The Other Side

The Other Side

Original Cover

## Blurb

**DARK DESIRES**

Alastair Stone and fellow professor Edwina Mortenson go together like punk rock and patchouli. So when an unwilling Stone is “volunteered” to participate in a paranormal TV reality show with her, neither of them is thrilled about it—even if the ghost town they’ll be filming in is supposedly the site of a powerful curse.

As if dealing with Mortenson, the show’s overbearing producer, and its prima-donna star weren’t bad enough, Stone soon uncovers evidence that the town’s curse is very real—and it’s resurfacing again, more deadly than ever. Miles from civilization, cut off by a freak storm and a washed-out road, Stone must race to find the origin of the curse and stop it before it settles its malignant grip over everyone in the town.

Meanwhile, Jason and Verity head off to tackle their first case on their own in Las Vegas, where a search for a missing family man takes them down a dark path—and leads Verity to make a desperate choice that forces her to question everything she thought she knew about her magic.

## Plot

The Other Side is unusual in the Chronicles, in that it presents two independent tales in one volume. One follows Stone’s perilous brush with celebrity. The second returns Jason and Verity to Las Vegas to investigate a murder. The two are intertwined in the book, but summarized here separately.

### **Stone’s Story**

Edwina Mortensen is meeting with TV producer Larry Duncan when Alastair pops in briefly to retrieve some papers he needs for his next class. Days later, Edwina calls Stone to her office to tell him that, while she’d been slated to appear in Duncan’s ghost-hunting show, *The Other Side*, as an occult expert, Duncan has decided he wants Stone, instead. He was taken with Alastair’s accent and rock star look.

## Quotes and One-liners

I just mean—well, c’mon, let’s face it—most college professors don’t look like Doctor Who and Neil Gaiman got together and had a baby.Cody Huff

Verity's opinion of Harrison: Spending time with Harrison was like hanging around a dark room full of jet engines: intense, confusing, and not altogether pleasant.

Uninterested in doing the show, and indignant on Edwina’s behalf, Stone tries to refuse. But a large grant to the university is tied to the opportunity. Stone negotiates a compromise in which both he and Mortensen will appear on the show, and they prepare to travel to Brunderville, a reviving gold-rush ghost town reputed to be cursed, the following month.

Having casually mentioned the upcoming trip to Stefan Kolinsky, Stone is surprised when Kolinsky invites him to lunch to warn him not to go to Brunderville. The town is indeed cursed, the majority of its population having died on two separate occasions, during the gold rush and a later logging boom. Stone is under contract, though, and has to go. He promises Kolinsky the details of anything he finds there.

Stone, Jason and Verity get together to celebrate Verity’s twenty-first birthday, and Stone gifts her a bracelet she can charge with magical energy, and a used SUV. He also tells them about his coming trip to film the ghost-hunting show, taking their teasing in stride. He’s pleased Verity has decided to move back to the Bay Area and resume her apprenticeship.

On arrival in Brunderville, Stone and Edwina are put up in a hotel attached to the Shangri-La Winery. Duncan warns Stone not to go to the Brunder mansion; he wants his reaction to the place on camera. Alastair’s initial wander about the town gives him the impression that his three-day stay is going to be dead boring. At dinner, Duncan explains that Mortensen won’t be part of the mansion walk-through, but doing an on-camera history of the town elsewhere. After he leaves one of the cast, Cody Huff, tells Stone that Duncan is planning to hire him for more episodes, and that the star, Bryce Riley, is jealous.

The caretaker of the mansion, Randy Yates, invites Stone to see the cave under the winery. Part of it is used to store the wine in barrels, and the rest is bricked off for safety, because the cave continues into an old gold mine that’s too dangerous. He know much about the curse except that Jacob Brunder was not a nice guy. People who believe in the curse assume it was cast by one of the miners he swindled. He does have a box of old papers from a previous resident he offers to bring to Stone. Before they leave, Stone catches a hint of something and decides to come back alone to investigate.

