by R. L. King
“Fuck!” Calvin yelped, leaping off the table and cowering against the opposite wall. His dark eyes bulged as he fixed his terrified gaze on Ben. Daisy shrank back, her face pale.
“Dude, what are you doing?” Patch demanded. “What the fuck?” She looked between the window and Ben, backing away like the others.
Ben, as shocked as any of the rest of them, dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, shit…” he muttered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, guys. I didn’t mean to…Oh, God, I’m so sorry…” For the moment, the surging energy seemed to have receded, but he could still feel it in there, slowly gathering again.
“What…just happened?” T-boy ventured, taking a tentative step toward Ben. Calvin grabbed his arm but he shook free and dropped down next to him. “Why did you do that?”
That was a good question. Ben didn’t know the answer, but even though he hadn’t intended to lose control like that, he could see his outburst had made a big impression on the kids. “I don’t know…” he muttered, grabbing the corner of the table to haul himself back to his feet. “I just can’t stop thinkin’ about Ma. About how scared she must’ve been when those guys showed up. I can’t even sleep at night anymore. I keep picturin’ her face, wonderin’ if she called for me while she was dying…” He bowed his head. “I’m just fucked up, guys. I need to do this, to get some closure. I can’t let him get away with it.”
After a moment, he felt a hesitant grip on his arm. “I’ll help you,” T-boy said softly. “My mom’s still around, but sometimes I feel like she’s dead. I’d give anything to have her back the way she used to be. But even as fucked up as she is now, if somebody killed her…”
There was a long pause. Ben still didn’t look up, but he could picture the rest of them exchanging glances, trying to decide how far they wanted to go.
“Yeah,” Calvin said at last. “Me too, I guess. I’ll help you get in. But I ain’t hurtin’ nobody else. This ain’t my fight, man. I don’t wanna end up in juvie—or worse—over this.”
A low murmur rose among the remaining three.
Ben swallowed and dragged his gaze up. “What about the rest of you? Will you help me get in? You don’t have to hurt anybody.”
“Are you gonna hurt anybody?” Daisy asked in a shaky voice. “I mean, other than this guy? What if we can’t get to him? You said he had a lot of people around him.”
“I’m not gonna hurt anybody else,” Ben said. Hot shame prickled at the back of his neck, because he knew he couldn’t promise that. He’d do whatever he had to do to get at Julio, but they didn’t have to know it. “Just him. Maybe not even him. Depends on how he reacts. I just gotta get to him—get him somewhere away from his people. I’ll start by talkin’, and see where it goes.”
“Who is this guy?” Manuel tossed his empty beer can up, levitating it around the table and then flinging it at the shadowy ghost of somebody’s marketing plan on the room’s scarred whiteboard. “Where is he?”
“I’m not gonna tell you that yet.” Ben, relieved that the conversation seemed to be going more his way now, began prowling the room.
“Why not?” Patch demanded. “You want us to help, but you don’t trust us?”
“You think we gonna rat you out, tell this dude you gunnin’ for him or somethin’?” Calvin glared at him.
He was losing them again. “No,” he said quickly, raising his hands. He tried to channel the weird energy that sometimes helped him be more persuasive. “No, nothing like that. Of course I trust you. It’s for your own good. The less you know, the less trouble you can get into. I promise. I’m not quite ready to do this yet. I didn’t know if I could count on your help.” He swept them all in with his gaze. “You guys are awesome, you know that? I know some things have gotten fucked up, but I knew I could count on you. And I’m gonna make sure nothin’ happens to any of you. I can’t tell you how much it means to me, that you’ll help me.”
More grumbling and muttering among the group, until finally Patch finished off her second burger and crumpled the wrapper. “We’re not kidding, man. You ask us to hurt anybody and we’re out.”
“And this is it,” Calvin said. “For me, at least. After this, I’m out anyways. Goin’ my own way. I’m grateful for the stuff you taught me, but after this we square, yeah?”
“Same here,” Manuel said.
Ben didn’t like it, but he could see it was the best he was going to get at the moment. He’d address it again once he’d dealt with Julio. And anyway, maybe he didn’t need the kids after that. What did he care if they took the bits of magic he’d taught them and went on with their own lives? Already, he was hoping if he got this closure—if he took out Julio—the strange compulsion to remain in Oakland would depart. At that point, he wouldn’t have anything else holding him to the city, and he’d be safer if he went somewhere else anyway. That would be a hell of a lot easier if he didn’t have a flock of teenagers following him around. “Okay. Fair enough. You help me get in so I can finish my business with this guy, and we’re even. We’ll all go our own way and do our own thing. Deal?”
Another long pause as they looked at each other, at Ben, and around the room. But then they all nodded. “We’re in,” T-boy said. “You gonna call us when it’s gonna go down?”
“Yeah. It shouldn’t be long now, so be ready. I just gotta make some last-minute plans.” Ben waved his hand and gathered up all the wadded burger wrappers and empty cans into a whirlwind, then used magic to crumple them into a small ball. He was getting better every day with his power—a month ago, or even a week ago, he wouldn’t have had that kind of control.
