by R. L. King
“Let her go,” Alastair said. “Get the hell out of here.”
“Or what?” the more lucid of the other two demanded, balling up his fists. “Skinny kid like you gonna take all of us on? If you’re lucky, we’ll just kick yer arse.”
The third one brayed drunken laughter, which abruptly morphed into a roar of rage. “Get ’im!” he yelled, charging forward. “Kick ’is arse!”
The other two added their yells to their friends’ and both surged after him.
Alastair did it just like Desmond had taught him. He focused on the pattern, gathered magical energy, and projected his will outward into a glowing shield that shoved the three men violently backward. They tumbled in a tangled heap of flailing arms and legs and shouted curses, then tripped over each other as they tried to get back to their feet.
“What the bloody ’ell?” one of them shouted. He didn’t sound quite as drunk now. He sounded scared, and he was staring at Alastair with wide-eyed disbelief. “What did you do?”
The other two weren’t yelling. They were still trying to get up, their feet slipping as they tried to gain traction on the damp grass.
“Hey!” another voice—older, authoritative—yelled from the trees, and the piercing beam of a flashlight split the darkness. “What’s goin’ on over there?”
“It’s the cops! Run!” Green Aura yelled. He slipped again, recovered, and took off into the night. His friends both quickly followed.
Alastair, panting, hurried over to Rosemary. “Over here!” he yelled to the voice behind the flashlight. Then, to the sobbing girl: “It’s all right. You’re all right now.”
She threw her arms around him and continued crying into his shoulder. He smelled alcohol hovering around her as well, and thought his initial idea that her “date” had spiked her soda back at the cinema had been correct.
A figure burst through the trees, and the harsh flashlight beam pinned Alastair and Rosemary. “Get away from her!” the man ordered. “Now!”
Alastair disentangled himself from Rosemary as gently as he could and got up, pointing. He couldn’t see the man with the light glaring in his eyes, but he was sure he had to be a policeman. “They went that way! There were three of them.”
“Get away!” the cop ordered again, coming closer. The flashlight beam moved off Rosemary, who was still trying to fix her sweater, and settled on Alastair.
All at once, Alastair froze as he realized that, based on the scene he’d encountered, the cop might think he was the one who’d attacked Rosemary. “Officer—it’s not me. There were three of them. They ran off when you yelled.”
“Don’t you move, boy.” The cop held him in the bright beam for a second longer, then shifted it so it illuminated the clearing and muttered something into his radio.
Now that his eyes weren’t dazzled, Alastair could see he was right—it was a cop. Big, beefy, maybe mid-thirties. “Officer—”
“I said don’t move.” He hurried over to Rosemary and crouched down next to her. “It’s all right, luv,” he said in a more gentle voice. “Everything’s all right now. Did he hurt you?”
For a moment, Alastair was terrified that the “slow” and “strange” Rosemary wouldn’t—or couldn’t—reveal the truth, which would put him in a lot of trouble. But she shook her head violently, her slurred, muddy voice bubbling through her sobs. “No…no…wasn’t him. He helped me. Was Bobby…and his mates.”
The cop’s brow furrowed. He glanced at Alastair, then back at Rosemary, and frowned, sniffing the air. “You been drinking, luv?”
“I think he spiked her fizzy drink,” Alastair said. “Back at the cinema. Her name is Rosemary Cooper.”
Another flashlight beam appeared through the trees, and a moment later another cop—a woman this time—broke through. “You stay put,” the male cop told Alastair, then patted Rosemary on the shoulder. “Everything’s fine now, honey. This lady here will help you, all right?”
Rosemary nodded, but didn’t look up. She’d gotten her sweater back to as much order as she could manage, and now stared at her hands in her lap as she sat against the tree.
The male cop motioned Alastair over to the other side of the clearing. “Right, then,” he said. “She right? You helped her?”
Alastair nodded. “Yes, sir.” Now that it appeared he wasn’t about to be arrested, the adrenaline from the scene was draining away. His heart pounded, and so did his head from the magic. That had been a big shield he’d cast, bigger than he’d ever done before.
“You been drinking?”
“No, sir.”
He shined the beam around—with the female cop’s added in, the clearing was much better illuminated now—and it fell on a couple of bottles the three attackers had dropped when they’d taken off after Alastair had hit them with the shield. “So those aren’t yours?”
“No, sir. Like I said—there were three of them.” He paused a moment, trying to get his spinning thoughts under control so he could present a coherent story. “I was at the cinema earlier—I saw one of them with her there. I don’t know who the other two were.”
“Can you describe them?”
“Not really. It was dark, and I didn’t see the one at the cinema very well.” He couldn’t exactly tell him about the green aura, after all.
As the cop wrote something in his notebook, Alastair glanced over toward where the female officer was chatting softly with Rosemary. The girl had stopped sobbing now, and appeared to have gone back to her shy, uncommunicative self. Occasionally she glanced over toward Alastair and mumbled something he couldn’t hear.
“How did you see them here?” the male cop asked. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Alastair Stone.”
