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

by Brad Magnarella

  In my peripheral vision, I could see Vega’s gaze moving between us, brow furrowed, no doubt wondering where in the hell the interview was going. I wasn’t sure myself. But I was getting the impression that if I could rattle Sonny hard enough, something useful might fall out.

  “You’re familiar with the big investment bankers downtown, right?” I asked.

  “What about them?”

  “They like a certain degree of invisibility, don’t they? I mean, in terms of who they are?”

  Sonny wet his lips with a pale tongue.

  “It just strikes me that if they thought you were being, I don’t know, careless with your women, they might decide to come uptown and have a word with you.”

  “Look, man,” Sonny said, a note of fear entering his voice. I could feel cold power radiating from him, but it didn’t compare to Arnaud’s. A fact Sonny must have known too. “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t do that to my girls. I don’t turn them into anything.”

  At that moment, music burst through the opening door. A ginger-haired woman in glittering red shoes and a matching thong stepped into the office, her curves bared to the world.

  “Sorry,” she said between smacks of gum. “Didn’t know you had visitors.”

  “No, I’m glad you came,” Sonny said. He scooted back and patted his thighs. “Come over here, sugar. Have a seat.”

  She did as he said and plopped onto his lap, her mascara-lined eyes regarding us with utter disinterest.

  “How long have you been with me, Casey?”

  “I dunno.” She shrugged. “Fifteen years?”

  “Nineteen, sugar.” He stroked her cheek with a long nail, sending chills through me. Everything about the vampire repulsed me. He cut his eyes to mine. “Nineteen years, and look at her. A hundred percent flesh and blood.”

  He was right. She exhibited none of the waxiness of a blood slave. And though her eyes verged on lifeless, I suspected that had more to do with a combination of drug use and regular blood draws. I studied Casey’s neck and arms for marks. Sonny apparently caught on to what I was doing.

  “You think I’d damage the merchandise?” he asked with a laugh. “Casey, show the man your ticklish spot.”

  “Now?” she said.

  “Go on.”

  With a sigh, Casey set a high heel on the desktop and undid the thick strap across the top of her foot. She peeled back the strap to reveal red punctures in the scarred skin—Sonny’s watering hole.

  “You see,” he said. “I only take enough to keep me going, nothing more.”

  He brushed a thumb over the years’ worth of punctures as though they were a work of art. Casey wriggled and let out a giggle. Sonny’s eyes suddenly narrowed, and he shoved her off him.

  “Hey!” She stumbled and braced herself against the wall, balancing on one high heel to refasten the loose strap on the other.

  “Get back out there,” Sonny barked. “You’re not making any money in here.”

  “And you are?” she shot back.

  In a flash, Sonny was on his feet. I didn’t know what his intentions were—maybe just to yell some more—but seeing Casey flinch away was enough. I slammed Sonny into the wall and tackled him to the floor. A dry erase board with the dancers’ schedules clattered on top of us. Sonny was stronger and faster than me, but I had caught him off guard. Before he could wrestle free, I yanked his head back by the hair and shoved Grandpa’s ring against his throat.

  “You might not know what this is,” I said between gritted teeth. “But I know you can feel its power.”

  Sonny’s shades were hanging from one ear, and his naked eyes seethed red. “I can destroy you, human,” he hissed, a second set of spiny teeth growing through his gums.

  “The ring will destroy you first.”

  “Get up,” Vega said, pulling the dry erase board away. “Both of you.”

  Sonny’s eyes shifted to where she was standing over him, her pistol aimed down at his head. Her standard-issue bullets wouldn’t kill him, but they would hurt like hell until he could reconstitute his form. Sonny must have decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. He retracted his teeth and showed his palms.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “You said this was gonna be an informal interview.”

  I got up and moved back, keeping my ring trained on him. He fixed his sunglasses as he stood, then gave his hair a light toss. When he noticed Casey still in his office, he flicked his hand.

