Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5) Page 11

  “Hey, about the lamp—” I started to say.

  “Forget the lamp. When we talked earlier, you said you had some new information?”

  With the search over and the other officers gone, Vega’s stance seemed to soften. She sounded more like the Vega I’d come to know over the past year. But she was counting on me now for information I didn’t have.

  “I’m pretty sure we’re looking at more than one perp,” I said. Realizing I was repeating the same info she’d gotten from Pierce, I quickly added, “Possibly five. And there’s a chance they’re not magic-users, but mortals under the influence of a demonic entity.”

  The skin between Vega’s eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Pierce said the same thing.”

  “He did?” My stomach churned. “Even about the demonic stuff?”

  “Do you have anything else?”

  “That’s … Well, that’s it for right now,” I confessed. If there was demon energy out there, the wards should have detected it. I would call the Order anyway and ask them to double check. Pierce’s tampering with the wards could have screwed them up. The thought made my stomach churn even more.

  Vega pulled out her phone.

  “Who are you calling?” I asked.

  “I promised Pierce an update on the search.”

  “Well, wait, hold on a sec.”

  She paused. “What?”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t interested in the search.”

  “I said he wasn’t planning on coming.”

  “Well, does he have to know every little thing we’re doing?”

  Vega cocked her head in impatience.

  “He has a tendency to go overboard,” I said. “He’s been messing with the wards I depend on for closing breaches. Those creatures I told you about in Harlem? I almost missed them because of him. Hell, there are probably things about this case I’m missing because of him.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?” Vega asked.

  “Well, no, but … My point is that it’s starting to feel like too many chefs in the kitchen.”

  “He found the infernal bag last night, right?”

  “I would’ve found it eventually,” I grumbled.

  “And everything he’s uncovered since—multiple perps, possible demonic involvement—jibes with what you’re telling me, right? It sounds like he’s on track. And if you think you’ve hit a dead end—”

  “I never said ‘dead end.’”

  “Everson, I’m calling him.”

  I throttled my cane in frustration. “Fine, but don’t let him be vague. Make him tell you exactly what he’s working on.”

  If I was at a dead end, maybe I could piggy-back off his leads. Shameful as sin, yeah, but there was no way I was going to let him crack the case before I did.

  “I’m not your gopher,” Vega said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If you want Pierce’s help, ask him yourself.”

  Crap, she’d seen right through me. Something she was getting better at.

  “All right, one? I don’t need Pierce’s help. And two, I already approached him about collaborating and he blew me off. Not only that, he went behind my back.”

  “I asked him about that.”

  I blinked at her. “You did?”

  She allowed a smirk. “Maybe I was just being the protective girlfriend. He said he offered to show you what he was working on, but that you were anxious to begin interviewing the shop owners. He took your place at the mayor’s meeting as a courtesy, knowing you’d be a few hours. He said he even tried calling you before the meeting, but no one answered.”

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  I hadn’t meant to voice the thought, but there it was.

  Vega glared at me, then turned with her phone to make the call.

  I clenched my jaw. Way to dig yourself out of that hole, I thought.

  Without warning, Vega’s phone began to sparkle and smoke. She shouted in surprise and dropped it. By the time the phone hit the floor, flames were licking around the edges of the shattered screen.

  She looked from the device to me. “Did you just blow up my phone?”

  Her voice was cold and dangerous. “O-Of course not,” I stammered. But had I? I looked around. My wizarding aura sometimes jagged a little when I got angry, but it couldn’t have jagged that much. I remembered Pierce’s and Gretchen’s critiques of my control.

  Vega left her smoking phone on the floor and jabbed the button for the elevator.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  She faced the closed doors, arms crossed, body tense.

  “Ricki, listen, I did not blow up your phone. At least not … intentionally.”

  The elevator doors opened. Vega cut past the man stepping off and hammered the button to take her down. When I tried to join her, she showed me her hand in a sharp, martial arts-like gesture.

  “Ricki,” I said.

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. The doors closed in my face. I hit the button, but her elevator was already descending.

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  Vega and I had had our spats since we’d started seeing each other, sure, but this one felt different. Worse. Maybe because it had come on the heels of last night’s talk about moving the relationship forward. Something told me I’d just managed to slam it into reverse. It was also the first time we’d fought publicly. We’d only had an audience of one, but still.

  I snuck a look around at the man who had just gotten off the elevator. He was peering back at me, probably wondering what I’d done to piss off the woman who’d almost knocked him over.

  But then I noticed something strange. He’d been slowing toward Becky’s door, but now he sped up again. At the far end of the hallway, he opened a door and disappeared. Before the heavy door clattered closed, I picked up the descending patter of footfalls.

  He just went down the exit stairwell.

  I started down the hallway at a fast walk.

  I’d been so fixated on Vega that I hadn’t gotten a good look at the man, just a glimpse. The thirty-something man had been wearing a gray flat cap over a bald head. His face had seemed normal enough, maybe a little surly. But there had been something different about his mouth … the way the upper lip bent and curled … the faint track of a scar…

  Not surliness, I realized. A harelip.

  Which meant the man was a lisper.

