The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  BOOKS BY R. L. KING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The Other Side

  Copyright © 2017 by R.L. King All rights reserved.

  First Edition: June 2017

  Editor: John Helfers

  Cover and Formatting: 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 are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Want to be notified when the next Alastair Stone Chronicles novel will be released? Please sign up for the mailing list by going to http://www.alastairstonechronicles.com. We’ll never share your email address with anyone else, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  CHAPTER ONE

  If Alastair Stone could get away with it, he would stay as far away from Edwina Mortenson’s office as he could.

  His mind was already on his next class as he shrugged into his black wool overcoat and rapped on Mortenson’s door. He was already going to be late, even if he could get in and get hold of the papers he needed from her quickly. The rain was coming down in steady sheets now, which meant he had two choices: either make a mad dash across campus and show up at the lecture hall looking like a drowned rat who’d just run a hundred-yard dash, or move at a more sedate pace with his umbrella deployed and—assuming nobody tried to stop him on the way—get there with seconds to spare before the students decided he wasn’t showing up and drifted away. It was one of those unwritten rules at every university Stone had ever taught at or attended: the professor got ten minutes after the stated class start time. If he didn’t show up, the students were justified in assuming he wasn’t going to. Not all of them left, but usually enough did that there was no point in trying to get anything done.

  But before he could even start his cross-campus journey, he’d have to get past the Dragon Lady. He could hear her talking inside, and her voice stop abruptly at his knock—good. That meant she had a student in there with her, and he could make this fast.

  “Yes, who is it?”

  Mortenson sounded irritated, but that was nothing new. “Irritated” was one of her standard settings, along with “professionally aloof” and “pretentious.”

  Stone pushed the door open. “Terribly sorry to interrupt, Edwina, but I need to pick up those papers for my next—”

  He stopped. Mortenson wasn’t with a student. Instead, an older man—short, chubby, and balding—sat in her guest chair. His expensive shirt looked like he’d slept in it, and the fashionable leather briefcase leaning against his chair probably cost more than most people made in a month. A series of papers, both standard white sheets and a few glossy ones covered in photographs Stone couldn’t make out from where he stood, were spread across her desk.

  “Oh,” he said. “Er—sorry to intrude. I’ll pop back in later.”

  Mortenson sighed as the balding man twisted in his chair to check out the newcomer. “No, no, Alastair, it’s fine.” She opened a drawer and withdrew a clipped-together sheaf of papers. “Here they are.”

  The balding man’s gaze took in Stone, studying him from head to foot as if examining a particularly interesting specimen of the local fauna.

  With obvious reluctance, Mortenson nodded toward him. “Alastair, this is Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan, Dr. Alastair Stone, one of my colleagues. I hope you’ll excuse him—he’s got a class to get to.” She held up the stack of papers, waggling it as if to say take them and go.

  “Oh, yeah?” Duncan’s eyebrows went up as interest flashed across his small, shrewd eyes. “You part of the Occult Studies department too, Stone?”

  Stone took the papers from Mortenson and tucked them into his briefcase. “Er—that’s what it says on my paycheck, yes. If you’ll excuse me, though—Dr. Mortenson’s correct. I’ve got to get to class before my students decide I’ve found a better offer.”

  Closer to the desk now, he glanced down at the papers. Most of the photographs depicted spooky-looking old houses, dilapidated interiors lit with eerie green, and desolate landscapes. He couldn’t make out any of the text except the heading across one of them: The Other Side.

  Duncan stood and offered a manicured hand sporting a gold ring. “Niceta meetcha. Maybe we can chat later.” Along with the ring, he wore a flashy gold Rolex.

  Stone couldn’t imagine why he’d want to chat any further with this strange little man, but he made a noncommittal noise and extended his own hand, glancing at Mortenson with a clear what the hell is going on here? look.

  “Yes, well, Dr. Stone’s quite busy,” she said as Duncan grasped Stone’s hand in a crushing grip. She seemed in as big a hurry to get rid of him as he was to leave. “Probably best if we—”

  “Yes. Probably best indeed.” Stone yanked his hand back—why was it always small men who felt the need to break bones with their handshakes? “I’ll talk to you later, Edwina. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Duncan.”

