Circle of Stone: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 19)

by R. L. King

  “Not sure yet. It might mean that as they continue to succeed without being caught, they might grow bolder and make mistakes.”

  “So we can catch ’em?”

  “Possibly—though it could also make them dangerous. Obviously they don’t want to be caught or identified. You say they aren’t hurting anyone now, but will that remain true if they’re cornered?”

  Blum sighed. “Great. Listen, Stone—I hate to ask you this, especially since it’s off the record and not even related to a case I’m workin’ on, but…would you consider takin’ a look? Do a little snooping around with your magical contacts and see if anybody’s turned up anything? I just don’t want to see good cops get hurt chasin’ something they don’t even understand.”

  Stone rose from the bench and headed off again. “I can’t do it right away, Detective, I’m sorry. There’s a reason I’m in Paris now—I’m looking into a bit of trouble an old friend’s got himself into. It’s a bit time-sensitive, so I can’t drop it now. I can—wait a moment!” he said more loudly, startling a passer-by as a thought occurred to him.

  “What?”

  “Does it have to be me?”

  “What do you mean?” Blum’s tone took on suspicion.

  “Well…you remember Verity, right? My former apprentice?”

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “Would you mind if I asked her to take a look? As you might recall, she’s very good—and in fact she might fit in with the seamier side of Oakland better than I would.”

  “Uh—yeah, sure, if she’s willing. Tell her to be careful, though. I don’t want to get anybody hurt over this. I’m still not completely sure I’m even seein’ what I think I am. That guy who saw the floater might just be a pothead seein’ pink elephants.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll ask Verity to have a look ’round and report back to me. I should have this business here in Paris wrapped up in a day or two, and then I can devote more attention to it if it does turn out to be magical. Fair enough?”

  “Sounds like a plan. Thanks, Stone. We really should get together for a beer sometime, if we can ever unfuck our schedules enough to do it.”

  “I’ll look forward to it—perhaps sometime next year, at the rate we’re going.”

  5

  Stone’s next stop was the shabby apartment building where Selby had been instructed to show up. He took even more care this time, changing his illusionary disguise to a twentyish student and adding a disregarding spell to make himself even less conspicuous. Chances were much higher that someone was watching this place than the hotel room.

  The apartment building had four stories and resembled several others on both sides of the street. As Stone lingered at a bus stop watching people hurry by, he noted the area seemed populated mostly by the young, the poor, and more than a few shady characters whose twitchy auras marked them as nervous and watchful.

  The flat Selby had visited was in the back, down a narrow alleyway choked with parked cars. Stone passed a laughing young couple on his way up the alley, but otherwise no one seemed to be around. He found the third-floor flat and identified one of the windows. It was closed tight, with a tiny balcony encircling it. After determining with magical sight that no auras lurked in hiding behind any of the cars, he used his invisibility spell again and floated up until he perched on the balcony.

  It was obviously too small for anything but show, and issued a menacing creak when he put his weight on it. He froze, expecting the din to bring someone running to the window, but nobody appeared. With care, he leaned in closer, peering in through the uncovered window.

  It was hard to see inside, but it looked like the room beyond was nearly empty. He waited a moment to see if anybody showed up, then slipped the window lock and floated inside.

  Remaining levitated—he could maintain that spell for a much longer time—he dropped the invisibility and replaced it with a faint light spell to illuminate the dim space, continuing to keep his attention focused on any sounds indicating the occupants were present elsewhere.

  He was right—the room was nearly empty, with only a table, a couple of chairs, a tiny kitchenette, and an open door leading to a bathroom. A studio, then, most likely. Apartments in Paris were expensive, and studios were common. At least he didn’t have to worry about anybody else entering from another room. The place smelled of disuse, overlaid with the far-off odors of cooking oil and spices. The faint strains of a rap song wafted in through the thin walls.

  Unfortunately, though, it didn’t look like he’d find anything here either. Stone hadn’t expected to see the occupants sitting around laughing about the sucker they’d caught, or even the laptop unattended on the table, but this place didn’t look like anyone spent much time in it at all. He wondered if the blackmailers had targeted Selby specifically because they wanted the tome, or if they pulled this scheme on other tourists who had things they were interested in. Hell, he still didn’t know whether they wanted the book merely because they’d heard rumors of its value, or because they knew it was magical.

  Almost idly, he shifted to magical sight.

  He blinked, surprised.

  Though Stone suspected at least one of the blackmailers was magically talented, Selby had said nothing about either the man or the woman exhibiting any obvious magic. According to his story, he’d been instructed to come to this address where he was shown the incriminating video on a laptop.

  So why was the room practically awash with magical traces?

  They hung in the air mostly near the middle of the room, heavy and bright. Stone recognized them instantly: they meant that someone had done some decently powerful magic here, and recently. He floated closer to the floor and sharpened his senses, trying to get a better idea of the magic’s specific type, but didn’t have much hope of doing it—even with his power level, it was difficult to pick out details about arcane properties after the fact.

