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

“Fine,” he grunted. “But I’m keeping an eye on this.”

I walked outside and found Caroline in the front yard. She had placed a crescent gem on a small mound of earth. The white gem with glinting flakes looked a little like mica, but if it was indeed a lunar door, it wielded the power of an ancient fae god. I looked from the gem to the tops of the trees, where an enormous Faerie moon glowed silver-white.

“The time is nearing,” she said.

I stepped toward her. “I’ve come to a decision. I’ll return with you to our world, but I need to consult with someone before we go any further with this.”

“Whom?”

“Detective Vega. My fiancée.”

I hadn’t proposed to her yet, but that title resonated more strongly than girlfriend.

“Congratulations, and very well.” Something flashed across Caroline’s glamoured visage, but it was too fast for me to interpret. “I’ll ask something in return, then.”

“What’s that?”

“That you leave behind the stone my husband gave you.”

Damn, she sensed it. I reached into my pocket and palmed the calling stone, my insurance. If Caroline wasn’t herself, I could be chucking my one solid line of aid. Bree-yark was clearly thinking the same, because when I glanced over, he shook his head. I turned the stone over in my fingers several times.

“The kingdom is using it to track you,” Caroline said. “They’ll know you’ve returned to your world and that you had help. They’ll connect the dots back to me. I admit, it’s for my safety as much as yours.”

Was the stone acting like a GPS device, sending the kingdom my whereabouts? With my magic mute on the question, I went with my gut again. I pulled the translucent stone from my pocket and tossed it aside.

Bree-yark grumbled, but having made my decision, I felt better.

Caroline tilted her face back. I followed her gaze to the moon. It orbited faster in Faerie than on Earth and had nearly cleared the trees. Off toward the lake, I picked up the gleeful singing of sprites, but Caroline must have cast a protection, because their song had no ill effect. As the shadows of treetops withdrew from the yard and more moonlight moved in, the crescent gem began to glimmer.

“The portal will open here,” Caroline said, gesturing to the concave side of the gem.

Foot by foot, the moon’s radiance overtook the yard. When it reached the mound, the gem seemed to absorb the glow until it was emitting the same light as the moon itself, only more brightly.

“There,” Caroline said.

Indeed, a shadow was opening in the mound on the concave side of the gem.

“You may enter now,” she said. “I’ll need to go last to recover the lunar door.”

“If you’re playing some kind of game, lady…” Bree-yark grumbled.

“I assure you, I’ll be right behind you.”

The goblin gave me a doubtful look, but I nodded for him to go ahead. He stepped into the shadow with Dropsy and disappeared. Before following him, I peered back at Caroline. She’d restored her own visage just enough that her blue-green eyes glimmered back at me. Maybe it was an effect of the moonlight, but there was something in the look that recalled the late night she’d come to my apartment.

I dropped my gaze to the portal before my feet.

Hope you know what the hell you’re doing, Croft.

Then I entered too.

16

A cold, splintering rain stung my hands and face as I staggered for balance across hard pavement. The enchanted moonlit yard was gone. In its place swirled brick walls and an odor of decomposing garbage.

“Whoa, there,” Bree-yark said, grabbing my arm in one of his large hands.

I splashed through a puddle before coming to a stop, but it took another moment for the vertigo to wind down. I’d gone through four portals that day, five if I counted Gretchen dropping us behind the Met, and my brain and stomach were telling me that was at least four too many. This time we’d ended up in a narrow alleyway at night, a chain-link fence at one end and a dimly lit street at the other.

“Any idea where we are?” Bree-yark asked, water dripping from his jutting brow.

I swallowed my nausea and tuned into my wizard’s senses. “Judging by the ley energy, somewhere in the upper half of the city.”

“Yeah, and judging by the smell, not the ritzy part.”

Dropsy rotated in Bree-yark’s grip as though trying to get her own bearings. Fog plumed from her glass face. I peered up to see if I could spot any familiar landmarks, but the buildings on either side were too tall. The arrangements of their windows suggested apartments. A low cloud ceiling drifted past our wedge of sky, the moon glowing dimly beyond. Compared to Faerie’s version, it looked sad and puny.

“Damn,” I muttered.

“What?” Bree-yark asked.

“I told Vega not to worry about me until seven tonight, and it’s probably past that.”

The lunar door must have sent us through time as well as space to line up with the moon’s position here. When I pushed back my sleeve and found a naked wrist, I remembered I’d left my watch in Bree-yark’s vehicle, along with my cellphone.

“So where’s Goldilocks?” Bree-yark asked.

“If she said she’s coming, she’s coming,” I replied testily.

“Hey, I’m not trying to start anything. I’ve just had enough dealings with the fae in my hundred-odd years to be, you know, thoroughly distrustful of them. Then you throw in a demon’s involvement—”

“Yeah, I get it.”

I stepped away from him and tuned into my wizard’s senses again. A pink orb swam into view. Fae nexus, I thought. Much like the wards my Order maintained throughout the city, the orb was one of several focal points of fae power. Glamoured, it was so transparent as to be nearly invisible. But it was clearly active.

I returned to Bree-yark bearing a steaming neutralizing potion. “There’s a fae ward here,” I said. “Caroline probably needed it as a focus for the portal, but it could be chatting with its neighbors.”

“Told you I didn’t like