by R. L. King
The answers to all of this lay with his dead mother, her attendant, and wherever they had taken him as a baby.
But how could he find that out, after all these years? Everyone involved was dead except Aubrey, and he’d already said he didn’t know.
On top of everything else, Stone couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen that green glow somewhere before. He didn’t know how that could be, though—he certainly didn’t remember ever seeing it around his father, but it had been a long time since Orion had died. Perhaps he’d—
Perhaps—
His head, suddenly heavy, nodded forward, and his shoulders slumped. The exhaustion of the day finally catching up with him, he was asleep before he could finish his thought.
He stood in the middle of a featureless room: black walls, black ceiling, black floor. It had no windows, no doors, no visible means of exit. Looking down at himself, he saw he was dressed in a simple white robe tied at the waist. His feet were bare. He turned slowly in place, squinting as he tried to spot some hidden way out, but none appeared.
Suddenly, a face pushed itself free of the wall directly in front of him. A familiar face: pale, sharp-featured, dark-haired. It wore an expression that was half-anger, half-disappointment. “You failed, Alastair!” his father yelled at him. “You failed! It was all your fault! All of it!” Orion’s eyes blazed sickly green.
“No!” Stone yelled. “You’re not here!” He spun away toward the opposite wall—but now that wall had a face too. This time it was female—young, dark-haired, with big, accusing eyes. “You failed me too! You were my teacher! You were supposed to have control! How could you have taken advantage of me like that?”
The two voices, growing louder, joined in a strident cacophony. Stone clamped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes, but it didn’t matter—the voices still got in.
And now a new one had joined it.
This one was female too, and he knew it instantly. He didn’t want to open his eyes, but he did it anyway, turning to look.
Imogen’s eyes showed the same disappointment and anger as his father’s and Verity’s. “You did fail,” she said. “You failed Dad—you let him die, and he didn’t have to—and you failed me. Why do you think I found Clifford? If you’d been man enough to love me, I’d never have had to!”
“None of this is real!” Stone yelled. “None of you are here!” He spun in place again, looking with desperation for a way out, but the little room seemed to be slowly, inexorably closing in on itself. Panicking now, he turned toward the final wall—and gasped, dropping to his knees.
The final face—the one he knew deep down had to be there, even as he hoped it wasn’t—glared at him with the full force of personality that used to petrify him as an apprentice. William Desmond looked down on him like the others, but his expression was downright terrifying. “You are a disgrace, Mr. Stone!” he thundered. “A simple problem, one even the dullest apprentice could see through, and you failed to grasp it! I have no idea why I ever thought you were worthy of being my apprentice. You are an embarrassment!”
It wasn’t just Desmond’s eyes that blazed with the sickly green aura—it was his whole face. Dancing over his pale skin against the unrelieved black of the wall, it made him look cadaverous, like a zombie trying to push its way free of an obstacle. “An embarrassment!” he shouted, his voice mingling with the others until Stone could barely hear himself think.
“NO!” he screamed, clutching the sides of his head again even though he knew it was useless. “No! Go away, all of you! Just—go away! Leave me alone! I tried! I tried, damn you!”
The four faces pushed further out of the wall, their freakishly long necks extending them closer to Stone as the walls continued to contract. Their hot, fetid breath rolled over him as their mouths opened wider, wider, showing throats as huge and black and featureless as the walls.
Stone screamed again, louder, and threw his hands across his face to protect himself. He slumped to the floor, drawing his knees up and continuing to scream as the shouting, accusing faces drew ever nearer.
Stone’s head snapped up.
He sat in the workroom chair, slumped sideways, his back screaming in protest. His breath came hard and fast, and hot sweat prickled on his forehead. When he reached up to push his hair back, he found it damp.
A nightmare—just a nightmare, no doubt brought on by too much stress. He looked around quickly to verify that no faces poked from the walls, but the room looked just as he’d left it. Even the warded cabinet where he’d stored the wooden sculpture lay silent and undisturbed. The clock on the wall told him he’d been asleep for a little over an hour. It would be dawn soon.
The images tumbled back to mind, even though he tried to forget them—his father, Verity, Imogen, Desmond, all of them yelling at him that he’d failed them. His father and Desmond with those strange, otherworldly green glows, making them look like corpses—
Like…corpses—
Stone sat up straight in his chair, heedless of his protesting back. A wave of cold sluiced through his body, and for a moment to forgot to breathe.
Corpses.
That was where he’d seen the sickly green glow before.
He hadn’t remembered because he’d only glimpsed it for an instant. Verity had seen it more clearly.
It was the same faint green glow he’d briefly seen hovering around Desmond’s body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When Stone emerged from the underground part of the house later that morning, intending to head upstairs for a quick shower, shave, and change of clothes, Aubrey intercepted him. The caretaker looked as disheveled as Stone felt. “Sir, where have you been? I thought you must still be at Caventhorne.”
Stone blinked. His mind was still far away, focused on the shocking revelation that followed his nightmare. “What—?”
