by R. L. King
“Hey, what do I know? I’m just a mundane, remember?” He opened the car door. “Let’s go in before she thinks we stood her up.”
Kristen was already waiting for them when they got inside. She leaned out and waved them over to the booth she’d staked out in the back corner.
“Here goes,” Verity muttered.
Jason squeezed her hand.
“Hey,” Kristen said when they reached the table. “I was wondering if you got stuck in traffic.”
Jason slid in next to her and leaned over to brush a quick kiss across her lips. “Sorry we’re late.”
“Did you check with the hospital?” Verity asked, taking the seat across from them. “How’s the guy doing? Please tell me he made it.”
“He did. He’ll have a long recovery, but he’s young and healthy. If he’s lucky, he won’t have any permanent damage.”
Verity’s relief was so strong that she slumped in her seat and let her breath out in a whoosh. “I’ve been thinking about him all day. They wouldn’t tell me anything when I called.”
The waiter came by and they put in their orders, opting to go with burgers and sandwiches instead of pizza. Verity, focused on what she planned to say (or not say), didn’t even protest that she was only a few days shy of twenty-one when Jason ordered a pitcher of beer and then asked her what she wanted to drink.
Kristen watched the man go as he headed back off into the crowd, and kept her gaze fixed in that general direction after he disappeared behind the counter. “What happened last night, Verity?” she asked. Her voice held no inflection.
“Um.”
She twisted back around and looked at Jason. “Do you know anything about this?”
“I…know you said something weird happened last night,” he said without looking at her.
“Yeah. Something weird happened. And I’d really like to know what it was.”
Verity took a deep breath. Where had her normal confidence gone? Suddenly she felt twelve years old, standing in front of the principal for some stupid prank she’d pulled in the girls’ room. That wasn’t going to work in this case. What would Stone do, or Edna?
That wouldn’t work either, though. Stone would make some kind of sarcastic comment and neatly change the subject. Edna would bite Kristen’s head off and tell her it was none of her damn business and she should just be happy the kid lived. Neither of those were appropriate for talking to Jason’s girlfriend who just wanted to know what the hell she’d seen. It was a reasonable request, after all.
“Um,” she said again. “What do you think you saw?”
Kristen’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s going on here?” Her suspicious gaze shifted back and forth between Jason and Verity. “Something did happen, and you two both know what it is. Is there some reason you don’t want to tell me?”
“Go ahead and answer her, Kris,” Jason said. “This is…a bit complicated. Just answer her question. What do you think you saw last night?”
She looked for a moment as if she wouldn’t respond, but then she blew air out in frustration. “Okay. I’ll play it your way for the moment. Somehow—I’m still not sure how—Verity spotted a motorcycle wreck off the side of 33, a few miles out of Ojai. In the dark, as we drove by at about fifty miles per hour. We investigated and found the victim, who’d hit a tree and was in bad shape. I called it in and did what I could, but I didn’t have any gear so it wasn’t much. The kid had an abdominal bleed, and it looked bad. I didn’t think he’d survive until the ambulance got there.”
Their drinks arrived, and she paused to pour glasses of beer for herself and Jason and take a long swallow before continuing. “That’s when the weird thing happened. Verity got down next to the guy and sort of leaned over him. She stared at him like she was trying to spot something. And then she started…waving her hands over him.” She mimicked the action, moving her own hands, palm down, over the table in a slow swirling motion. “She focused mostly on the lower left quadrant of his abdomen. This lasted for about five minutes, and then she looked like she was going to faint for a few seconds. By the time the ambulance arrived, the victim seemed to be doing better.” She took another swallow. “And here’s the really weird part, which I didn’t find out until today: I talked to one of the emergency-room nurses who worked on the kid. Even though they did surgery and found evidence of bleeding in his abdomen, there was no sign of an actual injury capable of producing that kind of bleed.”
“That’s not so weird, is it?” Jason asked. “Maybe it just wasn’t as bad as it looked, and it clotted up.”
Kristen actually rolled her eyes. “Jason, I’m not an idiot. Please don’t treat me like one. With the amount of blood they found, the nurse was telling me the doctors were amazed there was no injury. They found nothing. Not healed up—just not there. That doesn’t happen.” She turned back to Verity. “So, what did you do to him with all that hand-waving? Are you some kind of faith healer or something?”
For a brief couple of seconds, Verity considered taking the easy out. Stone had mentioned to her a couple of months ago that he’d met a young woman with formidable healing powers who believed them to be a gift from God, not a magical talent. But trying to keep that kind of lie going would require more energy than she was willing to expend, even if she wanted to pretend she was something she wasn’t. “Not…exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“Do you believe in faith healing?” Verity asked.
“No. Well—not the ones on TV, anyway. I think those guys are a bunch of frauds. I guess it’s possible somebody might be able to do it, but I’ve never heard any documented evidence.” She took another sip of beer. “Besides, you don’t strike me as the religious type.”
“Not really,” Verity admitted.
“So…what, then?”
