The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  The robes were wrapping all of their necks, strangling them like boas.

  I didn’t know what the hell was happening and didn’t much care. My eye was intact, even if a blinding glare remained. Turning, I forced my arms and legs into an absurd underwater run. My sword and staff were on the ground where I’d relinquished them. I was bending in slo-mo to retrieve them when a shaking force nailed me between the shoulder blades.

  I reflexively hooked a finger into the front of my shirt collar. But instead of struggling to breathe, I was no longer struggling, period. My limbs were fluid again. I exercised my jaw and tested my voice: “Do-re-mi-fa-sol…” Someone had broken up the effect of the encumbering potion.

  Sword and staff in hands, I swung around.

  “The animation spell’s not going to last,” someone said in an Irish brogue. A short, rumpled figure hustled from the gagging druids and seized the sleeve of my coat. “We need to get a move on.”

  “Chicory?” I asked, stumbling to keep up.

  In the year since I’d last seen my mentor, he had gained a bit of weight. Even so, his feet were a blur. Instead of crossing the stream, he led me farther down the path I’d arrived by, his coat flapping around his stubby legs, then up to where the path joined a defunct road. His gray Volkswagen Rabbit sat against the near curb. As he shuffled around to the driver’s side, I peeked back, relieved to find no one—and nothing—in pursuit. The diesel engine chugged to life as I dropped inside and slammed the door behind me.

  “Man, talk about timing,” I said, inspecting my right eye in the visor mirror. It was red and puffy around the rim, but otherwise healthy. “How did you know—”

  “Magic,” Chicory said, tossing his wand into the back seat, curmudgeonly face set in a frown. Then to clarify: “Forbidden magic.”

  “You mean theirs?” I tried.

  He stared at me over a squash-shaped nose. “I mean yours.”

  I gave a nervous chuckle as Chicory swung the car around. “Yeah, about that…”

  “You violated a mandate from the Order. Two, in fact.”

  “Well, their letter was awfully short on details. It called me off a shrieker case without saying why—or what the Order planned to do about it. And cessation of magic? Was that supposed to be a blanket mandate?”

  My mentor nodded.

  “What the hell, Chicory? If the Order would ever bother to ask, they might learn that I have to make ends meet around here. I also have friends in this city, good people. Keeping my job and keeping them safe require magic sometimes.”

  I thought I’d made a reasonable appeal, but Chicory was shaking his mop of gray hair. He looked more like a frazzled physics professor than a wizard. “It’s not your place to question the Elders.”

  “So, what, they’re gods now?”

  “As far as you and I are concerned, yes.”

  I pushed out an exasperated breath. At our level, the purpose of magic was defending the mortal world from manifested evils. But the Elders dealt in other planes entirely, where linear thought and logic no longer held, necessarily. With their power and knowledge, the Elders were very nearly gods. It was what I would become one day—if I lived to be that old. When the Elders issued a decree, there was usually a very good reason for it.

  But call it hubris, I still felt like they were missing something.

  “Do they have a plan for the shriekers, at least?” I asked.

  “I’m sure they do, Everson.” His response hardly inspired confidence, but before I could press him, Chicory took up his scolding voice. “What were you doing out here anyway?” He skirted a cement barricade and merged onto Central Park West. “Picking a fight with a women’s group?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “I didn’t know they were… Look, I thought they might be behind a murder the NYPD asked me to help investigate, all right? The rector was killed at a church I used to attend.”

  “Oh, yes, about that,” Chicory interrupted. “The Order wants you off that case as well.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Not our place to ask.”

  “Well, let me spell a few things out for you, and maybe you can run it up the flagpole.” I twisted my entire body toward him. “The church in question sits on the city’s most powerful fount of ley energy. The balance of power in the city is already tipping toward darkness because of the crisis brought on by the vampires. We lose St. Martin’s, and we may never get that balance back. New York City will become a Romper Room of evil. Father Victor, the man in position to take over as rector? I know him. He’s as devoted as they come. He’ll safeguard that fount. But he’s also about to be slammed for capital murder by a police department short on resources and long on the illusion that they’re actually solving crimes.”

