by R. L. King
I sat there, my hands wrapped around my coffee cup, and swallowed. It was possible this man was as crazy as I was beginning to think I was—but was it also possible he wasn’t? Emma—little innocent baby Emma, who hadn’t asked for any of this insanity—was counting on me to help her. I was her only hope. If I told Alastair Stone that I couldn’t handle anything but my boring, everyday reality and he left, where would I turn next? The police had already proven they were stumped, and if I left it to them I was certain I’d never see Emma alive again.
“Okay,” I said, and was surprised to hear my voice come out tremble-free. “I can do this. What do I need to do to help you?”
He looked pleased, nodding once. “Well done, Ms. Huntley. I’m proud of you, and I’m sure Emma will be too, when we get her back.” His manner changed again, becoming brisk. “Now, then: the answer to your question about how she would cast illusions in your home is by using a ritual.”
“A ritual? You mean like some kind of Satanic ritual from a horror movie?”
“I doubt Satan has anything to do with it. A magical ritual is a tool used by all sorts of practitioners. One of the things it can do is to allow the caster to work their magic at a distance, so they don’t have to be present for the effect to function.”
“So…you’re saying…” I ventured, trying to get my mind around this and push away all the warning bells and “normal person” filters trying to get in the way, “that Madame Minna, or whoever did this, cast the spell somewhere else—like maybe at her shop in San Francisco—and made dead birds appear in my daughter’s bed?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m certain that’s what she did. I can still detect traces of magic around the bed, though they’ve almost faded by now. After this much time has passed, I can’t use them to trace the spell back to her.”
“You…could have done that before?” I looked at him in astonishment. He wasn’t acting like this was anything out of the ordinary. He could just as easily have said, “My car’s been towed, and it’s been gone too long for me to trace it to where they took it.”
“Yes, if I’d caught it right away. It’s sort of like tracking footprints in loose dirt—eventually the wind blows them away and you can’t follow them any longer. But that’s all right. I think we’ll probably find much better traces at your sister’s place tomorrow.”
I narrowed my eyes, still trying to get on board with all this weird stuff he was saying. All this talk of magic and rituals and illusions was so absurd I didn’t want to believe it. Something in my mind kept trying to block it out, to ridicule both it and this man who was trying to make me accept it. But for Emma’s sake, I couldn’t do that. I decided the only way I could handle it was to treat it like trying to solve a puzzle in one of my mystery books: just take the clues and try to make sense of them, as fanciful as they sounded.
“But…why do you need to find traces at all? We know where Madame Minna is. I can take you to her tomorrow, if you want to see her.” I wondered if he did, if he planned to confront her directly, and wasn’t sure if that was a good idea for either of us.
“Yes—assuming she’s still there. But we don’t know where the child is. I doubt she’s got her at her shop, which means we need to find her. With any luck at all, we can do that and get her away before Madame Minna even realizes we’re on to her.”
I took a slow, deep breath, looking around. Alastair Stone looked out of place in my neat country kitchen, and his words sounded even more out of place. “You’re saying…that you can find Emma with these traces?”
“I hope so.”
“How…does that work?” I suddenly remembered something he said. “Before, back at the coffee shop, you said something about how I needed ‘real magic’ on my side, because that’s what Madame Minna was using.”
“Yes.”
“So…does that mean that you…know real magic?”
His expression was calm and serious. “Yes, Ms. Huntley. I do. And that’s one of the biggest paradigms you’re going to have to accept if we’ve any hope of doing this.”
“Magic. Like…spells. Like Doctor Strange or something.”
“Yes. Very much like that.” He shot me a sideways smile. “Though Doctor Strange is a good deal more powerful than I am, given that he’s a comic-book superhero and I’m a university professor. Also, I look frightful in blue tights, trust me.”
I got a fleeting mental image of Stone in bright blue tights, but with Emma in danger I didn’t have time to get sidetracked. “So…what would you do? To find her, I mean?”
“I’ll need to do a ritual of my own. And for that I’ll need something that belongs to the child—preferably something with emotional significance, like a favorite toy.”
“You can do that?” I asked, gaping at him. What had I gotten myself into? “If I can get you that, you can find her? Simple as that?”
“Well…magic is rarely simple. There are potential issues, but I don’t think they’ll cause us much trouble.”
“What kind of issues?”
“For one thing, I can’t find her if she’s dead. But as I said, I’m almost certain she isn’t.”
A chill ran through me. “And…what else?”
“She might be behind wards—protective barriers designed to elude magical tracking.”
“Do you…think she is?”
“It’s possible. But it’s also possible Madame Minna wouldn’t bother, since she doesn’t expect magical opposition. I’d say the chances are fifty-fifty.” He got up and began to pace the kitchen. “But right now, I’ve got to discuss some things with you.”
Numbly, I watched him as he prowled back and forth, stopping occasionally to look out the window into the backyard or examine the photos on the refrigerator.
“We can’t do the ritual tonight,” he said, “but that’s all right. I doubt she’s keeping tabs on you. She probably thinks the crow illusion frightened you off.”
