The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

“Not quite,” I said. “The mage was too powerful. He let the spell go just long enough to issue a warning.”

“Seems you’ve been getting a lot of those lately.”

“No shit,” I muttered. “This one was to keep my nose out of Lady Bastet’s murder—which the mage all but confessed to.”

I limped back to my lab table and looked down at the smoking casting circle. I thought about the shriveled strand of hair the investigators had found on Lady Bastet’s lap. If it had belonged to my mother, as I suspected, maybe it explained the timing of the murder.

I repeated the mage’s warning in a whisper: “Leave it, Everson, or you will join others who have waded into matters beyond their purview.”

“What, darling?” Tabitha asked.

…matters beyond their purview, I repeated to myself.

I turned toward Tabitha, speaking quickly. “All this time I’ve been thinking the murder had to do with the wolves or the mayor’s office. But what if the mage killed Lady Bastet for what she’d learned?”

“What in the world are you talking about?” she asked in irritation.

I thought back to the murder scene. The toppled shelves, the decapitated cats, Lady Bastet’s slit throat, and in front of her … the scrying globe! If Lady Bastet had been killed at the conclusion of the divination session, the final images she received might still be in the globe.

I slotted my sword into my staff, grabbed several spell items from my drawers, and made for the ladder.

“Where are you going?” Tabitha asked.

“To ignore a warning,” I said.

17

I descended the steps to Lady Bastet’s former business and found the door secured by a police padlock. I drew my sword and inserted the tip inside the shackle. With a whispered “Vigore,” I cracked one of the shafts from the body and slipped it from the hasp.

I opened the door. Inside, afternoon light fell through the high basement windows in dusty slants. The showroom was clean, the hanging rugs gone, probably in a forensics lab somewhere. For a panicked moment, I became certain the scrying globe would be gone too.

After sensing no one else inside, I sealed the door behind me with a basic locking spell and hurried to the windowless back room. I called light to my staff and exhaled. The globe was there, on the table. The rest of the room had been straightened, shelves righted, the items that had fallen from them swept into a pile. Blood stains still marred the floor, though.

I returned my gaze to the scrying globe. It seemed to absorb the light from my staff, giving nothing back. The orb simply stared, a gray, inscrutable eye.

The chair in which I’d found Lady Bastet was scooted out at a slight angle, as though inviting me to sit. I didn’t sense any traps, but given the power of the mage, and that he seemed to have anticipated my hunting spell, I built a protective circle around the chair before lowering myself onto the seat.

“All right,” I whispered, eyeing the globe. “Let’s see if there’s anything left in your memory.”

I set my sword and staff on the table and pulled two silver candles from my pockets. I lit them and stood them on either side of the globe. Next, I extinguished my staff. As darkness collapsed around the candles, the marble-like surface of the globe shifted. Nothing appeared, though. Scrying required a level of intuition that I lacked, not only to perceive images but to interpret them.

Fortunately, I kept an Elixir of Seeing on hand. It had been drawn from a ’48 batch, which was supposed to have been an especially good year. I pulled the flask from my shirt pocket and drank the bitter potion down.

It didn’t take long to start working. Within minutes, I began to feel insubstantial, ghost-like. A dull pressure built between my eyes while, from the sides of my vision, a dark mist drifted in. The mist thickened until I could no longer see the candles in front of me. With a final, rude gouge, the pressure in the center of my brow relented, and a third eye opened.

The scrying globe hovered in front of me like a misty planet, larger than it had appeared to my physical eyes. Light from the candles glistened over a surface that had begun to swirl. Images flashed forth, talking to me in a strange language—one I could suddenly understand.

Oh, God.

The images were horrifying. But I was no longer just observing them.

I was living them.

I staggered in the center of a pillared room, a woman, pain seething in every part of my body. The metallic tastes of blood and fear stained my palate. Through hanks of sweat-soaked hair, I could see the burning candles that ringed me. Robed figures stood among them.

“Please,” I managed, the word raw in my throat.

Their responding voices rose at once, a single word climbing above the others: “Traitor.”

“No,” I said, searching for a way out.

A force blast caught me in the chest and knocked me back. Breathless, I stumbled to keep my feet. Another blast nailed me between the shoulder blades, pitching me onto my hands and knees. My right collarbone cracked in a harsh flare, and I moaned. The figures swam toward me.

My son, I thought through the haze. Need to stay alive for my son.

“Did you really think you could keep up this shameful duplicity without me finding out?”

I squinted at the tall figure emerging through the others. The face beneath his hood was an ornate gold mask, the eyeholes dark and vacant, open mouth set in a frown. A mask of judgment.

“I did nothing,” I said.

The mage’s black gown shuffled to a stop in front of me. “Nothing?” he scoffed. “You joined the Front as a sworn rebel against tyranny. You pledged your allegiance, your life. Only for us to learn that you’re a plant for the Order.”

I shook my head. “That’s a lie.”

The mage drew a wand. I could smell the elder wood. “Then you shouldn’t have