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

by Brad Magnarella

  “You have four days,” Arianna said, “no more.”

  “And then, let me guess, I have to come back here, right?”

  “If you want to live,” Connell said bluntly. “You’ll have no defenses against his magic out there.”

  “Why do you care?”

  He looked at me for a moment. “Because you’re one of us.”

  “So are all magic-users, if what you’re saying is true. Why aren’t you helping them?”

  “We have no way to reach them,” he said. “When Lich discovered us, he sealed us in. Though your arrival came with a cost, it also presents a new opportunity. We can’t come and go, but you can.”

  Is that why they kept me alive? To use me as an agent against the Order?

  “Just be open to whatever you find out there,” Arianna said. “When you’re ready, return to the portal on your side and we’ll help transport you back here. Just remember. Four days.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I muttered.

  She presented a small glass vial with a clear liquid inside. “Take this,” she said. “The same magic that purged you is concentrated within. Should you find yourself beset, use it.”

  Sure, lady, I thought, but accepted it.

  “Are you ready?” Connell asked me.

  I gave a nod, and he and Arianna began an incantation. The mastiff, who had been sniffing around, dropped onto his haunches between them and gave a single, friendly bark.

  A moment later, I was staring at complete blackness.

  “Illuminare,” I called in a panic.

  The opal in my staff flickered and then cast an orb of white light. A dirt floor and empty space stretched out around me. Shadows shifted in the rafters overhead. I was back in the basement, standing in the casting circle Chicory had drawn days before. The Front had actually released me.

  I stepped from the circle and found the staircase at the far end of the basement. Mounds of earth, where my mentor had manifested elementals during my training, stood on either side of me. I looked back, half expecting to see Chicory, but a hollowness in my gut told me I was alone. I ascended the stairs quickly, emerging through the door beneath the staircase to the attic.

  “Hello?” I called. “Chicory? Tabitha?”

  The inside of the house creaked and clicked in the stifling heat of high noon. I made a tour of all the rooms, starting in the kitchen. Everything appeared as I’d left it, down to the dirty plates Chicory had deposited around the house, only now black flies picked over them. With Chicory’s death, the protective energies that once shielded the house were gone.

  “Tabitha,” I called again.

  “In here…”

  The weak voice had come from under the sink. When I opened the cabinet doors, a pair of green eyes squinted at me from behind pipes whose rusty joints glistened with moisture.

  “Tabitha? What are you doing in there?” I reached a hand inside and, curling it beneath her stomach, hefted her out. She had lost a few pounds. I set her on the kitchen table and examined her.

  “I thought you left me,” she said in her hurt voice. She plopped onto her side as though her legs were too weak to support her.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”

  “I couldn’t get into the fridge and had to live off the spoiled crud Chicory left out. And then the water stopped running. After lapping up everything in the toilet, the only place I could find any water was on those disgusting pipes.” She grimaced and smacked her mouth as though trying to rid it of the taste. “Where were you?”

  I sat in a chair facing her. “Things didn’t go exactly as planned.”

  She raised her head enough to look over a shoulder. “And Chicory?”

  Chicory is Lich, I heard Connell telling me. “The night he went through the portal, did he say anything?” I asked.

  “Oh, not now, darling. I’m starving and wretched.”

  “Please, just answer the question.”

  “He said he’d be back. Typical man.”

  “This is serious, Tabitha. I need you to think back. What were his exact words?”

  “What do I look like, a stenographer?” My eyes must have looked as frighteningly intense as they felt because her own eyes cut to one side as though searching her memory. “He said you were in trouble and that he was going in to help. That he would come back with you soon.”

  “Anything else?”

  “What happened down there, darling?”

  “You and Chicory are close,” I pressed. “Did anything about him ever strike you as, I don’t know, funny?”

  “Besides his green shoes?”

  “No, anything he said? Anything he did?”

  “Well, his sudden interest in you struck me as odd. I tried to tell him you were hopeless.”

  I thought about that. Aside from the brief visits here and there, usually to issue a warning, Chicory was absent for months, sometimes years. And all of a sudden he’s committed to training me? That did seem odd.

  And it had all begun the day I’d brought my mother’s hair to Lady Bastet to divine from. In fact, it was only hours after the mystic’s murder that I’d come home to find Chicory sitting in my apartment. All consistent with what Connell had told me. Chicory claimed to have been sent by the Order with information about my mother, but he’d damned sure been interested in the gatekeeper I’d summoned to learn about her death.

  And what did the gatekeeper say? he’d wanted to know.

  But that wasn’t evidence of anything. If the Order had sent Chicory, the timing could have been incidental. And he would have been interested in any summoning, given that it was forbidden.

  I looked back at Tabitha. Through her, the Front had access to my words, my actions.

  “Here,” I said, getting up quickly and opening the fridge. I pulled out a bottle of milk and some leftover food, fixed a meal for Tabitha, and set the plates and bowl on the floor. She hopped down from the table, wasting no time plunging her face into the fat and protein she’d been unable to get to.

