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

“Croft!”

—point her in the right direction.

I wheeled to find the one-woman Homicide squad striding up behind me, a black umbrella glistening above her stretched-back hair. She was wearing the same style of suit she seemed to favor, black jacket and pants, blouse opened at the neck. It was a good look for her, and if it ain’t broke…

“What in the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Besides enjoying the weather?”

“Were you just inside the church?” When she arrived in front of me, the challenge in her dark eyes told me she already knew the answer.

“Well, I wasn’t not in the church, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I don’t have time for this, Croft. Yes or no.”

“Si.”

“You have no business being in there.”

“Look,” I said, holding up my hands in a no-harm, no-foul gesture, “my grandmother and I attended St. Martin’s when I was growing up. Father Vick was my youth minister. Thursday was the first time I’d seen him in almost twenty years. He invited me to come back and visit him.” All technically true. “I had some time this morning, so…”

“Father Victor is a suspect in a homicide investigation—one you’re consulting on, I should remind you. You’re not to fraternize with him until we’ve wrapped up. I thought I made that clear.”

I was starting to get a little sick of being told what I could and couldn’t do.

“Oh, c’mon, it’s not like—”

“I’m dead serious, Croft.”

“You don’t honestly believe Father Vick had anything to do with the murder. Or are you just aiming for ‘good enough’ again?”

When her eyes glowered, I realized I’d gone too far. “For your information,” she hissed, drawing up until her umbrella was dripping water in front of my face, “his trace evidence is all over the crime scene.”

“Yeah, and maybe that’s because he lives and works there.”

“So you’re an investigator now?”

“Just…” I took a deep breath and let it out. “Father Vick is a good man. He helps people. Just make sure you talk to those who know him before jumping to any conclusions.” I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to convince Detective Vega or myself. After all these years, how well did I really know him?

“The message,” Vega said abruptly. “It’s been two days. What do you have?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I was actually going to call you about that. I’m going to, ah, need another day.”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“Right, but I put out a professional inquiry. I’m expecting an answer tonight.”

Vega looked at me a long moment, sharp suspicion in her stare, then sighed through her nose. “Tomorrow morning, but that’s it. No more extensions or the deal’s off. We clear?”

I shifted my cane to my left hand and offered to shake on it.

But Vega’s gaze remained on my cane, the suspicion back in her eyes. “Ever been to Hamilton Heights, Croft?”

“I try not to.”

“Where were you two nights ago?”

Other than running down a street, being shot at by you? “Home, slogging through student papers. In fact, I received a visit from a couple of your associates. Dempsey and Dipinski?”

She studied my eyes.

“Know them?” I asked.

After another moment, she gave a reluctant nod. “They liked your cat.”

I laughed. “I’m pretty sure the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

Vega’s lips pulled to one side, but only slightly. I bet she had a killer smile. “Watch yourself, Croft,” she said as she turned to leave. “I’d hate to have to arrest you again.”

That makes two of us, I thought as I watched her pace back toward the cathedral.

26

I caught a bus up Broadway, disembarking at the heart of Greenwich Village.

The plan, of course, was to return to my apartment, light a fire, and spend the day indoors, cooking spells. All of that lay west. And yet I felt an urgent pull toward the garbagy, graffiti-bruised East Village and the amateur conjurer who would be rising and shining about now.

“Better think about this, Everson,” I muttered, leaning against the cornice of a building on West Third. I might get away with playing dumb on the magic ban, I thought as I observed the funeral flow of foot and car traffic, but the “cease pursuit of the matter” part had been pretty plain.

Still, I’d received no assurance the Order intended to do anything about the “matter” other than call me off it. More likely, whatever they were planning would grow moss before it made it out of committee, by which time our sole lead to the spell supplier could be long gone.

Anyway, the Order didn’t have eyes on me twenty-four seven. The perks of being a bottom-runger. Their wards would pick up any magic I cast, sure. So I wouldn’t cast any magic. Problem solved.

But there was still that whole violation-of-decree thing.

I peered down Third Street, into a wind stinking of trash and diesel. Then I looked west, toward home.

“Oh, fuck it,” I said, and began kicking my way east.

Some neighborhoods looked less menacing in the light of day. The East Village wasn’t one of them. Not only were the blackened buildings and trash piles more vivid, but locals were now on the roam, most of them burned out and trashed, too. Beginning at Avenue A, I passed men and women in tatters, yellow skin stretched taut over sharp facial bones, teeth rotten to their roots. A woman with flaking patches of scalp beseeched me for money in a voice that was hardly human. The rest stared from vacant eyes, tagging them as junkies, the soul-eaten, or both.

I chanted to reinforce the strength of my coin pendant.

At Avenue C, I spotted a familiar mountain of garbage and, across the street, the conjurer’s apartment building—one of two on the block still standing. Entering the lobby, I hit the stairwell at a jog.

On the top floor, at the end of the hallway, I readied my cane and threw open the conjurer’s door.

The room was empty. Against the far wall, the cheap furniture had been piled