  Heart pounding, I broke into a run.

  16

  I was still gimpy from my spill in the apartment as well as the falls in the lobby and at Becky’s place. I wished now I’d applied some healing magic, but I hadn’t wanted to deplete my power stock. The pain wasn’t bad, just annoying—especially since my gym trainer and I had spent the last month on speed drills.

  At the far end of the hallway, I spoke a Word, and a shield crackled to life around me. I opened the exit door and stepped onto the landing. I could hear Harelip’s footsteps echoing off the walls. He had a good three-story head start. I started down, wracking my brain for ways to close the gap.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “NYPD!” Because it was still a crime to impersonate a police officer, I added, “Consultant.”

  None of it mattered, though. Harelip’s footsteps never slowed.

  Could I chance a force invocation? I’d gotten pretty good at controlling them. I could probably manage to bend one down the stairwell and send the man sprawling. But was it the same man Mr. Han had described? If not, I could be maiming someone who had nothing to do with the attacks.

  I imagined Pierce studying his Himitsu painting, teasing out more info.

  No guts, no glory, I decided

  “Vigore!”

  I aligned myself with the charge that pulsed from my cane and whipped it down the stairwell. But after two floors, I got my turns mixed up. The next thing I knew, the invocation was back and slamming into my shield. The impact lifted me from my feet and drove me into the wall. I rebounded and landed on hands and knees. Had it not been for the shield
, I would’ve been paste. In my fog, it took me a moment to recognize the sound of a door opening.

  He’s getting off on one of the floors, I realized.

  I all but threw myself down the next three flights until I arrived on a landing for the fifteenth floor just as the door clicked closed. Opening the door, I flung myself out into the hallway. I expected to find Harelip racing toward the elevators. But the hallway was empty.

  Meaning he’s in one of these rooms.

  I stole down the hallway and listened. But all I could hear was the steady whoosh of air-conditioning. I’d progressed a quarter of the way along the hallway when the door to the stairwell closed behind me. The sound was followed by a second click. And then soft footsteps.

  Son of a bitch never left the stairwell.

  I spun and ran back, but the exit door was now locked.

  I aimed my cane at the door, shouted a force invocation, and jerked the cane violently back. The bolt broke through the door frame, and the entire door swung out, narrowly missing my face.

  The descending footsteps sped up.

  I started to lunge into the stairwell after them, but stopped. It was clear the man wanted out of the building. Which meant he was headed for the lobby.

  I can get there first, I thought.

  I stamped my feet on the landing a few times to make it sound like I was in pursuit, then slipped back onto the floor and made for the elevators. By a minor miracle, one of the doors slid open just as I arrived. I stepped past an elderly couple getting off and pressed the button for the lobby. The doors closed, and the elevator dropped with stomach-dipping speed.

  My pulse pounded as I planned my next steps.

  I’ll catch him at the bottom of the stairwell before he comes out. Trap him in a shield invocation.

  I took that as a cue to disperse my own shield. The last thing I needed was to short the elevator. As the energy broke apart, the lights dimmed for a moment and the car shuddered, but our descent didn’t slow.

  At the ninth floor, I estimated that I’d passed Harelip.

  At the eighth floor, the car came to a sudden stop. No, dammit. The elevator door opened, and a mother boarded with her preschool-aged son. I smiled stiffly at them as I punched the button for the door to close again. A few seconds of lost time, but I still had my lead.

  The boy glared up at me. “I wanted to press the button!”

  “Be nice, Dylan,” his mother admonished, but with a smile that said, Aren’t you just the cutest little thing? “Anyway, this man was already on the elevator. He pushed the button before we came on.”

  The logic escaped the child. “I wanted to press the button!”

  “Dylan,” she warned, but while reading a text on her phone.

  The boy advanced on me with hands that were red and sticky. I backed away, not wanting whatever he’d been handling on my coat. Snarling, the boy trained his anger on the elevator buttons themselves.

  My heart leapt into my throat. “No!” I shouted.

  Before I could stop him, he slapped his sticky hands against the buttons for the lower floors, lighting them all up.

  “Oh, you little shit,” I muttered.

  “Dylan!” his mother cried, pulling him to her side. “And you!” she said to me, eyes engorged with anger and indigence. “You have no right to talk to my little boy that way.”

  When the doors opened on the sixth floor—thanks to junior—I stepped off. If I could catch another elevator, I still had a chance. I waited for the doors to close so I could hit the down button again, but the mother wasn’t done. She stepped into the path of the sensor so the doors wouldn’t close.

  “What’s your name?” she demanded. “Do you even live here? I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “Get back on the elevator,” I ordered as I dug around for my NYPD card. “I’m here on official business.”

  “Oh, and that gives you the right to cuss out my son?”

  He peered at me from behind her legs with a sharp grin.

  “I’m pursuing a suspect and he … interfered.”

  “He’s four!”

  She had a point. Regardless, I didn’t have time for this.

  I angled my cane up. “Vigore,” I whispered. The soft force invocation sent the woman and her devil child stumbling into the back of the elevator. The doors closed and finally I was able to punch the down button.

