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

  “Yeah, I hear that…I’m sure you guys did all you could, though.”

  “Oh, we did. Sometimes the universe just screws you over, though, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you can’t handle that, you’ll never make it in this job.”

  Verity leaned against the window, recalling some of the situations she’d been through with Jason and Stone. How would responding to the scene of an accident compare with shutting down an extradimensional portal, or fighting a murderous wild talent in the Las Vegas flood tunnels? In a way, she thought it might be more stressful—their magical adventures had involved larger stakes, but Kristen’s work saw people on the worst day of their lives, either one on one or in small enough numbers that each person was still an individual.

  “Anyway, thanks again for driving me,” she said. “The bus doesn’t go all the way out to Matilija, so I’d have to call Edna and ask her to come pick me up. I know she’s not crazy about driving at night. I really gotta figure out a way to get myself some wheels.”

  She settled back in her seat and continued looking out the window as they drove, letting her mind drift as she listened to whatever CD was playing. She didn’t recognize the band—maybe something local. Idly, she shifted to magical sight and scanned the side of the road, looking for the small, telltale green auras of animals scurrying around in the underbrush. They’d made it to Ojai now, and were heading out on 33. Only a few more miles.

  Lots of little animals around here. Squirrels, birds, maybe a coyote or loose dog. She couldn’t identify them for sure, not at this distance, but—

  A muddy golden aura flickered in the trees, just off the side of the road. Jagged red streaks broke it into shards, like molten glass.

  It took her a couple of seconds to identify it. She stiffened. God, no…

  “Kristen, stop the car!” she yelled, twisting in her seat.

  “What—why? We’re almost—”

  “Stop! Now! I saw something back there! I think somebody’s hurt!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “What?”

  Stone sat up straight in his chair and stared at Mortenson. “What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.” When she didn’t reply, he settled back down and lowered his voice. “Edwina, I don’t know what you’re on about—if you want to go spend your time with a bunch of pretentious nutters, be my guest. But don’t drag me along. I wouldn’t think you’d want me along anyway.”

  She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing her eyes. “I’ll be honest with you—I didn’t want you along.”

  “Well, great, then. What’s the—”

  “Mr. Duncan had other ideas.”

  “Mr. Duncan can get stuffed. You tell him—”

  “Please, Alastair.”

  He blinked at her sudden change of tone. Was Mortenson—prickly, dragon-lady Edwina Mortenson—teetering on the verge of tears? “Edwina?” he asked, uncertain. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Another deep breath. Another sip of her coffee. Her hand shook, though whether it was with frustration, anger, or despair was impossible for Stone to determine. Her aura was out of control, that was all he could tell. “After you left the other day,” she said with precise, measured dignity, “Mr. Duncan kept asking me questions about you. Who you were, what you did in the department, that sort of thing. He’s—not a very tactful man, I’m afraid. I suppose most of those Hollywood types aren’t.”

  “Was he rude to you?”

  She shook her head and patted her face with an oversized blue handkerchief she’d pulled from somewhere in the folds of her flowing skirt. “Not…No. Not rude. But he kept going on about how well your accent would go over with the viewers, and how much you looked the part of an occult expert.”

  “Oh, bloody hell…” Stone sighed, looking down at his hands as he caught on to where this was headed. Mortenson was—to put it charitably—not photogenic. Short and plump, with skinned-back, iron-gray hair and a preference for dramatic makeup, she had a default expression some would call “resting bitch face,” and her smile, on the rare occasions when she employed it, tended to either disturb people or convince them she had something on them. Every headshot Stone had ever seen of her made her look like the matron at a high-security women’s prison, and every candid shot like an aging hippie. While Stone wasn’t Mortenson’s biggest fan, the woman certainly couldn’t help the fact that she had a great face for radio. That didn’t make her any less capable in her field.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I won’t do it. I don’t want to anyway, and I certainly wouldn’t interfere with whatever you’ve worked on setting up. If they want an occult expert, they’ve already got a damned good one.”

  Her gaze came up, and she shook her head. “Mr. Duncan’s the producer, and he’s already talked with George Landry and convinced him that they have to have you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t already called someone higher up in the department to make it happen. Nobody’s mentioned it to you yet? Mr. Duncan’s coming back tomorrow.”

  “No. Haven’t heard a word. Perhaps you’re concerned about nothing.”

  “Perhaps so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “Don’t worry, Edwina. We’ll get this sorted out, one way or another.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t put too much hope on that.”

  Stone didn’t either, to tell the truth. But this wasn’t over yet.

  When he got back to his office, he found a message on his voicemail from Beatrice Martinez, the head of the Cultural Anthropology department. “Listen,” he said when he returned the call. “I don’t care what this Duncan wants. This is Edwina’s project, and if he wants an occult expert for his TV show, he’s already got her. You know how I feel about those kinds of things anyway. They’re all a load of sensationalistic frauds. They don’t give a damn about anything but their ratings.”

