Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set: Alastair Stone Chronicles, Books 1 through 4

by R. L. King

  Stone winced. “Yes?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “I suppose you can.”

  “Why are you doing all this? A while ago I asked you if you knew me from somewhere, and you said something like ‘let’s assume for the moment that I don’t.’ What did you mean by that?”

  For a long time the mage didn’t answer. “I don’t know you, per se. But I knew your mother.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Jason nearly veered off the road. “What?”

  “Jason! Drive the car!” Stone sounded alarmed. “Honestly —I’d rather not survive a trip through extradimensional space only to be wrapped around the back end of an eighteen wheeler.”

  “Sorry,” Jason muttered, getting the car settled back on course again. “I just—you knew my mother? My mother died eighteen years ago.”

  “I know.”

  “So how could you know her?”

  Stone watched the traffic out the front window. “I’m not sure I should say any more right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, driving properly and surprising news don’t seem to play well together with you.”

  Jason glared at him. “Out with it, Al. I won’t drive off the road. It’s not like you’re going to tell me my mom was a mage or anything like that, right?”

  Stone was silent.

  “Right?” Oh, holy crap…

  “I met her when I was almost eighteen,” Stone said. “I’d taken my first trip through the gateway—I told you about that before—to visit America and attend a meeting of a group of mages. She was there. She was ill—I don’t believe she had much time left at that point. But I had the opportunity to talk with her for a while, and she took a liking to me in a mentor sort of way. She told me about her family—her husband and young son and baby daughter—and how much she regretted that magic couldn’t do anything about what was killing her.”

  Jason did as he’d promised—he didn’t run the car off the road. In fact, he was driving with even more care than usual, hands knotted around the steering wheel as if letting go would plunge the car instantly off a cliff. “Did—did my dad know?” His voice came out dead—almost as mechanical as it had sounded in the Overworld.

  “I don’t think so.” Stone’s tone was gentle. “She said it was better that way—there would have been too many questions to answer. At that point she didn’t really practice magic much, being more focused on raising her family and dealing with her illness. But she did keep up on the latest developments, and attended get-togethers when she could.”

  Jason swallowed hard. A lump was rising in his throat, and he struggled to keep it under control. He didn’t remember a lot about his mother—she’d died when he was still a young boy—but he did remember her as being kind, with a wicked sense of humor that leaned toward the macabre, and much more flighty and spontaneous than his steady, reliable father. “What—what was she like?”

  “I only met her the one time, and it was a long time ago. But I do know that she made quite an impression on me. I think I might have had a bit of a schoolboy crush on her, truth be told,” he said, chuckling. “She teased me unmercifully about my difficulties coming through the gateway. And I do remember that she was quite practiced in the Art, though that was obviously dimmed by her illness.”

  “Wow…” There wasn’t really much else he could say at the moment. Of all the shocking things Jason had heard and seen and experienced in the past few days, to find out that his own mother— “Just…wow.” He glanced at Stone. “So—were you ever gonna tell me this, if I hadn’t asked?”

  Stone nodded. “Eventually, yes. After this whole business was sorted and we got Verity back. I didn’t want to fragment your concentration with it until then.”

  Jason had to admit he’d been right about that—it was definitely fragmenting his concentration. “So—is that how you found me?”

  “What?”

  “You know, back when you first got me away from the DMW. Were you keeping some sort of magical tabs on Mom’s kids after all these years? Does your—I dunno—magic bat signal go off when we’re in trouble?”

  Stone chuckled. “Hardly. If it did, then don’t you think I’d be able to take you straight to Verity? No, I found you because I was investigating some odd murders and disappearances in the area, and one of the missing people turned out to be your sister. I recognized her name, so I changed my focus to look for her specifically. I was actually tracking Charles when I found you.”

  “So that’s why you decided to help me instead of just getting me out of there and dropping me off somewhere?”

  “Exactly.”

  Jason pondered all that for a moment. Well, at least it sort of makes sense… On more than one occasion he’d wondered why this guy, who’d essentially been a stranger, had put his life on the line numerous times to help out some random dude he’d met in a bad neighborhood. “I’d really like to talk more about this,” he said. “We can later, right? I have a lot of things I want to ask you. But right now we should probably be focusing on getting V back.”

  Stone nodded. “Don’t worry—if I haven’t forgotten her after all these years, I won’t do it in the next few days.”

  They’d exited the freeway by now, and were heading back toward Stanford. Jason spotted a little knot of vagrants huddled together in a doorway, and it reminded him of the group at the library. “I wonder where those bums ended up,” he said.

  “The ones at the library?”

  “Yeah. It’s still freaking me out a little bit, what they did. You know, hiding us from those fake cops and all. Are you sure they weren’t mages of some kind?”

  “If they were, it was a type I’ve never seen before. I can’t say it’s not possible—as I told you, I’m reluctant to say anything isn’t possible—but it’s unlikely.”

