by R. L. King
“Oh, come on now. It’s true I’m not terribly interested in the minutiae of baby-related topics, but you two are some of my closest friends. This important to you, so it’s important to me.” He grinned. “Help me out here—I’m trying to work on becoming less of a self-centered prat.”
Verity’s eyes sparkled. “I dunno, Doc, I think that’s going to take more than one baby.”
“Hush, you.” He turned back to Jason and Verity. “So…?”
“If everything goes well, it should be at the end of the year,” Amber said.
“Have you told anybody else yet?” Verity asked. “Like your brothers?”
“Not yet,” Jason said. “We’re keeping it to ourselves, except for you guys, a little longer to make sure nothing…”
Verity nodded soberly, but didn’t finish his sentence: nothing goes wrong. “Are you nervous?”
“Me? No.” Amber grinned. “I’ve always wanted a family, so I’m excited. Jason, on the other hand, is terrified.” She patted him on the shoulder.
Verity patted him too. “You’ll be a great dad.”
“I hope so. I’m just worried something will happen. That’s what dads are supposed to do, right? You gotta admit, a lot of weird shit happens around us. Part of me almost wants to shut Amber up in a room, bring her everything she could possibly want, and keep her away from the world until the kid shows up.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s gonna work,” Amber drawled. “Don’t worry your pretty head, hubby. We bears are tough, and that whole ‘mama bear’ thing? That’s true. Even more for shifters. Anybody gets near this kid with bad intentions, I’ll rip their head off.”
Stone had no doubt she would. “Well,” he said with a chuckle, “perhaps you should focus more on things like nursery colors and less on head-ripping. I’m sure you’ll have a perfectly normal pregnancy.”
“Yeah, like you’d know what that is,” Verity said.
He didn’t bother trying to deny it. “In any case, I promise to stay away from you if you don’t want to take the chance of my weirdness-magnet thing rubbing off on your offspring.”
“No way,” Jason said, and Amber nodded firmly in agreement. “You might bring the weirdness, Al, but I’ve never met anybody who’s better at dealing with it if it happens. And speaking of that, if you need help finding Daphne, let me know. I’m not sure the agency can do anything, but I’m willing to try.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. I’m hoping she’ll call me back and we can go from there.”
He didn’t have any classes the following day, so he stopped by Kolinsky’s shop before noon. “Up for getting some lunch? I’m buying.”
“Of course. If I may make a suggestion, a new Mediterranean restaurant has opened recently in Sunnyvale.”
Stone had long ago begun to wonder if Kolinsky ever went out to eat on his own. He pictured the dragon digging through a sack lunch at his desk, hoping one of his numerous contacts would show up needing a favor so he could cadge something more appealing. “Sounds brilliant. I’ll drive.” Come to think of it, he’d never seen Kolinsky drive anywhere, either. He probably had a dedicated chauffeur for when the ley lines didn’t line up with where he was trying to go.
He had to give the dragon credit, though—he didn’t always pick restaurants that would strain a Silicon Valley CEO’s expense account. This time, the small Moroccan establishment was tucked away in an unassuming strip mall near Mary Street. Its unpretentious décor didn’t promise much, but the aromas wafting out from the kitchen did.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Kolinsky asked after they were seated and had placed their orders.
“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Related to the West Virginia situation?”
“Yes. You haven’t spotted anything else, have you?”
“No. Nor do I expect to. Why? Do you expect me to?”
“I’ve got no idea. Probably not.” He sighed. “Stefan, if I tell you something, can I trust you to keep it to yourself?”
“That depends on what it is.”
It was a reasonable answer. “It’s about my friend. The woman who showed up near where you detected the energy surge.”
“Yes? What about her?”
Stone hesitated. He felt a bit like he was betraying Daphne by revealing this information, but he had told her he was going to consult some friends. And at least Kolinsky wouldn’t put Daphne’s anonymity at risk by blabbing the story around to the wrong people.
Kolinsky was watching him through narrowed eyes as he sipped his wine, waiting patiently for an answer.
“Well—the thing is, she called me yesterday. I don’t know where she is, but she told me most of what she’d told me before was a lie. And now I am convinced she was responsible for the surge.”
“Indeed.”
“Yes. As it turns out, she didn’t escape that portal eleven years ago. She…went somewhere else, and that’s where she’s been all this time. Either it took her a long time to get back, or time runs differently on whatever other dimension she was on, but she finally managed to work out how to get back. She popped in the day before I turned up in Decker’s Gap. Which means there’s a close correlation between the appearance of your power surge and her arrival.”
“I see.”
Stone could see he’d captured the dragon’s attention now. “Does that make sense? Could what you spotted have been some kind of temporary portal popping up and then disappearing?”
“It is possible. The energy was quite strong, but I have not observed many temporary portals.” Their meals arrived, and he paused to sample his tangia before continuing. “Was that the question you wished to ask me?”
“One of them. At least that seems to be one mystery solved. But…I want to help her, Stefan. She doesn’t want to tell me where she is—I think she’d afraid the world will find out she’s back and she’ll end up in the center of a media circus.”
