Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9) Read online

  “Like a bloated appendix, but I’d rather you solved the case.”

  “After all the crap he’s given me over the years, it feels strangely empowering to be wielding the Sword of Damocles over him.”

  “Well, you won’t be wielding it alone,” Vega said with a sly look.

  “Huh?”

  “Hoffman got me assigned to the case on a part-time basis. From a desk,” she added before I could voice my objection. “I’ll also be acting as official liaison between the NYPD and one Everson Croft, consultant. My job is to make sure case info reaches you in a timely manner and vice versa.”

  “So, what? You’re going to be my babysitter?”

  “More like your taskmaster.” She grinned around her next bite of steak.

  “That son of a … birch,” I said, shaking my head. “And after our tender moment. Well, welcome to the team.”

  She accepted my formal handshake, then aimed her knife at my food. “Eat.”

  My wife, who was dining for two, had already cleaned half her plate, while I’d only managed to twirl a wad of spaghetti onto my fork. The day’s trifecta of puzzles—strange box, strange student, and stranger case—had me in full-blown cognitive mode, which tended to distract from my appetite. I began delivering food to mouth, if only so Vega wouldn’t worry about me. Could probably use the brain fuel too.

  “You mentioned spellwork,” she said as she was finishing up. “Anything I should be worried about?”

  “It’s just a scrying spell. I got everything set up.” I lifted my eyes to indicate the lab. “I also reinforced the wards so no energy can escape the space.”

  She fell silent.

  Sensing a familiar tension, I said, “It’ll be fine.”

  “I know you’d never put us in danger. It’s just that I don’t entirely get spellwork, so my mind goes to all the things that could go wrong. And a lot of that worry is for you. You’ve had some close calls.”

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “When I was here by myself, flying solo, I took some risks I probably shouldn’t have. I mean, if anything went wrong, I was the only one who got smoked, right?” I thought about the time I’d summoned a gatekeeper and nearly been pulled into the in-between realm. “That was my reasoning, anyway. My stupidity would equal my loss, and no one else’s.”

  “What about my meals?” Tabitha called.

  I ignored her. “But since you and I became we, it’s been different. I’ve taken a lot more care. And now that it’s us,” I gestured to include her pregnant belly and Tony, “I’m taking even more care. Like ‘swaddled in bubble wrap and packaged in foam peanuts’ care.”

  “And I appreciate that,” she said, but I could see she still wasn’t one-hundred percent assuaged. This was going to take time.

  “Want seconds?” I asked, nodding at her plate.

  “No, thanks. I think I’ve eaten enough for the next hour.”

  I stood and bussed the table. “If it’s any consolation, the Order already has the box I found this morning, so that’s one less worry in the household.”

  I’d been relieved to return home to an empty casting circle that afternoon. True to his word, Claudius, who had a direct line to my lab, had portaled in and out. Now, not only was there one less potential hazard in the household, but one less thing to puzzle over. The case and student were plenty.

  I scraped the leftovers into Tupperware, rinsed everything off in the sink, and dropped them in the dishwasher.

  “Is there anything I can be doing on the case?” Vega called.

  “No, no, you’ve had a long day, and I promised you a bath and shoulder rub. I’m not going to put you to work.”

  “Your dinner revived me. And since I’m technically your boss on this, I’m not really asking.”

  “Well, if you’re going to put it that way…” I returned to the table, wiping my hands with a dish towel and slinging it over a shoulder. “Let me send you something.” I pulled out my phone and texted her the shot I’d taken of Bear Goldburn’s expedition photo. When she received it, she studied the image with a frown.

  “Ookay…”

  “When I was looking over the penthouse for anomalies, my magic directed me to this picture on his wall. I think I was specifically meant to see the flag. It’s not a country flag—I already checked—and the symbols on the center stripe are odd. Not from any of the pictographic alphabets. While Hoffman’s rounding up the usual suspects, I’d like to find out what the flag means, whether it’s relevant.”

  “I can isolate it and do an image search.”