At the evening get-together, Bryce insults Stone and disrespects Mortensen, and he and Stone nearly come to blows. The show’s director, Kelly Petrucci, intervenes and steers Riley away. Mortensen, having overheard Bryce say it was obvious that she and Stone couldn’t stand each other, assures Alastair that it’s not true, and that he can’t help being young and attractive while she’s…not. Stone bolsters Edwina by disparaging Bryce, reinforcing his own respect for her, and asking for her help with Yates’s box of papers.

During another wander, this time around the mansion, Stone encounters Larry Duncan sneaking about the woods with a flashlight. He claims to be looking for an old cemetery, but his aura shows he’s lying. In the morning, Stone revisits the cave, and confirms there is a red glow of malignant magical energy, coming from the bricked-off area. He decides to hint it to Duncan, hoping the man will pressure for permission to open the bricked area for filming, during which time Stone can identify and neutralize what he assumes is the source of the town’s curse.

When Alastair reports for makeup, he notes that the red energy has seeped from the mine, and was now present all the way to the mansion. After the morning’s shooting, it appears even more widespread, but Duncan is so busy, Stone can’t track him down to mention the cave and mine. Denise, the Shangri-La’s hostess, propositions Stone when she drops off Yates’s papers, and he notes tinges of red in her aura. Edwina, on the other hand, is more grumpy than usual, and sounds bitter and resentful when he leaves the papers with her.

The shoot in the mansion goes so badly, that Duncan eventually has to call a break. Everyone is on edge, Riley is especially obnoxious, and even equipment keeps failing. Stone even overhears the Yateses arguing. He notes the red mist is present, as strong as ever. On the next attempt, upstairs, things go wrong again and everyone, including Stone, begins arguing. Alastair isn’t sure why he’s reacting as he is. Duncan calls the shoot off and tells everyone to go chill out. He also tells Stone he can’t use the cave in the shoot, can’t break down the bricks, for insurance reasons.

Back at the hotel, Stone finds a fancy wine basket and a suggestive note from Denise. He goes next door to see how Edwina is doing with Yates’s papers. They get into such a nasty argument that Stone is nearly ready to harm Edwina, when he stops himself and looks around. The red mist is everywhere, including engulfing Edwina, and it’s glowing. Stone tries to convince her to throw off the effect, but fails. He’s almost convinced, now, that the mist - the curse - is affecting people’s emotions, particularly negative ones.

Stone tries to convince Duncan that they all need to leave Brunderville immediately, but it becomes moot when Denise reports that the only road has been washed out by the persistent rain. Trying to insist everyone go to their rooms and remain separate doesn’t work, either. Then the power and phones go out.

Needing some kind of ally, Stone returns to Mortensen’s room. She’s still irate, so he restrains her with magic, then puts a shield on her mind against the curse. He’s successful, but not before some painful moments. He puts off her demands for more details, but does convince her that the curse is real, and affecting everyone. He tells her he needs her to find anything at all in the Yates papers to indicate who laid the curse.

Alastair hurries to the cave, only to find someone has knocked down the brick wall. His first thought is Larry Duncan, who’d been skulking about, ostensibly looking for a cemetery. Stone heads to the mansion, which is now fully engulfed in the red mist. Everyone is still volatile, but he manages to get Duncan separated, restrain him, and shield his mind. He reveals he’d been looking for the mine, for gold, because he’s under the gun with the Mob after losing big money on horse racing – he was desperate. But the mine had nothing in it but bones and, when he broke through from the wine cave, he found it had collapsed not far into the mine. Stone suspects Duncan’s interference is what reactivated the curse.

Soaked to the skin, now, Stone goes to his room, only to find Denise there. She’s lit candles everywhere and is posing naked on his bed. When he attempts to rebuff her and order her to dress, she turns on him and slashes him with a broken wine glass. Then she begins screaming ‘rape’. A .ocal named Randy Mott breaks down the door and, axe in hand, declaring he’s going to kill them both. In the ensuing chaos, Mott is thrown into a table covered in candles, and his beard catches fire. By now Edwina has arrived, and Stone’s room is quickly being engulfed in flames.