“It did. I’m scared to death she’ll hurt me—or worse yet, my kids.” Once again, the overwhelming compulsion to call Mark and check on them filled me, to the point where I gazed longingly at the phone.
“Where are they now?”
“With their father—my ex-husband—in Millbrae. I was afraid to have them in the house until this is over, and my daughter refused to sleep in that bedroom again. We’ll probably have to move…” That was an even more overwhelming thought.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Once again I can’t say it with certainty, but I doubt they’re in any danger.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of the bargain she made with your sister. She seems to be driven by rules—some types of practitioners are. Your sister made a vow to give up her first-born child in exchange for Madame Minna’s help dealing with the man who assaulted her, and in her mind, your sister broke that vow. That gave her the right to collect on the promise in any way she saw fit.”
“No, it didn’t!” I yelled. “She can’t just take a baby away from her mother! And kill two people to do it!”
“In her mind, she could. If I were to talk to her, she’d probably tell me that the bargain was made properly, your sister knew what she was promising, and the ritual bound her to keep her end or suffer the consequences.”
I slumped in my chair. “So…you’re telling me there’s nothing we can do?”
“I didn’t say that. But I need to do a bit more research before I can say more. I’ve never heard of this Madame Minna, so I’ve got to do some discreet inquiries to find out what kind of power level I’m dealing with here. If she’s got wards around the child, I’ll have to be very careful with my search, to avoid alerting her.”
“What happens if you alert her? Will she hurt Emma?”
“Almost certainly not. As I said before, I think she wants her for something, and I have my suspicions about what.”
“What?”
“I won’t say right now, not until I’ve got more information. But,” he add
ed, leaning against the counter, “I don’t want her to threaten your family anymore, either.”
“Will she hurt us if she finds out we’re looking for her?”
“She might try to hurt me—but I can handle her. I don’t think she’ll hurt you and your family, though. She might try more illusions to frighten you off, but you weren’t part of the original bargain.”
“She won’t scare me.” That was a lie and I knew it, but I kept picturing Emma’s face. Was she cold wherever that old witch had her? Was she crying for her mother? Was she hungry? Even though I’d never been close to Susan, those thoughts still hit me like bullets. What if it had been Melanie or Max instead of Emma?
Stone must have noticed something change in my expression. He settled that intense gaze on me again. “Do you want to do this, Ms. Huntley? Do you want me to get started?”
“Yes! Of course I do. But—”
“But what?”
“Well…if you’re one of these people who do magic, like Madame Minna—” I had a hard time getting those words out “—what do you charge? Do you want something that isn’t money, too?”
He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I don’t want any money, and you don’t have to give me one of your children. Truth be told, I’m rubbish with children. Wouldn’t know what to do with one if I had one.”
“Well…what, then?” I refused to be deterred.
“The only thing I ask is that you make bloody good and sure you’re willing to see this through. I don’t fancy coming back here tomorrow and having you tell me you’ve changed your mind.”
I couldn’t even imagine changing my mind, knowing that by doing it I’d be giving up on Emma, but this was all uncharted territory. Sitting here in my familiar, shadowy kitchen, safely enclosed in the bubble of reassuring light from the lamp over the table, this all felt somehow unreal. Like a dream or something, and tomorrow I’d wake up realizing none of it had actually happened. I had no idea how I’d feel in the morning, or how my mind would try to rationalize away all this talk of magic.
“I promise,” I said, before I could second-guess myself. “I’m in, and I won’t back out. If you can find Emma, I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
He pushed off the counter, suddenly energized. “Right, then. For tonight, you should be fine here. Don’t talk to anyone until tomorrow. Don’t call anyone, not even your ex-husband. Trust me, your children are safer away from you, and I doubt she’ll bother you here tonight. I’d put up a little ward around your house, but I don’t want her getting wise that we’re on to her and you’ve got professional help, since that could complicate things. I’ll come by tomorrow at midday and we’ll go to your sister’s house.”
“Oh!” I tensed. “I just realized, I don’t have a key. Susan and I…weren’t really close. Before this, I hadn’t seen her since she moved there. I’ve never even been inside her house.”
“Quite all right. Won’t be a problem.”
I didn’t ask him why not. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
As he headed for the door, though, I remembered something else. “Dr. Stone?”
“Yes?”
“Back at the auditorium…I thought I caught you looking at me a couple of times during your talk. And afterward, you homed right in on me and said I looked like a woman with a problem. How did you know that?”
“Ah. Easy—I saw it in your aura. I’ll see you tomorrow, Ms. Huntley.”
13
I didn’t sleep very well.
Every time I nodded off, I thought I heard some strange noise that jerked me back awake. Several times, I got up and checked Mel’s and Max’s bedrooms for any sign of oddness, but everything looked normal. For the rest of the night I lay in my own bed with the bedside light on, trying to read but spending most of my time re-scanning the same paragraphs over and over.
What was I doing? The rational part of my mind, the “normal” part that didn’t want to stand out in a crowd, make any waves, or deviate from the routine I’d followed ever since the kids were born, tried to convince me that I should just give all this up and let the police handle it. That was what they were paid for, after all. They found missing children all the time.
