by R. L. King
“Why not?”
“Because we can’t have six people breaking into a school,” Jason said. “Even if their security’s some old guy, a dog, and a burglar alarm they never turn on, somebody’s gonna notice.”
“Exactly,” Stone said, surprised at the unexpected support. “It wouldn’t be six—Eddie and Ward aren’t coming—but it can’t even be four.”
“You’re not planning to go alone, are you?” Verity asked.
“No. I was thinking I might take one of you with me, if you want to go. Absolutely optional, though. I doubt this will be dangerous, but it’s definitely illegal.”
To his surprise, Verity looked uncomfortable, and so did Jason.
“What?” He tilted his head. “Jason, I can see why you wouldn’t want to go, and honestly you’d be my third choice, despite your expertise with mundane security systems. You have the most to lose if we’re caught.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “I called Gina back home while I was upstairs, and there’s been a development on one of the cases I’m workin’ on. I really should be home to handle it.”
“And you, Verity?”
“Well—if Jase needs to go home, somebody needs to take him through the portal. And I got so caught up in all this that I forgot I was supposed to help Scuro out with a job tonight.”
Stone wasn’t surprised—this whole situation at the house had been so outside any of their experience that he himself had almost forgotten there was a real life going on away from its events. “It’s fine,” he said, waving them off. “Both of you go. I can handle this.”
“We can handle this,” Ian corrected. “I’ve got nowhere to be. I’ll go with you. I’m the best one anyway—this mess is about my family too.”
“You sure?” Verity still looked uncomfortable. “Because I hate to leave you guys in the middle of this.”
“Not a problem,” Stone said. “Come back when you can, if you want to. I’ll call you with any new developments.”
“Are you planning on doing it tonight?” Jason looked at his watch. “It’s almost ten already. How far away is this place?”
“If we pop up to Caventhorne, it will take a couple of hours from there. And yes, best to get it over with as soon as possible.”
They all exchanged uncomfortable glances, and finally Verity nodded. “Okay. We’ll—well, at least I’ll—come back as soon as I can.”
Stone patted her arm. “Don’t worry about it, Verity. It’s not as if we need to solve this problem tomorrow. As long as Ian and I don’t try to enter the house, everything should be relatively calm.”
“Except for Brathwaite trying to kill you, and whatever this ‘fiend’ is, out running loose somewhere,” Jason muttered.
“Yes, well, one problem at a time.”
They took the portal to Caventhorne. Stone had called ahead, so Kerrick was there to meet them.
“It’s good to see you, sir,” he said. The estate steward’s eyes widened when he spotted Ian. “And…this must be young Ian.”
“Yes. Sorry—I’d hoped the introductions might be more formal, but we’re in a bit of a hurry. Ian, this is Kerrick. He was my master’s oldest friend, and now he sees to looking after the non-magical aspects of Caventhorne.”
The two shook hands, checking each other out.
“I hear you’ve got a bit of trouble down at your Surrey house, Dr. Stone,” Kerrick said. “Mr. Monkton didn’t give me many details, but he and Mr. Ward have been popping in and out to check Mr. Desmond’s library over the past day or so.”
“Yes. Long story. I hope we’ll get it sorted soon. I don’t want it affecting the opening.” Stone could hardly believe it—after all this time and so many unexpected delays, Caventhorne’s magical resource center would finally have its formal gala opening in less than a month.
“Don’t you worry, sir. Everything’s going according to plan.”
“Brilliant.” He patted Kerrick’s shoulder. “You go on with whatever you were doing. Ian and I will be taking the Mercedes. We’ll be back later tonight, but probably not for long.”
“Of course, sir. Good luck with whatever you’re doing.”
When Kerrick left, Ian looked around the ornate room. “This place is amazing. You don’t own it too, do you?”
“No. Dear gods, no. I’m not sure what I’d have done if Desmond had left it to me. No, it’s been a long-term project, in accordance with his will, to turn it into sort of a library-slash-resource center-slash-meeting facility for mages, and he left me in charge of facilitating it. I’ve mostly delegated it to Eddie, Ward, and Kerrick. There’ll be a big gala do in a couple of weeks, if you’re interested in attending.”
Ian gave a dubious half-smile. “A bunch of stuffy old mages in tuxedos and evening gowns? I’ll pass, I think. No offense.”
Stone chuckled. “Quite all right. They’re hardly your crowd. Hell, most of them are hardly my crowd. But do keep the place in mind—once you apprentice to someone, you’ll find a large amount of useful reference material here. Including some that won’t be available to the general public.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” He followed Stone out of the room. “So how old is this place? As old as yours?”
“At least.”
When Ian didn’t reply, Stone turned back around. “Something on your mind?”
“I was just wondering—if it’s that old, do you think there are any dark secrets buried under this one too?”
Stone tensed. He hadn’t thought of that—not until Ian brought it up. “Damned good question. And to be honest, I’m not sure I want to know.” It wouldn’t have surprised him, though—Desmond’s family was even wealthier and had reached back longer than Stone’s, and at least some of his master’s ancestors had almost certainly been part of Ordo Purpuratus. “We’ve got enough problems to be getting on with right now without trying to dig up more.”
