by R. L. King
“Wait, but you said—”
“Mrs. Woods was so upset about the whole thing that I convinced Fran to let me keep working the case on my own. It would be officially under the agency’s umbrella, but I’d do all the work.”
“And she went for that?”
“Took some persuading, but it helped that Mrs. Woods was all over it. She didn’t want to have to go find another agency—if she could even convince any of them to take on the case. So bottom line is, it’s my case now. I’m heading off to Vegas tomorrow to look into it.”
The words were out of her mouth almost before she’d thought them through: “I want to come with you.”
“What? No way, V.” His tone was adamant. “This could be dangerous. You’re not used to—”
“Like hell I’m not. No offense, big bro, but I’m just as good at handling dangerous stuff as you are these days.” She didn’t add probably better, but it still hung there in the air and she doubted Jason missed it. “And besides, I can help you. Maybe if we go to the murder scene, I can get some reads that will help us figure out what happened.”
Silence crackled on the line. “I don’t like it,” he said at last.
“Well, I don’t like you going on your own either. You have to admit, having somebody along who can do what I can could make things a lot safer. You do the detecting, and I’ll help make sure we get home alive. Remember what Vegas is full of?”
Another long pause. She thought she might have hit the mark that time: Las Vegas was still one of the last and largest concentrations of the soldier-level Evil left in the country, which made it a dangerous place even after their leaders had been evicted back to their home dimension. Verity’s odd ability to kick the Evil entities out of their possessed host bodies made her a formidable enemy, even overlooking her growing magical abilities.
“What about Al?” he finally demanded, but it was clearly a last-ditch effort he didn’t expect to succeed. “You were gonna go house-sit for him.”
“I’ll call him right away,” she said. “I’m sure he can find a grad student or somebody to do it. I’ll just go pick up the SUV after we’re done in Vegas. So what do you say? One last adventure together before I move back up north?”
He let out a loud sigh. “Fine. Like I can even win this argument anyway. But let’s not tell Fran, okay? She’ll pop a gasket if she finds out I’m getting civilians involved.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Remember, you asked for this.
That was Stone’s thought as he pulled up in front of Edwina Mortenson’s neat little house on a neat little side street in Mountain View.
Sometimes, the inbred British politeness gene could really get in one’s way. It was bad enough he’d agreed to participate in this farce in the first place, but at least the large donation to the department (along with the anticipation of checking out the curse for Kolinsky) provided reasonable excuses. What he didn’t have was an excuse for why he’d agreed to drive Mortenson up to Brunderville, aside from the fact that she’d asked him, and he couldn’t very well say, “No, sorry, I’m driving up myself but I haven’t got room for you—you’ll have to find your own way.”
So now he was looking at three or more hours cooped up in a car with someone he did his best to avoid whenever possible. Good one, Stone.
He was all but certain she wouldn’t approve of any of his musical choices.
He got out and headed up the front walk. He’d never been to Mortenson’s house before, in all the years they’d known each other. Somehow, in the back of his mind, he always pictured her living in some sort of bohemian hippie commune for older, uptight women with too many cats. Instead, the place looked like any number of unassuming California tract houses, nicely kept but utterly boring.
She answered at his first knock. His initial impression was that she looked a bit breathless, as if she’d been running around taking care of last-minute chores. In contrast to her usual flowing skirts and overabundance of jewelry, she wore a loose-fitting top and pants and sensible shoes, and had pulled her long, iron-gray hair back into a ponytail. A ginger cat wound himself around her ankles, regarding Stone with suspicion.
“Alastair. Thank you so much for this. I’m really not comfortable driving so far alone, so I appreciate it. I’ll be ready to go in just a moment. Please make yourself at home.” She waved him toward a small living room.
This was more like it. The interior was all Mortenson, decorated in her tasteful new-age/upscale-hippie style with candles, heavy drapes, overflowing bookshelves, framed prints of occult-related items and figures from various cultures, and a large, intricate oriental rug. Stone idly shifted to magical sight and was surprised to see a couple of the items in her carved wooden curio cabinet light up with faint, benign energy.
Another cat, this one black, poked its tentative head around one of the chairs, looking up at him with huge yellow eyes. He remembered one of his graduate students telling him that she had three cats, but he had to admit he didn’t notice any hint of “cat smell” in the house. Of course, all the incense and perfume might be covering it up.
“Ready,” Mortenson said from behind him.
He turned to find her standing in the doorway. Next to her was an oversized brocade suitcase; she held a smaller matching bag in her left hand, and her usual large handbag in her right, with a coat and a red umbrella draped over her arm. Stone almost said something about the trip only being for three or four days, not a month, but caught himself. Damned British politeness, anyway. As long as she remained civil and courteous, he would too. “Right, then. Let’s go. Let me get that for you.”
“Thank you.”
He carried the suitcase outside and stowed it in the BMW’s trunk next to his own bags: a small one for clothes and accessories, a garment bag, and his usual black leather duffel containing various magical and ritual supplies. “Who’s looking after your cats?”
