The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Brad Magnarella (ink book reader txt) 📖

“Where are you taking me now?” I asked. “The zoo?”

“No,” Floyd replied. “But by the time we’re through with you, you’re gonna be singing like one of them macaws.”

I planted my feet and resisted. I didn’t have a plan, but I wasn’t getting back into their car.

“You want us to work you over out here?” Floyd asked. “That it?”

“What can I say?” I grunted, resisting their efforts to drag me forward. “I’m an exhibitionist.”

“Hear that, Whitey? Man wants to be beaten bloody for the world to see.” He jerked the cane from my hand and sent it clattering across the pier. When he turned back to face me, I drove a fist into his nose.

“That’s for this morning,” I said.

Floyd staggered back, a hand to his spurting nose. “Y-you broke it!”

“Believe me, it’s an enhancement.”

“Oh, you screwed up.” I turned toward Whitey’s raspy voice and met a pair of pale eyes as devoid of empathy as the black bore staring at my forehead. “You screwed up big time.”

“Waste him,” I heard Floyd call from behind me, his voice clogged with blood. “Screw the job, just waste him.”

I’d been gambling that Mr. Reid wouldn’t want a professional hit on his hands. Plus, what good was I to him dead? What I had underestimated was Moretti’s men taking matters into their own hands.

Whitey smiled thinly as he cocked the revolver.

I threw my forearms over my face and crouched away. But the shot never came. When I peeked out, Whitey was on his back, arms and legs spread like a man after a night of extreme bar-hopping. Floyd lay nearby on his side, blood pooling beside his head.

I turned around to find Blondie straightening the sleeves of his jacket. Two more blood slaves stood at his back.

“I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth,” I said, peering back at Moretti’s men, “but twice in one day?”

“Arnaud has another lead for you to give to the detective,” Blondie said.

I accepted the piece of paper he held out and looked it over. Arnaud’s spidery handwriting read:

Claudette Poole, Headmistress

Hangar Hall School for Girls

Hauppauge, New York

From a strip joint to a girl’s boarding school?

“We still have eyes on the boy,” Blondie reminded me.

I read the contact info a second time, wondering how in the hell I was going to convince Vega to pursue another Arnaud lead, especially one so far away.

“Fine,” I sighed, pocketing the paper. “But do you mind telling me what the trip to Sonny’s was all about?”

Intelligence seemed to infuse Blondie’s empty gaze. “Well, it is like the old line goes,” he replied in a familiar, taunting voice. “Do as you’re told and no one gets hurt.”

“Is he involved with the killer?”

“Sonny has been involved with many people,” Arnaud-as-Blondie said. “And for some, that’s a problem.”

“Who?” I pressed.

“Who, indeed?” Arnaud smiled impishly as though to say the Q&A was over.

“Can you at least explain the new lead? Give me something I can use to convince Detective Vega?”

“For someone as resourceful as yourself, Mr. Croft, I trust you’ll come up with a compelling reason all on your own.”

He gave a small wave and disappeared from Blondie’s eyes. I looked back at Floyd and Whitey, who had begun to stir. Time to make tracks. I would need to stop off at my apartment to grab a few things and explain the situation to Tabitha, but with Mr. Reid and Moretti’s men after me, I wouldn’t be able to stay there. I had to come up with another staging area, somewhere they wouldn’t think to look for me.

After a moment’s deliberation, I had one.

I grabbed my cane and left the pier at a run.

18

I poked my revolver into the East Village apartment. “Hello?”

No answer, no sounds of movement. I stepped inside and made a quick tour of the rooms. The unit appeared to have seen at least one more squatter since Clifford Rhodes, the stringy-haired vagrant who had summoned a shrieker six months earlier, but it was presently vacant. I set down two duffle bags loaded with items I’d gathered at my apartment and bought en route. Fortunately, Moretti’s men hadn’t recovered in time to head me off.

From one of the bags I pulled out a padlock, screwdriver, and two door-hasp kits. I spent several minutes screwing the thick metal hasps to both sides of the door and adjacent frame, then clicked the padlock home through the inside hasp. The security system was nowhere close to what I had at my own apartment, but I hoped it would keep just anyone—and hopefully anything—from wandering in.

And it looked like this dump was going to be home for a while.

I sighed as I made another tour of the apartment. No electricity, a trickle of cold running water, and from the bathroom, a sewer-like smell that could fell an ogre. On the plus side, the steel bed frame and roll-up mattress remained, as well as the table, Bunsen burner, and propane tank from Clifford’s time here. With dusk dimming the unit, I set several candles around the old lab and lit them. I then pulled an iron pot and several spell items from my bags.

One of the spells I had been planning was a nullifying spell—to try to neutralize the fae magic protecting the townhouse. But with my powers scrambled, that spell was out. Instead, I would have to cook a potion to neutralize the effect the fae magic was having on me.

I opened the valve on the propane tank and fired up the Bunsen burner. I set the iron pot on a mesh platform above the burner and poured in some green absinthe. To the absinthe, I added salt, iron dust, and shavings of rowan wood, stirring the ingredients with my engraved spoon. With none of my own power to channel, I directed my intentions through what energy remained in my coin pendant, which I held over the potion.

I was just tapping the spoon against the rim of the pot and setting