by R. L. King
Finally, he tried stopping by Stefan Kolinsky’s shop to discuss the situation with him, but the place was shuttered and dark. A note attached to the door beyond the wards indicated Kolinsky was on an extended trip searching for artifacts, and would not return until at least the following month. Please do not contact me except in case of utmost emergency, the note said at the bottom. Stone was certain that was aimed at him, and equally certain that missing children, even ones taken by a magical kidnapper, didn’t constitute “utmost emergency” to Kolinsky by any stretch of the imagination.
He thought, too, that the stress might be connected with another frustrating aspect of his life: his portal construction efforts had come to a standstill. He’d finally managed to finish the circle, an impossibly intricate thing that qualified as much as a work of art as a magical working, and now the time had come to build the gateway itself. That was the part that required the rare and expensive components. He’d managed to procure several of them already, leaving the rarest and most expensive—a magical substance called Vanazarite that alternated between solid and liquid depending on the amount of ambient arcane energy in the area—for last because it was highly volatile and there was no point in procuring it until he needed it. It wasn’t as if people were building portals all over the world. When you counted both the public and private varieties, generally fewer than a single portal was constructed each year. Aside from himself, Stone could count on the fingers of two hands the number of practitioners he knew who were even capable of doing it anymore.
His call to his usual source, a Mongolian woman whose true name he’d never known and who went only by “Oyunaa,” had come up empty. “I am sorry,” she told him ruefully in her thick accent. “I had a small supply of the substance, but I am afraid it has recently been purchased.”
“Is that right? By whom?”
She chuckled. “You know I cannot tell you that. But I will make a note of your interest. I have a team out searching for more, and I promise you are at the top of my list when I obtain it.”
Damn. Well, that was brilliant. After he ended the call, and not for the first time, he grumbled not entirely flattering things about Madame Huan, who used to be his other most reliable source for such things. Ever since the business with the rifts, she’d headed for the hills and was now actively avoiding him—and she was bloody good at avoiding people. If he ever located her again, he had quite a number of things he planned to say to her.
But none of that was solving his problems now. There wasn’t much else he could do with the portal without the substance. Once again, he wished he hadn’t chosen to take this particular summer off—work would have been a welcome distraction. For now, he’d have to make do with his research. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but maybe he could finally finish the damned paper.
He did have one other thing to distract him: The Cardinal Sin, the bar band he played with along with three other Stanford professors, had a gig Friday night. He was looking forward to it, especially now that, after a few more performances in the meantime, the band’s fans finally seemed to have forgotten about his catastrophic stage dive a couple years ago. It was getting annoying, standing up there on stage playing lead guitar and watching the audience eyeing him like they expected him to keel over any second. The looks in their eyes helped him at long last comprehend one of the allures of stock-car racing: even though nobody would ever admit it aloud, the crashes were one of the most interesting parts.
He thought Jason and Amber might come to see the show, and was a little disappointed when he didn’t spot them in the audience. That, in turn, reminded him of all the times Verity had come out to see him—and what they’d usually done after the show. And that finally solidified what had been causing his growing unease all week.
The Occult Symposium was next week. Verity would be there, trying to drum up support for her magical-oversight proposal.
It was the first time since she’d left that he would know where, specifically, she was. He’d promised not to go, and he had no reason to break that promise, but he’d found her haunting his dreams more often than usual this past week.
Her, and the conversation he’d had with Amber.
If he wanted to be completely truthful with himself, it was mostly the conversation.
He arrived at this epiphany halfway through the band’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” and had to force himself to concentrate more carefully so he didn’t screw up the melody. Fortunately, the band was due for a break after, and he gratefully stepped down from the stage and headed to the bar for a Guinness when the song ended.
“You seemed a little distracted during that last one,” Gerry Hook said. “Something on your mind?”
“I’ve always got something on my mind.” Stone kept his tone light, though his thoughts were anything but.
“You’re supposed to be on vacation this summer. Lying on the beach, drinking margaritas and working on your tan.” He eyed Stone up and down. “Which is definitely something you could stand to do.”
Stone was spared offering a smart-ass reply by his phone ringing. He pulled it out and was surprised to see Jason’s number. “Excuse me,” he said to Hook. “I’ve got to take this.” He turned away from him and answered. “Jason. Bit late to be calling, isn’t it? I’d hoped you might make the show tonight.”
“Oh—right. That was tonight, wasn’t it? Sorry, Al. We got a little buried.”
“Quite all right—I’m not that easy to disappoint. But why are you calling now? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah. You need to come down here, though—Gina did some more digging, and she came up with something you’re gonna want to hear.”
Stone glanced back toward the stage. The other band members were already stepping back up, preparing to begin the next set. “I can’t leave now—we still have another set to play. Can you just tell me?”
“I really want you to see this. Come down when you’re done. We’ll still be here.”
“Come on—I know I’m being the world’s biggest hypocrite by saying this, but don’t keep secrets. If you’ve got something, tell me.”