  “Excellent. I’ll go ahead and get started on the spell, then. The extra-safe spell,” I emphasized.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? You were going to tell me what was up with Bree-yark.”

  “Oh, that.” I scratched my neck. “Wellll… I sort of took a cone-of-silence vow.”

  “And you’re married now, so that cone extends to your wife.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  She cocked her head. “Do you really need me to explain that to you?”

  “All right, all right.” I peeked over at Tony and Tabitha, then crouched until I was level with her ear. “He’s considering proposing.”

  She turned to me, eyes wide.

  “Yeah, but just considering,” I emphasized. “You saw what happened this morning. I think Gretchen’s actually right about the whole ‘emotional stress overwhelming a goblin’s nervous system’ thing.”

  “Well, try to work on him. They’d be so good for each other.”

  “Sure, but if he’s going to lay out every time she turns up, maybe they’re better off dating.”

  Tabitha cleared her throat. “And to whom are you referring?”

  “No one,” Vega and I said simultaneously.

  8

  I made a couple nervous adjustments to Bear’s hair sample, then stood back and looked over the arrangement on my lab floor. Satisfied, I activated and downed a slick wizard potion in the unlikely event something tried to grab me. I did the same with a second potion, this one to strengthen the bond to my casting circle.

  As I smacked on the bitter aftertastes, I thought of my promise to Vega.

  The scrying spell would be as harmless as I’d sworn—but I’d omitted one detail. With deaths, particularly violent ones, memories stuck to cells. Seers projected those memories onto scrying objects, but since I wasn’t a seer, I was left with absorbing the memories, essentially becoming a scrying object myself. More than just observing Bear’s final moments, I would be experiencing them.

  Safe, yes. Pleasant, not at all.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I muttered.

  As my skin turned slippery with the slick wizard potion, I lit a pair of silver candles and killed the light. The candles swelled on either side of a round mirror I’d placed on the floor. Beyond the mirror, three of Bear’s hairs lay in a fresh casting circle, a sigil-enhanced line running back to the circle around my feet.

  Tapping into my circle, I pushed energy until the symbols glowed the color of heated copper. The warm energy flowed out along the line, haloing the mirror and enclosing the smaller casting circle with the hairs.

  A resonant hum took up in the lab. We were connected.

  I drew a final potion from my coat, this one an Elixir of Seeing. It was the last of my potent ’48 batch, and I choked it down, dregs and all. Almost immediately, I began to feel light and insubstantial.

  As a growing pressure built above and between my eyes, I lowered myself to my knees until I was peering at my own reflection. As I began to incant, my mind made a note to do a better shave job along the groove of my neck. But a mist was drifting in from the sides now, occluding the dark swath of bristles.

  And here comes the fun part…

  I drew a hissing breath as the pressure in the center of my brow turned to a gouge—the opening of my third eye. The sharp pain relented. With it went the mist, and I was suddenly staring into a pair of blue eyes: Bear Goldburn’s.r />
  Then, in a terrifying inversion, I was him.

  A hand clapped down on my shoulder.

  I was hunched over, forearms bracketing a glass of something on a shiny bar. Bourbon, maybe. Hard to tell. Everything in my vision was washed out and dim. Drink, bar, the shelves of bottles opposite me.

  The hand that had clapped down squeezed now. It belonged to an arm across my back.

  “We just need to give it some air,” its owner said. The voice was male, friendly, and familiar to Bear. I wanted to turn, but I was merely an observer in his memories. I sipped my drink and shook my head.

  “It’s bullshit,” I said, slurring the words. “The whole thing is bullshit.”

  Though drunkenness rolled through me, I was furious. And it was a kind of fury I’d never quite experienced as Everson Croft. I was in the head of someone who lived life at the extreme of extremes. This was a nuclear-rod level fury—contained for now, but hot and dangerous.

  “Of course it’s bullshit,” the voice replied. “But it’s too soon. Anything you do now is going to come off as desperate. Guilty, even. We need to assemble the right legal team. We need experts in data. We need a strategy.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’m ready to kill someone.”

