Balance of Power: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 25) Read online

  Reluctantly, he pushed the figurine off to the side next to the book. So far, this trip was turning out to be a bit of a bust, at least magically speaking.

  Last, he retrieved the box of quills, once again using the handkerchief to pull each from the box and spread them on the table. There were five in all, and once he had them separated he saw that only two glowed. The box itself was as mundane as most of the rest of the collection. Like the statuette, it had a tag with a number, this time inside the box.

  He examined the two glowing quills, but once again quickly lost interest. They were another minor magical item used by mages long ago, enchanted to extend the usefulness of ink so the mage could write longer without having to re-dip the nib in the inkwell. A big deal in the olden days, but not much to speak of in modern times.

  “Well, that’s unfortunate,” Stone murmured. He put the quills back in the box, this time shoving it to the left side of the desk. He supposed he should take a quick scan of the rest of the bookshelves before he left—even mundane books could contain information mages found useful—but aside from that, it appeared likely that Hiram Drummond hadn’t been a mage. The three minor arcane objects among the collection could have been obtained accidentally, perhaps as part of smaller collections Drummond had bought from others. It happened all the time.

  At least he knew now that he didn’t need to spend a lot of time here this evening, making sure nothing in the room would enchant, eat, compel, or otherwise threaten his mundane colleagues. That was something, he supposed. But still, he couldn’t help being disappointed.

  He shifted back to magical sight, intending to give the room one last once-over before he left. This time he switched off the light, which sometimes made it easier to spot dim magical auras.

  That’s odd…

  Instead of the three glows he’d expected to see, only one appeared, on the left side of the table where he’d put the box of quills.

  He flicked the light back on, half-expecting the book and the figurine to be inexplicably gone, but no—there they were, right where he’d put them.

  Frowning, he picked up the figurine and shifted back to magical sight.

  It glowed as it always had.

  Very strange…

  Without dropping magical sight, he looked back at the book.

  It too glowed, but only very faintly—far more faintly than it had before when he was examining it. So faintly, in fact, that he could easily have missed it before when he thought it was gone.

  He wrapped the handkerchief around his hand and picked it up, pulling it to him.

  The brighter glow instantly sprang into life.

  “Bloody hell…” Stone murmured.

  Perhaps something interesting was going on here after all.

  Stone was a scientist at heart, so his first thought was to conduct experiments. The book and the figurine had glowed, and then they hadn’t, and then they had again. The quills, on the other hand, had never lost their glows.

  What had changed?

  He’d shoved all three objects off to the sides of the table—but the quills had gone to the left side, while the book and figurine had gone to the right.

  He shifted the book and the figurine to the left side of the table, then turned off the light again.

  All three objects glowed as they had before.

  “Hmm…” Stone murmured. This time, he didn’t bother with the light switch, instead holding up his hand and summoning a glow around it. With his other hand, he moved the box containing the quills to the right side, leaving the book and figurine on the left.

  The quills showed no sign of magic, while the other objects’ auras remained, serene and untroubled.

  “Okay…” Stone said under his breath, turning the light back on. He pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket and jotted down what he’d discovered so far.

  This would bear more investigation.

  There were several other objects on both sides of the table: more figurines, something that looked like an elaborate ashtray, a vase decorated with stylized images of animals, a brass amulet, and a six-inch-tall, chipped black pyramid with various glyphs and figures etched onto its visible surfaces. None of them glowed with magic, regardless of where Stone placed the original three objects. All of them either had tags tied around them or were sitting on a card with a similar tag attached to it.

  Continuing to avoid using magic of his own in direct contact with the items in fear of contaminating his results, Stone moved the three magical objects to the next table over, then gathered all the other items to the right side of the leftmost table. Then, with the left side empty, he moved the book back there.

  It continued to glow.

  “Hmm…okay, so it’s not the table itself. Could it be one of those other items that’s interfering with magic?” Stone spoke barely above a whisper, his heart beating faster as it always did when he felt he was on the edge of a discovery.

  One by one, he moved each of the non-magical objects into proximity with the book, starting with the figurines and the amulet. If one of the items was causing interference, he had a suspicion about which one it was—the pyramid with the etchings—so he saved that one for last.

  None of the others had any effect on the book. It kept on glowing regardless of which of them was near it.

  Finally, only the pyramid was left. Stone held his breath, picked the object up with his handkerchief-covered hand, and drew it closer to the book.

  The closer it got, the more the tome’s glow faded. By the time Stone put the two directly next to each other, the book might as well have been any other volume on the bookshelves.

  “There we go…” he murmured. He was smiling, but also tense. If this thing truly did interfere with magic, that was a big deal. A bigger deal, in fact, than all the other magical items in the storeroom combined. Where had Hiram Drummond obtained it? How had he obtained it? Did he have any idea what he had, or, more likely, had he purchased it as part of an auction lot or from a fellow collector?