“She found something the kids all have in common—something a lot bigger than being blond. Just get here as soon as you can, okay?”
21
Somehow, Stone managed to get through the rest of the set without making any major mistakes—at least not any the audience noticed. Fortunately, nobody expected The Cardinal Sin to be pitch perfect—they were a bar band, after all. They probably figured Stone was drunk, though after Jason’s call he hadn’t touched another Guinness.
He begged off helping with teardown, telling Hook he’d received a call he needed to deal with. “I promise, I’ll stay till the bitter end next time. And drinks are on me for the next two.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Go. You’ve had ants in your pants all night, even before the call.”
First Street was mostly dark when Stone arrived. Only the tiny Thayer Investigations office had a light on, and he had no trouble finding a parking spot near the entrance. “Okay,” he called as he pushed open the door. “What’s the big surprise that you couldn’t tell me on the phone?”
Gina sat at her familiar place behind her computer screen, with Jason hovering over her shoulder. Stone wondered if the woman ever slept. Amber lay stretched out on the sofa in the lobby, paging through a magazine.
“Show go okay?” Jason moved aside to make room.
“Bugger the show. It was fine. What have you got? What do the kids have in common?”
“This has been bugging me all week,” Gina said, indicating the screen. “I went with the assumption that the cops checked all the obvious stuff—although I checked it too, of course. Nothing turned up, as you know. No friends or relatives in common, nobody moved from one area to another. So I started going further back.”
“Yes, and—” Stone studied the screen, but right now it was showing a news story about one of the five-year-o
ld kidnappings.
“Took me all day, which is why I’m still here now. And I had to do a couple things that aren’t…entirely legal.”
“Hacking, she means,” Jason said with a grin.
She glared at him, but there was more pride than fire in it. “I called Jason as soon as I found it.” With a flourish, she closed the window on top to reveal another one.
Stone stared at it. “This looks like…the birth record for one of the victims? I don’t see—”
“Every one of these kids—well, the ones I could find, but so far that’s seven out of the nine we know about—was conceived with the help of a fertility clinic.”
Something chilled in the pit of Stone’s stomach. “Bloody hell.”
“Yeah. I got to thinking—if what you were saying before is true, and the kidnapper is looking for something specific about these particular kids—I thought maybe whatever they have in common might be something medical. This info wasn’t easy to get, by the way.”
Stone exchanged glances with Jason. Now that Gina had brought it up, he remembered an offhand comment Sylvia Ellerman had made when they talked to her—about how she and her husband had tried for a baby for a long time, and the fertility treatments had been “hell.” “Was it all the same fertility clinic?”
She shook her head. “No. It would be a lot easier to crack this if it was, but there are at least three. One in Chicago, one near Miami, and one here.” She pulled up three other records, arranging them side by side on the screen.
Stone looked them over. All three had different names, none of which had anything in common. “Did you find any connection between them?”
“Not yet. Still digging. But…” She pointed. “Of the ones I found, all of them are out of business.”
Damn. That made things more difficult. But given that the youngest of the most recent group of children was eleven years old, it didn’t entirely surprise him. “Did you check to see if any of the kids had them in common?”
“Yeah, and they did. Tyler Ellerman and one other kid who was taken in this more recent group were both connected with this one: New Beginnings IVF Solutions in Menlo Park. But like I said, they’re not in business anymore. Haven’t been for years.”
Stone didn’t reply right away. He paced, letting his mind spin. “So…” he said after a few moments, “let me think out loud here for a bit. At least seven out of nine of the children were conceived with fertility treatments, and some of them from the same agencies. Are you sure there’s no connection between them? Did you check the owners, track down any silent partners—there’s got to be something.”
She flashed him a tired smile. “I’m good, Dr. Stone, but I’m not good enough to get all that in a few hours. You need to give me more time. Believe me, I’m already going in the same directions you are.”
“You should get some sleep,” Amber called from the sofa. “Jason, don’t be a slave-driver. This is important, but she’s not gonna be worth shit if you exhaust her.”
“It’s okay,” Gina said. “Actually, I’ve got a better setup at home. If it’s cool with you, I’ll take these files with me and see what I can dig up there.”
“Uh…sure.” Jason glanced at Stone for agreement. “This computer stuff isn’t likely to be dangerous, right?”
Stone thought about what they’d done to him, which didn’t speak highly of what they were capable of. “Well…I’d be careful if I were you. Don’t let them catch you poking your nose about where it doesn’t belong.”
“They won’t catch me.” Her voice was full of confidence. “I doubt they even have a clue anybody’s on to this stuff, to be honest. It’s pretty farfetched.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I’m serious,” Stone said. “be careful. Don’t take unnecessary chances. I believe this man—or these people, because he might not be working alone—could cause trouble if he’s poked too hard.”
“Yeah, okay. Got it.” Gina didn’t seem worried. She gathered her laptop, a couple of flash drives, and a portable drive in a soft case, and shoved them all into her patch-covered backpack. “I’ll call you if I get anything, Jason. See you tomorrow. ’Night, all.”
