by R. L. King
“Just sit down,” Jason ordered, offering him a bag.
It was a pretty good testament to how hungry Stone was that a cooling Quarter Pounder, fries, and a Coke smelled like a gourmet meal. He sat on the bed and wolfed down the food, then settled back against the pillow. “Thank you. That’s an improvement.”
Jason took a seat at the tiny table, across from Amber. “Okay. You ate, you took a shower, and you’re out of those dirty clothes. Time to talk.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “Did you call the police?”
“Yeah, on the way to McD’s. Told them you turned up—that you were upset about something, got drunk, and wandered off. They want to talk to you later. But right now, you need to tell us what the hell happened to you.”
With many fits and starts—he still wasn’t anywhere near full operating capacity—Stone told them everything, from the trip to Morrie’s Roadhouse to his conversation with Roy Darner.
“Oh!” He held up a finger. “Before we leave here, we need to find Mr. Darner. I want to know if he had something do with what happened to me.”
Jason and Amber exchanged somber glances again.
“What?”
“Roy Darner’s dead, Al.”
“What?” He jerked his head up, which was a mistake, and winced. “Bloody hell, what happened?”
“Car accident, the same night you talked to him. Single vehicle thing—he went off the road and hit a utility pole. Cops found an open container in his car, and his BAC was well above legally drunk.”
“Damn.”
“Do you think he’s the one who hit you?” Amber asked.
“I’ve got no idea. My gut feeling is that he wasn’t, though.”
“Why not? You gave him all that money—if he was an ex-con and needed cash, he might have thought you were a good source.”
“I considered that. But I watched his aura while we talked. I don’t think he was the murdering sort.” Stone shifted, trying to get comfortable, but it was essentially impossible as long as he was putting any pressure on the back of his head. Finally, he struggled to a half-seated position. “Got anything for a headache?”
“I’m not sure you should—” Jason began.
“Listen,” he growled. “I’ve been smacked with enough force to apparently kill me and survived being buried alive—albeit fairly shallowly—for three days. I doubt two or three Advil are going to do me in.”
Amber snorted. “He’s throwing around words like ‘albeit,’ Jase—I think his head’s okay.”
“He always talks like that. I think he can do it in his sleep.” Jason still sounded reluctant, but dug in Amber’s pack again and came up with a small bottle, which he tossed to Stone.
He swallowed three of them and washed them down with the last of his Coke. “Better. Anyway—if I’m right and Darner didn’t do it, then that brings up several questions.”
“Like who did?” Jason asked.
“Yes, but that’s the least interesting of them. The most interesting, at least for me, is why did anyone do it? Obviously they didn’t spot me handing out hundreds to Darner and decide to mug me, or they’d have taken the rest of the money. And just as obviously, they knew about magic. Why else would they take my little amulet and leave the cash?” Stone was surprised at how lucid he felt now. He wasn’t sure if it was the food and drink, the shower, or just the confidence that came from being in a safe place, but his brain was coming back online a hell of a lot faster than it should have, given how hard it had been scrambled.
“You think someone magical went after you, don’t you?” Amber asked.
“Either someone magical, or someone mundane who knows about magic. I don’t keep my shields up normally, when I’m not expecting trouble. Too tiring. I would have been easy to sneak up on, since I wasn’t suspecting anything.”
“But why?” Jason’s brow furrowed, and he frowned. “Wait. You were talking to the only kidnap victim we know of who’s over eighteen and still alive. You don’t suppose whoever did this keeping tabs on his old victims, do you?”
“I don’t know about that…at least not normally. But now he’s got wind that someone with magical talent is on to at least part of his little game. If we figured out the next step, maybe he did too. It wouldn’t be that hard for him to put some kind of watch on Darner.”
“Why let him talk to you at all, though?” Amber asked. “Why not just kill him so he can’t talk?”
“Probably because he didn’t expect him to be able to tell me anything.” Stone shifted position again. Damn, he must have been hungry—he wished Jason had brought another Quarter Pounder, and he normally hated mass-market fast food. “Darner told me he couldn’t remember anything. The only reason I got anything at all out of him was because I used a technique I’d been working on with Verity. A variation on the one we used with Ian, Jason, remember?”
“The channeling one?”
“Yes. Not exactly the same—I didn’t channel him, obviously, since I was alone, but I did get some impressions. Ah!” He held up a finger. “I got some good impressions, actually, including a fairly decent image of what our man looks like. When we get home, can you put me in touch with a police sketch artist?”
“Yeah, but that’s gonna look pretty strange, isn’t it?”
“See if Blum can arrange something under the table. We are helping with an active case, even if it’s a fairly nonstandard way.”
Jason sighed. “Al…I don’t know what to think of all this.”
“You’re not the only one. But we’ve got one advantage now that we didn’t have before, and we’ve got to use it while it’s still true.”
“What’s that?”
“Whoever is behind this now thinks I’m dead. If we move fast, we might be able to catch up with him before he discovers otherwise.”
“You’re not gonna be much use till you heal up. You can’t heal that magically, can you?”
