Stone and a Hard Place by R. L. King Read Free Book Online Page B

protested. “I thought we were just going to wander around up there for a while, and then come back down and tell her nothing’s up. Do we actually have to go anywhere in particular?”
    Stone shrugged. “Let’s make it look realistic. Besides, what’s to say we won’t find a perfectly normal, non-supernatural explanation?” Truth be told, he wanted to check out his hypothesis that the old lady was picking up vibes from somewhere, but he didn’t think telling Langley that would get him anything but laughed at. He glanced sideways at Ethan, who looked intrigued by the whole thing.
    “Fine. C’mon—the main stairway’s this way.”
    Stone and Ethan followed Langley down the hallway and into a wide open hall; on the other side was an elaborately carved stairway. “How does she make it up all those stairs?” Ethan asked.
    “She doesn’t. There’s an elevator. But it’s easier for us to take them. Let’s go to her bedroom first.”
    Adelaide’s bedroom was on the second floor, at the end of a wide hallway lined with more family portraits, landscapes, and pastoral scenes. Langley pushed the door open and stepped aside to let them in.
    As Stone expected, it was your classic ‘rich old lady’ bedroom: heavy drapes, brocade bedspread, elaborately carved antique furniture. The only things that didn’t fit the decorating scheme were a couple of pill bottles on the nightstand and a small oxygen tank in a rack next to the right side of the bed. A large-print paperback copy of The Cat Who Brought Down the House lay open next to the pill bottles. The drapes were closed. The whole place smelled vaguely musty, with a floral overlay.
    Langley came in last and plopped himself down in a chair, looking skeptical. “You wander around all you want with your magnifying glass and your magic deerstalker hat. Me, I’m gonna take a load off.”
    Stone got right to it, pacing the room and reaching out with his magical senses to see if anything caught his notice. Nothing did—of course, he was doing his best to be subtle about the whole thing so Langley wouldn’t ask uncomfortable questions. His examination of the bedroom, which included getting down to look under the bed and tapping on various walls, lasted about ten minutes. Then he disappeared momentarily into the bathroom and emerged only a minute or so later. Ethan trailed him, looking like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing.
    “Anything?” Langley asked, sounding bored.
    “Not a thing,” Stone said. “If she’s hearing voices, they’re not coming from in here.”
    “Or—you know—there aren’t any.”
    “That too. All right—take me to the east wing.”
    Langley seemed eager to get out of this all too intimate space of his old aunt’s. “This way.” This time he took the lead, with Stone following. Ethan once again brought up the rear.
    No doubt about it—the house was vast. It took them several minutes to get to the third floor and find their way down another wide painting-lined hallway to the library. “Why does she stay in this place?” Stone asked. He himself was no stranger to large houses, being the owner of a decaying old manor back home in England that he could barely afford to keep one step ahead of collapse, but this one made his place look like a three-bedroom in the suburbs. “Obviously she’s got the money to keep it up, but wouldn’t it be more comfortable for her if she didn’t have to lay in supplies to make the trip from the bedroom to the kitchen?”
    Langley chuckled. “Iona adores her, and if she needs to go anywhere she gets pushed around in a fancy wheelchair. Plus, she absolutely refuses to move out. She says she’s got too many good memories here, and she’ll leave when they wheel her out in a casket.”
    “I guess nobody does stubborn as well as a rich old lady,” Stone conceded, following Langley inside. “This is the—”
    A wave of lightheaded weakness struck him from nowhere. He swayed, reaching for