  I hadn’t quite put it in those terms before, not even in my own mind, but it wasn’t a stretch. Those were the bigger stakes.

  Chicory sighed. “Fine, I’ll add it to my report.” He glanced at the folders and spiral-bound notebooks spread over his dashboard. I noticed his back seat was jammed with boxes containing more files. I wasn’t sure how many of us he was responsible for across the country, but based on the intervals between visits, probably too many. “But until you hear back from me…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “No magic.”

  We rode in silence the rest of the way to the West Village.

  As Chicory pulled up in front of my apartment, I peeked around. I still hadn’t seen the woman Tabitha claimed to have caught watching the building. I was beginning to suspect my cat had fabricated the story to convince me she was pulling her weight around the homestead.

  My gaze returned to Chicory. “Hey, thanks for bailing me out back there.” I no longer had a suspect, but I’d managed to keep both eyes and my life, which was something. “And for the lift home,” I added.

  “Ooh, that reminds me.”

  I watched cross-eyed as he pressed an ink-stained thumb between my brows. “What the…? Ow!” I cried as a bolt of energy pierced my forebrain. Though the sensation quickly dissipated, a tingling pressure remained behind. “What are you doing?”

  “The wards around the city could detect your magic but not your intentions. Consider yourself stamped.” He said it matter-of-factly. “If you violate any of the mandates, including pursuing the matter with the church, the Order will know. That should tell you how serious they are.”

  “And if I do it anyway?”

  “You’ll find out just how serious.”

  I sighed and got out of the car.

  “Everson,” Chicory said before I could close the door. I leaned down and met his eyes, which didn’t seem so frazzled anymore. They appeared dark, almost mercenary. “The Order can seem like an abstraction sometimes, but when it comes to their mandates, they’re rather black and white. Trust me. I’ve had to take care of two wayward wizards this month already.”

  I felt the moisture leave my mouth. “You mean…?”

  He nodded once. “Don’t test them.”

  32

  I awoke early Sunday morning, having slept decently for someone who faced a deadline with an NYPD detective, another deadline with a mob boss, and a not-so-subtle threat from his mentor of being put to death if he acted on either. It probably explained the shredded feeling in my stomach.

  I dressed, fixed an omelet for Tabitha, who was still snoozing, and headed out for coffee. I had some serious mulling to do.

  Except for a handful of neighbors out walking their dogs, the West Village streets were quiet. The weather system that had dumped gray clouds and on-and-off rainfall over the city since last week continued to linger like a nagging cold. I wasn’t feeling so hot myself.

  I hustled the three blocks through the damp to my favorite caffeine stop, Two Story Coffee, and ordered a large Colombian roast with two shots of scotch. I paid for it, along with a folded-over Sunday Edition of the Scream, and carried both to a soft reading chair in a corner. Being Sunday, it was too early for the regulars: various artists a
nd practitioners of the esoteric, which the particular energy patterns in the neighborhood seemed to attract.

  I took a sip of coffee and sank into the chair in thought.

  It seemed all of the decent options were off the table. I was looking at least bad now. To avoid the Order’s wrath, I would have to back off the shrieker case, which meant hiding from Bashi and the White Hand for roughly the rest of my life. I would also have to walk away from the cathedral case—not that I had any new leads at the moment—but what would happen to Father Vick, not to mention the crucial role of St. Martin’s in the city’s balance of power?

  One thing I had decided for certain was to skip my hearing at Midtown College tomorrow morning. I refused to give Snodgrass the satisfaction of watching me sink. I wasn’t sure which hurt more, though: the thought of no longer being able to research and teach the subject I loved, or of not having Caroline Reid as a colleague. Would our friendship survive? And what was she going to think of me for not fighting for my position?

