by R. L. King
Stone doubted they could have finished the homes Avila had been working on in a month, but they must have reached at least the foundation-pouring and possibly even the framing stage by now. Construction scheduling wasn’t exactly his area of expertise. In any case, he had a couple hours before he had to head back to Palo Alto, so he had time to walk the whole area looking for any traces.
The late-summer day was setting up to be a scorcher. He was glad for the illusion, which covered the scratches on his arms so he didn’t have to wear long sleeves. They still stung and itched, and it took a lot of willpower not to scratch them. Already he regretted not taking the time for a healing spell, but now it was too late. At least they seemed to be healing well on their own.
Nobody approached Stone as he walked. He kept magical sight up and frequently glanced at the ground, hoping to spot a glow indicating that something interesting had been unearthed. His mind flashed back to a situation he’d dealt with several years ago, where a swimming-pool excavation at the suburban San Jose home of a former Stanford colleague had revealed a long-buried magical idol. There, the ground had glowed faintly red at the spot where the idol turned up.
This time, though, nothing glowed. His feet crunched on the uneven dry ground and gravel as he checked out the foundations, taking in the big concrete slabs, the poking, capped-off wiring, and the scattered construction debris that hadn’t been cleaned up yet. If this was the place where Avila had found the box and anything else lay buried, it had most likely been covered with concrete. No luck there.
He headed for the framed houses, but not with much enthusiasm. He’d just take a cursory look around and then head back home to check on Raider before he had to go to campus.
Stepping inside the first house he reached, he got a better feel for just how large these places would be when they were finished. Given the prices in the area, they’d no doubt sell for a small fortune. He was halfway surprised that nobody had accosted him yet, demanding to know what he was doing on private property. If nothing else, they wouldn’t want him blundering around the site due to potential liability concerns. Americans seemed to be obsessed with suing each other over the most ridiculous things—if he tripped over his own feet and broke his arm while poking around a half-finished construction site, he’d hardly expect someone else to pay for his own clumsiness.
A quick walk through three of the houses yielded nothing of interest. Nothing glowed or otherwise caught his attention—these places were so new that they wouldn’t have any sort of psychic residue of their own, and obviously wherever Avila had dug up the strange box with his backhoe was either somewhere he hadn’t checked yet or, more likely, was buried under several tons of concrete by now.
In other words, this was becoming increasingly pointless.
He’d check one more house and then head back home—that would give him a bit of time to try calming Raider down and perhaps even grab a quick lunch.
He’d almost reached the doorway when the sudden sensation of being watched hit him.
Paranoia? Possibly.
But possibly not, too.
He spun and looked back the way he’d come, and just caught the movement of a dark figure past the series of wood-framed walls. By the time he got a good fix on it, it had disappeared.
“Is someone there?” he called.
No answer.
Surprised to discover his heart beating fast and his breath picking up, Stone admonished himself for his reaction. Don’t be absurd. It was probably one of the workmen wanting to know who he was and what he was doing here.
He hurried back through the house toward where he’d seen the figure. “Are you there?” he called again, louder. “Did you want something?”
Still no reply, and no sign of the figure.
That’s because there wasn’t anyone there, you prat. Get a grip. It was the middle of the day. He hardly thought bloodthirsty murderers would be lurking at construction sites for overpriced yuppie tract houses. Hell, it was summer—it could have been local kids, who’d taken off when they realized someone else was nearby.
The figure appeared again as he turned back in the direction of the door.
This time it stood outside one of the windows on the far side of the house. It paused there for a moment as if daring Stone to approach it, then stepped aside and out of sight. He got a brief impression of a tall, pale form in dark clothes before it disappeared.
Stone didn’t hesitate: he ran outside through the front door and around the side of the house, taking the distance in long strides that got him to the corner in bare seconds.
The area around the open window was deserted.
He took off again, skidding to a stop at the house’s back corner. It was the only place the figure could have gone that quickly, unless it had either disappeared or flown away.
Nothing.
Feeling ridiculous but doing it anyway, Stone even took a few steps back and checked the skeletal roof to make sure it hadn’t leaped up there and scrambled away. Nothing there either.
Finally, deciding if he was going to be ridiculous he might as well make a good job of it, he walked back to the spot near the window where he’d seen the figure and looked for footprints. Bloody Sherlock Holmes, he was turning into. Maybe he should invest in a magnifying glass and a deerstalker hat.
The dusty ground beneath the window showed no footprints—not even workmen’s boots.
Stone frowned. Had he been imagining things? He wasn’t usually prone to flights of fancy, but between the odd phone call, Cheng’s murder, and Raider’s psychic images, he had no doubt he wasn’t imagining the supernatural involvement in the killings.
On a hunch, he switched to magical sight and checked out the spot.
The faintest of glows shifted in the air and was gone, so quickly he couldn’t even be certain he’d seen it.
“Hey!” a voice called.