  Duncan raised a finger and made as if to say something else, but Stone got out o
f there fast and closed the door behind him.

  Definitely a weird situation. Mr. Duncan, whoever he was, didn’t look anything like the sort of person the lofty Edwina Mortenson would deign to make time for. He’d rarely seen her with anybody but a student, a fellow professor, or somebody from the upper echelons of the University’s bureaucracy, and Duncan didn’t look like any of the above.

  Ah, well. No time to care about it now. He glanced at his watch—if he hurried, he might still be able to make it to the lecture hall on time while only impersonating a partially drowned rat.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Verity Thayer was glad to see her brother Jason already seated at their familiar back booth at Moretti’s Pizza, and that he was alone. What she wanted to talk to him about didn’t really lend itself to an audience.

  He looked up and grinned as he spotted her. “Hey,” he said, waving her to the bench across from him. The tall glass of beer in front of him was already half empty. “How’s it going?”

  “Where’s Kristen?”

  “She’s running late. Should be here pretty soon. I ordered the usual.”

  “Cool. I was surprised Fran let you out.”

  “Even flunkies get a break every now and then,” he said. “So what’s up? Not that I don’t like getting together—I wish we could do it more often, but…you know.” He shrugged.

  Verity did know. Between his PI work with Fran Bartek, his growing relationship with Kristen, and her own magical studies, their rare instances of free time didn’t match up nearly as often as they used to.

  The waiter came by and set her usual glass of iced tea in front of her, and she spent long enough dumping sugar in and stirring it that Jason knocked gently on the table. “Hey, V? Is something wrong?”

  “What makes you think something’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

  “I’m a detective, remember?”

  She snorted. “Not yet you’re not. No detecting without a license.”

  “Don’t tell Fran, or she’ll make me polish her deerstalker or something.”

  “More likely rebuild her carburetor.”

  “V…?”

  There it was: that gentle, admonishing tone that clearly said I’m your big brother and you can’t hide anything from me, so spill it, baby sis. No real way around that one—she’d tried before and it hadn’t gone well.

  She sighed. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?” he asked innocently.

  She glared at him, but then had to chuckle. He could be such a doofus. “Shut up.” Come on—just say it. Get it out there. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with myself.”

  “How so?” he asked, tilting his head. “I thought you were pretty set on keeping up with the magic.”

  The waiter arrived again, this time bearing a large pizza brimming with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, and peppers. She waited for him to leave, then grabbed a slice and took a bite before continuing, “I am. That part I’m sure about. But I can’t just do that.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Not too many full-time mages around, huh?” Jason liberated two slices and dropped them on his plate.

  “Not that I know of. It doesn’t exactly pay well. And even if there were, I don’t think that’s what I’d want to do. I need to find a real job too.”

  “So what are you getting at? Have you decided to look for a job? Go to college? You got your GED, so you should be good to—”

  “Actually, I’m thinking about going back up to the Bay Area,” she said.

  There. It was out. She switched on magical sight and watched him over her half-eaten slice, trying to gauge his reaction.

  His expression didn’t change, but his aura did. The clear, smooth blue shifted and clouded with troubled energy. “Nothing’s up with you and Edna, is it?” he asked after a pause.

  “No, nothing like that. Well…not exactly.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

  “The magic’s great. She’s teaching me a lot—I’ve learned tons about healing, and the kind of magic where you use natural energy to make things happen. She says I’m coming along really well, and I’m getting to the point where I should be able to take what I’ve learned and build on it on my own.”

  “Okay, that sounds good. And you don’t really need a job, right? Edna gives you room and board, and Al’s still sending money, isn’t he?”

  He didn’t get it. That didn’t surprise her—he’d always thought of her in a certain way, continuing to plug her into the “little sister” template even after all they’d been through together. She didn’t blame him for it: given their history, it was pretty much inevitable. But that didn’t mean she had to like it, or conform to it. “Yeah. He is. But I’m getting tired of other people paying my way. The job at the restaurant was hard and annoying sometimes, but at least I was making my own money.” She sighed and snagged another pizza slice. “But that’s only part of it.”

  “So what’s the rest?”

  “I’m bored, Jason.”

  He stared at her. “What do you mean, you’re bored? V, you’re learning magic. How can that be boring?”

