built yesterday. He donned the ring and the amulet, stuffing the feline skull under his shirt, then stuck a couple of the crystals in his pocket and left the rest on the kitchen table. At least if anyone tried to jump him again, he’d have a fighting chance of showing them the error of their ways. Of course, even without the focus objects, he didn’t think they’d catch him by surprise again. Laziness about the world around him was a luxury he could no longer afford.

  He lowered himself into the nearest chair, and tried to figure out what to do next. It was Saturday, so he had no classes. It was nearly eleven o’clock—he supposed he could call Megan, but decided not to. Like him, she needed her alone time, and he didn’t want her to feel obligated to hover over him like a protective mother bear. He was actually feeling better today, especially af
ter the shower—he’d only taken one pain pill. He thought he’d even be all right to drive, should he have anywhere to go.

  One thing was sure: he couldn’t go back to Adelaide’s house. Not if he wanted to keep his friendship with Langley. It wasn’t like the two of them were best buddies or anything, but Stone did like him enough that if he was going to break a promise, he’d need a better reason than ‘there’s something there, and it might be dangerous.’ He wasn’t even completely certain that the entity had been behind the TV explosion, but if someone had offered to bet him, he would have taken it.

  If he couldn’t go to the house, he’d have to come up with some other angle to pursue. He leaned back in the chair and thought about it, halfway wishing that Ethan was there to bounce ideas off. The boy might not be far along in his magical training yet, but he was smart and picked things up quickly, and Stone did his best thinking when he had an audience to lecture to.

  He thought about the entity—the spirit, or ghost, or whatever it was. Why was it there? He’d suggested some ideas while talking to Ethan at the house itself: that it had always been there, gaining power; that something had happened to “awaken” it; that it was newly arrived. He didn’t think the latter was true—things that powerful tended to put down roots and associate themselves with particular areas, buildings, or people. But if it had been there all along, then why was it only now causing trouble? How long had it been there? The house was very old, Langley had said: one of the oldest in the area. Had it been there since the house was built?

  “Hmm...” he said aloud. If it had been there that long, maybe it had caused trouble before. Some similar spirits waxed and waned in their power, going dormant for many years before waking up again. Maybe this was one of those. The next step, then, was to find out more about the history of the house.

  Fortunately, he had one of the best sources around for such things, easily available to him. Pleased to finally have a plan, he first drove to Green Library on the Stanford campus. After an hour of digging, he determined that what he wanted wasn’t there. The house was in Los Gatos, so perhaps the library there was more likely to have the information he sought.