Yeah, but sometimes they find them dead. And the ones they find are runaways, or were taken in a custody battle, or were even kidnapped by normal strangers.
There was that. The police certainly didn’t track down babies stolen away by old witches as part of some sick magical bargain.
My thoughts drifted to Alastair Stone. What a strange man he was, with his long black coat, bright blue eyes, and brisk manner. Could he really do what he claimed, or was he just playing a cruel joke on me, trying to make the square, conventional woman believe magic existed? Would he even show up tomorrow as he’d promised, or just call to laugh at me? “Good one!” I could hear him say in his British accent. “I got you good, didn’t I? Don’t be so gullible next time! Ta-ta!” I didn’t know if real British people said “ta-ta,” but it seemed to fit.
The hardest thing for me the next day when I finally gave up trying to sleep was not to call Mark and ask to talk to the kids, or call Lieutenant O’Riley to find out if the police had made any progress locating Emma. Even if Dr. Stone did turn out to be a fraud or a prankster, he’d asked me not to call anyone else until I heard from him. I at least owed it to him to wait that long, on the off chance making those calls might put my loved ones in danger.
When his gleaming black Jaguar pulled into the driveway shortly after noon, I was actually surprised to see it. By that point, I’d managed to convince myself he wasn’t coming. I hurried outside and met him as he came up the front walk.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t show up,” I blurted.
“I thought you might be.” He didn’t seem bothered by my words. “Did you call anyone?”
“No. But it was hard as hell not to.”
He still wore the black overcoat; today, his jeans were a bit darker and his black T-shirt had the Pink Floyd rainbow prism on it. A pair of dark sunglasses concealed his eyes. “So, then—are you ready to go?”
“Right now?” Suddenly, everything seemed to be happening so fast. I got that feeling in Stone’s presence—like I’d just boarded a high-speed train and my only choices were to hang on or jump off before I no longer had the option to do it safely.
“Why not? Magical traces fade, so I want to get to them as soon as possible.”
Once again, my mental image of Emma’s face firmed my resolve. “Okay. Let me just grab a jacket and I’ll be ready to go. Do you want to follow me again, or—”
“It would be easier if you just rode along with me. If you trust me, anyway.”
I had to trust him. If I was throwing myself into this crazy plan, I didn’t have a lot of choice. “That’s true. Okay.”
He drove fast, flying up 101 like he didn’t give a damn about getting a ticket. At least he didn’t whip in and out of traffic like a madman, so that was something. We passed at least two CHP cruisers, but both ignored us. I sat back in the soft leather seat, studying the view out the passenger window and casting occasional glances his way. The stereo played something I didn’t recognize at barely-audible volume.
“So…” I said. “How does somebody get to be a professor of Occult Studies? That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing little kids want to be when they grow up.”
He chuckled. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“Is it because of the…magic?” It was funny—every time I spoke the word aloud, I felt like I was saying something embarrassing.
“Partially. I’ve always been interested in things that go bump in the night, ever since I was a child.”
“What part of England did you grow up in?” I didn’t know why I was talking so much, except maybe that having a normal conversation was doing a decent job of driving down my growing anxiety as we got closer to Susan’s house.
“Little village in Surrey, south of London.”
“And you decided to come all the
way over here to teach at Stanford? That’s a long way from home.”
“It is indeed.”
He didn’t elaborate. I got the impression he didn’t want to talk about it, so I backed off. I didn’t need to get the man’s life story, after all.
As we got close to San Mateo, I directed him off the freeway and a few minutes later we pulled into Susan’s familiar driveway. No one was there, of course, but I immediately spotted a small wreath of flowers somebody had left on the front porch. It occurred to me that with all the craziness going on, I hadn’t even thought about all the normal stuff that would have to be dealt with. Susan and Chuck were both dead now, which meant the ownership of the house had to be in question. Had they even made wills? At their age, it was possible they hadn’t even wanted to think about such morbid finality, but since they had a daughter to provide for they might have done it anyway. With Emma missing, I didn’t even want to think about the legal snarls ahead. As Susan’s closest living relative, I’d probably have to help figure them out, but that was for later. Right now, getting Emma back from Madame Minna was all I cared about.
As Stone and I got out of the car, a voice called out: “Hello, dear. I didn’t expect to see you here today.”
I froze in horror, forcing myself not to jump as I jerked my gaze over. Mrs. Bond, Susan’s elderly neighbor, was crouched in her yard near a colorful flowerbed, an array of gardening supplies spread out around her. “Oh! Uh—hello, Mrs. Bond. I didn’t see you there.” Next to me, Stone was silent.
The old lady hauled herself to her feet, her face wreathed in sadness. “I’m so sorry about everything. I was just sick to hear about Susan’s accident, so soon after what happened to Chuck. And little Emma missing—please tell me you’ve heard some good news. I don’t think I could take any more bad. The police were by a couple of days ago to ask me some questions, but I’m afraid I couldn’t help them very much.”