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

by Brad Magnarella

  Cyrus closed the door behind me and locked it.

  “I know the way,” I told him, not wanting to wait on his frail lead.

  I replicated the route Father Vick and I had taken the morning before, until I was crossing the inner courtyard and standing in front of the vicarage. The door was open a crack, and I could make out a slice of Father Vick’s tall figure beneath the white covers of his bed.

  I knocked. “Father?”

  The bed creaked as he lifted his head. “Is that Everson? Come in, come in.”

  I entered and returned the door to its cracked-open state behind me. A smell like stale gauze hung thick in the room. By the time I turned back to Father Vick, my eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and I paused to take him in. True to Cyrus’s word—though paraphrasing slightly—he looked like crap. His pale red hair was thin and scattered. What I mistook for bald patches in his beard were spots that had gone white, probably less evident when his beard was combed. He blinked with boggy eyelids, but his eyes exuded the same paternal concern.

  “Please, have a seat,” he said.

  I pulled a chair up beside the bed. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “You read the article?”

  I nodded.

  As his head rested back on the pillow, he exhaled. “I was to have told the congregation today, in morning Mass. I spent much of the night preparing the service and in prayer.”

  Holy books stood in stacks on his window-facing desk. Beside the books hung his white kerchief.

  “I saw the sign out front,” I said.

  “The congregation is in a panic. I … I don’t know what to do.”

  As he spoke, I caught what looked like tissue paper balled into his right ear canal. His nose had bled too, bits of red crust clinging to the top of his mustache. I recalled what he’d said about channeling forces beyond us, and could only imagine the kind of strain he was under. The faith in the cathedral was similar to my mental prism—a converter of ley energy. Right now, Father Vick was having to make up the faith deficit, and it was killing him.

  “The Bishop of New York is coming today,” he said, but the worry in his eyes confused me.

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Well, the visit is avowedly to chart a path forward, though I think that’s a kind way of suggesting the Church wants to conduct its own investigation.”

  So in addition to the NYPD, he was under suspicion by his own ecclesiastic authorities. I knew the gut-punched feeling. I gave his arm a squeeze of support, which seemed to warm his face.

  “And how are you, Everson?” he asked.

  “Concerned.”

  He raised his eyebrows slightly. Though the protective energies of the cathedral had weakened, I sensed it blowing static through the monitoring spell Chicory had placed on me. With that bit of cover, I proceeded.

  “There’s work I do in the city that not many know about, but I think you would understand.” I watched him nod in encouragement. “The Crash rocked the ground under a lot of people. Many fell to vice, but others reached for magic. You help the first group, Father. I try to help the second.” Something in his eyes told me he knew, or at least suspected, this to have been the case. “Lately, the kinds of emergencies I’ve been called to have been especially black—demonic summonings. Lower creatures, granted, but I think something bigger is working its way up the pipe.”

  Father Vick’s gaze shifted to the ceiling. “I’ve felt it, too,” he said after a moment, his voice nearly a whisper. “Like a force eclipsing the sun, casting everything into dire shadow.” He shook his head. “I tried discussing it with Brother Richard, but he was preoccupied with the magic use in the city, much of it benign, of course. I’m afraid my concern fell on deaf ears.”

  I thought about my own appeals to the Order.

  “What can we do, Everson?” he asked, his voice possessed by sudden strength.

  “If we trace the summoning spells back to their source, we’ll know who or what we’re dealing with. That would be a start.” Not wanting to suggest the church was behind the spreading evil, I proceeded carefully. “I was actually hoping you know or at least encountered the first conjurer. I found him squatting in an East Village apartment. He had a St. Martin’s Bible in his possession.” I described the man in as much detail as I could.

  When I got to the glasses, a look of recognition came over Father Vick’s face.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “That would have been Clifford Rhodes. We have an outreach group that offers spiritual guidance to the homeless. Clifford was well known to us. When he disappeared, we feared the worst. It grieves me to hear he turned to dark practices. But he’s alive?”

  “Last time I saw him, yes. The other conjurers weren’t as fortunate.”

  I told him about the Chinatown conjurer next, Chin Lau Ping.

  “That was from a summoning?” he asked, sitting partway up.

  “You knew him, too?”

  “He was an informant, in Brother Richard’s campaign against the White Hand.”

  “So he approached the church?”

  Father Vick nodded. “The White Hand pressed Chin into service because he drove a bus and had a clean record. He transported narcotics, and often women, to other cities. Chin wanted nothing to do with it, but the White Hand made it clear it was the cost of doing business in Chinatown. When I read about his murder, I thought the White Hand had found him out.”

  I took a steadying breath. So far, two for two.

  “What about Fred Thomas?” I asked. “A young man from Hamilton Heights?”

  Father Vick’s face creased as he searched his memory for the name.

  “He went by ‘Flash’,” I remembered.

  “Flash,” Father Vick repeated. “Yes. I read about him, too. Another summoning?” He let out an aggrieved sigh. “He attended one of St. Martin’s parochial schools for a time. It was a pilot program for inner-city youths who couldn’t otherwise afford the tuition. A prank got him expelled, I remember, but he was good hearted. Afterwards, he showed up to a few of our youth services.”

