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

by Brad Magnarella

  He was speaking as though in riddle. Bad luck and crossing paths called to mind black cats. And a second time?

  In a sudden flash, I remembered the cat that had darted out when I’d blown open Lady Bastet’s door. I had assumed the cat with the sleek midnight coat to have been the lone survivor of the massacre, but something told me the feline hadn’t belonged to Lady Bastet.

  Had I crossed paths with the departing mage?

  To test the theory, I said, “You killed Lady Bastet.”

  Tabitha’s black eyes moved back and forth over mine. At last, her lips grinned again. “You’re more astute than you appear,” the mage said. “But don’t mistake astuteness for adeptness. You’re still a babe in the woods.”

  The satisfaction in the mage’s voice stoked a raw rage inside me. Without forethought, I called a tidal wave of power to my prism. “Uccidere!” I shouted, unleashing the power through the conduit, the force shoving me backwards. Tabitha recoiled too, eyes startling wide.

  A moment later, though, her body shook with laughter.

  “You’re a tempestuous one,” the mage said. “It looks like you require a more tactile warning.”

  Before I could raise my staff, Tabitha sprang, claws flashing. Her rear legs kicked me in the chest, toppling me backwards. Hot tines raked my right cheek. I landed hard, cracking my head against the edge of a bookshelf. The room blurred as I struck out my arms in defense.

  “Are you all right, darling?”

  I blinked over to where Tabitha was sauntering up. I started to shrink away before sensing she was herself again. A quick check showed me the hunting spell had been broken.

  Tabitha’s pupils narrowed inside her green irises as she leaned down to inspect my cheek. “Who did you manage to piss off this time?”

  “A mage,” I replied, understanding that Tabitha had no memory of the possession.

  I touched the knot on the back of my head and inspected my fingers. I wasn’t bleeding there, anyway. My face was another matter. I looked down at the blood spattering the thigh of my pants. The claw marks felt deep enough to leave scars, even with healing magic. No doubt the mage’s intention. I drew a handkerchief from my pocket, balled it up, and pressed it to my cheek. I then used the bookcase to pull myself to my feet.

  “So the hunting spell was a score?” Tabitha asked.

  “Not quite,” I said. “The mage was too powerful. He let the spell go just long enough to issue a warning.”

  “Seems you’ve been getting a lot of those lately.”

  “No shit,” I muttered. “This one was to keep my nose out of Lady Bastet’s murder—which the mage all but confessed to.”

  I limped back to my lab table and looked down at the smoking casting circle. I thought about the shriveled strand of hair the investigators had found on Lady Bastet’s lap. If it had belonged to my mother, as I suspected, maybe it explained the timing of the murder.

  I repeated the mage’s warning in a whisper: “Leave it, Everson, or you will join others who have waded into matters beyond their purview.”

  “What, darling?” Tabitha asked.

  …matters beyond their purview, I repeated to myself.

  I turned toward Tabitha, speaking quickly. “All this time I’ve been thinking the murder had to do with the wolves or the mayor’s office. But what if the mage killed Lady Bastet for what she’d learned?”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” she asked in irritation.

  I thought back to the murder scene. The toppled shelves, the decapitated cats, Lady Bastet’s slit throat, and in front of her … the scrying globe! If Lady Bastet had been killed at the conclusion of the divination session, the final images she received might still be in the globe.

  I slotted my sword into my staff, grabbed several spell items from my drawers, and made for the ladder.

  “Where are you going?” Tabitha asked.

  “To ignore a warning,” I said.

  17

  I descended the steps to Lady Bastet’s former business and found the door secured by a police padlock. I drew my sword and inserted the tip inside the shackle. With a whispered “Vigore,” I cracked one of the shafts from the body and slipped it from the hasp.

  I opened the door. Inside, afternoon light fell through the high basement windows in dusty slants. The showroom was clean, the hanging rugs gone, probably in a forensics lab somewhere. For a panicked moment, I became certain the scrying globe would be gone too.

