The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  She nodded, glanced at him, then away again. “I…Dr. Stone?” She looked even more uncomfortable—or was it nervous?

  “Yes?”

  “We’ll…probably never see each other after tonight. You’ll go back home, and I’ll probably go back to Los Angeles, since I don’t really have a job here anymore.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed.

  She turned toward him then, and finally did meet his gaze. “What I did yesterday…I didn’t mean to. I wouldn’t have, if I’d been…myself. But…I did notice you when you first came in yesterday. That part wasn’t a lie. So I thought…if you wanted, I mean…I thought you might not want be alone tonight.”

  He stared at her. That was not at all what he’d expected her to say. “Denise…”

  She took his hand with a gentle squeeze. “This is me in my right mind, Dr.…Alastair. I totally understand if you don’t want to, but…I just wanted you to know that.”

  “I—” He took her other hand and hesitated. “Are you…sure?”

  She nodded. When she spoke again, it was with more confidence. “No strings. Just this one night. But maybe we can both leave ourselves with one pleasant memory of this place before we go, you know?”

  Still he hesitated. He shouldn’t even be considering it. He remembered Mortenson’s cutting words, when she’d been in the grip of the curse, about ‘girls young enough to be his daughter.’ But then he shifted to magical sight and looked at Denise’s sunny yellow aura, tinged liberally with bright red. Whatever else she was, she wasn’t lying about her intentions, or her interest.

  He shifted back and spoke softly, almost before he let himself think about it: “I…don’t want to be alone tonight,” he admitted.

  She smiled. “Good. Me neither.” She moved in closer, and this time when he bent his neck to kiss her, it wasn’t with any reluctance. She snuggled in close to him against the cold chill of the evening, and together they descended the steps and walked into the darkness in the direction of her tiny house.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Three days later

  Verity called Stone as he was completing his last-minute preparations to head to Sunnyvale and take the portal to England. He almost didn’t answer until he saw her number on the display—he’d had so many calls in the last couple days that he’d stopped answering the home phone, and set the mobile to silent mode so they’d all go to voicemail and leave him the hell alone.

  “Can I come up and see you?” she asked. She sounded odd, distant—lost.

  “Of course. Is everything all right?”

  A long pause. “I’m…not sure. I just want to talk, and not on the phone. Is that okay?”

  “You’re always welcome here, Verity. Is Jason coming as well?”

  “No…just me, this time.” Another pause. “I saw the news…about what happened in Brunderville. What I read…that wasn’t anything close to the whole story, was it?”

  “No.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Now it was his turn to pause. “No. Not really.”

  “Are you sure you want me to come up? I don’t want to—”

  He gripped the receiver tighter as it occurred to him she might be one of the few people on earth he actually did want to talk to. “It’s fine. It’s…good. I’ll see you soon.”

  He didn’t do much while he waited for her. In truth, he hadn’t been doing much since he got back—sleeping when he could, puttering around the house, existing on delivered pizzas and takeout Chinese food, and confusing an increasingly agitated Raider. The cat followed him around, a silent shadow with wide green eyes, staying close and jumping into his lap whenever he sat down. He was a rare comfort in days and nights filled with uneasy thoughts and too many nightmares.

  The day before Stone had finally been allowed to leave the Brunderville area with the others had been a whirlwind of despair and frustration. The authorities and rescue workers had broken through the massive mudslide early on the morning following the little gathering at the schoolhouse. They’d taken out the injured, removed the bodies of the dead, and collected the remainder of the dazed group in the schoolhouse and under the pavilion near the trailers to question them about what had gone so horrifically wrong.

  Stone had done his best to play the role of just another shell-shocked survivor, answering the questions they put to him with the truth when he could, and lies when he had to. He didn’t mention the curse, nor his involvement with the fire at the Shangri-La, or the explosion at the Brunder mansion. He had no idea what Riley and Denise might say, but he didn’t care. If their stories ended up leading the police to arrest him for anything, they’d just have to do it.

  They didn’t arrest him. They didn’t arrest anyone. The prevailing attitude among the survivors had mostly been one of confusion—they claimed not to remember much about what had occurred the night Brunderville died. The authorities were skeptical, but Stone believed them. Perhaps the last remnants of Sarah’s curse had done their job, fogging the minds of the participants sufficiently that, no matter how many times they were questioned, they could summon only the most superficial of details. Either that, or all of them had their own secrets to keep, so they weren’t in any hurry to spill anyone else’s.

  The press who showed up a few hours later were more persistent, but got no further with their inquiries than the police had. Stone made liberal use of his disregarding spell, doing his best to stay away from anyone he wasn’t required to talk to, citing grief at the loss of his colleague when anyone managed to track him down and then making himself scarce as soon as he could.

  When the authorities at last cleared him to go, he gathered his few remaining possessions and departed immediately. It took him over an hour to pick his way down the muddy, rock-strewn mountain road to Delsey, and another three to get home. His thoughts haunted him despite his best efforts to drown them out with loud, angry music—especially the one about his wish that he wouldn’t have to share a three-hour drive home with a resentful Mortenson.

