Homecoming: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 23) Read online

  Stone didn’t believe that for a moment, though. People’s auras didn’t change color for no reason, and Jason’s had gone from a steady medium blue to a deep indigo following his escape. That had to mean something.

  He’d held Jason off so far, though, for two reasons. The main one was that he wanted as much time as possible to examine Whitworth’s notes for any insights. The problem was, the notes were incomplete—he only had what he could carry from the man’s ancillary lab, and the primary one had been destroyed before he could retrieve anything else. After three weeks, Stone had gleaned some interesting information from them, but he didn’t have the background in human biology, let alone alchemy, to fill in the gaps.

  The second reason was more nebulous. Whitworth, when he’d sent an associate to attack Stone, had stolen some of his blood and made it part of the mixture he’d given Jason. Before he died, he’d claimed the blood had spurred him to more success than he’d had with any of his previous attempts. Stone had no idea what that meant, and though his curiosity wouldn’t let him rest until he found out, he still wasn’t entirely comfortable about it. He’d spent a lot of time on the research, but not as much as he might have. He’d found far too many excuses to put it aside over the last three weeks in favor of working on the portal or his academic studies.

  He couldn’t keep Jason waiting forever, though. It wasn’t fair to his friend, even though Jason seemed finally to have found his place in the world with the agency and let go of his lingering dissatisfaction about being the token mundane on the team.

  “Why don’t you come to the house tonight,” he said. “I’ve set up part of the workroom to run a few tests.”

  “So you think there really is something to it?” Again, Jason was obviously trying to keep the eagerness from his voice, but wasn’t succeeding.

  “Who knows? It’s possible. Do you think there is?”

  His gaze cut away. “What do you mean?”

  Stone snorted. “Come on, Jason. Don’t tell me you haven’t been trying to find out on your own.”

  “Well…okay, yeah. A little.”

  “Any success?”

  He shook his head. “No. But I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been trying to lift heavier weights at the gym, see if I can run faster, that kind of thing. But I haven’t seen any difference. No repeat of that weird tingly feeling.” He sighed. “Maybe it was just a big adrenaline spike. I was pretty motivated to get out of that place.”

  “Now, don’t get discouraged. As I said before, auras don’t change color spontaneously.” Stone thought about his own aura, with its new silver stripe only a few people could even see. He still had no idea what that was about, either. “It means something—all we’ve got to do is figure out what it means.”

  “Well, I’m down for sure. But I’m not gonna get my hopes up. Even if nothing comes of it, I’m okay with things the way they are.” He indicated the office. “I’ve got it pretty good these days. The agency’s a success, Amber and I are happy, we’re closing on the house soon…can’t really ask for too much more, you know?”

  “Indeed.” Stone stood. “In a way I envy you a bit.”

  “Seriously?” Jason shoved his chair back and got up as well.

  “I do. Your life certainly isn’t boring these days, but you’re still more…settled than I am. That’s something to aspire to.”

  Now it was Jason’s turn to snort. “Al, you wouldn’t know what to do with settled. You’d climb the walls if you didn’t have your puzzles to solve.”

  “I suppose so.” Stone looked away, out through the agency’s front window at the cars rolling by on First Street. Then he shook his head. “In any case, we should go if we’re to find someplace to have lunch before the crowds descend.”

  As they walked through the front part of the office, Gina Rodriguez looked up from her computer. “Heading out?”

  “Just for lunch,” Jason said. “Want me to bring you anything back?”

  “Nah, I brought something in today. Thanks, though.”

  He glanced at her screen and grinned. “That doesn’t look like the Moreno case to me.”

  She returned the grin. “Nope. This is for your crank file. I was planning to show it to you when you got back.”

  “Crank file?” Stone tilted his head at Jason.

  “Yeah. I asked Gina to keep a lookout for any weird stories. She’s got a bunch of searches set up to bring back anything strange or unexplainable.” He shot Stone a significant glance.

  “Indeed. Doesn’t that result in quite a lot of Bigfoot and Bat Boy stories?”

  “Hey, give me some credit,” Gina protested. “I filter out the obviously fake stuff, or the file would be a foot thick already.”

  “So what’s this new one?” Jason asked. “Anything interesting?”

  “Not sure.” She swung the screen around so they could see. “Definitely weird, but honestly it probably does fit in Bat Boy territory. I was gonna do a little more research before I sent it on—if I did at all.”

  Stone leaned in to look. The story was in a publication he’d never heard of. “Hmm…so some campers in Colorado discovered an unconscious humanoid in the mountains. They called the authorities, who whisked the creature away, and now they can’t get any updates on the situation.”

  “That does sound like Bat Boy,” Jason said. “Or maybe Marvin the Martian.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Gina scrolled up. “A couple of the eyewitnesses say the creature looked human, but had gray skin and green hair. They say it was dressed in odd clothes and seemed sick.” She scrolled again. “Here’s a sketch based on their description.”

  Stone and Jason studied the crude sketch. It didn’t provide much help. “No photos?” Stone asked. “With everyone having phone cameras these days, I’m surprised nobody dressed it up and posted interviews with it on YouTube before they handed it over.”