He frowned again. “Stone. Don’t know that name. Haven’t seen you ’round town. Where do you live?”
“I don’t live here in Wexley, sir. I’m—studying here. Up at Caventhorne.”
“Got some ID?”
Alastair pulled out his wallet and handed over his ID card.
The cop shined the flashlight on it, his gaze flicking between the photo and Alastair’s face. For a moment it appeared he might say something, but then he shook his head and handed the card back. “Okay. Okay. So what were you doing in the park this late?”
“I was at the cinema with a girl. Madeleine Hill.”
“Oh, yeah, I know Maddy’s dad. Owns the chip shop downtown.”
“Yes, sir. I was walking her home after, and then I walked back through the park to where I’d left my Vespa in town.”
The cop wrote that down, then waved over toward where the scene had occurred. “How did you notice them?”
“Heard something. It sounded like a girl needed help. So I investigated.”
“And you say there were three of them?”
“Yes, sir.”
The cop eyed Alastair, looking him up and down. “Skinny kid like you fought off three big blokes?”
Alastair swallowed. “No…no, sir. I didn’t fight them off. They were drunk. I yelled, and they ran off. Probably didn’t want to get caught.”
For a moment, it seemed the cop would challenge his words, but finally he just closed his notebook. “Okay. You’ll have to come back to the station and give us a statement, and we’ll have to call your parents.”
Great. Things were about to get uncomfortable again. “You…can’t do that, sir.”
“What do you mean, I can’t?”
“My father’s away, sir. We live in Surrey normally, but he travels. You can call Caventhorne if you like. My ma—er—teacher is away for the evening, but you can ask for Kerrick. He’ll vouch for me.”
Alastair had hoped he could handle this without involving anybody at Caventhorne, but it didn’t look like that would be the case. He s
houldn’t have been surprised, he supposed—despite the fact that everybody at Caventhorne treated him like an adult, down here in the real world he was still just a fifteen-year-old boy.
Once again the cop looked suspicious, but finally sighed. “Right. Give me the number, and I’ll do that when we get back to the station.”
Great. This night just kept getting better and better. “I—don’t have it, sir.”
“You don’t have it?”
“No, sir. I’ve only been there for three weeks, and I haven’t had any reason to call there.”
The cop’s expression suggested he was trying to determine if Alastair was being a smart-ass. “Then you’ll have to come—” He paused as yet another policeman came through the trees and beckoned to him. “You stay here,” he told Alastair, and moved off to confer with the new cop.
Alastair waited, hands in his pockets against the growing damp chill of the night. His adrenaline surge was almost completely gone now, leaving him twitchy and shivering; the persistent dull ache in his head wasn’t getting any worse, but it wasn’t getting any better either. Now that he knew Rosemary was safe and would be taken care of, all he wanted to do was get back to the Vespa and home to Caventhorne. Would they want to take him back to the station? Would they keep him there all night?
The cop came back over. “They’ve picked up three blokes tryin’ to make a run for it. Drunk as lords, they were. Crashed their car into a hedgerow and took off across a field, but we got ’em.” He paused, and Alastair got the impression he wanted to say something else.
“That’s—good news, right?” he ventured.
“Yeah. Good news. They’ll take ’em to the station, get a statement from the girl. Got ’em for public drunkenness and drink driving, minimum, and once the Cooper girl tells ’er story, should be open and shut.” He tilted his head at Alastair. “There’s just one thing weird.”
“Sir?”
“They all said the same thing—said some skinny dark-haired kid yelled somethin’ at ’em, then waved his hands and some glowin’ thing shot out and knocked ’em on their arses. You got any idea what they were talkin’ about?”
Alastair wondered if the cop could see his heart pounding; to him, it felt as if it might leap directly out of his chest and make a run for it. He forced himself to keep his tone even—this might be the most important acting job he’d ever done in his life. “Er—no, sir. No idea. They were all pretty drunk, though. Tripping over their feet. I don’t think they expected anyone to bother them while they were—” He nodded toward Rosemary, who was being led off by the female cop.
The cop held his gaze for a few more seconds, then sighed. “Yeah, that’s probably it. Bloody idiots were so blotto they were probably seein’ pink elephants.” He closed his notebook.
“So…do I have to go to the station, then?”
He considered. “Got your name and where you’re stayin’. Cooper girl says you helped her, and I don’t smell any booze on you. I think it’ll be okay for you to go home for the night. If we need you, we’ll call this Kerrick tomorrow. You need a ride?”
Relief—momentary relief, anyway—washed over Alastair. “No, thank you, sir. I’ve got to pick up the Vespa downtown. I borrowed it, so I need to get it home.”
“Right, then.” He paused a moment, then his expression softened as he clapped Alastair on the shoulder. “Good job, boy. That girl would have been in a world of trouble if you hadn’t come along. I’m sure her mum will want to thank you.”
Alastair nodded, but didn’t reply. When the cop waved him off, he trudged back through the park and back downtown, finding the Vespa right where he’d left it. He glanced at his watch: barely ten-thirty. So much had happened over the last hour, it felt a lot later.
