by R. L. King
“Look,” he said. “I’m still your master, at least for a few more months, and I said the subject is closed. Pass the bread, will you? And let’s talk about something else.”
She sighed and shook her head in frustration, but she didn’t push it.
Stone remained silent as they finished eating, casting occasional glances at Verity across the table.
They’d been…different around each other ever since they’d gotten back. Not enough that anyone else would have noticed—they still maintained the same easy camaraderie during Verity’s magic lessons, and they dined together at either Stone’s or Verity’s place at least a couple times a week, but that had been as far as it had gone. Neither of them had mentioned or even acknowledged what had happened the night they’d returned from England; it seemed, in fact, as if both of them were doing their best not to acknowledge it. Instead, they’d reverted, without even noticing it, into a model that fell somewhere between “teacher and favorite student” and “good friends.”
But nothing more.
The relief both of them felt when they’d located an apartment that both Verity and Stone could agree on had been almost palpable, and their relationship had lost some of its tension when she’d at last settled into her own place. Between Stone’s trips back and forth to Caventhorne and his work at the University, he barely found time to keep up Verity’s magic lessons. For now, he preferred it that way. It made a lot of things easier, even if it was just postponing the inevitable.
When they finished, he helped her gather the dishes and take them to the kitchen. He did it the old-fashioned way; before, he would use magic for useless things like this because he enjoyed exercising the power, but now he’d become mindful of having to conserve his energy as long as possible. If Verity noticed, she didn’t comment.
“How’s the job?” he asked as he set the plates on the sideboard.
“It’s—good.” She’d finally managed to find a job at a nearby coffee shop, and had been working there for a little over a week. “Not a career or anything, but I like the people and it’ll be nice to be making some money again.”
“Good, good.” He paused, lingering in the doorway. “Listen, I’ve got to get going soon—need to catch a few hours’ sleep before I head back to Caventhorne later on. Do you need help with the dishes?”
“No, it’s fine. You go on. You need your sleep. Tell Eddie and Arthur I said hi.”
“I will. They want to see you again, if you ever want to come back over.”
“Maybe one of these days. We’ll see.”
He didn’t miss the odd note in her tone, nor his own relief at her reply. Eddie and Ward were both quite perceptive, and would be sure to notice something was up, so it was probably for the best that Verity remained stateside for now. “Right, then—I’ll be off. Come by tomorrow at seven and we’ll have your next lesson. And finish that reading I gave you, all right?”
“You got it, Doc.” She sounded more confident now that they were back to familiar territory.
He left the apartment and walked back toward the BMW, deep in thought. It would certainly be nice if his life slowed down a bit, at least for a while. Between the University, Caventhorne, and Verity’s lessons, it left him little time to do anything else, including sleep. And he still wanted to get back to hunting through the archives of family history back at his place in England. The events of the last few weeks had lit a fire under him—he’d never been particularly interested in his past before, but after what had happened, a compulsion to learn everything he could about his ancestors had taken hold. Aubrey had promised to search for whatever he could locate, but Stone suspected the good stuff was probably in places the caretaker couldn’t reach. Which meant he’d have to do the hunting himself.
If he ever got any time, that was.
Ah, well. At least he could get a few hours’ rest before he had to head back to England. Ward, Eddie, and Kerrick had things well in hand at Caventhorne by now—perhaps he’d have time to pop down to Surrey and do a bit of searching.
He’d almost reached the car and was pulling the key from his pocket when his mobile phone rang.
“Brilliant…” he murmured. “What now?” It was too early for anyone from England to be calling—unless something had gone terribly wrong.
He pulled it from his pocket. “Yes, hello?”
“Dr. Alastair Stone?” The male voice was unfamiliar.
“Yes?” Stone opened the car door and got in, but didn’t start it yet.
“My name is Maurice Timmons. I’m a detective with the San Francisco police department. Do you have a moment to talk with me?”
“Er…yes, of course. What can I do for you?” Stone frowned, trying to think of anything he might have done recently that might attract the attention of the San Francisco police. He hadn’t even been up there since the beginning of the year.
“Well…it’s more like what you might be able to do for us. You are the Alastair Stone who teaches at Stanford, right? The occult expert?”
Stone shook his head in frustration and made sure his sigh wasn’t audible. So that was what this was about. Somebody wanting a consult. Normally he enjoyed that sort of thing, but right now the last thing he wanted was to add another item to his already packed schedule. “I am, but I’m afraid I’m quite busy—”
“Please hear me out, Dr. Stone. We’ve got a rather…unusual situation up here, and your name was recommended as someone who might be able to help us figure out what we’re dealing with.”
In spite of himself, Stone perked up at the word unusual. Sometimes he wished his legendary curiosity had an off switch—it would make so much of his life easier. “Unusual?”
“Yes. I don’t want to go into details on the phone, but would it be possible for you to come up here and take a look? I know it’s late, but we need to move fast on this.”
Stone was about to ask if it could wait until tomorrow, but he realized that wouldn’t help—tomorrow he had a class at eleven o’clock, and with all the time he’d been missing lately, it wouldn’t be a good idea to bail on it. “Can you give me any other details?”
