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

I heard Lazlo’s voice from years before. A wizard who cannot cast is a dead wizard.

Leaning my arms against the door, I inhaled through my nose and exhaled through pursed lips. I recited my centering mantra.

After several cycles, I saw it wasn’t going to work. Arnaud had siphoned out too much of me. The distance between where I stood and where I needed to be remained too vast.

Arnaud was the bridge, and unless he commanded it, I couldn’t cast.

I straightened and pulled my coin pendant from beneath the collar of my shirt. I ran my thumb over the symbol. It was the first magical item of his Grandpa had given me, the only one he’d given me while still alive. I’d acquired the sword and ring after his death—and managed to lose both, I thought bitterly. Right now, the ring’s loss was the more damning.

The coin’s metal pulsed warmly in my hand.

As I considered its round shape, I thought about Grandpa’s penchant for acquiring things in pairs: tools, slippers, straight razors. To have an immediate replacement, my grandmother had said.

What about the Brasov Pact? Grandpa hadn’t owned a second ring, but he would have wanted a backup. My thumb made another pass over the symbol. The coin could cast light and protect against lesser beings. Might Grandpa have also instilled it with the power of the Pact? It was the only other wearable ornament he’d possessed.

As though in answer, the coin let out another pulse.

Hope kicked inside me. Yes, the enchantment was buried, but it was in there! I could feel it! It was just a matter of manifesting enough magic to access the enchantment, to release its power.

“Illuminare,” I said, concentrating into the coin. I waited for several moments before repeating the word. But no energy stirred. No light shone forth. The vault remained as dark as my situation.

I twisted off the fake ring Arnaud had given me and threw it with all of my strength. “Goddammit!” I shouted, the echoes seeming to chase the clattering ring around the vault before both fell silent. With my back to the door, I slid to the vault floor, landing with a rustle of chainmail.

Another troll’s scream pierced the vault.

I closed my eyes. Backup or no backup, I was powerless to cast. The vampire had won.

Checkmate.

I could search the vault in the hopes of finding something to use as a weapon. Perhaps the iron trunk the shadow fiend had emerged from. I could stand to one side of the door and await Arnaud’s return. I could bring the trunk down on his head, or attempt to. And it would all be for nothing. At every turn, Arnaud had been a dozen steps ahead of me. He’d enticed me, repelled me, vexed me, possessed me—all moves in a complex dance that he’d been leading the entire time. He hadn’t come this far to be foiled by a box on his head.

Exhaling, I muttered, “Trust in the one you trust least.”

I cast back to that final moment with Lady Bastet. I remembered the feel of the stone table beneath my forearms, the tendrils of incense in the air, the strand of my mother’s hair. I remembered Lady Bastet staring into me, losing herself so completely that she didn’t remember the experience. Could she have erred? Gotten her signals crossed? Trust in the one you trust least. From the mouth of an oracle. And the one I trusted least was Arnaud. Zero doubt.

But that’s not what Lady Bastet had said, I realized. Not exactly.

In my memory, I watched her violet lips shape the message. Trust in the one your heart trusts least.

Yes, that’s what she’d said. Heart. And that one word changed everything. The divination no longer fit Arnaud Thorne, but it conformed perfectly to my feelings for Caroline Reid. Caroline was the one I was supposed to have trusted—the one who had been offering to help me the whole time.

I kicked the floor in disgust.

Tabitha had been right. I’d let my wounded heart play foil. I was so hell bent on punishing Caroline for choosing Angelus and the fae over me, that I slammed the door on her offer, on her.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The words weren’t just meant for Caroline, who had always helped me—how could I have forgotten that? The apology was also for my mother, who had sacrificed her life for my future. It was for my grandfather, who had protected me in ways I still couldn’t quite understand. My self-disgust took on the ponderous weight of disappointment.

I had failed them. And in doing so, I’d unleashed a frigging shadow fiend.

I’d also lost any chance at retribution against my mother’s killer, the head of a group that could still be plotting against the Order.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, the darkness swallowing my voice.

I sighed and touched the coin dangling from my neck. Whatever warmth I’d imagined emanating from the metal earlier was gone. I began to tuck it back inside my shirt—and froze.

Ed.

A strangled laugh escaped my throat.

Ed! My golem! The one I’d animated to follow Hoffman. He could still be out there, the amulet that powered him dangling from his clay neck. When did Hoffman say he’d seen him? A week ago?

I stood and paced in a circle, not wanting to get too excited, but not wanting to release the slender hope, either. As my golem, Ed would be accessible to me. That didn’t require magic, just focus.

A kaleidoscope of colors danced before my eyes as I sat in my centering pose. It was a long shot—I hadn’t expected Ed to hold out for more than a few days. But hadn’t a rover or two tooled over the Mars surface years beyond their life expectancies? I was mixing robotics and magic in my thinking, sure, but still … I needed Ed to have that same plucky resilience.

I took a calming breath, closed my eyes, and focused on my creation.

A moment later, the world lurched into motion.

“…matter of finding