  I sighed and unfolded the paper across my lap. The headline that took up half the front page blew all thoughts of the college from my head.

  Murder And Mayhem At St. Martin’s! Rector Battered To Death! Parishioners Ask, “Who’s Next?”

  Despite the Church’s effort, the story had gotten out. Probably a blackmail job. The paper had wanted more money and the Church had balked. The article contained nothing I didn’t already know, the information attributed to a “brave source” who had requested anonymity. I snorted at the irony. I worried, though, what the story meant for Father Vick and St. Martin’s.

  The cathedral’s power as a sanctuary against evil depended largely on a collective faith in, well, the cathedral’s power as a sanctuary against evil. Challenging that faith with a graphic depiction of the murder and suggestions that there could be more to come wobbled the central struts.

  Maybe exactly what someone was trying to do.

  The rest of the article was garbage, something the Scream had unabashedly mastered. At least my likeness wasn’t featured below the article.

  I turned the page. Correction. At least my likeness wasn’t featured below that article. Because the god-awful police sketch was back, on page two. I raised my eyes to the headline—and nearly spilled my coffee.

  The Eviscerator Strikes Again! Soho! Chelsea! Spanish Harlem! Murray Hill!

  My eyes rocketed up and down the columns, grabbing the relevant information, slamming it into something coherent. Four more murders since Friday night. Two men. Two women. The info on the victims was sketchy, but they had all been slain in the same manner as the Chinatown and Hamilton Heights victims—hence my reprisal as lead suspect and creep job.

  I closed my eyes to a corkscrew of dizziness. Had those same shriekers reappeared to feed? I shook my head. No, these sounded like the just-summoned variety. No signs of entrance, smashed windows for exits.

  “Plan for the shriekers, my ass,” I grumbled as I recalled the assurance Chicory had given me in the car last night. There were now at least six of them loose in the city, up to God knew what, and the Order wasn’t doing a goddamned thing. The thought knotted the muscles in my neck.

  And why hadn’t my alarm alerted me? The city hologram should have lit up like a supernova. Cold understanding stiffened my spine. The Order had cut me off from their wards. Hence, the hologram’s silence the last couple of nights.

  I took a large swallow of coffee, more for the alcohol than caffeine, and flipped between the two articles in thought. Oh, yes, about that, Chicory had said when I’d brought up my work on the cathedral murder last night. The Order wants you off that case, as well.

  Now why would that be? I could understand their concern with an incubus-toting wizard getting mixed up with demonic beings, but what danger did Thelonious and I pose to an investigation into a rector’s murder?

  Unless…

  My hand went still, the paper poised between the cases.

  Unless there’s a connection.

  I thought back to the Bible I’d found in the East Village conjurer’s apartment. I’d written it off as incidental, but now I wasn’t so sure. Had the vagrant been linked to St. Martin’s, somehow? Ditto the Chinatown and Hamilton Heights conjurers? The four listed here in the paper? Had the same person who supplied their spells murdered the rector?

  There was someone who could probably shed light on those questions—only I was forbidden from speaking to Father Vick by Detective Vega and now the Order.

  I touched the place on my forehead where Chicory had mashed his thumb. He’d hit me with a binding spell, a psychic tether that created a one-way conduit for my thoughts. The pressure of the spell lingered in my brain like a subsiding headache.

  A friend, I told myself—and anyone who might be eavesdropping. I’m only going to visit Father Victor as a friend. And then, because I was so fed up with the Order, If that’s a crime, we can discuss it in hell.

  33

  Because it was Sunday, the line for the pedestrian checkpoint on Liberty Street was nonexistent. I went through the same motions I’d gone through the last two times, showing my NYPD card and Midtown College ID, even managing to affect impatience. But the longer the guard’s impassive shades remained fixed on my ID, the more unnerved I became.

  For the first time, I noticed the small black eye of a camera in the corner of his sunglasses. The camera was beaming the info on my ID to a monitor and whichever technician was talking into the guard’s earpiece. After another minute, the guard handed my ID back.