  “Look,” she said. “Edna’s great. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for what she’s teaching me, and I’m really glad to be able to learn a style that fits my talents better. But…” She clenched her fists around her napkin. Why was this so hard? Every time she mulled the words around in her head, she sounded like some kind of whiny teenager who had a great life, but was still upset because she wasn’t getting everything she wanted. Damn it, she was almost twenty-one years old now.

  “But what?”

  She glared at him. “Do I really have to spell it out, Jason?”

  He glared right back. “Yeah. I think you do.”

  “Okay. Fine, I will. Edna’s an old lady. She’s tough and all, but she’s set in her ways, and she likes living out in the sticks on her own. I don’t. I’ve tried, but it’s just not working. It’s not like she ever tries to get me to go for that back-to-nature stuff or anything, but I don’t have a car so any time I want to go anywhere, I have to borrow her truck. Which means I don’t go out very often, because frankly I don’t trust that thing to make it to L.A. and back. I can’t afford my own car since I don’t make any money.”

  “You could ask Al—”

  Seriously, how could such a smart guy be so thick sometimes? “He’s my magic teacher, not my sugar daddy. I’m not gonna ask him to buy me a car. Used to be you and I would do things together, but now you’re so busy with your PI stuff and Kristen that I hardly ever see you anymore.”

  Jason didn’t even try to deny it. Verity knew that, because he wanted to get his license as quickly as possible, he’d been putting in a lot of hours of overtime with the job. And ever since he’d started seeing Kristen, the two of them had spent most of their limited free hours together. “Haven’t you made any friends down here?” he asked.

  “Not really. In case you haven’t noticed, you pretty much have to go to L.A. to find the kinds of clubs I like. And I’m not exactly a social butterfly anyway.” She let out a loud sigh and ripped another bite out of her pizza slice. “You don’t get it at all, do you?”

  Jason leaned forward and put a hand on hers. “Yeah, V. I do get it. Honestly, I was kinda wondering when this would happen. Hoping it would be longer than this, but I knew it would happen eventually.” He paused and reclaimed his hand. “But you’re not thinking this through.”

  “How so?”

  “If you did move back up north—assuming Al’s even ready to start up with your training again—where would you live? It’s expensive up there. We barely afforded our place with me payin’ half and Al payin’ the other half. Unless you want to live in a dump, you’ll need a decent job to do it
on your own.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not thinking of movin’ in with Al, are you?”

  “No!” She glared at him. “He wouldn’t go for it even if I wanted to, and I don’t. I’ll do what everybody else does—get a roommate or two.”

  “So you’re gonna practice your magic someplace where roommates might walk in on you?”

  Verity took a couple of deep breaths. No, you can’t throw your pizza at him. That’s not the way adults handle disagreements. “Let’s just drop it, okay? I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “Don’t be sorry. If you really want to do it, I’ll help you figure out a way to make it happen. But I think it’s gonna take more planning than you think. I wish I didn’t still have two years left on my PI training—I’d move back with you. Maybe I could talk to Fran, see if she knows anybody—”

  Suddenly, she was ashamed of herself for sounding like a petulant child. She had no doubt in her mind that if he thought it would make her truly happy, he’d shelve his own plans and do whatever it took to help her achieve her own. And that wasn’t cool, not at all.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not doing that. You’re gonna keep working with Fran and become the best damn private eye in Ventura County. And maybe marry Kristen and make lots of blond surfer babies.” She chuckled. “I’m tough. I’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll give Dr. Stone a call and see what he thinks. But I’m not gonna ask him for money,” she added quickly. “And you’d better not either, or I’ll—turn you into a frog.”

  “You haven’t learned frogs yet.”

  “I’ll…leave a frog in your car, then. You know, until I learn.”

  “That’s the way to strike fear into the mundanes.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Stone had put the odd interaction with Edwina Mortenson out of his mind almost immediately after he left her office. He didn’t have time to think about his prickly department head and her strange visitors; it was getting toward the end of the quarter, which meant both his own and his students’ workloads were increasing. And that didn’t even include the paper on the sociological impacts of historical occult writers, which he’d been working on for the last couple months and hoped to submit before the end of the year. If Edwina wanted to meet with guys who looked like successful used-car salesmen, that was none of his business.