The Seventh Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “Murder?” Suspicion laced the detective’s voice. “Do I want to know?”

  “Not sure yet. That’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m looking for details about a woman named Amy Detmire. Age twenty-four. She was found recently—in the last day or two—but that’s all the information I have.”

  “How do you know this, if you don’t know the details?”

  “She was a mage—an apprentice. Her master’s an old bird named Myra Lindstrom. Harmless sort, and it sounds like Amy was too. Nothing to speak of, power-wise, either of them. Myra rang me last night after she went missing. Apparently she’d heard of my reputation for dealing with...potentially dangerous situations.” He gave Blum the rest of what he knew, including the sigil Amy had received, but didn’t say anything about Myra’s note or Portas Justitiæ.

  “Okay, hang on a sec. I need to put you on hold.”

  Stone put the phone on speaker and spent the next few minutes listening to bouncy Muzak while he studied Myra’s note. It still showed no magical traces, and the laser-printed text gave no clues. It could have been written by anybody with a word processor and a printer. He supposed the police might have ways to narrow it down, but he wasn’t ready to hand it over until he’d done more investigation of his own.

  The sigil on top was likely the key. It too was printed, but the original had clearly been hand-drawn. He pulled out the other note, the one Amy had found, and compared the two. They definitely could have been drawn by the same person. He picked up Raider, who’d flopped over onto the papers, and set him on the floor.

  “Stone?” Blum’s voice broke through the Muzak.

  “Yes?”

  “Okay, I got something for you. And if you know anything else about this, you need to spill it.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Amy Detmire, age twenty-four. Discovered in an abandoned building in east San Jose last night by a guy walking his dog. She’d been hanged.”

  “Hanged? That’s generally indicative of suicide, right?”

  “Yeah, usually, but not in this case.” He dropped his volume, as if trying to ensure he wasn’t overheard at his end. “Listen—I’m not supposed to tell you this, so don’t let it get around, okay? It’s one of those confidential details we use to weed out the crazies tryin’ to take credit for the murder.”

  Stone tensed. “Go on.”

  “Whoever killed her carved some kinda symbol into her back, post-mortem. No way she could’ve done that to herself.”

  Raider jumped back on the desk, but this time Stone ignored him. “What kind of symbol? Can you describe it?”

  When Blum did, Stone’s hand tightened on the phone. As he’d suspected, it sounded like a perfect match for the one on the note that had been delivered to Amy at her home.

  Blum immediately picked up on his silence. “You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” He wished Blum had a counterpart with the San Jose police—somebody familiar with magical society, so he could provide information without either being thought a crackpot or revealing more than he wanted to mundanes. “I don’t know what it means yet, but I’ve seen it.”

  “Stone, if you know more than you’re telling about this, you need to tell the cops down there. You know that, right?”

  Stone sighed. “Yes, I know that. I’m just trying to work out how to do it without opening myself up to the wrong kind of attention.” A sudden thought occurred to him. “Wait—I might have something. Does Captain Flores still work down there?”

  “Not sure. I think so. Why?”

  “I worked with him on that case a couple of years ago—the one with the dismembered bodies. Remember?”

  “Yeah, how could I forget? You said that one was supernatural too.”

  “Very much so. And while Captain Flores and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye, I think I managed to convince him at the end that I wasn’t a nutter. Can I give him your name as a reference if he gives me any trouble?”

  “Yeah, of course, as long as you don’t mess up my ‘skeptic’ cover. And give me a call if I can do anything else to help.” Blum’s sigh came through clearly over the line. “You know, it sure as hell feels like we’re getting more of these spooky crimes than we used to.”

  “That might be so—I’ve thought so for a while, actually. But it might simply be that we’re noticing them now, whereas before you might have written them off to some mundane explanation.”

  “I hope that’s all it is. Take care, Stone. And be careful. I don’t want to hear you got yourself killed chasing some ghost.”

  11

  Two years ago

  It took only an hour’s practice before Ian could consistently summon both his and Blake’s auras into being. He sat slumped in his chair, sipping a vodka and Red Bull she had brought him, and watched the dancing red nimbus shift around her slim form.

  “So, this is cool and all,” he said. “But what’s it good for, other than making parties more fun to look at without being high?”

  “Oh, it’s good for a lot more than that. Auras reflect their owners—you can tell a lot about a person, especially a mundane, by looking at one.”

  “Mundane. I still think that’s a pretty cold way to refer to people without magic.”

  “Isn’t it?” Her snaky smile returned. “I like to think of them as ‘sheep,’ but even most mages get their panties in a bunch about that.” She leaned forward in her chair. “That’s what they are, though. They’re at our mercy. We can do whatever we want to them, and as long as we’re careful, nobody will ever catch us.”

  Ian tilted his head. He was beginning to think this chick had more than a few screws loose. “I don’t want to do anything to people. Not unless they do something to me, at least.”

  “Of course not,” she said smoothly. “That’s what I meant. Tell me—did anybody ever pick on you when you were a kid? Did you get bullied?”

  Bobby Tanner’s blotchy, enraged face rose in Ian’s mind’s eye, and he tensed. “Yeah.”