Stone spun to see two burly workmen approaching him. They wore dusty jeans and T-shirts, carried lunch boxes, and eyed him in suspicion. Startled, he almost forgot about his disguise illusion. “Yes?”
“What’re you doin’ here?” one asked. “This is private property.”
“Oh. Er—I’m sorry. I didn’t see a fence or anything, and I wanted to see the houses. I might be looking to buy one.”
The two construction men looked him up and down, obviously doubting that his schlubby nerd persona planned to buy a million-dollar home. “Well, you can’t look around here yet. Insurance don’t allow it. Talk to the sales office if you want to get on the list.”
“They got brochures with floorplans and stuff,” the other one added. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Or they got a model house a couple streets over you can look at.”
“Ah. Thank you.” Stone nodded to them and turned to leave, then stopped. “Hey—have either of you seen somebody else around the site today?”
“Somebody else?” the first man asked.
“Yeah. When I was looking around I thought I saw somebody peeking in the windows at me. A man in dark clothes. Have you seen him?”
“We ain’t been over here till now,” the second man said. “But if somebody else is around here, they shouldn’t be either. You better go now, man.”
“Yeah, I will. Sorry.”
He felt their gazes on him as he hurried off the site and back toward his car. All the way back, he kept his magical sight up in hopes of spotting the figure again, but it didn’t reappear.
Chapter Seventeen
Stone stopped at home to shower and change clothes, and checked on Raider before he left. The cat was still under the armoire and refused to come out, but Stone found indication that he’d eaten a little from his kibble bowl. Nothing in the litter box, but a sharp odor sent him sniffing around the room until he discovered a stain on one of the guest-bed pillows. “Brilliant…” he muttered.
He wore a lightweight black sport jacket to class to cover up the scratches on his arms. His mind wasn’t on the lecture, but fortunately it was an undergraduate-level class so he could teach it without thinking about it. As he prowled the aisles, rattling off facts about the history of alchemy, he chewed over what had happened over the last couple days: Cheng, the problems with Raider, the vision he’d seen from the cat, the strange figure at the construction site. More than ever, he knew he’d have to get to the bottom of the sigils, which meant a trip back home to England where he had better reference materials and a couple other people he could consult with.
He didn’t linger after the class was over, but hurried back across campus toward his office, where he planned to make some notes about his next steps. He had several angles to follow up on now and didn’t want to let anything slip through the cracks.
Deep in thought, he almost collided with Edwina Mortenson in the hallway. “Oh!” he said, backing off. “Terribly sorry, Edwina.”
Mortenson eyed him in suspicion. She carried a stack of file folders and books, and was clearly heading toward her own office a few doors down from his. “Are you all right, Alastair?”
“Fine, fine. I—” Suddenly, he remembered Brandon Greene’s words when he’d delivered the cat supplies: Mortenson had “like three” cats of her own, and carried photos of them in her wallet. “Edwina,” he said slowly. “I wonder if I might ask your advice on something.”
She looked startled, and he wasn’t surprised. In all the years he’d worked at Stanford, he’d never once asked her advice on anything. The two of them tended to avoid each other except when absolutely necessary. “Uh—of course. What is it?” She waved him toward her office.
Mortenson’s office looked like a cross between a library and a psychic reader’s parlor. Two stuffed bookshelves lined one wall, while framed prints of classic Rider-Waite Tarot cards decorated two others: The Priestess, The Moon, and her newest addition, The Hierophant. A large, polished crystal ball on a marble stand had pride of place on the credenza behind her desk, flanked by carved wooden boxes, a scattering of runestones, and a leatherbound tome with a stylized image of the sun on the cover. The faint hint of incense hung in the air, but Stone could never be sure if that was the office or the concentrated effect of Mortenson’s perfume.
She settled into her high-backed leather chair and regarded him expectantly. “Please—sit down.”
He didn’t sit. Instead, he paced the small area in front of the desk. Her office was larger than his, but not by much. “I have an…unusual dilemma, and from what I understand from one of my students, you might be able to offer me some insight into how to deal with it.”
“Oh?” Her gaze sharpened. “This isn’t about those murders you were consulting on, was it?” Something seemed to occur to her, and her eyes got wide. “Oh, my. That police detective who was murdered—he was the one you were working with, wasn’t he?”
Stone rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “Yes. But that’s not why I’m here. It’s not about the murders. It’s about…cats.”
Her expression went from concerned to confused. “Cats?”
“Right.” He plunged ahead before he regretted this. “Brandon Greene told me you have—expertise.”
“Well,” she said slowly, “I don’t know if I’d call it ‘expertise,’ but I’ve had cats for years. What can I help you with?” She was now watching him as if wondering who he was and what he’d done with Dr. Stone.
This didn’t surprise him either. There were things he’d be less likely to ask her about, but not many. “Well…it seems I’ve acquired one. Temporarily, at least,” he added. “A friend was unable to keep him, and I’m—cat-sitting. It was either that or send him to the pound. But we’re not getting on too well, I’m afraid.”
