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

contain evidence of that deception. It’s another potential lead. I’ll just need to cast a different spell.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are you trying to get me thrown off the force? Because I’ll tell you right now—”

His phone rang, interrupting whatever he was going to say. He drew it from his pocket.

“Hoffman,” he answered. “What?” Even in the ambient light of the flashlight hanging at his side, I could see the color drain from his face. “Yes, sir,” he said in a stilted voice. “I’m on my way now, sir.”

He ended the call and limped toward the door.

I hustled to catch up to him. “What’s going on?”

“I ordered Cole taken into custody on your word, and guess what, asshole? He’s suing the department for unlawful detention. Now I’ve got a meeting with the chief.” As we neared his car, he scowled at me over a shoulder. “You know, I just thought of something. Find your own ride home.”

10

“He really told you to find your own ride?” Vega asked.

“Thankfully, you’re a lot more popular than he is,” I said. “After he left, one of the officers swung back to give me a lift.”

She shook her head as she turned her sedan onto Sixth Avenue, sunlight glinting from her large shades. It was the next morning, and we were carpooling to the college before she had to start her shift at 1 Police Plaza. Not wanting to wake her when I’d returned home last night, or discuss the case in front of Tony at breakfast, I’d waited until we were in the car to share the perplexing events at Wilson’s Body Shop.

“The thing is, he was right to be pissed,” I said. “He acted on info I’d told him was high confidence.”

“You’re a consultant, babe, not God.”

“Still, I steered him into a ditch. And that mess with Bear’s lawyer…?”

“Pfft. That’s on Hoffman. I can’t think of anything more boneheaded than arresting a lawyer without cause, even if Hoffman did get his judge buddy to sign off.”

“You think he still has a job?”

“Depends on the chief’s mood. Either way, I can guarantee you he got chewed a new one. I’ll find out today.”

“Well, I can guarantee my services will no longer be needed,” I muttered.

“I wouldn’t bet on it. If the mayor was in Hoffman’s ear, he’s in the chief’s too. And when it comes to magic, Budge thinks you walk on water. You restored his city to sanity; you kept Yankee Stadium from becoming a bloodbath.” She was referring to my campaign against Lich and then my fight to stop the demon-vampire Arnaud from claiming the souls of 50,000 baseball fans for his master. “He’s gonna want you on this,” she finished.

“We’ll see.”

“Just watch.”

“The thing is, I still can’t figure out what happened,” I said. “The scrying spell worked. I know what I saw, what I experienced. And when I got home last night, I ran tests on the hairs. There wasn’t a scintilla of magic in those cells, meaning they hadn’t been manipulated. And yet…” I replayed the moment when Hoffman and I entered the garage to find it hadn’t been touched in at least three months, much less three days.

“How much sleep did you get last night?” she asked.

The truth was very little. After failing to find anything on the hairs, I’d remained in my library/lab pondering the puzzle. Kidneys taken, but no outer wounds. Messy crime, but no crime scene. Magic a factor, but no actual magic in evidence. I noodled some tenuous theories, each one slapped down by an authoritative tome on the subject. Around three in the morning, I balled up my final page of scribbled notes and just sat at my desk, trying to think like the killer. If anything had become clear by the time I finished it was that my opponent seemed superior to me in every way.

“Couple hours?” I said.

Vega looked over with an expression that was equal parts sympathy and dismay. “Have you talked to your Order yet?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I left a message for Claudius.”

“And bringing them in on this is a bad thing, why, exactly?”

“Arianna and the senior members entrusted the city to me. I’m responsible for New York. But in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve basically told them there are not one, but two cases here I can’t handle. The box and now this. It’s hard not to feel like I’m failing them, failing the city.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself? Last fall you stopped a demon apocalypse that involved going through, what, four different time periods, all about to collapse?”

“Five, if you count the Cretaceous Period,” I said quietly.

She chuckled at my little joke, even though getting head-butted by a velociraptor had been no picnic. “My point is that I don’t know too many people who could have managed that,” she said.

“I appreciate the morale boost. Sadly, I don’t even have a good lead. And my gut’s telling me the perp’s not done.” My gut was also telling me that the perp had bigger plans for those kidneys.

“Well, I found some info on your mystery flag.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It matched with a few images online, all expeditions to extreme parts of the world. It’s the banner for an explorer’s club, the Discovery Society. In fact, the flag’s symbols are just stylized versions of the two initials with a compass between them. They have a headquarters here in the city, Upper West Side. They also put on presentations for the public, basically anyone interested in that sort of thing.”

“An explorer’s club, huh?”

Was that what my magic had wanted me to learn about Bear? I tuned into my magic now, but it was in one of its sullen, contemplative moods. Or maybe that was just me.

“Did you happen to—?”

“See when the next presentation was?” Vega finished for me. “There’s one tonight. I printed off the schedule for the rest of the month.”

“You’re good. Will you marry me?”

She laughed, something I tried to make her