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

the one before the Front had captured me, and the one after. I had been counting on my reason to determine which was the truth. Reason. The very thing Marlow would have corrupted.

I looked up at my mentor. “I need to talk to Detective Vega. If she says we never spoke, that will settle it. I’ll go along with whatever needs doing, and we’ll get back to the business of Marlow.” That decided, the exhaustion I’d been holding back broke through me, and I slumped in the chair.

Chicory nodded. “Very good, Everson. Stay here and rest, lie down if you need to.” He waved a hand toward the cluttered bed. “I’ll bring the phone up.”

When he left the room, Tabitha fell in behind him. My gaze moved from their departure to the flight itinerary—correction, packing list—I’d dropped on the floor. I thought back over my journey to Romania. The flights, the trains, the visit to Lazlo’s farm, my stay with Olga and her father, the bones she had read. It had all felt so damned real!

I lifted up my shirt to check the place on my stomach where the shadow creature had lashed me. Last night an ugly blue-green mark had run from my left ribcage down to my right hip, complete with bite marks. Right now there was nothing save pale skin, the faintest suggestion of abdominal muscles, and a mole I’d had since birth. Was Whisperer magic really that powerful?

Apparently so, I thought with a stab of disgrace.

I patted my pockets again. No pager. I looked through my wallet. Nothing to suggest I’d been in Romania. I stepped out into the hallway. Back in the kitchen, Chicory had stopped to heat up some goat’s milk for Tabitha. I went the other direction. My backpack wasn’t in the foyer where I was sure I’d dropped it. In the bedroom where I’d stayed, I found my clothes, books, and duffel bag, never packed. I could feel the hum of protective energy that encircled the house. Was it helping me to perceive clearly again?

Or is it poisoning your thoughts once more, the insidious voice whispered. But the voice no longer held the same power.

I looked down at the bed, where I could see an imprint of my body. I imagined myself lying there in a catatonic state for the past four days, Whisperer lies twisting through my mind like black tentacles.

I returned to Chicory’s room and walked along the lab table, absently touching the glass tubes and notebooks, telling myself there was no shame in succumbing to a magic that had nearly overwhelmed the Elders. Anyway, I had destroyed Lich’s book, not an Elder book. Meaning no Whisperer magic was flowing into the world. That was a huge relief right there. And as Marlow’s power dwindled, he and the Front would have nowhere to hide. The Elders would take care of them.

With that knowledge, I no longer cared to see the face behind the gold mask. Marlow was corrupt and evil, a vessel for the Whisperer. He wasn’t my father. He was nothing to—

At the end of the table, I had arrived at the pile of newspaper clippings and begun poking through them: the article on the robe of John the Baptist as well as those concerning exhibits of other magic-sounding artifacts. But near the bottom of the pile, at a depth I hadn’t ventured to the last time, I arrived at a glossy program for an opera. The program showed a black-robed figure standing center stage.

He was wearing a gold mask.

Heart thudding, I pulled the program all the way out.

The gold mask with its frowning mouth was identical to the one I’d seen on Marlow. I read the caption below:

RADICAL! VIOLENT!

In this reimagining of Verdi’s Macbeth, we go not to Scotland, but ancient Greece, where an ambitious young magician murders the King of Athens and embarks on a bloody rule.

My eyes skipped to the bottom:

Praise for The Death Mage, recent Opera Award nominee and…

“Here we are,” Chicory said.

I jumped and shoved the program back into the stack. My mentor had returned with the phone, but he wasn’t looking at me. In search of a jack, he was kicking through the clutter along the baseboards. I glanced back at the articles. In his carelessness, Chicory had neglected to conceal the most damning clue: his model for what would become my boogeyman.

There was no Death Mage. Chicory had invented him.

I turned from the table and eyed the chair where my cane was leaning. As Chicory continued to root around, I crept toward it.

“Could’ve sworn there was a place to plug in,” he muttered.

I reached the chair and slowly grasped the cane’s handle. But when I tried to unsheathe the sword that had slain Lich’s form once before—the doppelganger story was BS too, I now decided—it wouldn’t come free. I rearranged my slick grip and tried again. Normally, it was an unconscious act, a smooth release, but now the wood around the blade seemed to clench.

As though magic were holding it closed.

“Ah, there it is,” Chicory said, stooping down to snap the plastic head into the jack. He turned, a pair of fingers hooked under the phone’s switch hook, and was in the act of extending the handset when he stopped and pulled it back. “Why, Everson, you’re as pale as a ghost. Something the matter?”

“No,” I replied, thinking about what James had said about bluffs and double bluffs. I watched Chicory for a tell. A subtle force wriggled through my mind, and Chicory glanced past me to his lab table.

And there it is, I thought numbly.

“Damned Whisperer magic,” he said, setting the phone on the chair and bustling past me. “What’s it making you see now?” He arrived at the stack of articles and began searching through them.

The odds had finally shifted decisively, away from Marlow as the culprit and toward Lich. If the magic around the house was clearing my mind, I shouldn’t have been able to see the program. Not