Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4) Read online

  “Respingere,” he said.

  His silver shield flashed, and the fence broke into pieces, his boots crunching over the broken links as he continued his advance. Thanks to his five years of training, the guy’s magic was fundamentally sound. But I had experience on my side, not to mention a sword in which some of Grandpa’s magic-cleaving enchantment still lingered. I’d have to employ the first to get close enough to use the second, though.

  “Illuminare,” I called.

  The light that pulsed from my shield was meant to blind him, but James had anticipated the Word and countered with a Word of his own, one that intercepted the light with an orb of darkness. Damn. That was the problem with casting in the same language as your opponent.

  Two more bolts slammed into my shield, rocking me backward. When I grunted, a smile formed across James’s lips. His confidence was growing. He cast his next bolt from the hip.

  As my shield shook and sparks blew across my face, I remembered how James had passed on the easy tap into the side pocket for the win against me earlier, electing instead for a trick shot. Something told me he’d do the same thing out here: go for the spectacular instead of the sure bet.

  Deciding to test that theory, I turned and ran.

  Behind me, James spoke four Words in rapid succession. Bolts ripped past my shielded body, leaving harsh ozone trails in their wakes. Several blocks ahead they wheeled in different directions, like jets at an air show, before storming back toward me en masse. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know James had thinned his shield to feed the bolts.

  I aimed my sword back between my legs. Using a force blast as a propellant, I released my grip and let the sword rip.

  Behind me, James let out a scream. The bolts fizzled in midair.

  I turned to find his shield shattered, James clutching his shoulder where the blade had gashed him. With another force invocation, I returned the sword to my grip and stalked toward him. His sunglasses had fallen off, and surprised blue eyes stared from his face. He jerked his wand at me several times, but no bolts would emerge. The blade’s enchantment had broken his magic. I kicked the wand out of his hand and touched the blade to his throat.

  “You’re oh for two, pal. Care to explain why you attacked me?”

  His eyes shifted, as though searching for an escape.

  “You can try to get up, but this blade has cut through thicker necks than yours.”

  Muttering, he showed his hands.

  “Better start talking,” I said. “Fast.”

  “Can I at least grab another beer?”

  I allowed James his beer, warning him that if he shouted for help or did anything funny, I would force blast him into next month. But he was already injured, his magic spent. I doubted he would test me.

  We sat at the dark end of the empty bar, a couple of brown bottles sweating in front of us.

  “All right,” I said, the tip of my blade against James’s side. “Mind telling me why you went homicidal on me out there?”

  James sighed. “I was warned you might show up.”

  “Warned?” Coldness enveloped me. “By whom?”

  “Chicory.”

  “Chicory? Our Chicory?”

  “Yeah, he stopped in a couple weeks ago. Told me to be on the lookout for someone who’d come with a lot of questions. Said the person would be the agent of some evil wizard, a dude named Lich or Lech, and not to let him get away.” James took a swig from his bottle. “And then here you come, driving Chicory’s car. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

  I took a sip from my own bottle and worked out the timing. Two weeks before would have been when Chicory was training me. He had ducked out a couple of times, though he’d never said for what. There was nothing about the visit in James’s file, either.

  “Were those his exact words?” I asked. “Agent of an evil wizard?”

  “Best I can remember. I was sort of stoned when he dropped in.”

  I still couldn’t believe this guy was a member of the Order.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “Naw, that was pretty much it.”

  Had the warning to James been some sort of insurance in case the operation failed and the Front used Whisperer magic on me? Or had it been in case the Front told me the truth?

  “To be honest, you don’t strike me as an evil agent,” James said.

  “Would’ve been nice if you’d exercised that bit of judgment outside,” I muttered.

  By warning James, my former mentor had put me in a bind. No matter what I told him, James was now biased against me. Just like Chicory biased you against the Front, the voice whispered in my head. If the potion I’d drunk that morning had worked, I was hearing my own voice. If not, I could well be hearing the Whisperer’s corrupting words. I squeezed my beer bottle in frustration. Never mind James trusting me—could I trust myself?

  “Before you started firing bolts at me,” I said, “you suggested you’d met someone higher up in the Order.”

  “Naw. I just wanted my money back.” He froze with his bottle halfway to his mouth. “Shit. Does that mean you’re gonna kill me now?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good.” James took his swallow. “How about I ask you a few questions, then?”

  I checked my watch. I still had a couple hours before I needed to be at the airport.

  “Shoot,” I told him.

  “What do you really do?”

  “Same thing as you,” I said tiredly. “Stop amateur conjurers, blow up nether creatures, close holes to their worlds. Oh, and get threatened by the Order. I cover Manhattan. I helped the mayor’s eradication campaign last month. You might have read about me in the papers?”

  “Eradication who?”

  “Don’t follow the news, huh?”

  He shook his head and took another swig. “So why does Chicory think you’re working for an evil wizard?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time. Not like I can hustle now.”

