That reminded me of a question I’d been pondering. “The night I faced Lich, I was blood-drained, low on power, nearly passed out from pain and exhaustion. But Thelonious never came. Is he still … with me?”
“He remains bound to you, yes,” she said, “but he shrinks from the power of the collective. With enough exposure he may decide to terminate the contract on his end and leave you for good.”
“That would be nice,” I said. “So I can call on the collective when I feel him near?”
“Always. But it’s something else you shouldn’t count on, at least not in the near term. The portal to Dhuul’s realm was so deep that when it collapsed, it sent shockwaves through many realms, including this one. Small tears formed in the fabric that separates them. The more experienced of the Order have already begun repairing them, but it will take time.”
“Are you saying our world is more porous now?”
I thought about my father’s sacrifice, worried now that it had been for nothing.
“None of the tears extend to Dhuul’s realm, or even close,” she reassured me. “The portal is sealed. But yes, our world will be more porous for a time. Creatures who yearn to enter our world will do so more easily, and sorcerers who command such creatures will become more powerful, especially where there are potent currents of ley energy. We’ve restored the wards in the city for you to monitor. Your work here will become more important than ever.”
Her words felt daunting. “I’ll have help from others in the Order, though … right?”
“When it can be spared, yes. Like I said, the most experienced will be addressing the problem at the source while others will be tracking down the Diaspora of magic-users. That’s what is most urgent right now. In the meantime, you’re to form a team.”
“A team? Of magic-users?”
“Of anyone committed to protecting our world from the darkness and the creatures that darkness spawns. That was the original mandate of the Order. Our numbers are down, however. Lich murdered many, including our most powerful. We must solicit help where we can.”
“I suppose I can start with James,” I said, not entirely enthused at the prospect. Though he’d been a big help against Lich, our styles weren’t exactly complementary.
“We’re sending James out west,” she said.
“What’s out west?” I asked, feeling disappointment now.
“An area better suited to his particular energies. And it’s what he wanted.”
I thought of his cowboy hat and battered leather boots. Made sense, I guessed.
“We’ll introduce you to his replacement when we have one. You’ll be able to collaborate as needed.”
“No more compartmentalization then, huh?” I said with a smile. “So, where do I find this team?”
Arianna looked at me as though reading an invisible cast of bones. “They will find you, Everson. One at a time.”
I was preparing to ask what she meant, but she held up the sword. “We’ll have to keep this, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“But know that for twelve years you wielded the mightiest weapon the Order had ever forged. Not many can say that.” She smiled and disappeared the sword into a fold in her skirt and then produced a new sword. “Your father made this for you. It will fit inside your staff.”
My heart cramped as I accepted the sword from her and looked up and down its length. The handsome steel blade was beveled, its edge lined with silver. Runes ran down one side. Something about the grip reminded me of our final embrace, which made sense. My father would have willed the blade into being, then imbued it with his own magic. I was, in essence, carrying a part of him.
“He designed it to better channel your specific energies. As your power grows, it will unlock certain enchantments.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I have something else for you,” she said, reaching a strong, vein-lined hand into a skirt pocket. I imagined that same hand helping deliver me from my mother’s womb more than thirty years before—much as she’d helped deliver me from Lich’s imploding realm, her powers pulling me back into the Refuge. I was the last to arrive, and though Arianna hadn’t said so, I sensed it had been close. When her hand emerged now, it was holding a misty orb the size of a tennis ball.
“Your mother wanted you to have this,” she said, handing it to me.
The mist stirred as the orb settled inside my cupped palm. A feeling of profound warmth and what I could only describe as love overcame me. I hadn’t felt anything quite like it since Nana’s death.
“What is it?”
“It’s an emo ball,” Arianna explained. “After you were born, your mother invested it with her feelings for you. She knew well the danger of her work, and if something were to happen, she didn’t want you to grow up without knowing the love of a mother for her child, for you. After Lich sealed us in the Refuge, we had no way to get it to you. But the feelings of an emo ball do not fade. They are as authentic as the day your mother put them inside.”
I caressed the orb. As the mist stirred again, I felt another rush of warmth and love.
“This is incredible,” I said, my voice beginning to tremble. The feeling of my mother’s presence was a lot how I’d imagined it would be, but also wonderfully different. Deeper. “Thanks for safeguarding it all these years.” I looked from the orb to the sword and back.
“I’ll leave you now,” Arianna said, “but we’ll be in contact.”
“And if I need to reach you…?” I asked. My mind was already going to cups and flames and special parchment paper and strange formalities, wondering how that was going to work now.
“Give us a call,” she said.
“A call? You mean, like, on a phone?”
“I’ve left a number on your counter.”