Stone and Edwina get a near-catatonic Denise to Edwina’s room, where Stone breaks the window and gets them all out, as well as a diary Edwina says the information on the curse is recorded. Stone swipes some coveralls and boots for the women, then the get Denise to her house.

With Edwina trying to get him to tell her how he knows what’s going on, Stone sets off to find the mine entrance. On the way, she also fills him in on the details of the curse. Brunder’s daughter, Sarah, fell in love with someone ‘unsuitable’, so Brunder had him hanged for rape and made Sarah watch. She laid the curse, being from New Orleans and versed in Voudoun. But it backfired on her when her father, in a rage, killed her and her unborn baby. The curse, the deaths, and the ley line combined to activate the curse and keep it going all these years, coming to a head when the population rose and emotions came into play.

Inside the mine, they find Sarah’s Vodou altar and a *gris-gris* that Stone says he has to dismantle and ward. At this point, he finally has to admit to Edwina that magic is real, and he is a mage. He sets about warding and destroying the gris-gris, but finds a second component to the curse – a thread of energy leading to the mansion, and probably Sarah’s echo.

While conducting his ritual, Stone has visions of how the curse came about. While intended as revenge, it backfired on her when her father, in a rage, killed her and her unborn baby. The curse, the deaths, and the ley line combined to activate the curse and keep it going all these years, coming to a head when the population rose and emotions came into play. Her body is buried in the basement under the mansion, and Stone will have to address that after the Voudoun part is neutralized. As he works, Edwina marvels that magic is real, after all, and hopes she can ‘learn it’.

Just as Stone finishes with the ritual, Larry Duncan bursts in with a gun, screaming that Stone is stealing his gold. He only grazes Stone, but the report from the pistol brings the mine ceiling down. Stone has only a split-second to shield himself and telekinetically pull Edwina to him. Duncan is completely buried. Stone, briefly unconscious, wakes to find he hadn’t managed to shield Edwina completely. The lower half of her body is crushed under and enormous boulder. Unable to heal her, he is only able to mitigate her pain. He creates a magical light show for her, the last thing she sees as she dies.

With nothing more he can do for Edwina, Stone returns to the mansion to find the Yateses dead, and Bryce Riley pointing a shotgun at him. He wrenches the gun away, subdues Riley, and shields his mind. With much difficulty, he enlists Bryce to help him find Sarah’s body.

The basement is dirt-floored, which is good. There are also boxes of very old, unstable dynamite, which is bad. Riley tries to flee, but the stairs give way and he breaks his leg. Left to do this alone, Stone manages to uncover Sarah in her shallow grave, along with the tiny skeleton of her unborn baby. While he conducts a ritual and communicates with Sarah, pointing out that her own curse led to the death of both herself and her baby, and that no one is left alive who killed her lover, someone throws a torch down into the basement, setting boxes on fire. As soon as Sarah understands and crosses over, Stone grabs Riley and levitates them both out of the house, which explodes.

Later, Stone is informed that a total of nine were killed, including Larry, Edwina, the Yateses, and Bill Mott. Still trapped by the landslide, the group convenes a makeshift remembrance get-together. Denise apologizes to Stone, saying she would never have acted that way, but… Seeing she does have genuine interest in him, he proposes the comfort each other, neither of them wanting to be alone.

### Jason and Verity's Story

Jason and Verity meet for pizza, and Verity meets Jason’s new girlfriend, Kristen Bradley, for the first time. She’s a tall blonde surfer-type, and an EMT. When Jason has to excuse himself for a night surveillance job, Kristen drives Verity home to Edna’s. As they chat in the car, Verity mentions her intention to return to the Bay Area.

Suddenly, Verity spots a distressed aura off the side of the road and demands Kristen stop. They find a motorcyclist in the bushes, badly injured. Kristen doesn’t have her gear with her so, while she calls 911, Verity assesses the man. He’s bleeding internally and will die before help can arrive, so she heals the bleed to stabilize him. Kristen wants to know how Verity spotted the guy, and what she did to him, but V puts her off until she and Jason can meet with her together.

