by R. L. King
He gave her a sideways look. “Are you planning to tell me what’s going on, or do I have to guess?”
Trin flung herself down into a chair. “Zack’s gone.”
“Gone?” Sam tilted his head. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Who the hell knows? He didn’t show up to the meet with the driver on time, so the driver left like I told him to. A couple of our people there tried to find Zack, but he’s in the wind.”
Sam frowned. “Do you think he ran away?”
“Possibly. He’s a fucking idiot, but maybe even his pathetic brain finally figured out that I wasn’t going to fuck him and give him a million dollars even if he did turn up with the rest of the books. Maybe he just took off. I don’t think so, though.”
“What do you think, then?”
“I think he got caught.” Trin shook her head in disgust. “Frankly I’m surprised somebody didn’t cap his pathetic ass a long time ago, but from what little I could find out about the guy he was after this time, he’s bad news. Hardcore black mage. Wouldn’t hesitate to waste the little fucktard if he caught him.”
Sam nodded. “I did tell you not to push your luck.”
She glared at him. “Yes, and you’re so wise and all knowing,” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
He held up a hand. He didn’t like having to be the conciliatory one, but for now they needed Trin’s magical expertise. “In any case, we’ve got what we need now, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “And this does save me the trouble of having to fry him myself.”
Sam stood a moment, wondering if now was the time to pass on another bit of information. He decided that she needed to know, because it might affect the plan. “There is one other thing,” he said. “I just found out about it this morning.”
“Great.” She rolled her eyes. “What now?”
“Stone’s apprentice is back in California,” he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
“Yeah? How come? I thought she was back east hanging out with that granola girlfriend of hers.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment he looked as angry—albeit more controlled about it—as Trin had been. “Because one of the soldiers recognized her and tried to kill her.”
She stared at him. “What?” Her voice was dead flat.
Sam nodded. “Tried to push her in front of a subway train. Apparently she used magic to get out of it, and the next day she and the girlfriend got on a plane back to California.”
Trin took a slow deep breath, clearly in lieu of sending a blast of magical power through the nearest wall. “Did you have the soldier killed?”
“Already dead. That’s how we found out. An eyewitness saw her yell something at the host, and then the guy was just a body again.”
“Fuck…” she said, still keeping her voice controlled. “That means Stone knows now for sure. That means all of them know.” She glanced up. “How’s the plan going?”
“It’s going well,” Sam said. “The arrangements are all made for travel. Dr. Brandt thinks the location we’ve chosen is ideal for what she’s got planned. She’ll be contacting you soon to discuss the details.”
Trin nodded. Maybe everything wasn’t lost yet. “Is there any sign that Stone and his bunch know what we’re planning?”
“Not that we know of, but we can’t watch them that closely. It’s too dangerous.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, her tone reluctant but grudgingly agreeing. “The word getting out all right, though?”
“Yes. It takes time, but we should have enough people there to make it work. And we can always swap the soldiers around once you get there, if we need to.”
Trin nodded, leaning back in the chair. Sam watched her for a moment, then turned and left without further comment.
When Sam was gone, Trin swiped her hand across her forehead. Fucking Stone and his fucking apprentice causing trouble again. Why couldn’t they just mind their own business? She closed her eyes and amused herself picturing Stone undergoing various types of creative torture, smiling as she tried to decide which of them she’d inflict on him when all of this was over.
It wouldn’t be too long now: a little more than a month. Things were proceeding well—she was pleased with the timing, since what ended up being the perfect venue for their plans was occurring later the following month. This would give Dr. Brandt enough time to work out her calculations, and Trin to study the books the unfortunate Zack had delivered to her before he disappeared.
And best of all, she didn’t see how Stone and his crew would possibly figure out what they were up to until it was too late. It was hardly the sort of thing he would think to seek out, she was sure of it, and the rest of his pathetic gang wouldn’t make a move without his say-so. Let them hang around in their dull little suburb, reacting instead of anticipating. They’d find out in time—after it was all over. After they couldn’t stop it.
They wouldn’t be able to miss it at that point.
And after—
Trin smiled. At that point she might not be able to indulge her original fantasy of seducing Stone and then killing him, but that was all right.
The killing was the best part anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Stone, Jason, and Verity got settled back in and resumed their regular routine over the next few days, except Verity didn’t go back to work yet because she thought it would be rude to leave Sharra on her own. Sharra had moved in with her and Jason for now, chipping in toward the rent. Between Stone, Verity, and Sharra all reinforcing them, the small apartment had wards that would be more appropriate for a fortress.
Stone himself mostly disappeared from view, though he made it a point to check in with Jason and Verity once a day to make sure they were all right. Just the previous night he’d finally gotten the remainder of the translated papers from Kolinsky and had shut himself up in his study to pore over them.
