Mortal Imperative: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 24)

by R. L. King

  “You look like you’re doing all right for yourself,” Stone said, taking the place in.

  “Yeah. I was renting back in the Bay Area, but Laura had that big place in Palo Alto. Made a pretty penny when she sold it, and even after giving a bunch of the money to her kids, we still had enough to buy this outright and help out a few of the other folks in the colony. It’s a lot cheaper to live here, which is nice, and we didn’t need anything fancy.”

  Stone followed Grider up the walk and into the house. The curtains were open, revealing a living room decorated with understated taste. If Stone hadn’t known Grider was married before, the décor would have given it away.

  “We’re back,” Grider called.

  A woman hurried out of the kitchen and broke into a smile when she spotted Stone. “Oh! Dr. Stone, it’s good to see you. It’s been a long time. Thank you so much for coming.”

  Laura Phelps (now, presumably, Laura Grider) likewise didn’t look much different from when Stone had seen her last ten years ago. She was still comfortably plump, dressed in casual but fashionable clothes, and her hair was neatly coiffed in a no-nonsense style. Like Grider, she hadn’t aged much. She’d been in her late forties when he’d known her, and now she appeared perhaps in her early fifties at most. Apparently ghouls, similar to mages, aged more slowly than mundanes. It made sense, given their regenerative qualities.

  “Come on into the kitchen,” Laura said. “I’m sure you’re tired from your trip.”

  Stone chuckled. “Not really, to be honest. But I wouldn’t turn down a cup of coffee.”

  The kitchen was bright and cheerful, decorated with a colorful butterfly motif. Laura bustled around gathering cups of coffee for everyone, then took a seat next to Grider at the table. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’m worried about Orville and Chris.”

  Whenever he interacted with any of the “civilized” ghouls, Stone always felt vaguely uncomfortable. He wondered if the shiny stainless-steel refrigerator with family photos and take-out menus stuck to it was stocked with little packages somebody had smuggled out of hospitals, funeral homes, or worse. He felt guilty about it, too—as a mage, he’d dealt with plenty of creatures, beings, and people who didn’t fit the vanilla-mundane mode, and the ghouls were no different. They were what they were, and punishing them for needing small infusions of human flesh to keep them alive would be no better than punishing a dog because it needed to eat meat. As long as they didn’t kill anyone to obtain their meals, Stone didn’t believe he had cause to find them unsettling.

  That didn’t mean he didn’t, though.

  Perhaps getting down to business would help alleviate his unease. After all, this was just another problem to solve, and he was good at that. “Tell me what’s happened,” he said, sipping his coffee. “Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

  Grider flashed him an approving look. Down to business was good. “Okay, so, like I said before, our group all lives in the area, but not close together. It’s safer that way—turns out it’s dangerous when a colony decides to move all at once, because there’s a chance the locals will get suspicious about a bunch of unrelated people showing up from the same area. I hadn’t thought about that at the time, but I was still new to this whole thing.”

  Stone nodded. It made sense, if anybody wanted to get nosy.

  “Mostly,” Laura said, “we all just go about our business, and live our lives.” She looked at Stone. “I don’t know if you remember from before, but except for our…dietary needs, there isn’t much difference between us and…well…normal people.”

  “Yes, I remember.” After Grider called, Stone had popped home to England and located the notes he’d taken on ghouls, along with some supplemental research he’d done shortly after he’d dealt with them previously. They were very rare—there were no documented cases of them anywhere in Europe he could find, and even the rumors of their existence in the United States were sketchy. If he hadn’t met some in person, he’d have doubted they even existed anymore. The best information he could find suggested that, as Grider had said, there were two other small colonies in the South and the Midwest, but he got no details about them.

  “I’m retired now,” Grider said. “Like I mentioned, I’m working part-time at a golf shop, but I have my pension from the force, and we’ve put away some of Laura’s money. The rest of us are mostly still working—Orville got a job at a hospital in Chattanooga, and a couple other folks got in at places where they could help us get what we need: one’s an orderly at a different hospital, and another one works at a mortuary. We’ve been very stable over the years.”

  “You said you added some new people to the group,” Stone said. “Was that recent? Did you investigate them before they joined?”

  “They’re not that new,” Laura said. “Frank and Chris and a couple others did check into them, but they’re both older and they’ve been here more than five years.”

  “Yeah, I’d be very surprised if they had anything to do with Orville’s and Chris’s disappearance,” Grider said. “My gut’s still pretty good these days, and it says no.”

  “All right, fair enough. Let’s leave them for now, then. So what happened to make you think Lu and Belmont are missing, as opposed to just…stepping out for some reason of their own?”

  Grider sighed. “Chris, I might have thought that about. He can be a little flaky sometimes, and he does go off on his own every now and then. But Orville’s not like that. He takes his job very seriously.”

  “Did he just…leave?” Stone asked. “Didn’t say anything to his employer?”

  “See, that’s the thing—I don’t know. This only happened a few days ago, and it would look really weird for some stranger to call and ask about him. The last thing any of us want to do is put one of our major suppliers at risk by drawing attention to him.”

