Heart of stone, p.28
Heart of Stone, page 28
Stone gripped the edge of the counter, shaking. What had he done today? He didn’t remember collecting any of these items, but he did remember stopping to do something on the way home from work. Perhaps someone had left the duffel bag and the items in his trunk, or he’d stopped somewhere and allowed them to put it there. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force his brain to bring back the memories that eluded him. At first, all he got was that Deirdre had asked him to run errands. He’d done the same thing over the weekend. She’d wanted him to pick something up.
Then, as suddenly as if someone had just placed it there for him to find, another memory returned. This one hit him so hard he swayed on his feet, and would have fallen if he hadn’t been maintaining a death grip on the breakfast bar.
No.
This can’t be happening.
She can’t be involved in this.
He stared at the items again.
The items that were some of the components in one of the grimoire’s rituals.
Weakness and nausea slammed into him like a cresting wave, his hands going white where they gripped the counter. He swallowed several times, forcing down the nausea. No…
The doorbell rang.
He stiffened.
Who could that be? Had Jason and Verity returned? Had Deirdre? Hastily, he gathered up the items on the counter and tossed them back in the bag, which he zipped up.
The bell rang again. More urgently this time.
He dropped the bag behind the kitchen counter and hurried down the hall. He opened the door.
Deirdre stood there, her hand in mid-reach toward the doorbell.
Stone stared at her in shock. Every time he had ever seen her, even first thing in the morning when she’d just woke up, she always looked utterly put together, with every line of her clothes perfect, her face smooth and lovely.
She didn’t look that way now. Her eyes were wide, her expression terrified, her clothes in disarray. “Deirdre? What’s happened?”
“Alastair,” she said, with breathless urgency. She grasped his arm. “You have to help me. Everything’s gone wrong!”
Chapter Sixty-Four
Movement, the sensation of starting and stopping, brought Verity back to wakefulness. She cracked open her eyes, and her first sight was the familiar tattered tan headliner of Jason’s car. She was belted into a seat, which had been pushed all the way back until it was almost reclining. Twisting, she saw her brother in the driver’s seat, both hands gripping the steering wheel, looking straight ahead. “…Jason?”
Jason glanced over at the passenger seat, then went back to watching the traffic without acknowledging that his sister had spoken.
“Jason?” she said again, louder. “What’s…going on?” She fumbled at the side of the seat with her right hand until she found the control to return the seat to its upright position. Her left arm throbbed, and blazed pain when she tried to move it.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
She shifted again. “Ow. Where the hell are we?” Memories came back: her anger at Deirdre, hitting her with a spell. Stone’s enraged roar. The concussion beam slamming her into a wall. Jason’s wild lunge. Why weren’t they back at Stone’s place? “Jason, why are we driving? Where’s Dr. Stone?”
“Back at his place, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t give a damn.”
She grabbed his arm, hard, ignoring the pain in her own. “Jason! Damn it, what’s going on with you? We have to get back there!”
“We’re not going back. He hurt you, V.”
“I know—but he didn’t mean to. I hit Deirdre with a spell. I had to stop her from doing whatever she was doing.”
“She wasn’t doing anything. Why’d you hit her?”
“Where are we?” She looked around, trying to figure out where the car was headed. The freeway was packed with commuter traffic, creeping along at about twenty miles per hour. Taillights flared bright red as the whole line of traffic periodically ground to a halt. “Are we in San Jose?”
“I guess. I’ve just been driving.”
“Jason!” She squeezed his arm again, and shook it. “Pull off the freeway. Now. We gotta get this straightened out. We need to get back to Dr. Stone before Deirdre does something to him.”
“She’s not gonna do anything to him, V. I don’t know why you keep thinking that.”
Verity let out a loud sigh. Every time Jason got near Deirdre, his common sense went out the window, and he forgot every bit of his distrust of her. “Listen to me,” she said, loudly. “Don’t your remember? We were going over there to tell Dr. Stone about how Deirdre doesn’t exist. Remember? You had Fran check? After we said something about it, that’s when everything got fucked up.” She shook him again. “Damn it, remember!”
It almost seemed for a moment as if he was beginning to. His grip on the wheel loosened, and his eyes shifted to her and back to the road. Uncertainty flitted across his face.
“Pull this car off the freeway now, Jason, or I swear, I’ll knock you out right here.” She raised her right hand, flaring energy around it in a passable imitation of Stone’s favorite magical intimidation gesture.
Jason glanced over at her again. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. But we’re not going back there.”
“Just pull off. Go park somewhere. I’m gonna heal my arm.”
She waited long enough to make sure Jason was making headway toward moving the car in the direction of an exit, then closed her eyes and concentrated on generating healing energy, pulling it from the Earth’s aura just as Edna had taught her. She still amazed herself sometimes at how much easier it was to do it this way—to work with the energy that surrounded the Earth in harmony with her own body, to set right what had been disrupted, to restore the proper pattern to the body’s integrity. It still wasn’t easy—Edna had told her that magic worth doing was almost never easy—but healing this way made so much more sense than the way Stone had tried to teach her. In less than five minutes, the cracked bone in her upper arm had been restored to wholeness, and the pain that remained was only a vestige of its former self.
