Necessary Sacrifices

by R. L. King

  Stone thought about it. “I suppose that’s true,” he said at last. “All right—let’s try it. How long will it take?”

  “Five minutes or so, I think.”

  “All right. Do it. I’ll go see if I can find a surface we can levitate him onto.”

  He returned a few minutes later, a heavy wooden door floating along behind him. “Best I could find,” he said. “It will have to do. Were you successful?”

  She was crouched next to Desmond’s body, deep in concentration. She held up a hand, murmured something under her breath, and then raised her head. “There,” she said. “It won’t hold long, so hurry up.”

  Stone got right to it, forcing himself to compartmentalize his feelings about what he was about to do. It had to be done, and the sooner it was, the better. He concentrated, and Desmond’s body lifted off the floor, floated a few feet to the side, and settled back onto the door. It was impossible to tell by looking if they’d been successful, but it didn’t appear he’d made any change in the body’s orientation. “Can you do that again once we’ve got him where he needs to be?”

  “Yeah. I get how to do it now, so it should be a little easier. Where are we going?”

  “Up to the attic. Kerrick’s going to make sure no one disturbs us.”

  Verity didn’t get up. “Doc…?”

  “Yes?”

  “I—think I saw something while I was doing the spell.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What did you see?”

  She hesitated. “Do you know how he died?”

  “Not exactly. I didn’t find any traces of magic around him—I thought it must have been natural causes. Do you disagree?”

  “I’m…not sure. I had to take a pretty close look at him so I could make the spell work, or I never would have spotted it. It looks like he had a heart attack.”

  Stone frowned. “That’s natural causes, right?”

  “Yeah…if that’s all it was.” She stood then, flowing up with a natural grace that made Stone suddenly feel old. “But I’m not sure it is.”

  “What else do you think it could be, then?” Something deep inside Stone chilled, and unconsciously he glanced around the area. Nothing looked as if it had been moved or changed.

  “I spotted…really faint traces of magic around him. I mean, I know he’s a mage and he might have been doing magic before he died, but that’s not what I saw. That would have faded anyway. I think he’s been dead for a few hours.”

  Stone nodded. “Yes, that’s what I thought as well. Even if he were actively using magic at his time of death, nothing here indicates he was doing anything powerful enough to linger this long. Are you sure you’re not just picking up the ambient level of magic around here?”

  “Not completely. But like I said this feels…bad. I can’t explain it, exactly. But the oddest part is it that it feels like it’s been around a long time.”

  Stone stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s really faint—I’d have missed it if I hadn’t been looking as closely as I was—but I think whatever it is has been with him for a long time. Maybe chipping away at him, so subtly he might not even have noticed it himself.”

  “Verity…” He let his breath out slowly, and his voice was soft and even. “How sure are you of this? Because if you’re right, the implications are—”

  “Yeah. I know. If I’m right, it means something magical killed him—and something that’s been working on it for a long time. Years, maybe.”

  Stone looked down at Desmond’s body again. He wanted to shift back to magical sight and examine it thoroughly, trying to see if he could spot whatever Verity had found. But he knew they didn’t have time for that. Every minute they waited before moving Desmond added to the chance he authorities would figure out the body had been moved. Sure, there was no way they’d ever find the location where Desmond had died, but that didn’t mean suspicion wouldn’t cause a lot of unnecessary trouble for the staff and Imogen.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get him upstairs, and then I’ll take another look. Perhaps between the two of us we can work this out.”

  “Do you need me to do anything else?”

  “Put a disregarding spell over us, so if any staff other than Kerrick happen to be up and around, they won’t spot us. And stay quiet.”

  They didn’t encounter anyone as they left the restricted area and ventured back out into the main part of the house. Verity scouted ahead, heeding Stone’s whispered directions as he followed along, Desmond’s body floating serenely next to him on the levitating door. They moved quickly but carefully, always pausing to check the way before turning any corners. Fortunately the doors they had to pass through were all wide enough to get the platform through.

  Less than ten minutes later, they had mounted the stairs to the attic and stood before the open door leading into the vast space. “Stop here,” Stone said before Verity went through the door. “We’ll have to be careful.”

  “Why?”

  “Kerrick said nobody’s been up here for years. That means the floor will be dusty. They can’t find our footprints, and it won’t be practical for us to fix it so they find his. We’ll have to set him down just inside the door.”

  “What about his fingerprints on the knob?”

  “Bugger.” Stone had a brief flash of relief that he was essentially an honest person, because crime was mentally exhausting. Once again he hated having to disturb Desmond’s body, but if they wanted to spare the others in the house, this had to look plausible.

  He steeled himself, made sure his grip on the levitated door was rock-solid, then raised Desmond’s arm and wrapped his fingers around the doorknob. Then, using magic, he opened the attic door and levitated the platform inside.

  “Can you do it from there without going inside?” he asked Verity.

  “Yeah. It’ll be a little harder, but I can do it. Hold him steady.”