She considered her words with care. “It’s…sort of a talent I have.”
“A talent?” Kristen stared at her, then glanced at Jason as if looking for confirmation.
Jason merely shrugged, as if to say, leave me out of this.
“Kristen…” Verity paused as the waiter came and dropped off their meals. “You have to understand, this isn’t easy for me. It’s not something I really wanted to show off, but I couldn’t let that guy die because I’m scared.”
“Scared? What are you scared of?”
“You,” she said. “What you might do if you found out.”
“Found out what?”
Verity watched Kristen’s aura. It was troubled, but despite her tone of voice, she was more confused than frustrated. “That I can heal injuries. And...do other stuff, too.”
For several seconds, Kristen only stared at her. “Heal injuries.”
“Yeah.”
“And…other stuff.”
“Yeah.”
She took a breath, let it out, and had another swallow of beer. “What ‘other stuff’?”
“That’s not really important right now.”
Kristen looked at Jason, back at Verity, and then once again at Jason. Her expression went from confused to suspicious. “This is some kind of joke, right?”
Jason’s expression was sober. “It’s not a joke, Kris.”
Verity continued to watch her aura. It billowed with confusion and growing unease. “Look,” she said. “Like I said, I didn’t really want to let you see it. I try not to let anyone who doesn’t know about this kind of stuff see it, because it could cause a lot of trouble for me if the wrong people found out. Jason says I can trust you, and I trust Jason. That’s why I’m here. Why I didn’t just tell you nothing weird happened and I had no idea why the guy survived.”
Kristen paused again to take a bite of her burger. She chewed thoughtfully, her gaze now fixed somewhere past Verity, out into the restaurant. “People…wh
o don’t know about ‘this kind of stuff,’” she said at last. “What kind of stuff?”
Okay, here goes. Verity wondered if this was how Stone felt right before he dropped the big news on Stan Lopez. A sudden crazy vision popped into her mind, of her standing poised at the top of one of those big ski jumps you saw on the Olympics. All she had to do was tilt her weight forward a little and there was no turning back.
“Magic.”
The word hung in the air for a long time. The silence stretched out until Verity thought she might scream, or lunge across the table and grab Kristen by the jacket and yell “Say something!” in her face.
Across the table, Jason sat without moving, the burger in his hand halted between his plate and his mouth, his gaze fixed on Kristen.
Finally, Kristen put her beer glass down on the table with the deliberate, measured calm of a surgeon preparing to make an incision. “Jason, let me out, please.” Her voice was a monotone, her expression utterly neutral.
“Kris, what—”
“Let me out,” she repeated a bit more forcefully. She still didn’t raise her voice.
“Do it, Jase,” Verity said, seeing what he couldn’t: Kristen’s aura had erupted.
Jason slid out of the booth. “Kris, come on. We can—”
Kristen scooted out and stood. She dug in her bag and tossed some cash on the table. “I don’t know what you two think you’re doing, but I don’t think it’s very funny.”
“There’s nothing funny about it,” Verity said. “You asked me to tell you what I did. I told you.”
Kristen glared at her. “Maybe this is some weird brother-and-sister thing you two have going on. ‘Let’s see how much we can get her to believe, then get a big laugh out of it later.’ Nice try. You almost had me believing you could do something weird. Seriously. Maybe you should think about acting as a career.”
“Kris—” Jason began.
“It’s okay, Jason. Ha ha, funny joke. You got me.” She snapped her bag shut. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? I have a lot to do before my shift starts tomorrow, so I think I’ll just head home.”
“Wait!” Verity called. People at nearby tables were starting to look at them now. “Wait, Kristen, please. I can show you! Not here, but after we finish we can go—”
“No, V.”
Verity blinked. Jason stood there next to the bench, shaking his head. His eyes looked calm and still, and surprisingly his aura was in far less turmoil than Kristen’s. “But I could—”
“No. You couldn’t. It’s okay.” He turned to Kristen, who was glaring at both of them. “You take care, Kris.”
Her brow furrowed. “Take care? That’s it?”
Jason shrugged, and bowed his head. “I’m sorry. Really I am.”
Verity looked back and forth between them. She wanted to grab them both and yell “Sit down!” She wanted to do something impressive and pyrotechnic and indisputably magical, just to make Kristen see. Suddenly, it was the most important thing in the world to her that Jason’s girlfriend believe her—that she sit back down next to her brother and stop looking at him like that.
But Verity didn’t do any of those things. People talked sometimes about what it was like, watching something happen that you can’t do anything to stop—the surreal, slow-motion, train-wreck quality of it all, while your world spirals out of control and you just sit there watching it as if it’s unspooling on a movie screen.
Kristen looked back and forth between the two of them in disbelief. She sighed loudly and nodded. “Yeah, okay. Whatever. You and your weird sister have a nice life, Jason.” Then she whirled and stalked away into the crowd.
Verity watched her go. Her brain felt like it was full of static—for several seconds, she couldn’t hold a coherent thought. This was all a dream, right? She was still sitting in Jason’s car out in the parking lot, spinning worst-case scenarios about what might go wrong if she revealed her secret.
