Chapter Twenty

Jason stared at him, momentarily rendered speechless. If he’d said “pancakes,” or “universal joints,” or “Martian death rays,” the sentence wouldn’t have sounded any more outlandish to him. “Magic,” he said, glaring. “You’re screwin’ with me, aren’t you? A nice fun round of ‘let’s fuck with the crazy guy’?”

Stone’s own gaze was quite steady. “Do I look like I’m screwing with you, Jason?”

Watching his last chance to hang on to sanity slipping away, Jason shook his head. “No. You don’t. And that’s what scares the shit out of me.” He let the silence hang for a long time, then looked back up. “So—you’re saying Charles was killed by magic. That the gang dude—cast a spell at him. Like in the movies. Merlin the Magician and all that.”

Stone chuckled. “Not much like that, no. But I assure you, magic is entirely real, and entirely dangerous.”

“And you know this how—?” Jason wasn’t sure he wanted Stone to answer, and very much afraid he already knew what the other man was going to say.

“I think you’ve already figured that part out, haven’t you?” Stone said softly, leaning forward a little in his chair.

“You’re one of them too, aren’t you? A—wizard or something.”

That got another chuckle. “I prefer to call myself a mage, but yes. I am.”

Oh, shit. Yeah, Jason was firmly entrenched in the Twilight Zone now, and sinking fast. “So—you can—kill people by making blood come out their eyes?” He knew even as he said it that it shouldn’t even make the first page of questions that were busily poking at the inside of his skull, but he spit it out anyway.

Stone’s expression grew serious. “I daresay I could if I had to—but that’s not the sort of thing I make a habit of doing. I’m not that kind of mage.”

“There are different kinds? What kind are you, then? What do you do?”

“Slow down, slow down. I said I’d answer your questions, but this isn’t going to be easy, and it won’t be fast. Are you sure you don’t want to get some sleep, and we can—”

“No. I couldn’t sleep now if my life depended on it. I want to know what’s going on.”

Stone nodded as if he’d expected nothing else, but felt it was only polite to ask. “All right, then. Fair enough. Yes, there are different kinds. I’m not going to go into the esoteric details right now—I’d probably bore the stuffing out of you. I’ve been told I can have that effect when I get going. The long and short of it is that magic has different ways to manifest and control it. The most simplistic way to say it is to say that it’s split between so-called ‘good’ or ‘white’ magic, and ‘evil’ or ‘black’ magic.”

Jason took this in for a brief moment, then almost laughed like an idiot. It was all so absurd. He managed to quell the compulsion with difficulty, but he couldn’t help grinning. “So—are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”

That actually got a reaction out of Stone. He laughed, shaking his head in amusement. “I, my dear boy, am a good witch. Or at least I try to be most of the time. As for what I do—research, mostly. And teaching.”

“Teaching? Wait a minute—you teach magic? There are schools for magic?” Jason had thought things were weird before, but he was starting to realize that he hadn’t even scratched the surface yet.

“No. Not per se. I teach at Stanford, actually. I’m a professor of Occult Studies.”

“Occult Studies? What’s that? Like…Ouija boards and haunted houses and stuff like that?”

“Not exactly.” Stone chuckled again. “But is that really what you want to ask me about right now? I’m not going anywhere—we can talk more in the morning about things like that, if you still want to. Let’s hit the highlights now, shall we?”

Jason took a deep breath. “Okay. But much as I want to know this stuff, I really do need to get back to trying to find my sister. I don’t know what she’s tangled herself up in, but there’s no way she’s got the street smarts to survive out there very long.”

“I might be able to help you with that,” Stone said. “But it will have to wait until morning. As wiped out as I am right now, there’s no way I can attempt any kind of magic. So we might as well have our chat now, and then get a few hours’ sleep and start fresh in the morning.”

“Wait—” Jason stared at him. “You can help me find her? Why would you do that? You don’t know me from some bum on the street. I don’t know you. I don’t even know why you came by there tonight. That whole area was deserted. We didn’t see another car the whole time we were there. How did you know what was going on?”

“Erm,” Stone said. “I’ll leave that one alone for now, I think. Suffice it to say that I was conducting an investigation of my own, and it led me to where you were. It’s really not important why at the moment. It’s just fortunate that I did happen to drive by.”