  The fact that it was here at all was interesting, though. The one thing he could discern about it was that it wasn’t violent magic: nobody had been killed here, or beaten up, or raped. Those kinds of traces always left markers behind, and because they were highly charged emotionally, they could linger much longer than other types of magic. Magical scholars had spent a lot of time trying to determine why negative emotional energy was almost always more persistent than positive or neutral energy, but as yet nobody had a definitive answer.

  The traces seemed to be concentrated around the small table near the room’s center. Stone floated forward until he was directly above it. Had the blackmailers been performing some kind of working on the table? If they had, it must have been recent—Selby had been here a couple of days ago, which was far longer than this kind of energy would stick around without reinforcement. The fact that it was here now meant the room’s occupants must have either performed it after Selby left, or that they did this kind of magic here often.

  Interesting. What are you lot up to?

  There wasn’t much point in remaining here too much longer. He supposed he could wait until the occupants returned, but he had no way to know if they would return any time soon. The room looked like it wasn’t used often—probably only for meets like the one Selby had attended. The magical traces suggested he wasn’t the only victim of whatever scheme they were running, but even so, it didn’t make sense to remain here for an indefinite period waiting. He still had one more place to check.

  He took one last look around the room with both magical and mundane sight, this time looking for anything the blackmailers might have left behind that he could use in a tracking ritual. He found nothing, and wondered if that was deliberate. Anyone with an ounce of magical talent would know not to leave such things behind. He even checked the bathroom on the faint hope that someone might have left a toothbrush or comb with some hair in it, but the place looked unused.

  Nothing else to see here, unless he wanted to risk looking for other residents to talk to—which he didn’t. Again, it was an option for later, but not yet. He re-cast
the invisibility spell, floated back out the window, and closed and locked it behind him.

  Once he was back on the ground and away from the building, he called Selby.

  “Yes?” The man answered on the first ring, sounding breathless. “Did you find anything? Please tell me you’ve found them.”

  “Not yet. But I’ve got a question for you. I checked out the place where you said the man showed you the video. I didn’t find much of interest there, except for some fairly significant magical traces. Are you sure the man didn’t use magic while you were there?”

  There was a pause. “Of course I can’t be certain…but it didn’t look like it. He never left the room during the meet—not even to use the toilet. In fact, he was never out of my sight.”

  Stone pondered. While magic didn’t technically require any specific movements, incantations, or other obvious indications, most mages reflexively used gestures when casting spells. Selby might not have much of the Talent, but he’d trained what little of it he had with William Desmond, one of the finest magical teachers in the world. Stone had no doubt he could recognize such subtle cues—assuming he wasn’t so stressed out he’d missed them.

  “Okay,” he said, resuming his pace. “So you haven’t any idea what might have left magical remnants behind in the room.”

  “I’m sorry, but no.” Selby was sounding miserable again.

  “Don’t give up yet. I want you to think hard: can you tell me anything about the scene you saw in the video?”

  “The scene in the video? I told you, I was—”

  “Not you. Not what you were doing. Do you remember anything about the background? Could you tell if it was a hotel room, a private bedroom—anything? Think, Selby. It might be very important.”

  There was a long pause. Stone had made it halfway up the block before Selby spoke again. “I’m sorry…I can’t remember much. As you can imagine, I was quite shocked to see myself…doing such horrible things. There was a bed, of course…the sheets were white, and I think the spread was blue.”

  “Where was the camera?”

  “What?”

  “From what you saw in the video, can you tell where the camera was? Did it take a wide-angle shot of the room, as if it was mounted up high? Were you only visible from the back, or did you see your face? Did you see the woman’s?”

  “It wasn’t up high—it was closer in. Not too far from the bed, filming from the side. I saw both her face and mine. If I hadn’t, that would have been my first suspicion—that they used some sort of body double for me. But I saw my own face, as clearly as I saw yours when we met. I heard my voice, saying those horrible things to her. And…I have a distinctive birthmark on my…er…posterior, which was visible in the video.” His voice shook. “I’m sure it was me, Dr. Stone. They must have drugged me somehow. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

  Stone rubbed his jaw. Something was off here, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. “Okay. Calm down, Selby. We’ll get this sorted. But if you remember anything else—anything at all—about what you saw in that video, please call me right away.”

  “I will.” Selby didn’t sound encouraged. “But…what if you can’t find anything? I can’t let them release that video. I just can’t. I don’t want to steal Madame Bertrand’s book, but—”

  “It hasn’t come to that yet.”

  “Wait a moment.” Sudden hope rose in his voice, animating it. “What if we…fooled them? I could borrow the book—the Bertrands are away, so they won’t miss it if I get it back to the chateau before they return—and you could accompany me to meet the blackmailers and hand it over. You…you could deal with them, couldn’t you?”

  Stone closed his eyes. “I…could, yes. But I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not until I know more about what they’ve done.”

  “Why not? You’re very powerful, and I know you can be quite intimidating.” Again, his voice shook. “I know we’re not close, Dr. Stone, but is it because you’re not willing to—”

  “No,” Stone said quickly. “It’s not that.” Damn. I was hoping not to get to this yet. “But…I don’t think it will matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they showed you the video on a computer. That means they’ve got copies of it. If they hand one over to you and discover we’ve turned the tables on them, they’ll release the others. Even if I were to kill them—and no offense, Selby, but I’m not killing anyone for you—that doesn’t mean they don’t have associates with instructions to release them if their friends don’t contact them.”