  “Go on, sugar,” he said gently. “Back to work, huh?”

  Thrusting her chest out defiantly, Casey turned and marched from the office, as though leaving of her own initiative. “Asshole,” she said before the door closed behind her.

  “Bitch,” Sonny grumbled as he returned to his desk and sat down hard. “Always had a mouth on her. Probably getting too old for this gig, anyway.”

  Vega holstered her weapon and dropped a card in front of him. “If you decide you know anything about those murders, you give us a call.”

  I stepped up beside Vega and aimed a finger at him. “And if we find our killer and she has little puncture scars across the top of her foot, we’ll be making some calls to the Financial District.”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t turn them into anything.”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “I don’t!” he called at our backs as we left his office.

  16

  “A vampire,” Vega mused as we drove south.

  “Yeah, they’re rare outside the Financial District,” I said. “The banking class doesn’t like having attention drawn to their kind—I wasn’t lying to Sonny about that. Rogue vampires who get too homicidal get taken out pretty quick. Sonny knows this, which tells me he probably has been playing by their rules all these years. Snacking from his dancers’ feet could well be the extent of his vampiric activities.” I grimaced at the thought.

  “So why did Arnaud send us to him?”

  I was still trying to wrap my head around that one. I understood how a creature like Sonny would make the false lead appear more compelling, but a niggling feeling in the back of my brain told me Arnaud was trying to accomplish something more.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I think it’s worth getting a list of all the women who have worked for Sonny. Track them down.”

  “Three decades’ worth?” Vega hit me with a hard stare. “Do you know how long that would take?”

  “I know, but—”

  “We’ve got two nights, Croft. Not two years.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” I suggested.

  Vega’s phone rang before she could voice the irritation on her face. “Yeah,” she said, then listened. “Be right there.” The engine hit another octave as she depressed the accelerator.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Hoffman’s got the plans for the Towers at the office. He says he found a way the perp might have gotten in and out. Would you mind coming? If we have something we can act on, we’re going to need to start planning. I don’t know anything about taking down a blood slave.”

  What I really wanted to do was get back uptown to Seventieth Street and put eyes on the fae townhouse. But with Vega desperate for results in the face of a looming gang war, I knew leaving her was putting her son at risk. And if she tried to take on the creature alone…

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll go.”

  “Storm drains,” Hoffman said, pointing them out on the blueprint he’d unrolled across Vega’s desk. “A system runs directly underneath the towers. And right here’s an access point, in the boiler room.”

  I remembered the rusty grate. “The pipe looked too small for a person.”

  “For you or me, maybe,” Hoffman said, “but it’s a foot and a half in diameter. Someone slender could’ve shimmied up it. And look.” He unrolled another blueprint, angling it toward Vega. “After getting the plans from the Housing Authority, I went down to Environmental Protection, got a map of the storm lines in a sixteen-block radius.”

 
I craned my neck to look over the gray paper and network of blue lines.

  “Someone wanting to access the drain would’ve had a few choices,” he said, tapping some entry points.

  Vega’s gaze rose from the map to my face. “What are we going to need?”

  “Are you sure this is something you should be rushing into?” I asked.

  “Who’s this guy think he is?” Hoffman growled.

  Vega moved her fists to her hips. I pretended to study the map, racking my brain for anything that would steer the investigation away from Ferguson Towers.

  “Croft,” she said.

  “Have you ever been down a storm drain?” I asked, working out my argument as I spoke. “I did once when I was a kid, on a dare. They’re confined, confusing. They take sounds and amplify them, bouncing them every which way. And a lot of stretches involve wading through water, some of it up to here.” I placed a hand at thigh level. “My magic doesn’t play so well with water. And with a blood slave’s speed and strength, we’d be sitting ducks. As your consultant, I’m advising against it.”

  “You’re still talking about blood slaves?” Hoffman asked, incredulous.

