Threshold

by King, R. L.

  Stone touched her arm. “What sort of accident? David—” Around them, the wait staff moved busily back and forth, bringing dishes out from the kitchen and returning trays laden with used plates. They glanced curiously at the two of them, but left them their privacy.

  “He’s—gone, Alastair.” Her stoic British mask cracked and she began to cry into her hands. “It was—a head-on collision. He—he died instantly.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next few hours passed in a blur. Stone took Marta into the back room, away from the curious gazes of the customers and the restaurant’s staff, then hurried out to inform the chef of what had happened. The man, shocked, promised to take charge of the restaurant, closing it for the night after the current group of diners had finished.

  Stone then drove the grieving woman to the police station, where a female officer named Lieutenant Garvey escorted them to a private area.

  “What happened?” Marta said, struggling to maintain her composure. “David—who hit him? This can’t be happening...I don’t believe it...It’s—not possible.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Garvey said gently. “I know this is shocking for you.” She paused a moment as if unsure of how to continue. “I’m afraid—we’re going to need someone to identify—”

  “I’ll take care of that if you’d rather, Marta,” Stone murmured, squeezing her shoulder. She reached up and gripped his hand gratefully without looking at him.

  Any doubt that they’d misidentified David was gone when another officer took Stone to the morgue and pulled back the sheet just enough to reveal the body’s face. The mage merely stared in silence at the portly, pale, balding figure on the roll-out slab, the man who had always been so cheerful and seemed to enjoy everything about his life. The body displayed evidence of serious trauma, but Stone suspected that the worst of it was covered by the sheet. He nodded, and the officer covered David’s face, rolled the slab back in, and closed the door.

  “I’m sorry,” the cop said gently.

  He filled Stone in on the details as they drove back to the station. Apparently David had been driving south on Highway 1 around one o’clock and, according to witnesses, an oncoming car had suddenly veered into David’s path. David had tried to swerve to the right, but the witnesses reported that the other car had mirrored his actions—almost as if it had been trying to hit him. David’s car had plunged through the guardrail and plummeted over the edge to the rocks below.

  “What about this other driver?” Stone asked, his mind still refusing to believe that anyone would be insane enough to do such a thing. “Are they sure it was deliberate? Perhaps he had a heart attack—something medical—”

  “We’re still investigating,” the officer told him. “But several witnesses at the scene said it looked very deliberate to them—the car literally turned in the same direction and sped up to hit your friend’s car. The other driver was a young male—he died instantly as well. We won’t know more about his state until the autopsy results and the tox screens come back—some of that can take weeks. There were no tire tracks, so the other guy didn’t try to stop, and we can’t be sure until the forensics crew gets done, but there was no immediate evidence of a blown tire or anything else obvious like that.”

  Stone grasped at straws now. “Some sort of car trouble?”

  “We don’t know yet, sir,” he said, his voice sympathetic but businesslike. “There’s still a lot of investigation left to do.”

  They arrived back at the station, and the cop escorted Stone back to the room where Marta was. At the moment, she was alone. They’d gotten her a cold drink and she clutched it in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, staring down into her lap.

  “Marta...” Stone said softly.

  “Alastair. Oh, God...please tell me they were wrong—that it wasn’t David. Please...”

  He sat down next to her, head bowed. “I’m sorry, Marta. I’m so sorry...”

  “They said some punk kid ran into him!” She looked up with surprising vehemence. “Probably on drugs, or drunk or something. And now David’s gone. He was happy, Alastair. We were happy. We were planning to take a trip back to India next year. Why did this have to happen—” Her momentary surge of energy fled and she began sobbing again.

  Stone put his hand on her shoulder and sat there providing silent support. After a few moments he said quietly, “Do they need you to stay here? I could take you home—is there anyone you could call? I can stay with you, if you like—”

  “You’re very kind, but—I’ll be all right. I’ll call Amita—she’s our chef Nikhil’s wife, and we’ve gotten close. If you’ll just take me back to the restaurant—”

  “Of course.”

