The Seventh Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “She’s up in San Francisco. I’m having lunch with her tomorrow—I’m sure she’ll give you a call, though. She told me it went fine, but she’ll probably have more details for you when she gets back.” He shook his head and stood. “Still not quite believing you’ve got a son. I gotta say, that was quite a shocker.”

  “Yes, well, I suppose those little shocks make life interesting.” Stone headed out front before Jason could say anything else about it. “Thank you for the information—and it was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Rodriguez.”

  “Oh, yeah, for sure.” Intent on something on her computer screen, she waved at him without looking up.

  43

  Stone didn’t catch up with Verity until two days later, when she called to ask if she could come by his place and cook him dinner. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about,” she said, but wouldn’t specify what it was.

  Naturally, Stone assumed the discussion would be about Ian, whom he also hadn’t seen since the lunch with Verity. He watched as she spread various items from three shopping bags across the kitchen counter. “So,” he said casually, “what’s this you wanted to talk about? Did your lunch go well?”

  “Come over here,” she said. “Ever since I started studying alchemy, I’ve decided to make it my mission to teach you how to cook—at least enough so you don’t starve if all the takeout restaurants suddenly disappeared from the earth.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Amused, he took the space she indicated.

  “I think it’s a mental block.” She handed him a knife and a bunch of celery. “We’re just doing spaghetti—a nice, simple recipe even you can make. Cut that up into little pieces and put it in that bowl there.”

  “Verity, I can always tell when you’re stalling. How did your lunch with Ian go? Jason mentioned you’d gone, but I haven’t heard anything from either you or Ian. That makes me think something unexpected happened.”

  “It was good,” she said without looking at him, slicing tomatoes. “We…talked about a lot of stuff. He’s a good guy. Really wants to make you proud of him.”

  “I am proud of him,” Stone protested.

  “Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but trust me—you need to show him a little more. He’s concerned he’s not performing up to your expectations, and that can be tough when you’re dealing with your dad. Even your long-lost one.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll try to remember to be more encouraging, instead of channeling my inner Desmond. This is a new situation for me—I’m still fumbling about trying to get it right.”

  “Oh—and he knows about you and me.”

  Stone’s knife froze above a stalk of celery. “Does he? Did you tell him?”

  “Nope. He’s perceptive. He figured it out from watching us the other night. Surprised me, but maybe we’re not as subtle as we thought. We talked about it a little—no details, but he knows what’s going on with us, and with Kyla and me. It’s all good.”

  “I…see.” Stone resumed his cutting, not sure how he felt about that. He supposed Ian would have to find out at some point, but things were so up in the air between them that adding another emotional variable wouldn’t have been his first choice.

  “Anyway,” she said casually, “that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh? What is it, then?”

  “Jason.”

  “What about him?”

  “We had lunch yesterday, and talked a lot about…things.”

  “Things.”

  She finished slicing the tomato and put the slices on a plate, then got a pot from a nearby cabinet and put water on to boil. “He did some research, and found Tony.”

  “Tony?”

  “Remember the bear shapeshifter from the lab?”

  Stone froze again. “He…found him?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t do anything about it yet—didn’t contact him or anything—but he reached out to Officer Foley, the cop who worked with us. He had Tony’s contact information. He’s somewhere over by Lake Tahoe.”

  “And…why was he interested in Tony’s contact information?” Stone was sure he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it in case he was wrong.

  She let her breath out. “He’s obsessed with that elixir, Doc. Especially after it turned out that Hezzie and I could duplicate it. Our version isn’t as good as the one from Garra—it made him stronger and faster, but not nearly as much—but it did have the regeneration properties. You saw how well those worked.”

  Stone recalled Jason’s bloody injuries, and how quickly the potion had taken care of them. “I…suppose I can’t blame him,” he said slowly. “You know as well as I do that Jason’s always been sensitive about what he brings to our little partnership, no matter how much either of us tries to convince him otherwise. That should change now, though, since he’s got access to the kind of research information that would be much harder to get otherwise.”

  “Yeah. But come on—Jason’s not a researcher. He’s not a nerd. Ever since I was a kid, he’s always been the big, strong protector type. In normal mundane situations, he would be. But facing the kind of stuff we deal with, having an edge like that is a big deal.” She handed him a carton of fresh mushrooms and a soft brush. “Brush the dirt off, then chop them up into small pieces, will you?”

  “So…you’re saying he wants to—what? Contact Tony and ask him to provide some blood so you can make more elixir?”

  “He didn’t say, not for sure. But I’m guessing he’s thinking about it. Not sure if he wants to offer to pay for it, or maybe remind him that we saved his life, but…yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s what he wants.”

  Stone focused on chopping the mushrooms. He doubted he’d ever be good at cooking—he had neither the knack nor the patience for it—but he began to see how it could be therapeutic to have something mundane to do with his hands while his thoughts spun like ice cubes in a blender. “And…how do you feel about this? Are you going to help him? If he does get the blood, will you make the elixir for him?”