They retrieved the car, a black Mercedes sedan, from the garage and drove off.
“So it will take a couple hours to get to this place?” Ian asked.
“Yes. It’s about eighty miles.”
“That must have been quite a trip, back in horse and buggy days. You think there was a private portal there?”
“The portals weren’t even discovered back then, so I doubt it. And even if they added one later, it’s probably gone by now.”
“Gone? What, they can disappear?”
“They can, if you don’t keep them calibrated and tended every now and then. Especially the older ones, before they worked out better ways of stabilizing them. I suspect quite a number of the earliest hidden portals might have gone that way over the years. That’s part of why Desmond left me the London place—Imogen didn’t want it, and she couldn’t exactly sell it. It’s difficult to dismantle portals, and sometimes malfunctioning ones can be dangerous.”
He hadn’t even thought about Imogen since he’d returned to the Surrey house following the wedding reception and discovered the echoes. It seemed as if he’d been dealing with this problem for weeks, but he realized with shock that it had only been a couple of days. She’d still be on her honeymoon with Blakeley now, probably lying on a sunny beach somewhere in the south of France. He shook his head, trying to clear that thought from it before it took root. He couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted now.
“Why didn’t you two get married?” Ian asked.
Stone glanced over, surprised. His son was looking straight ahead, watching the road, his sharp profile so much like Stone’s own. “What?”
“You and Imogen. I can see by the way you talk about her that you two are close. What happened? If you don’t mind me asking, I mean. We’ve got some time to kill.”
Stone didn’t answer, not sure where to start—or if he wanted to.
Ian leaned back in his seat. “Aubrey and I talked a little back at the house, the night you went to the wedding. He didn’t tell me much, just said it was something about you having magic and her not. Don’t blame him for it�
��I kind of got it out of him.”
“That was…the gist of it, yes.” Stone continued to fix his gaze forward, telling himself it was because he had to watch the road. There was no other traffic, though; the Mercedes’ powerful headlights picked out a narrow, winding lane bounded on both sides by waist-high hedgerows. “We were together for a few years, but hadn’t ever formalized anything. We weren’t even properly engaged. I suppose I always just assumed we would be. That was my fault.”
“Wasn’t she used to the magical world, though? Didn’t she grow up with her dad?”
“She didn’t. Desmond and his wife divorced before I met him. I never knew why, and never asked.”
“So his wife wasn’t a mage too?”
“No. That always struck me as odd that Desmond, who was even more caught up in the magical world than I was, married a mundane. But it wasn’t my business. Desmond was a very private man, and didn’t take kindly to anyone poking their noses into his personal business.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “Not even his prized apprentice. And come on, Ian—you can’t be interested in the sordid details of my early life.”
“Sure I am. You’re my dad, and I barely know you. I’ve got friends in L.A. that I know better than I know my own father.”
Stone shot him a quick glance. “Well, you’ve hardly been around, have you?”
“I thought you said that wasn’t a problem.”
“It isn’t. I’m happy you’re having a good time, off seeing the world. But popping in for half a day hardly lends itself to heartfelt talks. Which is fine by me,” he added hastily, “since I’ve always been rubbish with them anyway.” He tightened his grip on the wheel.
Ian fell silent, leaning against the window and watching the lights flash by, and Stone didn’t push it. The truth was, he didn’t want to talk about Imogen right now. Every time he tried to think about something normal like that, the images of the shambling skeletons and the ledger full of carefully notated sacrifice victims crowded them out. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t have a right to “normal” until he’d gotten this whole affair sorted out.
It took them almost two hours to get to Crofton Academy, which was located a few miles outside Burford. Stone pulled the car off the road some distance down from the front gates, shut it off, and retrieved a bag from the back seat. “We walk from here. I can put a disregarding spell on the car, but if we drive right in through the front door and anyone’s around, they’ll notice.”
Ian got out, slipping on his leather jacket against the evening’s light chill. It was a clear night with only a few clouds. “I hope you know where this closet is. That place looks as big as yours. It would take us all night to search it.”
Stone shifted to magical sight as they approached, easily spotting the clear, strong ley line running through the middle of the campus, and then pulled a folded sheet from his coat pocket. “Eddie described it. He didn’t have a floorplan, but he got the directions from the man he spoke with. Those will have to do. They’ve added quite a number of new buildings to the campus since Crofton took it over, but it’s the big one at the center we’re after.”
They didn’t go in the front gates, even though they were open—that would have been too conspicuous if anyone had been watching. Instead, Stone led them off the road a short distance down. They crossed a field and paused behind another building.
The campus was spread over a considerable space, with numerous other darkened buildings dotting the area around the main manor house. Perimeter lights around several of the buildings provided illumination, but not much. Stone saw no indication of anyone around—if anyone was, it was probably a security guard or two making occasional rounds. If they were careful, they could get in and out quickly before anyone spotted them.
Using disregarding spells, they crept across the open field and around the rear of the main building. Stone was pleased to see a set of double French doors leading out to a courtyard area—probably a place for students to congregate during breaks.