Aubrey looked at him, his forehead creased with worry. “Sir—are you all right? Did you find what you were looking for at Caventhorne?”
That’s a bit of an understatement, he thought wryly. “Er—yes. I did. I’ve been downstairs doing some research, and fell asleep for a while. Did you need something?” He already started to move past Aubrey—he had more to do today, and the sooner he began, the better.
The caretaker put a hand on his arm. “Yes, sir. There is something.” His expression was hard to read, serious and disturbed. “Please—come with me to the kitchen and let me fix you something. If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, you look terrible.”
Stone didn’t doubt that. He ran a hand over his stubbled face and through his untidy hair and sighed. “Fine,” he said at last. “I suppose I could use a little something before I get started. Just make it quick, please.”
His mind wandered again as he followed Aubrey by rote to the kitchen, where he dropped into a chair and waited while the caretaker puttered around making coffee and toast. The latest shock had done what he hadn’t thought possible: it had driven out all the other ones, at least temporarily. Whatever the thing in his warded cabinet was, it apparently had at least two deaths to its credit: Stone’s father and now William Desmond. He had no idea how it had accomplished the latter, hidden as it had been in Desmond’s ultra-secure warded vault, but the more he thought about it, the more he was certain the green energy he’d spotted around it was identical to what he’d seen on his examination of Desmond’s body. It certainly hadn’t driven Desmond mad as it likely had his father, though—his master interacted with far too many people for someone not to have noticed. Had its effects been more insidious, taking place over a longer period? He remembered what Verity had told him after she’d gotten a better look than he had: “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,” she’d said.
Had the malevolent energy been affecting Desmond ever since he’d taken possession o
f the item twenty years ago? Had it somehow gotten through the wards and slipped its silent tendrils into him, so incrementally that neither he nor anyone else ever noticed? Had it finally reached a point where his body couldn’t handle the stress anymore and finally failed? And if so, why? What would be the point of a magic item that took that long to act?
His father had had the thing for nearly as long as Desmond had—why had it driven Orion mad and caused him to attack Desmond, rather than eroding his body?
So many questions, and he had no way to answer any of them.
“Sir?”
Stone snapped his attention back. “What?”
Aubrey stood in front of him. He put a steaming cup of coffee down along with a plate of toast and jam. “You were—somewhere else, sir.”
“Oh. Yes, I’ve—been doing that a lot lately.” He took a sip of the coffee; the hot, strong liquid helped to focus his concentration. “You said you had something else?”
“Yes, sir.” Aubrey took a seat across from him. “Last night, after you left, I thought more about what happened all those years ago, trying to remember if I’d left anything out, or forgotten anything. I remembered that I’d written down some thoughts at the time, but I couldn’t remember what I’d done with them—or if I’d even kept them at all. I tossed out a lot of rubbish last time I reorganized my flat.”
Stone tensed. “Did you find them?”
“Yes, sir. Took me most of the night, but I found some notes in a box downstairs in the garage. There wasn’t much—I wasn’t much for writing back then—but I did find one thing I’d forgotten about.” He looked away, and Stone didn’t miss the disturbance that crossed his face.
“What is it?”
Aubrey closed his eyes briefly, then bowed his head. “When your father returned, he was naturally quite agitated. As I’d mentioned, he was injured and exhausted, and he didn’t have his usual filters in place. When he had me ring his friend the healer, he—I overheard him telling her to check you over carefully for any signs of magical damage.”
Stone frowned. “Magical damage? Why?”
“Because…” Aubrey swallowed, then took a long drink from his cup of coffee. His hands shook. “Because, sir—he told her that when he found you, he found them using you as part of some sort of…sacrificial ritual.”
Stone didn’t answer. His hand tightened on his cup until he thought he might shatter it. He remembered his father’s words, as reported by Desmond, in the journal: They wanted a child…a baby… “Sacrificial ritual?” he whispered.
“Yes, sir.” Aubrey looked miserable. “I don’t have any more about it than that—my notes were quite sketchy. I believe…well, I think I might have been rather intoxicated when I wrote them. I don’t know why I didn’t remember that—it’s possible I blocked it out. Such a horrific thing…I’m sorry, sir.”
Stone was no longer listening to the caretaker’s words. When he spoke again, it was as if to himself. “My own mother…took me away to use me in a sacrifice?” The shocks just kept on coming. At this point, he was nearly numb to them. How could he have spent his whole life with no idea of what had happened around him? How had he never even suspected any of this? Why hadn’t he pressed his father harder to tell him what had become of his mother?
“Sir, I—”
“Why…would she do that? Who was she working with? Could she have been…compelled, somehow?” That thought was better than the alternative—that his mother, the person who’d given him life, had intended to kill him all along. But for what purpose?
He leaped up so fast he nearly overturned his chair. “Aubrey! Did my father keep anything having to do with our family history? Photos, records—especially anything about the period when he and my mother were married?”
Aubrey looked startled by his sudden vehemence. “Er—yes, sir, I believe so. He was going to destroy all of that—he wanted no reminders of your mother after what happened—but I gathered it up and put it in the attic. I thought perhaps you might wish to see it someday, but you never asked.”
