Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9) by Brad Magnarella (ereader with android .txt) 📕

I heard in her voice or that I’d caused her to race up a ladder eight months pregnant. But in my shock and confusion, I could only murmur, “I’m good.”

“Did something happen to your back?”

I realized I was bracing the spot where the blade had gone in. I pulled my hand away and checked my palm. It was damp, but from the perspiration rolling down the inside of my shirt, not blood.

Vega climbed up the rest of the way, turned on the light, and guided me to my desk chair.

Though I sat heavily, I was already feeling better. “I’m all right,” I assured her. “The spell just takes a minute to wind down.”

As I massaged the aching spot, her gaze shifted to the spent casting circles, where a faint haze lingered.

“How did it go?” she asked warily.

“We may have just saved Hoffman’s job.”

When her eyebrows went up, I nodded.

“I saw who did it and where.”

9

“You sure this is the place?” Detective Hoffman asked from behind the wheel.

As his sedan’s headlights grew over the body shop, I experienced a jarring sense of déjà vu. The same faded WILSON’S BODY SHOP I’d seen an hour earlier announced the business, only now in living color. The same line of broken windows stared back at us. The only change was that the bay door was now closed.

“One hundred percent,” I said.

Hoffman spoke into a walkie-talkie, and a cluster of police vehicles accelerated past us, surrounding the building. As officers stacked and entered, Hoffman pulled to a stop, and he and I got out.

“Still doesn’t explain the no cuts,” he said. “Or how this Vince Cole placed the body in Goldburn’s apartment without anyone seeing.”

“On the ride here, Cole gave him a debilitating drink that may have contained a magical component,” I said. “I’m betting he also had a potion that could heal wounds post mortem.”

It wasn’t something I’d considered in Bear’s penthouse, mainly because it didn’t make sense. But a lawyer killing Bear for his kidneys didn’t make a lot of sense, either—unless he’d been hired. Some spells saw potency boosts with fresh organ ingredients versus the dry stuff. But his own friend?

Could suggest enchantment. Or someone assuming his likeness.

And that was the problem. There were too many possibilities, and I hadn’t remained in the spell long enough to narrow them down. I caught my fingers probing the spot where the blade had gone into my back.

“What about getting him back to the apartment?” Hoffman prompted.

“Your guess is as good as mine, though I wouldn’t rule out some form of translocation.”

Even as Hoffman made a dubious face, I could tell a weight had been lifted from his ponderous shoulders. He had a name now. “If we can establish a murder scene and place Cole in the thick of it,” he said, “we should be able to get him to plead, info for lenience. He’s a lawyer. He knows the game.”

“All clear,” an officer’s voice crackled over Hoffman’s walkie-talkie.

The bay door clattered up. Hoffman snapped on a flashlight and jerked his head for me to follow. “Show me where it happened.”

“Straight ahead, in the back,” I said.

We walked past the black pillar and around an automotive lift in the floor. But instead of an open area, the flashlight beam played over a pair of toppled filing cabinets and a scatter of old car parts. Hoffman motioned for me and the other officers to stay back as he panned his flashlight across the floor.

“It’s covered in a half inch of dust,” he growled.

“It’s where it happened,” I said defensively, replaying the sequence in my head. Car stopping, Cole lifting me out and carrying me over his shoulder, depositing me onto a metal table just past where Hoffman was standing. A table may not have been there now, but the exact same motor oil sign was hanging on the wall.

Hoffman wheeled on me. “Let’s forget the fact there’s no blood or signs of a clean-up. Where are the damned footprints?” He lashed the beam back toward the entrance. “Where are the fucking tire tracks?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t. Unless…

“Rivelare!” I called, my voice echoing throughout the concrete enclosure.

The energy from the invocation rippled from my cane and spread over the floor. And revealed absolutely nothing.

Kneeling, I drew a finger through the dust and brought it to my nose. It wasn’t a veiling spell or illusion. The damned stuff was real. As I rose, I caught several officers exchanging smug looks.

“All I can tell you is what his hair showed me,” I said lamely.

“What his hair showed you,” Hoffman muttered. “From where I’m standing, a turd would’ve worked just as well.”

The officers to my left snickered, but my gaze remained on Hoffman. If my spell had bombed somehow, he came out of this looking a lot worse than me. And professionally, he had a lot more at stake.

Swearing, he paced a circle over what should have been the crime scene. When he arrived at one of the filing cabinets, he sent it clanging into the back wall with a foot. I couldn’t help but notice the rectangle it left on the floor, where the cabinet had been lying for months, if not years. It definitely hadn’t been there in Bear Goldburn’s final moments. Favoring his kicking foot, Hoffman limped back toward me.

“Everyone out!” he shouted.

As the officers returned to their vehicles, he drew himself up in front of me.

“You told me it happened here,” he said. “You goddamned guaranteed me it happened here.”

“I know.”

I took a moment to revisit the spell. I’d carefully selected each hair. The execution had been systematic and sound. I knew what I’d experienced. Had someone imbued the cells with false memories?

“Dammit, Croft,” he growled. “You owe me more than ‘I know.’”

“Look, I told you what I saw,” I said, my own voice growing an edge. “That it was wrong suggests someone could be covering their tracks. If so, the same hairs I used for the scrying spell will