“Haley, one of my graduate students. She’s quite fond of them and they of her, so she’s happy to pick up a bit of extra money. What about you?” she asked as they got in and Stone drove off. “I’d imagine it’s a bit of an adjustment to have to make arrangements when you travel now.”
“A bit. I’ve got Brandon Greene coming by. He should be fine, though—he enjoys the solitude, I think. Raider, I mean—not Greene.”
He’d been disappointed when Verity had called to tell him she wouldn’t be able to house-sit after all, since she was off to Las Vegas with Jason to help him with a strange missing-persons case. Fortunately, Greene was available and willing, and Raider liked the amiable goth. Stone wished he’d had more time to chat with Verity about the case—Vegas was still a dangerous place to be, even with the Evil on the decline—but she’d only had a few minutes to talk. They’d wished each other luck in their respective endeavors and that had been it. They’d get back together at the holidays to discuss future plans.
“How are you and Raider getting along?” Mortenson asked, settling back in her seat.
“Fine, fine. He’s my favorite sort of housemate: quiet, undemanding, and self-cleaning. We’re getting on quite nicely.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Their topics of polite conversation temporarily exhausted already, both of them subsided into silence. Stone tentatively turned up the music—he’d picked an obscure Pink Floyd CD rather than something from his punk collection—and when Mortenson didn’t object, he leaned back and concentrated on driving. It was a slate-gray, overcast day, with rain coming in intermittent drizzles.
She didn’t speak again until they were well on their way up Highway 580, headed north toward Sacramento. “Have you ever been to the Gold Country, Alastair?”
“Haven’t had the pleasure, no.”
“It’s quite beautiful up there, from what I’ve seen. Although this Brunderville is a bit more remote than I
’d normally choose as a destination.”
“Well, it is a ghost town. I suppose they’ll have to do something about the roads if they plan for it to be a tourist destination.” He’d checked a map last night: Brunderville was at the end of a twisty, narrow road meandering up the side of a mountain north of Highway 50. The closest other town was five miles away, but from the look of the roads, that five miles would take quite some time to navigate, especially this time of year. He wondered why Duncan and his crew had decided to do their filming now instead of waiting for spring, but given that he knew next to nothing about the entertainment industry, it might have been standard operating procedure. Duncan had assured him there wouldn’t be snow, but rain was a distinct possibility. Aside from a few establishing shots of the town, though, most of the filming would be done inside the Brunder mansion, so if anything, the rain and overcast weather should add to the spooky atmosphere.
“I’ve been doing some research on the building and the surrounding town,” she said. “I’m fascinated by the idea that the town is supposed to be cursed, though I wasn’t able to find any specific information about the nature of the curse. Were you?”
Ah, good. A safe subject. “The only thing I was able to find was something about a number of people dying over a short period of time, both in the Gold Rush period and again near the end of the Depression.”
“Did you?” She sounded surprised. “I thought my research was fairly exhaustive, but I saw nothing about that. Where did you find it?”
“I’ve got a friend with some—rather extensive networks.” He shrugged. “You don’t truly believe it’s cursed, though, do you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice a little cooler. “I know you don’t believe in that sort of thing, but I try to keep an open mind. I suppose you don’t believe the Brunder house is haunted, either.”
“Of course not. It’s probably like most of those places: nothing attracts tourists like a ghost or two, so the owners are using the show to get some publicity.”
When Mortenson fell silent, Stone continued after a few moments: “There’s really no difference, you know, as far as people’s perceptions are concerned. That’s what fascinates me: what people perceive about hauntings and ghosts and curses and whatnot. How these legends grow and change over the years, as people die and firsthand stories are lost. That’s every bit as interesting to me as the real thing. Assuming, of course, that I believed the so-called ‘real thing’ existed in the first place.”
“I don’t see how you can say that,” she said, obviously making a valiant effort to keep her tone even and conversational. “I’ve never understood, Alastair, how you can be in this field without believing in anything that can’t be explained by hard science.”
“Hubbard doesn’t believe either,” he pointed out. “In fact, he’s more pragmatic about the whole thing than I am. He thinks we’re both daft for agreeing to do this.”
“Hubbard,” she said with a snort. “Mac is different. The only reason he gravitated toward our field at all was for the same reason as some of the students: it helps him gather research material for those novels of his.” She turned in her seat. “Be honest with me: in all the years you’ve been researching the occult, have you never encountered anything you simply couldn’t explain away with a rational justification?”
Stone paused, considering. “No,” he said at last. “Can’t say as I have.” That wasn’t entirely true, of course: if Mortenson knew even a tiny percentage of what he’d faced in his magical career, it would likely blow her mind. But in an abstract sense, he could explain everything he’d encountered under the umbrella of “magical phenomena.” Since he knew with complete certainty that magic was real, he wasn’t technically lying to her. Just… obfuscating the truth a bit.
Okay, more than a bit.
