An Unexpected Truth: A Novella in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  And who set me up.

  Okay, maybe I’m being paranoid again—but maybe I’m not. If Josie was telling the truth about how vindictive and cruel Lydia is, it’s entirely possible she might have caught on to Josie’s plan and punished her for it.

  The only way to find out for sure is to stay patient, stay aware, and see what happens.

  The cop helps me out of the car and leads me inside. It’s a tiny office—I suppose they don’t get much crime in a town this small—and the only other people inside are a receptionist and one other cop. Both of them eye me with the same kind of nervous suspicion as my arresting officers.

  To my surprise, my cop does nothing more lead me directly to one of the station’s two cells. He unlocks the door, then my cuffs. “Inside,” he orders, pointing.

  I frown at him. “Just like that? No questioning? No mugshots or fingerprinting? No search?”

  “You sound pretty anxious for all those things.”

  “Not really. Okay, fine, you’re the boss.” I stroll into the cell and turn to face him. “I still want my phone call, though.”

  “You’ll get it. Just be a good girl and be quiet for a while.”

  I drop down onto the thin bunk with a sigh. Because the police station is so small, I can see the front part from the cell. My cop is sitting at a desk, typing something into a computer. The other one is at another desk, bent over what looks like a notebook. The receptionist is reading a magazine.

  This all seems pretty low-key for a murder investigation. I get up and begin pacing the cell. “Hey, do I get anything to eat?”

  “Lunch isn’t till noon,” my cop calls back. “Just be quiet, okay? I need to finish this report.”

  This is getting stranger and stranger. I mean, okay, this is the smallest of small-town police departments, so maybe they do things differently. But in a normal town this tiny, a murder would be a big deal. Hell, Ojai’s a lot bigger than Los Robles, and up until the July 4th Massacre a few years back, they didn’t even average a murder a year. How can these guys be so…blasé about this one?

  Wait, though. As I stand at the front of my cell, watching the cops with magical sight, I realize they aren’t blasé. Their auras are hard to read: a strange combination of nervousness, fear, and resignation.

  I imagine Alastair standing in front of me during my apprenticeship days, pinning me with that intense stare he got going on when he was deep into professor mode. “What does an aura that looks like that indicate to you?” I can almost hear him ask.

  They know what’s going on, they don’t like it, but they’re scared to do anything about it.

  I shiver as the answer dawns on me: they aren’t going through the usual procedures because they know I didn’t kill Josie, but that doesn’t matter. They haven’t fingerprinted me or taken my photo because there’s no need to keep any records.

  They don’t expect me to be here very long.

  I glance past them, toward the front door. Is Lydia even now on her way here? If she comes, will the cops just look the other way while she takes me out?

  But if Lydia knows I’m here, that means she knows who—and what—I am. These cops are taking no precautions whatsoever against magic. At the very least, if they knew my capabilities, they should have knocked me out instantly, before I got the chance to strike first.

  Is it possible they don’t know?

  This whole thing is getting stranger by the minute.

  I grip the bars and think hard. Josie said last night that Lydia will be in meetings for most of today. Is that still true? Or is she on her way over here already?

  I want to confront her, but not in front of these cops.

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  I can’t be here when she arrives. And besides, I need to find Sebastian.

  Damn—Josie was going to take me to him. Without her, I don’t even know where he lives.

  But first I need to break out of this jail, and I can’t do it with the cops and the receptionist around.

  Just chill out, I tell myself. As long as Lydia doesn’t show up and I pay attention to my surroundings, I’m probably safe. That means no falling asleep, but even though I barely slept at all last night, tired is the last thing I feel.

  “Hey,” I call to the room. “I want my phone call. You guys can’t hold me here without letting me contact somebody.”

  My cop looks irritated, but I think it’s more at having his routine interrupted than at me specifically. “I told you, you’ll get your phone call. Now be quiet. Take a nap or something. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I don’t want to be quiet. I want to know why you guys are framing me for Josie’s murder.”

  “What are you talking about, framing?” His aura flares bright and disturbed.

  “You heard me. Somebody set me up. Was it you?”

  “We’re just cops, kid. We enforce the law, that’s all.”

  “Is that right? So can you tell me who sent you over there?”

  He sighs, obviously catching on that I won’t shut up until he talks to me. “I told you—it was a neighbor.”

  “That’s a lie, and we both know it. Her house is too far away for a neighbor to see, and in a little town like this, if somebody had called they’d be over there somewhere watching when you got there.”

  The other cop glares at me. “Look, kid—your prints are on the murder weapon. It’s pretty open-and-shut. So maybe you could be quiet until your lawyer shows up, before you put your foot in your mouth and say something you’ll regret.”

  I smile. Whatever else these guys are, they’re not geniuses. Sometimes I get so used to dealing with smart people, I forget that not everybody is. “Is that right?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “My prints are on the murder weapon.”

  “Yeah.”

  Another bit of the puzzle slots in. I hadn’t paid attention to it at the time, but the handle of the knife sticking out of Josie’s back had the same smooth, medium-brown wood as my steak knife at Shadow Glen last night. If Lydia had been wise to Josie’s plan all along, she could easily have used magic to snag the knife off my plate after we left.

