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

I relaxed slightly. I couldn’t have handled another loss. Even Tabitha’s.

“That doesn’t change the fact you’re not welcome here.”

“I’ve surmised as much by the quality of your sauce.” He looked down at his glass with a slight grimace. “But that is beside the point for now. Have you forgotten our blood deal?”

“Blood deal?”

“I said that if the arrangement concluded to everyone’s satisfaction, I might have some information concerning your mother.”

I stiffened. The deal had gotten buried beneath the desperateness of the night, one emergency after another—and the idiotic gamble I had made with Vega’s son. I studied Arnaud’s waxen face. Did he know something about my mother, or was this just another one of his games? I lowered myself onto the couch opposite him, knowing better than to appear too interested.

“I don’t deal with scumbags who kidnap children for leverage,” I said.

“Yes, but one cannot argue with the results, Mr. Croft. Besides, didn’t you agree to the terms?”

Shame burned over my face. Instead of acknowledging his question, I asked one of my own. “What results?”

“Why don’t you tell me? Let’s see how much the weekend has taught you.” He grinned as he sipped the whiskey.

“Mayor Lowder hired you to protect his stepdaughter,” I said in a tired monotone, like a child reciting a catechism. “Which is why you deployed your blood slaves to the crime scene and ordered Vega and me to stay away from Ferguson Towers. Penny Lowder wanted her daughter dead so as not to jeopardize her husband’s reelection and her own grip on power.”

“Very good, Mr. Croft. And kudos for restoring dear Alexandra to her sentient form. Though you failed to follow my instructions to the letter at various junctures, I awarded you and the detective make-up points for saving the child. I understand she was placed in someone’s stewardship?” He flashed a teasing smile.

I squinted at him. How would he know that? Unless Lady Bastet had made a gross error in divination.

“Alexandra was placed in your care?”

“You seem concerned.”

“Well, gee, excuse me. I mean, why should I care that she was handed over to a cold-blooded killer?”

“Cold-blooded toward your kind, perhaps.”

“But warm and cuddly toward a half-vampire?”

“Or a half-Thorne.”

The fight fell out of me as I stammered silently. “She’s yours?”

Arnaud watched me above his glass as he took another sip of whiskey.

“I thought Sonny Shoat was the father.”

“The despicable Sonny Shoat was Penny’s employer,” Arnaud said. “And the vampire fancied her, yes, but she was looking for someone more powerful. When the opportunity presented itself, she exercised her seductions on me—which I could hardly blame her for—but vampires and werewolves have an embattled history, as you likely know. It could never have worked. When her bid for my protection failed, Penny turned to the mortal world.”

I remembered what Lady Bastet had said about two men of significance in Penny’s life: one weak, the other strong. Mayor Lowder had been the man of weakness, Arnaud Thorne the man of strength.

“So where money fortifies you,” I said, “politics now fortifies her.”

“Precisely,” Arnaud hissed.

“And that’s what you wanted us to find out?”

“For decades, your cognitive scientists have clamored that the surest way to assimilate new information is through direct experience. While the detective correctly deduced that I was bound by an agreement, had I told you all you ultimately learned, it might have gone in one ear and out the other. And besides, it would only have been my word.”

“Why, though? What does Penny pulling the mayor’s strings have to do with anything?”

“As I said, the best investors cover all sides of a trade.”

“Mayor Lowder promised you something in exchange for protecting his stepdaughter...” If not money, then what? I wondered. I thought about what vampires valued most. “Protection,” I said.

“We’d come to a certain agreement,” Arnaud confirmed.

“Protection from what, though?”

“From who, Mr. Croft. And I believe you can answer that for yourself.”

“His wife?”

“Our kinds don’t get along, but in rejecting her I made that enmity personal. I would have liked very much for you to have destroyed her. As I understand it, you came close. I don’t know that it would have mattered, though,” he added, as though to himself. “Wheels are already in motion.”

“Wheels? What wheels?”

“Look around yourself, Everson. An election year, a close race, and more and more New Yorkers becoming aware that not only is their city crumbling, it’s being overrun by undesirables.”

I remembered the ghouls I’d seen in the East Village, digging through the garbage in the light of dusk. “So, what, the mayor’s going to announce some sort of plan to combat the supernaturals?”

“In Europe they called it a purge.”

“But Penny’s one of them,” I said.

“Which is precisely why she fought so hard to expunge her past.”

“The deal you made with the mayor—it was that you’d be exempted from the purge, wasn’t it?”

“I think you now appreciate how fragile that agreement is,” he said.

Yeah, I thought with a tired snort, probably about as fragile as the deal Vega and I struck with the mayor. “But I thought you controlled the city’s purse strings. Why not leverage your financial power?”

He smiled bitterly. “It seems the mood of the nation is shifting. There is talk of the U.S. government bailing the city out of its debt. The country is hardly solvent itself, but more and more politicians are becoming uncomfortable with the power institutions like mine wield.”

“And if the bailout goes through, City Hall won’t need your money.”

“You’re a quick study, Mr. Croft.”

“So that’s what this whole thing was about, wasn’t it?” I said, anger shaking my voice. “To make me an enemy of City Hall, too. That way you’d have an ally should Mayor Lowder renege and come after you.”

“Oh, wipe that sourpuss look from your face, Mr. Croft. It wouldn’t be the first time the interests of vampires and wizards coincided. Your grandfather certainly wasn’t above joining forces when the need arose. Indeed, you’re sitting here today because of it.”

The foul fumes of resentment clouded over