Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5) Read online

  “The calendar app?”

  “No, the computer. And I’ve got two of ’em in my office for some reason. Tell you what. Soon as my secretary gets back, I’ll have her clear a time and then give you a call.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Hey, I’m looking forward to teaming up again, Everson,” he said in that buddy-buddy way of his. “We’ve got a solid record, you and me. Haven’t let our city down yet.”

  Though the mayor hadn’t stressed the word “yet,” it lingered as I hung up the phone. Probably because there was too much negativity swimming around my head. I hadn’t gone through my morning practices, and between the lumpy sofa and Gretchen’s snoring, I hadn’t even rested that well.

  The one time I managed to fall into a decent sleep, I was awakened by Gretchen rooting around the fridge. She did that for twenty minutes before fixing what smelled like a leftover lamb-and-onion sandwich. I hope she enjoyed it. She had devoured it noisily enough.

  I checked my watch, then eyed the door to my bedroom. Still closed, and I had things to get out of there.

  I was heading for the bathroom when the bedroom door swung open and banged against the wall. Sporting the most violent bed head I’d ever seen, Gretchen staggered out and peered at me with crinkled eyes. She cleared her nostrils and then disappeared into the bathroom without a word.

  Assuming she was going to be in there for a while, I rifled the pockets of my hanging coat until I found Pierce’s card. I went to my phone and dialed. Pierce claimed to have information from last night, which I had apparently missed. I still didn’t see how that was possible, but just in case, I wanted to talk to him before sitting down with the mayor. The line rang twice before a young woman answered.

  “Pierce Dalton’s office.”

  “Yes, is he in?”

  “I’m afraid he can’t come to the phone right now. Can I ask who’s calling?”

  “This is Everson Croft. I’m an … associate of Pierce’s.” I had no idea if his assistant knew anything about his wizarding life. “He told me to call to schedule a time to meet with him.”

  “Hmm,” the woman said. “He didn’t mention anything about that. Hold one moment, please.”

  “The earlier the better,” I said quickly, but canned violin music was already piping through the line.

  The woman returned a minute later. “He has an opening in forty minutes?”

  Crap. I’d been hoping to go through at least an expedited version of the Magical Me program and then swing by Mae’s apartment. I’d already incinerated the old woman’s spell book, but I still needed to take care of Buster. I hadn’t worked out exactly how yet, but with the mage case looming, I wanted to tie up all of my dangling threads. Guess that would have to wait.

  “Sure,” I told Pierce’s assistant. “I just need his address.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary. We’ll send a car.”

  “A car?”

  I could hear her tapping on a handheld device. “You’re on West Tenth, correct?”

  “That’s right,” I said uncertainly.

  “Great, we’ll have a car there in twenty.”

  “Great,” I echoed, and hung up.

  Who in the hell was this guy? On top of being a wizard, he appraised art and had a personal assistant and a chauffeur? I couldn’t wait to see what he drove. Feeling my jealousy gathering again, I spoke a quick affirmation, then headed to the bathroom. Twenty minutes didn’t give me much time. I knocked tentatively on the closed door.

  “Hey, ah, how much longer—”

  “Do you mind?” Gretchen barked. “I’ve been stopped up for three days, and I’m finally getting some movement.”

  I backed away from the door. I’d skip the bathroom. Instead, I scrubbed my face in the kitchen sink, finger-combed my hair, and rinsed my mouth with baking soda and water. I was heading to my room to grab a clean set of clothes, when Gretchen emerged from the bathroom with a loud, satisfied sigh and strode into my room ahead of me, closing the door.

  Wonderful.

  I pulled last night’s clothes from the back of my reading chair, put them on along with my shoes, and grabbed my cane. Tabitha slept while I dressed, which was just as well. My black pants and shirt looked more appropriate for another date, and I didn’t need any commentary. Then again, I wasn’t aware of there being standard attire for meeting a fellow wizard.

  “Where you going?” Gretchen called from my bedroom.

  “I have to meet someone. Another wizard. I shouldn’t be too long.”

  “Well, come straight back when you’re done. Your training starts today.”

  She was testing my patience as a roommate, but for the first time that morning, I actually smiled.

  Training! Finally!

  10

  The car that arrived to pick me up was a Rolls Royce. Its silver body glistened as it pulled up to the curb. I took two steps forward, then stopped. Was I supposed to wait for the driver to do the whole chauffeur thing? I squinted, but couldn’t see anything past the tinting.

  The rear door on my side opened.

  I hunkered down and peered into the empty back seat. “Neat trick.”

  I slid onto the supple leather seat, and the door closed. Cool air moved around me. It wasn’t until the car pulled from the curb that my eyes began to adjust to the dimness. I was opening my mouth to make conversation with the driver before realizing there was no one behind the wheel either. I rose from my seat to make sure the driver wasn’t just really short before settling back down.

  Great, the car was operating itself.

  I opened my wizard’s senses until I felt the magic moving throughout the vehicle. I’d had modest success animating golems, but a frigging car? Jealousy curdled my gut again and I had to talk it back down.

  The truth was, a part of me was excited to be meeting another wizard. Until discovering the Order in Exile and then James Wesson, the only wizards I’d known had been my first trainer, Lazlo, and then Chicory, who turned out to be Lich. Which meant the majority of my wizarding life in the city had been pretty lonely.

  I was also starting to see how Pierce’s skill—demonstrated by the car’s smooth turn and acceleration onto Sixth Avenue—could be to my benefit. His appearance last night had bothered me, sure. After the hundreds of extra hours I’d put into wizarding in the past year, after all the early mornings and late nights, I’d started to believe in my own affirmations. Last night’s one-two punch of Pierce and Gretchen had taken care of that. I was a better wizard now than I’d been a year before, but I was nowhere close to where I thought I was—or should be.