Okay, a lot. But he couldn’t very well reveal his true self to her. That fell firmly under the heading of “a bad decision.”
She let out a loud sigh. “Well, I suppose I’m not going to change your mind after all this time.”
“Not likely,” he agreed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jason and Verity left for Las Vegas in his Mustang first thing the following morning. He’d decided to drive for a few reasons: first, flying would require them to drive to either Santa Barbara for a long and expensive flight or Los Angeles for a shorter and cheaper one; second, Jason wanted to have his own car available when they were in Vegas; and third, Jason was sure Fran wouldn’t spring for a ticket for Verity—assuming he would even tell her he was taking his sister along. Which he hadn’t.
Verity was fine with all this. The drive through the desert gave her a lot of time to think, and it had been a long while since she’d had more than an hour or two to hang out with Jason. “So, did Fran give you any help at all?” she asked, watching the scrubby desert scenery fly by.
“Not much. She still thinks this whole thing is pointless. In fact, we’ve only got a couple of days to do this—she was pretty clear on that. But she did give me the name of a police contact she’s got there. She said he probably won’t be able to give us much, but we can talk to him about what the cops found.”
“I wonder if the police department there is still full of Evil.”
“I guess there’s no way to tell, huh?” Jason glanced at her. “This guy of Fran’s might even be, yeah?”
She shrugged. “Might not even matter. If they’ve settled down, they’re probably just doing their jobs. They don’t want to make waves and get themselves discovered. And besides, they probably get plenty of jollies from just day-to-day cop stuff, right?”
He glanced at her again with a slight frown this time. “That’s a pretty cold way of looking at it.”
“Yeah, but it’s true. I talked to the Doc about it a while back. The way he sees it—and he makes a lot of sense—the big Evil, the ones we sent home, were…well…evil. Nasty bastards. But the grunt-level ones—they’re just…creatures from another dimension, doing what they gotta do to survive. Would you punish a wolf for killing a deer out in the wild?”
“No. But I’d sure as hell punish him if he attacked somebody I cared about. Or anybody, really.”
“Exactly. But over the years, wolves evolved and figured out that if they attack humans, they get killed, so they stick with deer. Dr. Stone thinks the grunt Evil are like that, except instead of changing their food source, they changed their habits. Sure, there are still a few bad eggs, but they don’t have any special powers. So if they get caught, they get locked up just like any other criminal.”
“So you’re sayin’ we probably don’t have to worry about ‘em.”
“Who knows? We should stay sharp, but I don’t think we need to be jumping at every shadow. If they even remember us—me especially—they aren’t gonna want to fuck with us.”
Jason sighed. “Unless they’re behind Gary’s death somehow. Remember, he was tortured. That’s the Evil’s MO.”
“Let’s get there and see what we find first. There are a lot more regular-type sick bastards in the world than Evil. No point speculating about it now with no information.” She reached around into the back seat and pulled Jason’s messenger bag forward. “Let’s go over what we do have, so we don’t have to waste time on it when we get to Vegas. You haven’t given me all the details yet.”
“Yeah, good idea.” Jason turned down the music. “So Gary Woods was thirty-eight years old. Married to Linda for fifteen years. Two daughters, seven and nine. He was a salesman for a small company that made accounting software.”
“Did he take a lot of these business trips?”
“Yeah, sounds like it. One or two a year, anyway, usually to the L.A. area, or sometimes San Diego. His wife said he’d almost always go two or three days early to hang out with old college buddies.”
Verity gave him the side-eye
. “She believed that?”
“Why wouldn’t she? She told Fran they’d always had a happy marriage. She trusted him.”
“Yeah, okay. Just seems fishy to me that he’d always go early. I’m guessing she never checked?”
“No, and I couldn’t either, because he never told her the names of these buddies. She never asked. She figured they’d just hang out, get a little drunk, go to football games, whatever.”
“And the cops didn’t find ’em either?”
“Nope. Nobody came forward. They’re pretty sure Gary was lying about it. He was supposed to meet with some people from a place called Pinnacle Financial Systems—his wife says it was a big deal for him, since it was the biggest sale he’d ever had a shot to make. She said he was excited about it, and promised if he landed the sale, the family could take a trip to Disney World.”
“Hmm,” Verity said, pulling out the file and studying Woods’s photo. “So what kind of guy was Gary? Was he as boring as he looked?”
“Yeah, apparently. Both Fran and I talked to some of his friends around the area, and everybody says he was about as straight-arrow as they came. Coached the girls’ soccer team on weekends, belonged to the Rotary Club—you know, your basic small-town cliché all the way down the line.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little weird? I mean, everybody’s got some kind of dark secret, right?”
Jason grinned. “You’re a suspicious woman, little sis. Just because everybody you know has a dark and mysterious past doesn’t mean there aren’t guys who just go to work, mow the lawn, and read the kids bedtime stories at night.”
“Yeah, but those kinds of guys don’t end up naked in dumpsters three hundred miles from where they’re supposed to be,” she pointed out.
