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

of the patrol. It took me a moment to understand she was looking for the dominant member, the leader. After a moment, the stockiest of them, a man with salt-and-pepper hair, turned toward his associates and spoke sternly. The others put up what sounded like token resistance, but when he gestured to our accuser and made a face, they broke into laughter.

Bingo. Caroline had found him.

Rat Face looked around wildly as the patrolmen dispersed.

“Oy, where ya goin’?” he demanded. “He attacked me! Did me bodily harm!” Realizing he’d lost them, he appealed to the gathering crowd. “Said he’d scalp the lot of us, he did! Then said he’d burn New Amsterdam to the ground!”

Oh, you little liar.

As the crowd pressed in, I whispered a Word. Power flowed from my glamoured cane, hardening the air around Caroline and me. Rat Face continued to talk, working the crowd into a murmuring mob. As I searched their faces, I saw more fear than anger—which I knew from experience could be twice as deadly.

“Be ready to make a run for the boat,” I told Caroline.

But before I could invoke a repulsive force, heads began to turn and the crowd backed away. As they spread out, a man paced toward us, stout and sturdy with authority. A purple coat hung to knee-length trousers that revealed a right wooden leg, carved and knobbed like a dining room table’s.

“It’s the governor,” Caroline whispered. “Peter Stuyvesant.”

“The Peter Stuyvesant?” I’d learned about him in high school, the last Dutch governor before England claimed the city and renamed it New York. In the modern era there was a street and park in Stuyvesant’s name, even a housing project. I was going to feel really bad if it came to blows.

With each limping step, curtains of gray hair shifted around the governor’s somber face. When he’d come to within ten feet of us, he stopped and peered from the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.

“Is it true you do magic?” he asked in broken English.

“He does, he does!” Rat Face cried, elated to finally have someone in authority interceding on his behalf. But Stuyvesant silenced him with a look. Rat Face stopped hopping and retreated into the crowd.

“Speak,” he demanded.

“We’re leaving now,” I said. “Returning upriver.”

I pushed power through my wizard’s voice, but something was pushing back. Caroline must have felt it too, because I caught her subtle energy moving around the governor’s head, warping his large nose and heavy cheeks.

Another enchantment we couldn’t afford.

“Oh, but that’s not what he asked,” a slippery voice interjected.

He had been moving silently through the crowd, and now he arrived behind the governor with his head servant.

You have got to be kidding me.

“No, that’s not what he asked at all,” Arnaud Thorne said. “Was it, dear Zarko?”

“No,” his servant confirmed.

Both vampire and slave were dressed for the period, though more extravagantly. Puffy sleeves bloomed from the cuffs of colorful coats. The gold buttons down their chests matched the shiny buckles on their shoes. Both wore wide-brimmed hats, similar to the governor’s, but while Zarko’s fit snugly over his monkish bangs, Arnaud’s sat at a rakish angle. His predatory eyes gleamed above his spreading grin.

“Now, why not answer the governor truthfully, hm?” he said. “Then perhaps he’ll release you upriver.”

As I looked over the three of them—one stout, two lean—I realized they were the distant figures I’d seen right after my encounter with the drunkards. The itchy feeling I’d gotten had been from vampiric energy. With his preternatural vision, Arnaud would have seen everything. He would also have sensed my magic, and he’d evidently shared his findings with the good governor here.

“What do you care?” I shot back. “Tristan.”

I was so frigging over these Arnauds from the past.

“My, my, what a temper,” he said. “And a perfect command of the English language. Unusual for an Indian.”

His teasing voice told me he knew we were anything but.

It was up to Caroline’s enchantment now. If the governor dismissed us, what could Arnaud do? But the vampire’s misty powers of suggestion were countering her efforts. With a look of exasperation, she withdrew, her enchantment dispersing. Stuyvesant, who had been watching us with dulling eyes, snapped to with a sharp intake of breath.

“We have an ordinance against magic,” he said. “It is not allowed here.”

“And I believe they’ve just attempted it again,” Arnaud purred. “This time against you, dear Governor.”

The flesh around Stuyvesant’s eyes balled up. “Is this true?”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and limp-hopped away, crying out in Dutch. He was going after the patrolmen. I searched the crowd in the dim hope I might spot my grandfather. But he was still in Europe in the 1660s—I was sure of that. Instead, I picked out the cold gazes of blood slaves who stood from the crowd here and there. Two had headed off our Dutch traders to keep them from readying the boat.

I glared back at Arnaud, Grandpa’s ring pulsing around my finger. “What do you want?”

“The ordinance is in place for a reason,” he said. “Indeed, I advised the governor in the very matter.”

I scoffed. “While he was under your influence, right?”

Arnaud’s eyes glinted sharply as if appreciating the challenge. “Regardless, New Amsterdam only attained city status a few years ago. It’s young, vulnerable. But ah, the potential. Growing trade, budding businesses, everyone working for and in opposition to one another. The spirit of enterprise and opportunity is everywhere.” He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply as if he could smell it. “Now, my friend, imagine someone coming here with the advantage of magic. It would upset the balance. Nay, destroy it.”

Yeah, just like you’re planning to do.

As the apex predator, the vampire was poisoning the governor’s mind, weeding out potential rivals, all to monopolize the crown jewels of the city: trade and finance. They would become his fortress, one he would command for more than three hundred years, ultimately heading a cabal of vampires downtown.

If he only knew he was looking at the two who would