  I looked over at him. Something in his hunched posture spoke to sincerity. Maybe he’d been lonely for the company of another magic-user, someone he could talk to. I doubted he’d told his life story to anyone else—or at least anyone who wouldn’t have laughed him out of the room. In any case, it wasn’t as if I’d be giving away any secrets. I had nothing to lose.

  “It’s going to sound insane,” I said.

  “Hey, I dig insane.”

  “All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” In a lowered voice, I began. I told him about my mother’s suspicious death, the silence from the Order, and how my consulting Lady Bastet had led to her murder.

  “So that’s why someone offed her,” James said. “I’d wondered about that.”

  I nodded, going on to tell him about my own investigation, which had gotten me a warning from Marlow, or at least someone pretending to be him; my session in the scrying globe, where I experienced my mother’s murder at the mage’s hands; and then what Chicory had told me about Marlow taking up Lich’s work to bring forth the Whisperer.

  “No one ever told me about any Whisperer,” James said.

  “According to Chicory, that info isn’t shared with novice practitioners.” I wondered now if that info was shared with anyone, save in cases where a magic-user came too close to the truth.

  “Always did feel like I was at the kid’s table,” he said.

  “Don’t take it personally. I was right there beside you, bib and all.”

  “So why were you told all this stuff?”

  “Because Marlow’s my father.”

  “No shit?” James said.

  “Yeah.” That much I knew to be true. Both Chicory and Connell had said so. I told James about being sent to the Refuge, allegedly to destroy Lich’s book, and what had actually happened—from battling Marlow to being sent back here to investigate the Front’s claims for myself.

  James’s sunglasses remained fixed on me as I spoke. When I finished, he said, �
�So … Chicory’s history?”

  “That remains to be seen. Either he’s dead, or he’ll return in four days. Well, three days now.”

  “So you wait and see,” James said. “That would settle that question, right?”

  “If Connell is telling the truth, Chicory will be coming for me. I know too much now. Were I to alert the magic-using community, he’d be deprived of the power he needs to sustain himself and the portal to the Whisperer. Plus, he’d be looking at a much larger resistance.” I thought of the hundreds of files I’d given to Vega. Convincing those magic-users would be another matter, of course.

  “What if this dude Connell is lying?” James asked.

  “That’s what I have three days to find out.”

  James blew out his breath as though to say, Sucks to be you, bro.

  “What do you think?” I asked pointedly.

  “What do I think?” He set down his bottle and studied me for a moment. “I think if you’re on the bad side of this, you don’t know it.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I play cards, five card stud mostly. There my magic only really helps when I’m the dealer, so I’ve had to learn to read people, pick out their tells. For the past hour, you haven’t shown me a one. Which suggests that everything you’ve said either happened, or you believe it happened.”

  “So you understand my dilemma.”

  “Yeah, you’re either looking at a bluff or a double bluff.”

  “What does that mean to us non-card-playing types?”

  “It all goes back to the mystic’s murder,” he explained. “The perpetrator made it look like a wolf attack, right? With a simple bluff, he would’ve done that to hide his involvement—in which case the killer is Marlow. But with a double bluff, he’d have done that to make you think the second bluff about Marlow was the truth. In which case the killer is Chicory.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself.

  “The anti-hunting spell that earned you those claw marks from your cat,” he said, “what you saw in the scrying globe … Any advanced magic-user could have put those together.”

  I nodded some more, glad now I’d shared my story with James. I hadn’t learned anything new, no, but the back and forth was helping to bring the essential questions into relief.

  “Mind sharing your plan?” James asked. “I mean, besides shaking down guys like me?”

  I rotated my bottle on the bar, wondering how far I could trust him. James had been warned I was coming. He’d been ordered to stop me. He had failed, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again. The man was an admitted hustler. He claimed to believe me—and he’d brought up some great points—but he could also be playing me, setting me up for the next round.

  And if Chicory had gotten into his head…

  “I’d rather not,” I said. “No offense.”

  James shrugged and signaled to the bartender he was ready for another round. We drank for the next few minutes in silence, billiard balls clacking in the next room. James was halfway through his new bottle when he said, “Before he left, Chicory did this strange thing he’d never done before. Sort of mashed his thumb between my eyes. Said it was supposed to protect me from mind magic or something. You ever heard of anything like that?”

  I straightened. “Did you feel a pressure behind your eyes, in your ears?”

  James shook his head. “Nothing like that. More like a tingling that just sort of went away.”

  I considered that. “What do I look like?” I asked suddenly.

  “Huh?”

  “Just describe me.”

  Connell had claimed Lich’s magic had poisoned me, superimposing nightmare images over everything I’d observed in the Refuge. If James was seeing someone other than me, I would have my answer.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” James said, “you look like you’re about my height, dark hair. Could probably stand to gain a few pounds. You worry a lot too. Got these deep lines between your eyebrows. And I’m guessing by the episode outside you can’t read women too well. Sort of awkward around them.”

