Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9) Brad Magnarella (the best novels to read .TXT) 📖

pull Sven’s registration info. I asked the young woman to fast-forward to the blast. She slowed to quarter speed as my recorded self neared the office, phone to my ear.

“Can you zoom in on the bottom half of the door?” I asked.

Just as the door started to move, I spotted a distortion in the space near my right foot, like a tiny jet of released gas. The sigil triggering. A moment later the fireball was erupting into the corridor.

I had her zoom out again as it enveloped me.

“How did you even survive that?” she asked.

“Magic,” I said absently, prompting a surprised laugh.

For the next few seconds, my actions on screen were engulfed in fire and steam. I thought about the incendiary circle Sven had drawn and left on my desk the day before. A brazen act of foreshadowing?

“There’s no Sven Roe in the system,” the returning officer said. “Are you sure he’s a student here?”

Still dazed by the events and revelations of the morning, it took me a moment to process what he’d said. “I guess not,” I replied at last. “He showed up to my class, but I never checked to see if he was registered.”

“Nothing on him in the city computers either,” Trevor said, handing the torn-out page back to me. “Is that the right spelling?”

“That’s what he told me,” I said, looking over the name I’d written down. I stopped. “Wait a sec.” Taking my pencil, I drew a mark through the first E in his name, then crossed out the V right before it. I continued, mouthing the remaining letters. At N, there were no more letters to strike out.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

“What is it?” Trevor asked.

Still shaking my head, I wrote another name beneath the one Sven had given me and held it up for Trevor to see.

“‘Sven Roe’ is just a rearrangement of the letters in my name: ‘Everson.’”

So not only had the little shit just tried to burn me to a crisp, he’d been toying with me. I remembered too how he’d offered to show me his ID after class yesterday to prove his age. More toying.

As Trevor took the paper back, I pressed a knuckle to my bottom lip, vaguely aware of how absurd I looked in my sleeveless coat and singed pants. But I was too preoccupied with this latest piece of the puzzle to care.

What was Sven doing? How was he mixed up in this? Of course if the perp were assuming different forms—something I’d considered following the scrying spell—Sven wasn’t mixed up in anything.

He was this.

Could explain why he targeted me.

But no, the timeline was off. He’d shown up in my class before the scrying spell—hell, before Hoffman had even brought me in on the case. Had he anticipated my involvement and wanted to keep tabs on me? If so, the incendiary circle may have been meant to pique my interest. Perhaps enough to take him on as an apprentice, even share details of the case I was working on. But with the scrying spell, maybe I’d gotten too close to something he hadn’t wanted me to see. Hence the fireball.

Vega may have been right about that.

“Do we have any leads to his real identity?” Trevor asked.

That was the key question, the one that would begin to unlock the others. But how to find him? With something of his, I could attempt a hunting spell. But the only tangible item I could come up with was the sigil he’d drawn under the door, which had conveniently disappeared right after the attack.

“I’ll show you where he sat in my classroom yesterday,” I said. “Also, if your explosives guys detect any unusual residue in the office, let me know. The composition could give us a clue.” I turned to the young woman at the monitor. “In the meantime, can you follow his movements this morning?”

“Sure, just about everywhere but the classrooms.” She was already pulling up an adjacent feed.

“It’s a long shot, but look for anything he might have dropped or set down. Also, anyone he talked to.”

“And grab a decent image with his face,” Trevor put in. “We’ll need it to canvas the campus and post for the public.”

“Post what for the public?” a gruff voice asked.

Detective Hoffman entered the office in the same crumpled brown suit from the night before, his wreath of hair in disarray. He was also lurching to one side. When he rounded a desk, I saw why. A cumbersome orthopedic boot encased his right foot—the same foot he’d used to kick the filing cabinet at the body shop.

This was not going to be pleasant.

“There was an attempt on Everson’s life,” Trevor started to explain.

“Yeah, yeah.” Hoffman waved an irritable hand. “Vega already told me, and I read the report from your team.” He trained his bloodshot eyes on me, the fleshy bags underneath confirming the man was on no sleep. “You think this is related to the Goldburn case?”

“Are you still on it?” I asked to be sure.

“Yeah, no thanks to you. Anything I can use here?”

That was surprisingly tame for Hoffman, which suggested Vega was right again: Mayor Lowder wanted to keep me involved.

“Possibly,” I hedged, having learned my lesson from the night before. “The sigil that triggered the explosion had markings that I saw on an enchanted box I recovered yesterday.”

“So?”

“The same box was stolen from my lab later in the day.”

“Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.”

“Possibly through translocation,” I continued. “And there are strong suggestions translocation was involved in Goldburn’s murder.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” he muttered.

“Anyway, this guy who was posing as my student planted the explosive.” I pointed to the monitor. “We don’t have a name, so Trevor was talking about getting an image of his face to show the public.”

I expected some kind of pushback, but Hoffman squinted at the footage for another moment before nodding. “Can you handle the campus canvassing?” he asked Trevor, who replied in the affirmative. “Good, get me two or three good images and send them to