“No, not after three days. But it’s healing on its own. Mages heal faster than mundanes, Jason. You know that.” Not this fast, he was sure—not normal mages anyway. He hoped this time he could count on Jason’s lack of deep knowledge of the ways of mages.
“It is healing,” Amber said in wonder. “He’s not lying. He’s already doing a little better than when we picked him up.”
Jason looked back and forth between them. “I don’t like it,” he said at last. “But I see your point. How are we gonna do this, though? You think he’s still around this area?”
“Highly unlikely. He seems to like using portals to move around, so I doubt he’d be foolish enough to remain nearby. No, we need to go home and regroup.”
Amber pulled her laptop out of her bag. “I’ll see if I can get tickets—”
“Never mind tickets. We’ve got to move faster than that.”
“Al…” Jason said in an I know where you’re going with this and I don’t like it one bit tone.
“There’s no helping it, Jason.”
“Wait,” Amber said. “Are you talking about taking the portal home? You’re in no shape to do that alone.”
“He’s not gonna be alone,” Jason said.
“He’s not? But he—hold on.” She stared hard at Stone. “You’re planning to take us with you?”
“That’s the plan, yes. It’s much safer now that…well, it’s much safer. Trust me on that.”
“You’ve never taken two through, though, have you?” Jason asked, clearly grasping at straws. He might talk a good game, but he hated portal travel.
“I took you and Verity through one time, remember?”
“Yeah, but she was unconscious, and I carried her.”
Stone waved them off. “You’ll be fine. I’m already feeling better. Not great, true, but I don’t need to be great to manage a portal.”
Jason and Amber looked at each other.
“I’m game,” Amber said. “I agree it’s probably best to get back home fast.”
“Damn it,” Jason grumbled. “I can’t say no
if you’re saying yes. It’ll make me look bad.”
“Score one for the male ego,” Stone said dryly. “We’d best get going, then. You drive, and I’ll navigate. The portal’s in Chicago. I’ll ring the police on the way. We should probably swing by so I can pick up my wallet and prove to them I’m not dead.”
18
The trip through the portal was every bit as anticlimactic as Stone had hoped. He was disappointed that the bar where it was located was closed this early—he’d have liked to ask the proprietor if anyone had spotted a man who looked like his vision—but it couldn’t be helped. They didn’t have time to wait for him to show up.
It was far too early for A Passage to India to be open, which was good because that way they wouldn’t have to answer any of Marta’s worried questions. “I hope my car’s still here,” Stone said. “After three days, they might have towed it.”
The BMW was still there, with a ticket stuck under its windshield wiper. Stone tossed Jason the key and stuffed the ticket in the glove box. “You drive. Still not feeling up to it.”
“That’s our Al,” Jason said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Extradimensional portals are fine, but freeways are too much.”
“I can’t kill anybody traversing an extradimensional portal. Not anymore, anyway. Drive.”
They dropped him off at the Encantada house, and went in with him to make sure he was all right. “You don’t need to hover over me,” he said, annoyed. “The worst is over now. I think I want to spend the rest of the day getting some quality sleep. You can take the car—just bring it back before the end of the day, please.”
“You sure you don’t need anything?” Jason asked, as Amber bent to scratch a purring Raider behind the ears.
“I’m fine. If I get hungry, I’ll have a pizza delivered or something. Go. Do whatever you two do on a Sunday when you’re not flying across the country to retrieve idiot friends who forget to watch their backs.”
“You shouldn’t have to watch your back all the time.” He sighed. “Okay. I guess we’ll see you tomorrow, then. I’ll call Blum and see if he can come up with somebody to talk to you. Should be soon, I guess, before you forget what the guy looks like.”
“I won’t forget. Believe me—that image is seared into my brain.”
Stone’s phone—the land line—rang late the following morning. True to his word, he had slept most of the previous day, and felt better than he expected to when he woke up. His head still hurt—he suspected it would for a while—but now it was more in the range of a bad headache rather than a serious injury. He’d take it.
He fumbled for the phone, forgetting for a moment that he didn’t have his cell anymore. Almost nobody except spammers called him on the home line these days. “Yes, hello?”
“Wake up, sleeping prince.”
Stone blinked a couple times, trying to place the gruff, amused voice. “Ah. Detective. Good—er—” He glanced at the clock on the nightstand: 11:09 a.m. “—morning.”
Leo Blum’s tone sobered. “You okay, Stone? Jason said you got your bell rung pretty hard.”
“Doing much better, thankfully.”
“Yeah, I knew you mages had hard heads, but I guess in your case at least it’s harder than I thought. Damn good thing, too.”
“You’ll forgive me, I hope, but my capacity for small talk is at a historically low ebb right now.”
“Yeah, yeah. Jason said you needed to talk to a sketch artist. You got something on our guy?”
He sat up, dislodging Raider. The cat made an annoyed mrrow and climbed into his lap. “Yes, I think so.”
“He also said you talked to one of the adult vics—and now he’s dead. You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?”
“No, of course not. Apparently he got drunk and drove his car into a utility pole. I don’t believe it, though.”
