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

“What were you doing in the dream?”

“I was fighting in the freaking thing.”

“And the obsession you described after the first dream…?” I asked carefully.

Sven gave a solemn nod. “It came back. Not as insistent. Yet. But it’s there.”

I trained my gaze on his pack. What in the hell was the Hermes box doing to him?

“Twice I tried to ditch it in the other reality,” he said, following my gaze. “And twice it found its way back to me.”

I remembered the first hit on the box the week before, when I’d gone to an alley and found nothing. The second time, Sven must have tossed it in a dumpster, which explained how it ended up in the landfill. Though I’d packed the box in salt and placed it in my casting circle, the threads to Sven remained. Which meant I’d been wrong about someone stealing the box from my lab; the box had stolen itself.

But Sven had just confirmed something else.

“When you said you found yourself in a different reality,” I said. “You’re talking about this one, aren’t you?”

His dusky appearance was the first clue. I’d noticed it the other day in my classroom. Beneath the fluorescent lights he’d still appeared to be in partial shade, but at the time I hadn’t given it a lot of thought. It also explained why I hadn’t detected his magic. Its source was on the other plane.

And then there was his account of the city. Though still dodgy, Manhattan wasn’t so dangerous that you couldn’t take a walk alone in broad daylight. People did it all the time. But not in the shadow present.

Sven nodded. “Yeah. And this place is… It’s just…” His eyes glistened as he looked around the room. “It’s amazing.”

“I can only imagine,” I said gently.

It must have been like someone who’d been colorblind seeing clearly for the first time. And that was to say nothing of experiencing a version of the city that was considerably nicer than the one he’d grown up in.

“Anyway…” He wiped his eyes. “I learned about you from a search at the New York Public Library. The one here,” he clarified. “There were articles about your role in the mayor’s monster-eradication program, and they said you were a professor at Midtown College. I wanted to check you out, so I audited your course—which I enjoyed, by the way, even if we see tricksters differently. When you brought up the grad assistance thing, I saw it as a chance to get your help. But first I needed you to take me seriously.”

“The fire circle you left on my desk,” I said.

He gave me a guilty look. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Was the one you drew under my office door spur-of-the-moment too?” My voice turned hard as I replayed the explosion that had thrown me into a wall, incinerated my favorite coat, and ripped into skin.

Sven looked down at his hands. “I can’t explain that. I was delivering your lesson plans. You weren’t there, so I slid them under the door. And the next thing I knew, I was drawing the rune. It wasn’t one I’d rendered before—a combo of force and fire. I even used tanzanite. I knew it might hurt you, but … it felt necessary.”

“Like the compulsion of your stealing dream?”

“Sort of, but different. Like I needed to do it in order to convince you of something important.”

I thought about the aftermath, tracking the tanzanite to the Gowdie sisters, where I received the Doideag’s prophecy.

“Well, just talk to me next time,” I said. “I’m not sure I’ll survive another round of convincing.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, his chuckle scared-sounding. “When I saw the police were after me, I knew I’d messed up. Knew I’d lost you as a potential source of help. I returned to my city, never planning to come back here.”

“Why didn’t you look for my shadow?”

A cloud passed over his already dim face. “You don’t, um, exist over there.”

“I don’t?” Even though we were talking about a probable version of myself, a knot tightened in my gut.

He shook his head. “I don’t think any magic-users do. Not ones like you, anyway.”

That explained why no one from the Order had contacted him. It did raise questions about what had happened to the magical community in the shadow present, but that was more a curiosity right now than a concern.

“How did you find me last night?” I asked.

“Right place, right time. I was out walking—thinking about you, actually. I was freaking out over the rune I planted, debating whether to go back and check on you. I hadn’t even gone home yet. I heard a bunch of commotion, went over to see what was happening, and there you were, on the sidewalk with the police incoming. I grabbed you to take you back, but I had to switch my focus from the vagueness rune to the transport version, which always negates the first. That’s when the pig saw and shot me.”

“I appreciate the assist,” I said, even as my voice turned taut. “Just keep in mind that the woman you call a ‘pig’ was doing her job. She thought you were a threat.” Had I just stood up for shadow Vega?

Sven gave me a strange look before shrugging it off. “Well, she’d seen me, so I couldn’t go back there. But the police were hunting me here too. Wanted in two realities,” he said in disbelief. “Bet that’s never happened before.”

“You’d be surprised,” I muttered.

“I used the vagueness rune to make my way down to Track 61. It’s where I’d go when I stayed here overnight. But I was hurting too much to draw a healing rune.” He winced at the memory and peeked at his sutured wound, which was already scarring. “I climbed into my bag, and that’s all I remember until I woke up here. I know I freaked when I first saw you, but I’m super glad you’re all right.”

He