  While she ate, I returned to the bedroom Chicory had been using as a laboratory. On one side, a table held different-sized beakers with dirty distillation tubes running between them. A disorganization of spell implements and spiral-bound notebooks lay in scattered piles. Inside the notebooks, I found scribblings on various spells, all of them benign as far as I could tell. Nothing to suggest Chicory was anything other than who he’d appeared to be.

  I didn’t sense any active magic either, but I spoke a reveal invocation anyway. Nothing new appeared. I glanced over a pile of newspaper clippings on the table, the topmost one about the robe of John the Baptist being on exhibit at Grace Cathedral. Chicory had once remarked that, in addition to his mentoring duties, he kept track of magical artifacts. The clippings two and three down, on similar exhibits around the country, seemed to confirm that.

  I moved a chair—over the back of which he had draped a row of wool stockings—and picked up a pair of manila folders that must have slid off the seat and landed under the table.

  On one of the folder’s tabs, I read my name.

  Heart thumping, I retrieved the files and opened mine. Was this where I would discover the truth? Inside was a thin stack of pages secured by a pair of metal brads. I read through the pages, which contained notes on Chicory’s handful of visits, including the warnings he’d issued. A line at the bottom of his final entry read, “Shows significant promise but requires more guidance to get there.”

  Sounds like Chicory, I thought.

  The other file, considerably thicker, was labeled “James Wesson.” Another magic-user? I opened the file, but other than the name I could find no identifying features. Just a much longer scribbled list of infractions, ranging from dereliction of duty to substance abuse.

  And here I thought I was the black sheep.

  But more important than what the notes said about James was what it said about Chicory. Like the messy room I was standing in, the notes appeared consistent with an advanced, t
hough absentminded, wizard.

  A dead wizard, I thought, picking up a gold cup from the floor: Chicory’s former communication system to the Order. An oil crystal clinked around its bottom, but no flame rose from it now.

  My throat tightened with grief as I remembered his death. His murder.

  Then why did no one from the Order come? a voice prodded inside my head.

  That was what was nagging me more than anything. Chicory had gotten through, after all. If the mission had been as important as he’d claimed, if I’d been sent by the Order, why hadn’t others followed? Why had no one responded to my message? Where were they now?

  “Goddammit,” I whispered, hating the growing tangle of doubt I felt.

  I set the cup back atop the table and searched the rest of the house. In the attic, I found an open trunk with the various wands, weapons, and artifacts Arnaud had kept in his armory and that I had passed on to Chicory. By all appearances, Chicory had given them a quick cleaning, then dumped them here. I sealed the trunk with a locking spell and moved on, checking the walls and panels for loose boards, calling out reveal invocations at intervals. But nothing appeared or stood out as unusual, in the attic or the rest of the house.

  I arrived back in the guest bedroom to find Tabitha conked out on her ottoman. I shook her awake.

  “What?” she complained.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Can’t it wait?” She flopped onto her other side so she was facing away from me.

  “Chicory is dead,” I said.

  She twisted her neck around and blinked twice. “Dead?”

  Or undead, depending on who you talk to, I thought. But with the Front monitoring me, I didn’t want to show the slightest wavering. Better to keep my doubts a secret, deny Connell and Arianna anything they could use to manipulate me. I didn’t believe they were trapped in the Refuge as they’d claimed. If they could watch me, they could reach me.

  “When Chicory came to bring me back,” I told Tabitha, “he battled the Dark Mage. Chicory was winning, but one of the mage’s minions snuck up and ran him through with my sword.”

  “Well then how did you make it back alive?” she asked, her voice bordering on accusing.

  “They released me.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “To, ah, warn other magic-users not to mess with the Dark Mage,” I lied.

  I no longer saw Tabitha’s eyes as eyes, but as peepholes. She narrowed them at me in suspicion. Can they see me right now? I wondered.

  “Look,” I said, “we just need to get out of here.”

  “Now?”

  I stood and began gathering my clothes. “The house’s defenses are down. We’re not safe here anymore.” And whose house is it anyway? a part of me wondered as I stuffed everything into the large duffel bag I’d brought.

  “The defenses are down? You mean I could have just strolled out of here and fed on male souls?”

  “I’ll contact the Order when we get back to the apartment,” I said, hurriedly throwing my books into the bag and mashing everything down to pull the zipper. I was anxious to be behind my own defenses. “We can pick up some fresh goat’s milk and tuna steaks on the way.”

  Tabitha stood and arched her back until several vertebra cracked. “First sensible thing you’ve said since you returned.”

  12

  Chicory had parked his compact car in the small garage attached to the house. Though I hadn’t been able to find any keys in the house, a quick search of his cluttered glove compartment turned up a spare.

  I opened the trunk to stow my duffel bag, but the space was too jammed with boxes. Several more rows filled his back seat, the files they held like the ones I’d found in Chicory’s room. Names of whom I assumed were magic-users, along with scribbled notes. The files looked less like the work of a demigod than an overburdened social worker. But they might be a start.

  I shoved my duffel bag atop the boxes in the back seat and opened the passenger side door for Tabitha. As she climbed in, I took a final look at the door to the house. When you’re ready, return to the portal, Arianna had said. I had scoffed, but would I be returning here?