The next evening, after finding out from Kristen that the cyclist survived, she tells the woman she can ‘do things’ like that. Kristen misunderstands at first, thinking Verity means she’s a faith healer. When Verity mentions magic, Kristen shuts her down, angrily reacting to the ‘joke’. Verity offers to demonstrate, but Jason says no, nevermind. Kristen says she’ll see Jason tomorrow and gets up to leave in a huff. Jason just tells her to take care. Verity is shocked that he just broke up with Kristen because of her.

When Verity’s 21st birthday arrives, Jason takes her out to dinner, saying he’s got gifts and a surprise for her. The surprise is Alastair, and the three catch up together. Among other things, Jason gifts Verity money to move north, and Alastair a used SUV. The siblings rib Stone when they find out he’s going to be on a ghost hunter show, and again when, browsing an old photo album Jason found, they find a photo of their mother and others, including a gangly, teenaged Stone. They agree to discuss Verity moving when Stone returns from Brunderville.

Before Jason can take Verity up to Palo Alto to cat-sit for Stone when he leaves for the TV shoot, Jason calls and says his boss, Fran, has him on a missing person case and can’t let him have time off. Verity offers to help with a tracking spell. They get together at Edna’s and Jason gives her Gary Woods’ hat to use in the ritual. The spell can’t find Gary, though, and oddly seems to have been trying to locate two different people. All Verity can be reasonably sure is that he’s not in LA where he was supposed to be, the direction she got was wrong. That night Jason calls to say that Woods has been found – in Las Vegas, dead. There’s no record of him traveling there, checking into a hotel…nothing. He was found naked, with no ID, but someone else’s ID was found in the dumpster where his body had been dumped after being tortured and killed.

Verity decides to accompany Jason to Vegas, begging off the cat-sitting, because the Evil are still active there and she can help with protection. Once there, the two meet with Chet Roper, the LVPD contact Jason got from Fran. He explains that Gary was found behind a strip club in an especially nasty part of town, though he hadn’t been killed there. He’d been severely beaten in the genital area, then had his throat cut. The only ID found with him was for a David Ames, who looked completely different, and whose address is fake.

Their next stop is the Pussycat Club to check the dumpster. Verity picks up traces of magic and, again, a second person. Inside, one of the strippers tells them that she doesn’t know anything but, if Gary was found as they say, someone was sending a message, to whom, she didn’t know. Leaving the club, discussing trying to find Ames instead, the pair are accosted by a trio of gangbangers who intend to rape Verity and kill them both. They warn the siblings they should have kept their noses out of things. They fight, Verity using magic, and one of the gangers yells that she has ‘mojo’ – is familiar with magic. They flee, but not before Verity makes note of a tattoo – and eagle and double-fours dice.

Back at their hotel, Jason and Verity try having him power her magic. It works very well, though Verity notes it’s not the kind of power she can store for later. Not hoping to find Trevor Harrison, Verity nevertheless suggests visiting The Obsidian in hopes Nakamura might be able to help. There, he confirms he hasn’t seen Harrison, but agrees to see if he can track down either David Ames, or the tattoo the ganger had. During the conversation, Nakamura lets slip that Verity and Stone had been in Vegas two years prior – without Jason. Verity explains later that she was helping Stone with something, but it isn’t her story to tell (see Core of Stone).

While Jason excuses himself to the restroom, Verity wanders out onto the floor to maybe gamble a little. There, she unexpectedly spots Harrison and almost literally chases him down. He’s stiff and chilly, as always, though she tells him she’s glad to see him alive. She asks where he goes when he’s not in Vegas, whether he goes to another plane. He deflects with another question. When Verity says Stone wants to talk to him, Harrison answers that she should tell Stone he already has the means to do so and, if not, he will figure it out when he’s more motivated to do so. He says good evening and disappears into the crowd. Completely.

