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

“I will miss you darling,” Tabitha said sleepily.

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“But you’ll come back.”

I looked at my cat, her words catching me by surprise. As a succubus, Tabitha had no divine powers, but hope flickered inside me anyway. “Oh yeah?” I asked cautiously.

“You always do.”

She had a point. Whether it was facing demon lords or ancient vampires, I had a knack for pulling something out of my hat at the last moment. Part of that went with being a magic-user. We carried a “luck quotient,” as Chicory called it. More accurately, we lived in a symbiotic relationship with magic, a force keen on being moved and manipulated. That relationship often led to sudden insights and synchronicities, especially in times of acute stress.

But this challenge felt different—probably because I would be going up against another wizard, one much more powerful than I was. Not only would his luck quotient cancel mine, it would likely exceed it.

“We’ll see,” I said.

Instead of answering, Tabitha began to snore. Shaking my head, I stood and paced the crowded guest bedroom. While Chicory had spent the last week shut up in his lab, I’d been devoting my time to reading from a selection of books he’d picked out as well as performing exercises to enable me to channel more energy. I did feel stronger, more focused, but would it be enough?

I stopped at the window and released a shaky breath. The dream, my mother’s warning to run…

The Order wouldn’t be sending you if they thought you would fail, I reminded myself. Granted, they were a mysterious, often confounding, organization whose directives didn’t make a ton of sense sometimes—all right, most times—and yet they had been around for several millennia, suggesting they possessed more than an inkling of what they were doing.

You’re going to have to trust their judgment.

I looked toward the door as a burst of expletives sounded from down the hallway.

I would also have to trust that Chicory knew what the hell he was doing.

I emerged from my room the next morning and shouted in alarm. Across the dining room table, my cane was in a state of complete disassembly. I ran up to examine the carnage. The blade was without a hilt. The white opal stone, usually embedded in the staff, sat on the table’s very edge. And a set of copper metal bands I hadn’t even known belonged to the cane were scattered everywhere.

“My sword and staff!”

“Crotchety old thing,” Chicory said, as though in agreement. My round little mentor appeared from the kitchen, blowing the steam from the mouth of a coffee mug. His mop of gray hair looked messier than usual, telling me he probably hadn’t slept. Is this what he’d been doing all night?

“It—it’s in pieces,” I said, still not believing what I was seeing. Thin wood shavings covered the round table in what appeared to have been a failed attempt to inscribe runes into the staff. The result was chicken scratch.

Chicory took a loud slurp of coffee as he arrived beside me. “I’ve been trying to give her a needed upgrade, but she’s not having it. Had to get a little rough with her, I’m afraid.”

“You’re going to put it back together, right?”

“Eventually,” he replied, scratching his stubbly chin. “I’ll let her sit like this for another day, see if that doesn’t temper her spirits. Rest assured, once I complete the upgrade, she’ll be better than new. And you’ll be better prepared. I never intentionally send a wizard to his death. Well, unless so ordered.”

“I appreciate that,” I muttered, my gaze drifting over the scattered parts again. After ten years, the sword and staff had become extensions of me. I couldn’t imagine life without them.

“There’s extra coffee, if you’d like some,” my mentor said.

Dragging a hand through my bed head, I gave a begrudging nod and shuffled into the kitchen. “Speaking of preparations,” I called as I poured myself a mug of the strong-smelling brew. “When are we going to get into serious training? I mean, I appreciate the exercises and extra reading, but it’s not the same as having spells slung at you. Blood spells, in particular.”

The coffee shook slightly in the mug as I lifted it to my lips. The blood Marlow had stolen could be used to cast any number of things, including a death spell. Though such spells did take time to prepare, that time was getting shorter.

“Yes, yes, we’ll get to that,” Chicory replied irritably. “More important now is outfitting you.”

I returned to the dining room, where my mentor was frowning over the cane parts, his bushy gray eyebrows nearly touching in the center. Did he know how to reassemble it? I pulled out a chair and sat.

“Do you mind going over what that will entail?” I asked.

“Outfitting you?” He lifted the tail of his corduroy sports jacket and hopped onto the chair across from me. I didn’t have to look to know his feet weren’t touching the floor. “Well, the first step is establishing a link to Marlow’s hideout and getting you inside. No sense teaching you magic you won’t be in a position to use. To that end, I’ve been tinkering with your blood.”

“My blood?”

He took another loud slurp of coffee. We’d only been living together for a week, and already his habits were starting to annoy me. Besides the slurping, there was his singing in a loud baritone in the bathroom as well as his tendency to leave dirty dishes everywhere. A small plate with a half-eaten slice of toast and curdled eggs from two days before sat precariously on a window sill. Were it not for the magic surrounding the old house, the place would have been thick with flies.

“I drew a small sample from your neck the other night while you were asleep,” Chicory said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Not at all,” I replied thinly.

“Now, if Marlow is your father, about half of your magic came from him. The other half from