She opened her eyes, half afraid to find out that Jason had continued driving south on the freeway, but he’d pulled off at an exit and was now cruising down a crowded street she didn’t recognize, past a procession of strip malls and fast-food restaurants. “Pull off,” she said. “Just pick a parking lot somewhere.”
He did as he was told, still looking like he was half in a daze. He didn’t even ask her about whether her healing efforts had worked. He guided the Ford into a parking space in the back corner of a McDonald’s lot, switched off the ignition, and waited, still staring straight ahead.
“Talk to me,” she said. “Come on. I’m fine now. See?” She waved her arm in emphasis. “All good. We need to go back and find out what’s going on.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Jason. Didn’t you hear me before? There’s something up with your aura. Deirdre did something to you. I don’t know what, but it’s the same as she did to Dr. Stone. We—”
She stopped, because he didn’t appear to be listening to her. He stared out through the windshield, fixated on a rusting Customer Parking Only sign on the wall in front of them.
She let her frustration out in a loud sigh, then shifted to magical sight and focused on Jason. His vivid blue aura blazed as brightly as ever, but just like before she noticed a faint red overlay. As she’d learned from both Stone and Edna, red in an aura (at least in one that wasn’t red to start with) was usually associated with strong emotion—most commonly either anger or sexual desire. Since Jason didn’t seem angry—in fact, he appeared surprisingly complacent, especially given what had occurred back at Stone’s place—she suspected that whatever Deirdre had done to him focused on the sexual end of things. That could explain why both Jason and Stone considered Deirdre abnormally beautiful, when Verity herself saw only an attractive woman.
If they were going to get anywhere fast, she’d have to do something about this herself. She couldn’t afford to wait for it to wear off—if it even wore off. If Deirdre had Stone under some kind of compulsion, it had clearly been going on for quite some time—possibly since shortly after they met.
“Argh,” she said under her breath. Aura manipulation was tricky stuff. She’d only begun to study it with Edna, who made it a point to reiterate before every session that any kind of magic that messed with the mind or the aura directly was both more difficult and potentially more dangerous than magic that healed the body. If a physical healing spell went wrong, the worst that might happen is it didn’t work, or possibly a bone would knit wrong or something. If mental healing magic went wrong, it could have devastating effects on the patient’s mind.
Carefully, slowly, she reached out with her magical senses to touch Jason’s aura. She felt its familiar strong, steady pulse: whatever Deirdre had done, it wasn’t inherently harmful. Jason was still there—she’d just added something extra.
That would make things easier.
“Jason…” she murmured, keeping her voice low and soothing. “I’m going to try something. Don’t freak out if it feels a little weird, okay? I promise it won’t hurt.”
Jason shrugged. “Sure, go ahead.”
She leaned in a little closer, narrowing her eyes. She took several deep breaths to center herself, then reached out toward Jason’s aura. She wasn’t sure what would happen when she touched it—how the red part would react—so she forced herself to go slow even though her mind was screaming to hurry.
Jason shifted in his seat when she contacted his aura, but the red part didn’t react. Verity let her breath out. Passive, then. That meant it would probably wear off on its own given time, especially since it hadn’t had much time to take root. With Stone, she thought it would be much harder. She wasn’t even sure she’d be capable of helping him—she might need to call Edna. But for now, she moved her perceptions around Jason, poking with gentle care at the red overlay, gauging its boundaries. When she thought she had them, she mentally took hold of part of it and gave it a small tug.
It came away readily, and in the place where it broke free of Jason’s blue aura, it dimmed and faded like smoke. Once again, Jason shifted in his seat, though he continued to stare at the battered sign as if it were written in hieroglyphs and his life depended on deciphering them.
Still moving slowly—can’t be impatient now—Verity peeled up one edge of the empty space between the two bits of red and tugged again, a little harder this time. The same thing happened, with more of the red going hazy and drifting away. It took her several minutes to finish; she probably could have gone faster, but she didn’t want to take the chance. Once all of the red was gone, she focused on building a barrier that, with luck, would make it more difficult for Deirdre to get through to Jason again if she tried. She had no idea how well it would work, but it couldn’t hurt. When she finished, she slumped back into her seat, drawing her shoulder blades together against the cramping from sitting still too long. “Jason?”
He blinked a couple times as if awakening from sleep. “V?” He looked around, confused. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere in San Jose,” she said. “Are you okay? Is it gone?”
“San Jose?” He spun around to look out the back window. “What the hell—we were at Al’s place. He hit you. Deirdre—”
“Yeah. And we gotta get back. C’mon. I’ll explain everything on the way.”
Jason didn’t ask questions. He turned on the car, backed out, and headed back for the freeway.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Stone narrowed his eyes at Deirdre. “What’s going on? Where are Jason and Verity?”
