Circle of Stone

by R. L. King

  Again, he stopped to think. “No…not specifically.”

  “And what about the tome? How did the man describe it? Did he tell you it was magical in nature?”

  “No…he merely described it physically, and told me it was valuable.”

  Stone nodded and pulled a notebook from his coat pocket. “Tell me everything you can remember about the man and the woman. Give me their descriptions, the name of the restaurant where you met her, the addresses of the hotel where you awoke and the flat where you met the man, and anything else you can remember. Any detail, no matter how small, might be important.”

  Selby looked suddenly overwhelmed, but visibly pulled himself together and tried to focus. With prompting, he answered Stone’s questions.

  Stone wrote everything down. It wasn’t a lot to go on: Selby had forgotten to check the room number at the hotel where he’d awakened, though he remembered the correct floor and one of the prints hanging on the hallway wall outside. He still had the scrap of paper where he’d noted down the location of the meet, so that was good, at least. He gave a fairly detailed description of the woman along with the name of the restaurant where he’d met her, but had little helpful information about the man since his shapeless clothes and mask had made it difficult to spot details.

  “Come on, Selby—anything you can come up with. Was he tall? Short? Did he have a deep voice or a higher one?”

  Selby clamped his eyes shut and clenched his fists. “I don’t remember,” he said miserably. “Once he showed me the video, I panicked and my mind stopped processing anything else. I—ah, wait a moment.” His eyes flew open and his gaze locked on Stone. “I do remember something. Two things, in fact! He spoke English with a French accent…but I believe it was a false one. He slipped a couple of times, just a bit, and I think I detected a London accent.”

  “Good, good.” Stone scribbled it down. “And the other thing?”

  “He wore gloves so I couldn’t see his hands, but when he opened the laptop to show me the video, I noticed the little finger on his right hand was misshapen—perhaps as if he’d broken it at some point and it didn’t heal properly.”

  “Brilliant. That will help, I think.”

  Selby swallowed. “What are you going to do? If they find out we’re looking for them—”

  “They won’t find out. It sounds like they don’t suspect you have any magical ability, so that’s a good thing.”

  “Essentially I don’t. Not anymore.”

  “Yes, but I do. And probably a good deal more than they do.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Stone. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am that you’ll help me.”

  Stone put his notebook back in his pocket, finished his pint, and took a last look at Selby with magical sight. The man’s aura hadn’t changed—it still showed misery and agitation, with no sign of duplicity. “Just remember what I said—if I find out you truly did attack this woman, I can’t and won’t protect you.”

  “Nor do I expect you to.” Tears glittered once again in his eyes. “Honestly, before you agreed to help me I have entertained thoughts of…ending it all. Even if I wasn’t responsible for my actions, the thought that I’ve done such a terrible thing at all—I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand it.”

  A wave of empathy gripped Stone. He knew exactly how Selby felt. To most of the world, it wouldn’t matter whether the man had been compelled to commit the act or he’d done it of his own accord. How could they even tell the difference? He patted Selby’s arm. “For now, just—be reachable. I might need to consult with you again, depending on what I find out.”

  “I will.” Selby stood too. “As it happens, Monsieur Bertrand is away on business for a few days, which means that the chateau is vacant save for the small number of other staff. I will remain there and wait to hear from you.” His gaze grew imploring. “Please—be careful. I doubt these people would pose any threat to you, but if they were to somehow become aware that anyone is searching for them—”

  “I promise. I’ll be careful.”

  Stone left the pub deep in thought about his next steps, a disregarding spell concealing him from anyone who might be watching. He would have to be careful—if the blackmailers got any whiff that Selby had engaged anyone else to help him track them down, nothing would stop them from releasing the video. And once it was out in the world, no amount of magic could bring it back.

  What he hadn’t told Selby, because the man was agitated enough already and didn’t need any additional stress, was that it might not matter. Regardless of whether he produced the tome the blackmailers wanted him to steal, it didn’t mean a damned thing. The video they’d shown Selby had been on a laptop, which meant it existed in electronic format. Even if their victim complied with their demands, nothing stopped them from holding on to a copy, perhaps so they could use it to compel Selby to do something else in the future. As long as any copies remained, the man would never truly be out of danger. Stone wondered if that had occurred to him yet. He hoped it hadn’t, because if Selby panicked and did something unexpected, that would make this whole thing much more difficult.

  3

  Stone called Aubrey to let him know he wouldn’t be home until much later, then examined his options. He had three locations to check out, all of them in Paris: the restaurant where Selby first met the mysterious woman, the hotel room where he’d awakened the following morning, and the location of the meet where the blackmailer had shown Selby the video.

  Good thing there was a portal in Paris, or this would all take much longer than he wanted to spare.

  He stopped by the London house, glad he’d left one of his disguise amulets there. He’d found the little things quite useful recently—they beat the hell out of maintaining an illusion himself, or trying to hold an invisibility spell—so he’d built a couple more and left them at his other homes.

  He located the amulet and calibrated it to make him look like an unassuming, respectable middle-aged businessman in a well-made but dull suit. He already had an idea for what he wanted to do, but he’d have to wait until tonight to try implementing the main part of it. Until then, he could do some poking around but he’d have to be careful about it. He had no idea who might be watching the locations.