“You don’t? I looked up the info—looks pretty straightforward to me.”
Stone didn’t want to discuss it in detail at the moment. “So, about this artist—”
Blum caught on fast. “Yeah, I found you a guy. He’s retired, so he’s not officially associated with the department anymore, but Jason made it sound like you don’t want this goin’ through official channels.”
“Best if it doesn’t.”
“But even if that’s the case, my payment for gettin’ you two in touch is that I get a copy of the sketch. I know we don’t have a snowball’s chance of catchin’ this guy, but I gotta do something.”
“Fair enough. Give me his number, and I’ll make sure you get one. Unofficially, of course.”
“Yeah,” Blum said glumly. “Why is it every time I get involved in something from your end of the woods, I feel like I’m this close to gettin’ my ass kicked off the force?”
Jason and Amber had come by the previous night and left the BMW without disturbing Stone. He felt well enough to drive, so he stopped to grab a quick lunch and then headed down to Thayer Investigations. He found Gina at her computer, deep in concentration. Barely coming up for air, she hooked a thumb toward the back part of the office.
Jason had done some work on the place since he moved in, and now had a tiny office with a door in the back corner. The door was currently half-open, so Stone knocked.
“Oh, hey, Al.” Jason looked up from a thick file he was reading, then his eyes narrowed. “Should you be driving?”
“I’m fine. Better today. And thanks for bringing my car back last night.”
“Yeah, we didn’t want to bother you. Have a seat. What’s up?”
“Have you had any luck finding any other information?”
“Nah, not yet. Still got Gina on it, but I also have this other big case I’ve been neglecting.” He gestured at the file. “It’s an embezzlement thing involving a decent-sized software company. Not the kind of thing we normally do, but Gina’s already found enough dirt that they should be able to nail the guy soon. Just dotting all the I’s and crossing the T’s, y’know? Did Blum call you?”
“This morning, yes. I’m going to be chatting with a sketch artist this afternoon. After I pick up a new phone.”
“Good deal. Hopefully it will lead to something.”
“Where’s Amber?”
“Santa Cruz.” He pushed a real-estate flyer across the desk. “We weren’t really looking this soon, but she found a place that looks like it might be perfect. She went off to check it out it in person. If she likes it, I’ll go take a look when I can.”
Stone examined the flyer. The house was a small three-bedroom in the Santa Cruz mountains, surrounded by towering redwoods. “Good price, for around this area.”
“Yeah, that’s what caught our eye. It’s gonna need a lot of work—way more than that place of yours did. But it sounds like the structure’s solid. I’m not getting my hopes up yet, though.”
“Well, good luck with it. I hope it turns out to be what you want.” Stone stood. “I’ll leave you to it, then—I’m off to replace my phone. Never thought I’d get so tethered to one of those bloody things, but now I’ve got no idea how I ever lived without it.”
“Hey, Al?”
Stone turned back at his friend’s odd tone. “Yes?”
Jason was eyeing him with an uncharacteristically serious, thoughtful expression. “Can I ask you something? I know it’s none of my business, but it’s been bugging me.”
“Er…maybe. Depends on what it is.” Stone tensed, sure he knew what this was about. He didn’t want to discuss Verity right now.
“Is there something weird going on with you?” He didn’t look at Stone as he spoke, which was unlike him.
“Weird?” He chuckled. “Jason, everything about me is weird. You should know that by now.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Jason refused to be baited.
“Well, then, what do you mean?”
He looked at Stone, then got up and closed the office door before settling back in his chair. “I don’t say much, because I don’t want to
get involved in the nuts and bolts of magic stuff. I’m involved, but I’m not involved, you know? And I’m okay with that.”
Stone waited. He had no idea where Jason was going with this, but he was beginning to suspect it wasn’t about Verity after all.
“Yeah. I am. But…I can’t forget about what happened a couple years ago. At that show with your band, when Garra’s people poisoned your beer.”
Ah. So that was where he was going. “Yes.”
“I heard the doctors, Al. They said you should have been dead. That stuff was so corrosive it should have eaten you up inside. But…you were in the hospital for a couple days, and pretty much back to normal in a week.”
Again, Stone didn’t reply.
Jason still wasn’t looking at him. “I let it go then—I figured you were probably right, that the stuff didn’t work the way it was supposed to, or V healing you so fast took the edge off it. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but I figured it was another case of MFM.”
“MFM?”
“More fucking magic.”
Stone chuckled. “That’s a good way to describe a lot of things connected with me, I suppose.”
Jason sighed. “I overlooked it back then, but now…I’m not so sure about it anymore.” His gaze came up. “I saw the back of your head, Al. Somebody hit you hard. Like, hard enough to kill you, or at least fuck you up so bad you’d spend the rest of your life in a care facility watching cartoons and eating soup through a straw. And they buried you. I don’t know for how long, but if they hit you the night you disappeared, it could have been for three days. And now, two days later, you’re sitting in my office talking about the house we’re looking at. Doesn’t that seem fucking wrong to you?”