It was slow going. Stone was no stranger to portal science, and his expertise in the subject had increased significantly over the last year since he’d spent so much time examining the notes of his old girlfriend Daphne Weldon, who’d been an expert researcher and copious note-taker. Unfortunately, Pia Brandt was as far above Daphne as Daphne was above Stone. He found himself having to read each page multiple times, studying the diagrams and footnotes with great care, and even then he wasn’t sure he grasped all the implications. It didn’t help that the documents were translated from another language: Kolinsky’s translations were no doubt as careful and precise as the black mage himself was, but when you were trying to understand intricate and complicated scientific concepts, doing it in your own native language was difficult enough. By the end of the first day before he got so tired that the equations began to blur, he’d only gotten through the fourth of the six papers. Aside from the first two overview papers Kolinsky had already given him, he was reading through them in chronological order, oldest to newest. The problem was, the newer ones were also the larger ones. This would take more time than he’d hoped. He couldn’t even ask anyone to help him: as far as he knew, he was the currently reigning expert in portal science in the country these days. As he’d mentioned when someone had asked him long ago, that wasn’t particularly impressive, given the fact that most American mages these days didn’t have the combination of magical ability, mental horsepower, and sheer interest to tackle such a complex field of study.
Which left Stone to do the best he could to make sense of Pia Brandt’s complex research. He hoped he could do it. If he couldn’t, he’d have to search elsewhere for experts.
The four of them got together for pizza a few days later, mostly because Jason insisted that Stone get out of the house at least briefly. “You getting anywhere with that stuff?” he asked once they’d all settled into a scarred back-corner booth and placed their orders.
Stone frowned. “Well, depends on what you mean by ‘getting anywhere.’ I’ve finished reading them all, which is something, I suppose.”
>
“But nothing’s jumping out at you?”
“Oh, it could be jumping around like a bloody rabbit on a hot griddle, and I might be missing it because I’m just not making the connections I need to be making.” He stared down into his glass of Guinness, looking frustrated.
Verity patted his arm. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve figured out?” she asked. “I know you like to talk things out—maybe it’ll help.”
Stone considered. “Possibly,” he admitted. “But first, Jason—have you found out anything else from your police contacts? Anyone found any trace of our missing people?”
“Nope,” Jason said, shaking his head. “I’ve been checking the papers, too, but nothing. Adam Darden’s mother’s offered a reward for information leading to his return. I can’t really follow the German press, but according to what my friends can find out, they got nothin’ either.”
Stone nodded. “Not surprising.”
“Did your friend know anything about the redhead or the kid?” Sharra asked. “You said you were going to check with him.”
“No. He’d never heard of them. Fortunately he still owes me two or three more favors to catch up with what I’ve done for him, so I called in one and asked him to put out feelers to see if anyone he knows has heard of them. I checked with him before I came here, but he’s got nothing yet.”
“Maybe it was an illusion,” Verity said. “You know, like Mr. Harrison did with those coins.”
Stone nodded. “That’s a good thought, and could well be right. Though if that’s true, then there’s no point in trying to track them down. They’d be fools to use the same disguise multiple times, especially if they think we might be on to them.”
“Yeah, probably,” Jason said. “So anyway, why don’t you tell us about these papers? See if you can dumb it down enough to make completely non-magical me understand it, and maybe something will pop up.”
“What’s the basic idea of them?” Verity asked. “They’re all about portals, right? But are they all the same kind of thing, or different aspects?”
Stone paused to gather his thoughts before speaking. “They’re all similar, but they approach the problem from various angles. Pia Brandt is a mathematician in her mundane job—she’s a professor of applied mathematics at a private university in Essen. A lot of her research is around how to make portals more energy efficient. That’s the problem with them now: they’re freakishly expensive to construct, and unless you set them up just right, they collapse, and you have to start over. Mostly because it’s hard to keep them stable long enough for them sustain themselves on their own. It’s sort of like when you glue something together: you have to clamp it until the glue dries.”
“So…the ‘glue’ is whatever keeps the portal going indefinitely?” Jason asked.
“Exactly. Remember we talked about temporary portals before: all you have to do with those is keep them up long enough to hop through them—a few minutes, maybe an hour at most. But with a permanent portal, it has to attune itself to the earth, which is what sustains it. It helps if you build them on ley lines—the more the better. That’s why of the portals that exist, a large number are at a place where at least one ley line is nearby. The one at the restaurant is like that. The one at my home in England is actually at a confluence of three, which is fairly rare. The more you have, the more stable the portal is. Even then, you have to prop them up a bit occasionally, sort of like doing a wheel alignment on your car. If you don’t, they can get out of sync and cause trouble when you try to calibrate them to each other.”
Verity was thinking. “So what happens if you build one on more than three ley lines? How many would it take before it would be completely stable?”