  “They say the cops took their phones.” Gina scanned the rest of the article. “They were too far out in the boonies to get a signal to upload anything to the net.”

  “That’s convenient.” Jason waved it off. “File that one in circular, don’t you think, Al?”

  “Not quite yet.” Something about the description twigged the back of his mind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “If there are any photos out there, see if you can find them, will you?”

  “You think this is something to check out?” Jason looked surprised. “Come on—this is National Enquirer stuff.”

  “You’re probably right. But it couldn’t hurt to check.”

  “You’re the boss,” Gina said. “Well, the other boss. Don’t worry,” she added to Jason. “I’ll do it on my own time. Back to the Moreno case after lunch.”

  When they returned an hour later following lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant, they found Gina at her desk munching reheated pizza and intent on her screen. “Moreno stuff’s in your email,” she said without looking up.

  “Thanks,” Jason said.

  Stone paused in front of her desk. “Did you look into anything else about the Colorado thing?”

  “Oh—right. I sent out a couple more searches and I was going to check on them when you guys got back. Hang on.” She set her pizza slice down and wiped her hands, then closed several windows and brought up another one.

  “I’ll leave you two to it,” Jason said. “Got things to do this afternoon. Al, should I come by tonight?”

  “Er—yes. Around seven, if you can get away. I’ll pick something up to eat so we don’t have to leave.” Stone was barely thinking about tonight, though, as Jason left and he continued watching Gina tap in commands.

  After several moments, she frowned at the screen. “That’s weird…”

  “What?”

  “I can’t find the article.”

  “Which article?”

  “The original one. The one we were looking at before. It’s not there anymore.” She brought up a window. “See?”

  Stone recognized the fr
ont page of the same publication they’d been looking at before. “Is that the same date?”

  “Yeah. But when I put in the search terms, it comes up ‘not found.’”

  Stone dragged a chair over and sat behind her. “Is that unusual?”

  “Yeah. I mean, sometimes they pull a story when it turns out to be a fake, but…” She trailed off, her fingers flying as she typed.

  “But what?”

  “Well, usually, it’s pretty easy to find deleted stuff if you know what you’re looking for. Nothing ever really disappears from the internet. But this is gone. Like, completely. Like it never existed. That’s not normal.”

  “What do you suppose it could mean?”

  “Who knows? Somebody obviously didn’t want that story published. I guess it makes sense, since the cops took the campers’ phones. It probably slipped through. Just seems weird they’d pull it right now, when we were just looking at it.”

  That did indeed seem odd. “So we’re out of luck, then, are we?”

  She grinned. “O ye of little faith. I never trust anything’s going to stay where it is on the net, so I grab screen shots of all the stuff that looks interesting.” She opened a folder and clicked a file. The article popped back on the screen.

  “Can you send me a copy of that? And anything else you might find?”

  “Sure, but don’t hold your breath about finding anything else. I looked, and nothing turned up. I’ve still got a few inquiries out to some friends, but…” She shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t have a lot of hope anything will come of it. If I get anything, I’ll send it on.”

  “Thanks, Gina. I appreciate it.” Stone rose and glanced back toward the back office. “I’ll see you tonight, Jason.”

  2

  He didn’t think about Gina’s odd story for the rest of the day, because as soon as he got home and pulled out Whitworth’s notes in anticipation of Jason’s visit that night, he got lost in the details and didn’t come up for air until it was time to go out to grab takeout for dinner.

  Jason arrived promptly at seven—so promptly, in fact, that Stone wondered if he’d been sitting outside in his car, staring at his watch.

  Stone chuckled as he let him in. “Bit eager, are we?”

  “Can you blame me? Like I said, I know this is probably nothing. But there’s always the chance it isn’t, and if something’s going on, I want to know about it.”

  They quickly demolished the pizza Stone had picked up from the little shop in downtown Encantada, spending almost as much time discouraging Raider from sitting in it as actually eating it, and then adjourned to the upstairs workroom.

  “How’s the portal going?” Jason asked.

  “Eh, it’s on hold for now. Bloody Whitworth bought the last bit of material I needed to make a go of it, and I’ve got no idea what he did with it. It probably contributed to what happened to that lab of his.”

  “So…this stuff is rare?”

  “Very. I’ve got my sources—well, source, since Madame Huan’s done a runner and I’ve got no idea where she is anymore—scouring the usual places for it, but so far nothing’s turned up.”

  “That sucks.”

  Stone couldn’t miss that Jason had exhausted his meager store of interest in the portal project. He’d already crossed the room to the big ritual circle inlaid into the slate floor, and was now examining the various candles, crystals, and chalk symbols Stone had prepared within it. “Is this for me?”

  “It is. But not yet. First, sit down. I want to get a good, complete scan of your aura.”

  Jason took a seat in the chair in the middle of the room. “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing. You know how this works. Just sit still and stay quiet. I’ve got no idea how long it will take.”

  Stone sat across from him and shifted to magical sight, immediately dropping into the meditative state that allowed him to take deeper readings. Whatever was going on with Jason probably wouldn’t reveal itself to a cursory scan—he’d already done several of those, and aside from the change in aura color, he didn’t notice anything else of interest.

