Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9)

by Brad Magnarella

Could suggest enchantment. Or someone assuming his likeness.

  And that was the problem. There were too many possibilities, and I hadn’t remained in the spell long enough to narrow them down. I caught my fingers probing the spot where the blade had gone into my back.

  “What about getting him back to the apartment?” Hoffman prompted.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, though I wouldn’t rule out some form of translocation.”

  Even as Hoffman made a dubious face, I could tell a weight had been lifted from his ponderous shoulders. He had a name now. “If we can establish a murder scene and place Cole in the thick of it,” he said, “we should be able to get him to plead, info for lenience. He’s a lawyer. He knows the game.”

  “All clear,” an officer’s voice crackled over Hoffman’s walkie-talkie.

  The bay door clattered up. Hoffman snapped on a flashlight and jerked his head for me to follow. “Show me where it happened.”

  “Straight ahead, in the back,” I said.

  We walked past the black pillar and around an automotive lift in the floor. But instead of an open area, the flashlight beam played over a pair of toppled filing cabinets and a scatter of old car parts. Hoffman motioned for me and the other officers to stay back as he panned his flashlight across the floor.

  “It’s covered in a half inch of dust,” he growled.

  “It’s where it happened,” I said defensively, replaying the sequence in my head. Car stopping, Cole lifting me out and carrying me over his shoulder, depositing me onto a metal table just past where Hoffman was standing. A table may not have been there now, but the exact same motor oil sign was hanging on the wall.

  Hoffman wheeled on me. “Let’s forget the fact there’s no blood or signs of a clean-up. Where are the damned footprints?” He lashed the beam back toward the entrance. “Where are the fucking tire tracks?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t. Unless…

  “Rivelare!” I called, my voice echoing throughout the concrete enclosure.

  The energy from the invocation rippled from my cane and spread over the floor. And revealed absolutely nothing.

  Kneeling, I drew a finger through the dust and brought it to my nose. It wasn’t a veiling spell or illusion. The damned stuff was real. As I rose, I caught several officers exchanging smug looks.

  “All I can tell you is what his hair showed me,” I said lamely.

  “What his hair showed you,” Hoffman muttered. “From where I’m standing, a turd would’ve worked just as well.”

  The officers to my left snickered, but my gaze remained on Hoffman. If my spell had bombed somehow, he came out of this looking a lot worse than me. And professionally, he had a lot more at stake.

  Swearing, he paced a circle over what should have been the crime scene. When he arrived at one of the filing cabinets, he sent it clanging into the back wall with a foot. I couldn’t help but notice the rectangle it left on the floor, where the cabinet had been lying for months, if not years. It definitely hadn’t been there in Bear Goldburn’s final moments. Favoring his kicking foot, Hoffman limped back toward me.

  “Everyone out!” he shouted.

  As the officers returned to their vehicles, he drew himself up in front of me.

  “You told me it happened here,” he said. “You goddamned guaranteed me it happened here.”

  “I know.”

  I took a moment to revisit the spell. I’d carefully selected each hair. The execution had been systematic and sound. I knew what I’d experienced. Had someone imbued the cells with false memories?

  “Dammit, Croft,” he growled. “You owe me more than ‘I know.’”

  “Look, I told you what I saw,” I said, my own voice growing an edge. “That it was wrong suggests someone could be covering their tracks. If so, the same hairs I used for the scrying spell will contain evidence of that deception. It’s another potential lead. I’ll just need to cast a different spell.”

  “Are you fucking with me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you trying to get me thrown off the force? Because I’ll tell you right now—”

  His phone rang, interrupting whatever he was going to say. He drew it from his pocket.

  “Hoffman,” he answered. “What?” Even in the ambient light of the flashlight hanging at his side, I could see the color drain from his face. “Yes, sir,” he said in a stilted voice. “I’m on my way now, sir.”

  He ended the call and limped toward the door.

  I hustled to catch up to him. “What’s going on?”

  “I ordered Cole taken into custody on your word, and guess what, asshole? He’s suing the department for unlawful detention. Now I’ve got a meeting with the chief.” As we neared his car, he scowled at me over a shoulder. “You know, I just thought of something. Find your own ride home.”

  10

  “He really told you to find your own ride?” Vega asked.

  “Thankfully, you’re a lot more popular than he is,” I said. “After he left, one of the officers swung back to give me a lift.”

  She shook her head as she turned her sedan onto Sixth Avenue, sunlight glinting from her large shades. It was the next morning, and we were carpooling to the college before she had to start her shift at 1 Police Plaza. Not wanting to wake her when I’d returned home last night, or discuss the case in front of Tony at breakfast, I’d waited until we were in the car to share the perplexing events at Wilson’s Body Shop.

  “The thing is, he was right to be pissed,” I said. “He acted on info I’d told him was high confidence.”

  “You’re a consultant, babe, not God.”

  “Still, I steered him into a ditch. And that mess with Bear’s lawyer…?”

  “Pfft. That’s on Hoffman. I can’t think of anything more boneheaded than arresting a lawyer without cause, even if Hoffman did get his judge buddy to sign off.”

  “You think he still has a job?”