On returning to their hotel they find a woman’s severed hand on one of the bed pillows. Verity is almost sure it belongs to the stripper she spoke to. When the police arrive, she tells him the woman was alive when the hand was taken, so they should look for her. She asks about the gangers’ tattoos, and Roper tells them they’re the Hard Eights, a gang that enforces for a nameless criminal mob. Nakamura had offered a room in the Obsidian at no charge, but Jason had refused. Now, they pack their things before going out to Fremont Street to search for Forgotten, because they’ll likely have to take him up on it.

As they search Glitter Gulch, they see they’re being followed. They lure the guy into an alley and confront him. He’s Forgotten, and wants to know why they’re looking for his people. They explain a homeless man named Ned had found Gary’s body and they need to speak to him. They also mention the Hard Eights. The guy tells them to steer clear of them – they enforce for a group that offers interested parties anything they desire, and keep things ruthlessly private. He’ll find Ned for them, but that’s all. With nothing else, the siblings return to the Obsidian to get settled.

Nakamura has discovered that David Ames checked into the Oasis hotel, then disappeared, leaving all his belongings behind. The next day, Jason and Verity visit the Oasis and meet with Mr. Chesney, the manager, as Nakamura directed. After a few bribes, Chesney tells them Ames was a regular customer that he hopes will return. He can’t let them into his room because it’s been reoccupied. However, he does let them go through Ames’s suitcase. There, they find children’s jewelry, and a paper with the name Xavier and a number to call, with the notation, “delightful”. In addition, the dates of Ames’s stays match Gary’s past business trips. Verity, meanwhile, snitched a sock from David’s laundry, for tracking.

Contact with Roper brings them news that the stripper was found dead. He’s also gotten permission to view Gary’s body. At the Coroner’s Office, Verity examines him magically, and once again gets the faint trace of another person. She speculates that the two are one and the same, though no idea how that can be true. Jason has a brainstorm and compares David’s note to Gary’s handwriting, and finds they’re almost certainly the same. Family man Gary is up to something in Vegas, and assumes a different identity so his wife won’t find out. While Jason contacts the wife if she knows David Ames, or has found anything to indicate her husband knew him (she did not), Verity puts together a ritual and tries to find David with his sock. The result is clear: David is also dead.

Their Forgotten contact comes through, and they meet with Ned, the homeless man who found Gary. He tells them the body was dumped there by a small-time mobster with a limp named Mickey Toro and his goons. He gives the names of three casinos Toro’s Family own. They pay Ned and are about to give him a lift to the bus station so he can leave town, when they’re attacked. Ned goes down with a knife in him, while Verity begins firing off magic, Jason helping with power. Once the Hard Eights flee, Verity heals Ned, and they take him to the bus station. He leaves them with the advice to check the OTB in the back of the Palomar because Mickey Toro is often there.

Nursing drinks at the Palomar and speculating why the Hard Eights are after them if Mickey Toro is the one who killed Gary, the pair spot Mickey Toro limping for the men’s room. They stop him when he comes out and force him into the ladies room and try to question him. Completely calm, he tells them they’re not very smart, just before his men burst in with guns drawn and Jason is disarmed.

They’re herded into Mickey’s office, where they warn Mickey that killing them would be a bad idea – he’d seen Verity use magic, and she says she has friends even better at it. Toro says nobody is killing anybody. Just then, Verity grabs Jason’s gun with magic and holds it to Toro’s head. Toro orders his men to drop their guns and Jason collects and empties them. Mickey tells them he can’t admit to killing anyone, but that David Ames was scum, that he frequented a place where a man can get anything, no matter how depraved. Children – young children.

Verity realizes Toro is just as disgusted about this as they are. Jason asks why they don’t stop it, and Toro yells that they can’t find them. They’d recognized Ames as a regular and grabbed him to get information. Beating him didn’t get them anything – the place moves – but Toro says he made sure the guy would never touch a child again, and then, maybe went a little overboard. But when his knife ‘slipped’ and Ames died, he changed – and was now a guy they’d never seen before. Verity concludes Gary was a wild talent, able to completely transform into someone else, and he used that to visit Vegas twice a year to molest children.