  Though I was observing, I was also parsing through Bear’s memories, trying to piece together what was happening. I couldn’t go deep. All I had were his associations to what was happening in that present moment.

  The location was a bar in Brooklyn, a place he liked to go when he wanted to drink incognito. It was Friday night. The referenced “bullshit” had to do with his position at Ramsa Inc. There had been an emergency board meeting that day, a vote. He’d been ousted as CEO over something on an email server. Evidence, or at least a strong suggestion, he’d leaked design secrets to a competitor.

  The info must not have gone public yet, I thought. It would have been massive news in the city.

  “Bear, baby,” the man said, giving my shoulder another squeeze. “There are ways to come out of this even stronger. Trust me.”

  “But it’s a fucking lie!” I roared.

  Several heads turned, but Bear didn’t care. He hadn’t shared any trade secrets, intentionally or otherwise. Someone had set him up. He had a list of suspects, but it was long and scattered. I couldn’t get a precise fix on any of them. Beneath the rage, I began to pick up other emotions now. Betrayal at being undermined by someone he’d apparently trusted. Sadness at being forced from a position he loved.

  And fear, profound fear, that he’d lost his wife for good.

  “I know,” the man spoke softly. “But we need evidence. We need a strategy. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  I turned my head finally. The black man in a blazer and crisp shirt had one of those boyish middle-aged faces that was hard not to like. The edges of his pupils glinted strangely, but Bear’s memory supplied a name: Vince Cole, his personal attorney and friend. Vince removed his arm from my back and jerked his thumb toward the door.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s take a drive.”

  My gaze fell to my unfinished drink, but Vince slid it out of reach.

  “Forget about that,” he said. “I’ve got better stuff in the car.”

  As Everson, red flags were unfurling. The events I was accessing could last seconds or minutes, but not much longer. Bear’s death was fast approaching.

  I was scared for him—hell, scared for me. But as a magic-user, I was also curious. Somehow, someway, Vince was either going to remove Bear’s kidneys without making an incision or, more likely, deliver Bear to someone who could. It was like anticipating the secret to a magician’s confounding trick.

  Bear, of course, didn’t have a clue.

  I left my drink and staggered after Vince. A pair of guards with heavy armor and weapons flanked the entrance of the bar. Seemed like overkill. Out front, the valet delivered a tank of a car, and Vince helped me into the passenger seat. We talked as he drove, rehashing the events of the last twelve hours. As Everson, I only half listened. I was noting passing landmarks and blurry street signs. Several times, I searched Bear’s memories, trying to find the odd flag from the photo, but it wasn’t foremost in his thoughts.

  “Where’s the good stuff?” I asked.

  Vince pointed. “Glove compartment.”

  I opened it and pulled out a small crystalline bottle that held a shot’s worth of dark liquid. With the dim effect of the scrying spell, I couldn’t see the color. “What is this?” I asked, giving it a clumsy shake.

  “Go ahead, you’ll thank me.”

  Though I resisted as Everson—imaginary brake pedal pressed firmly to floorboard—as Bear, I unstoppered the bottle and took an exploratory sip. An alcoholic sweetness washed over my tongue.

  “I don’t do girlie drinks,” I said, replacing the stopper.

  “Just wait.”

  In the next moment, a euphoria washed over me. The dark fury and fear in my head morphed into fluffy clouds bathed in brilliant sunshine. I felt more unburdened, more carefree than I ever had—as Bear or Everson.

  “Holy shit,” I murmured.

  Vince grinned over at me. “What’d I tell you?”

  I took the rest down in a single swallow. For the next minute, wave after wave of bliss pummeled me, each cycle stronger than the last. They carried away the events of the day, sent them drifting out to a dazzling sea, where they dissolved like salt. I slumped against the door, a mass of pleasure putty.