I turned to where she nodded. A rectangular business card sat on the kitchen counter beside the telephone. “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
“And remember,” she said as she strode toward the door, “until we repair the fissures, the world will be a little stranger.”
At that moment, my fog-horn alarm sounded and the hologram upstairs began to flash red.
“Good luck,” she said.
30
“What in the hell happened to you?” Vega asked.
“Oh.” I touched the bandages on my forehead. “A group of teens thought it would be cute to call up their recently-deceased friend. An acid-flinging bug showed up instead. I … was flung at.”
She smirked. “In that case, you’re forgiven for being late.”
I started to tell her that the encounter had happened before I’d called to invite her and Tony to dinner, then decided against it. I’d take the mulligan. I slid onto the bench beside her. The venue was a popular restaurant in Brooklyn, its interior set up to look like a Latin American plaza: picnic tables arranged around a stone fountain, trikes and Big Wheels strewn about for kids to ride and fight over. “Mr. Croft!” Tony shouted as he flashed past, pumping one of the trikes like it was a scooter. He was gone by the time I waved back.
I smiled. I figured he’d enjoy it here.
“I went ahead and ordered,” Vega said. “Hope you like street tacos.”
“Delicioso,” I said.
“In the meantime…” She lifted a sweating margarita pitcher and poured me and her a salt-rimmed glass apiece. “I think we’ve earned it.”
The collapse of the portal had pulled with it the Whisperer magic that had begun flowing into the world. Those who had lost their minds regained their baseline sanity—or baseline insanity, in some cases. In the hours prior, the NYPD had followed through and fumigated the city with cannabis smoke. The smoke stopped the rioting in its tracks and spared large swaths of the city. The cleanup and rebuilding were another story, but it could have been a lot worse.
“No kidding,” I said wearily as we clinked glasses.
I took a large swallow, glad to be out in the world again, glad to be drinking margaritas wit
h a … friend? Remembering my conversation with James, I snuck a sidelong look at Vega. Her midnight hair was down, spilling over the shoulders of a simple V-neck shirt that she managed to make look amazing.
Yeah, I liked her.
“Hey, slow it down,” she called to her son as he zoomed past on another circuit. But Tony was too absorbed in his laughing, hair-whipping fun to hear. She frowned and shook her head.
“How’s his sitter?” I asked.
“Camilla? Aside from the two pounds she gained binge-eating, she’s fine.”
“Caught the munchies, huh?”
“Yeah, I don’t think she’s ever smoked before.”
That made me laugh hard enough to get Vega laughing too. As our chuckles wound down, a small fold appeared between her dark eyes and she peered around. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what did you mean on the phone when you said New York might get stranger?”
I shared what Arianna had told me about the collapsing portal creating tears in the boundaries between worlds. The alarm that morning seemed to lend proof to that. I doubted the teens would have been able to call up a nether creature that large or mean even a month ago.
“Great, just what the city needs,” Vega muttered. “What will you need?”
“Cooperation with the NYPD, for starters.”
“Well, you have a lot of goodwill there after coming up with the cannabis idea. I don’t know that there’s enough money in the budget right now to pay you, though. Not after all the costs—”
“No, no, that’s not necessary,” I interrupted. Though Arianna hadn’t explained how, the Order had funding resources going back to antiquity—resources Lich had been tapping. I used to think the grants that kept me afloat at Midtown College were reflections of the Order’s relative pleasure with my work. Turned out it was just Lich dispersing the funds erratically. Remind me never to scoff at primitive beliefs in weather gods. In any case, the Order would be paying us monthly now. Even so, I planned to keep my newly-tenured position at the college, though the change meant I was going to have to start earning grants by my own sweat now.
“This is less about me working as a consultant,” I continued, “which I’m still happy to do, and more about making sure we’re not working at cross purposes.”
“Cross purposes? You mean like the NYPD arresting you for suspected murder?”
I gave a dry laugh, reflecting back on Vega’s and my first encounter more than two years ago. And now here we were, swilling margaritas like old chums. Talk about cosmic humor. “Well, yeah, that,” I said, “but also getting info without going through a lot of red tape.”
“Croft, the NYPD is one of the city’s largest bureaucracies. There’s always going to be red tape.” She took another sip and licked her upper lip. “But you’ve got my number. If you need something, let me know. I’ll do whatever I can to get it for you.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“Only because it’s you.”
Wow, we really had come a long way. “Thanks,” I said. “I mean that.”
She nodded, and in one of the few times since I’d known her, I didn’t see her as a ball-breaking detective. She was simply Vega. She seemed to shift a little nearer as she studied my eyes. “What you told me about your dad on the phone. I know that’s gotta be hard.”
“It’s a process,” I said, trying not to look away. “I’ll be all right.”
A silence followed where the chatter and gleeful cries around us seemed to pull back. Our gazes drifted after Tony as he went around again.
