Stone and a Hard Place

Copyright ©2013-2015, R. L. King

Stone and a Hard Place

First Edition, 2015

Edited by John Helfers

Cover Art by Streetlight Graphics

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Dan, once again

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A lot of people helped me out on my quest to finish this book, and I want to thank them here. First as always, thanks to Dan Nitschke, my spousal unit, best friend, and first audience. He puts up with a lot from an obsessed writer, he’s my most vocal cheering section and inspiration during writerly funks, and I’m grateful for all of it. Additional thanks go to Mike Brodu, my “picky beta reader,” for finding plot holes and providing general encouragement; to my editor, John Helfers, for making the book better with his comments and suggestions for moving things around; to Glendon at Streetlight Graphics for the awesome cover, ebook formatting, and other assorted nifty bits; to the folks from the South Bay Writers critique group who found other errors; and to the readers of my Facebook author page for encouragement, kind words, and patience.

PROLOGUE

Adelaide Bonham was convinced that her house hated her.

She clutched her heavy comforter tighter around her bony shoulders, but it didn’t help. Mainly because it hadn’t been the sudden wave of cold rolling through her bedroom that caused the shaking in her wrinkled hands.

Not entirely, anyway.

The first time she’d heard the voices, a couple of weeks ago, she thought it was the workmen. The house and its grounds were so vast that there were always workers around, doing some task or another: repairing, cleaning, landscaping. She thought it was odd that they were still there so late in the day, but there’d been enough exceptions over the years that she didn’t worry about it. She mentioned the voices to Iona in passing, then promptly forgot about them. Despite her love for thrillers and cozy murder mysteries, Adelaide Bonham wasn’t a woman prone to flights of fancy or unreasonable fears.

The second time she heard the voices, about a week later, she didn’t tell anyone. She had a good reason: at eighty-nine years old, she was well aware that anything out of the ordinary she claimed she saw or heard would be instantly attributed to that dismissive diagnosis of senior citizens everywhere:
her mind’s starting to go, poor dear.

Adelaide was certain her mind was not starting to go. Sure, she might have her occasional bout of forgetfulness, but everybody had those. Even Iona, who was young enough to be her own daughter, occasionally forgot where she’d left her reading glasses or the day’s newspaper. The modern world simply moved at a faster pace than it had in Adelaide’s youth, and it was inevitable that things sometimes slipped through the cracks.

Nonetheless, the night she heard the murmuring while seated in her favorite chair in the upstairs library, she’d simply buzzed Iona and told her she was tired and wanted to go to bed. She watched the nurse’s face carefully when she came in, but saw no sign that Iona had heard anything.

The voices kept whispering and murmuring, however, a far-off conversation too indistinct to follow as Iona pushed her out of the room in her wheelchair. Adelaide didn’t look back.

Tonight, she’d gone to bed early, but not to sleep. One of her most cherished pleasures these days was curling up in her big bed under her heavy covers, turning on the cheery lamp on her nightstand, and cracking open her latest mystery novel. Iona made sure to keep her well supplied, and though she’d had to switch over to the large-print versions in the last few years, she’d never lost the almost childlike feeling of anticipation whenever she opened a new one. Diving into another beloved world of murder, mayhem, and the amateur sleuths caught in the middle allowed her to forget, if only for a little while, that it had been a very long time since she was young. Sometimes, as she was dropping off to sleep, she fantasized about what it might be like to have a mystery of her own to solve. She didn’t tell Iona about this, either. Some fantasies were better kept to yourself.

Tonight was one of the best kind for mystery-reading: cold and cloudy, with rain pelting a comforting cadence down on the roof. Adelaide loved the rain, at least when she was inside the house. There were few things that made her feel safer and more secure than being warm and dry and bundled up in the midst of a rainstorm. The wilder, the better.

She was deep into the latest exploits of James Qwilleran and his delightful mystery-solving cats when it hit her.

The sudden, inexplicable feeling of being an unwelcome intruder in her own home.

There were no words to the feeling, only impressions. But the impressions were clear enough:

Hatred.