  “Depends on the chief’s mood. Either way, I can guarantee you he got chewed a new one. I’ll find out today.”

  “Well, I can guarantee my services will no longer be needed,” I muttered.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it. If the mayor was in Hoffman’s ear, he’s in the chief’s too. And when it comes to magic, Budge thinks you walk on water. You restored his city to sanity; you kept Yankee Stadium from becoming a bloodbath.” She was referring to my campaign against Lich and then my fight to stop the demon-vampire Arnaud from claiming the souls of 50,000 baseball fans for his master. “He’s gonna want you on this,” she finished.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Just watch.”

  “The thing is, I still can’t figure out what happened,” I said. “The scrying spell worked. I know what I saw, what I experienced. And when I got home last night, I ran tests on the hairs. There wasn’t a scintilla of magic in those cells, meaning they hadn’t been manipulated. And yet…” I replayed the moment when Hoffman and I entered the garage to find it hadn’t been touched in at least three months, much less three days.

  “How much sleep did you get last night?” she asked.

  The truth was very little. After failing to find anything on the hairs, I’d remained in my library/lab pondering the puzzle. Kidneys taken, but no outer wounds. Messy crime, but no crime scene. Magic a factor, but no actual magic in evidence. I noodled some tenuous theories, each one slapped down by an authoritative tome on the subject. Around three in the morning, I balled up my final page of scribbled notes and just sat at my desk, trying to think like the killer. If anything had become clear by the time I finished it was that my opponent seemed superior to me in every way.

  “Couple hours?” I said.

  Vega looked over with an expression that was equal parts sympathy and dismay. “Have you talked to your Order yet?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I left a message for Claudius.”

  “And bringing them in on this is a bad thing, why, exactly?”

  “
Arianna and the senior members entrusted the city to me. I’m responsible for New York. But in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve basically told them there are not one, but two cases here I can’t handle. The box and now this. It’s hard not to feel like I’m failing them, failing the city.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself? Last fall you stopped a demon apocalypse that involved going through, what, four different time periods, all about to collapse?”

  “Five, if you count the Cretaceous Period,” I said quietly.

  She chuckled at my little joke, even though getting head-butted by a velociraptor had been no picnic. “My point is that I don’t know too many people who could have managed that,” she said.

  “I appreciate the morale boost. Sadly, I don’t even have a good lead. And my gut’s telling me the perp’s not done.” My gut was also telling me that the perp had bigger plans for those kidneys.

  “Well, I found some info on your mystery flag.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “It matched with a few images online, all expeditions to extreme parts of the world. It’s the banner for an explorer’s club, the Discovery Society. In fact, the flag’s symbols are just stylized versions of the two initials with a compass between them. They have a headquarters here in the city, Upper West Side. They also put on presentations for the public, basically anyone interested in that sort of thing.”

  “An explorer’s club, huh?”

  Was that what my magic had wanted me to learn about Bear? I tuned into my magic now, but it was in one of its sullen, contemplative moods. Or maybe that was just me.

  “Did you happen to—?”

  “See when the next presentation was?” Vega finished for me. “There’s one tonight. I printed off the schedule for the rest of the month.”

  “You’re good. Will you marry me?”

  She laughed, something I tried to make her do at least once a day. “Well, here you are, Professor Croft,” she said, pulling up to the curb near the entrance closest to my office. “Midtown College.”

  “Thanks.” I lingered a couple extra seconds on our goodbye kiss. I needed it this morning. “Have a great day.”

  “You too, babe. Try to get done early so you can come home and take a nap.”

  I didn’t have a class until later that morning, but I had a good deal of organizing to accomplish in my office. Waving as Vega pulled away, I turned in time to see my graduate assistant coming out of the side entrance.

  “Sven!” I called.

  I may have fumbled the murder and punted on the box, but I could definitely handle the stunt he pulled yesterday. He glanced over enough that I thought he’d seen me, but then he hiked up his dark pack and speed-walked the other way. I called his name again, at the exact moment a bus chose to blast its horn. It also looked as if Sven was wearing earbuds. As I hurried to catch him, my phone intoned in my pocket. I drew it out irritably, ready to silence the thing, but the caller was Claudius.

  I flipped it open. “Hello?”

  “Ah, yes, Everson? Is this Everson?”

  “It’s me, Claudius.”

  I was still trying to keep pace with Sven, or at least keep him in sight, but my satchel was swinging in a way that worked against my forward momentum, and the kid had fifteen years of youth on me.

  “Good, good,” Claudius breathed, as if he’d dialed a few wrong numbers before reaching me. “Well, I got your message about the murder and passed the information to the Order. They were concerned. Yes, very, very concerned.” Papers shuffled in the background. “They’re, ah, looking into it. Someone should be in touch shortly.”

  Ahead, Sven reached the street and got the perfect opening to make his way across four lanes of morning traffic. I pulled up beside a bus stop, swearing under my breath, and watched him disappear.

  “Everson, you still there?” Claudius asked.

  “Yeah, you said someone’s going to be in touch.” I headed back toward the campus. I’d catch Sven in class Thursday. “How about the box? Any updates?”

