Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9) by Brad Magnarella (ereader with android .txt) 📕

it the one time and the box wasn’t there. No one else would have touched it.”

Vega fell silent. “I’ll arrange for Tony to spend the week with his cousins,” she said at last, meaning her other brothers, who lived in the Bronx. That was some relief; those three had no problems with me.

“But I’m not leaving,” she finished.

“Ricki, if someone got into my lab, the apartment isn’t safe.”

“Which is why I’m not leaving you there alone. We’ll do whatever we need to do, but it’s going to be together. This marriage thing isn’t a one-way street, buddy. I took the same vows as you.”

“And I thank God for that every day, but we need to—”

“But nothing. That’s it. If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

What could I say? “Then I should probably solve this case.”

“You will,” she said, her voice relaxing a little. “You always do. Let me know what you need from the NYPD. More importantly, tell me what you need from me.”

Amid the wreckage of my fallen theories, I thought about Gretchen’s reminder that I listen to my magic. It had already shown me the flag in Bear Goldburn’s photo, which Vega learned belonged to an explorer’s club in the city.

“What time is that presentation at the Discovery Society?” I asked her.

18

The medical examiner’s was located in the Kips Bay neighborhood. Bree-yark dropped me off and went in search of a late lunch. He offered to bring me back something, and I agreed, not considering what my appetite would be like when I finished.

By the time I arrived in the cold lab, portions of Bear’s stomach contents had been separated into two metal bowls—one holding solids, the other a dark liquid. Even though I was double-masked, the smell hit me in the throat.

Hoffman must have told the examiner I needed to work in private because after confirming I had everything I needed, she disappeared from sight.

I pushed the bowl of solids aside and stared at the liquid for several moments. I was much less confident than when I’d last talked to Hoffman. At the time, I believed that whatever Bear had chugged in Cole’s car contained a magical hallucinogen. But after Vega’s updates, I didn’t know what to believe. The entire timeline of Bear’s final day seemed a mad patchwork of fact and fantasy.

Maybe this’ll clear things up somehow.

Signing into the air, I conjured my cubbyhole and pulled out an alchemy kit. I then went to work, titrating the stomach liquid into a row of glass tubes and adding solutions from various dropper bottles.

On the fourth tube, the liquid began to smoke.

“Well, hello there, lovely,” I whispered, lifting the tube to eye level.

The particular solution was meant to react with rose oil, a base ingredient in certain potions. A small nugget was taking shape at the tube’s bottom. Enough to cast on?

I replaced the tube in its holder and quickly built a casting circle. Using surgical tweezers, I retrieved the crumbly pink nugget and set it at the circle’s center. A couple incantations later, and my cane was inhaling the oil’s essence.

The ingredient may have been common, but once rendered in a potion, it held the caster’s signature. If there was any more potion in the city, my hunting spell would locate it. We’d have our perp.

My cane wiggled toward the stomach liquid. I crossed the room away from the work station, oriented the spell to the outside, and waited for a direction. My cane responded by going still.

Frowning, I rechecked it. The essence was there, but it was too weak, dammit. The hunting spell wasn’t going to give me a direction. Like a transponder, it would only tell me if the potion were close. I tested to see how close by pacing slowly back toward the work station. When my cane wiggled again, I eyed the distance.

In a city of roughly three hundred square miles, I only had to come within fifteen feet of the potion for a hit.

Hoffman was going to love that.

“So what now?” Bree-yark asked as we pulled in front of my apartment.

I peered toward my fourth floor loft and sighed. “I start building golems.”

The thought alone exhausted me. My plan was to shape and animate four lumps of clay—about all I could manage—infuse them with the hunting spell, and deploy them throughout the city. It was a long shot, but I’d promised Hoffman. Maybe one would get lucky, I told him. Which was about as likely as one getting a Broadway audition.

“Need any help?” Bree-yark asked.

“It’s nice of you to offer, but besides being a one-wizard job, it’s super tedious. And you’ve helped me a ton already.”

“Well, call if you head out again.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“Me?” He made a popping sound with his lips. “Dunno, might go catch a movie.”

“You know, Tony is at Mae’s. I’m sure he’d love to see you.”

“They’re up there, huh?” By the way he said it, I could tell he was buying time to think up an excuse.

“What is it?”

“I might’ve told Mae I was gonna be busy all day. She called this morning and asked if I wanted to join her at your place,” he explained. “I was about to say yes, but I got the shakes. It’s the damned proposal thing.”

“Is that why you came looking for me?” I asked, remembering how he’d intercepted me at the college. “To give yourself an excuse to be doing something else?”

He peered at me sidelong. “Maybe.”

“What about Operation Rip?” I said. “You can’t propose to her out of the blue if you keep avoiding her.”

“I know. I’ve just got more to think about now.”

When he glanced at me guiltily, I said, “No. Not Gretchen.”

“She looked good, right?”

“Bree-yark, listen to me. This is your panic talking. It’s casting around for any excuse to bail you out, and right now it’s seized on your ex. Sure, she looked … better, but it’s like lipstick on a rhino. She’s horrible. The only reason she’s making any effort right