by R. L. King
At the end of one of the blackjack rows was a roulette wheel. Five people were currently clustered around it, placing chips on a complicated layout and watching the little ball go round and round the wheel before dropping into one of the numbered slots. The croupier, in a black shirt with the Obsidian logo on the pocket, moved the chips around with effortless grace, paying the winners and dragging the losers’ bets away.
The placard read $10.00 Minimum Bet. On a whim, she pulled out her twenty-dollar bill, waited for the wheel to stop and the croupier to finish her business, and put it down on the table. The croupier replaced it with two blue chips. Verity put one on the “black” portion of the layout.
The wheel spun again, the little white ball whipping smoothly around the outer edge in the opposite direction and then dropping neatly in to a black slot labeled 23. Verity grinned as the croupier paired her chip with another one. Winner!
She picked them both up and was about to put one back down on a different spot when she happened to glance upward. At the end of the casino farthest from the front doors and the registration desk and not too far beyond Verity’s roulette wheel, another bar on the second floor overlooked the area. Entirely encased in glass, it provided a panoramic view of the casino floor below.
Directly in front of the bar, at a spot where two opposite-side staircases converged, was a railed landing perhaps ten feet wide. Verity’s quick gaze took in the area, noting the lone figure standing at the railing, then continued on.
And jerked back, as her mind belatedly registered something familiar about the tall, straight figure, clad in a severe black tuxedo.
Holy shit, it’s him!
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Stone found Mortenson in the winery’s restaurant the following morning when he came out a little after nine a.m. A continental breakfast spread had been set up where the buffet had been the previous night; most of it had already been picked over. Aside from himself, Mortenson, and a couple other people Stone didn’t recognize, the place was deserted. He got a cup of coffee and opted to skip anything from the uninspiring collection of muffins and croissants. “Morning. Everyone else already head up to the shoot?”
She nodded. “Most of them left about an hour ago.” She had a cup of coffee in front of her, as well as the remains of a danish, and was paging through a clipped-together stack of papers.
Stone studied her a moment. She’d broken out her new-age finery for her television appearance: loose-fitting periwinkle-blue tunic and matching long skirt, silver necklace with a sparkling blue gem, numerous bangle bracelets and rings. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Her aura, a bright, reddish purple, danced with excitement. He couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her, and hoped her experience ended up being a positive one despite Duncan’s and Riley’s attitudes.
“Mind if I sit down? I don’t fancy heading up early and getting in the way while they run around setting up lights and whatnot.”
She waved him to a chair across from her, looking him up and down as well. She frowned just a little, her brow furrowing, but didn’t say anything.
Stone didn’t miss it, though. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly.
“It’s not nothing. What is it?”
“It’s none of my concern,” she said, a faint tinge of disapproval coloring her words as her gaze took him in once again.
He chuckled. “You think I should look a bit more presentable, what with representing the University and all.” He hadn’t altered his usual look in the slightest—he wore jeans, a black T-shirt featuring the logo of an obscure pub in London, and his black overcoat. His only concession to propriety was that he’d spent a few minutes cleaning last night’s mud off his Doc Martens, though he suspected the walk to the Brunder house would undo that. Besides, he doubted they’d be filming his feet.
She looked down into her coffee cup and didn’t answer.
“Well,” he said, “remember—it’s not as if I asked to do this. I asked not to do this. So if they want me, they get me as I am.” He nodded toward the clipped papers. “Is that the script?”
“Yes. I’ve just been glancing through it. They don’t have a lot of scripted dialog, even in the walkthrough sequences. Celina told me yesterday that they have overall topics they’re supposed to talk about as they go through—historical bits and such—but Mr. Duncan and Ms. Petrucci prefer them to ad-lib their commentary. They feel it’s more ‘real’ that way.”
Stone nodded, remembering the episodes he’d watched, and the number of times dialog had been bleeped out, usually because of something Riley said. Real, indeed. “Say, Edwina—did you hear anything about a hidden graveyard up on the hillside above the Brunder place?”
She shook her head. “Why? Did you?”
“I was out for a walk last night, and I ran into Duncan blundering about in the underbrush up there with a flashlight. He claimed he was looking for an old graveyard that he wanted to use in the shoot, but said he didn’t find it.”
“Odd,” she said. “I hadn’t heard anything like that. Why would he do it in the middle of the night, instead of sending someone up there in the daytime?”
“Damn good question.” Stone finished his coffee and stood. “Guess I’ll head up to the Brunder place and have a look around before we have to be in makeup.”
“I’ll meet you there. I want to finish looking through this.”
Stone checked to make sure Mortenson had returned her attention to her script and that neither of the others in the restaurant were watching him, then exited not in the direction of the front door, but toward the back one. Nobody manned the winery’s front desk; he assumed everybody in town would be up at the Brunder place watching the TV production by now, so this was a good time to do what he’d planned to do yesterday. He pulled up a disregarding spell just in case and crossed the courtyard to the double doors Randy Yates had shown him yesterday. He hoped they still weren’t locked.