  Amita and Nikhil were both waiting for them at A Passage to India when they arrived. The CLOSED sign hung on the door, but when Stone and Marta entered the two of them flung themselves at her, both of them sobbing almost as hard as she was.

  Stone, still in shock but feeling awkward and suddenly out of place, said, “Marta, if you need anything—please don’t hesitate to call me. Any time. All right?”

  She broke free of her two friends and hugged him. “Thank you, Alastair. Thank you for being there for me. I’ll—let you know if I hear anything else.” She fumbled in her purse and handed him a key. “I’ll be closing the restaurant indefinitely—I don’t know if I can bear running it on my own for a while—but this will get you inside if you should need—” She glanced toward the back, where the door leading to the portal was.

  He nodded, pocketing the key. “Thank you, Marta.” Gently, he kissed her forehead and, knowing now that his friend was in good hands, saw himself out.

  When Jason and Verity arrived the following day and knocked on the door to Stone’s townhouse, there was no answer at first. Finally, after several knocks, Jason heard the mage’s listless voice call, “It’s open.”

  “Hey, Al!” Jason called as he came through the doorway. “We’re back. Did you miss—” He stopped, taking in the scene.

  Stone sat slumped in a chair in the living room, a half-finished drink on the table along with a half-empty bottle that suggested it hadn’t been his first. Unshaven and tousle-haired, he wore an old Pink Floyd concert T-shirt and jeans that looked like he’d slept in them—except that he looked like he hadn’t slept. He didn’t look up as they came in.

  Jason stared. “Al? Are you okay?”

  “Not really.”

  Verity dropped down next to him. “What happened?”

  “Did something go wrong in England?” Jason asked, frowning. “The gateway—”

  “David’s dead.” Stone still hadn’t looked at them. His voice was low and only barely intelligible.

  “David?” Verity asked, confused. “Who’s—”

  “The guy at the restaurant?” Jason demanded, shocked. “Your friend the mage?”

  Stone nodded.

  Verity’s eyes widened. “What happened?” she asked again.

  In a monotone and still without looking up, Stone gave them the short version of recent events. They both listened silently, staring at him in shock.

  “So it was deliberate?” Jason asked when he finished.

  “That’s what they think.”

  “Who’d want to murder a nice guy who runs a restaurant?” Verity asked.

  Stone shrugged. “Who would want to murder a nice middle-aged lady mage who never bothered anybody?” His tone was bitter. He reached over, picked up his glass with a somewhat unsteady hand, and drained it.

  “You think the Evil were involved?” Jason’s eyes narrowed. “That’s reaching a little, isn’t it, without more evidence?”

  “Who knows?” Stone let the empty glass slip from his hands and fall to the floor. “Not thinking too clearly at the moment, as you might have guessed.”

  Jason and Verity said nothing for several moments, both of the
m unsure of what to say. Verity picked up the glass and set it back on the table.

  Finally Stone glanced up. “Trip all right?”

  “Yeah.” Jason waved vaguely at the window. “Truck’s out front—we’ll need to take it over to the apartment and unload it so we can get it back to the rental place.” He took a deep breath. “Why don’t we do that, and you go get some sleep. Have you been sitting here all night?”

  Stone shrugged.

  Verity got up, picked up the bottle from the table, and put it back in the liquor cabinet. “Come on,” she said gently. “This isn’t gonna help. You want us to stay?”

  Again the mage shrugged. “Do what you like. I’ll be all right.”

  Jason wasn’t sure he wanted to leave Stone in this state, but finally he sighed. “Okay. We’ll go do that and then come back here. Get some rest—we’ll take you out to dinner when we get back, okay?”

  When Stone didn’t answer, Jason motioned for Verity to follow him and they left the townhouse, locking the door behind them.

