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

When Vega left the room, I lowered myself to where she’d been keeping vigil and released a shaky breath. I’d kept it from her, but I was rattled to the core. She was right. There was nothing stopping the perp from casting me back to the shadow present, an even darker, more dangerous place than I’d let on.

A place where I’d nearly died.

But with the fear came a growing anger. By targeting me, the perp was threatening to make a widow of my wife, a fatherless child of my future daughter. And that thought pissed me off more than anything. When my hands ached, I realized I’d drawn them into fists. I pushed myself up again.

You want to duel, I thought at the perp. Let’s fucking duel.

25

I had to force Vega to take a nap while I worked in my lab. We were both spent, but her rest was more important, and I had a lot to do and not much time.

While beakers bubbled over burners, I ran another hunting spell on the potion that had been in Bear Goldburn’s stomach. I siphoned a share of the essence into my cane and distributed the rest between a pair of amulets. I would be delivering one to Sunita Sharma and the other to Walter Mims. The NYPD had already contacted them, explained the danger, and told them to stay home. Cars were watching both places. So far, the two were complying.

With my potions needing another few minutes to reduce, I called Gretchen.

“What?” she answered.

“First, thanks for the healing last night. I feel a lot better.”

“Well, it wasn’t pleasant. You looked like something that got chewed up and shat out.”

“Nice. Though I have to say, that’s not far from what nearly happened.”

Knowing her short attention span, I gave her the Cliff’s Notes version of events. I’d apparently caught her in the middle of breakfast, because she smacked, slurped, and burped throughout my account.

“A Cerberus, huh?” she said, releasing a final belch.

“You’re still helping on the case, right? I need to know a couple things. Mainly, how the perp shifted me to the shadow present. When you healed me, did you feel anything?”

“I felt a few things,” she said coyly, “but it was completely necessary, I assure you. Anything energetic, though?” She cycled through her thinking noises. “Now that you mention it, there was a silver tint I thought odd. I just figured it was a residue from one of your spells. You’ve always been a slob in that department.”

I tried to access it, but I couldn’t feel anything. “Would you mind checking it out?”

“Sure,” she said, surprising me to the point of suspicion. “I have a few errands to run, but I’ll look for you as soon as I’m done. You said you needed to know a couple things. Is there a number two?”

“Yeah, do you know of any rituals that use livers, kidneys, and other purifying organs?”

“Hmm, not sure about rituals, but I once used them in a tasty quiche. Had to double up on the seasoning, though.”

“I’m talking about human organs.”

“Well, those came from an owl bear. I remember because it involved grating the beak for thickener. Boy, I really had to put my shoulder into that. Things are like rocks.”

“Getting back to the ritual, is that something you could look into? I’d do it myself, but I’m desperately short on time.”

Not only did I have to prepare for any future leaps into the shadow present, I needed to deny our perp any more organs, and that meant getting to the remaining two fellows, like an hour ago. As much as I was burning to find and hammer the killer, I needed to set up my defensive pieces first.

“I’ll try to have some info when I come,” Gretchen said, surprising me a second time. “Will Bree-yark be there?”

And there it was, the reason she was being so helpful.

“I’m not sure,” I lied as a knock sounded downstairs.

Gretchen heard it too. “Is that Bree-yark?”

“I’ve gotta go. Thanks again for your help.”

I ended the call and climbed down from the lab to answer the door. Tabitha, who didn’t appear to have budged since the day before, squinted at me from her divan.

“What’s a girl have to do to get a few calories around here?”

“I’ll be happy to take your goat’s milk out of the fridge, but you’ll have to heat it up.”

“God,” she complained. “With this place wall-to-wall, you’d think someone would make themselves useful.”

I answered the door to find Bree-yark carrying a brand new trench coat in the crook of his elbow and clutching a plastic shopping bag.

“Thanks a lot, man,” I said, taking both items off him and jerking my head for him to enter.

He craned his stout neck as if to ensure the coast was clear before crossing the threshold. “Boy, am I happy to see you up and about!” he said, clapping my shoulder hard enough to knock me off balance. But his expression quickly turned stern. “You were supposed to call me when you headed out again.”

“Sorry, I ran out of time. Barely made it to the Discovery Society myself.”

I checked the receipts of the items he’d bought and pulled several twenties from my wallet. When he tried to refuse them, I tucked the folded bills into the breast pocket of his denim overalls. He started to pull them out, then appeared to think better of it. His pension from the goblin army barely got him through the month.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Nah, I grabbed a pizza on the way over. Hey, Tabby!”

“Hi,” she said, disconsolately. “Sorry, but that’s all I have the energy for.”

“Yeah, ’cause you’ve been cooped up inside this place too long,” he said. “Everson and I are going on a couple house calls. Wanna come?”

I made a throat-slashing gesture—time was of the essence, and the last thing we needed was forty pounds of attitude weighing us down—but Bree-yark didn’t catch on. He strode to the divan and stood over