They weren’t—apparently the small number of permanent Brunderville residents trusted each other. Stone opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it behind him.
He didn’t turn on the overhead lights, instead using a light spell just bright enough to let him pick his way to the back part of the cool, damp cave without tripping over anything. What he was looking for, you couldn’t see well when the lights were on anyway.
The oversized barrel opened easily when he pushed the knot as Randy Yates had, swinging on silent hinges into the passageway. Nothing had changed since yesterday: the cave stretched back for a few feet and ended in the bricked-in wall blocking the rest of the tunnel from the curious.
Stone swung the door shut, propping it from closing all the way with a clipboard he found on one of the racks near it. He doubted, with the winery’s focus on safety, that they’d have designed the cave so anyone inside couldn’t get out, but he didn’t want to take chances on having to use magic and possibly damage the door.
Once it was shut, he positioned himself in the center of the small cave facing away from the door and switched off the light spell. Immediately the place went pitch black, the kind of blackness that almost hurts the eyes as they strain desperately to pick out the tiniest shred of light.
He stood for a moment, taking a few deep breaths, and then shifted to magical sight.
The glow was brighter today.
Not dramatically so—yesterday when he’d visited here with Randy Yates, it had been so dim that he hadn’t even been sure he wasn’t seeing things. Today, he couldn’t mistake it: it was definitely there. Still dim, still flickering, it suffused the cave area with a gentle illumination like the faint glow of phosphorescent moss. He might have thought it was moss—it was cooler and damper in here than out in the main part of the cave—except that the glow wasn’t green. It was red.
When he shivered, it had nothing to
do with the cold. Something was wrong with that glow. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was—it wasn’t as if it felt actively malevolent, not exactly, but more that he got the overwhelming impression it wanted something.
He sharpened his focus a little more, trying to pinpoint a more precise location, but all he got was that it seemed to be stronger toward the back of the cave, near the bricked-off area.
So whatever it was, there was probably more of it beyond that brick wall, in the mine that Fred Duchesne had blocked off years ago to keep curious kids from exploring a potentially dangerous space.
Could this be the origin of the curse? If so, why was it stronger today than it had been yesterday? There weren’t any people in town today, at least not that he knew of, who hadn’t been here yesterday. Did it take time to ramp up? Would it get stronger the longer they were here? And if it did, then how would it affect them?
Stone sighed. He shifted back to normal sight and pulled up a light spell so he could see his watch. Nine forty-five. He’d have to leave now if he wanted to get to his makeup call by ten.
He pushed the door open a little, checked to make sure nobody was waiting outside, and then slipped out and closed it behind him. Likewise, nobody noticed his exit through the double doors into the courtyard.
As he set off at a fast walk toward the Brunder place, he pondered. He couldn’t exactly justify knocking down the brick wall blocking the mine entrance merely because he suspected the “curse” might be active again.
Except…
The whole Other Side production here was about ghosts and the supposed curse on the town. If he, in his “research,” happened to uncover evidence suggesting something related to the curse might lurk in the mine, would Duncan want to investigate it? The man might be an ass, but he was a persuasive ass. Hell, if he thought it could improve the show’s ratings, he might even offer to pay Fred Duchesne to rebuild the brick wall if he allowed them to knock it down so they could poke their cameras around in there and let Bryce Riley ham it up. It was a bit risky, but if it meant Stone could get in there and deal with the curse before it got up a proper head of steam, it would be worth it. It was still possible that the crew and the small number of townspeople weren’t enough to give it enough power to be dangerous.
He picked up his already-quick pace. Perhaps if he got there a little early, he could take Duncan aside for a moment and propose the idea to him.
He only wished he had a better handle on what the strange energy in the mine was about. In his experience with magic, things were rarely what they seemed. It could be something else entirely, with no connection to a “curse.”
All he knew for sure was that it was bad news, and he needed to find out what was going on with it before somebody got hurt.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Trevor Harrison stood at the railing, his chill gaze roving over the casino floor with the proprietary familiarity of a ship captain surveying a well-traveled sea. His posture was relaxed but attentive; one hand hung loosely at his side, while the other lightly gripped the railing. Something on his finger glinted in the overhead light.
Verity didn’t realize she was staring at him until their eyes locked. His expression didn’t change except for the briefest arch of one eyebrow. He nodded once, and did not break the gaze.
Verity snatched her chip back, stuffed both of them in her pocket without losing sight of Harrison, and shoved through the crowd as fast as she could toward the stairs leading up to the bar. She was afraid if she lost sight of him, he’d simply fade into nothingness like an illusion. Was he an illusion? That was absurd—why would he, or anyone else, bother doing something like that? But illusion or not, if he didn’t want her to catch up to him, he had plenty of ways to disappear.
He was still there when she reached the foot of the stairs. She waited while a couple other casino patrons passed behind him on their way to the bar, then mounted the stairs at a more sedate pace and stopped at the edge of the landing.