  It took them a two hours and the help of a couple of their new neighbors to unload the truck at the apartment and then return it to the agency. They didn’t talk much while working, but once they were back in Jason’s car and heading back to Stone’s place, Verity turned to her brother. “Have you ever seen him like that before?”

  Jason shook his head. “But remember, he’s had it damn rough these last couple of weeks.”

  They picked up a paper to see if there was anything new about the story; they found it in the local news section and most of it matched what Stone had already told them, but there was one bit of new information. “Hey, listen to this!” Verity said, then read a portion of the article aloud:

  The driver of the other car was identified as Sammy Delgado, 19, of San Jose. Tests for drug and alcohol intoxication are pending, but a police spokesman, speaking on conditions of anonymity, stated that Delgado was a suspected member of the street gang ‘Dead Men Walking’. There is no known connection between Delgado and David Halloran.

  Jason stared at her. “DMW? No way.”

  “Jason, watch the road,” she ordered, pointing. “So I guess Dr. Stone wasn’t crazy after all. Sounds like the Evil were involved. Come on, let’s get back and tell him.”

  “If he hasn’t drunk himself into a stupor by now.”

  Stone looked quite a bit more like himself when they got back to the townhouse. They found in him in the upstairs study, a book open on his left as he dashed off notes in a notebook on his right. He’d shaved and straightened up his hair, though he still wore the same clothes. He glanced up as they appeared in the doorway. “All moved in, then?”

  “Nah. Just piled the boxes up for now. You doing any better?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll be all right. Last night was just—a bit of a shock, especially after what happened with Eleanor.”

  Jason sighed, tossing the folded paper on his desk. “We’ve got another shock for you, if you haven’t seen it yet.”

  Stone picked up the paper and glanced over the article. Jason could tell he’d reached the part about Sammy Delgado’s gang affiliation because he froze. He lowered the paper with deliberate slowness and regarded them with no expression. “The man who killed David was DMW.”

  Verity nodded. “Looks like you were right about the Evil after all.”

  “So it would appear,” Stone agreed. He closed the notebook and the other book and leaned back in his chair. “But why would they kill David? He didn’t even know anything about the Evil. He wasn’t any sort of threat to them.”

  “I’m guessing your friend back East wasn’t either, yeah?” Jason asked. “I mean, from what you said earlier, they went after David the driver specifically, but that doesn’t mean they went after David the mage specifically, right? Maybe they just decided they didn’t like his car. Those guys are fuckin’ psychos, even the ones that aren’t possessed.”

  Stone spread his hands. “I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine, and unfortunately the only people we could ask about it are both out of our reach.”

  “So why would the DMW want to kill mages?” Verity asked. “I mean, it makes sense that they’d want to kill us, since we’re messing up their plans. But why mages in general?”

  Jason stared at her. “You think the Evil’s just targeting mages on general principle?”

  She shrugged. “Well, we’re pretty sure it was the Evil who killed Eleanor. It doesn’t make sense that it was anything else, unless that security guy went temporarily crazy and then got over it that fast. We’re not positive it was for David, but we do know the DMW’s got a lot of them, right?” She looked at Stone. “So, is it?”

  Stone thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said after a time. “I’m not sure what they’d gain by it. I mean, we’ve seen that they can possess mages, though we’re still not sure whether they can do it without the mage’s consent, since the only ones we know about for sure presumably gave it. But it doesn’t make sense that they’d go after white mages, and so far they’re the only ones we know of who’ve been killed.”

  “Maybe white mages are easier to possess?” Verity suggested.

  “Good thought,” Stone said, “but no. To the contrary, actually. As a general rule, white mages tend to have stronger mental defenses—we have to, to keep us from being tempted to go over to the dark side, where things are a lot easier.”

  “So maybe they are possessing black mages—but we’re not hearing about it because they don’t object like the white ones do. It just seems like too much of a coincidence to be true, them killing two different mages this close together,” Jason said.

  ”It does,” Stone agreed. “Sorry—still not exactly firing on all cylinders right now.”