  Wow, she really wants to get back at me. I’d be flattered at all the attention if I wasn’t so pissed at her. Now she can add killing Josie to her list of crimes.

  It’s been less than a day since I found out I’ve got four family members I didn’t know about—and already one of them is dead and another is dying. I am not happy about this.

  “But,” I say sweetly, with a shit-eating grin you’d need a shot of insulin to counteract, “you didn’t take my prints. So how do you know they match?”

  The cop looks annoyed, but the one who arrested me speaks up: “You’re a smartass, kid. For your information, we got ’em off your vehicle.”

  “How do you know mine are the only ones there?”

  “What does it matter? We’re gonna take your prints soon, and I’ll bet you a hundred bucks we’ll get a definite match then.”

  “But you don’t need to, because you already know they match. Because you planted my knife in Josie’s back in the first place. Or somebody did.”

  He sighs. “Come on, just shut up, okay?”

  “What if I don’t want to?” When he doesn’t answer, I say, “You want to know what I think? I think you haven’t taken my prints or my photo because you don’t want to have anything in your system that said I was here at all. What do you think of that?”

  I watch their auras, and both of them flare again. They don’t look at me.

  Direct hit.

  “Look—we all know this whole thing is a big sham. Why don’t you just let me out of here and let me go on my way, and I’ll forget any of this ever happened.” Yeah, I can get out on my own—but I’d rather they did it. That way I don’t add jailbreaking to my record unless I have to. At least as long as I can stay awake and avoid eating or drinking anything they try to give me, I’m content to stay here and wait for Lydia to make her m
ove.

  The phone rings on the other cop’s desk. He snaps it up. “Los Robles PD, Jarrett speaking.”

  He turns away immediately, but not before I catch his startled glance at me and his tense posture. He’s muttering so I can’t hear him, but magical sight tells me everything I need to know: whoever’s on the other end of the line, he’s scared of them.

  Which means Lydia is probably on her way soon.

  I crane my ears to try catching part of what he’s saying, but my cop spots my effort and picks that time to loudly gather up some papers on his desk. By the time he finishes, Jarrett has hung up.

  “Who was that?” I call brightly.

  “None of your business,” my cop says. “Enough talking. Sit down and you’ll get your lunch soon.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not hungry. I want my phone call.”

  I can tell I’m bugging the hell out of them, which is exactly what I want to do. If I can rile them enough, maybe they’ll let something slip.

  Before he can say anything the phone rings again, this time at the front desk. The receptionist picks it up this time. She speaks for a moment, then hangs up. “Hey, Mike—that was Mrs. Gronsky again. She says somebody’s sneaking around her place and she wants you to check it out.”

  My cop, whose name is apparently Mike, sighs loudly. “Again? You know it’s just her damn cat.”

  “Yeah, but you still better check it out.”

  “Fine. Jarrett, you stay here with our smartass prisoner. I can handle this one on my own.”

  “No problem.”

  It strikes me as odd that a cop would go out on a call without his partner, but I figure they probably don’t have anybody else to babysit me. “We’ll be fine here together,” I say with a grin. “You run along and we’ll talk when you get back.”

  He glares at me and sweeps out, closing the door hard behind him.

  “As for me,” the receptionist says, “I’m starving. I’m going to run down the street and get a sandwich. Can you cover the phones for a few minutes, Chuck?”

  “Sure, if you bring me a turkey sub and a Mountain Dew.”

  “You got it. I’ll even bring one for our suspect. Back in a few.”

  Now I’m really confused. I don’t have that much experience with police stations, but I’m pretty sure it’s not standard procedure for people to bug out that casually for lunch. Especially when there’s a murder suspect in one of the cells.

  I shiver. Maybe they’re clearing out the witnesses for when Lydia shows up.

  “Hey!” I call to Chuck Jarrett.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you. Are you ignoring me on purpose?”

  Jarrett still doesn’t answer. He stands unmoving, looking off into the middle distance. As I lean forward, pressing against the cell bars for a better look, he suddenly keels over sideways, making no effort to catch himself. At the last moment, an invisible force grabs him and lowers him to the floor before he cracks his head.

  What the hell?

  An instant later, two figures shimmer into being behind him: a man and a woman. The man is puffing with exertion, and both of them look stressed. They’re both staring straight at me.

  “Come on!” the woman urges me, her voice full of urgency. “We don’t have long!”

  11

  I have to admit I don’t move right away. I stand there in my cell, looking at them with my mouth hanging open like a gasping guppy. “What—?”

  “Can you get out?” the man demands, still puffing. “I can do it, but I’m a little tired and I have to save my energy in case anything goes wrong.”

  “Uh, yeah, but—”

  The woman throws a scared glance over her shoulder toward the door, then back at the fallen cop. “Do it, then! We have to get away before the others come back, and that won’t be long.”

  I shift to magical sight and look at their auras. They both look stressed, but I can’t sense any animosity toward me specifically. I do need to get out of here, and unless they’re damned good illusionists, neither of them is Lydia. “Yeah, okay. But you’d better explain when we’re out of here.”

