by R. L. King
“And how good is that? Compared to other mages, I mean?”
“Ethan,” he said with a chuckle, “It’s not a contest. We don’t have the Magical Olympics or anything. We—” He stopped as a red light over the door flashed. “Phone’s ringing,” he said. “Excuse me a moment.” He headed upstairs.
After a few moments, he reappeared in the doorway. “It’s for you.”
The boy hurried up the stairs, took the phone, and listened a moment, his expression growing concerned. “Okay, thanks,” he said in a monotone. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He handed the phone back to Stone and just stood there.
“What’s happened?” Stone asked gently. “Your mum—”
“She’s in the hospital,” Ethan said in the same dead tone without looking at him. “They took her off in an ambulance. I need to get over there. They’re saying it’s really bad this time.”
CHAPTER TEN
When The Three went clubbing again a few days after flooding Angelique’s apartment, they had no particular plan in mind. Plans were boring. It was much better to go where the night took them, making their decisions based on the situations that presented themselves. That way, they never had to miss an opportunity.
They might even have passed the evening pleasantly: a few drinks, some good music, maybe a little weed to loosen them up. They might not have decided to kill anyone after all. They didn’t do everything they talked about—not even everything Trin talked about. Oliver and Miguel half-expected her to forget about the whole thing.
She almost did, too, until she overheard some drunken douchebag at the bar bragging to his friends about how he was going to get “that fag” out in the parking lot and “fuck him up.”
Trin didn’t mind people calling Miguel a fag—hell, she called him a fag. Miguel called himself a fag half the time. The chance that mere words would arouse her ire depended entirely on her current mental state, and tonight she was feeling pretty good. But threatening any of The Three, even when the threat came from someone who was obviously so wasted he probably couldn’t get out of his own way, was an entirely different matter.
It didn’t take her long, after the guy’s friends had departed to chat up women in other parts of the club, to slink up and convince him to buy her a drink. Once she had him believing she thought he was the hottest thing in the club—pathetically easy, given his wasted state—it took even less time to slip the clasp on his expensive watch and drop it into her pocket. Then she flashed him her best seductive smile and excused herself to the ladies’ room to freshen up.
Miguel, Oliver, and she were in their SUV and halfway back to their ritual space by the time he figured out she wasn’t coming back.
“So, you really want to do this?” Oliver asked an hour later while putting the finishing touches on their circle. It had taken a little longer this time: Trin insisted that everything had to be just right. The odds of anyone tracing the magic back to them were low, but the precautions only added a few minutes to the setup time.
“Why—you wussing out?” Trin asked.
“Nah. Just gettin’ tired.” He took another pull on his joint. “I could sleep for a week.”
“You can sleep when we’re done,” Miguel said, plucking the joint from his fingers. “I still think we should’ve just ashed the guy back at the club. All that wasted energy.”
“I want to try this ritual,” Trin said. “It’s a new one I found. Supposed to kill without a trace. Might be useful if we ever want to make somebody disappear long-distance.”
“Eh, whatever,” Oliver said. “Let’s get it over with. I wanna crash.”
They took their positions around the circle. They had augmented its basic structure with a fair bit of extra detail, most of which Trin had copied from a book while Miguel and Oliver stood back, passed the joint between them, and watched.
“Okay,” she finally said. “This one’s a little deeper than the usual stuff, so don’t lose focus. I don’t want to get my brain fried because you two chucklefucks are stoned off your asses.”
“We got this,” Miguel assured her. “Come on, let’s do it.”
Trin propped the book open on a stand next to her position, then took the douchebag’s watch from her pocket and placed it on a small table in the center of the circle. Each of The Three did as they’d done the previous time, nicking their palms and then clasping hands to initiate the contact. The power began building almost instantly, rising to a low humming thrum as Trin consulted the book and recited the words of the incantation in a low, steady voice. All of them noticed that the power flow was different this time: less electric, more primal. It passed through their bodies, gaining potency as it went.
Trin kept chanting for several more minutes, then gripped Miguel’s and Oliver’s hands. “Okay,” she said. “Ready to send the energy. This is where we have to really focus. Concentrate on the watch, and we’ll—”
Something happened.
One moment they were all standing, hands clasped around the circle, the energy zipping and twisting between them like a mad thing straining to be released, and then the next moment they were—somewhere else.
They all felt the shift. The glowing tendrils of power disappeared, the black walls and brazier and spray-painted sigils replaced by something deep, earthy, and unwell. It was as if they were standing in a damp cave, suffused with the smell of a thousand rotting corpses.
Something spoke in their minds.
“Spoke” wasn’t quite right, though, because there were no words. Whatever it was, it communicated by images, by nuance, by suggestion. It reached into their minds one by one and hovered there, sifting and examining what it found with the clinical detachment of a scientist. And it told them things.
