The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  Stone had been glaring at her, shaking with rage, leaning forward as if poised to leap at her, grab her, shut her the hell up.

  But then he stopped.

  He stood up straight and took a long, deep breath as a thought, unbidden, grew in his mind:

  What am I doing?

  What is Edwina doing?

  He had known the woman for nearly ten years. He’d interacted with her nearly every weekday for most of that time. He’d seen her angry, annoyed, frustrated, jealous—and she’d seen him at less than his best more than a few times too. But never once had it come even close to escalating into this kind of acrimonious screaming match. She wasn’t like that, and neither was he. This wasn’t professional rivalry. This was just plain dirty fighting.

  He shifted to magical sight, and stared in shock.

  The red energy, which had previously been creeping along the floor like dry ice at a metal concert, was definitely brighter now.

  It was glowing.

  And even worse, it had wafted upward until it engulfed Mortenson, hovering and shifting around her, poking its way into her red-purple aura, which blazed a brighter, angry red of its own.

  Then he looked down at himself, at the purple-gold nimbus of his own aura.

  The stuff had seeped up around him too.

  It wasn’t as strong with him, but it was definitely there.

  Bloody hell.

  It had been right there in front of his face, and he’d missed it.

  “What are you staring at?” Mortenson demanded. “I told you to get out.”

  Stone ignored her. Instead, he focused on his own mental defenses. He hadn’t been maintaining them beyond the most basic level here, assuming he would spot anything potentially dangerous before it affected him, but now he concentrated harder, keeping magical sight up as he increased the level of protection around his mind. He closed his eyes, taking deep, cleansing breaths as he felt the rage and tension around him dissipate. When he opened them again, the red energy had receded from him, moving once again along the floor. All he felt now was exhaustion, and regret for the things he’d said.

  “Alastair? Do I need to call someone to have you removed?”

  He let his breath out and focused back on her again. “Edwina…” he said in a soft, ragged voice. “Something’s wrong.”

  She blinked, momentarily startled from her anger by his unexpected change in tone. “What?”

  “Something’s wrong. Something’s—affecting our minds.”

  “What?” she demanded again. “Affecting our minds? Don’t be absurd!” She began gathering up the various papers on the table and tossing them back into the box. “Next thing you’ll claim is that it’s the Brunderville curse! Get out of here, and take your damned papers with you! I’m tired of being your flunky while you’re off hamming for the camera and screwing girls nearly young enough to be your daughter!”

  A hint of the anger rose, but he pushed it aside. This wasn’t the real Mortenson talking. Whether that was what she honestly thought of him—and to be fair, it might have been—that didn’t mean she’d ever say any of it aloud if she were really driving the bus. “Edwina, please—if you’ll just listen to me for a moment. Fight it. You’re not like this. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me there’s not some part of you that’s appalled you’re saying these things out loud. Please—just try. Fight it. Throw it off.”

  For a moment, it appeared she might. She stood there, a handful of loose pages in her hand as it hovered over the box, and blinked several times. She shook her head violently and put her other hand to her forehead. But then her eyes hardened again and she threw the papers in the box.

  “This is repugnant, that you’d act like this—try to blame your reprehensible behavior on the supernatural. You don’t even believe in the supernatural, remember? Everything has to be scientific and quantifiable for you, and now you’re trying to use a curse as an excuse?”

  She gathered the rest of the papers and flung them into the box, then picked it up, stalked up to him, and jammed it hard into his chest. “Take it and go. And you can be sure Dr. Martinez will be hearing about all of this when we return.”

  He had to bring his arms up fast to catch the box before it tumbled to the floor. “I’ll go,” he said, keeping his voice soft and even. “But think about what I said. Please. Think about what you’ve said, and how unlikely it is that you would say anything like it under normal circumstances. I’m begging you, Edwina. Think about it.”

  “Go!” she yelled.

  He backed out of the room, half-convinced she’d throw something at him if he turned his back on her, and let the door close behind him. For a moment, he stood there in the middle of the hall, mind moving fast. Then he ducked into his own room, stashed the box in the closet, and hurried back out.

  He had to do something—but what? If this really was the Brunderville curse, how was he going to stop it?

  A shiver ran up his neck, raising the little hairs as more thoughts rushed in: it all made sense now. If the “curse” was some kind of magical effect, what if it amplified people’s negative feelings toward each other, turning mild annoyance into anger, and simmering resentment into rage? He thought back to all the sniping Duncan’s crew had been doing at each other—the behavior he’d written off as mere squabbling between a collection of towering egos tossed together into a pressure-cooker environment.

  But what if it was more?

  Such a thing could easily explain why the previous residents of Brunderville had died off so quickly, with little time for any sort of documentation or reporting on the cause. In both cases, even more than now, Brunderville had been a remote town, far away from civilization. If the curse had touched off a powder keg of rage among a group that was overwhelmingly male, probably prone to heavy drinking, and had easy access to weapons (mining implements, hatchets, and axes as well as guns), it was absolutely plausible that their seething resentments and rivalries had bubbled up until they’d all killed each other in a horrific orgy of violence. He remembered the one rumor he’d heard about a dance-hall fire in the Gold Rush incarnation of the town—fighting over the few available women would be another easy explanation for how fast things had escalated.