Stone shrugged. “They’re never completely stable,” he said. “But as near as I can figure, that’s part of what she’s hypothesizing in her research: that if you could manage to construct a portal at the confluence of a larger number of ley lines, it would require less initial stabilization effort, as well as just generally being more robust. She also suggests that you could theoretically point one at someplace that doesn’t have a corresponding portal on the other side.”
“No way,” Sharra said, eyes widening. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“I’m not sure it is,” Stone said. He glanced at Verity and Jason. “Remember before, what Daphne and her group were trying to do? Set up temporary portals at both ends that would allow you to travel to places that don’t have permanent portals?”
Jason nodded. “But this is different?”
“Sort of the reverse,” Stone said. “If I’m reading Dr. Brandt’s research correctly, she’s hypothesizing that it might be possible to set up a stable, permanent gateway that you could then calibrate to send you anywhere, regardless of whether there was an existent portal on the other end. And,” he added, getting more animated as he warmed to the subject, “this part is sketchy, and I’m not sure I’m understanding it properly, but it sounds like once you’ve got this gateway set up and calibrated, it will open a way to the other side that will allow anyone to come through from the opposite direction.”
“That’s crazy,” Sharra protested. “I didn’t study any portal science, but I’ve used plenty of them. They don’t work like that. It sounds like you’re saying that you twiddle the settings on this hypothetical super-portal, and then a gateway just opens in space on the other side that people can come through.”
“That is what I think she’s saying,” Stone said. “I need to read through her last paper a few more times though to be sure.”
“So,” Verity said, “if that’s true, then why don’t people just always find these big ley line confluences to build portals on? It seems like it would be more efficient that way, and if they’re that expensive to build, I’d think you’d want the best possible chance of getting them to work right.”
“Good question,” Stone said. “I can give you two answers, which are both equally valid: First, confluences of large numbers of ley lines are rare. Finding spots where there are two or three isn’t hard, but finding a nexus where a whole lot of them come together? Much, much more difficult.”
“But aren’t there maps?” Jason asked. “I remember Harrison had one that we looked at to find the one near Vegas—”
“There are,” Stone agreed, nodding. “And no doubt if you gave me an hour or so, I could find you several such nexuses around the world. I can probably tell you most of them from memory—at least the major ones. But therein lies the other problem.”
“Which is—?” Verity asked, leaning forward.
He eyed her challengingly. “Suppose you tell me? This one should be fairly easy for you to work out.”
She stared into space for a couple of minutes as Stone finally got around to his pizza, then nodded in triumph. “If they’re rare,” she said, “People control them. Right?”
Stone grinned. “Well done, apprentice. There’s hope for you yet.” He nodded, setting the pizza slice back down on his plate. “That’s exactly it. The more ley lines that converge in a given location, the more highly prized that location is—and not just because they make great places for portals. As any apprentice knows, the more ley lines in an area, the more potential magical power it contains, which is something every mage wants access to, of course, because it makes casting easier. Most of the nexuses are on land owned or controlled by people who wouldn’t take kindly to having portals built on it. It’s generally considered good manners in the magical community, if you control a portal, to make it available for others to use. There are private ones, of course, but they’re surprisingly uncommon.” He paused suddenly, his gaze going fuzzy as his awareness departed for somewhere else. “Nexuses…” he murmured, ignoring them all.
When this lasted for a full minute, Sharra tilted her head. “He okay?”
“Yeah,” Verity said, waving her off. “He does that. It usually means he’s on to something.” She took a bite of pizza. “Just let him space out in peace. He�
�ll be back soon.”
It was a full five minutes before Stone switched back on again. “I need to go home,” he announced as if the intervening time hadn’t happened.
“Why?” Jason asked. “Got something?”
“Possibly. Let’s finish up here. You can come back with me while I check on it.”
“You want to share with the class?”
“When we get back,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m right. I want to verify a couple of things so I don’t make myself look like a complete idiot if my memory is bad.”
They quickly finished their meal and headed back to Stone’s townhouse. “Make yourselves at home,” he said, disappearing up the stairs at almost a run. “Back soon.”
Verity rolled her eyes and picked up the TV remote. “Trust me,” she told Sharra, “when he says ‘back soon’ that could mean anything from ten minutes to tomorrow. Settle in.”
As it happened, it was a lot closer to ten minutes than tomorrow. Stone came back down about a half-hour after he’d left, his arms loaded with rolled maps, sheaves of papers, and a short stack of books. He swooped into the living room without a word, swept everything off the coffee table with one magical gesture, and dropped the items down on the now-bare surface.
“I’m guessing you found something,” Jason said. “And it’s a good thing we didn’t have drinks…”
Stone ignored him and began unrolling the maps. He selected one, spread it out on the table and held down the corners with four of the books in the stack. Then he picked up one of the clipped-together sheaves of papers and leafed through it.