  “Anything?” Jason’s voice sounding far away.

  “Shh. Let me concentrate.”

  At first, Stone didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Jason’s aura was as strong and steady as ever, gently pulsing in time with his slightly elevated heart rate. The only difference was the color—but that difference was big enough. Stone could count the number of times he’d personally experienced someone’s aura changing color on one hand, and still have two or three fingers left over. The aura represented a fundamental connection to an individual’s life force—their soul, if you believed in that sort of thing. Even though many people shared the same aura color, on closer examination each one was as unique and different as a fingerprint. It wasn’t merely visual, either—good aura readers could pick out variations in everything from the frequency of its pulse, to its brightness, to a more nebulous “feeling” that was nearly impossible to quantify. Trained mages could conceal or disguise their auras—Stone was quite good at it these days—but he’d never met a mundane who could do it. The most even the best and most knowledgeable of them could manage was to damp its intensity.

  That meant whatever was going on with Jason’s, he wasn’t doing it consciously. Its color change also meant Melvin Whitworth’s treatment had altered something at his core. Whatever it was, though, Stone’s examination wasn’t revealing it.

  He almost broke the contact and shifted out of magical sight, but as he pulled back and prepared to do it, he noticed something else.

  Another way in which individual auras could differ was in their intensity: not merely how bright they shone, but how far they extended from the body. Most mundanes’ auras clung close to their bodies, creating a glow perhaps an inch or two out. Some of them, particularly those who were unusually strong of will, reached as much as twice that, and sometimes even farther. Mages varied wildly, their auras not necessarily an indication of their power level. Jason’s had always extended around three inches, while Stone’s, when he wasn’t masking it, blazed out to over a foot if he counted the new silver stripe.

  Now, as he leaned closer to Jason to get a better reading, the leading edge of his aura touched his friend’s. Over the rest of their bodies, the resonance continued as normal, each pulsing at its own rate. But in the place where they overlapped the pulse changed, subtly falling into step with each other at the same beat, midway between Stone’s slower, calmer one and Jason’s faster eagerness.

  “Al?” Jason’s voice still came from far away, as if he were speaking from the other end of a long tunnel.

  “Just a moment.” Ignoring Jason, Stone focused all his attention on the spot where the two auras overlapped, leaning in closer to increase its area. As soon as more of it came into contact, that part dropped into the same steady, identical rhythm.

  “Bloody hell…” he murmured.

  “What?” Jason’s voice wasn’t far away now. It was loud and impatient.

  Stone backed off, and immediately the two auras returned to their normal, individual beats. He stared at Jason and shifted out of magical sight.

  “Come on, Al—you found something. Out with it. Is it something bad?”

  “What?” He jerked his head up. “Oh—no, it’s not bad. Just…odd. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Before Jason could yell at him again, he held up a hand. “I already told you your aura’s changed color—it’s gone from medium blue to a darker indigo.”

  “Yeah…”

  “But…” He considered his words. “It seems as if your aura and mine are…resonating with each other.”

  Jason stared at him. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know yet. All I know is that when we get close enough for our auras to overlap, the spot where they do sort of…syncs up.”

  He snorted. “That sounds like something out of a bad romance novel. Sorry, Al—I don’t care how much our auras beat in time, I’m a
married guy and you’re not my type.”

  Stone sighed, chuckling. “It’s not that sort of resonance. And anyway, Amber would rip my throat out if I lured you away from her.”

  “Okay.” Jason grew serious again. “So, joking aside, what’s it mean?”

  Stone rose and began pacing. “Damned good question. It might not mean anything. I haven’t got very far in deciphering Whitworth’s notes yet—and honestly, I doubt I will since they’re incomplete. I need to find someone I can trust who’s got the kind of knowledge to possibly make sense of them and extrapolate from what’s there. But if I had to make a guess, I’d say whatever treatment he gave you, since it had my blood as a component, created a sort of…sympathetic connection between our auras. Which is fascinating in and of itself.”

  “Uh…yeah, I guess so. But it doesn’t explain what happened in that lab—if anything even happened. How could your blood make me strong enough and fast enough to break out of there? You have a lot of talents, but you’re not exactly the Incredible Hulk, strength-wise. And whatever I did, it was definitely physical. I wasn’t casting spells.”

  Stone continued pacing, trying to calm his spinning thoughts enough to articulate them. “If something did happen—and I’m convinced it did—I don’t think it was my blood that caused it. At least not by itself. I’m guessing at this point, because whatever Whitworth did to you, he didn’t document any of it in the lab where I got the notes. In fact, I’m guessing he probably did something highly unusual, given the sort of methodical researcher he obviously was.”

  Jason couldn’t sit still any longer, so he got up too. “What are you talking about?”

  “I think he took a leap of faith.”

  “Huh?”

  “When he had me attacked and took my blood, I’m not sure he had an idea what he wanted to do with it, aside from study it and try to determine if he could use it to further his efforts to create magical children. That much was obvious—he said so himself. But when he discovered you, an adult mundane with a strong magical connection, I don’t think he could resist the temptation to try something new.”