  After sensing no one else inside, I sealed the door behind me with a basic locking spell and hurried to the windowless back room. I called light to my staff and exhaled. The globe was there, on the table. The rest of the room had been straightened, shelves righted, the items that had fallen from them swept into a pile. Blood stains still marred the floor, though.

  I returned my gaze to the scrying globe. It seemed to absorb the light from my staff, giving nothing back. The orb simply stared, a gray, inscrutable eye.

  The chair in which I’d found Lady Bastet was scooted out at a slight angle, as though inviting me to sit. I didn’t sense any traps, but given the power of the mage, and that he seemed to have anticipated my hunting spell, I built a protective circle around the chair before lowering myself onto the seat.

  “All right,” I whispered, eyeing the globe. “Let’s see if there’s anything left in your memory.”

  I set my sword and staff on the table and pulled two silver candles from my pockets. I lit them and stood them on either side of the globe. Next, I extinguished my staff. As darkness collapsed around the candles, the marble-like surface of the globe shifted. Nothing appeared, though. Scrying required a level of intuition that I lacked, not only to perceive images but to interpret them.

  Fortunately, I kept an Elixir of Seeing on hand. It had been drawn from a ’48 batch, which was supposed to have been an especially good year. I pulled the flask from my shirt pocket and drank the bitter potion down.

  It didn’t take long to start working. Within minutes, I began to feel insubstantial, ghost-like. A dull pressure built between my eyes while, from the sides of my vision, a dark mist drifted in. The mist thickened until I could no longer see the candles in front of me. With a final, rude gouge, the pressure in the center of my brow relented, and a third eye opened.

  The scrying globe hovered in front of me like a misty planet, larger than it had appeared to my physical eyes. Light from the candles glistened over a surface that had begun to swirl. Images flashed forth, talking to me in a strange language—one I could suddenly understand.

  Oh, God.

  The images were horrifying. But I was no longer just observing them.

  I was living them.

  I staggered in the center of a pillared room, a woman, pain seething in every part of my body. The metallic tastes of blood and fear stained my palate. Through hanks of sweat-soaked hair, I could see the burning candles that ringed me. Robed figures stood among them.

  “Please,” I managed, the word raw in my throat.

  Their responding voices rose at once, a single word climbing above the others: “Traitor.”

  “No,” I said, searching for a way out.

  A force blast caught me in the chest and knocked me back. Breathless, I stumbled to keep my feet. Another blast nailed me between the shoulder blades, pitching me onto my hands and knees. My right collarbone cracked in a harsh flare, and I moaned. The figures swam toward me.

  My son, I thought through the haze. Need to stay alive for my son.

  “Did you really think you could keep up this shameful duplicity without me finding out?”

  I squinted at the tall figure emerging through the others. The face beneath his hood was an ornate gold mask, the eyeholes dark and vacant, open mouth set in a frown. A mask of judgment.

  “I did nothing,” I said.

  The mage’s black gown shuffled to a stop in front of me. “Nothing?” he scoffed. “You joined the Front as a sworn rebel against tyranny. You pledged your allegiance, your
life. Only for us to learn that you’re a plant for the Order.”

  I shook my head. “That’s a lie.”

  The mage drew a wand. I could smell the elder wood. “Then you shouldn’t have a problem submitting to a mind flaying.”

  My insides twisted up. A mind flaying would entail a level of pain beyond anything physically imaginable. It would lay bare everything—not only my infiltration of the Front, but my true feelings for my son. I had acted as if he were a mistake, a nuisance to be tolerated.

  Struggling to my feet, I faced the mage. “I will submit to nothing.”

  “Then you are admitting guilt.”

  “If that’s what you want to believe.”

  “It’s the truth, traitor,” he said. “And you know the penalty.”

  I stared past the eyeholes of his mask, defiant. “Do your worst.”