“I’m asking now. Show me where it is!” Stone had no idea if looking at old family photos and records would provide any more pieces to this puzzle, but at the very least he wanted to see his mother again—to look at the face he hadn’t seen since he was a young child, when his father had shown him the wedding photo.
“Yes, sir.”
Aubrey was looking at him like he’d gone insane, but at this point he didn’t care. He waited impatiently while the caretaker carried the cups to the sink, then followed him out of the kitchen.
Stone didn’t go into the house’s vast, cluttered attic very often. There wasn’t any need to—all it contained was old furniture covered in moldering sheets, assorted cast-off items, old holiday decorations, and probably a whole ecosystem of vermin. Many of the items dated back to before his father’s time or even before that. He continued after Aubrey as the old man retrieved a flashlight and then mounted the creaky wooden staircase, opened the door, and switched on the naked overhead bulb. It didn’t provide much illumination.
“It shouldn’t be very far in, sir,” Aubrey said. “Look for a covered cardboard box labeled something like “History.” He hurried off in one direction, shining the beam of his flashlight around at the shadowy piles.
Stone summoned a light spell around his hand and chose the opposite direction, scanning the sheet-covered piles, dusty boxes, and other detritus. Why was this stuff even still up here? Some of the furniture was probably antique—assuming it hadn’t been destroyed by water or vermin—but the rest of the items were worthless. He supposed the answer was the same reason he himself hadn’t gotten rid of any of it: because everyone had better things to do with their time than clump around a packed attic sorting through generations’ worth of junk. He certainly would never have asked Aubrey to do it. Unless he got around to hiring someone else to perform the task, likely this stuff would remain up here long after he was dead. Let his heirs—if he ever got around to producing any—deal with it.
“Found it, sir!” Aubrey’s triumphant voice called from further in.
“Stay there—I’ll get it!” Stone called back, hurrying over to find Aubrey pointing at a covered banker’s box at the bottom of a stack. None of the boxes looked as if they’d been moved in many years. Just as the caretaker had said, the bottom box had HISTORY scrawled across it in black marker.
Aubrey reached up to pull the top box off the stack, but Stone waved him off and used magic to lift everything but the one they were after. “Grab it, will you?”
“That’s a useful skill indeed, sir,” he said, chuckling as he slid the box out. Once Stone had lowered the rest of them back, he offered it to him. Then he sobered. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“So do I, Aubrey.” But Stone wasn’t sure what he hoped to find.
He didn’t bother changing clothes or showering, even though he was now covered in dust from the attic. Instead, he took the box back to his study, cleared off his desk, and began spreading out the items inside. It was only about half full, and most of the contents weren’t helpful: some of Stone’s old projects and photos from his early years in boarding school (no doubt saved by Aubrey—Orion would never have been so sentimental), newspaper clippings, wedding announcements, a few keepsakes. Stone set these aside, wondering if he was wasting his time, but as he moved a yellowed old newspaper, he found what he’d been looking for: a stack of photos from his parents’ wedding.
There were only a few. As Aubrey had said, it had clearly been a small affair, with a handful of guests. Stone picked up one of the photos and looked more closely at it; it showed his father in a severe black tuxedo, looking as elegant and unruffled as ever, standing next to a tall, equally elegant young woman with dark hair, an imperious demeanor, and a challenging glimmer in her eyes. She wore a simple but lovely white gown, and her fingers were entwined with O
rion’s.
The two had made an attractive couple, without a doubt. Though Stone most closely resembled his father, he could see bits of himself in his mother as well—especially the bright blue eyes he’d inherited instead of his father’s gray ones. Her haughty expression suggested dignity, but the gleam in her eyes spoke of a sense of humor, too.
She kidnapped you for a sacrificial ritual, he reminded himself. Don’t get too nostalgic.
He put the photo aside and examined the rest of them one after the other, pausing to take a close look at each. Most of them showed the couple alone, or with the officiant standing at the altar at a small church as they took their vows. One showed Orion with a couple of other men who must have been friends—Stone didn’t know who they were, and wondered if they were still alive. They’d be in their seventies or older by now if they were.
The last photo showed his mother with some other people he didn’t recognize: two young women and an older one. Were they friends as well? Stone wondered if it would be worth his time to try to track down either his mother’s friends or his father’s, to see if they remembered anything else, but decided it probably wasn’t.
He was about to toss the final photo aside when something caught his eye. Something about the older woman—he was certain he’d seen her somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember where. He took a magnifying glass from his desk drawer, moved the light so it shone directly over the photo, and examined it again.
He’d definitely seen her somewhere before. He was sure of it. But where?
Perhaps one of the wedding announcements would have names of guests or attendants in it. Stone snatched up the pile of newspaper clippings, shuffled through them until he found one with more text and a photo of his father and mother together, and quickly read through it.
He froze, his fingers tightening on the brittle, age-worn paper.
“No…” he whispered. “It can’t be… That’s not possible.”