“Damn fortunate,” Jason agreed. “Okay, then, you don’t want to tell me that, I guess I’ll have to deal with it. As long as you don’t plan to blow me up or make my brains leak out my ears, we’re cool.”

“No plans of either type,” Stone assured him.

Jason leaned back on the couch, debating whether or not to take another swig of the scotch. He decided against it—the last thing he needed to go with all the rest of the night’s insanity was a raging hangover. “What happened to the kid?” he asked suddenly. At Stone’s raised eyebrow, he added, “The one that got—torched.”

“Ah.” Stone nodded. He sighed, looking troubled. “What you witnessed there is the primary difference between so-called black and white magic.”

Jason’s eyes widened. “You mean you have to kill people to do black magic?” That didn’t seem logical—you’d either be limited in a hurry in the amount of magic you’d be able to do, or you’d end up being hunted down as a serial killer in pretty short order.

Stone shook his head. “No. Not always. All magic comes from the same source, but the way it’s accessed is different. White mages draw their power from within themselves, and from carefully constructed rituals and objects designed to channel the power safely. Black mages take the power from others, either draining it from willing donors, or stealing it from the unwilling.”

“You mean like vampires?”

“Sort of, but with life energy rather than blood. Depending on how much they drain, they can do everything from causing mild fatigue to killing the donor.” He shook his head in what was almost a shudder. “It’s a very dangerous path to take, though not without its allure.”

“So—” Jason’s words came out slowly as he thought it through, “—that guy, the ganger—he drained that kid for the power to cast a spell?” He thought he might be sick as the implications hit him. “He killed a kid just because he wanted to use magic to blow somebody away?”

Stone nodded soberly. “Most of them aren’t that blatant about it. There are a few minor talents in the DMW—and all of them are dangerously unstable. You must have run into one of them tonight.”

“So they’re not all like that? Please tell me I’m not gonna run into that on every street corner. How many of you guys are there, anyway?” Deciding that he needed the booze now more than he cared about the hangover later, he took another swig.

“Mages?” At Jason’s nod, Stone offered him a gentle smile. “Not that many overall, though they do tend to concentrate more in some areas than others. You’ll find more in large urban centers than smaller towns, for instance. Don’t worry—you’re unlikely to encounter another for a long time, even around here, and even if you go out looking for one. We’re generally a pretty secretive lot. We don’t flaunt our talents for obvious reasons, because being found out would cause us a great deal of difficulty. Even the black mages, most of them, keep quiet.”

“So—why are you telling me all this? How do you know you can trust me? How do you know I won’t go straight to—I dunno—the police? The media? and blab your secret all over the six o’clock news?”

Stone chuckled. “First of all, I’m a fairly good judge of character, and I don’t see you as the sort who’d do something like that. Second, I did get you out of a pretty sticky situation back there. I’d like to think you owe me the courtesy of not causing me a lot of inconvenience. And thirdly and most importantly: who would believe you? Let’s think: ‘Mr. Reporter, I know this chap and he’s a magician—a real one—and he can cast real spells.’ Or ‘Mr. Policeman, I want you to go arrest this guy I met. His crime? He’s a wizard!’ They’d lock you up or laugh you out of their lobby before you could get half of that out of your mouth.”

Jason had to admit he had a point. “Well, it’s not like I’m gonna do that anyway. Believe me, I’m grateful for all the help I can get right now. I’m way out of my league, and have been for a while.” He spread his hands. “I mean, I’m just a guy. I fight pretty well, I can fix things, I did okay in school. But this—” He shook his head, letting a breath out in a loud hiss through his teeth. “This is fuckin’ weird. And it scares the hell out of me—especially to think that Verity’s tied up with it somehow.”

He paused, then looked back at Stone. “So you say that black mages pull the power from other people, and white ones take it from themselves. Is that why you messed yourself up so bad when you cast that spell?”

Stone nodded. “White magic doesn’t lend itself well to fast, active spells like the ones I cast back there. They require an enormous expenditure of energy. As I said, white mages generally are more focused on rituals and longer-term or permanent spells. White magic is ultimately more powerful than black—for instance, we can imbue objects with magical power and use them as batteries if we need to, but they have to be specially prepared. Since it’s been quite some time since I last cast a damaging spell, I don’t generally keep those kinds of items on hand.”

“You said black mages don’t necessarily kill people when they use them—can you use like, willing batteries? People who know what they’re getting into?”