For a moment, the two regarded each other in silence. Then Harrison inclined his head. “Ms. Thayer.”
“Hello, Mr. Harrison. How are you?”
A minuscule shrug of one shoulder. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“You and me both,” she said. “We came by to ask Mr. Nakamura if he could help us with something. He said he couldn’t tell us anything about you.”
When he didn’t reply, she continued, “It’s—er—good to see you’re alive.”
“Was that in doubt?” He returned his attention to scanning the casino.
“No…not really. Not after you sent Dr. Stone those notes.”
“He is here?”
“No—it’s just Jason and me this time. I’m sure he’ll be disappointed he didn’t get to see you. He was looking for you a while back. Did Mr. Nakamura tell you?”
“He did. It appears he successfully dealt with his problem.”
“Yeah.” She’d forgotten how hard this man was to talk to, and that when they’d seen him last, Stone had done most of the talking. “Is it all right if I tell him I saw you? I know he really wants to talk with you, if you’re willing.”
“You may tell him anything you like, Ms. Thayer. But I am only here for a brief time.”
She studied his sharp profile for a moment, trying to decide if it was worth pissing him off by asking questions about things that weren’t her business. Finally, she decided if he was going to be this hard to get hold of, she might as well take advantage of rare opportunities. “Where are you when you’re not here?”
He turned a little to face her, his ice-gray eyes still and expressionless. “There are many answers to that question.”
She took the plunge: “You’re not even on earth, are you? You’re—on some other dimension or something. That’s how you were able to escape from that portal, isn’t it?”
“Is that what Dr. Stone believes?”
“Yeah. He says since there was no way you could have built a portal inside the Evil’s dimension before they killed you, you must have some other way to travel to other places.”
Again, he didn’t reply. He gripped the railing loosely with both hands now; the glint Verity had seen on his right hand was a ring—a massive, square-cut diamond set in simple gold. She took a breath. “Okay,” she said. “You’re not going to tell me. That’s fine—it’s none of my business anyway. But I know Dr. Stone wants to talk to you. He’s making progress on your notes, but I know he has questions.”
“I am not a teacher, Ms. Thayer. Merely a…facilitator.” He released the railing and faced her fully. “I must go now, as must you—your brother is looking for you. But you can tell Dr. Stone this, if you wish: If the time ever comes when he truly needs to find me, he already possesses the means to do it.”
What the hell did that mean? This guy was worse than Yoda! “Uh…okay. I’ll tell him that. Maybe it will make more sense to him than it does to me.”
“Perhaps it will. Or perhaps, if it does not at this time, it might at some time in the future, when his motivation is greater. At any rate, it was a pleasure to see you, Ms. Thayer, and I wish you success at whatever brings you to Las Vegas. Good evening.” He inclined his head in farewell and walked off toward the bar.
On a whim, Verity shifted to magical sight. She’d never looked at Harrison’s aura before—at his power level, it had to be like a freakin’ fireworks show.
But it wasn’t. She blinked, surprised: his aura looked normal, which for him was odder than if he’d lit up the room. The color was unusual—an intense purple edged with a deep black that nonetheless managed to glow—but it clung close to his body, closer by far than Stone’s did. Harrison had to be masking it, she decided. Stone could do it too, though he didn’t often bother.
At that moment, Harrison’s aura winked out completely.
Verity, startled, shifted back to normal sight. He was gone. She hurried over to the bar entrance and looked inside, but spotted no sign of him.
Well, that’s that. She wondered if she’d ever find him accidentally again, and decided that perhaps she didn’t want to. Spending time with Harrison was like hanging around a dark room full of jet engines: intense, confusing, and not altogether pleasant. Stone was welcome to him.
She walked back to the railing and scanned the casino floor, trying to spot Jason. After a couple moments she located him near the blackjack tables, obviously trying to find her. His aura showed the beginnings of agitation.
By the time she reached him, he’d moved to the roulette wheel where she’d placed her bet. “Jason!”
Relief washed over his face, replaced quickly by annoyance. “V! Where the hell were you?”
“Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “Jason, I saw him!”
“Saw who? C’mon, V—if you run off like that, I—”
“Harrison. I talked to him, Jason!” Clearly they were having two different conversations.
He stared at her. “You did? Where is he?”
“Gone now.” She pointed up toward the bar. “I spotted him up there while I was playing roulette. I won, by the way,” she added with a grin. “Ten whole dollars. Next cup of coffee’s my treat.”
Jason was having none of her attempts at distraction. He started off in the direction of the exit. “So he’s alive.”
“Yeah, but I think we all kinda knew that.”
“Did you find out anything?”
She snorted. “Are you kidding? We only talked for a couple minutes, and then he jetted. Don’t expect we’re gonna see him anymore while we’re here.” She thought about sharing Harrison’s cryptic message to Stone, but decided not to. Once again, she hated keeping things from her brother, but she figured she should at least tell Stone first and let him decide what he wanted to do with the information. If anything. “Anyway, now what?”