  I removed the newspaper I had folded and tucked inside my coat, and opened it to the second page.

  “Did you know any of them?” I asked.

  Sitting up, Father Vick took a pair of reading glasses from his nightstand and frowned over the article on last night’s quadruple slaying. I watched his face go from pale to a blotchy ashen. “Good God,” he muttered. “These three were parishioners, and she participated in the city’s Interfaith Council.”

  “Father,” I said carefully, “I think we have to consider that the spells came from someone inside the cathedral.”

  “From here?”

  “It’s the common factor.” I allowed a moment for the fact to sink in. “I think we also have to consider that whoever supplied the spells may have murdered your rector. Father Richard may have been onto what this person was doing.”

  Father Vick removed his glasses and set them aside. He looked destroyed.

  “Did the rector ever share any concerns with you?” I probed. “About anyone here or in the congregation?”

  “Not that I recall,” he answered after a moment. “He was a stoic man, praying on problems before acting on them. So even if he’d had such concerns, I wouldn’t necessarily have known of them. His concerns tended to be more external, anyway. The corruption he observed in the city. The practice of magic. He was uncomfortable with the archival work, though.”

  “Your acolyte’s research?” I asked. “Why?”

  Before he could answer, a soft knock sounded at the door. I looked over to find the acolyte himself peering through the crack. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, listening.

  “Father Vick?” he asked.

  “Yes, what is it Malachi?”

  “The, um, bishop called to say they’re a half hour out.”

  Father Vick nodded and pushed the cover from his legs. “I suppose I should get re
ady, then.” When he sat up, blood spattered the lap of his robe. I rose in alarm before realizing it was falling from his nose.

  I stretched past Malachi, who was standing slack-armed in the doorway, and reached for the kerchief on the desk.

  “No, no,” Father Vick said, plugging the bleeding nostril with a thumb. “The tissues.”

  I followed his finger to the windowsill and pulled several tissues from a plain box of them. He accepted the wad with a grateful nod and, after wiping his bearded mouth and chin, held it to his tipped-back nose.

  “That’s a heritage item,” he said of the kerchief.

  “Ah, sorry.”

  I looked around, but Malachi was no longer in the doorway. His robed form flashed beyond the window, lank ponytail falling over the hood bunched behind his neck. Remembering the hooded man Effie’s ghost friend had observed in the graveyard, suspicion spiked hot inside me. I wheeled back to Father Vick.

  “What was it about Malachi’s work that bothered the rector?” I asked quickly.

  Father Vick had gotten control of the bleeding and was now dabbing around it. “Oh, he just believed some things should remain in history. Because of the power of this site, I suspect, the church wasn’t always represented by honorable men.”

  I needed more, but at that moment the church bells began to ring out the hour.

  I checked my watch. Crap. I had ten minutes to get back to the checkpoint.

  “Can I call you later?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Father Vick wavered to his feet but embraced me with warm strength. I reciprocated. “You are exactly what Father Richard didn’t understand,” he said, “that the relative good or evil of magic depends entirely on the channeler. Though darkness clings to you, Everson, your foundation remains as solid and pure as when I first taught you. It is why you were called back here. Remember that.”

  In many ways, he had been my first mentor—and a great one.

  “Thank you, Father. I’ll try.”

  34

  Assuming my watch was synced to the guard’s, I had less than twenty seconds to spare by the time I arrived, panting, at the pedestrian checkpoint.

  I’d risked precious time by having Cyrus let me out through the graveyard again, but I’d wanted to inspect the mossy tomb beneath the willow tree. If Effie’s friend was to be believed, someone had been creeping around the site in the dark of night, muttering what might have been an incantation. And I was beginning to suspect that person had been Malachi. I found the raised sarcophagus sealed tight, the ground around it apparently undisturbed.

  I read the deceased’s name and dates: Bartholomew Higham, 1772 – 1824. No other information. It wasn’t until I pulled out my notepad that I remembered my small pencil was absent from its spiral binding. I resorted to cramming the info into my memory, hoping it would stay.

  “Where’s the fire?” a guard asked as I hurried up to the checkpoint.

  I looked from him to his partner. Neither was the one who had let me through an hour before.

  “Where’s the other guy?” I asked, breathlessly. “The one who was here earlier?” The last thing I needed was for someone else to be hunting me for having violated some agreement.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I, ah, I knew him,” I replied lamely.

  “Well, not anymore,” the guard said.

  The second guard opened his mouth to join in—it was a slow day at the checkpoint, evidently—but then paused as though someone was speaking into his earpiece. He nodded at the first guard, who, without comment, stepped forward and drove the barrel of his rifle into my gut. I grunted and dropped to a knee, the impact leaving me sick and gasping. From my new vantage, I noticed a smear of reddish oil on the pavement below my face.

  Wait … blood? My bribe had gotten the guy killed?

  “If you don’t wanna join your friend,” the guard said, wrestling with my hand now, “you’re gonna give this up.” I realized he was trying to pull Grandpa’s ring off my finger.

