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

cry. I cut my gaze to the back room. From my angle, I could see a slice of the stone table and the shadow of someone sitting at it.

Heart slamming, I eased toward the room at an oblique angle, sword and staff at the ready. I peeked around the doorway and froze.

No.

Lady Bastet was slouched back in her chair, eyes wide but not from entrancement. I entered the room. Spilled blood wrapped her neck like a wine-red cravat. I stepped closer, my breath stuck in my chest. Someone or something had slit the mystic’s throat.

“Lady Bastet?” I whispered.

No answer.

My eyes fell from her bloodstained peasant’s blouse to her wrists and ankles. No bindings. No signs of struggle. The gold band in her hair hadn’t even shifted—which didn’t make any goddamned sense, not for someone so powerful. Had she been caught deep in spell work?

Beyond my crackling shield, I took in the overturned shelves, shattered spell items, and scattered cat parts. The scene had the markings of a werewolf attack. Penny had been planning to order wolves here to find her daughter, but that had been before I’d put Penny in a coma. Had the mayor ordered the attack? Or was I looking at some kind of rogue event?

I circled the room, opening my wizard’s senses. Lingering energy showed in fading, multicolored hues. The energy appeared to have originated from Lady Bastet in the course of her divination work. Magic-wise, I wasn’t picking up anything foreign, or even violent.

I dispersed my shield with a sigh and drew a dog-eared business card from my wallet. I flicked it with my thumb a few times before nodding.

“Did you touch anything?” Detective Vega demanded.

Beneath midnight hair that had been stretched back into a ponytail, her professional eyes assessed the scene. She hadn’t been happy to hear my voice when I rang her from a payphone. To Vega’s credit, though, she hadn’t hung up. Now, she acted cold and clinical, as if we’d never worked together, never helped one another out. That stung in ways I hadn’t expected.

“Touch anything?” I echoed. “No.”

She stooped toward Lady Bastet and examined the neck wound. “You said the door was locked when you got here?”

“Bolted. But her defenses were down.”

Detective Vega seemed to ignore my last remark as she moved around the room, careful not to step on anything. “What were you doing here?” The question bordered on an accusation.

“I asked Lady Bastet to perform a reading on something I dropped off earlier today.” As I spoke, Vega continued to survey the scene. “I was returning to see if she’d finished with it.”

“What was the item?”

“A strand of my mother’s hair.”

Vega mumbled something about crime scene contamination, but she shifted her line of questioning. “And she was sitting here like this when you arrived?” she asked, standing to one side of Lady Bastet. “You didn’t pick her up off the floor or straighten her or anything?”

“No.”

“When you dropped off the hair earlier, did you come into this room?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell if anything’s missing?”

I looked around the trashed room. Was she serious? “Listen,” I said, stepping toward her and lowering my voice, even though we were alone. “Those werewolves we fought at the mayor’s mansion? I think they’re the ones who did this. Penny and her husband knew Lady Bastet put Penny’s daughter in someone’s care, but they don’t know whose. This could’ve been—”

Vega shook her head irritably. “Just answer the question.”

I gathered my nerve. If there was a time to have it out, it was now.

“For what it’s worth, there’s not a day that passes that I don’t regret what I did,” I said, “that I don’t think about the danger I put your son in. So here it is again: I’m sorry. I really am. But can we set that aside for right now?” I cut my eyes toward Lady Bastet. “There’s a good chance we’re looking at the work of wolves. Which puts us in danger too.”

Vega faced me, hands bracing her hips. “This is an official investigation, under the jurisdiction of the NYPD.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Other than the fact you were the first witness to the scene, there’s no we. Got it? Now, can you tell if anything’s missing or not?”

There was no compromise on her face. I blew out an exasperated breath as I turned from Vega to the table. The scrying globe was in front of Lady Bastet, the covering cloth folded neatly to one side. I scanned the table’s stone surface for my mother’s hair. Not there or on the floor around the table. My eyes ranged across the room’s wreckage once more.

“Nothing obvious,” I said.

“Holy shit,” someone exclaimed from the main room, no doubt finding the dead cats.

I turned as the person scuffed toward us, his body soon filling the doorway—its width, anyway. When he saw me, he scrunched up his face like someone had punched him in the nose. I squinted back in disbelief.

“Hoffman?” I said. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s Detective Hoffman,” he answered. “And I could ask you the same. Thought we eighty-sixed your contract.”

I turned to Vega. “But he was selling info to Moretti!”

“Yeah, or maybe I was setting him up,” Hoffman shot back. “Ever think of that, smartass?”

By Vega’s narrowing eyes, I guessed that she had reported her partner only to see him slapped on the wrist and sent back to work. It was tough times for the department—personnel cuts, waning public trust. The last thing they could afford was another investigation into police corruption.

“Is the door secured?” Vega asked him.

Hoffman gave me a final scowl. “Yeah, got a couple of uniforms out front. What’s going on?” He looked down at Lady Bastet and grinned around the gum he was smacking. “Someone get upset over his fortune?”

Vega observed my balling fists and stepped between us. “We’ll call if we have any more questions.”

I continued to glare at Hoffman, who ambled around the scene, still wearing that stupid smacking smile.