  With a grunted Word, he thrust his wand toward me. The force threw me against a stone pillar, knocking the wind from me. He spoke another Word and vines snaked up through cracks in the floor. I was too stunned to move. Could only watch as the vines encircled my legs, my broken body, binding me to the pillar. They wrapped my throat and squeezed until I gagged.

  The mage moved closer. “It didn’t have to end this way, Eve.”

  From a great distance, I flinched at hearing my mother’s name.

  The mage turned toward the other robed figures, fellow magic-users. “Behold the penalty for treachery,” he announced. I imagined a hard grin forming behind his mask. “Death by fire.”

  No, I thought as the woman.

  Though my eyes remained fixed on the mage, I saw my son’s face. He had just turned one. The week before, he had taken his first steps, spoken his first coherent sentence: Mama, read me. Such a smart boy.

  A crushing sadness filled my heart at the knowledge he would never know me. Not really. I had already discussed the contingency with my parents. My mother would love him as her own. My father would protect him. The Order would look after him as well…

  “Fuoco!” the mage shouted.

  Dark red flames sprang up around me and glistened in the mage’s gold mask until he looked like something demonic. Soon, the flames hid his face, and there was only pain.

  I love you, Everson, I felt my mother’s cracking lips whisper.

  I landed against the cold floor with a gasp. The room was dark, my shirt soaked with sweat. I pawed around until I encountered the stone table and pulled myself to my feet. The globe stood from the darkness, its surface dimming. The candles on either side had burned to their nubs and gone out, the puddles of wax cool and firm when I touched them.

  How long was I out?

  I stared at the spent candles, remembering the fire from my vision. It had consumed me. No—consumed my mother. I had relived the agony and sorrow of her final moments, felt her vanishing love for me. The experience—too raw to put into words—tore around my insides.

  Arnaud had been telling the truth. I believed now that my grandfather had gone to him after my mother’s death and said the words, They killed her. My God, they killed her. My mother had been murdered by a rebel group she had managed to infiltrate. Had been burned alive by their presumed leader, a mage with a gold mask whose voice I recognized.

  A scuff sounded from the showroom.

  I seized my sword and cane from the table and spun. The sun had set while I’d been entranced; the showroom was now cast in dark shadows. Another scuff sounded: someone trying to exercise stealth. Either the locking magic on the front door had petered out or someone had dispelled it.

  Heart slamming, I moved to one side of the door in the rear room and pressed my back to the wall. My mother’s executioner was still alive. He had murdered Lady Bastet to keep his deed a secret. He had hijacked my hunting spell and spoken through Tabitha to warn me not to pursue the matter. That was where I’d recognized the mage’s voice from.

  Another scuff.

  My lips trembled in fury as I summoned energy to my prism. You screwed with the wrong wizard family, you son of a bitch. Whatever happens, you’re going to know pain. Even if it kills me.

  A dark shape entered the doorway.

  “Entrapolarle!” I bellowed, swinging my staff around.

  White light burst from the opal, and a crackling shield encased a figure. I slammed the figure against the near wall and raised my sword overhead. The sound of muted gunshots stayed my arm. As the shield dimmed, I found myself staring at Detective Vega. She stared back with startled eyes.

  “Croft?” she shouted, eyebrows crushing down.

  I released her and called light to my staff. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

  “No,” she said, emerging through the sparks of the dissolving shield, “that’s my question.”

  I glanced back at the globe before meeting her gaze. “I was looking for something.”

  “You broke in here,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  The confession seemed to catch her off guard. Her dark eyes searched my face, pausing on the healing claw marks.

  “Do you want to tell me what the hell’s going on?” she asked.

  With a steadying breath, I sheathed my sword. “It wasn’t the wolves.”

  “What?”

  “The wolves didn’t kill Lady Bastet.”

  “That’s what you’re doing in here?” She holstered her firearm and took a menacing step forward. “Listen to me, Croft, and listen good. You may advise the Hundred, but that does not give you jurisdiction to investigate any old murder you just happen to take an interest in.”