Stone waited until she’d left and the front door swung shut behind her before letting his breath out. “This is bad.”
“Well—yeah,” Jason agreed. “Sounds like some kind of freaky mad-scientist shit. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That whoever our man is, he’s not only looking for something natural about these kids, but he possibly put it there in the first place?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
Amber swung her legs around, tossed the magazine aside, and stood. “So, you think this guy did something to the kids while they were still embryos? What could he do? I mean, you can’t create mages in a Petri dish, right? You can’t do something to unborn kids to make them manifest magical powers. What?” she asked, looking at Stone with narrowed eyes.
Stone was sure he’d just gone pale. He let out a slow breath and lowered himself into a chair. “It’s possible, yes. Maybe.”
“What the hell?” Jason said. “You never said anything about creating mages in a test tube.”
“No…because I didn’t think it was possible. It may not be possible, which explains why our man is snatching these kids and then letting them go. That suggests to me that whatever he tried to instill in them, it didn’t take. It sounds like he’s done two series of experiments, five years apart—at least that we know of. There might be more we haven’t found yet, perhaps in some other part of the world. But in any case, he…does whatever he does, then waits for the subjects to hit puberty and grabs them so he can check for any signs of success.”
“That’s got to take a phenomenal amount of patience. Waiting that long without any data, and then finding out whatever you did, didn’t work.”
Stone shrugged. “Drugs take years to develop, before they’re given approval to be sold. Scientists are used to waiting a long time for results, and a mage scientist probably has more patience than a mundane one, because he’ll likely live longer. But I admit, this is a bit on the extreme end.”
“So…” Amber said, propping herself against the side of Gina’s desk, “what could he have done to them? Do you know? Is there…I don’t know…scientific literature about this kind of thing?”
“I’m not sure, honestly. It’s not the sort of thing I seek out, and if there were, it wouldn’t be anywhere out in the open—even as open as magical publications get. But I do know it’s possible to manipulate an embryo or fetus in an attempt to instill magic.” He swallowed, taking a couple of deep breaths. He felt disassociated, as if his body was somewhere else entirely. “But the one case I’ve heard of involved a child who already had a strong magical heritage. I haven’t been able to turn up any sign of magic in the families of any of our victims.” He hoped Jason wouldn’t ask him to elaborate further. He’d done his best to forget about those things he’d discovered about his early life, and now wasn’t the time to dredge them up again. Especially if he wanted to stay sharp for this investigation.
Amber shot him a hard look. “Are you okay?”
“Just…tired. I’ll be fine.”
Her suspicious gaze didn’t waver, but she let it go. “So, assuming you’re right about what this guy is doing—and that’s still a fairly big ‘if,’ you realize—how did he pick them? If we can figure that out, it might help us anticipate his next moves.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Stone said. “Perhaps he had some way of predicting which ones had a chance of being receptive to magical tinkering. I’d imagine that the clinics dealt with many more clients that didn’t get tinkered with, otherwise we’d have seen more kidnappings.”
“Or they died,” Amber said soberly.
Stone jerked his head up. “Bloody hell…” he whispered. She was right: any kind of in-vitro manipulation, even in the mundane world, could carry the danger of failure at a very early point. “Can yo
u ask Gina to check on that, as long as she’s hacking into places she shouldn’t be? Were there any unexplained miscarriages?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “I’ll give her that tomorrow.”
“Probably can’t check deaths any earlier than that,” Amber said. “IVF involves harvesting a lot of eggs, and I don’t think it’s uncommon for some of them to die before they’re implanted.”
“Okay.” Stone’s head was still whirling. “I’m certain we’re on to something here, but we don’t have all the details yet. We need to know if these clinics are connected with each other, and who ran them.”
“And also if that guy in your sketch had anything to do with them,” Jason said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a name, and we can track him down before he catches on that we’re on to him this far.” He stood. “Not much else we can do tonight, I don’t think. Let’s head home and start fresh tomorrow. In the meantime, Al, you work on trying to guess what this guy’s doing to the kids—and everybody try to figure out why he’s picking the ones he is.”
Stone barely noticed the brief walk to his car. Despite Jason’s request, he wasn’t thinking about why the kidnapper had chosen the particular victims he did. Instead, his mind was far away, in a windswept, forested village in northern England.
He hadn’t told Jason about what he and Verity had discovered during their captivity in his mad grandmother’s compound in Windermere. The only reason Verity herself knew was that she was involved, and even she didn’t have the whole story. He still occasionally had nightmares about what Nessa Lennox and her people had done to him before he was born, infusing him with alchemical concoctions and subjecting him to treatments designed to boost his magical potential so he’d be more useful for their plans. There was no way to know whether those treatments had worked, or whether he simply possessed prodigious magical talent because he was the sixth in an unbroken line of mages. That was so unusual as to be almost nonexistent nowadays—the only other one he knew was his own son Ian, and possibly his old master, William Desmond. There might be others, but they didn’t generally advertise the fact.