Loathing.

Adelaide sat up, her book slipping from her hands. “Is—is someone there?” Her voice came out as a quavering whisper.

Get out.

You are not wanted here.

Go, while you still can.

Then the wave of cold, like someone had opened a freezer and allowed a slow current of frigid air to creep across the floor.

Adelaide’s heart pounded. She clutched her comforter and glanced toward the window. She was sure the heavy drapes were closed, and Iona never opened the windows.

The murmuring voices began again.

Adelaide remained there, her comforter pulled up under her chin, her eyes wide, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. She half-expected to see the little puffs of air as they escaped her lips, like you saw when you were outside in the morning chill, but she didn’t.

What was happening?

Get out…

“Who’s there?” she whispered. Her terrified gaze darted around the room, but despite the fact that her vision wasn’t what it once was, she didn’t think anything was moving.

She didn’t want to do it. She resisted it as long as she could. But as she sat there in her little pool of light, straining to make out what the ghostly voices were saying, her courage finally broke. She scooted over to the edge of the bed and scrabbled at the nightstand for the call button that would summon Iona.

As she waited for the nurse to arrive, Adelaide wasn’t sure which thought frightened her more: that she was imagining the voices and the cold waves and the feelings of dread…or that she wasn’t.

CHAPTER ONE

Alastair Stone suspected the Universe was conspiring against his desire to keep the two sides of his life separate.

That suspicion was confirmed the moment he picked up the phone (
who the hell is calling at three bloody thirty in the morning?)
and heard Walter Yarborough’s voice on the other end.

“Alastair. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I’m in a bit of a jam. I need a favor.”

Stone glanced at the other side of the bed. Megan Whitney, assistant professor of English literature and magically oblivious girlfriend, was stirring from deep slumber. He willed her not to wake up. It would make a lot of things easier.

Easier. That was amusing.

“Alastair…?” She rolled over, voice fuzzy. “Who’s that?”

“Nobody.” Then, to Yarborough: “Just—hold on a minute. Can’t talk here.”

“Can’t talk to who?” Megan muttered.

“Nobody. Go back to sleep.” He patted her shoulder, already swinging around to a sitting position. He stuck the phone between his ear and his shoulder and tried to shrug into his robe without dropping it. He could have taken the call here, but that would be a bad idea. Whatever Walter wanted to talk about, the odds were high it would be something Stone wouldn’t want to explain to Megan in the morning.

“Where are you going?” she asked. She was still mostly asleep; her arm flopped across his half of the bed as if expecting to find him there.

“Loo,” he said, hurrying out. “Back soon. Just go back to sleep.” He closed the door behind him and headed down the hall to his study. He closed that door, too.

“All right, Walter,” he said, not caring that he was failing utterly to keep the annoyed growl out of his voice. At this time of the night, “coherent” was about the best Walter could expect. “Pleasant” was pushing it, and “cheerful” was right out. “What is it that couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour?”

To his credit, Yarborough got it right away. “Oh, bugger—I forgot about the time difference, didn’t I?”

“Well, I’m up now,” Stone said, his tone dark.

“All right, then. I’m sorry to ask, Alastair, but I don’t know anyone else in the area who can do it. There’s a boy—his name is Ethan Penrose. Lives with his mother in San Jose. He just turned eighteen, and I was planning on taking him on as an apprentice. He was due to come over here next month.”

Stone’s eyes narrowed. “And—?”

“And—well, plans have changed. His mother’s taken ill. Some kind of heart issue. It came on suddenly, and it’s quite serious. Understandably, he doesn’t want to leave her and come over right now. Even taking the portal across, it’d still be a long trip up here to Leeds from London.”

Even half-awake, Stone was already seeing where this was going. “Walter—”

“I know. I know. You’ve always said you didn’t want an apprentice yet. But you’re a fantastic teacher. We both know that. He’s a good lad—you’d like him. And it wouldn’t be permanent. Just for a year or so. I’m sad to say it sounds like his mother isn’t doing well at all.”