Jason slid back into the booth across from her. His expression was hard to read.
“Why didn’t you let me show her?” Verity demanded. “Even here, I could have shown her something small, made her see—”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
He toyed with the remainder of his fries, then pushed the plate aside. “It wouldn’t have worked.”
She reached across the table and took his hand. “Jason…did I see that right? Did you just break up with your girlfriend over me?”
He didn’t answer for a while. “Yeah. I guess I did.”
“I’m—so sorry.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “Jason, I—”
“Don’t be. It never would have worked. I see that now. Kris is a great girl, but she’s just…not for me.”
“Bullshit. You two were great together. And now I’ve gone and—”
“V, you don’t get it. Remember I told you Kris was more mundane than I was? That was something that was starting to concern me. Yeah, she’s great. She’s fun to be around, she’s great in bed, she’s got a good heart—you’d think that would be all it would take, wouldn’t you?”
“Well…yeah.”
He picked up his burger, contemplated it for a moment, then tossed it back on the plate along with his napkin. “I thought so too, for a while. But anybody who gets serious about me is gonna have to deal with all of me. And you’re one of the most important parts of that.”
Verity wondered if this was how Stone felt when one of his girlfriends dumped him because what he called “the weirdness in his life” hit critical mass and got to be too much for her to deal with. But Jason wasn’t a mage. Even with all the knowledge of the supernatural world he’d gotten from hanging out with her and Stone, he was still almost as mundane as Kristen. Sure, there was that bit about his ability to give power to mages, which she’d never tried to see if it worked with her, but…
She stared at him as the truth dawned. “I’m the weirdness in your life.”
“Huh?” He frowned.
“It’s something Dr. Stone talks about sometimes—how he can never keep up a relationship because something always gets weird and she freaks out and heads for the door. Kristen was the first serious girlfriend you’ve had since…this whole thing started. And now she’s gone, because of me.”
“If that’s true, I’m glad I found out now,” he said without a hint of regret. He took her hand. “V, I’m proud as hell of you. I know all the shit you’ve had to deal with, and look at you now. If somebody can’t deal with that, then I don’t want them in my life. Okay? We’re kind of a package deal.”
She chuckled, but it was a weak little thing. “Yeah. You’re the cool stuff inside, and I’m the box with all the freaky symbols scrawled all over it in crayon.”
“If that means they gotta get past you to get to me, I’m fine with that.” He drained the rest of his beer. “And besides, you’re forgetting something.”
“What’s that?”
“That kid on the motorcycle would be dead if you couldn’t do what you can do. I bet he and his family are pretty damn grateful about that, even if they don’t have any idea how it happened.”
She had almost forgotten about that. She remembered how the magic had coursed through her, singing through her veins as she’d taken something badly wrong and set it right again. She blinked a couple times. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“Damn fucking straight I’m right. Like I said, V—I’m proud as hell of you. And I’ll bet Al and Edna will be too.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “But next time you find a girlfriend, maybe you should wait a little longer before you expose her to your sister the witch.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stone met Stefan Kolinsky for lunch a few days later at a new restaurant in Menlo Park he’d been meaning to try.
/>
“So,” he said when they were settled and sampling the place’s excellent Chardonnay, “how did the trip go?”
Kolinsky had only recently returned from an extended time away. Stone didn’t know where he’d gone, but his shop had been closed since early summer. He didn’t want to admit it, but he’d missed his periodic lunch discussions with the black mage.
“Very well.” Kolinsky shook out his cloth napkin and placed it fastidiously on his lap as the waiter arrived and set a fettuccine-and-scallops dish in front of him. In his severe, impeccably tailored black suit, he looked even more out of place surrounded by computer start-up engineers in business casual khakis and polo shirts than Stone did. He never appeared to notice or care, however, carrying himself with a patrician, aloof dignity that would have been much more at home two hundred years ago. Lunch with Kolinsky was one of the few occasions where Stone, used to being the most eccentrically-dressed guy in the room in his jeans, black pub T-shirt, and long black wool overcoat, didn’t attract attention.
“Find anything good?”
“A number of things—both information and some fascinating additions to several of my collections. It was quite fruitful.”
Stone knew better than to ask him for specifics. That was one of the oddest things about Stefan Kolinsky, aside from the fact that he was pathologically opposed to using the telephone except in cases of dire emergency: he never offered anything without reciprocation. The man was like a spider, sitting in the middle of a vast web of information, connections, and arcane knowledge, and he was quite willing to share it—for a price. That price rarely involved actual money, but usually consisted of either owing Kolinsky an unspecified favor to be redeemed at a later date, performing some service for him, or providing him with an equally interesting item or bit of lore. Stone found it amusing that, given Kolinsky’s philosophy of doing business, he’d never offered to pay for one of their lunches, but it didn’t bother him. That was just the way Stefan was. And the data he could get his hands on was frequently both fascinating and extremely useful.