Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8) by Brad Magnarella (best e reader for academics txt) 📕

is compromised. I can’t discern friend from foe, and Osgood is no longer under my orders.”

I turned the stone over in my fingers. Who to trust? Caroline or Angelus?

When I glanced over at Bree-yark, he appeared as baffled as I felt.

“I know our past is … complicated,” Caroline said, “but I need you to trust me. As your friend.”

She was suddenly right in front of me. Her touch was gentle, even as she drew my hand from my pocket. An instant before the stone came into view, I let it tumble from my fingers, back into the well of fabric.

“Friend?” I said. “We haven’t spoken in years.”

Instead of replying, she gazed at my hand, turning it one way, then the other. The white knob of bone still showed where the rotten skin had fallen from my fifth knuckle. Concern lines creased her brow.

“Banshee?” she asked.

“Yeah, in the Kinloch Forest.”

A warm force spread across my hand, thinning away the healing magic I’d applied. The damaged tissue suddenly felt raw and exposed. Caroline brought my hand to her stomach, folding her own hands over it.

“The purging will be harsh,” she said, “but you must not pull away.”

She was handling me with the familiarity of an intimate. And that was the problem. She looked and felt like the Caroline Reid I remembered. Almost human. But in the next moment, a dark throb of pain stole my breath. I felt the banshee curse spreading, eating through the rest of my hand, laying bare veins, muscles, bones. Sweat sprang from my brow, and I braced my teeth against a scream.

“Everson?” Bree-yark said from the doorway. “You all right?”

I was on the verge of tearing the hand away—the throbbing had deepened until I could hardly stand it. But Caroline pursed her lips and sent a soothing current of air into her cupped hands. The pain abated. When she separated her palms, my own hand was whole again. I raised it, flexing my fingers and then turned it over to inspect the knuckles. The skin was restored, smooth as a newborn’s.

She had healed me.

“You’re fortunate you caught it when you did,” she said. “The banshee’s curse nearly entered your bloodstream. Had the poison reached your heart, you would have joined the undead in the Fae Wilds.”

“Not exactly how I was planning to spend retirement,” I muttered. “Thanks.”

Her soft smile lulled me once more into the illusion of our former friendship. We could have been at our favorite Midtown deli, but the fact was we were standing next to the body of a murdered fae. Smoke continued to wisp from his eye sockets.

“There is another way to get there,” Caroline said.

I looked over to find her gazing at Crusspatch too.

“And what’s that?”

“Arnaud Thorne.”

The name landed like a shot in my gut.

“I know how that must sound,” she said. “But he—”

I swung my cane toward her and shouted, “Disfare!”

Holy power blasted the length of the cane, swallowing Caroline in a cone of white light. I’d been fifty-fifty on the odds of her being demon possessed. But her “solution” to accessing the time catch had just tipped those odds to ninety-ten in favor. A banishment attack would settle the question.

Bree-yark stepped into the room, one hand shielding his eyes, the other clutching his blade. I listened past the blast for screams, but all I heard was the flapping of her cloak. After another moment, I recalled the power. Dimness returned to our space, and Caroline was standing where she’d been, golden hair fluttering back over her settling cloak. No sign the invocation had harmed her.

“Satisfied?” she asked.

Bree-yark looked from her to me as I lowered my cane.

“Why Arnaud?” I asked.

“He has a direct line to the time catch. Malphas made it so for all his demons.”

“How do you know that?”

“Osgood. He left the information for me to find.”

“And only two demons remain,” I said, catching on. “Arnaud and the one who infiltrated the fae.”

“Yes. Which is why I’m going with you this time.”

I blinked at the unexpectedness of her announcement.

“You were correct in your letter,” she said. “The plans of the demon Malphas threaten Faerie. Indeed, it’s already begun. I have an interest in what happens. But once Malphas discovers you’ve re-entered the time catch, he’ll send the final demon to stop you. One who wields fae powers. He’ll be too formidable for you alone.”

“He won’t be alone,” Bree-yark said, stepping up beside me.

The gesture warmed me as I turned back to Caroline. “So you know this fae?”

“Well enough,” she said.

“Royalty?”

“Yes.”

And someone pretty high up if he’d managed to turn Angelus against his own wife, but I didn’t say that. I was thinking more about the nauseating prospect of having to bargain with Arnaud and what he would demand in exchange. A process that had the very real potential of turning Vega against me.

“Short of his freedom, Arnaud’s not going to agree to help us,” I said.

Caroline’s irises darkened, and power stirred behind them. “He won’t have a choice.”

“You can do that? I mean, access his connection to the time catch?” I had known advanced fae possessed the ability to repurpose portals for their own use, but I hadn’t guessed Caroline to be that far along. She must have cultivated some damned powerful contacts in Faerie, just as she had in our world.

“If he’s subdued,” she replied, “yes.”

Though she didn’t say it, I picked up a suggestion of that’s where you come in.

“All right, assuming we go the Arnaud route,” I said, a part of me wanting to vomit on the words, “there’s the little problem of returning to our world. You said yourself that the portals between here and there are being watched, and I can vouch for the speediness of the reaction force.”

I remembered how quickly Angelus and his fellow roc-riders had arrived. That had worked to our benefit the last time, but if Caroline was telling the truth—and after the failed banishment attack, I was leaning much more toward the idea she was—I doubted another run-in with