She took several deep breaths, her shoulders rising and falling rapidly. “I’ll tell you,” she said, voice shaking. “I’ll tell you everything. But you have to help me!”
“Help you do what?” He stepped aside and let her in. “Deirdre—something’s happening, and I want to know what it is. Why do I have components for one of those grimoire rituals in the trunk of my car?”
“I—I don’t even know where to start,” she said. “There isn’t time to talk for too long. You’re going to hate me—you might even want to kill me, Alastair, when you hear what I have to say. But you can’t—not yet. Not if you want to stop something horrible and save your friend.”
Stone went cold. “My friend?” He gripped her arms. “Jason? Verity? Where the hell are they? Have you done something to them?”
“No!” She shook free of him and took a couple steps back, still looking scared and frazzled. “No. I sent them away so they wouldn’t get involved.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Nobody was supposed to die, Alastair! I promise you! You’re still going to hate me, but please remember that!”
“Deirdre…” Stone fought to keep his breathing under control, to remain calm. “What did you do? If you’re not talking about Jason or Verity, then who—”
“Your student,” she said. “The woman. The one who caught us kissing in your office.”
“Tabby Wells?”
“I don’t know her name. But if she was the one—”
He surged forward, gripping her arm so hard she winced. “Deirdre, what did you do? Is Tabby dead? Did you kill her?”
“No!” She didn’t try to wrench free of his grip this time. “No…I never meant for her to die. I give you my word on that.”
“Then what?”
“He took her! I went back to where she was, and she was gone. And—” She met his gaze with big, haunted eyes. “So…was the grimoire.”
Stone froze. “The…grimoire?” he asked. “What do you mean? We destroyed that, Deirdre. We threw it in the fire. We watched it burn!”
She shook her head. “No. We didn’t. That’s what I made you think. Once you’d told me you did all the translations and understood the rituals, I…” She looked down, her shoulders hunching.
Stone yanked her forward by her arm. With his other hand, he grabbed her chin and forced her head back up. “Have you been mucking with my mind?” he asked, his voice deadly calm. He shook her. “Have you?”
“Yes! Yes!” She tried to pull back, but his grip was too strong. “You’re hurting me, Alastair. Please let me go. I won’t run.”
He didn’t let go. He shook her again. “Are you doing it now?”
“No!”
“How do I know that?”
She gaped at him in astonishment. “Can’t you tell?”
He glared. “How can I tell?”
“Don’t I—don’t I look different to you now?”
He stared at her. Her hair was windblown, her eyes reddened, her face blotchy and tearstained—but aside from that, she looked like the same beautiful Deirdre he’d known since the night he’d met her in January. He flung her hard onto the couch. “If I catch you messing with my mind, I will kill you.”
“I know. I know. I deserve it!” She sat up, but made no attempt to rise. “But you have to help me first. You have to stop this!”
“Stop what?” He replayed what she’d said. “Who’s ‘he’? Who’s got the grimoire? Who’s got Tabby?”
“Elias Richter. He’s—”
That froze him again. “Richter? The black mage?”
“You know who he is?”
“Yes. I knew he was searching for the grimoire, but I didn’t pursue it because I thought we’d destroyed it.” He took some more deep breaths, trying to get himself back under control. “What’s your connection with him?”
“I stole it from him,” she said.
“Impossible.” He whirled and began pacing, burying both hands in his hair as if trying to squeeze the answers from his own head. “You’re lying. You’re not a mage.” He faced her again. “What are you?”
She looked down at her lap. “There isn’t really a name for what I am,” she said. “There aren’t many of us left anymore.”
“So you’re not human?”
She shook her head. “Not…completely. We—I—can influence men. Make them see me as more beautiful than I am. And…”
“And…?” Everything began to make sense to him now, though his mind screamed against accepting the truth. All this time, she’d been using him, manipulating him…insinuating herself into his mind to make him do what she wanted. And he’d let her. Hell, he hadn’t even noticed she was doing it! He clenched his fists and felt the magical power rising within him. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run from the room.
He wanted to kill her.
Instead, he asked in the same tone of deadly calm, “And what?”
She still didn’t look up. “Once they fall in love with us…once we…make love…” She swallowed. “Once we have access to their blood…then we…”
Stone went still, remembering their first night, how her fingernails had sunk into his back, leaving bloody scratches. “You can control them,” he said. The rage rose again. “Is that what you’ve been doing? Controlling me? All this time?”
“No!” Her head came up, and her eyes were wide. “Only enough to make you see me as beautiful. I didn’t…I didn’t start until the night we destroyed the grimoire. I had to make you think it was gone, so I could…set up the rest of…”
“The rest of what?”
“The rest of my plan,” she said, looking at her lap again.
“Your plan.”
She nodded.
“Your plan to do what?”
“To…” She paused. “To keep from dying,” she said. “To stay young and beautiful.” She sighed. “And to punish Elias.”