  “I’m not surprised, given how much you probably drank,” Jason said.

  Stone scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Why don’t you two go back and get yourselves settled in as much as you can, and we’ll meet up in an hour or so for dinner?”

  Stone looked sober—and pensive—when they met him at a nearby Chinese restaurant an hour and a half later. “I just found out that another mage was killed under odd circumstances yesterday. This one was in New Mexico.”

  “Holy crap.” Jason stared at him. “They really are going after mages.”

  “How many mages are there?” Verity asked. “In America, I mean. Do you have any idea?”

  “Not really,” Stone said. “It’s not like we’re an organization or anything. Some of us don’t reveal ourselves, even to other mages. And the—darker-inclined among us tend to be much more secretive and less social.”

  “Take a guess,” she pressed. “Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? More?”

  Stone shrugged. “If I had to guess—mind you, this is a very rough guess—I’d say perhaps a few hundred in the United States, mostly minor and untrained talents. Fully trained mages—possibly a few dozen, but I seriously doubt it. More in Europe. Not sure how many in the rest of the world.”

  “And they’re spread out all over the country?”

  “More or less. You’ll find larger concentrations in major urban areas, of course, but many are private sorts who prefer less populated locations.”

  “Like Eleanor,” Jason said.

  Stone nodded. “What exactly are you getting at, Verity?”

  “Nothing, really. I was just curious. So it would be pretty hard for the Evil to kill all the mages, even if that’s what they’re trying to do, it sounds like.”

  “I’d imagine so, yes. I still suspect that the Evil aren’t entrenched all over the country. If they were, I think we’d have far more of these alarming incidents than we’ve had so far.”

  “Well, anyway, Al—you should watch yourself,” Jason said. “If they’re after mages, you’re probably Public Enemy Number One, since you’re not only a powerful mage, but you’re
one of the few people around who know about the Evil’s existence.”

  “I’m also expecting them,” Stone reminded him. His gaze hardened. “If they come after me, they’ll be in for some surprises. And I intend to build in a few more protections to the wards around my place tomorrow. I’ll come by and do yours as well. Verity, you can watch me—good a time as any to get you started on learning how.”

  They ate in silence for a while, each focusing on his or her own thoughts. As they finished up, Verity asked, “I almost hate to ask this because I know you’ve had a lot on your mind, but you didn’t get a chance to figure out why I can’t use the portals, did you?”

  “Sorry, no. I started to work on that the other night, but the only thing I came up with is that I wanted to test to see if there’s anything in common between your difficulty and Jason’s. I thought perhaps it might be something hereditary.”

  “Did our mom have any trouble with it?”

  “I don’t believe so. I only traveled with her once, but she seemed completely at ease.”

  She sighed. “I guess it’s not really a big deal now, but I sure hope we can get it figured out at some point. It’s gonna be pretty embarrassing if you have to knock me out every time we go somewhere. And Sharra told me I could come visit her sometime—she doesn’t live too far from one of the portals, so I thought we could—”

  “We’ll get it sorted,” Stone said. “I promise.”

  “And anyway, V, you’re not going anywhere until you’re eighteen,” Jason reminded her. “After that you’re on your own, but until then, I’m still responsible for you.”

  “And after that, I am,” Stone added. “Apprentice, remember?”

  She mock-glared at both of them, then focused on Stone. “You’d better watch out, O Mystic Master. If you don’t treat me right, I’ll—drop a cheeseburger in your lap. And Jason knows I can do it, too.”

  Chapter Eight

  There were no further reports of mage killings over the next few days, nor any other incidents beyond David’s murder indicating that the Bay Area chapter of the Evil was reorganizing enough to start committing mayhem again. Stone, Jason, and Verity used the slow time to settle in at their respective new homes, and Stone resumed Verity’s magical training as soon as he got the attic in order. She continued to be a quick study, and found it amusing when she was able to show him some application of a spell that hadn’t occurred to him.