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

the neck of her robe, which appeared to be throttling her. I tottered for balance as the others released me. My head rotated slowly from side to side.

The robes were wrapping all of their necks, strangling them like boas.

I didn’t know what the hell was happening and didn’t much care. My eye was intact, even if a blinding glare remained. Turning, I forced my arms and legs into an absurd underwater run. My sword and staff were on the ground where I’d relinquished them. I was bending in slo-mo to retrieve them when a shaking force nailed me between the shoulder blades.

I reflexively hooked a finger into the front of my shirt collar. But instead of struggling to breathe, I was no longer struggling, period. My limbs were fluid again. I exercised my jaw and tested my voice: “Do-re-mi-fa-sol…” Someone had broken up the effect of the encumbering potion.

Sword and staff in hands, I swung around.

“The animation spell’s not going to last,” someone said in an Irish brogue. A short, rumpled figure hustled from the gagging druids and seized the sleeve of my coat. “We need to get a move on.”

“Chicory?” I asked, stumbling to keep up.

In the year since I’d last seen my mentor, he had gained a bit of weight. Even so, his feet were a blur. Instead of crossing the stream, he led me farther down the path I’d arrived by, his coat flapping around his stubby legs, then up to where the path joined a defunct road. His gray Volkswagen Rabbit sat against the near curb. As he shuffled around to the driver’s side, I peeked back, relieved to find no one—and nothing—in pursuit. The diesel engine chugged to life as I dropped inside and slammed the door behind me.

“Man, talk about timing,” I said, inspecting my right eye in the visor mirror. It was red and puffy around the rim, but otherwise healthy. “How did you know—”

“Magic,” Chicory said, tossing his wand into the back seat, curmudgeonly face set in a frown. Then to clarify: “Forbidden magic.”

“You mean theirs?” I tried.

He stared at me over a squash-shaped nose. “I mean yours.”

I gave a nervous chuckle as Chicory swung the car around. “Yeah, about that…”

“You violated a mandate from the Order. Two, in fact.”

“Well, their letter was awfully short on details. It called me off a shrieker case without saying why—or what the Order planned to do about it. And cessation of magic? Was that supposed to be a blanket mandate?”

My mentor nodded.

“What the hell, Chicory? If the Order would ever bother to ask, they might learn that I have to make ends meet around here. I also have friends in this city, good people. Keeping my job and keeping them safe require magic sometimes.”

I thought I’d made a reasonable appeal, but Chicory was shaking his mop of gray hair. He looked more like a frazzled physics professor than a wizard. “It’s not your place to question the Elders.”

“So, what, they’re gods now?”

“As far as you and I are concerned, yes.”

I pushed out an exasperated breath. At our level, the purpose of magic was defending the mortal world from manifested evils. But the Elders dealt in other planes entirely, where linear thought and logic no longer held, necessarily. With their power and knowledge, the Elders were very nearly gods. It was what I would become one day—if I lived to be that old. When the Elders issued a decree, there was usually a very good reason for it.

But call it hubris, I still felt like they were missing something.

“Do they have a plan for the shriekers, at least?” I asked.

“I’m sure they do, Everson.” His response hardly inspired confidence, but before I could press him, Chicory took up his scolding voice. “What were you doing out here anyway?” He skirted a cement barricade and merged onto Central Park West. “Picking a fight with a women’s group?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I didn’t know they were… Look, I thought they might be behind a murder the NYPD asked me to help investigate, all right? The rector was killed at a church I used to attend.”

“Oh, yes, about that,” Chicory interrupted. “The Order wants you off that case as well.”

“What? Why?”

“Not our place to ask.”

“Well, let me spell a few things out for you, and maybe you can run it up the flagpole.” I twisted my entire body toward him. “The church in question sits on the city’s most powerful fount of ley energy. The balance of power in the city is already tipping toward darkness because of the crisis brought on by the vampires. We lose St. Martin’s, and we may never get that balance back. New York City will become a Romper Room of evil. Father Victor, the man in position to take over as rector? I know him. He’s as devoted as they come. He’ll safeguard that fount. But he’s also about to be slammed for capital murder by a police department short on resources and long on the illusion that they’re actually solving crimes.”

I hadn’t quite put it in those terms before, not even in my own mind, but it wasn’t a stretch. Those were the bigger stakes.

Chicory sighed. “Fine, I’ll add it to my report.” He glanced at the folders and spiral-bound notebooks spread over his dashboard. I noticed his back seat was jammed with boxes containing more files. I wasn’t sure how many of us he was responsible for across the country, but based on the intervals between visits, probably too many. “But until you hear back from me…”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “No magic.”

We rode in silence the rest of the way to the West Village.

As Chicory pulled up in front of my apartment, I peeked around. I still hadn’t seen the woman Tabitha claimed to have caught watching the building. I was beginning to suspect my cat had fabricated the story to convince me she was pulling her weight around the homestead.

My gaze returned to Chicory. “Hey, thanks for