  Stone looked around, checking again for cameras. His conscience twinged a bit about what he was about to do, but not much. This item definitely needed more study, and not here—and it definitely wasn’t something he wanted to leave lying around protected only by mundane security. Even though the odds were extremely low that anybody would take an interest in it—it was nowhere near as impressive-looking as the amulet, the vase, or a couple of the statues—Stone wasn’t willing to leave it to chance.

  He switched off the light in case there were cameras hidden somewhere in the storeroom, then slipped the little pyramid and its tagged card into his coat pocket. It made a small bulge, but even if Kelso turned up unexpectedly he could always use an illusion to hide it.

  Truly, pulling things over on uninitiated mundanes was almost embarrassingly easy.

  He didn’t have to worry, though—Kelso was nowhere in sight when he exited the room and carefully made sure the door was locked behind him. If all went well, he’d examine the pyramid at home, then have it back in the storeroom before anybody caught on that it was missing.

  He was halfway home when his phone buzzed, showing Jason’s number.

  “Hello, Jason.”

  “Hey, Al. You haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”

  “Er…no.” He glanced at the clock, surprised to see he’d spent nearly an hour and a half inside the storeroom. “Bit early, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but Amber’s got a meeting tonight and I figured I’d see if you want to go have a beer or something before I head back over the hill. Maybe stop by and talk to Marta. It’s been a while.”

  Stone patted the pyramid in his pocket. Truth be told, he was itching to get home and study it, but Jason was right—especially since he’d started traveling by ley line and no longer needed the portal, he hadn’t seen Marta since well before the holidays. “Er…sure. Sounds brilliant. Let me just pop home and drop off a couple of things. Meet you in an hour?”

  “Yeah, great. See you the
n.”

  It was tempting, when he got home, to take a few minutes to study the strange little pyramid, but he resisted. It wasn’t going anywhere—especially when locked inside his safe, which had both a formidable mundane lock and a heavy-duty ward around it. He paused long enough to make sure the pyramid didn’t interfere with the ward—it didn’t, as far as he could tell—and then headed out. He’d have plenty of time to check it later tonight or tomorrow.

  Dinner at A Passage to India was both delicious and pleasant, with a delighted Martha Bellwood taking some time off from her duties to join Stone and Jason at their table to catch up on their various activities. It turned out Marta had been considering the possibility of returning home to Leeds, but assured Stone that if she did it, she’d make doubly sure everything regarding the portal was taken care of before she did it.

  “Don’t you worry,” she assured him. “I’d never leave you in the lurch. This is sort of a…long-term goal of mine, not something I’m going to do next week.”

  He and Jason had dawdled over dinner with her for a couple hours, then the two of them adjourned to a nearby bar for beers and more conversation. They didn’t talk about anything momentous—mostly Jason and Amber’s home renovation, which was proceeding apace, Stone’s classes, and the latest cases at the agency. Stone didn’t bring up Hiram Drummond’s collection or the little pyramid, but it was on his mind for most of the evening. By the time the two of them said their good nights and Stone returned to Encantada, it was nearly midnight.

  Sleep was the last thing on his mind, though. He didn’t have any classes tomorrow, which meant he could stay up as late as he liked and sleep in a long as he wanted tomorrow. No reason not to get started examining the pyramid. He hurried upstairs to his attic workroom, pausing only to pat Raider on the head and make sure his food and water dishes were topped up. “See you in a bit,” he told the cat on his way by. “Important things to do.”

  A small part of him had been concerned all night that somehow, someone had managed to break into his house and steal the pyramid. Even though that was absurd—nobody knew he had it, and even if they did, getting past his wards and other security wouldn’t have been an easy feat—the thought had burrowed into his mind like a compulsion and refused to leave. When he opened the safe and discovered the pyramid exactly where he’d left it, he was almost surprised.

  His studies didn’t get him very far that night, however. He set the pyramid on his worktable and, wearing gloves this time, turned it in every direction. The three upright sides were all etched with the odd symbols and sigils. The bottom, while free of any writing, had two nearly identical round holes, one on each side. When Stone used a penlight to look inside them, he saw nothing of interest.

  He didn’t recognize the writing on the other surfaces. It looked remotely familiar, like he might have seen something similar to it at some point, but he couldn’t remember where. That didn’t surprise him: over his magical career, he’d seen plenty of odd languages and symbols, some of which he could read and some he couldn’t. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like any magical language he’d seen before. It also didn’t look Egyptian, despite the object’s shape.

  He used his phone camera to snap close-up photos of all four of the thing’s sides. After checking to make sure the photos came out properly, since sometimes magical objects resisted being photographed, he pulled out a larger notebook and painstakingly sketched all of the sides, taking extra care to get all the symbols right.

  Finally, he set the pyramid on the table and studied it. He’d saved his most potentially interesting experiment for last, on purpose. Back in the storeroom, the thing had seemed to interfere with magic, damping the arcane auras of the quills, the tome, and the statuette when he’d brought them near it. Obviously the power wasn’t terribly strong, or it would have interfered with the wards around the safe he’d locked it into, but it existed nonetheless. He was sure of it.