“Do I remember you saying you were good at invisibility?” he asked Ian.
“Yeah. I can hold it for about five minutes if I have to.”
“Can you hold it while doing another spell?”
“Yeah, if it’s one I’m comfortable with.”
“Brilliant.” He pointed toward the doors, then upward. “I suspect those floodlights over the doors are motion-sensitive, and I’d rather not have them come on. Sneak over there and unlock the door, then go inside and leave it unlocked. I’ll follow you.”
Ian, looking like he was enjoying this adventure, faded from view. Stone shifted to magical sight, following his progress as he jogged over, slipped the catch on the doors, and opened one just enough to get inside. The floodlights didn’t turn on.
In a moment, Stone had joined him. “Good job,” he whispered. “We’ll use the disregarding spell from now on.”
There wasn’t much light where they stood now, but the moonlight illuminated a large room full of several long tables. “Dining hall,” Stone said, getting his bearings. He pointed left. “There’s a hallway that way. We need to go past the main staircase and five doors down. The closet is a small door at the end, on the left side.”
“At least it’s on the main floor,” Ian whispered. “That’ll make things easier.”
“Don’t say things like that.” Stone gave an arch smile. “The universe is always listening, and it loves making lies of that sort of statement. Come on.”
Unexpected memories struck Stone as the two of them wended their way between the tables and out the other side of the dining room. He’d never been to this school, obviously, and hadn’t been back to Barrow since the day he’d left at age fifteen to go study with William Desmond, but apparently old boarding school dining rooms had a few things in common. He took in the smells of old wood, furniture polish, and hundreds of years of institutional food with a sense of satisfaction. As much as he and the other boys had complained about the accommodations at Barrow, overall his early school memories had been good ones.
He glanced at Ian’s tall, slim form moving ahead of him, and realized with some regret that if Jessamy Woodward had told him of his son’s existence when he’d been born, it was possible the boy might have attended Barrow as well.
It was hard for Stone to say what he might have done. When he’d first found out about Ian, the idea that he might have tried to gain custody was a ludicrous one, but after getting to know his son, and especially after finding out the kind of tyrannical, ultra-religious grandparents and stepfather Ian had to contend with, he wondered. Not that it mattered at this point, of course: Ian was an adult now, and such things weren’t relevant any longer. But as he crept through this unfamiliar-yet-familiar space, he couldn’t help picturing what his son might have looked like a few years ago, dressed in the neat blue-and-gray Barrow uniform and gathering his gear to head off for another school year. He wondered if his own father had had similar thoughts.
Ian stopped as they exited the dining hall, jolting Stone from his nostalgic reminiscence. They stood in a wide hallway paneled in fine wood. Faded carpeting covered the floor, and sconces lining the wall provided enough illumination to see their path but little more. Occasional small tables stood along the walls, along with a tall, glass-fronted cabinet halfway down containing various trophies. Stone picked out a series of framed paintings along both sides between several doors, but couldn’t make out their subjects. He wondered if any of them had been around since the days when the Brathwaite family had owned the place, and how much renovation the hall had required to make it suitable as a school.
Shifting to magical sight again, he took another look around. Aside from his own and Ian’s auras, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. The general ambiance of the place was a combination of a long-term satisfaction, anticipation, and a hint of youthful excitement—just what he would have expected to find in an institution of learning populated by an ever-changing collection of boys ranging from seven to
seventeen. He chuckled softly as he realized what else was probably floating around here, but fortunately raging hormones didn’t show up to magical sight.
They continued down the hall, staying in the center to avoid running into any of the small tables or knocking anything off them. Ian pointed. “Is that it down there?” he whispered.
Stone risked a feeble light spell, blocking it with his body. Ahead on the left side, a door that looked exactly like all the others sported a small, tarnished bronze plaque. When he drew closer, the word SUPPLIES came into view.
Ian, who like Stone wore thin gloves, tried the knob. “Locked.”
“Not surprising. Eddie said it would be. Watch the hall—this will only take a second.”
The old-fashioned lock was laughably easy to pop. Stone wondered if they’d added it later, after some of the boys had reported the eerie feelings they’d experienced when retrieving copy paper or staples. Boarding school life often fell into stultifying routines, so anything that deviated from those routines would be catnip to a bunch of bored boys. Once the story got out that something weird was going on in the supply closet, the staff would have had constant trouble keeping curious explorers out if they hadn’t locked it.
Stone shifted to magical sight again, but still nothing caught his attention. Inanimate objects didn’t have auras, of course, but buildings—particularly ones as old as this one—had general feelings to them. This one continued to give off exactly the sort of impression he expected. If anything was here, it was well hidden.
He turned the knob and pushed the door slowly open. It didn’t creak, which surprised him, and he chuckled. “Been watching too many horror films, I guess,” he whispered to Ian, then pushed it the rest of the way open. The two of them hurried inside and Stone closed it behind them.
“Block the crack under the door, will you, in case they’ve got someone doing rounds. Then I’ll switch on the light.”
When Ian had slipped off his jacket and pressed it against the bottom of the door, Stone dropped his faint light spell and pulled the chain hanging from the ceiling.