  She would have hated the music. But she could have bitched and grumbled at him for the entire trip—or insisted on listening to her airy-fairy new age CDs the whole way back—and he’d have cheerfully kept quiet and let her get on with it.

  His biggest regret was that the authorities would be unable to recover her body. He’d told them where she and Duncan were, weaving a story about how she had accompanied Duncan into the mine to search for something interesting he’d claimed to find. When Stone had led them to the spot, however, he’d discovered to his dismay that the entire tunnel had caved in—probably due to the explosion at the Brunder mansion. There was no way, the rescue workers told him, to go in after the bodies—it would be prohibitively expensive, but more importantly, it would be far too dangerous to risk. The mountain was unstable, the ground saturated, and the high chance of more cave-ins would put rescue workers in too much danger to justify the effort.

  So Edwina Mortenson, professor of Occult Studies and Stone’s longtime colleague, who’d grown over nearly ten years from a prickly, envious co-worker to something very close to a friend, would spend eternity buried under thousands of tons of rock, along with the fool who’d set the whole terrible sequence of events into motion. And there wasn’t a damn thing Stone and all his magic could do about it.

  He’d done what he could when he got back: called Laura at the department office to make sure they informed Mortenson’s sister of her death, and gotten the contact information for Haley, the grad student she’d arranged to take care of her cats. Haley was shocked at the news, but promised to continue caring for them until new homes could be found—and in fact volunteered to take one of them herself.

  Finally, he’d mailed a quick note to Kolinsky, promising to provide a full—and highly enlightening—report of what had occurred in Brunderville and inviting the black mage to lunch after
the first of the year. He wanted to discuss the situation with Kolinsky, but not yet. Not while it was all still this raw.

  Responsibilities duly discharged, he’d just stopped caring. After two days of a malaise where he’d sat around the house unshaven, unsatisfyingly drunk, and dodging phone calls while he tried half-heartedly to write up some notes about the curse, he’d called Aubrey at home and announced he was coming for a visit. Aubrey, who’d heard nothing about the events in Brunderville, had been all too happy to accommodate him. Stone figured at least a change of scenery might help snap him out of his dark mood. Maybe he’d even meet up with his old friends Eddie Monkton and Arthur Ward for a few drinks in more pleasant surroundings.

  Verity’s call changed all that. Aubrey had been disappointed when he’d called back to postpone the visit indefinitely, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d visit later, but some things couldn’t wait.

  She showed up at his door a few hours later, a little after seven p.m. “Hi, Dr. Stone.”

  His first impression was that she looked almost as troubled as he was. She wore faded jeans, with a gray hooded sweatshirt under her old black leather jacket, and though she smiled when she saw him, the smile was faraway and strained.

  “I thought you’d be calling from the bus station.” He stood aside to let her in. He’d gotten himself together while waiting for her to arrive; a long hot shower, a shave, and some fresh clothes hadn’t done a lot to improve his mood, but at least he wasn’t sodden drunk anymore. Baby steps.

  “I rented a car. Didn’t feel like sitting in a packed bus all day.”

  Stone nodded. “Can I get you anything? Drink? Something to eat?”

  She smiled faintly. “You’re gonna cook?”

  “Bloody hell, no. We can go out somewhere if you like, or I could have something delivered.”

  “Whatever you want,” she said, shrugging. “I’m not that hungry, honestly.”

  They regarded each other with rare awkwardness for a few seconds, then Stone waved her toward the sitting room. “How are you? Did your case with Jason go well? I was surprised when you said he wasn’t coming up with you.”

  “He can’t get away. Fran’s got him up to his ears in catch-up work since we got back.” She perched on the edge of the sofa and her gaze came up. “I’m sorry about Dr. Mortenson.”

  She looked odd—different in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on, as if she were simultaneously younger and far older. Something haunted flitted behind her eyes, and her aura was dark with unease. “Verity—what’s wrong? Is it something you’d like to talk about?”

  “I—” She looked down at her hands in her lap.

  “Is this about your case? Did something happen?” He sat at the opposite end of the sofa, turned toward her. “I didn’t see any horrific news coming out of Las Vegas in the last few days—”

  She shook her head, still not looking at him. “You wouldn’t have. They did a pretty good job covering it up. It never made it to the papers. They’re really good at that in Vegas, apparently.”

  Stone frowned. “What happened? Was it the Evil?”

  “No…no, for once the Evil had nothing to do with it. I don’t know if that’s comforting, though—knowing what people can do when they don’t have the excuse of being possessed by something from another dimension.”

  “So—what, then?” He continued watching her aura as it shifted and crested like a storm-tossed sea. “Verity—please. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

  Once again her gaze came up to briefly meet his. “I’ll tell you—but I’m not sure you can help me. I’m not sure anybody can.” She took a deep breath. “But before I do—I am sure of something now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to come back up here. I want to study with you again. As soon as I can.”