  But now that he knew—or at least strongly suspected—this, what could he do about it?

  He could try to find the source of the curse and deal with it—it was possible it lurked behind the bricked-up section of the winery’s storage cave, but it seemed odd that if it had been there, Fred Duchesne hadn’t found it when he’d put up the wall in the first place. Most likely, if it was in the mine at all, it was in a lot further. And given what Randy Yates had said about the network of abandoned tunnels running all around Brunderville, even if he could track the source magically it would still be a dangerous and potentially futile effort. He could face rockfalls, caved-in sections, segments where the ancient support beams had rotted to the point where it wasn’t safe to navigate even the open areas. Hell, there might not even be breathable air down there anymore.

  But if he didn’t do something, how long would it be before everyone in Brunderville—Other Side group and skeleton-crew townspeople alike—were at each other’s throats? Maybe there weren’t many guns up here anymore, but he suspected there were at least a few, as well as many other potential weapons.

  They had to get out of here.

  That was the only reasonable answer: they had to get out of Brunderville. Every last one of them. After the place was deserted again, perhaps the curse would calm itself back down and he could bring some other mages up to help him try to track it down and deal with it once and for all. But he couldn’t do that while people were in danger of killing each other.

  Duncan wasn’t going to like this—but right now, he didn’t give a damn what Duncan liked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

/>   Jason stared at Verity, eyes wide. “The same person? How could that be? Some kind of illusion?”

  “That’s just the thing, though—why I’m thinking I gotta be wrong. If it was an illusion, it wouldn’t have two auras. It’s possible to hide your aura, but I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to have two of them at once.”

  Jason pondered. “It does fit with the facts, though: nobody’s ever seen Gary and David together, they both were in Vegas on the same dates over three years…It could explain the jewelry, too: Gary picked up some souvenirs for his daughters. Right? What if he’s got one of those illusion-generating things like Harrison and Al had? If they can make them, then other mages could too, right?”

  “Yeah. They could. But…” She spread her hands. “It still doesn’t explain the auras. When I did the ritual to search for Gary, I found his aura, and I also found this other one.” She gripped the armrest in frustration and sighed. “I wish I could call Dr. Stone and ask him about it.”

  He fumbled in his pocket as he drove, and handed her his cell phone. “Try it. Maybe he’s got service up in the sticks.”

  She did, but then shook her head. “Hi, Dr. Stone. It’s Verity. If you get this in the next day or so, please call me back—I’ve got a question for you.” She hung up and handed the phone back. “I wish I knew the name of where he was staying, but I forgot to ask.”

  “And Edna won’t know about this?”

  “She already said it wasn’t her area, last time we talked about it.”

  Jason sighed. “Well, I guess we wait till tonight and hope the Forgotten guy’s friend has something for us. Or else—wait a second!” he yelled.

  “What?” Verity demanded, alarmed as he hit the brakes and veered the Mustang off into a 7-Eleven parking lot. “Jason, what the hell—”

  He didn’t answer until he’d parked, then twisted around to grab his bag from the back seat. He riffled through the papers until he found the one he was looking for, then dug out his notebook and removed the slip of paper he’d taken from David Ames’s suitcase.

  “Jason?”

  “Look!” he said, thrusting both in her direction. “You might be right!”

  Confused, she took the papers and studied the larger one. It was a photocopy of Gary’s record for the Los Angeles hotel where he’d stayed on one of his previous business trips. “What am I supposed to be looking at here?”

  “The writing. Compare the handwriting from the hotel record with the other one.”

  She did as he requested. The hotel record included a few spots Gary had filled out: address, car type and license number, emergency contact number. She shifted her gaze between those and the phone number, focusing on the letters in Xavier and delightful, and stared. “I think you might be right,” she said at last. “Can’t be sure, but…”

  “But it’s possible,” he said, taking the papers back. “Even if we don’t have an explanation for how it could be true yet, the reasoning makes sense. Gary’s a family man, doesn’t want to get caught doing anything that’ll get him in trouble, so he assumes a different identity so nobody will associate the two of them.”

  “So you’re saying he set up a completely different identity, with separate ID, credit cards, fake address—all so he can fly off to Vegas and screw hookers? Doesn’t that seem like a lot of work? I mean, his wife trusted him. He probably could have gotten away with it even if he’d just come here as his normal self. You know—what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and all that? Who was gonna rat him out?” She frowned. “And David was a tall, thin guy, right?”

  “Yeah—six foot, one-seventy. But can’t you make yourself look different with an illusion?”

  “You can, sure. But weren’t the clothes in David’s suitcase for a guy David’s size? I didn’t look at the tags, but it looked that way.”

