Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (detective books to read txt) 📕

Queen Hagatha’s castle make the wards and enchantments at my cousin’s school look rustic in comparison.”

“I thought that the Headmaster was supposed to be one of the most badass mages around?” I asked.

Leah led me down a winding lane, toward a cafe letting off scrumptious smells of baked goods and strong coffee. Our boot heels rapped smartly on the clean cobbles of the lane, while overhead a few cursory flakes of snow drifted down from the sky.

“Reggie is one of the cleverest clogs practitioners of the magical arts in Avalonia,” Leah said, making a beeline for a table in the corner. “But the Queen’s defenses are powered and maintained by dozens of lesser skilled mages. Reggie just doesn’t have the time or the attention span to do anything like that at the Mazirian Academy. Not that he would need to either.”

Leah made it to a table just as a sinewy elf and a pretty lamia—a demon-like creature with the torso of a woman and the body of a snake below her waist—arrived at the table too. Without preamble, Leah kicked one of her boots off so that it landed in the seat that the elf was just about to pull out.

“Dibs!” she said, smiling widely at the lamia, who gave her a look that could have curdled fresh milk.

The elf looked at her with annoyed disdain. “Some people…”

Leah swept out a chair and sat herself down at the table, crossing her bootless foot over the booted one.”I’m just calling this chair,” she said, wiggling her toes at the skinny elf. “You’re more than welcome to share the table with us, though I will warn you that I am an acquired taste, so if you’re not fond of me now, it’s probably better that you run along and acquire some taste.”

The lamia sneered and hissed something in a tongue that I did not understand. She and the elf moved on.

I snorted and shook my head. “Well, I’m pretty stumped then,” I said, taking a seat as Leah pulled on her boot. “What's our next move?”

“A bit of breakfast,” Leah said. “As sure as eggs is eggs, we could do with some eggs.”

I nodded my assent.

As much as Leah liked to give the impression that she was just playing things by ear, I knew her finely balanced, mercurial Chaosbane mind already had a ruse or stratagem. Hopefully one that would be more successful than the last.

“And, after eggs?” I asked patiently.

“Then we use another route,” Leah said casually. “There’s a special entrance, see. Located in a very special part of Manafell. Where you get the good gear, the royal gear, the gear that’ll make the hairs on your chest grow hairs on their chests.”

“Why don’t we get going, then? I’m not really that hungry. I’d rather—”

Leah raised a finger and placed it on my lips. She stared at me out of sparkling eyes full of vibrancy, despite their dark shade of chocolate brown. She might’ve been missing a few buttons off her shirt, mentally speaking, but she sure was a looker.

“A good breakfast is the key beginning to any adventure, Justin,” the pink-haired young woman said, in a fantastic impression of the bustling matron from a Dickens novel. “Hope make a good breakfast, as does sex, but if you can’t get your mitts on either of those two, then eggs served sunny side sideways are a good third option.”

“Sunny side sideways…” I muttered.

“Right,” Leah said. “When we’re fed and watered and feeling like everything is above board once more, sweet-cheeks, then I’ll take you to the place where we can go down on Manafell.”

Leah licked her lips and blew me a small kiss.

“This is going to be a goddamn shitshow, isn’t it?” I said, my stomach squirming with excitement.

“This,” Leah said, “is going to be fun.”

Chapter 10

We stood in the middle of a fetid and reeking alleyway, flanked by crumbling buildings. Garbage was strewn about the place, accompanied by an overwhelming stink of brussels sprouts about two decades past their prime.

“This is nice,” I said drily.

After wending our way like a couple of crawling bugs into the darker, poorer outer crust of Manafell, Leah had brought us here.

In the alleyway was the entrance to a tavern where having some sort of rare respiratory illness or venereal disease was a prerequisite for entering. It was at the base of one of the long hills that ran up to the Castle of Ascendance, though you could not see it from here. The peeling sign over the double doors read, YE OLDE SHITE PIPE.

Leah patted me on the back. “Don’t worry,” she said to me, “it’s not the sort of place you think it is.”

There was a man lounging against the double doors and eyeing us with a yellow and infinitely patient eye. I say a man, but while he was humanoid in shape, with a man’s arms and legs and torso, his head belonged to a Nile crocodile and a large crocodile’s tail poked out of his pinstripe trousers. His chest was bare, except for an aquamarine waistcoat. On his long, scaled head he had balanced a tophat, which contrasted nicely with the flip-flops he was wearing on his feet.

“Good look,” I said, not meaning to be sarcastic at all. It was a good look. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

Leah walked toward the lounging figure, who straightened a little as we approached.

“Roger,” Leah said, “what a lovely treat to see you again.”

The crocodile-man, Roger, blinked a couple of times and grinned. At least, it looked like he was grinning. I imagined it was pretty hard to do anything but grin with a mouth that big and an assortment of teeth like that.

“Good day, Miss Chaosbane,” he said, in an accent that could have come straight out of