  “Yes…I can see how that could be a problem. Have you been to his home? Or Belmont’s?”

  “Yeah…well, I went by, anyway, when they didn’t show up at our scheduled meeting. I tried to call first, then dropped by and knocked on their doors. Nobody answered.”

  “So you didn’t…break in or anything?”

  “Not yet, no.” He shot Laura a grim look. “Here’s the thing, Dr. Stone. We have to be careful. Really careful. If I called the cops and told them Chris and Orville were missing, and they went to their house to do a welfare check and found…well, you know…it could put not only them but all of us in danger. I can’t risk that on my own—especially since I didn’t see any signs of forced entry or problems around either of their places. No broken windows, no tool marks around the doors…nothing.”

  “So for all we know, they might have left for reasons of their own,” Laura added.

  “But you don’t think so.” Stone took another sip of his coffee and stared out the kitchen window into the backyard. A hummingbird was flitting around a feeder just outside the window.

  “Like I said, my gut doesn’t steer me wrong very often.” Grider drained his cup and got up to put it in the sink. “My feeling is that something’s wrong. That’s why I called you. I figured you could try one of those rituals of yours and see if you can find them.”

  “I can do that, of course. But I think we should check their homes first.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you told me. But I can get us in without showing any sign we were there. And besides, unless you’ve got a tether object, we’ll have to go there to get one.”

  “A tether object?” Laura looked up from where she was rinsing the coffee cups.

  “Yes—something belonging to the person I’m trying to find. The more emotional significance it has to the owner, the better the connection.”

  Grider looked dubious. “I don’t like it…but if you’re sure you can get in without anyone figuring it out…”

  “Do you know if they’ve got any sort of burglar alarms or cameras?”

  “Nah, pretty sure they don’t. Th
is area’s pretty safe.”

  “Shouldn’t be any problem at all.” He stood. “Right, then. Shall we?”

  “Now?”

  “Why not? I can’t stay long, unfortunately—I’ve got to be back in the Bay Area in the next couple of days. So the sooner, the better.”

  “Okay.” Grider exchanged glances with Laura, then turned back. “I’ll take you over there now. You got what you need?”

  “Yes, ready to go. Thank you for the coffee, Laura.”

  She nodded. “It really is good to see you again. Now that you know where we are, maybe you can come back sometime under…better circumstances.”

  “Let’s plan on it.” In all honesty, Stone wasn’t sure he wanted to, but he’d deal with that when and if it became an issue. Now, he had some people to find. He hoped the search would go smoothly.

  “We’ll go to Orville’s place first, since it’s closer.” Grider steered the SUV along more tree-lined streets, occasionally making a turn.

  “Nice place you’ve found here.” Stone leaned back in his seat and took in the area. It looked like the quintessential American suburb, the kind you’d expect to see in a Norman Rockwell painting. He didn’t think these sorts of towns existed anymore.

  “Yeah. There was a small colony already here when we moved—a couple folks in our group knew some people here, so they helped us settle in. It’s a little quiet after the Bay Area, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And best of all, people mind their own business.”

  “Yes, I suppose that would be an important consideration.”

  “It’s pretty much the important consideration. With this many of us around, having anyone find out would be…” He shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about it. Especially nowadays, with everything ending up on the internet.”

  “Has anything changed recently? Anything that might make you think either Dr. Lu or Mr. Belmont would suddenly leave the area?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Believe me, I’ve been trying to think of anything that might have been suspicious, but nothing’s popped up.” He glanced quickly at Stone before turning his attention back to the road. “Trust me—we didn’t want to call you any more than I think you wanted to be here. I have a feeling you probably wished you’d seen the last of us.”

  Stone shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t entirely true. I’m…not comfortable with your particular way of life. I don’t judge it, and I’ve certainly got nothing against it, in your case. But that doesn’t mean I want to spend much time in proximity with it.”

  “I get that.” Grider didn’t sound offended. “Trust me—I was the same way at first. When I first got infected, all I wanted to do was kill myself. I didn’t want to turn into…some kind of monster. But then Orville pointed out it might be a way of dealing with my brain tumor…and I didn’t know what to think. I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do. It was Laura who convinced me eventually. She made me see that she and everybody else in the group weren’t any different except in that one way. She made me feel like maybe I wasn’t done doin’ some good in this world. But I still got myself good and drunk and did some serious soul-searching before I made the final decision.”

  “I’m not surprised. And I certainly can’t blame you for doing everything you could to deal with a bad situation. Survival instinct can direct one down some interesting paths.”

  Grider half-chuckled, half-snorted. “Yeah, but maybe not quite this interesting, for most people. Ah—here we are.” He pointed to a two-story blue house set back from the road.

  “Don’t park directly in front,” Stone said. “I can use magic to keep us from being seen.”

  “Nice trick.” He continued past the house and parked two doors down. “You gonna turn us invisible or something?”

  “Not quite. Just…make it less likely anyone will notice us. Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself.”

  When they got out, Stone pulled a disregarding spell over them. He’d brought his disguise amulet along, but wasn’t using it currently. Jason’s paranoia aside, he wasn’t doing anything illegal…at least not yet.