“A reasonable fear.” A quick flash of distaste crossed Kolinsky’s face.
That heartened Stone. His friend didn’t like publicity either, so perhaps he might have a bit of empathy for someone else in the same position. “The thing is, like I said, I want to help her. Send her some money, help her get established somewhere. But she hasn’t got anything beyond what she can steal. No ID, no identity, no bank account…I’m at a bit of a loss about what I can do. Everything I come up with either requires her to have more documentation than she does, or to trust me more than she’s willing to do.”
“What are you asking me to do?”
He sighed. “I don’t even know. I suppose it doesn’t make sense to ask you to talk to your friend who set up the fake IDs for me.”
“Not if you are unable to contact her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. I suppose I’ll just have to hope she calls me back and I can convince her to trust me a bit more.” Stone bowed his head, contemplating his lunch. He wasn’t sure why he’d decided not to tell Kolinsky about Jeremy—perhaps it was because the dragon did have a streak of curiosity that dwarfed his own, and he didn’t want to add too much fuel to the fire. “In any case, I wanted to wrap up your little mystery. Like I said, I’m fairly certain her portal was what you spotted. Let me know if you see anything else, but for now I think there’s that sorted.”
“Thank you. If your friend contacts you again and you wish my help, I am sure we can arrange something.”
Daphne didn’t contact Stone again, at least not within the next couple days. He kept his mobile phone with him at all times, even leaving it on his nightstand with the ringer on while he slept. But each morning when he checked it, he found no voicemails or texts.
When he checked with Laura, she told him the mysterious woman hadn’t called back, so she hadn’t had the chance to give her his number. Laura was a bit of a busybody, and he could tell she was burning with curiosity both about Daphne’s identity and Stone’s interest in her, but he deftly deflected any of her questions until she fin
ally gave up asking.
He was in the South Bay on Friday, so he stopped by Jason’s San Jose agency that afternoon. Gina, the agency’s receptionist-slash-computer whiz, looked up from her screen and flashed him a smile.
“Hey. Haven’t seen you for a while. Jason’s not here. Amber showed up and they went to lunch—” She pointedly glanced at her watch. “—two hours ago.”
“I see. Well, tell them I stopped by, will you?”
“Sure thing. Hey, as long as you’re here, I’ve got a few things for your crank file. I’ve been gathering them up and was going to email them to you next week, but if you want to take a look—”
“Might as well, I suppose. Anything interesting?” He walked around behind her desk.
“Eh. Mostly standard stuff.” She pulled up a file and opened several items. “Let’s see…Bigfoot sighting in the Oregon woods, creepy black-eyed children surrounding a car in Alabama, dead serial killer spotted on a lonely road in Oklahoma…” She snorted. “It all sounds like a bunch of garden-variety urban-legend crap to me.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Stone sighed. “Well, thanks. I suppose I haven’t really got time for more mysteries right now anyway.”
Gina held up a finger. “Give me a sec—let me check the latest batch. I’ve been busy this morning, so I haven’t checked what my bots have brought back since yesterday.”
Stone paced while she tapped keys, his mind returning once again to Jason and Amber’s news. He wondered how his friends’ lives would change after they had a child. He’d had friends before who’d become parents, and had lost contact with most of them. It was as if many people entered a different world when a baby arrived—a world where childless friends didn’t have the interests or the background to follow. He hoped that didn’t happen with Jason, but there was no way to be sure until it was a reality.
“Here we go,” Gina called. “Got a few more things.”
Stone hurried back over. “Anything good?”
“Hang on…” She shifted through several tabs in her browser. “Trash…trash…trash… Wait! Here’s something different. North Carolina, a couple days ago. A bunch of people had what the cops are calling a ‘mass drug trip’ in a little town there—except when the cops checked for drugs and alcohol, every one of the people involved turned up negative except for a few with cannabis.” She shifted aside so Stone could read over her shoulder.
The article was from a small local publication. “Hmm…” Stone murmured as he scanned it. “So at least a dozen people went through an intersection outside this town and started hallucinating, seeing trees twisting, the sky turning red, the road rippling, that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, and it looks like there were several accidents because of it. Nobody died, so that’s good.” She looked up. “That enough to grab your interest?”
“It might be. Send it along, will you?”
“I’ll send ’em all. You can sort through them at your leisure.” She leaned back in her chair and regarded him with a probing glance. “Can I ask you a question, Doc? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“Of course.”
“Is there more to all this weird-shit hunting you do than just collecting interesting stories for your academic papers?”
Stone had been expecting this question for a long time. Gina wasn’t stupid, and in her own way she was as curious as he was. “There is,” he admitted.
She seemed surprised at his ready answer. “Yeah?”
“Yes. It’s a little embarrassing to own up to, but I suppose with my line of work, it shouldn’t be.”
He had her full attention now. She’d turned away from her screen and was following his progress as he paced around the room.