  Fresh anger burned inside me. “Any old murder? Let’s see, a powerful mystic was executed on the same day I just happened to drop off something for her to read. Excuse me for taking a goddamned interest.”

  “I told you we’d be in touch.”

  “Yeah, to blow me off,” I shot back.

  “For your information”—Vega jabbed a finger against my chest—“I already eliminated the wolf angle. Nothing linked them to the murder. I moved onto a substance we found on the mutilated cats, but I guess your informant already told you that,” she added with a sneer.

  She knew about my arrangement with Hoffman. I steeled my jaw.

  “I get that you think I’m a novice when it comes to the supernatural,” she went on, “but I have other resources besides you. The substance came from magic.”

  I chafed at the idea of her consulting another magic-user. It felt like betrayal—something I didn’t need any more of in my life. “And what were you going to do with that information?” I challenged. “Stick it in your Wizard Database and look for a match? You’re out of your depth, Vega. You have no idea who or what you’re dealing with.”

  “If you’re suggesting you have info,” she said, “you’re obligated to share it.”

  I stared back at her. My emotions might have been all over the map, but I knew better than to say anything that would put Vega in the path of a powerful mage. And after what he’d done to my mother, he was my problem.

  “Forget it.” I stepped past her.

  She seized my arm. “I’m serious, Croft. I already have you on breaking and entering.”

  My anger spiked, but I talked it back down, forced myself to relax. When at last I spoke, my voice was calm, quiet. “I understand I have you to thank for getting me a spot on the mayor’s eradication team. For protection, right? I appreciate that. I do. And if you want to continue to keep me at arm’s length, fine. That’s probably being a good mother. But I’m not going to stop pursuing Lady Bastet’s killer. How you deal with that is up to you.”

  I drew my arm from her relenting grip and walked from the back room.

  “The problem with you, Croft, is I never know who I’m dealing with.”

  I turned and found her standing in the back doorway, fists on her hips.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  “It means that I was ready to put the past behind us—only to find out you’re dealing with Arnaud again.”


  “Arnaud? I don’t have a goddamned thing to do with him.”

  “Oh yeah? You didn’t meet with one of his at a bar in the West Village last week?”

  She was referring to the morning of the mayor’s press conference. That had only been ten or so days ago, but with everything that had transpired since, it felt like ten months. I’d relegated it to the back of my mind. Explains Vega’s ball-breaking stance towards me, though, I thought.

  “Who told you that?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t sound like a denial.”

  I sighed. “It’s not what you think. Meeting with him was part of a deal for him to stay out of my life.”

  “Yeah, I know all about your deals.”

  Of course she did. The last one had led to her son getting grabbed. I cursed my word choice, but there was way too much going on in my head right now. I needed to leave. I surprised myself by walking back toward her.

  “Look,” I said, “Arnaud is always shifting pieces around his little chess board, looking for advantages. It’s how he’s stayed alive this long. But I know his game. I gave him ten minutes of my time. That was all. True to his word, he hasn’t approached me since. And if I know vampires, he won’t.”

  Vega was looking at me as though trying to decide what to make of me. In hindsight, agreeing to meet with one of Arnaud’s had been stupid. I glanced past her to the stains on the floor.

  “It’s not like I gave him my blood or anyth…” My voice trailed off as a horrifying thought struck me.

  “What’s wrong?” Vega asked.

  “The blood in the room,” I said, nodding past her. “You had it tested?”

  She looked over her shoulder and back at me. “Yeah?”

  “Did any of it…” I swallowed. “…belong to me?”

  Vega’s brow beetled as she shook her head.

  The room seemed to reel as I recalled the mage’s words: I know a lot about you. I own something vital of yours. The black cat that darted out Lady Bastet’s front door hadn’t been wearing an odd collar. It had been holding the clay tube with my blood.