Stone stared at him, looking startled and a little disturbed. “Short answer: yes. It’s possible. But any white mage who would contemplate it wouldn’t be a white mage for long. There’s a rush that comes from black magic, almost like a drug. I know we’re getting a little philosophical here, but bear with me. Think of casting spells as affecting your inner core…your soul, if you will. Every time you draw power from another human, especially an unwilling one, it—diminishes your soul somewhat. If you diminish it too much, it essentially makes it impossible for you to cast anything but black-style spells. You’re so addicted to the sensation that you can’t do anything else.”

“So…” Jason ventured, “It’s sort of like guys who spend so much time looking at porn that eventually they can’t do it with a real-live girl?”

Stone tilted his head, then nodded. “I’d never thought about it that way, but the comparison is valid.”

“Can you recover from this—blot on your soul?” In the back of his mind, Jason wondered why he was wasting time asking all these questions that had nothing to do with finding Verity, but part of him was finding the explanation interesting, and he couldn’t help forging on. “If you—I dunno—didn’t cast black magic for a while, would it—grow back? Kind of like detoxing off drugs?”

“You know,” Stone said with a wry smile, “You’d make a very good magic student. You’re quite good at homing in on the right questions. And the answer is—yes, eventually, as long as you haven’t taken it too far. But it takes a long time, and any backsliding will put you right back where you started. It’s the reason why, even though there aren’t that many mages in the world, most of them are of the black—or at least gray—variety. It’s very hard to resist the temptation.”

Jason nodded. That made sense to him. Growing up as a cop’s son he had encountered, at least peripherally, a lot of the bad things that happened behind closed doors in his own hometown, and he doubted it was much different anywhere else. He wanted to ask more questions, but the day’s fatigue was beginning to settle on him like a heavy blanket. He yawned, then tried hard to suppress it.

Stone wasn’t fooled. “Listen,” he said, standing. “It’s late, and I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be useless tomorrow if I don’t get at least a few hours’ sleep. Let me show you the guest room, and we can continue this tomorrow.”

Jason was torn. He was exhausted, both mentally and physically—no sense trying to pretend he wasn’t. But allowing himself to rest when his sister was still out there somewhere— “I can’t,” he said. “Verity—”

“—sounds like she’s probably with some people who can keep her safe for the night,” Stone pointed out. “From what you were telling me, they managed to get out of that warehouse before the DMW showed up. They’re probably holed up someplace getting some sleep, too. You’ll be no use to her if you’re so tired you can’t see straight. Come on.” He waved Jason out of the room ahead of him.

Jason sighed and rose. As he started toward the door, another random thought popped into his head. “Hey.”

“What?” Stone turned back.

Jason reached in his pocket and pulled out the piece of notepaper Willow had written on. “Have you ever seen this symbol before?”

Stone took the paper and examined it for a few seconds, then looked up at Jason. “Where did you get this?”

“From Willow, the lady at the hospital. The one who told us where to look for Verity. She said to look for that symbol, or to show it to anyone I saw around there. I found one chalked on the back wall of the warehouse, near the concealed entrance.”

“Interesting…” Stone murmured, as if his thoughts were far away.

“There’s another one, too.” Jason took the paper back, dug his stubby pencil out, and drew the other symbol, the one he’d seen at the rest stop and the motel. “According to somebody else I talked to, this one means ‘bad place’ or ‘don’t stay here.’ I think the two of them are related somehow. It seems too weird for them not to be.”

Stone took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And who told you about the other one?”

“A couple bums I ran into on the way up here, at a rest stop. I gave them something to eat, and they pointed it out on the side of the john and said I shouldn’t stay there. They said that sign meant it wasn’t safe. And then I saw it again, up here, on the curb in front of a motel I almost stopped at. I decided not to. I felt pretty stupid about it, but—”

“—but best not to take chances,” Stone said, nodding. “One moment. May I see that again?” When Jason handed it over, he rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a notebook and pen. He copied both symbols, jotted notes next to them, and then handed the original back. “Let me think about this a bit,” he said at last. “Tomorrow.”

Jason knew better than to argue or press for more details. Besides, now that the possibility of sleep was near, he was finding he could barely keep his eyes open anymore. He didn’t think he’d sleep with his mind whirling this hard, but at least he could rest.