  “I know that,” she said patiently. “But Mr. Landry isn’t a fraud, and Mr. Duncan has been quite adamant about what he wants. Mr. Landry has offered to make a…generous donation to our department if you’ll agree to participate. Since he normally focuses his donations in other areas, this is a rare opportunity for us. I hope you’ll consider at least meeting with Mr. Duncan.”

  The words were polite and might sound—to those unfamiliar with academic politics, anyway—to be a request, Stone knew better. Tenure or no tenure, his status around the department would suffer a considerable downturn if it got around that he was the one responsible for losing a sizeable donation from an unexpected source.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll talk to him. But no promises.”

  “That’s all I ask. Thank you, Dr. Stone.”

  That’s not all you ask and we both know it.

  Damn, he hated departmental politics.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kristen pulled the SUV off to the shoulder. “Verity, what—”

  Verity already had the door open and leaped out before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. “Come on!” she yelled.

  It was hard to run with magical sight on—the auras of the animals and even the thick growth of trees along this section of road made it difficult to keep the flickering golden aura in sight, but she managed to get there without tripping over anything.

  By the time she drew close, she didn’t need to look magically anymore—it was obvious what had happened. A brightly colored sportbike lay on its side a little way into the trees, its front end crumpled against one of them, its light out. Steam rose from its engine.

  A few feet from that lay a prone figure. “Oh, man…” Verity muttered. “Kristen!”

  Kristen pounded up behind her. “What’s going—oh, no!” She dropped down to her knees next to the figure, pulled a flashlight from her bag, and flipped it on.

  The victim was male, wearing a leather
jacket, jeans, and an open-face helmet. His eyes were closed, and blood covered his face and chest. His leg was bent at an odd angle. His breath came in shallow, hitching gasps.

  Verity knelt on the other side of him, shifting to magical sight again. The red-streaked gold aura had dimmed since she’d last looked. This kid was dying. “Can you help him?” she asked Kristen.

  Kristen was already in her bag again, pulling out a cell phone and punching in a number. “This is Kristen Bradley. I’m an off-duty EMT, and I’ve got an emergency here. Motorcycle accident, one victim.” She gave the location, and rattled off a few quick assessments based on her visual inspection of the victim. Then she put the phone away. “Ojai Valley Hospital’s not far. They’ll be here soon.”

  Verity stared at her. “But—can’t you do anything? You’re a paramedic! He’s dying!” Already, the young man’s hitching breaths were fading.

  Kristen spread her hands. “I’m off duty. I don’t have any equipment with me. If I try to move him, I could do more harm than good.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s dying! He’s not gonna last until they get here even if it only takes five minutes!”

  “Look,” Kristen said, “I know this looks bad, but blood doesn’t always mean the victim’s dying. We have to wait for the professionals to get here. If he’s got spinal damage and I try to move him, I could kill him.” She reached across the kid and gripped Verity’s arm. “It was damn lucky you spotted him, though. He’s got a chance because of you, and that’s a good thing.”

  Verity’s heart pounded as she watched the bleeding young man struggling to breathe. His aura flickered and dimmed again.

  Damn it, she couldn’t just sit here and let him die! Ignoring Kristen, she took a few deep breaths and concentrated on slipping into the deeper version of magical sight that Edna had taught her—the one that allowed her to get a better view of what was going on inside a living body. She’d never done healing on this scale on a human being before—only on injured animals they’d found in the forest. It’s not any different. It’s just a body. Same principle. Just focus…don’t think about this being a person…

  “Verity?” Kristen’s voice came from far away.

  “Not now.”

  “What are you—”

  “Not now.”

  She was barely aware that she was hovering her hands over the victim’s body, a few inches from touching. Edna had taught her that, too—it helped to concentrate the focus. She narrowed her eyes and the physical world dropped away, leaving only the shifting patterns of auras: not just the main one stuttering to a halt around the victim’s body, but the smaller, individual auras surrounding organs, the zipping energy of blood moving around, and the fading, once-strong rhythm of the heart.

  She focused first on the boy’s head and neck, but nothing seemed catastrophically wrong there. His neck wasn’t broken, and as far as she could tell there wasn’t any brain injury. It didn’t matter, though—that delicate, intricate level of healing was still beyond her skills.

  She moved her concentration downward. The heart was flagging, but appeared uninjured…the lungs were both functioning, so nothing had punctured them…that was another good sign.

  Downward again, toward the boy’s abdominal cavity. So many things going on down there, so many shimmering auras competing for her attention! Remember what Edna taught you…look for patterns. Look for where the flow is disrupted.

  Her hands shifted back and forth, trying to locate the problem. In the periphery of her awareness she heard Kristen saying something, but she ignored it. She couldn’t afford to split her concentration now. She was getting close.

  Careful…careful…

  There it was!

