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

friends would invite her to stay with their families. She came down to D.C. with me last year. My brother and his wife live there. We had a blast.”

“I’m sure she enjoyed that,” Vega said, standing. “I’m going to leave you my card. If you think of anything else about Alexandra or if you hear from her, I want you to give me a call.”

“I really hope I didn’t get her into trouble,” Dominique said.

As Vega reassured her that she hadn’t, I leaned back until I could touch the floor on the far side of Alexandra’s old bed. I ran my fingers along the gritty junction between floor and wall until I encountered a strand of hair. Pinching it, I sat up again. I cleaned the dust off the dark-auburn strand and placed it into an inner coat pocket.

Might come in handy.

24

“Great,” Vega said into her phone in a way that suggested whatever she had just learned was anything but, and hung up.

“What’s up?” I ventured.

Vega returned the phone to her jacket pocket and narrowed her eyes at the highway ahead.

“Look,” I said. “We’re both after the same thing—piecing together whatever it is Arnaud wants us to find so we can get your son back. Wouldn’t it be better if we worked together? I mean, there’s a whole supernatural dimension to this that I know a helluva lot more about than you.”

Vega passed two cars and a semi and veered back into the right lane.

“I screwed up,” I said. “I admit it. You never have to talk to me again, just—”

“John Smith relinquished the P.O. Box last month,” Vega said suddenly. “No forwarding address. The number on file is to a burner phone, untraceable, no longer in use. And there are a couple thousand John Smiths in the five boroughs—if that’s even Alexandra’s sponsor’s real name.”

“What about the payments to the school?” I said. “Checks or wire transfers would lead somewhere, right?”

“He mailed cash.”

“So, whoever was financing Alexandra’s education wanted to remain anonymous,” I said, more to myself than Vega.

Why, on both counts?

“Is she the killer?” Vega asked bluntly.

“May I?” I said, reaching for Alexandra’s student file on the dashboard. When Vega didn’t answer, I lifted the packet and examined the photo more closely.

Could that one dose of heroin have triggered a change in the young woman? A transformation into a blood-thirsty creature? I thought of the bone-white monster in the storm line, the protruding jaw, the red eyes and long, muscle-roped limbs. If so, I wasn’t aware of any similar cases. I needed my research books, but Moretti’s men would have eyes on my apartment, dammit.

“Hard to say,” I hedged.

“Thanks for your contribution.”

“I did manage to pick up a hair in her dorm room, though.” I patted the breast of my coat. “When we’re back in the city, I can cast a hunting spell. If it pulls us back into the tunnels, we’ll have our answer.”

Vega knifed her eyes toward me. “You mean the tunnels below Ferguson Towers? Are you trying to kill my kid?”

“Okay, okay,” I said, my face hot with frustration. “We’ll put that on hold for now. If Arnaud expects us to make a connection, and all he’s given us so far is Sonny and the boarding school, then we should pay Sonny another visit, see if he knows anything about Alexandra.”

“I didn’t need you to tell me that.”

“Great,” I said, replacing the copy of Alexandra’s file on the dashboard and sitting back. “The vamp’s place it is, then.”

“Sonny!” Vega hollered. “Open up!”

She waited five seconds, then hammered the paint-chipped door with the side of her fist again. I peeked down the narrow stairwell we’d just climbed, the red lights of Seductions flashing over the sidewalk outside.

“Who’s there?” Sonny demanded from the other side of the door.

“Detective Vega.”

“I already talked to you.”

“We need to talk again.”

“We? Is that screwball wizard with you?”

Vega looked over at me. “It will only take a minute.”

“Unless I’m under arrest,” came Sonny’s receding voice, “take a hike.”

“Sonny!” Vega shouted.

When he didn’t respond, she shook the knob and looked up and down the lock-riddled door.

“Stand back.” I unsheathed my sword and aimed it at the door. “Vigore!”

My goal was to bust the locks, but the force that shoved me into the rear wall ripped the door from the frame and sent the whole thing somersaulting into the apartment. The door upended a couch and crashed into an entertainment center, a television screen exploding in white sparks. Piles of DVDs spilled to the floor.

The door had just missed Sonny, who was sitting at a card table over a plate of food, a towel bib tied around his neck.

“What the fuck?” he cried, hair whipping as he looked from his displaced door to the two of us entering through the haze of dust.

“Maybe you’ll answer next time,” Vega said.

“Who’s gonna pay for all this?”

We were close enough now that I could see what was on Sonny’s plate: pig parts in a soup of blood.

“I don’t know,” Vega replied. “Maybe you can file a complaint with the NYPD. I’m sure they’ll fall all over themselves to help an upstanding citizen like you.”

As Sonny’s left eyelid jittered faster, his lips pouched out. I imagined his set of retractable teeth emerging through his gums.

“Oh, no you don’t.” The tip of my sword met the center of his bloody bib before he could lunge from the chair.

In the time it took Sonny to shift his red-glinting eyes from Vega to me and back, Vega had drawn her service pistol. He sat back with a sigh. “Come in here and ruin my dinner,” he muttered, yanking his bib from around his neck and spiking it beside his plate. “What do you want?”

Without lowering her pistol, Vega held out the photo of Alexandra. “Do you know her?”

I watched Sonny’s face. For an instant the resistance etched around his mouth smoothed. But only for an instant.

“A lot of girls come through my establishment,” he said, raising his eyes.

“Look