  “We’re going down.” Vega’s eyes remained hard as tacks. “Now tell us what we need.”

  She wasn’t going to back off, and I couldn’t warn her about the threat against her son. Arnaud’s rules. I sighed and dragged a hand through my hair. “Silver bullets, for starters.”

  “And where can we get those?” she asked.

  “I know someone, but I don’t know what he has in stock. It might take a day or two.”

  “We both use standard nine-millimeter rounds,” Vega said. “We can change weapons to accommodate the ammo, if needed. Find out what he can supply us now—not in one or two days. You can use my phone.”

  “Um, I’m not sure he has a number.”

  “What in the hell is this, Croft?” Vega demanded.

  “What?”

  “Every time something comes up that might advance the investigation, you start squirming.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Anger sprung from my smoldering bed of guilt. “Look, whether you like it or not, part of my role as your consultant is keeping you safe from the horrors out there. I’m doing the job you’re paying me for.”

  Hoffman snorted. “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” he said to Vega. “Gandalf here knows we’re about to find out there ain’t no blood slave, or whatever he calls them, so he’s milking us for as many hours as he can bill us for. Told you the man was a freaking hustler.”

  Vega’s eyes didn’t move from mine. “Do I need to drop you from the case?”

  I held her gaze, the corner of my mouth trembling with emotion. In my mind, I was saying, Fine, screw it. Go off and do whatever you want. Get yourselves killed. I don’t need this. But that was the stress talking. I took a deep breath and dropped my gaze back to the map.

  “Fine,” I said, holding up a hand. “I’ll see what I can find out about those bullets.”

  An hour later, I exited Mr. Han’s apothecary with two boxes of nine-millimeter silver bullets in my coat pockets, along with a third box packed with silver bullets and cold iron ones for my own use. I could have lied to Vega, of course, told her my source had been out, but she was getting better at seeing through my lies. The best I could do right now was stall her.

  All right, I thought as I paced north. Vega gave me three hours to track down the bullets, which means I have enough time to go home and try to prepare a spell or two to get into that fae townhouse and look for Caroline.

  “Well, lookie here,” someone said.

  It didn’t occur to me I had crossed Canal Street and entered Little Italy until I recognized the voice at my back.

  “We don’t have to go to his place after all.”

  I wheeled to find Floyd striding up behind me, a pistol aiming from the waist of his cinched coat. To the left, Whitey was steering a Studebaker along the one-way street beside us, his pale eyes tracking me.

  “C’mon, man,” I said. “I told you I have an alibi.”

  “Yeah, and guess what,” Floyd said. “It didn’t check out.”

  “What? Who did you talk to?”

  “Detective named Hoffman. Real helpful.”

  “Hoffman? He was the one who picked me up from the gala,” I said, then stopped as cold understanding took hold. That was one way to get rid of someone you believed to be a con man.

  “Not according to him, you weren’t,” Floyd said.

  “Did you talk to Detective Vega? She’ll vouch for me.”

  Floyd let out a barking laugh. “I bet she will. How much did that cost you?”

  “Cost?” Great, so not only had Hoffman denied seeing me the night of Caroline’s disappearance, but to discredit whatever Vega might say, he claimed I’d paid her off. That tire-shaped son of a bitch. “There were other officers at the scene,” I said, backing away.

  “Yeah, and you probably gave them a little something too. Now why don’t you climb on into the car.” He signaled with the gun.

  God, I don’t have time for this.

  I nodded but angled my cane so it was pointing at his stomach. “Vigore!” I yelled, anticipating the force that would burst from my cane and hit Floyd hard enough to lift him from his feet. But the meager force barely rattled my cane. Some trash near Floyd’s feet puffed up.

  I refocused. “Vigore!”

  “Yeah, that’s real cute,” Floyd said. “Now c’mon, you’re testing our patience here.”

  He grabbed me by the shoulder of my coat and jabbed the pistol barrel against my low back. A sharp pain opened in my left kidney, but I was still fixated on my cane.