  Orville Lu’s driveway was empty, and the garage was closed. Shifting to magical sight for a quick look, Stone didn’t spot any signs of agitation or violence. It looked as normal as he might have expected a suburban house to look in the middle of a calm, sunny day.

  “We just gonna walk right up to the front door and go in?” Grider asked skeptically, looking around as if expecting the neighbors to be monitoring their progress.

  “Easiest way. We’ll look less conspicuous doing that than if we try to break in through the back yard. My spell works best when we look like we know what we’re doing.”

  Grider didn’t seem convinced, but he followed Stone up the walk and watched as he popped the front door lock and used magic to open it.

  Stone didn’t enter the house immediately. “Did you bring gloves?”

  “Yeah.” Grider pulled two pairs of latex gloves from his pocket and offered him one. “We still need to be careful. Try not to touch anything you don’t need to.”

  “Yes, I’ve been getting some instruction from some friends with law enforcement experience. Let’s go. I’d like to finish this as soon as possible.”

  Together, they went inside and Stone closed the door behind them. “You’ve been here before, yes?”

  “Yeah, lots of times. We have a lot of our meetings here.”

  “You take the lead, then.”

  Stone had only visited Orville Lu’s house in the Bay Area once, but this place had the same neat, austere quality. He kept magical sight up as he followed Grider through the lower floor, examining the living room, kitchen, dining room, and bath. Nothing looked out of the ordinary as far as he could tell: most of the area was clean and arranged, with just the right amount of clutter to indicate someone actually lived in the house. Framed classic-movie posters hung on the walls: Casablanca, Rear Window, Metropolis.

  “Did you try to call either of them?” Stone asked suddenly, looking over the small pile of mail on the kitchen counter.

  “Yeah, of course. That’s the first thing I did when they didn’t show up at the meeting. No answer. Just voicemail.”

  “What about his mail?”

  “What about it?” Grider nodded toward the stack. “See anything interesting there?”

  “That’s not what I mean. If he disappeared, there should be mail piling up somewhere, right?”

  “That’s a damn good point,” Grider said with new respect. “We can check on the way out. I probably shouldn’t go out there now.”

  “No, not yet. Let’s go upstairs.”

  Stone kept magical sight active as they ascended to the top floor. The place had three bedrooms: one master, one repurposed as an office, and the third with the unused quality Stone would expect from a man who lived alone and didn’t get many visitors.

  “His toothbrush is still here,” Grider called from the master bath. “His hairbrush and razor, too. That’s weird, if he left on his own.”

  Stone hurried down the hall. “And you’re sure he hasn’t done something like this before?”

  “Not that I know of. Orville’s a workaholic, but aside from that he’s mostly a homebody. I don’t think he has any family he visits, and he definitely wasn’t married or had kids.”

  “All right. Well—see if you can find something you know he values. A piece of clothing he prefers, a memento, something he cares about or comes into contact with frequently. I’ll probably have to destroy it, so keep that in mind.”

  While Grider looked for a suitable item, Stone drifted back into the office. It looked a lot like his own: bookshelves, a big desk, and a sofa off to the side. Lu’s books were mostly medical references, with a few biographies and other nonfiction volumes. There weren’t any papers on the desk. The drawers weren’t locked, so Stone used magic to open them. Once again, he spotted nothing that caught his attention.

  Except…

 
“Grider?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did Dr. Lu have a computer?”

  “Uh—I dunno. I think he had a laptop. Why?”

  “I don’t see it in his office. Is it there?”

  There was a pause, and then, “Nope, don’t see it. Makes sense, though—he’d take it with him if he left, right?”

  “I suppose that depends on where he went. He might not take it if he went on holiday.”

  “Who knows?” Grider appeared in the doorway holding a They Might Be Giants concert T-shirt. “I think this’ll work—I’ve seen him wearing it a few times, so he must like it.”

  “Brilliant. Come on—let’s go check his mailbox and then head to Belmont’s place.”

  They returned to the ground floor, this time with Stone leading. He was about to open the front door and head outside when he stopped suddenly.

  “What?” Grider asked. “We goin’?”

  “One moment.” Stone whirled and stalked back into the kitchen.

  “What are you looking for?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he used magic to open first the refrigerator, then the freezer.

  “Come on, Stone—what are you looking for in there? Looks pretty empty.”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it? If he’s goin’ on vacation, he doesn’t want to leave stuff that will go bad on him.”

  “Yes, but look at this.” He closed the refrigerator, but left the freezer open. Inside were neatly-stacked boxes of frozen vegetables, ice cube trays, and a large container of chocolate ice cream.

  “Okay…what am I lookin’ at? I don’t see anything unusual.”

  “Once again—exactly. Something’s missing.”

  Grider got it fast. He hurried forward and scrabbled around in the freezer, pulling out boxes and the ice-cream tub and stacking them on the counter. “No meat.”

  Stone nodded soberly. “That’s odd, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It is. We don’t keep much on hand, but everybody gets pretty nervous if they don’t have at least a small emergency stash for when they can’t get to the distribution place.”