“Not on the phone. But I’ll tell you this—I’ve been on the force for over twenty years, and this is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. By far.”
“I see.” That did it—Stone knew how hard it was for the mundane police to acknowledge anything involving the supernatural—if they got to the point of calling him, in his guise as a mundane expert on the occult, they must have exhausted their other options. “All right—I’ll come as soon as I can. It will take me at least an hour to get up there.”
“No problem. The scene’s not going anywhere.” He gave Stone an address. “It’s a storage facility in the eastern Potrero Hill area.”
A storage facility? That was a new one. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, Detective.”
3
On the way up to San Francisco, Stone called Eddie Monkton and left a message telling him something had come up and he wouldn’t be able to make it to Caventhorne. It wasn’t a big problem—he’d already completed almost all of the only job he was truly needed there for: recalibrating the complex wards concealing the house’s hidden areas so Eddie and Ward could get through them. He’d finished the portal rooms at both Caventhorne and the London house—the most important bit, since it allowed the two of them to travel quickly between London and Caventhorne. He’d also done the areas around the biggest part of Desmond’s magical library, which was primarily where they would do their work sorting and cataloguing the collection. That meant they could get on with the magical end of the endeavor, while Kerrick mobilized the staff in the mundane areas and acclimated them to their new roles.
Because Desmond had left his entire collection of magical tomes, items, and other mystical gear to Stone, he’d made sure to give it all at least a cursory examination before turning the place over to his two friends. As it turned out, most of the rarest, most valuable, and most dangerous items in his old master�
��s collection were stored behind additional wards inside his private office—the same place where Stone had discovered his body—and a couple other nearby rooms. He left them in place there, as well as moving a few other items into the office before recalibrating the other wards. If Eddie and Ward wanted to study them he’d let them, but it was safer to keep them restricted. For now, he left the wards on the office as they were, accessible only to him.
It took him nearly an hour to get to the storage facility; by the time he left Verity’s place it was past most of the commute crush, but driving in San Francisco was never a pleasant experience. Usually when he went up there he took BART and caught a cab to his destination, but this time he thought it would be easier to have his own car.
The facility was in a mostly decent area, though Stone still noted a few junkies and homeless people huddled in doorways as he drew close to his destination. Almost reflexively, he looked for the familiar symbols scrawled by the Forgotten, indicating that they considered this either a good or a bad place, but he saw none. He hardly ever saw them anymore, and never fresh ones. Sometimes he felt guilty about not checking further into the fate of the Forgotten he and Jason and Verity used to know, but he always seemed to have something else more pressing to do. Especially lately.
He spotted the facility and drove in through the open gate, scanning the space numbers as he passed the outdoor units. He needn’t have, though—when he turned the corner toward the main building, two police cruisers and another white sedan that screamed “unmarked car” came into view parked out front. He paused a moment after he parked to examine the area with magical sight, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Whatever it was, it must be inside.
Either that, or there wasn’t anything supernatural at all, and he’d come all the way up here for nothing. Odds were highly in favor of that, actually—while mundanes commonly rationalized real supernatural events even when they occurred right in front of them, they also tended to see the supernatural where none existed. It was one of the things that made dealing with them so frustrating.
When Stone got out and approached the police cars, a beefy uniformed officer intercepted him. “Sorry, sir, can’t go in there right now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow to get your stuff.”
“I’m Alastair Stone. I’m here to see Detective Timmons.”
The cop gave him a suspicious once-over, but then spoke into his shoulder mic. A few minutes later, another man came out of the building and hurried over.
“Dr. Stone. Thank you for coming.” Maurice Timmons was in his forties, tall, trim but a little paunchy in the manner of an athlete who didn’t get to exercise as much as he used to. The cruisers’ red and blue lights flashed patterns on his bald head and the dark glasses perched on top of it.
Stone shook his offered hand. “I don’t know what kind of help you’re expecting from me, but I’m happy to take a look.”
“Come on inside. We’re hoping you can cast a little light on what went on in here. Word is you’ve got some expertise in this area, and you’ve worked with law enforcement before—like on that weird serial-killer case last summer.”
Ah, yes. It shouldn’t have surprised him—word got around among the cops, and he was developing a definite reputation as the local weird-shit expert. On the plus side, it meant he got to examine situations that might require a magical touch before they spiraled out of control; on the minus side, it meant he got called about every crackpot case the police couldn’t figure out. Since last summer when he’d dealt with the demon Archie and his cobbled-together minions, various cops from as far away as Los Angeles had called him to consult on four other cases. All four of them had turned out to be one hundred percent mundane in nature.
Timmons led him upstairs to the second floor, past a long series of closed blue roll-up doors lining both sides of a hallway. Even from here Stone could see bright light shining from around the corner at the other end, and hear the crackle of radio chatter in the silence.
“You found something in a storage locker?” Stone asked, more to make conversation than anything. “Was someone murdered?”
“We’re not sure.” Timmons kept going, maintaining his purposeful stride. “That’s part of why we called you.”
Stone had no trouble keeping up with him. “You’re not sure?”
