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

gone to Faerie with Angelus, and subsequently married him, Vega and I had been following a trail of Arnaud leads to recover her son. Throughout the night, I’d taken intermittent stabs at locating Caroline. At one point I’d even had Vega check to see if anyone had filed a missing person’s report on her. Though I’d never spelled out our relationship to her that night—which was at least a year before Vega and I got personal—she would have seen my anguish. She would have guessed that Caroline and I were close, if not involved.

Vega gave me a look now that was hard to read.

“We found her in Faerie,” I hurried to explain. “Or rather, she found us.”

“I have interests in the time catch too,” Caroline said. “And Everson’s right. Arnaud is our last recourse.”

“What does Arnaud get in exchange?” Vega asked.

“This.” I made a zero with my thumb and first two fingers. “The line to the time catch is embedded in his demonic makeup. We don’t need his consent to access it. We just need him to be with us.”

“To get there and back?” she said dryly. “And how do you plan to manage that?”

“Portable wards,” I said. “They’ll keep him cut off from the demonic realm.”

“And if he escapes?”

“He won’t,” Caroline said. “He’ll be under our power.”

One of Vega’s eyebrows went up. “Our?”

“The demon trap will be reinforced with fae enchantments,” I said. “Caroline here is fae,” I added awkwardly.

Vega’s lips pursed into a tight smile. “Everson, honey. Can I talk to you?”

I nodded at Caroline to tell her she could return to the cell. I wondered now why she’d come out in the first place. To help? She may have sensed the tension between Vega and me, prompting the intervention. Though now that I thought about it, she’d more likely acted out of self-interest. She wanted to speed things along.

Vega moved off a couple steps, then turned to face me.

“I thought you said the fae had been compromised,” she whispered.

“Yeah, someone high up in fae royalty. But when Caroline saw it happening, she left the kingdom, went into hiding.”

“And you know this how? Because she told you?”

“Because what she told me lines up with what I’ve observed.”

“And now she’s telling you the only way to get into this time catch is to free Arnaud.”

“He won’t be free. He—”

“Yeah, I know. He’ll be in portable wards with fae enchantments for ‘reinforcement.’” She air-quoted the word. “Her fae enchantments. How do you know they won’t be undermining your magic?”

She was sounding more and more like Bree-yark.

“You’re going to hate this answer,” I said, “but I just know.”

“Everson, she’s fae. You’ve never brought them up without using your next breath to list all the reasons why they can’t be trusted.”

When I caught Bree-yark nodding his head, I moved our conversation farther away.

“Look, you’re right to be suspicious,” I said. “Most fae are exactly how I’ve described them. But Caroline’s human side tempers that. We’re also … old friends. She was the one working behind the scenes to get the Upholders and me into the time catch.”

“Should I be worried you never mentioned that?”

“Oh c’mon, of course not. I just didn’t think the name meant anything to you.”

She studied my eyes for a moment. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“About Caroline?”

“About anything.”

Geez, where to begin? I was riffling through all that had happened that day—from my talk with Arnaud, to my vision of Malphas, to the pixies’ warning, to my encounters with Angelus and then Caroline—when I blurted out, “I think there’s another reason we’re supposed to take Arnaud into the time catch.”

“Another awful one?”

But her cynical remark barely registered. My words had arrived on the crest of an epiphany, and now the rest of it was crashing through me. I began pacing to compose my thoughts. “In that dream, Arianna told me the key to releasing her and the other members of the Order was to find Arnaud, right?”

“Mm-hmm,” Vega said impatiently.

“While waiting for some kind of follow-up message, I’ve been trying to get back to the time catch to find the Upholders. When I went to Gretchen for that help this morning, I told her Faerie was threatened. But when that failed to move her, I claimed the key to defeating Malphas and freeing the Order was in the time catch. I was talking completely out of my backside…”

Vega gave me a deadpan look that said, Really?

“But,” I thrust up a finger, “my magic agreed. It’s been in this weird, almost meditative state all day. But when I said that, it suddenly snapped to and nodded. I think that’s what Arianna meant when she told me to find Arnaud. Because she knew I’d need him to return to the time catch, where I can also help the Order.”

Vega’s brow furrowed. “But didn’t the dream happen before you even went into the time catch the first time?”

“It did, but our collective magic isn’t bound by limited constructs of time and space. None of us can access the extent of our magic’s intelligence, but Arianna comes closest. She was relaying what it was telling her.”

“I still have a lot to learn about your world,” Vega muttered.

“So if my read on this is right, we have a shot at the Upholders, the Order, and stopping Malphas.”

“You’ve got that manic light going in your eyes again.”

“Which should tell you how strongly I feel about this.” Because the more I considered it, the more sense it made. Increasingly, the thought of using Arnaud to access the time catch felt less like a problem and more like a grand and elegant solution. I just hoped Vega would see it the same way.

She sighed. “Fine.”

I took her hands and squeezed. “Thank you.”

“But I do have a condition,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Regardless of whether or not you’re right, the first thing you’re going to do when you get back is destroy Arnaud. No discussion. No debate. I want his ass smoked. He can’t be in our