  “Can we go?” Tabitha said. “I haven’t had any decent sleep in weeks.”

  The drive through the Lincoln Tunnel and down to the West Village was uneventful. I arrived at the apartment to find the door triple-bolted, the wards intact, and the inside of the unit as I’d left it. A quick scan revealed no signs of intrusion. Tabitha trotted past me and hopped onto her divan. She let out a contented sigh as she curled into her sleeping position.

  I dropped my duffel bag and checked my voicemail. No messages.

  Good.

  According to Arianna, I had four days until Lich reconstituted his form. A narrow window, which might have been the point—to compel me to dive straight into the investigative work.

  Instead, I climbed the ladder to my library/lab and glanced over my hologram of Manhattan. Though I’d been gone for two weeks, the hologram was dim. It had been Chicory’s job to maintain the magic-detecting wards throughout the city. No Chicory probably meant no more wards, which meant no alarms. Another senior magic-user in the Order would have to restore them.

  Assuming there are any left, the insidious voice inside my head whispered.

  I pressed my lips together and turned to the plum-colored flame on the table. No new messages. At my desk, I sat and penned an update to the Order. I waved it over the flame, the orange flare telling me the message had been received.

  But is anyone even home? the voice taunted.

  “Shut it,” I said.

  With a Word, I revealed my books, then pulled down a tome on potions. I flipped until I found the most powerful one for dispelling magic that I could reasonably cook. It would take the rest of the day to prepare the potion, and I wasn’t even sure it would work against Whisperer magic, but I needed to try. I wouldn’t get anywhere if I couldn’t trust my own thoughts.

  I pulled out my burner and pots and got to work.

  The next morning, with the bitter dispel potion cramping my stomach, I drove Chicory’s car downtown. At the checkpoint at One Police Plaza, guards examined my ID and waved me through. Detectives Vega and Hoffman were waiting for me in the front of the building, Hoffman holding the handle of a large, four-wheeled dolly.

  “Great. You again,” he said when I got out.

  I grinned. “Admit it, Hoffman. You missed me.”

  “Yeah, like a leaking appendix.”

  “Are those the files?” Vega asked, nodding toward the back seat.

  “Yeah, and there are some more back here,” I said, unlocking and raising the trunk door.

  While the potion had been cooking, I had called Vega and filled her in on my trip to the Refuge. She had agreed to take the files as evidence in the Lady Bastet murder investigation. I had also called Caroline, my former colleague and now a fae princess. At the very least, I’d wanted to find out what the fae knew about the Whisperer. But Caroline’s old number was no longer in service and she hadn’t been seen in the mayor’s office in several days. Were the fae evacuating our world? I had considered going to the fae townhouse in the Upper East Side to find out, but I couldn’t risk losing my magic again.

  Vega gestured to Hoffman, who grumbled and began loading the boxes onto the dolly. She and I walked several paces away from the car until we were out of his earshot.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, the skin between her eyebrows folding in.

  “Yeah. I think so, anyway.”

  “So your father didn’t kill your mother?”

  “At this point, I honestly don’t know. But either way, the same person who killed her killed Lady Bastet. That much I can say with confidence. The murderer wanted to suppress the truth. Whatever that truth is,” I added in a mumble, feeling just as confused as before I gagged down the potion.

  “And the perp might be the person whose files we’re taking in? This Chicory?” She jotted down his license plate numb
er.

  “There’s a small chance,” I said, hating that I was even considering it. “I appreciate you doing this, by the way.”

  “What are we looking for exactly?”

  “The files contain info about other magic-users like me, maybe. I just need you to find out what you can about them, who they are, where they live, whether they knew Chicory, when they last saw him.”

  “There must be hundreds,” she said, eyeing the growing pile of boxes on the dolly.

  “Which is why I need all the help I can get.” I remembered something I wanted to ask her. “Hey, last month when you and I were on the outs, didn’t you say something about consulting another magic-user in the city?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that guy.”

  “Do you happen to remember his name?”

  “James Wesson.”

  A charge went through me. His name had been on the other folder in Chicory’s room.

  “I should still have his info,” Vega said, pulling a wallet from her back pocket and flipping through a batch of business cards. “Here it is.” She separated out the card and handed it to me.

  The card stated his name and phone number, nothing else. “I’ll give him a call,” I said. “See if I can’t stop in and talk to him myself.”

  “Have fun,” she said dryly.

  “Why? What’s wrong with him?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Where did you find him?”

  “Yellow pages. He’s listed under both ‘Sorcerer’ and ‘Supernatural Consultant.’”

  That sounded odd for a member of the Order. I’d always assumed those listings were posted by frauds. “Was he helpful?”

  “You mean when he decided to do some actual work? Yeah, he came up with a few insights. Namely that the murder wasn’t the work of werewolves, and magic had decapitated the cats.”

  I reread the card and put it away. “Sounds like he knows his stuff, anyway.”

  “Said he was going to run a test on the residue, but that was around the time you and I patched things up. I had the department cut him a check and tell him his services were no longer needed.”