  The line went quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry … the box?”

  “Yes, Claudius,” I said as patiently as I could manage. “The one you picked up yesterday morning?”

  “Ah, I was going to ask you about that.”

  “Sure, what do you want to know?”

  “Well, for starters,” he said, “what did you do with it?”

  “Huh? I left it in the casting circle in my lab. You picked it up yesterday morning.”

  There were days when Claudius was as sharp as my blade, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. When I arrived in your lab, it wasn’t there.”

  How was that even possible? Already straightening the ID on my lanyard to show the security guard, I pulled open the door to the college. “Did you check all the places you might have set it?” I asked him as the guard nodded and waved me through. “Your desk, your bookshelves, the back of your toilet?”

  “Everson,” he said, “it wasn’t there.”

  “Well, could you have taken two trips to my lab and, I don’t know, neglected to remember the first?” As I accessed the stairs to the second floor, I had to remind myself it wasn’t Claudius I was annoyed at, but the Order. How could they have entrusted him with something that important?

  “Oh, most definitely not. If I take more than one round trip per day, my regularity goes right out the window.”

  “Your what?”

  “It’s one of the side effects of translocation they don’t tell you about in the books, and no amount of laxative aid helps. Believe me, I’ve tried them all. Even Blast Root.” He gave a little chuckle, as if I understood.

  “All right, no need to paint me a picture.”

  “This morning, though?” he continued. “Everything dropped on schedule. So definitely just the one trip.”

  I winced at the visual. “And no one else from the Order would have picked it up?”

  “No, no, the other members couldn’t be spared. They’re working on a stubborn tear that’s scarred around the edges. All hands on deck, as they say. Have you considered whether someone in your household moved it? There was an awful lot of hullabaloo when I arrived.”

  It was a fair question, and I gave it its due. Mae wouldn’t have touched it, much less gone up to my lab in the first place. Tony wouldn’t have, either. If his being a good kid weren’t enough, I’d warded the space against him at Vega’s urging. Buster was out too. My magic didn’t play nice with nether creatures.

  That left Tabitha. I considered her vocal displeasure at having the loft taken over, but hiding the box? When Tabitha did something punitive, she usually let me know that a.) she’d done it, and b.) zero fucks were harmed in the act.

  “I can check,” I said, “but I doubt it.”

  “Well, what’s the alternative? The box has to be somewhere.”

  As I approached my office, my thoughts spun a thread between the missing box, Bear’s murder, and the question of translocation. A clammy heat spread over my face.

  “Let me ask you a hypothetical question,” I said. “You can translocate into my lab because we worked out a handshake, right?” I was referring to the pattern of sigils we’d installed so my magic would recognize his, allowing him to come and go. “Could you translocate there even if we hadn’t?”

  He made a sputtering sound with his lips as if considering different options. “Not without some very unpleasant consequences. But if the magic-user in question were powerful enough, I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Someone came and took the box,” I said. “Possibly the same person who murdered Bear Goldburn.”

  I was unlocking my office when Claudius responded, but I didn’t hear him. A fireball erupted from the door, splintering it to pieces and swallowing me in a violent roar.

  11

  I slammed into the far side of the corridor, pieces of door clattering around me. In the instant before the detonation, I’
d sensed a pressure change and invoked a shield. But the explosion arrived too fast. I only managed a flat barrier, and now fire surged around the edges, sending the arms of my coat up in flames.

  Teeth grinding, I pushed back against the still-surging fire while struggling to shape the edges of the shield around me. Boosted by some sort of accelerant, the flames disintegrated my sleeves and ripped into skin.

  Holy hell, that hurts!

  My vision blurred with tears as I focused past the pain and fought for every last joule of energy I could gather. I channeled it all into my protection. A moment later, the shield snapped into place around me. I chased out the oxygen with a Word, withering the flames that wreathed both arms and had begun climbing my pant legs. They dwindled to smoke, but the world around me still looked like an inferno.

  If I don’t act, I thought, gasping, it’ll take down the entire college.

  Inside the thinning air of my confinement, I shouted, “Respingere!”

  The pulse that detonated from the shield blew the flames back enough for me to stand and disperse my protection. Scorched air billowed around me. I seized a vial of ice crystals from a coat pocket.

  “Ghiaccio!” I bellowed.

  A cone of subzero frost shot from the tube and met the returning fire in a great plume of vapor. I forced the fire back further, directing the blast along the doorframe, where the flames were most intense. By the time I’d exhausted the tube, the fire was a paler version of itself.

  A second tube finished the job.

  Sagging against the wall, I waved the smoke from my face and inspected my throbbing arms. The burns were bad but appeared limited to second degree. Hovering the opal end of my cane over one arm and then the other, I spoke words of healing. Soothing light haloed the weeping areas like gauze.

  With a long exhale, I peered around as fire alarms began sounding. Through the thinning smoke, icicles dripped from the splintered doorframe. Thick burn marks curled up the walls alongside patches of frost. In my office, it looked like a bomb had gone off. My desk was flat on its back and books lay everywhere. Shredded papers fluttered down, several on fire, while water dribbled from ceiling sprinklers.