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

couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. Join us and risk losing her child, or stay here, where both would perish.

“I can’t go, then,” she decided.

I raised my hands as if trying to coax someone from jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. “Seay, listen to me. I know this isn’t an easy decision, but you have to understand how fragile the time catch is. If you stay here, it will come apart, taking out you and anyone who remains, by choice or circumstance.”

“If I lose him, I’d die anyway.” She cupped her swell in both hands now.

“But by leaving, you’d at least give him a chance at life,” Caroline said.

Seay wedged a thumbnail between her upper teeth in anxious thought. At last, she turned to me.

“Is there anything you can do?”

She meant my magic, but how could I protect a child from something of this magnitude? I considered Seay’s fearful, pleading eyes before swallowing hard and nodding. “I have a potion in mind,” I said. “It’s no guarantee, but it will buffer your child from the transition, improve his odds of survival.”

It was a lie, but a necessary one to save my teammate.

Seay nodded. “Okay.”

I prepared the potion on a wood stove in Seay’s kitchen, which was in a nicely appointed house behind the store. Cats roamed the rooms.

While I worked, combining ingredients from her pantry with others I’d brought, Caroline filled Seay in on everything to do with the demon Malphas, the St. Martin’s site, and the time catches. I caught bits and pieces of the conversation. Seay confirmed that a crazy man had approached her on a few occasions, but she’d had no idea it was Malachi.

By the time I finished, Seay was up to speed, and I had a potion that did nothing.

“Here it is,” I said, handing her a warm tube. I’d made the liquid pink to appear as benign as possible.

Seay looked it over and placed it in a coat pocket. “As I told Caroline,” she said, “I’m going to meet with my team. None have children, but several are in relationships with locals. Two are engaged to be married this spring.”

Ouch, I thought.

“We’ll meet you at the caves later,” she finished.

“Wait, we’re not going together?” I asked.

“Between restoring their memories, explaining everything, and preparing for the trip, it’s going to take me the rest of the day,” Seay said with a weary breath.

“And we have Arnaud to look after,” Caroline reminded me.

I’d already left the demon-vampire longer than I was comfortable. “If for some reason we’re not at the caves, use the bond to call me,” I said. “And if on the very remote chance we’re no longer in the time catch, go to Jordan’s. Malachi said the portal is inside an unusual arrangement of boulders right above what’s known as Hell Gate. That’s a chokehold in the Harlem River before Randall’s Island.”

“I know Hell Gate,” she said. “It’s infamous among traders.”

“Just be sure to drink the potion before you enter,” I said.

“I … I’m still not a hundred percent decided, Everson.”

“Let us know either way,” I said. “We’ll wait.”

Her eyes glimmered. “Thanks for coming back for me, you jerk.”

“Thanks for being so understanding.”

Smirking, she kissed the spot where her palm had landed, then hugged me, making me feel both better and worse about the fake potion.

“See you soon, Bucky,” she said.

32

The snow was still falling when we left. Seay arranged for the Dutch traders to boat us back upriver, which would save Caroline from having to enchant them again. I was worried that she had less in the tank than she was letting on. But as we walked toward the dock, I was more worried for Seay.

“Do you think she’ll come?” I asked.

“I put a bit of suggestion into my pitch,” Caroline said. “Between that, your potion, and her desire for her child to have a future, yes. I believe she will.” Though Caroline didn’t say it outright, she knew my potion was a fake.

“I feel crappy about lying to her.”

“You did what needed to be done.”

“I hope so,” I said, but the thought of the child not surviving the transition sat like a massive brick in my stomach. The child wouldn’t survive here, granted, and neither would Seay. But the look she’d given me… She was trusting me with the most precious thing in the world to her right now.

We took a different route to avoid the corner tavern, one that headed away from the canal before turning left to join the waterfront. As we followed the Dutch traders, I kept my guard up, but the people we passed paid us little heed. That didn’t last. We were just emerging onto Pearl Street when a hoarse shout sounded.

“Oy! There they are!” The rat-faced man had been keeping lookout from behind a stack of crates near the warehouse. He emerged now, jabbing a dirty finger toward us. “There! Over there!”

His drunken cohorts weren’t with him—probably still thawing out somewhere—but four men who had been milling around the wharf with muskets on their shoulders oriented to his pointing and hustled toward us, weapons aimed.

“The rattle watch,” Caroline said under her breath. “They’re patrolmen.”

The crowds around the wharf paused in their bustling work to watch the developing scene.

“I can take them out,” I whispered back, “but it’s going to cause a huge stir.”

“I only need to enchant one of them,” she said.

Great, I thought, more magic we can’t afford to spend.

The four patrolmen arrived around us and began shouting in Dutch. It wasn’t one of my languages of fluency, but I picked out enough German to understand the threats. Imprisonment and death by hanging topped the list, and we just happened to be standing fifty yards from the gallows.

Rat Face arrived behind them, breathing hard. A too-big coat swam around his scrawny frame. “Struck me, he did,” he rasped. “Threatened to scalp me. Used Indian magic on me mates. All ’cause I said his missus was pretty.”

Caroline stood calmly, eyeing the members