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

was it? “Hey, did the department do a background check on James before you contracted him?”

“Hold on.” Through the buzzing line, a keyboard clacked. I awaited the verdict, my hand clenching the phone until it throbbed. After another few minutes, she said, “Yeah, he’s on here. And I just double-checked the public records. He’s legit.”

I relaxed my grip. “Good. But the others…?”

“Nothing,” she repeated.

I tried to think about it from two perspectives. In the Chicory as Lich case, he would have left the files out, knowing I would track down James—whom he had warned of my arrival in advance. The remaining files would be fakes, denying me access to the magic-using community. But in the Chicory as Chicory case, my mentor might have done the exact same thing, knowing that if I was captured by the Front, I’d be carrying Whisperer magic. Like someone infected with a virus, I would have to be quarantined, possibly even killed, so as not to infect other magic-users.

By winning over James, had I done just that?

“There’s no info on Chicory’s license plate either,” Vega said. “It’s a made-up number.”

That didn’t surprise me. Knowing Chicory, he’d probably enchanted it into inconspicuousness to avoid the hassle of registration. But did I know Chicory? I blew out my breath in frustration.

“Dare I ask how things are going?” Vega asked.

“Not good,” I said, looking around the kitchen. Simple folk charms adorned several shelves, and I noticed someone had lined the window sills with salt. “How about there? I mean, apart from the files.”

Vega gave a tired snort. “You’d think it’s a full moon. Crimes are up across the city.”

“Monsters?” I asked, thinking of the shadow beings.

“Nut cases,” she replied. “All the perps have psych issues of one kind or another, and we’re running out of places to stick them. The hospitals’ lockdown wards are at full capacity. There was a riot over at Bellevue last night. The patients went full zombie, biting anything in sight. Not even sleeping gas could subdue them. The police ended up having to shackle them.”

“Jeez,” I said, imagining the scene. I remembered what I’d told James about things getting uglier if the main portal to Dhuul were to open. Were we witnessing the beginning?

“You might want to stay put,” Vega said dryly.

“I’m actually flying back tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know if I learn anything else about the case. Right now, we’re still looking at Marlow or Chicory.”

“Are you leaning more toward one or the other?” Vega asked.

I thought about it for a moment. Either Connell and Arianna had told me the truth or they had screwed with my head so badly that I didn’t know which way was up. I wanted to tell Vega I was still leaning toward Marlow. Instead, I banged my forehead against the plaster wall twice.

“No,” I said.

17

That night I had horrible, disjointed dreams of death and decay.

Lazlo’s wolf-torn eye appeared from a mound of toadstools. I hurt, he repeated in a wet, whispering voice. I hurt, Everson. Shadowy tentacles lashed and grabbed me. I struggled to fight through them, to burn Lazlo’s remains and close the portal.

And then the scene changed to a locked psych ward. Patients with blood-smeared faces and limp robes moaned and shrieked on all sides. I looked around for my cane, but I didn’t have it. My coin pendant was gone from my chest. With insane eyes, the patients closed in. A stink of rot rose from them. I batted at their grasping hands, but there were too many of them.

Their eyes turned into fungus-filled sockets as they seized me and pulled me toward their gaping mouths. Mouths that became dark, fang-lined pits, plummeting to the very heart of madness.

I thrashed awake, blood roaring in my ears. I immediately sensed I wasn’t alone in the guest bedroom. I turned my head. A white T-shirt with a swollen belly seemed to float in the center of the room. As my eyes adjusted, the rest of Olga’s father emerged from the gloom.

He groaned as he hefted an axe overhead.

“Vigore!” I shouted, swinging my cane toward him.

The force blast caught Olga’s father in the stomach and propelled him into the far wall. The axe fell, the blade burying itself in the middle of the wooden floor. Olga’s father began to sob. A moment later, footsteps ran down the hallway, and the bedroom light flicked on. I looked from Olga’s father to Olga, who stood in the doorway. I’d placed a locking spell over the door the night before, but it must have come apart during my nightmare.

Olga rushed to her father and helped him to his feet. “Come, Papa,” she said in scolding Romanian.

“Holy hell,” I breathed, sitting up on the side of the bed, my heart still galloping at full tilt.

Olga walked her sobbing father from the room, bits of plaster falling from the back of his head. There was a bowl-shaped indentation in the wall where he’d impacted. Olga returned a minute later.

“I am sorry,” she said. “The drinking has made him sick up here.” She tapped her temple as she pried the axe from the floor.

“You think?” I asked, my voice hard and shaky.

“I fix your breakfast then take you to train.”

I checked my watch and nodded. It wasn’t like I was going to fall back to sleep anyway.

Thirty minutes later I sat across from Olga, bowls of porridge in front of us. We ate in silence for several minutes.

“So how long has he been like that?” I asked softly, feeling bad for having raised my voice at her in the bedroom. From the back of the house, I could hear her father snoring deeply.

“He has been drinking long time,” she said. “But he turned sick a week ago.”

“What do you mean ‘turned sick’?”

“Getting up at night. Chasing dogs around yard. This was first time he carried axe.”

Would have been nice if you’d shared the bit about his mental health before inviting me to stay the night, I thought, but