  Even over the cell phone connection, Selby’s moan came through loud and clear. “Oh, dear God…I hadn’t thought of that. I should have…so stupid…”

  “You’re not stupid. You’re frightened—and you’ve got every right to be. I didn’t want to add to that, but you didn’t give me a choice. Please—just let me keep looking into this. There might be a way to deal with it, even if they do have copies. Just trust me, all right? If I can’t come up with anything by the deadline, we’ll try it your way. Fair enough?”

  Selby didn’t answer.

  “Selby!”

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  “Damn you, Selby, you didn’t get me involved in this to give up now.” Stone recognized the growing despair in the other man’s voice—he’d felt it himself on rare occasions, and understood all too well how debilitating it could be. “Listen to me. I want you to make me a promise.”

  There was a long pause. “What…promise?”

  “That you won’t make any drastic decisions until after you’ve given me a chance to deal with this. Do you trust me?”

  “I do, but I don’t think you can—”

  “Well, I do think I can.” Stone hoped he sounded more certain than he felt. “If you don’t promise me, I’ll stop right now. I’ve got other things I need to deal with back home, and I’m putting them aside to help you. So the least you can do is hold yourself together until I’ve had a fair go at it.”

  No response.

  “Selby?”

  “Yes. All right.” Selby sighed loudly. “I suppose it doesn’t make any difference whether I do it now or after the Bertrands and the rest of the world find out I’m a reprehensible person.”

  “I want your word. I believe you. I don’t think you did this, but I’ve got to prove it so the rest of the world believes it too—or arrange it so they never find out. But I can’t do that if I’ve got to worry about you topping yourself before I can do it. So give me your word, Selby, or by the gods I’ll end this conversation and catch the next portal back to California.”

  Another pause, longer this time. “Fine. I don’t see what good it will do, but you have my word. I’ll wait to hear from you, and I won’t make any irreversible decisions until you’ve had your chance. But I’ve got to say, I’m not hopeful.”

  Neither am I, Stone thought, but he forced confidence into his tone and said, “I’ll sort this out, Selby. I will. And remember—if you recall anything else about what you saw in the video, call me immediately. Even if you think it’s trivial. In fact—do you still remember the meditation techniques Desmond taught you?”

  “Of course—they’re one of the few things I still keep up, since I find them helpful even in mundane life.”

  “Brilliant. Here’s what I want you to do: lie down somewhere quiet and use the techniques to go over what you saw. I wish I could get you and my former apprentice together, since she’s a dab hand at hypnosis, but she’s busy and there’s no time. This will have to do. Keep a notebook and pen next to your bed and write down whatever you remember, no matter how trivial. Can you do that for me?”

  “Er…yes, of course.” As Stone had hoped, having something definitive to do added confidence to Selby’s voice. Not much, but it was something. “Thank you, Dr. Stone. No matter how this ends, I want you to know I appreciate what you’re doing for me.”

  I just hope I can help you. Right now, that was hardly a given.

&
nbsp; He still had one more place to investigate, though—and he couldn’t do that until later on tonight.

  6

  Verity Thayer liked her new apartment in San Francisco. For one thing, it was a lot bigger than the one in Mountain View, which meant she had more room to spread out with her magical experiments. Sure, it wasn’t as nice—there had to be some trade-off for the fact that she wasn’t paying much more in rent for it than she had for the other one—but that only applied if you defined “nice” as “looking like every other generic, white-walled, middle-class, tech-worker apartment in the area.” This place might have a few warts, like the water stains on some of the walls, the ten-year-old carpet, and the finicky pipes in the spare bathroom, but the kitchen was in good shape, the roof didn’t leak, and she hadn’t seen any bugs. The place had character, and that counted for a lot. And besides, even though the landlord was what was charitably known as “hands off,” between her own skills, her brother’s, and various members of the Harpies’, they could take care of all but the worst problems.

  Best of all, she now lived just down the hall from Hezzie, which made it much easier to continue her alchemy studies. Since she’d fully moved in a little over a month ago, her skills had increased significantly just by virtue of having her teacher available for quick consults when things went wrong. With Hezzie’s help and Stone’s financial contribution to supplement her own, she now had a fairly impressive alchemy lab set up in the spare bedroom, along with protective illusions and wards to make sure nobody discovered it. It wouldn’t do to have some overzealous local cop thinking she was running a meth lab or something.

  A knock on the door startled her from her aimless puttering around the living room. “Come on in,” she called, knowing the wards would warn her if the visitor meant her any harm.

  Kyla entered, followed by several of the other Harpies. “Hey, V.”

  “What’s this about?” Greta asked, looking around suspiciously, as if expecting to spot someone else. Even after all this time, Verity and the muscular, short-haired woman hadn’t clicked as much as she had with most of the rest of the Harpies.