  That wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. “I told you—you’re always welcome here. That’s never going to change. But—is this connected with what happened in Las Vegas? Did you have some kind of disagreement with Edna?”

  Instead of answering, she grabbed a pillow from the end of the sofa and wrapped her arms around it, staring toward the curtained window without seeming to see it. “Our case—Jason’s case—was to find out what happened to this guy, Gary, who’d disappeared. He was supposed to be in L.A., but he turned up dead in Vegas. So we went there to try to track down who killed him.” She chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. When she spoke again, the words tumbled out in a robotic monotone. “What we found instead was that Gary was a wild talent—he could change into a completely different person—and he sneaked off to Vegas a couple times a year to get his freak on with little kids. The Mob found out and killed him, but they couldn’t find the operation because it was run by a mage who was really good at illusions and hiding. Jason and I tracked down where the place was, and attacked it with the help of the Mob guys who’d killed Gary. The mage had it hidden behind a bunch of illusions and wards on the top floor of a building downtown.”

  Stone stared at her, shocked. “Bloody hell…” he murmured.

  “Yeah.” She still didn’t look at him. “That wasn’t even the worst part, though. I mean, we succeeded, right? We got all the kids out alive and…well, as safe as they can be, I guess, after the hell they’ve been through. Between us and the Mob guys, we rounded up all the guys working for this mage, and even the customers who were there. The ones who weren’t killed are in jail—and even though a bunch of the Vegas cops are Evil, I still don’t think they’re just gonna let ’em go. Hell, they might get some great jollies tormenting them—and for once, I say they’re welcome to it. So everybody wins, right?” Her tone grew bitter.

  Stone leaned in a little closer, immediately picking up on what she hadn’t said. “What about the mage?” he asked softly. “Did he get away?”

  Her hands clenched around the pillow. “No. He didn’t get away.”

  He sensed she had more to say, so he remained silent, letting her take her time.

  When she turned toward him, there was no mistaking the haunted look in her eyes. She looked like she’d aged ten years. “I killed him, Doc.”

  He paused. “Verity,” he said gently, after several moments passed. “I—” He fought to find the right way to say what he wanted to say.

  She spoke again before he could work it out. “I didn’t just kill him. He had a gun on a kid. He was going to make the mob guy kill Jason, or he’d blow the kid’s head off. I had to do something before he noticed. So I—I—” Her fists clenched, and her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I used the magic Edna taught me—healing magic—to grab hold of his aura and…I didn’t even mean to do it. I just wanted to stop him!”

  Stone stared at her, the implications of what she’d just said chilling him. “What did you do, Verity?”

  “I blew a blood vessel in his brain! I gave him a stroke!” She looked like a terrified child who’d just caused some awful accident that she couldn’t take back no matter how hard she wanted to. Her voice trailed off, miserable and devastated. “He had a shield up…but he couldn’t stop me…Doc…I used powers Edna taught me for healing…to kill somebody. And now I feel like Jason’s looking at me like I’m some kind of monster.”

  Stone didn’t let the ramifications of what she’d told him occupy his mind right now. No question, they were huge, and he’d have to think long and hard about them later. But not now. Now, his prized apprentice was falling apart in front of his eyes. For once, he didn’t pause to think—instead, he reached out and put a gentle hand on her arm. “Verity…it’s all right. It will be all right.”

  The floodgates broke, and she threw herself into his arms, sobbing. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work!”

  He pulled her close, holding her and stroking her back as she buried her head in his shoulder. He didn’t s
ay anything. He didn’t need to. Right now, she needed him to be what she looked to him to be: her teacher. Her mentor. Her friend.

  Eventually, her sobs slowed to hitching gasps and she pulled back from him with obvious reluctance. “I’m…I’m sorry, Doc…” she said between breaths. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s all right…” he murmured. “It’s all right…”

  She chuckled and sniffed. “I got you all wet…”

  “Believe me…if you’d seen me a few days ago…this is nothing.”

  “You…don’t think I’m a monster, do you?” she asked, looking back down into her lap.

  He took her hand in both of his. “Verity…listen to me. Look at me.”

  Her gaze came back up. The dramatic makeup she favored had run with her tears, making her look like a little girl who’d gotten into her mother’s stash.

  “Magic is…messy. As much as we try to set it to order, the forces we manipulate are bigger than any one person can hope to get their mind completely around. We’re always discovering new things. That’s what I’ve been trying to teach you—to take what you know and build on it. Combine it. Use it in new and different ways. That’s all we can ever hope to do—keep learning. Keep discovering. Keep experimenting.”

  “But…I killed him. And…the worst part is…I don’t feel bad about it. Not that I did it, anyway.” Raider leaped into her lap, and she looked away again, stroking his head with the hand Stone wasn’t holding. “But…how I did it…Doc…he couldn’t stop me. What if I—” She swallowed and pulled Raider close.

  “What if you lose your temper and do it to someone else?” he asked softly.