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

minutes past before I was able to release the drapes and push myself upright, my hairline cold with sweat. The inside of the carriage rotated once before steadying.

“I’m all right,” I said faintly.

Gorgantha leaned forward. “What the hell happened?” She was sitting opposite me, glamoured to look like a large man.

From beside her hunkered head, Caroline’s knowing eyes met mine.

I stole another look out the window. “Something’s hunting me. Something from the present. I’m pretty sure it came to my apartment while I was out this morning, and I sensed it later in the Upper East Side.”

“That thing followed you here?” Bree-yark asked.

“It looks that way.” I wasn’t sure whether to be freaked out or super annoyed.

Bree-yark squinted between me and Caroline. Earlier, he’d accused her of creating the threat. Now he appeared uncertain. If her intention had been to rush my decision to use Arnaud, there was no reason to keep up the ruse.

“But how?” he barked. “I thought coming here took serious magic or a connection to one of these guys.” He hooked a thumb at Arnaud.

“It’s from the realm of the dead, and it’s locked onto Everson,” Caroline said. “It will go where he goes. I’ve fashioned a glamour to hide him. Not a strong one,” she added, anticipating my protest. “Just enough to muddle the connection, make it much harder for this entity to draw a bead on him.”

“It’s not a gatekeeper, I hope,” I said.

Gatekeepers were powerful entities that guarded the realm between the living and the dead. I’d foolishly tried to trap one a couple years earlier while searching for info on my mother. Now I wondered whether the same gatekeeper had built up enough vacation time to come after me. It ticked a lot of the boxes.

“No, not a gatekeeper,” Caroline said.

“That’s a relief.”

“A revenant.”

I straightened. “A revenant?”

“The hell’s a revenant?” Gorgantha asked.

“A spirit that returns to the world to track down and destroy its killer,” I said. “Are you sure?”

Caroline returned a solemn nod. “The being was close enough that I could sense its undead fixation on you. It’s powerful enough to ford planes, and it won’t stop hunting until either you’re dead or it’s destroyed.”

“Then we destroy it,” Bree-yark said as if that settled that.

I dug a thumb and finger into the corners of my eyes. “Much easier said than done, buddy. Besides retaining whatever abilities they had in life, revenants are a special kind of nasty. Undead powers and immunities out the wazoo.”

“How many suckas have you plugged?” Gorgantha asked.

I thought for a moment before replying, “A lot.”

“Well, which ones would still have beef with you?”

“Since things tend not to like getting killed, all of them.”

I flipped through the opponents I’d faced over the years. While most, if not all, had the motivation to come back for me, only a few would have possessed the means. Turning revenant required powerful magic.

“Old Bell Tavern,” the driver called from outside.

“Listen, guys,” I said. “I appreciate your concern, but our focus right now is Lazar. Let me worry about the revenant.”

For starters, our time here was limited. I also didn’t want to involve my teammates in something that freaking deadly. When our work was finished and we were back home, I’d deal with it myself. The one silver lining with a revenant was that it was only interested in its target. It wouldn’t go after Vega or anyone close to me in the meantime.

But did it have to be hunting me now, dammit?

And here?

27

I declined Gorgantha’s help down from the carriage, even though I was still queasy and my legs felt uncertain. Bree-yark pulled Dropsy from his pouch, but told her to keep her glow on the down-low. As the carriage U-turned across the dirt lane, Caroline came to my side.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Much better. Thanks for your help.”

“You’re hidden now,” she assured me, referring to the revenant.

I nodded, even though I hated being a sink on her finite powers. “Just let me know how you’re doing.”

“We’re in what will become New York’s Upper West Side,” she said, changing the subject.

As the horses clopped away, I looked around at the farmland that had been cleared and converted into building lots. For now, the result was a grid of dirt lanes, where ley energy trickled weakly. Plank homes were scattered here and there—squatter housing, most likely—but the city was clearly planning its thrust northward.

“Central Park is under construction to the east,” Caroline continued. “Many of the laborers live around here, so that’s who we can expect to find in the Old Bell.” She nodded at the building catty-corner to us, a two-story tavern with a hanging sign out front. A mass of figures crowded beyond the windows, the rise and fall of their murmuring voices breaking into occasional bouts of shouting and laughter.

I checked the pocket watch. Seven o’clock on the nose. By the time I looked up, Caroline was back in her male guise. She had altered our glamours so that we looked like laborers now, dusty coats and sweat-stained shirts.

“Good work,” I said. “Let’s move.”

I crossed the road, skirted a post tethered with horses, and opened the tavern door. A rowdy wall of noise hit me first, followed by a yeasty wave of beer and body odor that made my eyes water. Every surface on which one could conceivably sit was taken, the bar in the tavern’s back a solid five men deep.

I edged over to a plastered wall darkened by lantern smoke for a better vantage. My gaze went face to face in search of anyone I recognized. The place was mostly men, laborers as Caroline had guessed, the majority looking as if they’d come straight from their shift at Central Park. They were Germans, Irish, and Italians, all talking at once, their dialects as rough as their ruddy faces. No one stood out for me.

I peered back. Caroline had entered and was standing in an inconspicuous spot near a window. From there she could see Bree-yark,