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

milk into a small pot on the stove and lowered the burner to a guttering flame. Then, licking a finger, I decided to take advantage of the cat’s absence to make a call. (Tabitha had an annoying habit of providing background commentary.) I carried the desk phone from the counter to my favorite reading chair and rotary-dialed from memory. For wielders of magic, mechanical telephone switches trumped microchips every time. I’d fried more than my share of the second.

“Hello?” Caroline’s pleasant voice answered.

“Working late, Professor Reid?” I teased.

The voice fell flat. “Hi, Everson. Working, yes, but it’s not even two o’clock yet.”

“Really?” It felt much later, but I decided that saying so would make me sound like a loafer. Not an impression I wanted to reinforce, especially since I was preparing to ask her for another favor.

“What did Snodgrass want?” she asked first.

Though my colleague had lowered her voice to a whisper, her concern came through loud and clear. I felt a stab of guilt for evoking it and decided to play things down.

“Oh, you know. ‘Your class size is too small. You’re not a real historian. You’re a disgrace to academia.’ Same old refrains.”

“Are you sure that was all?” she asked skeptically. “He was practically skipping after your meeting.”

The image made my face burn. “The man probably found a discount on paperclips.”

Caroline laughed into the phone, a beautiful, effusive sound that always cheered me up. I imagined the backward spill of hair, the point-perfect dimples in her cheeks. She cleared her throat. “So, what’s up?”

“Well, without being allowed to say too, too much, something happened at St. Martin’s Cathedral last night, and—”

“You mean the murder?” she asked. “Isn’t that awful?”

“You know about it?”

“My dad told me.”

Of course. Caroline’s father worked as an attorney for the mayor’s office. I’d met him once, a barrel-chested man, iron hair combed back in severe lines, somber face. To hear Caroline tell it, he was the last honest broker in City Hall. That took brass. I wasn’t sure whether to envy the bastard who would one day ask for his daughter’s hand, or fear for the bastard’s life.

“Right,” I said. “Well, I was consulted for my knowledge of arcane languages—there was some writing at the scene, you see.” Oh, if Detective Vega could hear me now. “But I need some more info.”

“What kind?”

“Well, like who might have something against the church or rector.”

For time’s sake, I’d decided it was going to be easier to narrow down the suspects and see if I could link any to the message, versus starting with the message and performing the equivalent of a city-wide radial search. Caroline understood the city and its web of power brokers as well as anyone.

“I can think of a few,” she said after a moment, “but let me look into it.”

“Is lunchtime tomorrow too soon? We could meet at your favorite deli. My treat, of course.”

“That should be fine.”

“Hey, ah, I really appreciate you doing this.”

“Well, it’s nice to see you taking something seriously.”

She left out the for a change, but it was there, in her tone. Moments like these were when secret wizarding tended to suck the most. There were no explicit rules against my telling people what I did, but the less who knew about my other life, the better—for their sanity as much as for my safety. I didn’t have time to dwell on the question after we hung up. While Caroline was working on her list, I would need to get started on the shrieker case.

But first things first…

My cat had been right about one thing, I thought as I shed my coat and shoes and shuffled toward the shower.

I did smell like crap.

12

My first stop upstairs was a table that held a hologram of the city. Purchased from an architect friend of Caroline’s, it was as marvelous to me as any magic. From the great upthrust of downtown to the relative plains of the Villages to the spires of Midtown and the wilds of Central Park, it was all there: every ghostly street and structure, shown to scale.

And fortunately, all presently dim.

Through magic, I had bound the hologram to a series of wards placed throughout the city by the Order. If the wards detected so much as a whiff of taboo magic, a red light appeared. The light effect was accompanied by a fog-horn, more psychic than auditory, so I could hear it even when away from home. It was then up to me to hunt down the offender.

Last night the ruins of the East Village had lit up like hellfire. That should have tipped me off to the magic’s demonic nature.

I stepped over a silver casting circle and emptied what I’d gathered from the conjurer’s apartment onto an iron table that ran along the railing of the loft space. The spell elements I inspected were common. The power for the spell must have been in the ritual and incantation.

I turned around to a steep wall of mundane books.

“Svelare,” I said.

In a rippling wave, encyclopedias and classical titles became magical tomes and grimoires, the majority of them handwritten in lost languages, centuries old. Some of the very titles I labored to keep out of the hands of amateurs. I scaled the rolling ladder, walked my fingers over binders, and returned with a small stack of reference books dealing with demonology and subterranean beings. I spread the books over my corner desk and spent the next several hours deep inside them, emerging only for swallows of coffee.

When I closed the final book, I had some answers. Namely confirmation that the amateur conjurer hadn’t acted alone. A shrieker summoning required the power of a magic born or a higher demon. And since there didn’t seem to be any of the second bandying about, I was putting my money on the first.

I drew a piece of parchment paper from a drawer, dipped a quill in lampblack ink, and began penning my report to the Order.

To the Esteemed Oracular Order of