  “Well…” She sighed again. “That’s a good question. Several of them, in fact. It’s not that simple.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because even if Jason does find Tony and convince him to hand over some blood—which I think is a bad idea—I can’t make the elixir on my own. I’m not far enough along yet. I need Hezzie’s help for the tricky parts, and I’m not sure she’d be up for it.”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  She didn’t meet his gaze, and didn’t reply.

  “Verity?”

  “Because of who she is.” She got out a skillet, gathered a small collection of herbs and spices on the counter, and put some ground beef on to brown. “Let’s just say she’s not exactly crazy about the idea of making a big, tough man even tougher. Even if he is my brother. I had to do a lot of convincing to get her to help with the stuff we had, and that was mostly because she wanted to see if we could do it.”

  “Ah. This has something to do with her past—the reason she’s uncomfortable around men.”

  “Yeah.” She stared into the skillet for a while, pushing the meat around as it began to sizzle, and adding the various items she’d gathered to the mixture. “Don’t tell her I told you this, Doc—she’d be pissed at me if I did. But she dropped out of college in her freshman year, somewhere back East, because she…well, she got gang-raped by three guys at a party.” Her voice shook, and she still didn’t look at him.

  A chill ran down Stone’s back. “I…don’t know what to say,” he said softly. “That’s…horrible.”

  “Yeah. It is. What’s even worse was that she knew one of them. He’d asked her out, and didn’t take it well when she turned him down.” She made a choked little laugh. “You’d think she was a lesbian, wouldn’t you? But she’s not. That’s what makes it even worse—she’s straight, but she has a hard time being in the same room as a guy because it reminds her of what happened.”

  Stone gripped the coun
ter. “Were they caught?”

  “Yeah…but they got slaps on the wrist because their parents were rich, and Hezzie was known around school as the ‘weird chick.’ Plus, she was drunk at the time—she thinks they spiked her drink with something.” She turned to look at him. “But that’s not what this is about, Doc. It’s not the punishment—or not—that’s the issue. I know you, I know where your mind is going, and this isn’t something you can fix. That’s not why I told you.”

  I bloody well could fix it, he thought with cold clarity. His mind went to scenarios of learning the animals’ identities, tracking them down, and—

  “Doc.” She gripped his arm, and her eyes were serious. “Calm down. I know you—I know exactly what you’re thinking. Stop it. As much as you want to, you can’t solve everybody’s problems for them. Even if you tracked those guys down and reduced them to component atoms, that still wouldn’t change what they did to Hezzie. It wouldn’t heal her.”

  He dropped his gaze, and let his clenched fists relax. “You’re right, of course. But—”

  “But it sucks. Yeah, it does. But we go on. The reason I brought it up at all is to help you see why Hezzie isn’t in any hurry to create something to make a guy stronger, faster, and tougher. Even Jason.”

  Stone almost protested that Jason would never do anything like that, but then realized that wasn’t the point either. Hezzie probably hadn’t thought the guys who attacked her would ever do it, but yet they had. “What will you do, then?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t know yet. Like I said, I can’t do it on my own. So I have three choices. I could wait until I learn enough so I can—which could take quite a while, since it’s not an easy concoction. I could try to convince Hezzie to help, which will probably upset her and she might not go for it at all. Or I can tell Jason I can’t do it.”

  Stone sighed. “And in any case, someone won’t be happy with the results.”

  “Yeah. You begin to see my problem.”

  “I wish I could help you, but I’ve always been rubbish at alchemy. I understand the principles, but when I try putting them into practice, things always go pear-shaped. It’s sort of like what happens when I try to repair anything more complicated than a bookshelf.”

  She nodded. “Let me think about it. I told Jason I’d get back to him after I talked to Hezzie, but I can hold him off for a while.” Glancing up, she changed her tone. “Anyway, let’s talk about something else. How’s the investigation going for the apprentice murder?”

  “Not sure yet. Jason tracked down some cases that might be related. I’ve got a call in to one of the people involved, but she hasn’t returned it yet. Either she’s away and hasn’t gotten the message, or she’s deliberately choosing not to get back to me.”

  She finished browning the meat and turned the flame under the skillet down. “How many cases are we talking here?”

  “Three or four, spread out geographically and over the last ten years. If the same people are committing the murders, they’re quite patient about it.”

  “Any reason to believe they are the same people?”

  “Not…really, at least not officially. But if the people killed were actual apprentices and were killed by Portas Justitiæ, it’s possible their masters got the same type of note Myra Lindstrom did, and didn’t report it to the police because they knew they couldn’t solve a magic-related murder.”

  Verity returned to her cooking, narrating her process as she put together a simple meat-based spaghetti sauce and boiled the noodles, then pressed Stone into service setting the table. “I’ll leave you the recipe,” she said. “Seriously—this is something you can make on your own as long as you don’t let it intimidate you.”

  He chuckled. “I’m not intimidated. I just don’t feel it’s proper for me to commit such vile crimes against the culinary arts.” Pausing, he set the pot of pasta on the table and studied her. Something was still on her mind; he could tell even without looking at her aura. “Anyway—you’ve got something else brewing in that head of yours. Out with it.”