When he got back to Caventhorne after a brief but chilly ride, he managed to hurry up to his room without seeing or talking to anyone. He’d have to do it tomorrow, of course—there was no avoiding it. He was sure the police would call Kerrick, but probably not until the morning. And then there was Desmond himself, who would no doubt hear about it as soon as he got home. But for now, all Alastair wanted to do was sleep.
Sleep, however, did not come easily. He lay in his bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling and trying to will his mind to let go of the images of the three men laughing around the terrified Rosemary Cooper, and the memory of her cries and the stench of alcohol. Every time he almost dropped off, another memory would jolt him back to full wakefulness. By the time his exhaustion finally got the better of him, it was well after four a.m.
Even then, his sleep was uneasy, his dreams haunted by jumbled images of Madeleine Hill, Rosemary, and, hovering above them, the looming, dark figure of William Desmond.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Alastair would have preferred to sleep late, but awakened before seven a.m. For several moments he lay in bed, looking up at the same ceiling he’d been staring at for most of the night, and allowed himself to hope that everything that happened last night had been a dream.
Well, almost everything. His time with Madeleine Hill, despite their bittersweet parting, was a memory he didn’t want to forget. But as for the rest—life going forward would be a lot easier if the whole thing had been nothing more than a product of his overactive imagination.
But no—there were his clothes from last night hanging over the chair next to his bed, and there were the keys to the Vespa on his desk. He’d have to return those to the groundskeeper.
He drifted through his morning routine of showering, dressing, and preparing for the day in a kind of fog, his mind torn between horror at what had almost happened to Rosemary Cooper, dismay about what had happened with Madeleine, and pride that he’d managed to stop those three louts before they’d done something terrible. That situation could have turned out a lot worse than it had: if his magic had faltered, either because of fear or simple lack of experience using it in real-world situations, he had no idea what those three men might have done to him. Beaten him up, at minimum—possibly even killed him, in their drunken state. And Rosemary would have been hurt too. What they’d been intending was horrific enough, but three guys like that could have done serious damage to her without even intending to. Or even panicked and killed her to keep her from talking.
No, he thought as he headed downstairs to dust the workroom—despite wishing none of the night’s events had ever happened, he was convinced he’d dealt with them in the best way he could have.
He lingered perhaps a little longer than necessary over the dusting. He straightened books, lined up the room’s few chairs neatly along one wall, and checked the circle to make sure no signs of the design he and Desmond had been working on remained. It was only when he stood in the middle of the vast room and admitted to himself he was stalling that he finally headed back to the lift and ascended to the ground floor.
Kerrick was waiting in the great room. He had a duster in his hand and appeared to be deeply interested in one of the paintings hanging on the near wall, but Alastair wasn’t fooled. A quick glance at the tension in the man’s blue aura confirmed it.
Alastair took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then spoke. “They rang, then, did they?”
Kerrick turned and set down the duster. He didn’t have his usual cheerful smile, but neither did he look angry. “They did, yes.” He nodded at the dining room. “Will you have breakfast with me, sir? I assume you’ve some things you’d like to talk about?”
Inexplicably nervous, Alastair joined Kerrick in the dining room. He thought he shouldn’t be, since Kerrick had no authority over him, but nonetheless he’d grown to associate the man with a pseudo-parental role over the past few weeks, sort of like he did with Aubrey back home. Neither William Desmond nor Orion Stone—despite the fact that Stone was Alastair’s actual parent—gave any impression that they’d be willing or interested in dealing with their yo
ung charge’s day-to-day problems, so in both cases, in the rare instance when he needed such a thing, Alastair had found it elsewhere.
Now, he and Kerrick faced each other across the table after Gretchen brought in several plates full of various breakfast dishes. It was far more food than they usually served, and Alastair wondered if Kerrick had requested it on purpose. It didn’t matter—the last thing he wanted to do right now was eat.
“I—” he began. “So the police called?”
“Yes, sir. They wanted to check your story, and they’d like you to come into town a bit later to give them a more detailed statement.”
He glanced up. “How’s Rosemary?”
“She’ll be fine. Shaken up, of course, but that’s to be expected after what happened. They had her checked for injuries, and her mum picked her up.”
Alastair noticed something odd in Kerrick’s tone. He tilted his head. “So…she wasn’t hurt? He spiked her drink…”
“He didn’t…” Kerrick said gently. “The police told me the whole story, sir. They found out after they talked to the girl and her mum some more. She’d been sneaking out to see the young man—his name is Bobby Portman, and he’s nearly twenty. She says she went with him to the park willingly after the film. They had some drinks together, and then…well, his mates showed up and things got out of hand.”
Alastair stared at him. “So she—”
“Apparently, she’s been chafing against her mother’s overprotectiveness for some time, and when she met Mr. Portman in a shop a few days ago, he decided to take advantage of that. She waited until her mum was out for the evening, and sneaked out. Apparently she didn’t realize what was happening, what he had in mind, since the idea of having someone pay attention to her—” He shook his head. “Sad situation.”
“She didn’t deserve that,” Alastair said, clenching his fists.