This was going to be easy, and before long Julio was going to regret he’d ever met Ben Halstrom.
31
Stone was beginning to fear that, despite all the effort he, his friends, and his friends’ friends were making to turn up anything about the Oakland mage gang, it was all going to be for nothing.
He kept in contact with Verity and Jason, checking in with them once a day when he had a free hour at the University, but so far neither they, their group of mundane agents, nor the Harpies had discovered anything new or noteworthy. It was as if the teenagers and their mysterious leader had dropped off the face of the earth. The closest they’d come were a couple of vague references to the foster-kid runaway Daisy, with reported sightings of her in several areas of Oakland, but none of them had panned out—by the time someone showed up at her rumored location, she was either gone or had never been there in the first place.
At least Stone had less to worry about now with the rift. When he’d checked in on it the previous Saturday afternoon, he’d discovered it still there (as he’d expected) and essentially unchanged (as he’d hoped but not dared to count on). It hadn’t gotten any bigger, and he didn’t pick up any new or disturbing readings from it. The warped ley line still concerned him, but since he didn’t think he could do anything about it without closing the rift, he was forced to leave it as it was. He didn’t like it, and spent several moments cursing Stefan Kolinsky under his breath as he paced around the warehouse examining the glowing structure from all angles, but nonetheless he couldn’t risk doing anything else about it. At least at the moment it was relatively stable—who knew what would happen if he tried to tamper with it?
What he did do, though, both to protect the area from curious mundanes and to calm his own growing apprehension about the thing being here in the first place, was to spend the afternoon setting up some specialized wards around the warehouse’s potential entrance points, including two normal-sized doors, one double roll-up door, and several windows low enough that a mundane could potentially break them and gain entry.
He’d been working on the ward design during his free time the previous week; it was a different sort than he usually employed, halfway between a ward and an illusion. Its intent was to plant a subtle suggestion in the mind of anyone who came within six feet of any of the entry points, convincing them that there was nothing interesting
here and that they’d be better off going somewhere else. It might even work on mages—illusions often did, because they relied on fooling the mind. Most mages, by and large, were no more intelligent or clever than their mundane counterparts, which meant they were equally vulnerable to this kind of subtle magic.
The casting had taken the better part of three hours, a good portion of which had been tying it into the nearby ley line to provide it with power. But by the time he finished, Stone felt satisfied he’d done everything he could to keep Oakland’s mundane population safe from the rift’s energies, short of closing it. He’d have to pop up here and check on it now and then, but at least it was a start that would allow him to concentrate on his work at the University without constant intrusive thoughts about whether something might be going wrong. Once the business with the teenage mage gang had been successfully dealt with, he planned on contacting Kolinsky again to see if anything else could be done.
If it was successfully dealt with.
Verity called him late on Wednesday afternoon to give him the latest update, which wasn’t much.
“Greta’s surgery went well. They still won’t know if she’ll walk again until she recovers a little, but it’s looking good.”
“That’s brilliant.”
“Yeah…” He tone was dubious. “But you gotta understand, when they say ‘walk,’ they mean if she’s lucky she might be able to get around without a cane. She’s not gonna be running any marathons—and probably not doing any more patrols with the Harpies.”
“Damn.” Stone stared down at the clutter of papers and open books on his desk. “I still wish there was something I could do, some way I could help…”
“You can’t always make things right, Doc,” she said gently. “I know, it’s one of those things mages don’t want to hear, but sometimes it’s the truth.”
“I know. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.” He closed one of the books, feeling useless again. “But I—” He paused as the phone buzzed in his hand, and was surprised to see Leo Blum’s number on the display. “Hold on a moment, Verity, I’ve got another call I need to take.”
“No problem, I gotta go anyway. I’ll talk to you later. Take care.” She hung up before he could respond.
Stone switched the call over to Blum. “Hello, Detective. How are you?”
“Dunno yet. I might have somethin’ for you. Then again, I might not. But either way, sorry it took so long. I had a friend, an evidence clerk for the Oakland PD, lookin’ into this as a favor, and this was as fast as she could get back to me.”
Stone sat up straighter. “What have you got?”
“It’s weird. Like I said, it’s probably nothing, but it came from that last thing you asked me to do the other day. You know, check around that area near that area you mentioned for anything unusual?”
Stone tensed, heart beating faster. “Yes? And did you find something?”
“Maybe. Had to go back a few weeks, which is why I’m not convinced it’s anything important. But somebody found a van abandoned around there. It was missing all four of its wheels and had been stripped for parts.”
“Er…that doesn’t sound very interesting. I assume unattended vehicles are stripped all the time in that part of Oakland.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. And by itself it wouldn’t be interesting at all. Just hang on and let me tell it, because this one takes some setup.”
“Be my guest, Detective.” Stone settled back, letting himself relax, and glanced toward his door. The last thing he needed was a student to show up right now. With a reflexive flick of his magic, he switched off the light and clicked the door lock.
“Okay. So anyway, the van by itself was nothing. But the van was registered to a guy named Ben Halstrom. I didn’t get much on him—no criminal record, and before that night nothing that looked at all suspicious.”