“I’m…a bit of a ghost hunter. Not just ghosts, but any sort of strange supernatural phenomena. I mean, yes, it’s useful for my papers, and I use that as a good excuse to get time away so I can pursue them, but the truth is, I’m just fascinated by them. Tell me about a Mothman sighting, or Bigfoot, or a headless bride who’s rumored to haunt a lonely stretch of road where her beloved killed her…I believe cats have less interest in catnip.”
She grinned. “You believe that stuff?”
“I’m…skeptical. Most of it turns out to be hogwash—either someone playing pranks, or a legend that’s built up over the years about what ends up being a completely mundane event. But every now and then I find something I can’t explain. That’s what gets me up in the morning.” He grinned. “Well, that and Raider going on walkabout across my bladder, but you see where I’m going with this.”
“I do.” She laughed. “And what about Jason and the rest?”
He shrugged. “I met him and Verity a few years back—oddly enough, while investigating yet another supernatural phenomenon—and as it happens, they share my interest. With Jason, I think it’s more the thrill of the chase than the actual things that go bump in the night…” He returned to her desk and leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “Don’t tell him I told you this, but your boss used to be quite the scaredy-cat back in the day, when it came to this sort of thing. He’d stand up to someone pointing a gun at him without a twitch, but show him a potential haunting and he preferred to stay back in the hotel room whilst Verity and I did the ghost-hunting.”
“I can believe that.” She glanced at her screen, tapped a key, then turned back to him. “So you just…travel all over the country looking into these rumors of weird stuff.”
“I do. Sometimes all over the world.”
Gina shook her head. “Rich people are bonkers. Some more than others.”
“And me most of all. Is that what you’re not saying?”
“Hey, you are one of my bosses. I better not push it too far. But thanks for telling me. I promise, I’ll keep feeding you weird stories. Especially when you send me payments like the one you sent for all that auction-house stuff. That bought me some sweet new components for my rig at home.”
“Glad to be of assistance. Must go now. Tell Jason I came by, will you?”
As Stone walked back to his car, he pulled out his phone and checked his email. As he’d expected, she’d already sent him the file. He paused, leaning against a building as he opened the article about the North Carolina situation. That did sound intriguing. In fact, it sounded like the kind of behavior he might expect from a new rift. If one had appeared near a road, that could cause a lot of potential problems.
He glanced at his watch. It was still early enough that, if there was a ley line anywhere nearby, he could pop back there and investigate. No point in speculating if—
“Hey, Al. What are you doing out here?”
He looked up to see Jason and Amber approaching. He had his arm around her and the two of them were both smiling at him. “Ah. Back from your two-hour lunch, I see.”
“Perks of being the boss. Plus we don’t have any urgent work this afternoon. Why are you standing out here?”
“Eh, I was in the area, so I stopped by to say hello.” He raised his phone. “Gina’s sent me several new stories for my oddities file, so I’m checking through them before I head home.”
“Anything interesting?” Amber asked.
“Possibly. And that’s why I’ve got to go.”
Jason grinned. “Heading to Sunnyvale?”
“Not yet. But possibly soon. See you later.”
He waved and hurried off before they could ask any other questions. Damn—he was going to have to own up to his convenient new travel method soon, at least as much as he had with Verity. Jason and Amber were both sharp and suspicious, and they went to A Passage to India often to eat and visit with Marta. It wouldn’t be long before they caught on that he wasn’t using the portal anymore, despite all his claims of travel.
13
Stone started by checking Desmond’s globe. After comparing it against a more modern map of the United States, he determined that no new rifts had appeared anywhere near the North Carolina area. The closest one was in the wilds o
f Georgia, and it had been there for a while.
To his delight, though, there was a ley line not too far away from the tiny town where the anomaly had occurred. He packed a quick bag, even though he didn’t expect to be gone for more than a few hours, then selected a location in the nearest town he thought might have a rental car agency, cast his invisibility spell, and popped over.
He still half-expected to run into a problem, but nothing happened. He appeared on a deserted side street and quickly found a place to hide so he could drop the spell. Then he called a cab, had it take him to the rental agency, and headed off. He made a mental note to familiarize himself with more rental-car places around the country, and cursed himself for forgetting once again to ask Kolinsky to have his fake-ID guy set him up with an actual smartphone so he could use things like rideshare and map apps. He was learning this routine as he went along.
The small town where the strange phenomenon had occurred was called Fern Ridge. Stone had a little trouble finding it on his paper map, but it took him less than half an hour to drive there once he did. Since the news article hadn’t specified exactly where the oddness had taken place, he decided to stop for a cup of coffee. It had been his experience in the past that in small towns like this, most people knew about anything weird that was going on. There wasn’t much else to do, so anything out of the ordinary attracted attention.
He wasn’t wrong this time. When he sat at the counter, ordered a cup, and mentioned the incident to the cheerful, middle-aged server, she perked up immediately.
“Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Craziest thing, isn’t it?” She tilted her head at him. “Are you a reporter?”
“No. Just an…interested observer.”
She laughed. “We don’t get many guys like you around here. But I hate to have to tell you, there’s nothing there to observe anymore. If there ever was at all.”
“You don’t believe there was?”