  Now it was Jason’s turn to frown. “Yeah…you’re right. They were. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because it made sense—his clothes, of course they’d be his size. But if he was using an illusion, he’d still have to have real clothes that would fit him underneath, wouldn’t he?”

  Verity nodded. “No way Gary could have worn that suit—he was shorter and chubbier than David.”

  “Well, damn. I thought we had something.”

  “Yeah…it’s a good theory, but it doesn’t fit all the facts. Guess we’d better keep looking. The good news is, maybe we’ve still got a chance of using the sock to find David.”

  When they got back to the Obsidian, Jason was restless. While Verity set up the ritual in the suite’s front room, he went through all his papers looking for anything he might have missed, and eventually even called Gary Woods’s wife to ask her, carefully and gently, if she’d located anything in her husband’s personal effects that might suggest why he’d go to Las Vegas, or if he knew anyone named David Ames. She assured him that she’d been through his home office and hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary, including any references to Ames.

  “Isn’t it a little weird that she hasn’t come to Vegas?” Verity asked when he hung up. She’d finished the ritual setup and was walking around the circle, giving it one last once-over before starting. “I’d think if her husband was murdered, she’d be right there.”

  “She did come to identify the body, but she didn’t stay long,” he told her. “No real point in hanging around, especially since the police were upfront about how the investigation would take a while. She wants the body back, though, of course. She asked about it again today—about when she can have the funeral. I wish I could tell her something.”

  “Yeah…” How horrible it must be to know someone you loved was dead and his body was rotting away on a shelf in some coroner’s office. She thought about how she would feel if it were Jason or Stone on that slab. “We gotta solve this, Jason. Not just to make you look good for Fran. We can’t let these guys get away with this.”

  “Let’s figure out what happened before we make any decisions, okay? We’re not going vigilante on anybody’s ass unless we have a damn good reason to. Otherwise, we do it by the book. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.” We’ll see, she thought. A lot depended on what they found out. “Let me do this—maybe we’ll find David and we won’t have to do anything.” She sat down in the middle of the circle as Jason settled into one of the chairs to watch.

  The ritual didn’t take long, and the result was disappointing, but at least it was definitive this time. After only fifteen minutes, Verity let her breath out and stood. “He’s dead.”

  Jason leaped out of his chair. “David’s dead?”

  “Yeah.” She was certain of it—the tendril had ranged out, trying to trace the faint energy around the sock to its source, but had winked out almost immediately. “It didn’t get anything—it wasn’t like he was behind wards or anything like that. I’ve never tracked anybody who’s dead before, but Dr. Stone gave me a really good explanation for what it felt like. I’d bet anything I’m right.”

  “Well, fuck. So whether your theory about David and Gary being the same person was right or not, they’re both dead, which means we can’t track David down and question him.”

  “Yeah. We better hope the Forgotten guy has something for us. I’m not really hot to go back to the Pussycat Club or tangle with the Hard Eights again, either.”

  They headed downtown at nine o’clock that night. The Forgotten man they’d talked to hadn’t given them a definite time, so they hoped the didn’t have to wait too long for the woman he mentioned to show up.

  She was already there, set up off to one side of a small, exuberantly tacky little casino called the Treasure Trove. As the Forgotten man had mentioned, she wore a black patch over her right eye, and a faded Navajo-print blanket wrapped around her plump shoulders. She didn’t appear to be paying attention to her surroundings, but sat humming to
herself, nodding her head to some unseen beat. She had a small bowl in front of her, currently containing a few pennies, one casino chip, and a wadded-up hot-dog wrapper.

  Verity gestured for Jason to wait, and approached the woman on her own. She took out one of the fresh quantity of silver dollars they’d obtained before they left and tossed it in the bowl with a clink.

  “Hi,” she said, crouching next to the woman. “How are you?”

  The woman continued humming for a few more seconds, then her squinting left eye opened a little wider to take Verity in. “Survivin’,” she mumbled. She had brown, tobacco-stained teeth; one of the front pair was missing.

  “We’d like to talk to you, if we can. A friend from the Forgotten told us you might be able to tell us something about Ned. Can you do that?”

  At the word “Forgotten,” she tilted her head up a little more and some of her airy manner dropped away. “You the magic girl,” she said, still under her breath so it didn’t carry farther than Verity. Around them, tipsy, laughing tourists flowed past, ignoring their presence.

  “Yep, that’s me. So, can you tell us anything about Ned? We’d really appreciate it.”

  “Help me up,” she ordered, sticking out one sweater-clad arm.

  Verity grasped her hand and steadied her as she struggled to her feet. She stood there a moment, puffing and leaning against the wall, then pointed to the blanket she’d been sitting on, and her bowl.

  Verity gathered them up and handed them to her. She was tempted to pluck out the hot-dog wrapper for later disposal, but didn’t do it—some of the Forgotten were prickly about anyone touching their stuff without permission. “My brother’s with me—I’m gonna call him over, okay?”