  Her gaze flicked up, and she looked troubled. “It’s nothing.”

  “I doubt that. It rarely is. What’s going on?”

  She sat down and watched as he used magic to open a bottle of wine and pour them each a glass. “I was just thinking about the murders. About Amy. She didn’t do anything wrong. She wasn’t even the kind of mage who got involved in stuff like you do—like we do. All she wanted to do was study with a nice, harmless old lady and learn nice, harmless magic. And somebody killed her. Directed by somebody who has magic themselves, it sounds like.”

  “Yes, and—?” He didn’t see where she was going with this. He set the wine bottle aside and ladled sauce over his plate of pasta.

  “Well…this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, and not just because of this. You once told me that mages don’t have any kind of…governing body. No magical cops, or ruling council, or anything like that.”

  “No, they don’t. We’re a contentious lot, overall. We don’t lend ourselves to any kind of outside oversight.”

  “Do you ever think that might be a bad idea?”

  “What, that there’s no magical council telling us what we can and can’t do?”

  Her gaze came up, and he saw something sharp. “I guess that’s your answer—you don’t want anybody telling you what to do.”

  “No, I don’t. No offense, Verity, but I don’t trust most people to know what’s best for me better than I do.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “But that means mages can just run around hurting or killing anybody they like, and nobody does anything about it. The mundane police can’t stop it, and it sounds like the mages aren’t interested in stopping it. So that leaves any mages who want to cause trouble able to just…do it.”

  “That’s not entirely true.” He set his fork down and took a sip of wine. “If anyone gets out of line too much, usually a group of us get together and show them the error of their ways. That’s especially true if they reveal the existence of the magical world to mundanes without taking proper precautions.”

  “So it’s—what—a posse thing? Whatever group gets together decides whether somebody’s out of line?” She shook her head. “That’s pretty arbitrary, Doc. That means whether you get away with stuff depends on things it shouldn’t, like how powerful you are, how respected, and how scared people are of you. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?” She waved her hand. “Look at what’s going on now. Somebody’s murdering apprentices—well, one, at least—and getting away with it. The only reason you’re even looking into at all is because the old lady witch happened to remember your name and call you. Otherwise, you’d never have known anything about it.”

  He almost gave her a quick, glib answer, but then he saw her expression. It was obvious she had thought about this extensively. “Verity—I get it. You’re young, idealistic, fresh out of your apprenticeship, and you want to change the world. Of course you do. Everyone does at your age. But magical society is hundreds of years old, and you haven’t met a hidebound traditionalist until you’ve met some of the older mages—and a few of the younger ones, too. Mages don’t like change.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘you’re young and you’ll see you’re wrong when you get older’ bullshit,” she snapped, eyes flashing. “Maybe mages don’t like change—but the world is changing. Magical power doesn’t give anybody the right to throw their weight around and have their way with people who can’t fight back.”

  “No,” he said carefully. “It doesn’t.” He thought about the Talented back on Calanar, doing exactly what she was talking about—but they did have a council, and a level of bureaucracy that rivaled the most old-fashioned of Earth governments. “But I don’t think the answer is to set up some arbitrary group of people tasked with enforcing laws. Remember, before they could even do that, they’d have to come up with those laws in the first place. Currently, there aren’t any. And if you think getting a group of stro
ng-willed, opinionated mages together to try hammering out a code of conduct they all agree on would be a pleasant, civilized affair…well, you haven’t dealt with as many mages as I have.”

  “So that’s it, then?” She gripped the table, glaring at him. “That’s the excuse? It’s hard, so nobody wants to do it? That’s a pretty lousy reason.”

  “Verity…” Stone wasn’t sure where this sudden passion had come from, and it startled him. He sighed and spread his hands. “What can I say? It’s not something I’m interested in pursuing. If somebody wants to get together and try it—if you do—I wish you luck. But I won’t support it. The way we’ve been dealing with magical renegades may not be the best, but as far as I’m concerned it’s better than concentrating power in the hands of a small group of people.”

  “Even if one of them is you?”

  “Me?” He blinked. “Don’t be absurd. You don’t know me as well as I thought if you think I’d have any interest in being part of some kind of mage council. Bloody hell, my department meetings at the University are enough of a test of my patience. Trying to get anything done with our lot would drive me to look for the nearest window to chuck myself out of.”

  “Even if they put you in charge of it?”

  “Verity—” He studied her flashing eyes, wondering where she was getting all this. “No. The only thing I can think of that would be worse than being part of something like that is being in charge of it. I don’t want to tell other people what to do, unless it’s in a classroom situation. Anything else—I’d rather be left alone to pursue my own interests.”

  She took a slow deep breath, and deliberately unclamped her hands from the table. She closed her eyes for several seconds, then opened them, took a sip of wine, and looked at her plate. “Okay. I can see I won’t get anywhere with you about this, and that’s okay. Like I said, it was just something I’ve been thinking about.”