  Arnaud, I thought. By his reasoning, I had entered his territory; ergo, he had rights to my ring. I balled my hand against the guard’s wrenching fingers. I was risking my life, yeah, but the ring seemed to be compelling me—it had some future role to play, and it wouldn’t do to be in a vampire’s possession. My hand balled tighter, gripped by the mother of all cramps. If my own life played a role, it appeared it was going to be as a footnote.

  “Tough guy, huh?” the guard said, ramming an elbow against my ear for leverage.

  I was angling my cane toward him, wondering what the penalty would be for magic exercised in self defense, when his partner entered my peripheral vision.

  “Stand back,” he said, raising his rifle.

  Before I could summon my light shield, a pair of explosions sounded. In the ringing aftermath, I recognized the register. I opened my eyes and blinked twice. The shots hadn’t come from an assault rifle.

  “NYPD,” a familiar voice shouted. “Get the fuck away from him!”

  I raised my face to find Detective Vega storming toward us. She lowered the nine millimeter she’d fired until it was level with the nearer guard’s head. He backed away, palms showing. His partner adjusted his rifle’s aim from me to Vega, but he looked hesitant before the tiny tornado in a black suit.

  “This man’s wanted in an investigation,” Vega said, using her free hand to haul me up. The guard who’d been grappling for my ring began to stammer. Before his words could take on intelligence, Vega was pulling me toward her sedan, which she’d left idling at the auto checkpoint.

  I wasted no time getting in. She joined me on the driver’s side and drove us from the Financial District.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I was making friends,” I said. “Sheesh. Now they’ll never call.” I was buying time until I could determine just how much she knew about my morning excursion.

  “Were you at the church?” she asked.

  The inflection in her tone told me it was an honest question. I’d caught a break.

  “Um, sorry, but were you not just witness to my near-execution?” I jerked my head back. “I was kidding about being pally-wally with those guys, in case you missed that, too.”

  “You were intending to go to the church, though.”

  “Can you prove it?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Ripping off a string of Spanish curses, Vega accelerated around a line of cars, blooped her siren, and shot through a red light. “You’re lucky I had business downtown,” she said when she’d calmed down enough to return to English. “Those guys could’ve put two dozen bullets in you, and the NYPD wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Official immunity,” she grumbled.

  I nodded in understanding. Probably one of Arnaud’s conditions for bailing out the city. Which also meant that if the guards had gotten it into their meaty heads to gun down Vega, they could have done so without fear of prosecution. Boy, did that make me feel like a dick.

  “Hey, listen—”

  “Save it,” Vega said sharply. “The next words I want out of your mouth are what you can tell me about the message. Today’s the deadline. In case you forgot,” she added wryly.

  “Well—”

  She cut me off again. “Not here. My office.”

  We emerged from underneath the off ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge and into view of One Police Plaza. I had a sinking sense of déjà vu. The last time Vega had driven me here, it was for processing.

  She veered into a secure underground garage. We rode an elevator up in silence, stopping every floor or two for plain-clothed personnel and uniformed officers to get on and off. I caught more than a few sidelong glances. It was my six-foot frame, dark brown hair, and cane. I could all but feel my face being lined up with the police sketch and had a feeling Detective Vega was the only reason I wasn’t being slammed against a wall and cuffed.

  I edged closer to her.


  On the eighth floor, I followed her off the elevator and down a hallway to a busy workspace whose cluttered desks and colony of Styrofoam coffee cups shouted HOMICIDE. Of course, I’d been here before, so I was cheating. Vega led me into a windowless office—not an interrogation room this time, thankfully—rounded a desk with piled-up folders and an outdated computer, and sat down hard. I scooted up one of the folding metal chairs.

  “Speak,” she said as I lowered myself.

  I had already decided to be as truthful as I could. I owed her that much.

  “All right.” I laced my fingers, save my splinted pinky, and bent them back until they cracked. “The message on the rector’s back translates to ‘Black Earth.’”

  “What does it mean?” she asked, jotting it down on a notepad.

  “I don’t know.”

  She stared up at me as though there had to be more. I shrugged.

  “I gave you three days for that?” She threw her pen at the pad.

  The pen ricocheted and collided into a propped-up frame, knocking it onto its felt back. When I reached forward to right it, I saw it held a photo of a smiling Detective Vega—white teeth and all—clutching a giggling boy of five or six, her chin propped on his feathery curls.

  “Your son?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied, her frustration seeming to have gotten lost for the moment. She took over the task of righting the frame, angling it toward her, where I could no longer see the photo.

  “Good-looking kid,” I said. But then so was his mother. And I’d been right about her smile—wow. I blamed Thelonious for flicking my eyes to Vega’s left ring finger, which was unencumbered. Dream on, pal. I thought at my incubus. A homicide detective and a probationer?

  “Something funny?” Vega asked, her face creasing with renewed sternness.

  I’d snorted at my own thought, apparently. I tried to cover it up with a second snort meant to sound functional. “Allergies.”

  “I thought you were pursuing some kind of lead.” She gestured to the pad. “Is there a group that goes by this name?”