  Jason nodded, then remembered something else. “The two bums I saw at the rest stop—I don’t know if they had any kind of powers or abilities or whatever, but now I’m kind of wondering if those weird symbols are somehow connected to the weird abilities.”

  “I’ve wondered that myself,” Stone admitted. “About the symbols, anyway. The powers are something I never knew about until we saw them in action the other day. It’s one of those projects I’ve got on my list, to investigate that further. Perhaps even by tracking down some of them and talking to them, assuming they’d even give me the time of day. But between work and all the other things I’ve got on my plate, hunting down groups of hoboes, magical or otherwise, has had to take a back seat.”

  Hoboes…why was that word tickling something in Jason’s mind, where “bums” or “vagrants” hadn’t? Something he’d read a long time ago, when he was a kid—and then he had it. “Hoboes!” he yelled.

  Stone jumped. “Don’t do that!” he said, irritated.

  “Hoboes!” Jason yelled again, ignoring him. “That’s it!”

  “That’s what?”

  “Hobo code!” So overwhelmed with his revelation that he couldn’t hold it in anymore, Jason pulled the car off the road and turned to Stone, his eyes blazing. “That’s what it is! Hobo code!”

  “Jason…” Stone eyed him nervously, as if expecting his head to start spinning around on his neck, or bats to fly out of his mouth. “What the hell are you on about?”

  Jason took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down enough to explain. “When I was a kid, I read this book from the library about hoboes—you know, bums who travel around the country by hopping trains. One of the things that interested me the most about it was Hobo Code—this group of symbols that hoboes used to let each other know things like which towns were safe to stop in, which houses had dogs, where nice ladies lived who’d give them food if they told a good sob story—that kind of thing. A couple friends and I even used it for a couple of weeks, leaving messages around the neighborhood until somebody read a book about something else and we forgot about it.”

  Stone raised an eyebrow. “I’ve nev
er heard of such a thing.”

  “You wouldn’t have, I’ll bet, if you haven’t been here that long—I think it’s pretty much an American thing, and it was mostly from a long time ago, back when a lot of hoboes used to ride the rails. But—man, I wish I still had the book—those symbols in your notebook look a lot like it. I’ll bet the bums use these new ones in the same way: to pass on information, warn each other about dangers, things like that.”

  “That—would imply some sort of organization,” Stone said slowly, thinking. “Remember I told you I’ve seen those in other parts of California too? I wonder how far-reaching they are? And if they’re only used by vagrants who have these odd powers—”

  “—does that mean there are a lot of them?” Jason finished, eyes widening. “That’s crazy. How could there be that many magic bums and nobody knows about them?”

  Stone didn’t answer. They’d almost reached the cottage now, and he didn’t say anything else until they’d arrived and were back inside. He pulled out the old book he’d brought back from England. “You might as well find something to do for a while,” he told Jason. “I’ll need time to study what we’ll be doing. Believe me, this is not something I want to get wrong because I read it through too fast and missed a step.”

  “You still aren’t gonna tell me what you’re planning to do, are you?”

  “I will, but not yet.” He was looking serious again.

  An hour later, Stone appeared in Jason’s doorway and knocked once. Jason glanced up, startled: the mage looked like a man who’d spent the last hour contemplating his own mortality. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”

  Stone sighed. “I’m all right. Come on. We need to go a couple of places. And I need to find a place to do this.”

  “You can’t do it here?” Jason noticed that he was holding the briefcase containing the book.

  “Not enough room. And not safe.”

  Jason stared at him. “Not safe? For who?”

  “For anyone.”

  “Al—”

  “Just bear with me, all right? Let me get what we need, and then I’ll explain everything. You’ll still have the opportunity to back out after you’ve heard the details.”

  “Back out? You mean I need to be part of this too?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? I don’t know any magic—” Jason tossed the magazine he’d been reading aside and swung his legs off the bed.

  “Jason, please. All will be revealed. Just come with me.”

  Jason followed him out to the car. “Do you mind if I drive?” Stone asked. “It will be easier than trying to give you directions.”

  “Uh—sure, that’s fine.”

  The first place Stone stopped was his office on campus, where he disappeared for five minutes and returned with a leather satchel. Next he went back to Madame Huan’s, but this time came out with nothing. Jason looked puzzled. “If you’re going to do a ritual, don’t you need all those candles and other doohickeys you got before?”

  “It’s not that kind of ritual,” he said, and started the car again. “The few things I need, Madame Huan can’t supply. But she did convince a friend of hers to allow us to use a location she knows.”

  Their final stop made Jason nervous. It was a tiny, unmarked store in a bad East Palo Alto neighborhood, where most of the other store windows were broken or boarded up, with faded FOR LEASE signs hanging in them.

  “Uh…” Jason said, looking around. “I don’t like this.” He didn’t see any DMW or other immediate threats, but he knew they could appear from around any corner at any time. He did spot what he was pretty sure was an example of the modern hobo code, chalked on the side of the building next to the one to which Stone was headed. He didn’t recognize the symbol, though.

