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

your mother, of course. Fortunately, the qualities of the two are different enough that I’ve been able to set up a process that will distill out your mother’s portion. Once that process is complete, I’ll add an enhancer and re-infuse the blood back into you. For a time, your magical aura will be a dead ringer for Marlow’s.”

“He won’t be able to sense me?” I asked, thinking about the hunting spell I’d cast a couple of weeks before. A hunting spell Marlow had detected and counterspelled, possessing Tabitha in the process. With three fingers, I traced the healed claw marks along my right cheek.

“No,” Chicory confirmed. “You’ll be able to penetrate whatever defenses he’s employed and enter his domain unscathed.” He hesitated for a beat. “Again, assuming he’s your father.”

“And once I’m inside?”

“Well, ah…” He coughed into his fist. “We’ll have a plan, of course.”

“Which is?”

Chicory grumbled for a moment before his eyes seemed to sparkle with an idea. “You said you wanted to get on with your training? Advance to something a little more challenging?”

“Yeah…” I answered carefully.

“Well, I think I have just the thing.”

He bustled away from the table and returned a moment later with a badly refolded map. He spread it over the table, knocking some of the cane parts onto the floor. My molars ground together as I stood and came around. The map showed a grid of Manhattan, circa 1930.

“A bit outdated,” I remarked.

“Here,” he said, tapping a brown square just north of Central Park.

I read the label. “Grace Cathedral?”

“They have a robe on exhibit believed to have been worn by John the Baptist. In fact, it belonged to a Franciscan monk who came along some centuries later, but the point here is that the robe is special. You see, this monk was a descendant of Saint Michael’s, but never told. An oversight by the Order, no doubt. In any case, he was an ascetic who took a vow of silence early in his career. For more than half a century, he walked softly and said not a word. It got to the point that his fellow monks were barely even aware he existed.”

“And those qualities became instilled in the robe,” I said, guessing the rest.

“Exactly, and can be bestowed upon the wearer.” He looked pointedly at me.

“Wait, you’re asking me to steal the robe from the church?”

“Borrow it,” Chicory countered. “We’ll put a duplicate in its place so as not to alarm anyone. When you complete your mission, we’ll return the original.”

“If I complete my mission. But what happened to all of your highbrow talk about following the rules? Acting responsibly? Not taking stupid risks? Doesn’t this sort of fly in the face of that?”

“Acting responsibly as a wizard,” Chicory said. “You’re not being asked to summon or perform dark magic. To the contrary, you’re obtaining an item in the service of opposing such magic. An item that belongs just as much to the Order as to the Church, after all.”

I considered that for a moment. “And if I’m caught?”

“Well, that’s sort of the point of the exercise, isn’t it? To not let that happen.”

I sighed. I had just gotten back into the good graces of the city and press, not to mention Detective Vega. And now Chicory was suggesting I return to Manhattan and commit grand larceny. “Do I even need the robe?” I asked. “Why can’t I just mix a stealth potion?”

Chicory’s eyebrows seemed to bristle as he glared up at me. “Because stealth potions wear off, and then mentors have to get involved.” I remembered him rescuing me from the band of angry druids in north Central Park the year before. “Not true for magical artifacts,” he finished.

“I don’t have my sword and staff.” I looked dismally at the scattered parts.

“I’ll give you a wand that’s ready for use. Less obtrusive and it won’t set off the metal detectors.”

The wand was among several magical items that had come into the vampire Arnaud’s possession. Following the vampire’s demise, I acquired the items from the NYPD and gave them to Chicory for cleaning and redistributing. I still hadn’t mentioned Arnaud’s story about Grandpa stealing artifacts from fellow magic-users during the war against the Inquisition. I didn’t fully believe the story and wanted to check it out for myself—assuming the Death Mage didn’t kill me first. My more immediate concern, though, was staying out of jail.

“Well, what about the church threshold?” I said lamely. “It’s not going to care for my, you know, companion.”

“Who?”

“Thelonious, my incubus.”

“Hmm, then you better get an invite,” Chicory replied, refolding the map. The ungainly way he went about the job, ripping several of the seams, didn’t give me much hope for my cane.

“How?” I asked.

“That’s for you to figure out. Again, part of the point of the exercise.”

“Great,” I muttered.

3

When Detective Vega raised her eyes from the scatter of files across her desk, the sharp concentration lines that converged in the center of her brow let out slightly. “Croft,” she said. “What’s up?”

I showed her a plain cup of coffee I’d bought from a street vendor and placed it on the corner of her desk. “Gourmet roast.”

She smiled wryly. “Thanks.”

“Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“Other than between a stabbing in Spanish Harlem and a double murder in Chelsea?” Fatigue weighed on her face when she shrugged. “At least we know it’s not ghouls. Do you have something for me besides coffee?”

I noticed that several files on the right side of her desk were for the Lady Bastet murder investigation. Officially, the mystic’s murder remained an open case. I had promised to keep Vega in the loop on my end of things, which was the least I could do after the help she’d given me that summer. At some point she and I had stopped being adversaries and become allies. She had even introduced me to her son the last time I’d seen her.

“Well, sort of part update, part request,” I said.

She frowned as she smoothed back