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

Hoffman’s phone rang, and he dug it out of a pocket. “Hoffman,” he answered, then listened for several seconds. “No shit?” He moved the phone from his mouth. “We just got the data back on Mims’s phone,” he told me. “Someone called and talked to him right before he left his apartment and—” He moved the phone back to his mouth. “Him, huh? Okay, sounds good. Yeah, we’ll take it from there.”

“Who?” I mouthed, the suspense killing me.

As he continued to talk, Hoffman scribbled on his pad and turned it around for me to see. His eyebrows went up in a gesture of concession.

Ludvig Lassgard, it read.

30

I was still looking at what Hoffman had written, that Ludvig was the last to call Walter before he was killed, when my own phone began to ring.

“Hello?” I answered distractedly.

“Professor Croft,” came a prim voice.

For a moment I debated whether to fake a bad connection and end the call, but I cleared my throat. “Hi, Professor Snodgrass.”

“Yes, I’m calling because—well, first, how are you doing?”

The last time he’d seen me, my office had just blown up and I was half cooked, not that he’d shown any concern. The present show sounded forced, as if his wife had scolded and shamed him into it the night before.

“Better,” I replied.

“Yes, well, I apologize for reacting the way I did. I suppose it was the shock of—”

“Not to be rude,” I cut in, “but I’m in the middle of something pretty important.”

I looked over at Hoffman who was still on his phone, discussing Ludvig. I heard him say something about picking him up.

“Yes, fine, this will only take a minute,” Snodgrass said, sounding relieved to be past the niceties. “First, in light of yesterday’s events, I went ahead and canceled your remaining classes this week.”

“Appreciated,” I said, surprising myself by meaning it.

“You didn’t appear in any shape to teach, and I felt you could use the time to recover. It’s just for this week, though.”

Okay, now I was growing wary. “That was … thoughtful of you.”

“But what I really wanted to talk to you about was your lesson plans.”

God. He was not going to let that go. I very nearly ended the call, but his next words stopped me cold.

“What I could read of them looked remarkably … well, adequate. Organized, concise, supported by academic literature. To the extent mythology can be considered academic, but we won’t revisit that debate here. I do appreciate—that is to say, I’m glad to see you took the new requirement seriously.”

“My lesson plans?” I asked.

“Yes, while inspecting your office with an engineer I found them amid the debris. They were damaged, of course, but—”

“You found my lesson plans?”

“The only thing is, well, I hate to ask, but can you send me an unsullied version by Friday’s deadline? I’ll need it for the official file.”

I was too dumbfounded to react to his very Snodgrassian request.

I had never written any lesson plans. But I’d asked “Sven Roe” to.

I thought back to the security footage of the young man stooped before my office, bringing his pack around to his front. I was convinced he’d rendered the exploding sigil, but had he been sliding the lesson plans under my door? That didn’t explain away the fire circle he’d drawn a day earlier, though, or his insistence that I teach him magic. He was still a piece of the puzzle somehow.

My magic nodded in agreement.

“You didn’t throw them out, did you?” I all but shouted.

“Your tattered plans? No… I have them here in my office.”

“Okay, hold onto them,” I breathed. “I don’t have another copy, and I, ah, I’m going to need them to make a new one.”

“One of several duties a graduate assistant could have performed for you,” he reminded me, sounding especially smug—no doubt from my apparent sudden about-face in the compliance department. But I wasn’t thinking about his stupid requirement. I now had something tangible to hunt Sven.

“I’ll get over there as soon as I can,” I said.

I ended the call at the same time Detective Hoffman ended his.

“Lassgard was just picked up,” he said. “We’re getting the search warrants, but I want to head down to 1PP to see if we can get him talking. You already know him, so I want you there too. You did pretty good with what’s-his-name.” He jerked his thumb toward Eldred who was still at the table, then broke into a broad smile that lumped up his face. “I have a good feeling about this, Everson.”

I did too, so why was my magic urging me to find Sven instead?

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to start without me.”

Hoffman’s smile shrank. “What the hell for?”

“That call I got was a potential lead on Sven Roe.”

“Guy who blew your door off the hinges? Screw him. If he’s involved, we’ll squeeze the info from Lassgard.”

“Look, I happen to agree with that reasoning, but…” There was nothing to do but level with him, even as the flesh around his eyes trembled angrily. “Well, my magic’s telling me otherwise.”

“Your magic,” he spat.

“The same magic that led us here,” I reminded him.

Glancing back at Eldred, Hoffman grumbled a few choice words before whistling a member of the Sup Squad over. “Take him where he needs to go,” he said of me.

“Thanks, I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”

Before I could turn, he grabbed the shoulder of my coat and aimed a thick finger at my face. “You heard the mayor, we only have till tonight. You leave me hanging, and I’ll take your ass down with me.”

“Noted,” I said.

Snodgrass wasn’t in his office when I arrived at Midtown College, but he’d left the plans in a folder with the department secretary. I hustled it to the faculty restroom on the second floor and sealed the door with a locking spell.

Let’s see what you left me, Sven…

The four pages inside were both fire and