The Three didn’t try to fight it, or to break the circle. Partly they were afraid to: whatever this was, they’d never experienced anything like it in all the times they had performed these rituals. They weren’t sure what would happen if they tried to interrupt it—or even if they could. But mostly it was because whatever this thing was, this formless, powerful thing paging through their minds and their experiences—somewhere deep within them, they understood it. They understood what it wanted, and they understood what it could offer them if they helped it to achieve its goals.
They had no idea how long they stood there, hands locked together, legs shaking, eyes clenched shut. As the thing became more familiar with their minds, as its alien thought processes slowly meshed with theirs, its communications became clearer: still not words, but the images and concepts grew incrementally more lucid. It showed them four, repeatedly, intertwined with a mélange of others: a large house, a nondescript apartment building, a blond teenage boy, and a slim, dark-haired man.
At first they were confused, and sent that back to it; they had never seen the buildings, the boy, nor the man before, nor did they have any idea what the thing wanted with them. They could sense its frustration at their inability to understand it, but also a deep, abiding patience. It had time.
Now that it had made contact with someone it could communicate with, it had all the time in the world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As much as Stone hadn’t been sure he’d wanted to take on an apprentice, he found to his surprise that he was missing the time he’d been spending with Ethan.
It had been three days since the boy had hurried out of the house, scared that if he didn’t get there soon enough, his mother might die, and he wouldn’t get to say goodbye. He’d politely declined Stone’s offer to drive him to the hospital and raced to his car, leaving at the same high rate of speed at which he’d arrived.
He’d called back a day later with news: his mother wasn’t dead, and they’d managed to stabilize her to the point where she most likely would survive this episode. Things were still very touchy, though, and she would have to remain in the hospital for the next couple of weeks at least. Ethan had apologized, but told Stone that there was no way he was going to be able to make it up to Pal
o Alto for a while. He promised to keep up his studies and practice the levitation spell, but that was the best he could do.
What could Stone say? “No, you’re my apprentice now and damn your mother’s precarious health, I want you here promptly at three o’clock”? Yeah, no. Instead, he told Ethan to keep him posted and not to hesitate to call if he needed anything and gone back to splitting his time between his job and Megan.
“You seem distracted,” she said a couple of nights after Ethan had called. “Something wrong?”
He reminded himself again that her quick and perceptive mind was a big part of what was appealing about her in the first place. “Just a bit concerned about Ethan, I suppose.”
“Why?”
“His mum’s taken a bad turn, so he’s spending most of his time at the hospital with her.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing’s wrong with that. I’m just concerned about him. She’s not doing well. If she dies, then he’s not going to know what to do with himself.”
She moved in closer, snuggling her head against his shoulder. “You were enjoying that mentor thing, weren’t you? You’re missing it.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I am.” That wasn’t quite it, but of course he couldn’t tell her that. In truth, the time he’d been spending teaching Ethan had made him realize just how little effort he’d been spending actually doing magic lately, as opposed to studying it and reading about it. And realizing that made him also remember how much he loved doing magic.
“Well,” she said gently, “He’s going to need you if…something happens to his mother.”
He lay there, staring up at the darkened ceiling and not answering, for several minutes. Finally, he said, “I think I’ll give Tommy a call tomorrow.”
“Tommy Langley?” She seemed startled by the abrupt change of subject. “Why?”
Again he shrugged. “I want to have another look at his aunt’s house. This is as good a time as any. It’ll give me something to do.”
“You want to go back there? I thought you were just supposed to tell her that everything was fine and there was nothing haunting her towel closet or whatever.” She rolled over to face him, her eyes getting big. “Alastair. You’re not telling me you believe that nonsense, are you? You don’t really think something weird’s going on in that house?”
“I don’t know what I believe,” he said, a little defensive now. “Who’s to say there aren’t things going on out there that we don’t understand?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re starting to believe your own course descriptions. I knew it would happen eventually.”
“Look,” he said. “You don’t have to go. You don’t have to be involved with it at all. I’ll just nip out there with Tommy for a couple of hours, have a look around, and then come back and we can go check out that new sushi place you found. All right?”
“Bribes,” she said, snuggling back into his shoulder. “Hey, if you want to be a nutcase on your own time, that’s none of my business. Just don’t ask me to believe it.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed.
Langley, as Stone expected, was reluctant to sanction another expedition to Adelaide’s house. “I still think this whole thing is all in your head,” he said when Stone showed up at his office the next day. “You and Aunt Adelaide are feeding on each other with your stories. Hell, maybe you just want to impress her. I dunno. But I don’t believe in spooks, and I thought you didn’t either.”
“I just want to have another look,” he said, neatly sidestepping the issue of spooks. “That’s all. I promise not to tell Aunt Adelaide anything frightening. I just want to see if what I felt there the other night is still there, or if I was just tired.”
Langley sighed. “I don’t like it, Alastair. I’d really rather you didn’t. It’s just—weird.”
Stone stood and began pacing in front of his friend’s desk. “Listen, Tommy. First of all, you have my word that I have nothing but your aunt’s best interests in mind. I shouldn’t even have to tell you that, should I? How long have we known each other? Do you honestly think I’d do anything to purposely frighten an 89-year-old woman?”