  Her focus locked in on a region of the boy’s lower abdomen. Instead of the orderly currents of normally-flowing blood, the sudden disruption stood out stark and immediate. It looked like what you got when you put your thumb down in the middle of a marching column of ants: sudden chaos as the tiny creatures lost their direction and milled around in aimless confusion.

  Only it wasn’t ants. It was blood. The kid was bleeding out internally as she watched.

  She tightened in again, her eyes barely open now. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped down, but she dared not even shake her head for fear of losing her delicate concentration.

  Remember what you learned. It’s all a system. It knows what it wants to be—you just have to help it get back there.

  She gathered magic to her, first focusing on slowing the blood flow around the injured vessels. The marching ants’ milling quieted, their frantic pace lessening—more like a bunch of commuters looking for their trains in a busy station now than a panicked crowd stampeding for the exits.

  Now that she had the bleeding under control—not stopped, but at least slowed—she could see the problem more clearly: the glowing, ragged edges of a torn blood vessel. She wasn’t sure if it was a vein or an artery, but for her purposes it didn’t matter. It was broken, out of phase, deviating from its normal pattern. All she had to do was put it back.

  Except she also had to concentrate on keeping the blood flow slowed, or he’d bleed to death before she’d have time to finish. Doing that required her to split her focus, essentially maintaining two thoughts at the same time. That was something Edna hadn’t taught her.

  Stone had, though.

  He’d drilled it into her from the earliest days of their training together: mental discipline, the ability to hold multiple patterns and formulae in the mind at once, switching between them like turning pages in a book. She’d never had the knack for it that he did, but this job required juggling only two processes. The skills came back to her now, the mental “muscle memory” snapping into place.

  Okay…just hold it for a few more seconds…Easy…easy…

  She poured magical energy into the roiling red pit, nudging the two edges together, using the energy to shore up the pattern, building a frame to support her work until the magic took over and the natural structure reformed.

  And there it was! The vessel, its edges knitted back together now, resumed its normal function. The aura cleared around it, the angry redness dissipating as once again the orderly ants fell into step and took up their march.

  She almost let herself slump, but then Edna’s words came back to her: Just because you fix one problem doesn’t mean there aren’t more.

  A quick check, though, revealed nothing else potentially life-threatening. The kid certainly had a broken leg, and probably at least a couple more broken or cracked bones. He’d have a long recovery ahead of him, and probably wouldn’t be back on that motorcycle any time soon. But already his heart beat stronger—not strong, but stronger—and his ragged breathing had evened out a little. His golden aura had brightened, some of the jagged red shafts settling down. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, literally or figuratively, but at least he probably wouldn’t die before the ambulance got here.

  Verity did slump then, rocking back on her knees and swiping the sweat off her face with her sleeve. The yowl of a siren grew louder. After a moment, she looked up.

  Kristen was staring at her, her eyes wide and her face pale. She dragged herself to her feet and turned to hurry out and flag down the ambulance, but stopped after a couple steps and turned back.

  “We,” she said in a voice devoid of any emotion, “are gonna have to talk.”

  Verity nodded. “Yeah. I guess we are.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The meeting took place at lunchtime the next day, in a private dining room at the Stanford Faculty Club. Stone showed up ten minutes late on purpose. It wasn’t something he normally made a habit of, but it couldn’t hurt to plant the seeds that he might be “difficult” if it helped get him out of this mess.

  Mortenson was already there, seated at the table with Duncan and another man S
tone didn’t recognize. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, making no effort to sound sincere.

  “Hey hey, no worries,” Duncan said, rising with a grin and offering his hand. He wore another well-tailored but rumpled shirt along with his Rolex and flashy gold ring. “Good to seeya, Dr. Stone. Or should I call you Al?”

  “You should not.” Prepared for Duncan’s macho posturing this time, he shifted his hand subtly to gain the advantage, and gave the little man a taste of his own medicine.

  “Sure, sure,” Duncan said, snatching his hand back. “Hey, quite a grip you got there, Doc.” Then the grin was back as he indicated the other man. “This right here is Bryce Riley. But of course you already knew that.”

  Stone glanced across the table. Bryce Riley was about thirty, tall and tanned, his light-brown hair artfully mussed as if he’d just come in from a brisk ride in a convertible. He wore a plaid shirt under a designer-cut denim jacket; a pair of sunglasses perched on the top of his head. Unlike Duncan, he didn’t get up, but instead lounged in his chair, looked Stone up and down, and offered a perfunctory wave. He didn’t smile.

  Stone had no idea who he was.

  “Sorry,” he said with a shrug.

  “Well, anyway, I’m sure you two are gonna be great pals.” Duncan settled back down in his chair. “Bryce here is the star of The Other Side. You’ll be working with him at the shoot, and we’ll be wanting to do some interviews beforehand, of course. Establish the academic bona fides, don’tcha know?”

  “Hang on,” Stone said, glancing at Mortenson, who was doing her best not to look utterly miserable. “What’s this about shoots and interviews?”