“You’ll see. I want you to get a fresh look at the scene, without any preconceptions.”
They rounded the corner. Two other plainclothes cops, a short , sturdy man in shirtsleeves and loosened tie and a taller, thinner woman in jeans and a purple blouse, stood off to one side. They appeared to be chatting, perhaps waiting for Timmons to come back. They both looked up as he and Stone approached.
“So, this your ghost hunter, Mo?” the short man said, eyeing Stone up and down. He didn’t appear to be doing much to hide his contempt.
Timmons flashed him a dirty look. “This is Dr. Alastair Stone. Dr. Stone, these are my colleagues, Leo Blum and Toni Vasquez.”
“Don’t mind Leo, Dr. Stone,” Toni Vasquez said. “He’s kind of the department skeptic. Which is weird, since he was the one who first brought your name up when we were looking for an expert.”
Leo Blum shrugged. “With somethin’ like this, I knew you guys were gonna wanna check the occult angle. Sooner we get it over with, the better, so I figured we might as well get a guy who knows what the hell he’s talkin’ about.”
“Well, I agree with that last part, at least,” Timmons said. “This is definitely weird, and we’d like to get your take on it, Dr. Stone.” He pulled gloves and paper booties from a couple of nearby boxes. “Please put these on, then take a look. Try not to touch anything, okay?”
Stone donned the gloves and slipped the booties over his own boots, curious now. Half of him hoped this would turn out to be another false alarm—he didn’t have time to investigate another supernatural situation—but as always, the other half hoped it would be something he hadn’t seen before. Even overscheduled to the point of exhaustion, he could never resist an occult puzzle.
As soon as he saw the scene, he knew that second part—the curious one—was going to win this time.
Aside from a few yellow number tags indicating the investigators had taken some photographs, the scene appeared not to have been disturbed. Stone stood for several moments, taking it in first with mundane sight.
In the center of the mostly empty space, a large ritual circle had been carefully laid out. A closed chest stood in the circle’s middle, its lock hanging loosely around the hasp. Stone took these in quickly, but they weren’t what captured the bulk of his attention.
Lying half-in, half-out of the circle was what looked like a heap of carefully arranged clothing in a roughly human-shaped configuration. It would have looked like someone had laid it out to suggest its occupant had somehow departed leaving behind only his clothing. Immediately, images of Acantha Lennox’s ashed body and blood-red robe flashed to Stone’s mind, and he quickly banished them. He didn’t have time to think about that.
Besides, this was clearly not an ashing. Poking out of the brown workman’s jacket was a white skull with a few strands of dark hair still attached, and two skeletal hands emerged from the sleeves. Stone took a step forward for a closer look, staying well back from the circle even though the body had obviously already broken it by disturbing the objects arranged around its perimeter.
“What do you make of it, Dr. Stone?”
Stone didn’t reply right away. He examined the body for a few more moments, focusing on the odd concave spot on its back that seemed to flatten it out. “What happened there?” he asked, pointing at it.
“We think he got stepped on,” Timmons said.
“By whom? Did someone report this?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute.” The detective indicated the circle. “What do you make of that thing?”
Stone paced around the outside of the circle, examining the sigils, symbols, and items that formed it. Then he stopped on the far side of
it and switched to magical sight.
As he expected, the circle was dead now, probably disrupted when the body fell on it—or stepped into it when the man was still alive. Traces of magic—powerful magic—hung in the area, though. Something big had happened here, and not too long ago. He wondered if the circle’s magic had done this to the victim when he’d unwittingly crossed it.
Nearly forgetting that the detectives were even present, Stone crouched next to the circle and focused his examination, trying to read the sigils.
“Dr. Stone?” Timmons’s voice was soft, but insistent.
Stone snapped his gaze up, shifting back to normal sight. “Oh. Sorry. I get a bit caught up.”
“Can you tell what it is?”
“The circle? Yes. It’s a protective barrier—or it was.”
Behind Timmons, both Blum and Vasquez didn’t hide skeptical expressions. Timmons himself had better control. “A…protective barrier. You mean it’s supposed to be protecting whatever’s in that chest?”
“Well, that’s what the design is,” Stone said, rising to his feet. “That’s clearly what whoever set this up intended. Do you know who rented this locker? Is that him, there?”
“No, that’s not him. This guy’s name is—was—Frank Gallegos. He and his brother bought the contents of storage lockers when their owners didn’t pay the bills. You know, speculators, like on that TV show.”
Vasquez stepped forward, still looking skeptical. “So you’re saying that this guy—what—crossed the protective barrier and this happened to him? No offense, Dr. Stone, but you do realize how crazy that sounds, right?”
Stone raised his hands to forestall her protests. “Hold on, Ms. Vasquez. All I did was answer Detective Timmons’s question. He asked me about the circle, and I told him what I know based on my studies. What I didn’t do is speculate about what might have happened to Mr. Gallegos here.” He pointed at the chest. “Besides, it’s not that kind of circle. I don’t see any indication that it’s designed to kill or even injure someone who crosses it. It’s designed more to protect whatever’s inside. Have you opened the chest yet?”