  “About time,” I muttered, going to step past him.

  The palm that met my chest knocked me back several steps.

  “Hey, what gives?” I shouted, more in surprise than pain.

  “You’re forbidden entry.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re on the list.”

  “What list?”

  “The forbidden-entry list.”

  “Gee, thanks for the clarification. Can you tell me who put me on it?”

  The guard crossed his thick arms to signal he was done talking. One of the perks of bearing body armor and an assault rifle. I peered past him to where the massive towers of the financial district thrust upward into a gray haze. Arnaud must have known I’d come yesterday morning. He’d put me on his naughty list, alongside the anti-capitalists and bomb-happy anarchists. He must have also included a note to have my NYPD card confiscated, because that was what the guard had done, I now realized.

  Shit.

  I looked up and down the length of the imposing wall before stepping up to the guard again.

  “Look,” I said quietly. “Your X-ray didn’t pick up anything, right? I’m only going to St. Martin’s to meet an old friend, then I’m shooting straight home. You can call the cathedral to check. They’ll confirm it.”

  The guard’s arms remained crossed, his gaze leveled above me, as though I was the annoying neighborhood kid who, if you ignored long enough, would eventually slouch off. Maybe I was in luck. Most of the other guards would have beaten me into the pavement by now.

  I opened my wallet, removed my remaining big bills—over one hundred dollars—and folded them into the palm of my hand, behind my ID. Though the guard’s head didn’t move, the tension in his neck told me his eyes were observing me. He was a mercenary, after all. Money spoke.

  “There must have been a mistake,” I suggested, holding out the ID with the bills concealed underneath. “Maybe you could take a second look?”

  The guard remained statue stiff for long enough that I was sure it was a failed bid. But he had only been waiting for the guard off to his right to turn away, because his hand shot out like a piston and seized the ID and tightly-folded stash. He didn’t hold the ID to his shades this time. It went in and out of the front pocket of his pants, as though he were cleaning it.

  “You don’t report back within one hour,” he said in a low voice, handing me back the ID sans cash, “and I’ll bag you and drag you out myself.”

&
nbsp; I nodded earnestly. He could just as easily have pocketed the money and denied my entrance a second time, even shot me dead on the pretense of rushing the checkpoint. Now I was only at risk of being shot for failing to return by—I glanced down at my watch—ten after eleven.

  “That won’t be necessary,” I assured him.

  But I was sure as hell going to have to hurry.

  Despite what I’d suggested to the guard, I didn’t have an appointment with Father Vick. I arrived at the steep bronze doors of the cathedral, surprised to find them closed and locked. A sign announced that Sunday Mass would not be held. Future services had been suspended “until further notice.” Maybe because the wording mirrored my cease-and-desist mandate from the Order, I feared the worst—namely Father Vick having been arrested.

  I pressed a button beside the right door. A metallic buzz sounded from deep inside the cathedral. A minute passed. I was preparing to buzz again when I heard the clunking of bolts. After another moment, the right door opened, and the groundskeeper’s squinting face backed from the light.

  “Cyrus,” I breathed. “It’s Everson. I met you yesterday morning? I need to have a word with Father Victor. Is he in?”

  I spoke with the urgency of someone on the clock and wasn’t sure Cyrus had caught it all. Beneath his combed-over wisps of white hair, the folds of Cyrus’s palsied face alternately winced and sagged as he studied my lips. “He’s unwell,” he rasped after a moment.

  “But he’s here?”

  “In bed,” the old man confirmed, causing me to exhale in relief.

  “Please, it will only take a minute, and it’s extremely important.”

  When Cyrus stepped to one side and waved for me to enter, I hoped the gesture would be enough to temper the threshold. It was, but it might not have mattered. The force that rippled through me was less than half the strength I’d felt on Thursday, and left much of my wizarding powers intact.