  He stepped through the portal and a few moments later emerged in a hidden back room of an old bookstore near the Louvre. Amused, he remembered earlier that summer when his son Ian had used the same portal to pop over to Paris long enough to grab a bag of croissants from a nearby patisserie, since he’d found it easier to do that than to drive somewhere in London.

  He had no idea where Ian was right now, he realized with his usual regret. Last time his son had contacted him had been a week ago, when he’d sent a text saying he and some friends were going to Japan. So far, he’d shown no sign of losing interest in his hedonistic, globe-trotting lifestyle, and he used the portals to bounce around the world in much the same way and with as much casual disregard as a mundane would use an elevator.

  What’s the problem? Stone thought, a little bitterly. You still haven’t done bugger-all about trying to find him a teacher. Still, he’d have to give Ian a call when this whole business with Selby was settled. It was time for the two of them to have a serious talk about the boy’s future.

  He flagged a cab and gave the driver the address of the hotel where Selby had awakened after his lost night. He spoke French, and the cabbie’s medium-blue aura barely flickered with interest. Stone had deliberately chosen an illusionary appearance that wouldn’t remain in anyone’s mind for long—just another boring businessman. The city was full of them.

  The hotel was in the Latin Quarter, one of many dotting the street. Stone lingered on a corner for a few minutes, watching the people passing by. The neighborhood was respectable but not high-class, and seemed to appeal equally to frugal business travelers and tourists looking to save some money. He consulted his notes and approached the hotel, joining a trickle of other guests heading in. There weren’t many
this time of the mid-afternoon, but nobody noticed him. Fortunately, the hotel wasn’t modern or high-class enough to require key cards to work the elevator, so after only a couple of minutes Stone stood in the hallway on the fifth floor. To his further good luck, nobody else got off on the same floor.

  After glancing around to make sure no one was approaching, he hurried down the hall. He scanned the prints on the walls as he went, noting they were all stylized travel posters featuring various European tourist destinations. He found the one Selby had described, Saint Tropez, near the far end.

  He’d have to be careful now. He looked around one more time for anyone in the hall, then cast an invisibility spell on himself and knocked briskly on the door. His heart thumped with anticipation as he waited to see if anyone would answer; it wasn’t as if anybody around here could hurt him, but if anyone got a whiff of his investigation it could cause trouble for Selby.

  Nobody answered the door.

  He tried again, just to be sure, and then used magic on the lock and slipped inside.

  As expected, the room was currently unoccupied.

  He dropped the invisibility spell with a sigh of relief, once again vowing to spend some time trying to improve how long he could maintain it without getting tired. Even Calanarian magic hadn’t helped much with that. With a tight smile of amusement, he remembered an article Eddie Monkton had cheekily brought to his attention a few months ago. The hypothesis had been that one’s ability to maintain an invisibility spell worked in inverse proportion to one’s innate force of personality—ego, in other words. Because most talented mages had outsized egos, and Stone had perhaps a more outsized one than most mages, it made sense that they’d be rubbish at hiding themselves. Stone had jokingly told Eddie exactly what he thought of that hypothesis, but secretly he wondered if the article’s author might not be on to something.

  The room was the same kind of unassuming, efficient type marketed to business travelers everywhere: it included a double bed, a desk with a lamp and phone, a flat-panel television set, an inoffensive art print, and a small table with two chairs. While it wasn’t occupied at the moment, it was obvious someone was staying there: a suitcase lay open on a stand at the foot of the bed, the bed itself had not been made, and a glance in the bathroom revealed a towel draped over the shower enclosure and men’s toiletries lined up along the vanity. Stone shifted to magical sight, looking for any sign of odd or disturbed energy, but found none. That didn’t surprise him too much—an attack such as Selby had described would have caused serious unease in the area’s ambient energy, but obviously the attack, if there had been one at all, hadn’t taken place here. He wondered how the blackmailers had gotten Selby up here without anyone noticing. Had they used magic, or merely passed him off as a drunken friend?

  In any case, he wasn’t going to get anything here. He wished he could lean on the hotel’s staff to show him who had rented the room the night Selby was here, but there was too much chance the blackmailers might be paying them off. Briefly he considered contacting Jason to see if his computer-whiz friend Gina could turn up anything, but discarded the idea. Hacking obscure French hotels was probably a bit much to ask—at least until he’d examined his more immediate options.

  He took a last look around, using magic to open the closet and drawers, then turned invisible again and slipped back out into the hall. A few moments later he was back in the lobby and heading back out to the street.

  Well, that was a bust. That was all right, though: he still had two more places to investigate, and those would likely turn up better evidence. He strode back up the street, scanning for another cab.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket.

  He glanced at the number and stopped, surprised. There was a name he hadn’t seen in a while. “Detective Blum. How are you?”

  4

  “Hey, Stone. How’s it going?” Detective Leo Blum sounded the same as always over the crackly connection: brisk and harried, as if he were juggling ten different high-priority projects. Which he probably was.