  “I know. I don’t like it either, but we’ve no choice. Just wait here—I’ll put a small enchantment on the car so anyone happening by won’t notice it. I won’t be long.”

  By the time Stone returned ten minutes later, Jason had swiveled his neck around so much trying to watch everywhere at once that it was starting to ache. A couple people, including one guy Jason was almost certain was DMW, had walked by, but hadn’t stopped or appeared to even notice the car. Stone dropped back into the driver’s seat and tossed another bag into the backseat next to the leather satchel. “So what was that place?” Jason asked as they pulled back out into traffic.

  “Another magical supply store.”

  “Like Madame Huan’s?”

  “In name only. This one caters to a—slightly more nefarious clientele.”

  Jason stared at him. “It’s a black magic shop?”

  Stone nodded. “Right in one.”

  “And you went there, and they let you get away?” He looked around again as if expecting to find someone following them.

  “Not all black mages are evil,” Stone told him. “Some of them simply prefer—more expedient methods of getting things done, and have a somewhat more malleable moral core. The proprietor of that shop and I go back a long way. I wouldn’t call us old chums, exactly, but we’re not enemies. Occasionally we compare notes on research problems.”

  “Did you have to tell him what we were doing?” In Jason’s mind, the fewer unnecessary people who knew about their search for Verity, the better.

  Stone shook his head. “No. The items I purchased were fairly generic.” He chuckled a little. “If old Stefan knew about what I was preparing to do and how I’d learned to do it, he’d have been practically salivating to get his hands on my book. I can’t let that happen. I have a lot of respect for his abilities, but I would never trust him with that sort of thing.”

  “Wait a sec,” Jason said, twisting in his seat to face Stone. “You’re going to do black magic? I thought you said that was a bad idea. That it—what did you say? Corrupts your soul or something?”

  “Not corrupts. Not something this small and simple. Blots a bit, yes. But it has to be done, and it’s not like this is the first time I’ve done magic that’s not strictly white.” He smiled a little, but his eyes were still serious. “I guess you could say I’m a white mage with a few streaks of gray here and there.”

  They continued driving, and Jason soon realized they weren’t heading back to the cottage near Stanford. “We’re not going home?” he asked, surprised.

  Stone shook his head. “I’d like to get moving on this as soon as possible so we can find Verity. It will be dark soon—no helping that—but if we succeed, I’d rather not be out tracking her down at midnight.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Madame Huan has a friend who lives in the Los Gatos hills. He’s got an outbuilding he’s willing to let us use.”

  “How far is that?”

  “We should be there in half an hour or so.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Jason could tell right away that the place they were going was a much more upscale end of the Bay Area than most of those they’d been visiting—even nicer than the part of Palo Alto where Stone’s place had been. “Madame Huan’s friend must have money.”

  “No doubt,” Stone agreed as they left the main drag and turned right onto a tree-lined, two-lane road. It meandered past some expensive homes for a couple miles, then began to gain elevation and grew more twisty. The streetlights were infrequent, but they all worked up here, and Jason could see the closed gates along the road and the twinkling lights far back from them indicating homes at the ends of long driveways.

  Their destination was a small building behind an impressive-looking house at the end of another long, sweeping driveway.

  Stone got out of the car, gathered up the items in the backseat, and motioned for Jason to follow him.

  Jason wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but if he’d been given twenty guesses he wouldn’t have come close. Looking over Stone’s shoulder, he saw a large empty room with a smooth wooden floor, track ceiling lighting, and a full-length mirror along the entire opposite wall. At about waist height along the
mirror was a wooden bar attached to the wall and running its full length. There was nothing else in the room except for a couple of small tables, three folding chairs, and a stack of cardboard boxes labeled XMAS STUFF piled against the far right wall. The room had no windows, and the musty smell of a disused space hung in the air.

  “What—is this?” Jason asked again, stepping inside. His footsteps echoed ominously.

  Stone closed the door and put his various bags and cases down on the smaller of the tables. “Madame Huan’s friend’s daughter was quite serious about the ballet, so he built her this studio so she would have a place to practice. She’s at university back East now, though, and he hasn’t gotten around to repurposing the room for other uses.”

  “So—we’re gonna do magic in a ballet studio.” Jason sounded dubious. “I guess it’s better than a barn. Or a basement.”

  “Much better than a barn, since one of my main requirements was a large mirror.” Stone grabbed the larger table and began dragging it across the room. “Give me a hand, will you?”

  Jason picked up the other end of the table and, under Stone’s direction, helped him place it directly in front of the mirror halfway along the wall. Stone retrieved the items from the other table and brought them over. Opening the leather satchel first, he pulled out a wooden bookstand with a small, flexible attached light and put it in the center of the table. Then he removed two red candles (Jason was starting to surmise that it was impossible to do magical rituals without at least one candle) and placed them on either side of the bookstand. Finally, he took out a purple silk cloth and laid it out lengthwise in front of the stand, and a black leather sheath from which he drew a black-bladed knife. He placed that on top of the cloth.