  “Respingere!” I cried, trying for a shield to shove Floyd off me.

  “Let’s go, let’s go.”

  As Floyd walked me off the curb, I remembered the warping sensation of the fae threshold when I’d tried to force my way in. That bit of contact must have scrambled my abilities, knocked them offline. I hadn’t noticed any changes at the time, but fae magic was often subtle.

  Fantastic timing.

  By the time we arrived at the car, Whitey had gotten out and opened a backdoor. Without my power, I had no choice but to duck inside. Floyd scooted in after me. He didn’t need to warn me not to try anything funny. He was saying it all with the pressure of his barrel. The plastic-covered seat spoke volumes as well.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” Floyd said.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To talk to someone.”

  “Not the fish, I hope.”

  Floyd chuckled. “Well, that’s gonna be up to you.” He pulled a phone from his coat and made a call. “We picked him up in Little Italy,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah. All right. We’ll meet you down there.”

  He put his phone away and tapped Whitey’s shoulder. “Pier sixteen.”

  Recent experience told me I was being taken to the mob boss—who had taken a keen interest in Caroline’s whereabouts, for some reason. I examined my hands, my right pinky still a little off where Bashi had had it snapped a few months earlier. I just hoped Mr. Moretti would prove less volatile, though mob bosses and piers rarely worked out for people like me.

  Whitey drove us onto an abandoned shipping dock, where huge metal containers stood in rusting stacks. At a chain-link fence, he got out, unfastened a lock, and rolled the gate open. Seagulls scattered from what looked like a rotting dog carcass as we drove through. Whitey parked close to the water’s edge, almost in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.

  I tested my cane with a whispered Word, but still nothing. When I tried to inch away from Floyd’s pistol, he dug it even deeper into my ribs. “I’m telling you,” I sighed. “Caroline didn’t leave the party with me. She left with a guy named Angelus.”

  Floyd laughed. “Couldn’t even come up with a regular-sounding name.”

  “Wh
ich should tell you I’m not lying.”

  “Shut it,” Floyd said. “He’s here.”

  I craned my neck around to see a black Escalade with tinted windows easing through the gate and onto the cement pier. It pulled up next to my side of the car and sat, engine idling.

  “Let’s go,” Floyd said, shoving the pistol against me. “Slowly, though.”

  My door lock popped open and I stepped out, Floyd scooting across the seat after me. I considered making a run for it, but Whitey had chosen the spot for a reason. It was open, exposed, the closest shipping container a good fifty yards away. If I could summon a shield, piece of cake. But since my powers had taken a fae-induced crap, I had no choice but to follow orders.

  Floyd seized me by the upper arm and opened the back door of the Escalade. “Get in,” he said.

  The back seat was empty, but I could make out the silhouettes of the driver and a large man in the passenger seat. Mr. Moretti, I presumed. Floyd prodded me, and I scooted across the seat—one not covered in plastic, I noted with some relief. After climbing in after me, Floyd closed the door. I shifted in a sudden darkness that smelled of oily hair tonic.

  “Where is she?” the man in the passenger seat asked.

  “I’m assuming you mean Caroline?”

  He remained staring straight ahead, his silence thickening the air.

  “Well, as I told Floyd here, I consult for the NYPD. I was called to a case last night and left Caroline in the company of a guy named Angelus. By the time I returned, she had already left.”

  “With someone who looked just like you,” the man said.

  “Apparently.”

  “You see, the problem I’m having here is twofold.” The man’s voice was low and husky, as though each word were passing over a grater. Was he Mr. Moretti? “One, we have several witnesses who saw you and her leave together. And two, no one in the NYPD can corroborate your story.”

  “Well, I can explain the second,” I said, my voice thin and unconvincing. “Detective Hoffman doesn’t like that I’m consulting for the Department. He did in fact pick me up from the gala last night, at about—”