  “We will. Just get out.”

  I focus on the cell-door lock. As I suspected, there’s nothing magical about it and it pops open easily. The man grabs the door and swings it open. “Come on! Use invisibility if you can do it.”

  This may be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, but it’s better than waiting here. I’d rather face Lydia on my own terms, not hers. I pull up an invisibility spell, snatch my wallet, phone, and keys from the corner of the cop’s desk, and follow them out the door.

  There’s no sign of the other cop or the receptionist outside. The man and woman hurry around the corner, where a windowless florist’s van is parked. The woman flings open the rear door. “Get in,” she orders, looking around like she’s trying to spot me.

  I climb into the van, and she slams the door shut behind me. A few seconds later, the front doors close and the van drives off.

  I drop the invisibility spell and crawl forward. The man’s in the driver’s seat, and the woman’s riding shotgun. “Okay, now out with it. What’s going on, and where are we going?” For the first time, I get a good look at them. The man looks around thirty, tall and broad-shouldered and blond. The woman’s maybe a couple years younger than him, slightly built with long, dark hair. Both are dressed casually.

  “Back to your car. You need to get out of here,” the woman says. “It’s not safe for you to be in Los Robles.”

  “Wait a second!” I protest. “I’m not going back to my car, and I’m sure as hell not leaving. I’m here to see somebody, and I’m not going anywhere until I see him.”

  They exchange glances. “That’s really not a good idea,” the woman says.

  “How do you know that? You don’t even know why I’m here. Who are you, anyway? I’m not even sure I should have gone with you, to be honest.” I prepare my shield, in case they try to go after me. The man, at least, is a mage. Not sure about the woman. Either she’s hiding it well, or she isn’t one.

  They look at each other again, and seem to come to an unspoken decision. “Okay,” the man says at last, turning off on a narrow side street. “We have a few minutes to talk. But you do need to get out of here. We’re not kidding—it’s not safe.”

  “Why isn’t it safe? Do you two even know who I am?”

  The woman twists in her seat to look at me. “We know who you are. You’re Verity. Our half-sister.”

  You know that scene in all the comedy movies when somebody gets shocking news and falls over backward onto their ass? Well, let me tell you—those aren’t always just for humorous effect. One second I’m crouched there in the back of this empty florist van, and the next I’m splayed out on the floor with my legs sticking out in front of me. “You’re—my—”

  “Yeah.” The woman appears amused. “My name’s Elena, and this is Miles.”

  Miles waves from the driver’s seat. “Nice to meet you. Me, I would have picked other circumstances—you know, a nice lunch or something—but beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”

  I scramble back up to a kneeling position. “Wait—if you guys are my half-siblings, you must be Lydia and Sebastian’s kids.”

  “Yep,” Elena says.

  My whole body freezes. Was I better off staying in the cell? I back off a little and gather magical energy around my hands, keeping a warning eye on them. “I’m leaving right now, and I wouldn’t advise trying to stop me.”

  “Calm down,” Miles says. “Trust me—we know why you’re here and we know who you want to see. We had to get you out of that police station before Mom showed up.”

  “I didn’t kill Josie.” I don’t move any farther back, but I don’t release the magic, either.

  “We know,” Elena says. She looks troubled and angry. “Mom did—or she arranged it, anyway—so she could frame you for it.”

  “But why?” I don’t want to think about the fac
t that Josie’s most likely dead because of me—but then again, she did send the note. She knew what she was getting herself into.

  Miles sighs. “I don’t know how much Josie told you about…our family situation. I’m not even sure why you’re here now, to be honest.”

  I was thankful before that I’d left the note from Josie in my room back at the B&B—it meant the cops couldn’t easily get hold of it—but now I wish I had it with me. “She sent me a note that led me here. We talked last night, at a restaurant in Fairbreeze. She told me Sebastian’s my biological father, and he’s sick. She said he wanted a chance to meet me before…”

  Both of them give sober nods. “Yeah,” Elena says. “Dad’s pretty sick. We don’t think he’s got more than a few more days, if that. Josie told us a little about what she did. We knew she was going to send the note, but we didn’t know you actually showed up. We hoped you would, because that was the first we’d heard you existed, but we figured you’d blow it off and think it was a joke.”

  “When we found out what happened with you and Josie,” Miles adds, “we knew we had to get to you before Mom did.”

  “I’m not worried about your mother,” I say, and I’m surprised how cold my voice sounds. “I was planning to look her up after I saw Sebastian.” I can’t bring myself to call him Dad.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Elena says.

  “Yeah, maybe not. You said that before. But I don’t care. That woman killed my mother—not just killed her, but put a curse on her—because she was jealous. That is true, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Miles says. “We were pretty young at the time, and Mom doesn’t exactly talk about what happened. All we know is that she split with Dad when Elena and I were little, and they never lived together again after that.”

  “Josie said that was what happened. She told me Lydia cursed my mom. She was going to curse me too, but Josie talked her out of it as long as nobody ever found out about me.” I don’t bother trying to mask my bitterness. “But guess what—I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere until I see Sebastian and have a few…words…with Lydia. And I wouldn’t advise you two to try to stop me.”