  “Did you fight back? Could you?”

  He thought of the kids—the ones who’d guessed the truth about him before he’d even fully realized it himself. Kids were like that: if they sensed weakness or figured out you didn’t fit in, they could be as predatory as a pack of sharks. “Sometimes.”

  “Sometimes. I’m guessing not often, though, right?”

  “No,” he said with reluctance. “Not often.”

  “Wouldn’t you have liked it if you could?” She got up and came over to him with an unhurried, relaxed stride. “Weren’t there any people you wish you could have had the power to get back at, or at least defend yourself against?”

  He nodded.

  She patted his shoulder. “That’s what it’s all about, E. You don’t have to use your power on anybody if you don’t want to. But I promise you—once I teach you how to use it, you’ll never have to worry about mundanes again. Those guys in the alley? You saw how easily I dealt with them. And the beauty of magic is that it can be as showy or as subtle as you want. You don’t have to throw people into walls. You don’t even have to be near them.”

  Ian narrowed his eyes. “How does that work? How can you do it without being near them?”

  “How do you think I found you? Come on, get up—I want to show you something.”

  He followed her, suspicious but intrigued. He still wasn’t sure what to make of her, but her words fascinated him. As they walked down a hallway toward the back of the house, his mind spun with fantasies of returning to Winthrop and showing Bobby Tanner he’d never mess with him again.

  Blake pushed open the doors to a room and stood aside. “Take a look.”

  Ian moved past her, then stopped in the doorway, astonished. He’d been doing a fairly good job of hiding his reactions so far—it had become second nature to him for most of his life not to let people see what he was feeling because they could, and often did, use it against him. But this time he couldn’t help it.

  Sprea
d out on the cleared floor ahead of him was something that looked like it should have been in one of those old late-night movies he used to watch before his mother had married Bobby and he’d forbidden it as blasphemous. The circle on the floor, ten feet in diameter, had all kinds of strange writing and symbols around it, with more circles and geometric figures making up its center. Around it at regular intervals, metal stands held candles and hunks of crystal, and in the spaces between the stands lay—what? He couldn’t tell, but it looked like some kind of plant material, and…

  Bones?

  “What the…hell?” he whispered.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” She seemed pleased at his reaction. “That’s part of why I wanted this place—a good circle takes a lot of room. Go ahead—look at it with your sight.”

  He shifted easily—and took a step back. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but nothing could have prepared him for the wild, riotous glow of carefully ordered energy that flowed around the area the circle bounded. It arced between the crystals and candles, shot across the center in lancing shafts to form a shifting pattern, and danced upward toward the room’s high ceiling. If he’d thought earlier that his and Blake’s auras were the most impressive things he’d ever seen in his life, he suspected that idea was going to be challenged frequently going forward. “That’s…beautiful.”

  “Yeah, I thought you’d think so. Everything’s better with magic. That’s your first lesson.”

  Ian studied the lines, trying to make sense of them. “So…is this thing for something? It’s not just some kind of magical art project, is it?” His question surprised him: how easily he was already accepting this. Careful, Ian…

  “I don’t waste my time on magical art projects. This is a ritual circle. The basic one stays the same, and you customize it for whatever you want. You can use them to find people, to perform long-range magic, to create things—they’re one of the most versatile things mages can learn.”

  “And…you could teach me to make one of these?” With great reluctance, Ian switched back to normal sight. As lovely as the circle in its full glory was, it was distracting, and right now something inside him was telling him loud and clear that this wasn’t a good time to be distracted.

  “That, and a lot more.”

  He looked between the circle and Blake. “So I ask again—why? Nobody does anything for nothing. Yeah, you said you wanted to get back at my dad. I don’t even know who my dad is. I don’t see why you need me for that. You just got done telling me mages can do anything they want to people, so why can’t you just do it yourself?”

  “I said we can do anything we want to mundanes,” she reminded him.

  He blinked. Did she mean what he thought she meant? “You’re telling me my dad is—”

  “A mage. Yeah. And a powerful one. Magic’s hereditary, and almost always women get it from their mothers and guys from their dads.”

  “So my mother—”

  She shrugged. “I never met your mother. But I’d bet a lot of money she’s as mundane as a stump. Your dad’s where you got the mojo from.”

  He studied the circle, not looking at her. “Tell me about my dad. How did you know him?”

  “I met him when he got in the middle of something I was trying to do and fucked it up. He killed two of my friends.”

  “Killed them? Why?”

  She let her breath out. “Your dad is bad news, E. I hate to have to tell you that, but it’s true. He’s the kind of mage who gives all of us a bad name. Powerful as hell, but he gets off on fucking with other people. Even mages. He’s screwed up more of my plans than I want to talk about, and he’s nearly killed me twice.”

  Something inside Ian went cold. “So he’s a bully.”

  “Oh, hell yeah. He’s the kind of guy who thinks because he’s got the power, he can have his way with everybody. Not just to defend himself, like me—or like I’ll teach you. He gets off on making people do what he wants.”

