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

now is because she knows if you marry Mae, she’ll never control you again. I hate to be that blunt, but it’s the truth, and I know you know that.”

“Yeah,” he allowed. “But if she and that guy get serious…”

“Let them! You’re way too good for her. Promise me you won’t talk to her, even if she comes looking for you.”

He sighed. “I’ll promise if you promise to eat that.” He nodded at my wrapped hoagie. “It wasn’t cheap.”

“Then you have my word,” I said, saluting him with the footlong sandwich.

He laughed as I got out, but it sounded too shaky to be trusted.

“No Gretchen,” I stressed.

As I arrived at my door, I checked my watch. Mid-afternoon, which gave me three hours to build the golems and still have enough time to make it to the presentation at the Discovery Society, where Vega had reserved me a seat. To her credit, she wasn’t questioning my decision to pursue something apparently unrelated to Bear Goldburn’s murder, much less Sven’s attempt on my life. Like me, she was learning to trust my magic.

I tuned into it now, asking if there were any intruders or danger. Its motion changed, giving me a hard no.

“Wow. Clarity.”

After the day I’d had, I could have used those kinds of responses more often, but magic operated in its own dimension and on its own terms, beyond logic and intellect. A mage had to go to it, not vice versa. Despite my magic’s assurance, I scanned the frame before unlocking and opening the door. The lights were out and the curtains drawn, telling me Tabitha was having another one of her migraines.

“You’re in luck,” I said, feeling for the dimmer switch. “I just stocked up on…”

But where the switch should have been, my hand encountered crumbling drywall. As my eyes adjusted, the shapes that emerged from the darkness didn’t line up at all with my furniture arrangement.

“Illuminare,” I called, sending up a ball of light.

As the ball crackled and grew, I jerked my cane into sword and staff. My apartment was a flophouse. A pair of soiled mattresses lay among old couches and chairs that looked like they’d been carried up from the street. Holes and graffiti competed for wall space while garbage littered the floor. And the smell—sweet Moses!

For a moment, my shocked brain tried to convince me I was in the wrong unit, but I’d just unlocked the door. I peered over a shoulder. Instead of the three bolts I’d installed a decade earlier, there was only one now, as well as a thick barrel bolt that was drawn. I shouldn’t have been able to open it from the outside.

Okay, stop for a moment, I told myself. Think.

Gretchen had been here earlier. Was this her idea of a joke?

I activated and drank a neutralizing potion, then waited. As the magic took tingling effect, I expected the glamour to thin and my own apartment, with the framed photos Vega had hung that weekend, to return to form. Instead, I remained staring around a wasted, decrepit space that even the junkies appeared to have deserted. My invoked light, normally clean white, shone gritty overhead.

“Hello?” I called. “Tabitha?”

A whimper sounded from the back bedroom. Dropping the hoagie, I summoned a shield and strode behind my hovering ball of light. One way or another, I was going to get some damned answers.

At my bedroom door, I peered over a king-sized mattress strewn with blankets. “Who’s here?”

When another whimper sounded, I couldn’t tell whether it was human, animal, or other. But I pinpointed its source. Across the room stood my closet—only in this version, the folding doors were missing.

Stepping to the right for a better angle, I sent my light forward. In the closet’s far corner, the light glimmered from two sets of eyes. They belonged to a young boy and girl. A dirty hand covered each of their mouths. In another step, I saw the woman huddled behind them, hugging them close. Her haggard eyes looked just as scared as theirs.

Holy crap, a family lives here.

In as soothing a voice as I could muster, I said, “It’s all right. I’m not here to hurt you. I just have a couple questions.”

The children shrank, whimpering, against their mother. Her gaze darted to my right. I looked over as a figure rose. The man had been crouched behind a dresser. He was aiming a shotgun at my face.

I spun from the room as the weapon discharged.

“What in the actual fuck?” someone cried.

When I stumbled to a stop, sunlight was slanting through the west-facing windows, and I was back in my apartment. Tabitha had risen on her divan, large eyes peering between me and the front door.

“What happened?” I stammered, my heart still slamming in my chest.

“You tell me,” she said, her hair puffed out. “I heard the bolts unlock, and the next thing I knew you were stumbling from your room like a drunken ogre. You frightened the hell out of me—and when I was in the middle of digesting my afternoon milk.” She rubbed her stomach. “Please don’t do that again, darling.”

“I didn’t do anything.” I looked around, even craning my neck into the bedroom, to ensure I was really back. “I walked through the door, and the apartment, or at least this version of it, was gone. There were people here, and—”

“More people?” Tabitha moaned.

“Not here. At least not here here.”

“I can’t pretend to understand or stay interested,” she said, lying back down. “As long as it’s just you and me, I’m content.”

“And your contentment is all that matters,” I said thinly.

“Thank you,” she sighed. “There’s hope for us yet, darling.”

I returned to the outside hallway and repeated my earlier actions—unlocking the door, stepping through my defenses—but the apartment didn’t change. I looked down at where I’d dropped the hoagie, which would have been beside the coat rack. The sandwich wasn’t there. My thoughts immediately went to the box that had been in my casting circle.

Holy crap.

I ran