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

to open my wizard’s senses and peer around. But like at Bear Goldburn’s penthouse apartment, there were no supernatural auras and nothing stood out on the astral level.

All right, magic, I thought. Show me what I’m here for.

I waded deeper until I felt the familiar shifting of tidal energies, but they were directionless and without guidance. My instinct was to be frustrated, but more and more I suspected that the seemingly random movement was my magic arranging things, ensuring I was in the right place at the right time.

“Everson!” Ludvig called.

The library returned to focus as he came rushing toward me, his face flush with excitement. “I’ve arranged for you to attend the private meeting of members and fellows. I’m going to find you a sponsor.”

I stepped back. “What? Why?”

“Because you’re the next frontier.”

“Huh?”

“The club’s original purpose was to further the exploration of land, sea, and air. It was later expanded to include space—but we’ve never explored the esoteric, not with any scientific rigor. You could change that. I recognized you the moment you walked in. You are Everson Croft, the great wizard!”

His eyes seemed to cross further as he spoke. I clutched my cane, muscles tensing with suspicion.

“Yes, yes, I remember you from the mayor’s eradication campaign!”

“Let’s not broadcast it,” I said in a lowered voice. “I just came out of curiosity.”

He seized my arm and whispered, “There they are! The fellows of the Council!”

I looked over at the three people walking toward us. One was the thin man with the V mustache who had just concluded his presentation. He was accompanied by a middle-aged woman in a red sari and a large gray-haired man, who looked vaguely familiar. When Ludvig waved, the large man returned an indifferent nod, suggesting I’d been right about the club’s view of him.

My new friend was clutching me with both hands now and bouncing on his toes. The fellows continued past, toward the back of the library.

“Yeah, that’s great,” I whispered, trying to wrest myself from his grip.

I stopped suddenly and looked down at my cane. It was wiggling. When the fellows reached a doorway, the wiggling stopped. My hunting spell had just gotten a hit. One of the fellows was carrying the potion that had been in Bear Goldburn’s stomach.

“Come,” Ludvig said. “The meeting’s about to start.”

I let him seize my hand and pull me after him.

20

The meeting was held in a conference room that featured a massive pair of elephant tusks protruding from the far wall. By the time Ludvig and I entered, the fellows were taking their seats at an official-looking table on a dais. The remaining attendees congregated at a long table that bisected the room. I walked toward it with the aim of getting as close to the fellows as possible, but Ludvig grabbed my arm.

“That’s for members,” he explained.

He pulled me to a row of red-leather chairs along the side of the room. It took some tugging back on my part to get us into the two seats closest to the front, beside a large globe. My vibrating cane told me we were on the very edge of the spell’s range. I focused on the fellows, my gaze going from the two men’s jackets to the woman’s shoulder bag. The potion could be on any of them.

“Who are they?” I whispered.

“The big one is Robert Strock,” he said. “He is the club’s fifty-second president.”

No wonder he looked familiar. “The real estate developer?”

“Yes, but he also spends millions on research, especially deep sea. He’s a submarine enthusiast like his father, Harold Strock. Harold created one of the first comprehensive maps of the ocean floor. Robert has gone on many expeditions himself. His last one, to the Mariana Trench, discovered two new species of marine life. ”

It was hard to imagine someone Robert Strock’s size spending any length of time in a deep-sea submersible, but my mind was too busy working out scenarios in which he would become involved with the occult or want Bear dead.

“The woman is Sunita Sharma,” Ludvig continued, playing eager guide. “Her name is not as recognizable to lay people, but she is one of the top bioengineering researchers in the world. She and her team won the Nobel Prize three years ago for their work on gene splicing. I think she is very pretty, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said absently, searching Sunita’s green eyes for signs of magic or malice.

“And finally, Walter Mims. You heard his lecture. Or at least the beginning.” He giggled loudly enough for heads to turn at the members’ table. “Walter is an astronomer and the youngest son of astronaut Gene Mims, one of the first ever in space. Walter is also my sponsor. He was the one who gave me permission to bring you to the meeting. We’ll find you a sponsor among the members.”

As Ludvig was saying this, Walter’s smallish eyes met mine and pinched critically.

“You didn’t mention the wizard part to him, did you?” I asked in a lowered voice.

“Not yet.” Ludvig’s next giggle sounded like anticipation. “I just told him you were a foremost expert in your field.”

“Let’s keep that to ourselves for now,” I said as Walter Mims looked away. He was probably upset I’d dozed off during his lecture.

Ludvig had run down the fellows in a line, and I couldn’t help but notice the empty chair at the far end. A flag, like the one in Bear Goldburn’s photo and hanging in the hall of portraits, was folded into a triangle and set on the table in his place.

“How did the others get along with Bear?”

“Well, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.” Before Ludvig could elaborate, Strock brought the room to order.

“Welcome to the one thousand two hundred and forty-third meeting of the Discovery Society,” he said in a husky voice that commanded attention. “First, I have a tragic announcement.” He motioned toward the empty chair. “As most of you know, Bear Goldburn lost his life this weekend. Besides being a dear friend, he