  “Alright, alright,” I said, my face growing warm. Yeah, he could see me, zits and all, which seemed to tip the scales toward Chicory’s version of events. I checked my watch. “I need to get going,” I said, pushing myself from my stool. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  “So, that’s it?”

  “I have your number. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

  He rotated on the stool. “While you’re out, doing whatever it is you’re gonna do, is there something I could be doing?”

  I stopped. “You said your first mentor was in the Catskills?”

  “Yeah, about two, three hours upstate.”

  “Could you take a drive up there?” I asked. “Tell her what I told you? I sent a couple messages to the Order about my trip to the Refuge and Chicory’s death, but I never heard back. I don’t have a handle on what’s going on yet, but certainly the more who know, the better.”

  He stood and tossed a twenty onto the bar. “I’m on it, boss. It’s been sort of beat around here anyway. Hey, you got a number where I can reach you?”

  I pulled out the pager Vega had given me. The number was taped to the back. “Do you have something to write with?”

  “Here,” James said, taking the pager. He turned it around and read the ten numbers aloud. Then he closed his eyes and repeated them before nodding and handing it back. “It’s stored,” he said.

  “Offer you a ride?” I asked as we stepped outside.

  “Naw, I’m just a few blocks north.”

  I gripped his elbow before he could turn away. “Listen, I’m not sure what I might be getting you into, so you need to tread carefully.”

  James’s mouth leaned into a grin. “I’m not real good at that, boss.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle as I released him and we headed our separate ways.

  Maybe I had an ally in James, after all.

  15

  The trip to Romania was long and sleepless. I wrestled with James’s assessment the entire way: a bluff or a double bluff. Marlow or Lich/Chicory. I had good reasons to suspect both and not enough to clear either. I had to trust that finding Lazlo would tip the balance toward one or the other.

  From the train station in Bacau, I hustled to the edge of town where I’d been told the final bus of the day would be departing for the villages in the foothills. Eleven years earlier, I’d arrived on a weekend day and had had to find a cart driver—who’d turned out to be Lazlo. After an exhausting twenty hours of travel, I hoped I was close to seeing him again.

  A cold drizzle began to fall as I approached the end of an asphalt road that turned into a rutted pair of tracks. I looked around in exasperation. No bus. Had I missed it? A car horn blew twice. I looked over at a livestock truck I had assumed abandoned. Its pale blue body was rusted, and it was leaning on one side of the road. When its lights flashed on and off, I spotted someone sitting in the driver’s seat. The window cranked down as I hustled up.

  “Has the bus to the villages left yet?” I asked in Slovak.

  “That depends,” a woman’s voice replied in accented English.

  From beneath the bill of a newsboy hat, a young woman with dark red hair and a mole over the left corner of her mouth peered back at me. Though she wore the grave face of so many in the countryside, her beauty startled me.

  “Depends on what?” I stammered.

  “If I have any riders.”

  It took me a moment to process what she was saying. “Wait, this is the bus?”

  “What were you expecting?” she asked. “A double-decker?” Without waiting for a response, she said, “You can put pack in back and ride up front with me. The weather is not expected to improve.”

  I thanked her and did as she said, dropping my pack in the open truck bed. When I slammed the passenger door and settled in, cane between my knees, the young woman put the truck in gear and bumped forward, the rain alrea
dy beginning to form brown puddles in the road ahead.

  “I am Olga. Where are you going?”

  “Hi, I’m Everson. There’s a farm between here and the last village. The owner’s name is Lazlo.”

  She stopped the truck. “There is no such farm.”

  I looked over at her, but her face remained fixed on the road ahead. “There is, actually,” I said, trying to hide my irritation. “I stayed there for a summer, about ten years ago.”

  “The farm burned down five years ago,” she said.

  Horror prickled over me like a violent rash. “Burned down? What happened?”

  “There was fire.”

  “Yeah, thanks, but does anyone know what started it?”

  “No. Fire destroyed everything. House. Farm. Horses.”

  “And Lazlo?” I asked, my voice dry and husky.

  “They think he was inside house. In cellar.”

  “What do you mean think?” I asked. “Did they recover his body or didn’t they?”

  “No one will go to farm now. Ghosts have been seen.”

  “Ghosts? What ghosts?”

  “Do you want me to take you back to town?”

  “No, I want you to take me to the farm,” I answered stubbornly.

  “I can take you in morning.”

  “There’s no time,” I said, which was true. If the Front could be believed, I had roughly two days until Lich’s return—and one of those days would involve travel back to the States.

  I expected Olga to object, but she released the brake, and the truck began to rumble forward again. We rode in silence. She twisted the headlights on shortly and rain sliced through the beams. The forests and fields darkened around us. Olga snapped on the radio, and a man singing a sad ballad crackled from the speakers. I refused to believe she had the right farm, refused to believe it had burned to the ground and that Lazlo was … missing? dead?

  No, I decided. Once I show her where it is, she’ll realize she was thinking of a different farm, a different person. But I couldn’t forget what Connell had told me about Lich eliminating the most powerful wizards, sacrificing them in his effort to bring the Whisperer into our world.