  With careful concentration, he reached out with a little magic and attempted to levitate the pyramid off his worktable. If it had been a normal mundane object, or even a normal magical one, he should find it an easy task. It didn’t weigh much, and at Stone’s power level, it should be no more difficult than picking up a mundane paperback book.

  The little thing shuddered, trembling in place, but didn’t lift.

  Interesting indeed…

  Stone added more power, gripping the pyramid and willing it to rise from the surface.

  It shuddered again, but this time it rose, floating a few inches above the table.

  It did it under protest, though, continuing to twitch and judder in the air as if resisting Stone’s effort. Power-wise, instead of feeling like lifting a paperback book, keeping the pyramid aloft felt more like he was levitating a stack of heavy tomes.

  So whatever else this thing was, it was both resistant to magic itself, and had an effect on other magic around it. Stone tested this hypothesis by bringing several more magic items of varying power levels in proximity to it one at a time.

  Its response depended on the objects’ magical potency. Powerful items seemed not to be affected by it at all, their auras shining strong and clear even when the two were touching. Mid-level objects reacted the same way those in the storeroom had: their auras dimmed relative to how close he placed them.

  The most potentially interesting result came when he placed a weak object near the pyramid. He used a piece of paper he’d enchanted to display text only when examined with magical sight, and slowly moved the pyramid closer until he rested it on the sheet like a paperweight.

  Its faint glow vanished, as Stone expected—but this time, when he removed the pyramid, the glow didn’t return.

  “Bloody hell…” he murmured, shoving the pyramid aside almost nervously. That thing had completely obliterated the paper’s magical power. Not just interfered with it, but eliminated it. Sure, it had been a very weak object…

  But still.

  He would definitely need to do more study with this thing—but perhaps not under such informal conditions. Whatever this thing was, the mere concept of it was unsettling.

  When he came up for air, he discovered two hours had passed and it was now after two a.m. That wasn’t late for him, but his shoulders ached and a dull headache was blooming behind his eyes from focusing on the tiny symbols. He leaned back, stretching his arms above his head and reveling in the satisfying pops from his back, and decided perhaps this was enough study for the night. He didn’t have anything on his schedule for tomorrow, so he could get started again as soon as he dragged himself out of bed. If he didn’t get anywhere, he considered taking the pyramid to Eddie and Ward or Kolinsky—or perhaps all of them. He’d start with his friends in England, though. Any object that could interfere, even slightly, with magic was potentially an important discovery, and he wanted to know more about it before he revealed it to the dragons.

  Hell, it was possible they already knew all about it. Stone wasn’t sure whether that thought comforted him or made him nervous.

  He locked it back in the safe along with his written notes, stretched again, and headed out. Raider, as was often the case, was waiting patiently outside the door. The cat fixed him with a calm, inquisitive stare, appeared satisfied, and padded along behind him as he descended the stairs toward his bedroom.

  Stone’s phone buzzed on his nightstand, rousing him from a sound sleep. He poked a hand from beneath the covers, startling Raider, and snatched it up.

  The number was Beatrice Martinez’s, and the time was barely after eight a.m.

  What does she want this early?

  As he fumbled with the phone, a sudden thought brought a surge of ice water along with it: Does she know I took the pyramid?

  That was ridiculous, though. There was no way she could know. “Yes, hello, Dr. Martinez,” he mumbled. “Bit early to be calling, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you.” She sounded contrite, but her voice also held an odd, stressed edge. “I wouldn’t d
o it if it wasn’t important.”

  Stone was more awake now, sitting up against his pillows and glancing at Raider, who seemed as clueless as he was. “No, no, it’s fine. What can I do for you?”

  “Something’s…happened, Dr. Stone.”

  Now he was fully awake, the last vestiges of his brain fuzz departing like fog in a stiff wind. “What is it?”

  “There’s been…an incident at the storeroom where Hiram Drummond’s collection is stored.”

  Bloody hell, they do know. “What…kind of incident?”

  “A break-in. And I’m sorry to report that Mr. Greene was injured.”

  4

  Stone arrived at the University less than half an hour later, and the early-morning students must have thought it odd to see one of their professors dashing from the parking lot as though pursued by a pack of wolves. He ignored them, though, and didn’t slow his pace until he skidded to a stop in front of the administration building where Martinez had her office. He managed to walk inside at a reasonable pace, but it wasn’t easy.

  “What’s happened?” he demanded, after striding past Martinez’s admin aide without acknowledging her presence and flinging open his boss’s door.

  Martinez didn’t even look annoyed at his intrusion. Her pale face showed both worry and fear. “Thank you for coming so fast, Alastair.”

  “What’s happened?” he repeated. “How’s Greene? When did this happen?”

  “Slow down.” She held up a hand. “Please, have a seat. I’ve only got a few minutes—I need to meet with the police again.”

  Stone didn’t sit. He couldn’t. He stalked in front of her desk and forced himself to wait for her to speak.

  She sighed. “We don’t know much yet. Brandon will be all right. He’s in the hospital for observation, and should be there for a couple days. Someone hit him pretty hard on the head, so they’re watching for any complications, but they don’t expect any. He’s young and strong. And he was very lucky.”