“I…see. What do you mean by ‘not getting on too well’?”
In answer, he slipped off his sport jacket and tossed it over the guest chair.
Mortenson stared at the latticework of angry scratches on his right arm. “Oh, my. I hope you’ve taken care of those. Cat scratches can get infected easily.”
“They’re fine,” he assured her. “But I need some ideas about how to deal with the beast that don’t involve additional mayhem—on his part or mine.”
“What were you doing to him to make him scratch you like that?”
“I just tried to pick him up,” Stone lied. He couldn’t very well tell her, ‘He witnessed a horrific supernatural event and I freaked him out while trying to gather his psychic impressions of it.’ “He’s also having…litterbox issues. He was a bit traumatized before I got him, I’m afraid. I’ve got him shut up in my guest bedroom at present, and he’s already left his mark on one of the pillows. If this keeps up, the place will be unlivable and I’ll have to have someone in to give it a thorough cleaning.”
“Well,” she said, “It’s hard to say without meeting the cat. It depends on what you mean by ‘traumatized,’ and whether it’s a temporary thing. Some cats, unfortunately, never really lose those bad habits—but if it’s something fairly recent, he might revert to normal after he’s calmed down and feels safe.”
Stone weighed the pros and cons, and finally decided if there was any chance Mortenson could help with Raider, he had to take it. “Would you consider coming by some time to take a look at him? I don’t want to let my friend down, but I’m not really set up to deal with these kinds of issues.” He would owe Edwina big if she agreed, which was not a position he particularly wanted to be in. However, desperate times and all that…
To his surprise, her plain, severe face lit up in a smile. “Of course,” she said. “I’d be happy to meet him, Alastair. Just let me know when it’s convenient.”
He blinked. That was a surprise. It was odd, finding out new things about old colleagues after years of working with them. “Er…how about tomorrow evening? I’m not far from campus.” He wrote down the address. “Thanks, Edwina. You’re a lifesaver.” Possibly literally, he added to himself.
Chapter Eighteen
That evening, Stone called Jason, half-expecting him not to be home. Instead, his friend picked up the phone on the second ring.
“Hey, Al,” he said. “How’s it going? V’s here—mind if I put her on too so she stops making rude gestures at me?”
“Of course not.”
A few seconds later, a muffled rustling, then: “Hi, Doc. What’s up? Jason was telling me you’ve got some kind of weird murders going on up there.”
“I do,” he said. “Officially I’m off the case…especially since the detective I was consulting with has become one of the victims.”
“Holy shit,” Jason said. “Same MO? Stan told me about a cop getting killed, but I didn’t know it was the guy you were working with.”
Stone filled them in on the details. When he got to the part about Raider, Verity interrupted him.
“Wait a sec, Doc—are you telling me you picked up all that stuff from a cat?”
“That and quite a lot of scratches. And you can’t come up here and stay at my place until I get the guest room thoroughly fumigated.”
“Still, that’s pretty impressive. I’ll have to tell Edna about it. So where’s the cat now?”
“Cowering under my armoire. Dr. Mortenson is coming by tomorrow to see if she can talk some sense into him. But that’s not the point,” he added. “The point is, I think the original victim, Mr. Avila, let something nasty loose when he opened that box, and I need to find out what it is.”
“How are you planning to do that?” Jason asked.
“I think if I go home this weekend, I’ll have a better chance of deciphering the sigils and figuring out what it’s up to. I was hoping to find something at the construction site today, but other than someone apparently watching me, nothing turned up.”
“Yeah, about that. So you’re saying this guy kept appearing
and disappearing, but you couldn’t find footprints or anything?”
“Nothing. And the ground would have shown it, too. I wish I’d had more time to try to find him, but the workers ran me off.”
“You should go back when they’re not around,” Verity said. “But be careful if you do, okay?”
“Hmm…” Jason said. “Dunno if you’ll find anything if you go back, but you should definitely see if you can find out about the land. Like, who owned it before and what went on there.”
“Good idea,” Verity said. “Maybe there was a massacre there or something a long time ago.”
“I doubt that,” Jason said, “but if you know the history of the area, it might give you some clue about why the box ended up there. Might have been an old graveyard or something. That area probably had a lot of church activity—you know, trying to convert the local Indians.”
Stone jotted that down. “Good thought. I don’t tend to think of things like that, since I’ve never gotten ’round to learning much about the local history. I know someone who might be able to help, though, so thank you.”
“No problem.”
“So, ask Jason what’s going on with him,” Verity said, the grin evident in her voice.
“V—”
“Go on, ask him.”
“All right, I’ll bite,” Stone said. “Jason, what’s going on with you?”
“He’s got a girlfriend,” Verity said, still obviously grinning from ear to ear.
“V—”
“Indeed. Do tell, Jason.” Stone usually didn’t make it a point to pay much attention to Jason’s or Verity’s personal lives. If they wanted to tell him about anyone they were seeing, that was their business.