  “Busy, but not bad. I trust this isn’t a social call.”

  “Nah. Wish it was, but I don’t really have time for those anymore. You have a minute? Or better yet, do you have time to come up here and meet someplace for a cup of coffee?”

  “Er—well, I’m currently in Paris, so—”

  The sigh came through loud and clear. “Damned mages. Never know where the hell you might be.”

  “Yes, we do get around. What can I do for you, Detective? Is this official business?”

  “Well…kind of, but not exactly. This’ll take a little time—can you tear yourself away from the Louvre or whatever long enough to hear it?”

  Stone glanced around the unassuming neighborhood he was strolling through and chuckled. “Yes, I think I can manage that. Go ahead.”

  There was a sound like a door closing, then the squeak of chair springs. “Okay, so here’s the deal. The reason this isn’t official business, to start with, is because it’s out of my jurisdiction.”

  “Oh? How far out?”

  “Oakland.”

  “Indeed?” Stone had only been to the city across the bay from San Francisco a few times, usually driving through on his way to visit one of his favorite occult bookshops in Berkeley. The last time had been with Viajera the previous year, to locate a man who’d been murdered in the Oakland Hills. “What’s going on there, and why do you think I’d be interested in it?”

  “I can’t be sure of anything—I’ll tell you that right up front. But I’ve been noticing reports of some odd crimes going on over there for the past several weeks.”

  “Odd in what way?” Stone spotted a bench and headed for it.

  “That’s the thing—if most people looked at them, they might not even think anything of them. Typical stuff: break-ins, car thefts, drug stuff. The usual, in other words.”

  “Except…” There had to be an except. Blum wouldn’t bother calling Stone over garden-variety street crime.

  “Well, here, let me read you a little from a couple of the reports. This one was two weeks ago—burglary of some guy in the Rockridge area. Small time drug dealer type. House was broken into, some cash and jewelry stolen. Nothing big or expensive.”

  “Okay…”

  “Yeah, sounds boring, right? Except there was no sign of forced entry. No fingerprints. No footprints. No sign of tampering locks.”

  Stone shrugged. “Was the man insured? Sounds like an inside job to me.”

  “Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But let me keep going. Three days later, another break-in, this time on the top floor of a five-story building. Once again, no sign of forced entry. The lobby camera had been out for ages, but the street cams show nothing. Just like before, the thieves made off with some cash, drugs, and jewelry. Again, small time stuff.”

  “Detective, I’m not sure I—”

  “Get this, Stone: like I said, there was no evidence that the thieves got into the building, and none of the security cams showed anything. But a guy nearby swears he saw somebody floating in the air, down from the top of the building. He claims the guy was holding a bag, and as soon as he hit the ground, a car drove up and he got in. Except the witness can’t remember anything about the car. Not even what color it was.”

  Stone had been staring idly across the street, watching a couple of pigeons waddling in front of a tea shop. At Blum’s latest words he sat up straighter. “Floating.”

  “Yeah. Of course the guy’s a pothead, so nobody believes him—they think he was just seein’ pink elephants, especially since he can’t describe the floater or the car. But it got me wondering.”

  “Indeed. Have there been other such crimes?”

  “Like I said, they don’t have a lot in common to the average observer—they’re in different parts of town, sometimes even in other nearby towns. Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville. They’re all over the map type-wise, but in every case they’re small-time stuff. No bank robberies or high-profile vi
cs or anything like that. Nobody ever gets hurt, but there’s never any sign of force or even tampering with electronics. I wouldn’t even have noticed it—hell, I’ve got enough on my plate with my own work without sticking my nose in stuff from Oakland—but that ‘floating’ bit made me sit up and take notice.”

  “So you’re thinking you’re looking at some sort of…what…magical crime spree?”

  “I know, I know—it sounds crazy. But then again, maybe it doesn’t. Mages are around, right? And not all of ’em have the kind of resources you do. If I was some street kid who discovered I could levitate myself or open locks with my mind, I might start thinkin’ about ways I could monetize that talent. Wouldn’t you? And if there’s more than one of ’em and they got together, it’s possible we might be looking at an organized racket here. Do you agree, or do I just need a nice vacation in Hawaii?”

  “No…” Stone murmured, thinking. “I do agree. It’s possible you’re looking at one or more wild talents or low-powered mages working together without much ambition. You said this has been going on for a few weeks?”

  “Yeah, far as I know. I did a little research and identified a few cases that look like they might fit the pattern. Why?”

  “Well…it’s also possible this group is testing the waters, seeing what they can get away with, before perhaps graduating to something a bit more lucrative.”

  “So you think they’re gonna ramp this up?”

  “Who knows, Detective? I don’t know anything about them. But it’s been my experience, especially these days, that young mages’ confidence often exceeds their wisdom—and sometimes their ability.”

  “What’s that mean in real-world terms?”

  “Not sure yet. It might mean that as they continue to succeed without being caught, they might grow bolder and make mistakes.”

  “So we can catch ’em?”

  “Possibly—though it could also make them dangerous. Obviously they don’t want to be caught or identified. You say they aren’t hurting anyone now, but will that remain true if they’re cornered?”