  Stone did as directed. The levitation spell was one of the easiest for him, and the five ley lines intersecting at Caventhorne made it even less taxing. He examined the dark, shrouded hulks of old furniture and other stored items as Verity performed her delicate magic over Desmond’s body.

  “There,” she said. “It won’t hold long, so hurry up, okay?”

  “Right.” Once again firming up his hold on the door, Stone lifted Desmond’s body from it and carefully lowered it to the floor just inside the attic door, careful to keep it in the same pose in which he’d found it. When the body was safely in place, he levitated the door platform outside the room and leaned it against the wall at the foot of the stairs. He let his breath out. “All right, that’s done. We need to get going, but I want to take another look before we go. Can you guide me? I want to try to see what you saw.”

  “I’ll try.”

  They both shifted to magical sight, and Stone leaned against the wall, narrowing his perceptions to a laserlike focus. “What am I looking for?”

  “It’s really subtle,” she said. “I can barely see it—it’s centered around his torso. Can’t tell if it’s his heart or just kind of a general thing. It’s faint. I’m guessing if it was around him when he was alive, his aura would have hidden it.”

  Stone still couldn’t see it. “Can you describe it?”

  “It’s…green. I keep losing it—I’m guessing it’ll be gone completely in another day or so. Look right around his heart—it’s strongest there.”

  Stone wasn’t even aware of his physical body anymore. He’d always been good at magical examination, but his talents centered more around the mind than the body. This kind of deep, delicate probing was more Verity’s expertise than his. Finally, frustrated, he levitated himself and floated over Desmond’s body, reaching down to physically touch his mentor’s chest. If he didn’t get it now, he’d have to give up and take Verity’s word for it. They needed to get thing
s moving. The longer they waited, the bigger the chance that someone would find them.

  He tightened his focus even further, gently probing Desmond’s chest over his heart. For a moment he thought he still wouldn’t get it, and was preparing to move back into the hallway when suddenly he spotted something. He tensed.

  She was right. It was so faint it was nearly impossible to spot, just a tiny bit of green energy shifting and roiling around Desmond’s torso. When he tried to home into it and get a better look, it danced away like faint smoke.

  “Doc?” Verity’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  He didn’t want to let the energy go. “What?”

  “You’re shaking. You’d better get out of there before you fall on him.”

  Damn. She was right. He hadn’t been paying attention to his body as he’d been focusing his mind. The elusive green energy vanished as he shifted back. He couldn’t keep this up much longer without risking losing control of the levitation spell. With great reluctance, he floated back out into the hallway and dropped down against the wall.

  “Did you see it?”

  He dragged himself back to his feet. “I don’t know what it is, but I saw it. Let’s get out of here. Just give me a moment to move the door someplace it won’t be found.”

  They hurried back downstairs to the great room. As they approached, Stone heard soft voices. He held up a hand to stop Verity and crept forward to get a look.

  Imogen and Kerrick sat on a sofa, their backs to Stone and Verity. Imogen’s shoulders were slumped, and Kerrick leaned toward her as if trying to comfort her.

  Stone paused a moment to gather himself, then stepped into the room, motioning for Verity to follow. He cleared his throat softly to get their attention.

  Both of them turned, and Kerrick leaped to his feet. “Sir.”

  Stone inclined his head. It hurt him to see how devastated both Kerrick and Imogen looked, and he wondered if he looked the same to them. “Kerrick. Imogen, it’s good you made it.” He indicated Verity. “This is my apprentice, Verity Thayer. Verity, this is Imogen, Mr. Desmond’s daughter, and Kerrick, his head of staff.”

  Verity came up next to him, and he noticed her eyeing Imogen with carefully veiled interest. “Pleased to meet you both,” she said. “I’m so sorry it had to be…like this.”

  Kerrick swallowed and turned his attention back to Stone. “Sir, did you—”

  “Yes.” Stone glanced at Imogen.

  “Kerrick has…told me the plan,” she murmured.

  “Right, then.” Stone struggled to keep his voice calm and even, but even then it wasn’t as steady as he’d hoped. “We’ve…moved him to the attic, just inside the door. There shouldn’t be any indication that…that he’s been moved. So as soon as Verity and I get out of here, you can safely call the authorities.”

  Imogen looked at the floor. “Do you have any idea what—”

  “We’re still working on that,” Stone said. He crossed to her and put a gentle hand on her arm. “At the moment it looks like natural causes, but I want to have a closer look at his work areas after…everything’s been sorted.”

  “Of course…” She put her arms around him and squeezed hard, burying her head in his shoulder, but she didn’t cry. “Thank you, Alastair. This is horrible, but it could have been…so much worse…”

  He returned the hug, gently rubbing her back. “I know. I know. You know I’ll do whatever I can. Whatever you need.”

  He felt her nod, and then she pulled back. “Where will you go?”

  “For now, to my place. Though I’ll probably need to go back home soon and fly over the proper way.”

  “Yes…I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you, Alastair. For…for everything.”

  Stone squeezed her hand, then nodded to Kerrick. “If you need me for anything, I’ll be at my place for the next day or so. Please don’t hesitate to call. I’ll fill Aubrey in so he’ll know what’s going on.”

