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

Re: Amateur Magic/ Summoning

Urgency: High

(They were very particular about how these were to be composed: part Jane Austen, part inter-department memo.)

I. Practitioner: Apparent AMATEUR. Middle-aged male of minimal means. Name unknown. No identification found. Domicile apparently settled by occupation versus lease or purchase. Due to post-conjuration mental state, AMATEUR could not be immediately interviewed. Healing initiated.

II. Location: Avenue C, East Village, New York City, United States

III. Source of Magic: Unknown at this time (see above, I). AMATEUR appears to have conjured from common components, but spell was incinerated, likely to obscure origin. ADVANCED MAGIC USER suspected. Plan to interview AMATEUR following full restoration of senses. Estimated recover time: forty-eight (48) to seventy-two (72) hours.

IV. Creature summoned: SHRIEKER

V. Outcome: Banished

(I decided it better to leave out the specifics, especially the part about Thelonious.)

Unless otherwise instructed, I plan to pursue the investigation into the origin of the spell and will report further discoveries as I attain them.

Humbly Submitted,

Everson Croft

I reread the report and, satisfied it was sufficiently informative and deferential, folded it into a six-sided disc. At my lab table, I waved the hexagon over a silver cup with a plum-colored flame: my direct line to the Order.

“Consegnare,” I said.

The report smoked, then went up in a bright flash.

The flame in the pot shifted to orange before returning to its plum-colored hue, telling me the message had gone through. The tension in my neck and shoulders let out a little. There would be more work on the case, but I would have the Order’s muscle in my corner—even if it was the slow-twitch variety. And who knew? Maybe this would be my break, the case that would promote me from the wizarding basement, as it were. Ten years was starting to feel like long enough.

I checked my watch, surprised at the late hour. It was nearly ten.

“Don’t bother fixing dinner.” Tabitha hopped onto the end of the iron table and collapsed on her side. “I fended for myself.”

“Fended?” I asked before spotting the tuft of gray feathers stuck to a corner of her mouth. “Pigeon?”

“What else is a girl threatening to be shoved out the door supposed to do?”

Translation: See how low you made me go.

I snorted a laugh. “So it’s gone from ‘Maybe I won’t come back’ to ‘He’s throwing me out’?”

“Gotta survive somehow,” she went on in her hurt voice, as though she’d been done a terrible injustice. She stopped talking long enough to tongue-probe a back tooth. “I think I cracked a molar.”

Translation: You made me crack a molar.

I didn’t need to look to know her molars were fine, but since ninety percent of any relationship was knowing when to argue and when to accede… “I’m sorry,” I said. “Let me see about putting some magic to it.”

“You’ll just make it worse,” she pouted, turning her head away.

The other ten percent was knowing when neither one did any good.

I sighed and began returning the research books to their dusty slots. I could feel her succubus eyes on the back of my head. “Aren’t you going to ask for my report?” she asked after a moment.

“Do you have something?” I said from the ladder, trying to appear more interested in the title of the book I was holding. When her voice took on that dangling quality it meant she did have something.

“Oh, I might’ve caught someone watching our building.”

Cold fingers brushed the back of my neck. “Man or woman.”

“Hmm. You can never tell these days, can you?”

I turned. “Which did it look like?”

Tabitha licked a paw and began combing it over an ear. After several passes, she blinked up at me. “Did you say something, darling?”

“Man-looking or woman-looking?”

“Couldn’t see much beneath the coat, but given the long hair … woman-looking.”

I flipped through a mental Rolodex of women who might come calling—or who even knew where I lived. Of course, there were locating spells for the second, assuming the female in question had a magical bent. But I narrowed it down to the mundane: Caroline Reid or Detective Vega, one bearing a gift of info, the other coming to demand it. But why not just walk up? Or call, for that matter?

“When?” I asked.

“Couple of hours ago.”

“What did she look like?”

“Average in every way.”

I leveled my gaze at her. “If that were any less helpful, it might actually be helpful.”

Tabitha gave a self-satisfied smirk.

“Young or old.”

“Young but older-looking.”

“Blond-haired or black?”

“Brunette.”

I could tell Tabitha was tiring of the game because her eyes had closed and she was giving responses more freely. But I was no closer to who the woman might have been. Based on hair color, Reid and Vega were out. Still, call it wizard’s intuition, whoever it was had been watching for me.

I would need to find out why.

“All right, if she shows up again, try to pick out a defining feature or two.” I slid home the last book. “Better yet, let me know right away.” I turned and found Tabitha fast asleep.

I shook my head, but maybe it was time for me to do the same. After the day I’d had, I could use a solid twelve. Back at my desk, I grabbed my empty coffee pot and mug. The downstairs lights were glowing warmly up the unit’s tall windows. Somewhere on the Hudson, a ship’s horn sounded.

No, wait…

I spun to face the city hologram, and nearly choked.

Not a ship’s horn, my alarm. The hologram was glowing that hellfire red again.

This time in two places.

13

The narrow streets of Chinatown were deserted when the cabbie dropped me off forty minutes later. I tipped him the requisite one hundred percent for the after-dark run—the “danger premium,” New Yorkers called it.

Aptly named, I thought as the cab motored off. Of course most New Yorkers didn’t know what horrors truly lurked in the dark, lured by the city’s vortices of ley energy and, more recently, a muddy fog of despair.

I took a moment to get my bearings. The street that bustled with commerce by day was now an