“Of course not,” Langley said, not looking at him. “But you know as well as I do that you get kind of—well, okay, strange—about this sort of stuff sometimes. I’ve seen you do it before. I know you don’t believe all the hooey about the occult, but—” His eyes came up, and he was frowning. “But shit—you told her you were ‘sensitive.’ You said you could feel the same kind of stuff she was feeling. So you lied to her so she wouldn’t bust you for being a bogus occult investigator.”
“I didn’t lie to her, Tommy.” Stone dropped back down into the chair. This wasn’t going to be easy—he’d have to be very careful about what he said next. Sometimes he wished he could just tell the world that he was a genuine, real-deal mage. It would make things easier in situations like this. A lot tougher in most others, though, which is why he kept his mouth shut.
“What do you mean, you didn’t lie? Are you trying to tell me you are ‘sensitive’? Whatever the hell that even means?”
“I’m trying to tell you that there’s a reason I chose the field I did, and it wasn’t just because I wanted to write bad horror novels and impress goth women.”
“So you believe in this stuff? Ghosts and werewolves and vampires and all that shit? You told me it was all ‘rubbish.’ That was exactly your word. So did you lie to me?”
“No. I’ve never met a ghost, a werewolf, or a vampire.” That much was true. “But I do believe that there are forces in the world that we humans don’t understand yet. And I believe that they can affect people who are sensitive to them. I think your aunt is one of those people.”
Langley sighed, putting his face in his hands and shaking his head. “Alastair...sometimes I wish I’d gone looking for drinking buddies in the Physics department or something. You’re a hard guy to be friends with sometimes.”
“Let me remind you,” Stone pointed out, “that you called me about this, and you did it precisely because of my area of expertise. Why not let me finish what I started? I’m not going to hurt your aunt. If anything, I might be able to get to the bottom of the problem so she doesn’t have to deal with it anymore. Or at least give her a different perspective so it doesn’t frighten her.”
For several seconds Langley didn’t respond. Then he looked up and rolled his eyes. “Okay. One more trip? That’s it? Do you promise?”
“Well, that will be up to Aunt Adelaide, won’t it?” At Langley’s glare, he added, “All right, fine, then. One more trip. If I don’t find anything definitive, I’ll just tell her it was a false reading and we’ll go on our way. All right?”
Langley looked at Stone like he was trying to figure out what his angle was. Finally he dropped his hands to his desk. “Fine. I’ll give her a call. You want to go tonight?”
“The sooner we go, the sooner we can get it over with.”
This time, instead of one satchel full of bogus gear, Stone showed up with the satchel and a pair of boxes in the trunk of the Jaguar. He had also ditched the “crazy occult investigator” outfit for jeans and a Who concert T-shirt under his ubiquitous black wool overcoat. At Langley’s raised eyebrow he pointed out, “She already knows I’m not a real investigator. Might as well be comfortable.”
“So what’s in the trunk, then?”
“A few bits of measuring equipment I borrowed from a friend.” That wasn’t true. He’d actually made an afternoon trip to the Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale and picked up a selection of things with interesting meters and flashing lights.
“What about your assistant?”
“He—won’t be joining us today. He has other commitments.”
“Lucky him.”
Aunt Adelaide was happy to see them, insisting that they sit down and chat for a few minutes over a cup of tea. “Are you still experiencing the strange feelings?” Stone asked.
She nodded, fear showing i
n her eyes. “Not so much the voices now, but I still don’t like going into that library. What are you going to do tonight?”
“Just a bit more checking with some new equipment I’ve brought along. You’re welcome to watch, if you like.”
She shook her head. “No, thank you. If you don’t mind, I’ll just stay down here.” She shivered a little in emphasis.
Pressing Langley into service to help carry boxes (they took the elevator this time), Stone set off for the third floor. He kept his senses open all the way up this time, focusing on anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Now that he knew what he was looking for, there was no question in his mind that it was here. What “it” was, however, was another matter completely. He had no idea, probably wouldn’t have much chance of finding out without doing an actual ritual, and he didn’t think his odds of getting one of those past Langley were too good. All he could tell with his limited ability to probe the area was that it was most likely malevolent, and it was probably a good deal more powerful than it was letting on. In fact, if anything it seemed less potent than before. It’s hiding, he thought. It knows I’m here and it knows I can find it, so it’s trying to make that difficult.
“Hey!” Langley’s voice broke in on his musings. “Did you hear me?”
“What? Erm—no. What did you say again?”
“How long do you think this is going to take?”
“No idea. Depends on if I find anything.” He took the lead this time, heading for the library. Before entering, he made a quick gesture hidden by his body and felt a shield settle over his mind. He couldn’t shield himself completely—not if he wanted to pick anything up—but at least it should keep him from keeling over in a faint if the thing decided to pull any of its tricks.
Langley set down the boxes and moved over to the chair he’d sat in before. “You don’t need any help, do you?”
