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

My insides twisted up. A mind flaying would entail a level of pain beyond anything physically imaginable. It would lay bare everything—not only my infiltration of the Front, but my true feelings for my son. I had acted as if he were a mistake, a nuisance to be tolerated.

Struggling to my feet, I faced the mage. “I will submit to nothing.”

“Then you are admitting guilt.”

“If that’s what you want to believe.”

“It’s the truth, traitor,” he said. “And you know the penalty.”

I stared past the eyeholes of his mask, defiant. “Do your worst.”

With a grunted Word, he thrust his wand toward me. The force threw me against a stone pillar, knocking the wind from me. He spoke another Word and vines snaked up through cracks in the floor. I was too stunned to move. Could only watch as the vines encircled my legs, my broken body, binding me to the pillar. They wrapped my throat and squeezed until I gagged.

The mage moved closer. “It didn’t have to end this way, Eve.”

From a great distance, I flinched at hearing my mother’s name.

The mage turned toward the other robed figures, fellow magic-users. “Behold the penalty for treachery,” he announced. I imagined a hard grin forming behind his mask. “Death by fire.”

No, I thought as the woman.

Though my eyes remained fixed on the mage, I saw my son’s face. He had just turned one. The week before, he had taken his first steps, spoken his first coherent sentence: Mama, read me. Such a smart boy.

A crushing sadness filled my heart at the knowledge he would never know me. Not really. I had already discussed the contingency with my parents. My mother would love him as her own. My father would protect him. The Order would look after him as well…

“Fuoco!” the mage shouted.

Dark red flames sprang up around me and glistened in the mage’s gold mask until he looked like something demonic. Soon, the flames hid his face, and there was only pain.

I love you, Everson, I felt my mother’s cracking lips whisper.

I landed against the cold floor with a gasp. The room was dark, my shirt soaked with sweat. I pawed around until I encountered the stone table and pulled myself to my feet. The globe stood from the darkness, its surface dimming. The candles on either side had burned to their nubs and gone out, the puddles of wax cool and firm when I touched them.

How long was I out?

I stared at the spent candles, remembering the fire from my vision. It had consumed me. No—consumed my mother. I had relived the agony and sorrow of her final moments, felt her vanishing love for me. The experience—too raw to put into words—tore around my insides.

Arnaud had been telling the truth. I believed now that my grandfather had gone to him after my mother’s death and said the words, They killed her. My God, they killed her. My mother had been murdered by a rebel group she had managed to infiltrate. Had been burned alive by their presumed leader, a mage with a gold mask whose voice I recognized.

A scuff sounded from the showroom.

I seized my sword and cane from the table and spun. The sun had set while I’d been entranced; the showroom was now cast in dark shadows. Another scuff sounded: someone trying to exercise stealth. Either the locking magic on the front door had petered out or someone had dispelled it.

Heart slamming, I moved to one side of the door in the rear room and pressed my back to the wall. My mother’s executioner was still alive. He had murdered Lady Bastet to keep his deed a secret. He had hijacked my hunting spell and spoken through Tabitha to warn me not to pursue the matter. That was where I’d recognized the mage’s voice from.

Another scuff.

My lips trembled in fury as I summoned energy to my prism. You screwed with the wrong wizard family, you son of a bitch. Whatever happens, you’re going to know pain. Even if it kills me.

A dark shape entered the doorway.

“Entrapolarle!” I bellowed, swinging my staff around.

White light burst from the opal, and a crackling shield encased a figure. I slammed the figure against the near wall and raised my sword overhead. The sound of muted gunshots stayed my arm. As the shield dimmed, I found myself staring at Detective Vega. She stared back with startled eyes.

“Croft?” she shouted, eyebrows crushing down.

I released her and called light to my staff. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

“No,” she said, emerging through the sparks of the dissolving shield, “that’s my question.”

I glanced back at the globe before meeting her gaze. “I was looking for something.”

“You broke in here,” she said.

“Yeah.”

The confession seemed to catch her off guard. Her dark eyes searched my face, pausing on the healing claw marks.

“Do you want to tell me what the hell’s going on?” she asked.

With a steadying breath, I sheathed my sword. “It wasn’t the wolves.”

“What?”

“The wolves didn’t kill Lady Bastet.”

“That’s what you’re doing in here?” She holstered her firearm and took a menacing step forward. “Listen to me, Croft, and listen good. You may advise the Hundred, but that does not give you jurisdiction to investigate any old murder you just happen to take an interest in.”

Fresh anger burned inside me. “Any old murder? Let’s see, a powerful mystic was executed on the same day I just happened to drop off something for her to read. Excuse me for taking a goddamned interest.”

“I told you we’d be in touch.”

“Yeah, to blow me off,” I shot back.

“For your information”—Vega jabbed a finger against my chest—“I already eliminated the wolf angle. Nothing linked them to the murder. I moved onto a substance we found on the mutilated cats, but I guess your informant already told you that,” she added with a sneer.

She knew about my arrangement with Hoffman. I steeled my jaw.

“I get that you think I’m a novice when it comes to the supernatural,”