“Why doesn’t he just wait until she’s better, then? Shouldn’t he be taking care of her, not off somewhere learning magic?”

“She’s got a nurse staying there who takes care of her, but the unfortunate truth is that she might not
get
better. He’s helping out where he can, but he’s an eighteen-year-old boy. He loves his mother, but he’s got nothing else in his life. He hasn’t even applied to university, because he thought he’d be too busy with his apprenticeship. His mother only recently told him about the fact that he’s got the Talent at all, so everything’s been a bit of a shock to him these past couple of months.”

“Where’s the father in this equation?” Stone leaned back in his desk chair and swiped his hand through his dark, unruly hair. “If the kid is a mage, then the father—”

“His father died when Ethan was very young. We were friends for a long time—I met him back when I was living in New York. That’s why I was originally supposed to take the boy on. His mother and I have pretty much assumed that’s the way it would go for years.”

Stone paused, his gaze traversing the bookshelves, wooden desk, ratty leather armchair, and other fixtures of his study. The shelves were lined with row after row of books, from old moth-eaten tomes with bindings that barely held together to modern paperbacks, interspersed with skulls, bits of feathers, stone statuettes, and other eclectic objects he’d picked up over the years in his travels. “Walter—” he began after a long pause. “I—”

“Will you at least give it a try, Alastair?” It was odd hearing a pleading note in Walter’s usually staid and confident voice. “That’s all I ask. Just meet with him. Talk to him. See if you get on. If there are any expenses involved, I’ll take care of them. And since he’s local, he wouldn’t have to live with you or anything.” A pause, and then: “I know how much you enjoy teaching. Wouldn’t it be a nice change of pace to teach
real
magic for a while in addition to all that ‘Occult Studies’ rubbish you feed those kids at Stanford?”

Stone closed his eyes and sighed. The sad thing was, Walter was right. Taking on an apprentice was something almost every mage did eventually—it was the sort of “pay it forward” system that kept the magical society running smoothly. You learned the Art from your master, and then later on you turned around and taught it to the next generation of students. At thirty-one, he was already overdue to take his turn, especially given how young he himself had been when he’d begun his own apprenticeship. He’d been putting it off for all these years not so much because of the teaching part—he loved teaching, and was damned good at it—but mainly because he didn’t want his life disrupted by the responsibility the whole business would require. But—

His mind was already betraying him, spinning off lesson plans in the background and prioritizing magical techniques according to importance and level of difficulty. “Fine, Walter,” he said at last, resigned. “I’ll meet him. But that’s all I’m promising. If he ends up being an entitled little toe-rag, all bets are off.”

“Wouldn’t have expected anything else,” Yarborough said, sounding satisfied. He gave Stone the boy’s address and telephone number. “Just give him a call when you’re ready to get started. I’ll call him and tell him to expect you—and warn him about you,” he added with a chuckle. “And—thank you, Alastair. It’ll mean a lot to him, and to me.”

“Next time, thank me by not calling me in the middle of the bloody night,” Stone grumbled.

He hoped Megan would write the whole thing off as a dream, but as she was getting dressed the next morning, she asked, “Who called last night? Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” he assured her. “Just a—erm—distant relative from back home. Always did have a hell of a time remembering there’s an eight-hour time difference.”

She regarded him as she buttoned her jacket. It wasn’t hard to tell she didn’t entirely believe him. But then again, he hadn’t fallen for her because she was stupid. “That’s it?”

He shrugged. “Actually, it’s a bit more than that.” If he was going to continue seeing Megan—and he had no intention of stopping any time soon, since she possessed the rare quality of being satisfied with the level of commitment at which they were currently operating and showing no signs of wanting to increase it—he’d have to come up with some sort of cover story to explain Ethan. “He’s asked me to…look out for a young cousin of mine over here. Sort of a mentor thing. His mum is ill, and he’s having some trouble coping. So you might see him around here fairly often.”

“I never pegged you for the Big Brother type,” she said with a wicked smile.

“Yes, well—it would seem I’m overdue, then, aren’t I?”