you’d have liked him. He loved magic so much. I’m sure he was looking forward to seeing if Ethan would have it too, so he could teach him.” She shivered and looked away. “I…I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but the magic isn’t the only reason I’m glad you’ve agreed to this.”
“Oh?”
She glanced toward the living room, where Ethan still sat. “Ever since Matthew died, it’s just been Ethan and me. We do all right, but I…I think it will be good for him to have a man in his life. Sort of…a father figure.”
Stone didn’t answer right away. He didn’t want to tell her that he was hardly father-figure material; this didn’t seem the right time. “I’ll—do my best, Mrs. Penrose. I wasn’t kidding about the amount of work I’ll be expecting of him, though. He won’t have time to get into trouble.”
She chuckled. “That’s what I was hoping for. It’s been the two of us for too long. He needs someone else around to give him something else to care about. Especially since there’s a good chance I might—“ She trailed off, but her meaning was obvious.
Stone saw no reply that wasn’t either dismissive or patronizing, so instead he said, “I’ll make a mage of him, Mrs. Penrose, if he’s willing to work. You have my word on that.”
“Good.” She swallowed. “I know you will, Dr. Stone. I know you’ll do well by him. Walter speaks very highly of you. He says you’re probably the best teacher Ethan could have. I know he’s in good hands.”
After Stone left, Ethan waited for his mother to return to the living room. He still held the book Stone had given him, and idly began flipping through it.
“So…?” his mother asked, resuming her seat on the couch and gathering her blanket around her “What do you think?”
He didn’t answer right away. For several moments he continued leafing through the book. It was old, bound in leather, with heavy, deckle-edged pages and old-fashioned print. Along with the text, there were many diagrams, depicting circles with odd sigils and symbols around them, old-style drawings of naked humans engaging in various magical acts (this gave him a moment of panic: nobody does magic in the nude, do they? ), and elaborate mystical formulas that looked like the world’s weirdest math problems. He looked up at his mother. “Do you think I’ll be able to do this? To do—the kind of stuff he did?”
She smiled. “Your father did. And Dr. Stone seems to think you can.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Dr. Stone? He seemed very…focused. And a lot younger than I thought he’d be,” she added after a moment’s consideration.
“Yeah…” Ethan had spoken with Walter Yarborough on the phone a couple of days ago to get some idea what to expect. He recalled Yarborough’s words about Stone: he’s bloody clever, eccentric as hell, and the best mage of his generation that I know . But even with that, the mage had been nothing like Ethan had expected.
He’d only met Yarborough himself once, a few years ago. The older man was every bit your typical stodgy British stereotype: salt-and-pepper hair, impressive paunch, big moustache, gray tweed suit that had gone out of style long before Ethan was born, clothes and fingers festooned with strange pins, rings, and amulets. Maybe not exactly mage-looking, but definitely in the ballpark. And definitely fatherly—if not even grandfatherly—in his demeanor.
Stone, on the other hand, was—for lack of a better word— cool . How many mages wore a long black overcoat, jeans, and a Queen T-shirt? Yeah, okay, it was a geeky kind of cool, but Ethan understood that all too well, since it was the only kind he himself could reasonably aspire to. He gave a short laugh. “Mr. Yarborough said he’d be hard to deal with. Said he’s moody and—how did he put it?—‘doesn’t suffer fools gladly,’ but if I can keep up with him, he’ll make me into a good mage.”
“That’s what you want,