  He hated to leave her looking so lost; all he wanted to do right now was stay with her and Kerrick, doing what he could to both give and receive comfort. But that wasn’t feasible—one of the few practical problems with the portals was that, if he and Verity had to interact with anyone outside the magical community on more than a superficial basis, being in the country with no way to show how they’d gotten there could prove problematic. Especially in a high-profile situation like this, where everyone would be watching. Much as Stone didn’t want to go, the faster he got back to the US and took a proper plane over, the faster he could be of use without arousing the authorities’ suspicions.

  Besides, Imogen was one of the strongest people he knew. With William Desmond as a father, she had to be. Desmond, throughout the time Stone had known him, had a way of either strengthening the people close to him, or breaking them if they couldn’t cope with his outsized personality. Imogen definitely fell into the former camp, as did Stone himself and most of Caventhorne’s staff. They’d be fine.

  “What’s the plan?” Verity asked, as they headed back to the portal room.

  “We’re going back to my place—it looks like you’ll get to see it this time after all. I want to stay until Kerrick and Imogen have had a chance to alert the authorities and have Desmond seen to, just in case any problems turn up. Then we’ll take the portal to California and I’ll catch a plane back over here. I suspect I’ll need to be here for quite some time.”

  She followed him for several seconds without speaking, then asked, “Do you want me to come back with you?”

  “I…suppose that’s up to you. I wouldn’t turn down your help looking around Desmond’s work areas for traces of that energy you saw. And I suppose I could calibrate the portals, both at my place and at his, so you can use them to move back and forth in case you need to return to California on short notice. Tell you what—let’s deal with that after we find out if our little plan worked.”

  “Whatever you want, Doc.” As they entered the portal room, she touched his arm. “I’m sorry this all happened, and I know you’re still in shock about it. You just let me know what you need, and I’m there.”

  “Thank you, Verity.” Not for the first time, he was grateful for her quiet strength. He wouldn’t allow himself to call on it often—he was supposed to be the master, and if anything he should be there for her to lean on—but he found it comforting to know it was there in the rare instances when events overwhelmed him.

  He switched to magical sight, tinkering with the ward around the portal to allow Verity to go through without being immobilized. It was harder work than merely calibrating it, and required more concentration—especially since his concentration was shot at the moment. Verity waited in silence while he completed his work.

  “There,” he said at last, letting his breath out. “That should hold for a few days at least. I’ll have to do the same thing at the London place if we need to go there, but for now, we’ll just head straight to Surrey.”

  “Doc?”

  Something in her tone made him turn back toward her. “Yes?”

  She looked thoughtful. “I was just thinking…that energy we saw around Mr. Desmond. If it was something long-term, something magical—who would have put it there? Did he have powerful enemies?”

  It was a question he’d already been asking himself. “I…don’t know. He’s never spoken of any. He had a lot of power, that’s certain, but he wasn’t the sort to get involved in the kinds of things that tended to collect enemies.”

  “Not like you,” she said with a wry smile.

  “Not like me,” he agreed. “That was a topic Desmond and I got into long discussions about, especially after I moved to the States. He was always more of a researcher, interested in expanding the field of magical knowledge as much as he could. But he didn’t often put his power to practical use.”

  “So as far as you know, he didn’t have any enemies?
Or…magical rivals?”

  “No, not that he ever mentioned.” He waved her toward the portal. “Unlike what you might see in the cinema, real-life mages don’t tend to have ‘rivalries’ per se. Oh, it happens, certainly, but generally it’s confined to younger mages who might be more insecure about their abilities and standing. Desmond was so far above most other mages that he didn’t need to have rivals—and he wasn’t exactly secretive about his knowledge. There’s a whole section at the magical library in London full of papers and books he’s written. He was fairly passionate about the idea that magical knowledge should be shared to keep it from dying out.”

  She nodded, but didn’t step into the portal yet. “What about somebody who might want to be his apprentice, but got turned down? Somebody like that Selby guy you told me about?”

  Stone paused, frowning. “It’s a possibility,” he admitted. “Not a strong one, but definitely something worth looking into.” He was slipping, if he hadn’t thought of that. But he still wasn’t convinced Desmond had suffered anything more than a normal, albeit early, death of natural causes. It would have taken an enormous amount of magical talent, not to mention a light touch, to be able to hide the energy he’d barely been able to spot around Desmond’s body. That didn’t suggest a failed apprentice. “Come on—let’s get through. We can talk more once we get back to my place.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Stone and Verity emerged through the portal into the tiny room beneath the cemetery on his property. She looked around with interest, taking everything in as he led them up the pull-down wooden staircase and up into the crypt.

  “Jason wasn’t kidding,” she said. “I half thought he was pulling my leg about your portal being in a graveyard.”

  “It’s a bit dramatic, I suppose,” he said, pushing the cover out of the way. “but I didn’t have any input into where it was placed. It’s been here since long before I was born.”

  It was full dark when they exited the mausoleum and set out across the field toward the house. Stone summoned a light spell to illuminate their way, moving fast.