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

James stood and adjusted his hat. “Then what are we waiting for?”

“You’re in?” I asked in surprise.

“Hey, this is exactly the kind of gig I signed up for.”

I nodded, grateful for the company. When I turned back to Connell, something like pride shone in his eyes. “Excellent,” he said. “Before you depart, would you mind if I used your memory of Lich’s realm for a rendering?”

“A rendering?”

As Connell walked around the table, the water began to shift as though trying to assume shape. And then I understood. Connell wanted to create a likeness of the realm for their planning.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, of course,” I said.

I started to stand, but he gestured for me to remain sitting and placed a hand over my brow. His palm was warm with magic. I helped him by remembering the experience, the nightmare pit, the hills of fungal growth, the building opposite me. He extracted the information gently, his other hand extending toward the pool, where a three-dimensional likeness was beginning to take shape.

You know, he said in my thoughts.

Marlow, right? I answered.

That is my birth name, yes. I assumed the name Connell upon coming to the Refuge. I didn’t want to deceive you, but neither could I tell you in those first days. It would have been too much.

Probably a good thing, I agreed.

We’ll talk upon your return, he said, his voice gentle in my thoughts.

I thought about Arianna’s carefully crafted words before my first departure from the Refuge. I’m sure you’ve been wondering about your father, she’d said. He visited your bedside while you slept. He is anxious to meet you and for you to meet him, but only when that is what you desire.

Meet one another as father and son, she’d meant. Well played.

By the time Marlow removed his hand from my brow, the scene in the pool was fully rendered, the pit plunging deep into the water. While the other magic-users leaned toward it, I grasped my father’s retreating hand, a lump growing in my throat. It was all I could do to keep from bawling.

Without realizing I was going to, I said, “I missed you.”

He gave my hand a firm squeeze.

“I missed you, too, Everson.”

23

James and I arrived back in the basement we had fled only hours before. A miasma of death and magic clung to the darkness: the remnants of Lich’s presence. James beat me to a light invocation.

“Illuminare.”

Silver light swelled from his wand and reflected from the sunglasses he’d slipped on. I reached out with my wizard’s senses, scanning the basement and house. “I’m not picking up anything,” I said, “but he’s cloaked his magic before. Every inch of this place could be booby trapped.”

I cast through a wand Marlow had given me as a replacement for my staff and watched the light it emitted harden into a protective shield. From inside his own shield, James shook his head in disbelief.

“Goddamned Chicory,” he muttered.

“Yeah, I’m still getting used to the idea too.”

I held out my sword as we made our way across the littered basement. I was especially wary of the mounds from which Lich-as-Chicory had summoned elementals during my training, ready for them to spring to life again. James loped past them, apparently unconcerned.

“Hey, mind slowing it down?” I whispered.

“Place is clean.”

“How do you know?”

“Cause it’s not his play.”

“What do you mean, ‘not his play’?”

James trotted up the stairs, his boots clunking loudly on the wooden steps. “You were at the meeting. Lich wins either way, he’s just aiming to win big. He knows we’ve got no choice but to go to him. That’s his play. What we do up here doesn’t mean crap to the man.”

“It will if we find the weapon.”

James turned enough to make a skeptical face. “Really think that’s gonna happen, chief?”

Hot anger flushed over my own face, but I didn’t say anything. James was only voicing the obvious. Lich was acting too damned confident for there to be a weapon out there that could kill him. Meaning he had either destroyed the weapon or made it impossible to find. But what if Grandpa’s suicide had been about more than protecting me? What if he had wanted to hide something?

“Where to?” James asked.

We’d arrived in the main hallway, and I stood in our shifting lights for a moment. The safe house felt anything but.

“There’s a trunk in the attic where he stashed some wands and weapons. I can take care of those if you wouldn’t mind searching the other rooms again.”

James nodded and headed off while I climbed the stairs. I readied my sword upon entering the attic, but nothing jumped out at me. My locking spell still held the trunk closed. I dispelled it and lifted the creaking lid. The items remained where and—as far as I could tell—how I had left them.

From one of my coat pockets, I drew out an enchanted sack Marlow had given me. One by one, I set the items inside, including the maces I’d used in the battle against the werewolves. If they carried any magic, even the Whisperer variety, the bag would suppress it until the items could be examined in the Refuge.

“Yo, Everson!” James called. “You might want to take a look at this.”

I hurried downstairs and turned down the hallway to find the front door open. James was standing outside, arms leaning on the railing of the small front porch. Beyond him, in the direction of New York City, the sky was an evil-looking brown and orange. The fires that had sprung up in pockets around the city were spreading, just like the influence of the Whisperer.

We were running out of time.

“Did you find anything?” I asked him.

“Nothing interesting,” he said in a way that made me wonder how thoroughly he’d searched. “Guess it’s on to … where, exactly?”

“Port Gurney,” I muttered. “Other side of the city.”

James spun a set of keys around his finger. “Good thing I brought my ride, then.”

James’s ride was a black Trans-Am parked curbside, the