  As the final wave receded, I tried to say something, but I couldn’t talk. I tried to roll my head toward Vince, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what I’d drunk, but I didn’t care. Ramsa Inc. felt a million miles away.

  Did Vince slip him an enchanted roofie? I wondered from a distance.

  As warehouses and a large sprawling junkyard zoomed past, I noted we were on the outer edges of Brooklyn. Vince turned into an old garage. WILSON’S BODY SHOP was written in faded paint over an office with broken windows. He drove through an open bay door beside it and past a single, dark pillar. Ahead, the headlights illuminated a clear space. Standing in the center was a gleaming mortician’s table.

  Oh, fuck no.

  “Well, here we are,” Vince said cheerfully as the car came to a stop.

  I could feel the distant question in Bear’s mind, but he still felt too good to care what they were doing at Wilson’s Body Shop. As Everson, I considered shaping the Word that would return me to the casting circle.

  But I didn’t.

  I had my perpetrator and crime scene, but if I hung around I could still get means and possibly motive.

  My door opened. Lifting me out with surprising strength, Vince slung me over his shoulder. A moment later, he slammed me prone onto the metal table. It was the first shock to the drug’s disarming effect, but soon the table was softening beneath me, whispering assurances that made me smile.

  Someone began to whistle a tune. Vince? I couldn’t tell anymore.

  Further down the table, I caught the clinks of instruments being set beside me. A pair of surgical scissors bisected my shirt and jacket in back, and hands ripped them open, exposing bare skin.

  “I’m sorry about this, buddy,” Vince said. “I really am.”

  I felt Bear wanting to ask what he meant, but the question broke off in a mental scream.

  A blade had punched into my low back, sending blood gushing down my side.

  I jerked upright, the word Retirare! still ringing in my head. I was back in my lab, propped on my forearms, the reflection in the sweat-spattered mirror mine once more. Panting, I pushed myself back onto my heels.

  “Are you all right?”

  I blinked around until Vega’s concerned eyes were peering at me over the top rung of the ladder to my lab. I wasn’t sure what I felt worse about, the worry I heard in her voice or that I’d caused her to race up a ladder eight months pregnant. But in my shock and confusion, I could only murmur, “I’m good.”

  �
��Did something happen to your back?”

  I realized I was bracing the spot where the blade had gone in. I pulled my hand away and checked my palm. It was damp, but from the perspiration rolling down the inside of my shirt, not blood.

  Vega climbed up the rest of the way, turned on the light, and guided me to my desk chair.

  Though I sat heavily, I was already feeling better. “I’m all right,” I assured her. “The spell just takes a minute to wind down.”

  As I massaged the aching spot, her gaze shifted to the spent casting circles, where a faint haze lingered.

  “How did it go?” she asked warily.

  “We may have just saved Hoffman’s job.”

  When her eyebrows went up, I nodded.

  “I saw who did it and where.”

  9

  “You sure this is the place?” Detective Hoffman asked from behind the wheel.

  As his sedan’s headlights grew over the body shop, I experienced a jarring sense of déjà vu. The same faded WILSON’S BODY SHOP I’d seen an hour earlier announced the business, only now in living color. The same line of broken windows stared back at us. The only change was that the bay door was now closed.

  “One hundred percent,” I said.

  Hoffman spoke into a walkie-talkie, and a cluster of police vehicles accelerated past us, surrounding the building. As officers stacked and entered, Hoffman pulled to a stop, and he and I got out.

  “Still doesn’t explain the no cuts,” he said. “Or how this Vince Cole placed the body in Goldburn’s apartment without anyone seeing.”

  “On the ride here, Cole gave him a debilitating drink that may have contained a magical component,” I said. “I’m betting he also had a potion that could heal wounds post mortem.”

  It wasn’t something I’d considered in Bear’s penthouse, mainly because it didn’t make sense. But a lawyer killing Bear for his kidneys didn’t make a lot of sense, either—unless he’d been hired. Some spells saw potency boosts with fresh organ ingredients versus the dry stuff. But his own friend?