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

“But he’s here?”

“In bed,” the old man confirmed, causing me to exhale in relief.

“Please, it will only take a minute, and it’s extremely important.”

When Cyrus stepped to one side and waved for me to enter, I hoped the gesture would be enough to temper the threshold. It was, but it might not have mattered. The force that rippled through me was less than half the strength I’d felt on Thursday, and left much of my wizarding powers intact.

Cyrus closed the door behind me and locked it.

“I know the way,” I told him, not wanting to wait on his frail lead.

I replicated the route Father Vick and I had taken the morning before, until I was crossing the inner courtyard and standing in front of the vicarage. The door was open a crack, and I could make out a slice of Father Vick’s tall figure beneath the white covers of his bed.

I knocked. “Father?”

The bed creaked as he lifted his head. “Is that Everson? Come in, come in.”

I entered and returned the door to its cracked-open state behind me. A smell like stale gauze hung thick in the room. By the time I turned back to Father Vick, my eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and I paused to take him in. True to Cyrus’s word—though paraphrasing slightly—he looked like crap. His pale red hair was thin and scattered. What I mistook for bald patches in his beard were spots that had gone white, probably less evident when his beard was combed. He blinked with boggy eyelids, but his eyes exuded the same paternal concern.

“Please, have a seat,” he said.

I pulled a chair up beside the bed. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“You read the article?”

I nodded.

As his head rested back on the pillow, he exhaled. “I was to have told the congregation today, in morning Mass. I spent much of the night preparing the service and in prayer.”

Holy books stood in stacks on his window-facing desk. Beside the books hung his white kerchief.

“I saw the sign out front,” I said.

“The congregation is in a panic. I … I don’t know what to do.”

As he spoke, I caught what looked like tissue paper balled into his right ear canal. His nose had bled too, bits of red crust clinging to the top of his mustache. I recalled what he’d said about channeling forces beyond us, and could only imagine the kind of strain he was under. The faith in the cathedral was similar to my mental prism—a converter of ley energy. Right now, Father Vick was having to make up the faith deficit, and it was killing him.

“The Bishop of New York is coming today,” he said, but the worry in his eyes confused me.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Well, the visit is avowedly to chart a path forward, though I think that’s a kind way of suggesting the Church wants to conduct its own investigation.”

So in addition to the NYPD, he was under suspicion by his own ecclesiastic authorities. I knew the gut-punched feeling. I gave his arm a squeeze of support, which seemed to warm his face.

“And how are you, Everson?” he asked.

“Concerned.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly. Though the protective energies of the cathedral had weakened, I sensed it blowing static through the monitoring spell Chicory had placed on me. With that bit of cover, I proceeded.

“There’s work I do in the city that not many know about, but I think you would understand.” I watched him nod in encouragement. “The Crash rocked the ground under a lot of people. Many fell to vice, but others reached for magic. You help the first group, Father. I try to help the second.” Something in his eyes told me he knew, or at least suspected, this to have been the case. “Lately, the kinds of emergencies I’ve been called to have been especially black—demonic summonings. Lower creatures, granted, but I think something bigger is working its way up the pipe.”

Father Vick’s gaze shifted to the ceiling. “I’ve felt it, too,” he said after a moment, his voice nearly a whisper. “Like a force eclipsing the sun, casting everything into dire shadow.” He shook his head. “I tried discussing it with Brother Richard, but he was preoccupied with the magic use in the city, much of it benign, of course. I’m afraid my concern fell on deaf ears.”

I thought about my own appeals to the Order.

“What can we do, Everson?” he asked, his voice possessed by sudden strength.

“If we trace the summoning spells back to their source, we’ll know who or what we’re dealing with. That would be a start.” Not wanting to suggest the church was behind the spreading evil, I proceeded carefully. “I was actually hoping you know or at least encountered the first conjurer. I found him squatting in an East Village apartment. He had a St. Martin’s Bible in his possession.” I described the man in as much detail as I could.

When I got to the glasses, a look of recognition came over Father Vick’s face.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “That would have been Clifford Rhodes. We have an outreach group that offers spiritual guidance to the homeless. Clifford was well known to us. When he disappeared, we feared the worst. It grieves me to hear he turned to dark practices. But he’s alive?”

“Last time I saw him, yes. The other conjurers weren’t as fortunate.”

I told him about the Chinatown conjurer next, Chin Lau Ping.

“That was from a summoning?” he asked, sitting partway up.

“You knew him, too?”

“He was an informant, in Brother Richard’s campaign against the White Hand.”

“So he approached the church?”

Father Vick nodded. “The White Hand pressed Chin into service because he drove a bus and had a clean record. He transported narcotics, and often women, to other cities. Chin wanted nothing to do with it, but the White Hand made it clear it was the cost of doing business in Chinatown. When I read about