  Not my proudest moment, and probably not something my father would have done, but I was thinking about Harelip—and yes, Pierce. I needed a jump on this case in the worst way.

  I shifted my weight as I watched the digital displays above the doors. One elevator was on the upper floors and climbing, the other was in the lobby, just sitting there. The one I’d abandoned was plodding its way down.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I muttered.

  Ten seconds passed, then twenty. In my anxiousness, it felt like my bladder was going to burst. Finally, the elevator that had been heading up reversed and started back down.

  Thank God.

  Several long seconds later, the door opened, and I joined a middle-aged man. No kid this time. I estimated that Harelip was almost to the lobby by now. It was going to be close. Damn close.

  The elevator began its descent.

  5 … 4 … 3 … 2 …

  The car jerked to a halt and went dark. Red emergency lights came on.

  “Oh, you’ve gotta fucking be kidding me,” the man said before I could. “I called maintenance about the problem just this morning. I got stuck on this same elevator around seven a.m. Twenty minutes I was sitting here before it started up again. Something must be screwy with the wires.”

  “Twenty minutes?” I said, punching the lobby button.

  When nothing happened, I hopped up and down a few times, then wedged my fingers between the doors. With a whispered force invocation, I managed to open the doors a few inches. But we had stopped between floors. Short of trying to blow a hole through the roof or floor of the elevator, which was sure to cause more problems than it solved, I was stuck.

  The man, who had been speaking to someone on the emergency phone in the control panel, hung up. “Lucky for us, it’s just a fuse,” he said. “They should have it running again in ten.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sliding to the floor. “Lucky.”

  By the time the elevator came back to life and deposited us in the lobby, I knew Harelip was long gone. I approached the building’s doormen.

  “Did a bald man in a gray cap just leave here?” I asked.

  The doorman who had helped me up earlier smiled in recognition. “Was that you got stuck on the elevator just now? Man, some day you’re having.”

  “He’s about my height,” I pressed on. “And he has a scar here, above his lip.”

  “Oh yeah, I know him. Talks with a lisp.”

  Hope surged inside me. “What’s his name?”

  The doorman shrugged.

  “I thought guests had to show ID.”

  “Only if we’ve never seen ’em before,” the other doorman said. “He’s been in and out a few times with Becky.”

  So he had been going up to see her.

  I looked back into the lobby. Panoramic security cameras studded the ceiling. I checked my watch and estimated that Harelip had come in around 5:15 and left around 5:25. Good to know if we needed to pull the security footage. Right now, though, I needed to head back up and talk to Becky.

  Rather than risk another elevator ride, I took the stairs. Ten minutes later, I arrived on the top floor, panting, but without any mishaps. At Becky’s door, I knocked loudly. Moments later, a shadow moved over the peephole.

  “What do you want?”

  “I need to ask you about something.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “It’s about someone you know. A bald man with a scar on his upper lip.”

  “I just got off the phone with my lawyer, and she said I don’t have to tell you shit.”

  “It’ll only take a minute,” I said lamely.

>   “If you’re not gone in a minute, I’m suing for harassment. She said I could do that too.”

  Great. As desperate as I was, I had to weigh my need for a lead against the knowledge that Becky and the guy who’d just fled might have nothing to do with the infernal bags. For all I knew, Harelip could have been her drug supplier, and he’d thought I was a narco agent. In any case, rich, pissed off, and lawyering-up was not a combo you wanted to mess with.

  “Fine,” I said.

  I walked far enough away that I was out of view of the peephole, then reached into my coat pocket for my small overnight bag. In my effort to become my best wizard, I’d put the bag together to hold small everyday items that I might need in a pinch. It was surprising how often I’d used it over the last few months. I pulled out a set of tweezers now and winced as I plucked a slender hair from inside my ear. Holding up the hair, I uttered, “Attivare.”

  The hair trembled with energy, then stood straight up like an antenna. If I couldn’t get Becky to talk to me, I could damn sure listen. I pulled out a thin tube of adhesive and one of my business cards—just my name and number—and glued the hair to the card’s backside.

  When I returned to the door, Becky was still at the peephole. Probably waiting to ensure I’d left.

  “You’re down to ten seconds,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m just going to leave you my card, in case you change your mind.”

  “Wanna know what you can do with your card?”

  “Not really.” I wedged the card between the door and frame and quickly made my way back to the stairwell.

  My little bugging spell would absorb noise for the next hour or so, noise I could access back at my apartment. And I was laying odds that Becky would call Harelip as soon as I left.

  I was just stepping out into the lobby when my cane began to wriggle and tug. My watch flashed urgently. Damn, I was being called to another breach.

  “Careful, buddy!” the doorman shouted as I blew past him. “Sidewalks are still wet!”

  No sooner than he’d said it, I skidded on a manhole cover and splashed down.

  Swearing, I got back up and hailed a cab.

  17

  The scene this time was a Midtown delicatessen. We’d hit several traffic snarls en route—which gave me time to heal my knee—but by the time I paid the cabbie and stepped out, I could see from the black smoke rising from the stairwell that I’d arrived too late.