  Once again, Ian thought of Bobby, and he felt his face growing hot. Was his own father like Bobby? Worse than Bobby? “What’s his name?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that yet.” She gripped his shoulder. “It’s for your own good.”

  “Why?” He jerked away, but when he turned to flash her a glare, he saw her expression was sympathetic.

  “Because you’re not ready to take him on yet,” she said gently. “If you tried, he’d chew you up and spit you out. Do you think he’d even care that you’re his son? He ran off on your mother as soon as he found out she was pregnant and left her with nothing, even though he’s got enough money that he could have let both of you live in luxury. Hell, if you tried to attack him he’d probably kill you because you’re his son. He wouldn’t want the competition.” She spread her hands. “I know you, E. I know I’ve only just met you, but that doesn’t matter. I can see your type, because you’re a lot like me. If I tell you who he is and where to find him now, you’ll want to go off and take your shot at him. I don’t blame you. I would too. But I don’t want to see you end up dead—especially not since you’ve got the potential to take him down, with some training.”

  Ian drove the image of Bobby away, and wondered what his father looked like. Was he big and physically imposing like Bobby? Did he have the same sneering, self-righteous glare, the kind that dared anyone to defy him? He narrowed his eyes at Blake. “So why didn’t you take him down, if you hate him so much? You’re powerful, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. I am. I could probably do it, to be honest. But your dad’s older than I am, and he’s got a lot more resources. You wouldn’t know it to look at the way he lives, but it’s true. And besides, when I found you, I figured you’d want to help me—that you’d want your own shot at him.” She squeezed his shoulder again. “It’s a win-win for both of us. You get magic and the chance to get back at your dad, and I get your power added to mine so we can make damn sure we get the job done.” She pointed at the circle. “What do you say, E? This isn’t an opportunity that’s going to knock on your door every day.”

  Ian considered, switching his gaze between the beautiful, mathematically-ordered circle and Blake’s glittering eyes. He had no idea if she was telling the truth about his father—and ultimately, it didn’t matter. If she was, if his father really was as bad as she said, then he’d help her deal with him. If not—well, he could make up his mind once he’d let her train him. And if nothing else, he could finally show Bobby Tanner why it had been a bad idea to treat him as he had. That would be worth it, all on its own.

  “So what do I have to do?” he asked. “How long will it take to teach me?”

  She smiled. “It’s not an overnight thing. You’ll have to make a commitment. That’s how magical society works. If you agree to this, you’ll become my apprentice.”

  “Apprentice?” He narrowed his eyes and backed up. “No way, lady. I’m not mopping your floors or cleaning your crapper.”

  She laughed. “You’ve been watching too many Disney movies. It doesn’t work like that. It’s more like you’re a…college student. It’s not like I’m going to be your mother or anything. You can do whatever you want when you’re not studying. Party, drink, fuck hot guys, whatever. Hell, I can get you into some parties that’ll blow your mind. All it means is you agree to follow my rules about learning magic. And trust me,” she added with a sly smile, “I’m not much for rules. Your dad’s all about the structure. Me, I treat magic much more as a tool. As something to have fun with. What’s the point of power if you can’t have fun with it?”

  That sounded good, he had to admit. Already, he was thinking of ways he might use magic to make his life better. But even so—

  “I’m not going to agree to do everything you tell me. That’s just stupid. You might want my help with my dad, but that’s not the only reason you’re doing this. I can already tell you’re not the type who does anything from the good of your heart. You want something else from me. I can see that.”

  Before she could
protest, he raised a hand to stop her. “No, I can. But you know what? That’s okay. Because I want something from you, too. And as long as we both keep that in mind, I think we can work together. Otherwise, maybe I’ll go find somebody else to learn this stuff from. If you and I and my dad exist, there must be others, right? And if there are, I can find them.” He shrugged. “That’s pretty much been my life since I got out here: I trade what other people want for what I want. This isn’t really any different, is it?”

  Her sly smile widened, and she nodded. “I like you, E. You’re smart, and you’re not full of shit. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about my last apprentice—the one I lured away from your father. He was weak—a pathetic, lovesick little puppy I had wrapped around my finger. He’d do anything I said, without question, if I gave him a good fuck. He died because he couldn’t handle the magic. You, I think I can work with, though. You get it. Once I teach you the basics, it’ll be more like a partnership. So, what do you say?”

  Ian hesitated. Part of him—that self-preservation instinct that had kept him alive in the dangerous situations he’d fallen into before—told him to turn her down. To walk away until he’d had a chance to think this whole thing over. If he really did have the ability to use magic, he’d still have it tomorrow, or next week. He could examine his options and make the best choice.

  But could he? She was here now, and she was offering him something he had no guarantee he’d ever find again. Not only the power to get back at those who’d wronged him in the past, but the power to take control of his life. If he had magic, he wouldn’t be anyone’s bitch, not ever again.

  Besides, he could handle her. He’d met her type before—a big chunk of her influence came from using her sexuality to addle guys’ hormones and make them think with their dicks instead of their brains. He didn’t have to worry about that, and if he played things right, he could take advantage of putting her off her usual game.