“So what happened that night?”
“His mother was killed in their residence—along with another guy. It looked like a home-invasion kind of thing.”
Stone narrowed his eyes. “That’s certainly unfortunate, but once again, don’t things like that happen in that area sometimes?”
“They do, but not like this. The woman—Marsha Halstrom, age fifty-two—died of strangulation. She also had injuries consistent with being roughed up. We found evidence of a second attacker, but he must have cleared out before the police arrived. They didn’t find the scene until the following day. The next-door neighbor got suspicious when Mom didn’t turn up for their morning coffee and peeked in the window.”
“All right. But I still don’t see—”
“The Oakland PD is looking for Ben as a person of interest in the murder. And they haven’t been able to find him.”
“Wait—they think her own son killed her?”
“Nobody knows. That’s why they want to talk to him. The other guy who died had a knife sticking out of his throat—with no prints on it except his own.”
“Somebody stabbed him in the throat?”
“Yeah, fuckin’ weird, isn’t it? That’s a pretty damn messed-up way to kill somebody, and strange that there aren’t any other prints on the weapon. I mean, I guess the murderer could have worn gloves, but it’s still not the kind of thing we usually see.”
“Detective…are you suggesting there might have been magic involved?”
“Hey, what the hell do I know? Normal cops’ minds wouldn’t go to somebody bein’ forced to stab themself in the throat with a six-inch blade, but knowin’ what I know…” He sighed. “It just makes things a hell of a lot more complicated, y’know? Oakland PD is stumped. I was too, until I looked at a description of Ben Halstrom.”
And suddenly, Stone got where he was going. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Middle twenties, chubby, with brown hair.”
“Got it in one. And with the additional knowledge that you’re lookin’ at this Halstrom as the possible leader of our magic kiddie gang, I’m wondering if maybe he didn’t stumble on these two guys roughin’ up his mom and decide to hand out a little justice of his own. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Stone agreed. “Especially given that he’s disappeared.”
“Yeah. Far as I can tell he’s not anybody special—no specific employment, made money doin’ odd jobs. Kind of a slacker, really. Not the kind of guy you’d find killin’ somebody by punchin’ a knife through their neck, or headin’ up a gang of magic teenagers.”
A chill ran down Stone’s neck as another thought slipped into place. “And you say they found his van stripped in the area I described?”
“Yeah. Does that mean somethin’?”
Bloody hell, that’s only a couple of blocks from the warehouse with the rift. Is it possible— “Er—no. No, just trying to get my facts straight. I’m writing this down.” Figuring he probably should be writing this down, he snatched up a pen and a legal pad and began jotting notes. “Detective, can you send me any information you can find about Ben Halstrom? A photo would be nice, along with his address. Is the place still considered a crime scene?”
“Not after all this time. This all happened weeks ago. Oh, fuck,” he said. “I didn’t even make that connection.”
“What connection?”
“It happened like two weeks before we started getting the reports of weird crimes.”
Stone dropped his pen on top of the pad. “That would have given him enough time to round up a few young mages and begin teaching them some rudimentary skills.”
“Yeah…I guess it would. But there’s somethin’ here that doesn’t make sense, Stone.”
“What’s that?”
“By every account I can find, this Ben Halstrom character is a nobody. He’s a nerd, a mama’s boy, the kind of guy who lays around on the couch all day watchin’ sports on TV and only works when he needs money. I mean, yeah, it had to be a shock to stumble in on his mom gettin’ murdered—that’s enough to fuck anybody up—but how does that lead to collectin’ mages and mastermin
din’ a magic crime wave? I mean, hell, if the guy’s a mage, why is he livin’ like that at all? Why wasn’t he usin’ his magic a long time ago to make things better for himself?”
Stone considered. Blum was right—it didn’t make sense. Most of it didn’t, anyway. “Mages are just like everyone else, Detective. Not all of them are very ambitious—some of them are slackers. But obviously there’s still something here we’re not seeing yet. Do you have anything else on Halstrom? Anything about his friends, places of employment, anything?”
“Not yet. Like I said, he didn’t have any fixed place of employment, and he kept pretty much to himself. Didn’t really have friends, except his mom.”
“Anything about the murder victim? The one he allegedly killed?”
“Not really. He’s a thug, reputed to work for a guy named Julio Gutierrez, who’s apparently a minor-league underworld bigwig in the area.”
“Any connection between Halstrom and Gutierrez?”
“Not that we’ve found. If we could pick up the other victim we might be able to get something out of him, but he’s in the wind. Probably left town weeks ago.”
“No reason anyone’s aware of why these two would kill Mrs. Halstrom?”
“Who knows? I’ll check with my friend, but far as I know so far the Oakland cops haven’t come up with anything. You gotta understand, they get a lot of murders over there, so they can’t work these cases as fast as they’d like. These things take time.”
“I understand.” Stone tried to calm his frustration. This wasn’t anything new—unless the case was a high profile-one, the wheels of justice turned slowly by sheer necessity. He cast about for any other leads to pursue. “I assume Halstrom’s flat has been cleaned out.”