“When we moved from Ferguson Towers to the South Bronx,” Vega said, “my dad got a job as a youth counselor. He was this big, imposing guy, but he was good with kids. Knew how to talk to them. He’d been doing that for a few years when a gang war threatened to break out in a park down the block from us. My dad had worked with some of the kids on both sides, so he went down to talk some sense into them, keep them from killing each other, you know? Fighting broke out anyway, and he was shot in the chest. They say he died before he hit the ground.”
“I am so sorry,” I said.
“I was seventeen at the time. Had sort of been at a loss as far as what I was going to do. My dad had wanted me to go to college. But at the service for him, the entire 43rd Precinct showed up, hats off, like he was one of theirs. That got me. I decided then and there to become a cop.” When she looked up at me, her eyes were dry but strangely exposed. “I guess what I’m trying to say, Croft, is that the more I get to know you, the more of myself I see.” She snorted and shook her head. “Probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“It does, actually.”
“The point is, I’m not going to make it harder for you to do what’s in your blood, what you’re clearly committed to. And if I can make it easier, I will. Consider me a part of your team.”
She raised her glass as though for another toast. Instead, I leaned down and kissed her. Her mouth tensed, and I was sure she was going to draw away. But then her lips softened against mine, and I tasted the salty sweetness over them. When we separated, I felt like I was awakening from a long, pleasant dream, even though the kiss had lasted two seconds, tops.
She squinted at me. “Okay, what was that?”
My head still felt gauzy, and I had to blink her into focus. “Me saying ‘thank you’?”
“I’m flattered, Croft. I am. But I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now. There’s my work, there’s Tony. I don’t know if this is such a good…” At that moment, her son ditched his trike and ran up to the table. Red cheeked and panting, he clambered onto my lap.
“…idea,” Vega finished.
“Did you bring your cane?” Tony asked.
“It’s right here.” I reached under the bench and handed it to him, my father’s blade locked safely inside.
“Coool,” he said, looking it up and down. “When are you coming to visit the apartment again?”
“Well, that’s really up to your mom.”
“Mom, when can Mr. Croft come over?” he asked.
When I looked at Vega, her head was tilted to one side, lids half cocked as though to say, Sure, use my kid against me. But her lips were turning up at the corners. “Is Mr. Croft free next Sunday for lunch?” she asked.
Tony trained his large, expectant eyes on mine.
“Barring any emergencies,” I said. “He is. Absolutely.”
“Yay!” Tony said.
“Yay,” Vega echoed in deadpan, but still smiling.
Our tacos arrived, and Tony scrambled under the table and took his place opposite us. He babbled as we ate, the sound a pleasant backdrop to my thoughts about the strangeness Arianna had mentioned, the team who would find me “one at a time,” and the future of the Order. But mostly I thought about Ricki Vega and the beginnings, maybe, of something special.
“Who’s ready for more tacos?” I asked.
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Black Luck
(Prof Croft, Book 5)
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Author’s Notes
Assume for a moment, Everson, that everything to this point in your wizard’s life was an illusion and that this is the reality…
You have no idea how hard that was to sit on for three books.
Back in the original author’s notes for Demon Moon I wrote that part of the fun of writing in an established genre is deciding which rules to follow, which rules to break, and which rules to hide your plot twists behind. One popular trend in urban fantasy is to have the hero on the outs
with his magical community, ever under threat of being blasted to shit if he so much as toenails the line. It’s a fun device and an effective way to increase dramatic tension…
So I thought it would be even more fun to have the one making the threats, Chicory in this case, only posing as a representative of the magical community and for the actual community to be solidly in the hero’s corner.
So, yeah, three books to execute that plot twist. I can only hope the payoff was worth the setup.
We also learned a lot more about Everson’s family as well as the true history of the Order. The scenes with Everson and his grandfather in the prequel Book of Souls should make a lot more sense now. Grandpa’s efforts certainly paid off. It will be interesting to see how the new Order, led by Arianna and the senior members, takes shape.
One thing I can guarantee? They won’t be making any death threats against our hero. They’re too nice, and it’s Everson, for God’s sake.
If this first quadrilogy was seeing Everson journey from boy to man (metaphorically, of course—the guy’s in his early 30’s), in the next four books we’ll see him becoming more and more of a leader. I suspect Arianna’s remark about a team finding him “one at a time” will prove prophetic. No more flying solo for our boy. I mean, man.
I can’t wrap up this section of the author’s notes without commenting on Everson and Vega. For all their differences, they’ve turned out to be remarkably similar. And Vega not breaking her margarita glass against Croft’s head when he kissed her is promising. Does that make them relationship material?
I guess we’ll find out.
I have several people to thank for the five books that make up set one of the Prof Croft Series Box Set.
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 98