Jason, Verity and Toro come to an accord. If the siblings can find the traffickers, Toro and his men will back them up with muscle. At the Obsidian, Nakamura hooks them up with a dull sedan less likely to attract attention than Jason’s muscle car, then they check into another cheap hotel near the Hard Eights’ territory. Jason call the number for Xavier and leaves a message he’s looking for a delightful time. The return call instructs him to go to a Mexican place in the food court of a nearby mall later, order a large soda, and sit down.

While they await the meet, they contact Roper again, and request information on missing kids. When he gets back to them, they narrow it down to girls, a find two that disappeared from the mall where Jason is supposed to meet Xavier. Verity says they need to get there early so she can check out the building.

The place turns out to be several stories, and Verity spots something odd but powerful on the top floor, like a ward, but not. She speculates, horrified, that something that strong would take a lot of power, perhaps from killing the children who age out of their sexual desirability.

At the mall on the ground floor, Jason hides while Verity disguises herself and pays a random guy to go the Mexican place, get the soda, and sit down to drink it. Another man, possibly also under an illusion because Verity senses magic, approaches. The two talk, the random guy looking confused. The disguised man leaves, as do several others who appear to be muscle. Verity follows the magic trail, which vanishes at a blank wall in a hallway. She pierces the illusion and sees an elevator. She tells Jason to call Toro and tell him where they are, but they’re on their own to find a way to the top floor. Then she and Jason, not wanting to be trapped in an elevator, head outside.

Jason’s not thrilled, but Verity proposes levitating the two of them up to the roof. He gives her power, and she brings them up to the roof of the building next door, which is half as tall. After a rest, she takes them the rest of the way up, despite having spotted a guard there. With good timing, though, they make the roof while he’s at the other end of the building. Then Jason jumps and subdues the man and binds him with zip ties, and gags him. They steal his key card and let themselves into the building.

They make their way to a plush lounge, but it’s empty of people and auras. Jason tells Verity to make them invisible until they cross the room to another door, but the one behind them slams shut and the room is suddenly full of men. A voice orders Jason to drop his gun, while the other men point guns at the pair. When Verity calls out a taunt at the invisible man, he appears on a couch, his arms around two dazed-looking young girls.

Mathias, as the man calls himself, compliments Verity on her wits and magic, even says he’d like to meet her master. Both she and Jason express their disgust at what the man is doing, while he justifies his business. He supplies a service, and the children aren’t harmed. The pair aren’t buying it. Mathias orders his men to kill Jason and take Verity, but Toro’s men break in just then and all hell breaks loose.

Toro and his men make short work of Mathias’ men, but Mathias himself disappears. Toro goes to the elevator in the hall and shoots out the control panel, saying Mathias won’t be able to leave that way and, if he already has, a couple of Toro’s men are waiting there.

Jason, Verity and Toro’s men search the hallways, opening rooms, and round up the children, twelve in all. As they’re escorting the kids to the guarded service elevator, Verity muses that Mathais will just start over if they can’t catch him, and she’s troubled by the haunted looks on the kids’ faces. She studies them, and realizes there is an extra child. As soon as she yells to warn the others, Mathias stuns them all with a concussion spell, grabs two of the children and a gun, and hold the gun to their heads so the bullet would go through one to the other.

Mathias, shielded, orders Toro to kill Jason, or he’ll kill a child every minute until he does. Verity, desperately trying to think what to do, suddenly reaches out on instinct to Mathias’ aura, and twists.

She wakes in a room in one of Toro’s places, with Jason watching over her. He assures her the kids are fine, and Mathias is dead. Then he asks what she did. She says she used her healing to kill Mathias. Sensing how disturbed by that he is – as is she – she says she just wants to go home. Toro has anonymously made sure the kids and Mathias’ surviving customers were found by the police.

Their ride back to California is uncomfortable, with Verity worried Jason thinks she’s a monster, though she knows she’d do it again. Jason, meanwhile, has to figure out what he’s going to tell Gary’s wife and Fran.

A few days later, Verity asks to visit Stone. They unburden themselves to each other, giving mutual comfort. Verity also announces she definitely wants to move back up and resume her studies. Then she passes on Harrison’s cryptic message.