  Gretchen would help. But so too could Pierce. By collaborating on the case, I’d be able to observe him, ask questions, learn how he did what he did. It was just a matter of keeping my ego in check.

  And you can do it, I told myself. Think of it as a necessary step in your journey to becoming your best wizard.

  By the time the Rolls Royce pulled in front of a townhouse just south of Midtown, I was feeling good about where this could lead. And damn, he had a nice place. I climbed the stone steps to the front door, where I was greeted by Pierce’s assistant, a young Asian woman dressed in smart business attire. I suddenly felt self-conscious in my date-night get up.

  “Mr. Croft?” she said, giving me a firm handshake. “I’m Sora. This way, please.”

  I stepped into a giant foyer, where a staircase wound up and natural sunlight fell through large windows high overhead. The panes of light glowed over a series of beautiful landscape paintings that circled the room. Sora led me down a wainscoted corridor hung with more paintings before stopping at an open door. “Your ten o’clock is here,” she announced.

  His ten o’clock?

  Ego, I warned sternly.

  “Ah, yes,” Pierce said. “Show him in.”

  I thanked Sora as I stepped past her and into an office. Ahead of me, Pierce stood over a large desk, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. His brow was creased, and it took me a moment
to realize he was studying a painting on his desktop, a rendering of seemingly random lines and shapes.

  I looked around. No paintings hung from the walls, though large numbers of them were stacked here and there, protected by thin paper. Subtle magic moved throughout the ample space.

  Pierce remained staring at the painting for another several seconds before looking up.

  “Everson,” he said, recognition seeming to take hold in his blue eyes. “Have a seat.”

  “Thanks.” I sat in one of the leather chairs facing his desk. Sora returned a moment later with a cup of tea and a saucer, which she placed efficiently on a small table beside my chair.

  “Oh, Sora,” Pierce said before she could leave. “Go ahead and package this one and prepare the certificate of authenticity.” He handed her the painting he’d been studying.

  “I’ll have it ready to sign following your meeting,” she said.

  “Very good.”

  Sora left with the painting and closed the door behind her.

  “When your assistant said you were sending a car, I didn’t think she meant by itself.”

  Pierce gave a modest chuckle. “I found it saves on staff.”

  I took another look around. Like the rest of the house, the office demonstrated expensive tastes without being flashy. Wooden fixtures glowed handsomely in the light through the window.

  “Nice place,” I remarked.

  “Yes, well, property values have been depressed for some time, so when I received the request to relocate, I decided to take a chance on buying. Perhaps the housing market will come back fully, and perhaps it won’t.” He smiled in a way that suggested it didn’t really matter to him either way.

  “So how did you get into appraising?”

  “By accident, really. I grew up outside of Tokyo. My father was an officer in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, you see. They had a presence in Japan well into the ’70s. In the region where we lived, a kind of painting called Himitsu is widespread. The style dates back to an early religion called Jiko.”

  “I’ve heard of Jiko,” I said.

  “Yes, well, then you probably know that the religion was forbidden during the Muromachi period, its practice punishable by death. As such, devotees developed subtle ways to communicate with one another. One was through Himitsu paintings. On the surface they appealed to the common tastes of the era, but their true purpose was to transmit messages and teachings.”

  I gave my best scholarly nod, even though I’d known little of that.

  “We studied the local culture as part of the curriculum at my school,” Pierce went on. He had never sat down, and now he began to stroll the space behind his desk. “One day, a Himitsu painter spoke to our class. He showed us an original Himitsu painting and asked if anyone knew what it depicted. Various classmates of mine described the tree and the woman sitting beneath it. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why no one had pointed out the painting’s most obvious feature: directions to a meeting place. After class, I asked the painter about this. He looked at me intently for a long moment before decreeing, ‘You will study with me.’ Then he left. Two weeks later, my mother announced she wanted to add art to my extracurricular activities. In fact, she had already found someone to instruct me—a painter. Naturally, it was the man who had come to our school, Gaku.”

  Whether it was Pierce’s ability as a storyteller or his wizard’s voice, I felt myself being pulled into the account.

  “For the next eight years, I studied under Gaku. He taught me the language of the Himitsu paintings, which were even more layered than I’d first intuited. The painting he showed to our classroom? It also contained the history of an important period in the past as well as information on a mirror period, an epoch in the near future that would reflect the referenced history.”

  “So the Himitsu paintings were also used for divining.”

  “By the masters, yes. Eventually I could not only read and reproduce the paintings, but compose my own. The practice unlocked other abilities.”

  “Your magic,” I said, unable to hide my interest.

  “Some of the old Himitsu masters were practitioners themselves. Their teachings were found in the paintings. My teacher was a devotee rather than a master, but he had collected images of all the old works. We experimented in secret, developing my abilities.”

  “So you learned your magic through paintings?” Though I’d heard of such things, the concept still seemed incredibly foreign. In my defense, the Far East wasn’t my specialty. “What about books?”

  Pierce’s laugh carried the slightest hint of condescension. “I consulted books to round out my studies, but I found them too linear. With a Himitsu painting, you can take in everything at a glance. This one for example.” He walked over to a bookshelf that I’d assumed held reading material. But when he selected a leather folio and opened it for me to see, I was looking at an old painting on parchment.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “A lily pond with mountains in the distance?”

  “What if I were to tell you that this contains a complex spell on translocating objects?”

  I squinted and tilted my head, unable to see anything other than the image. Could Pierce really perform translocations? I’d taken a few stabs at it that year but without anything approaching success.

  Pierce’s eyes gleamed as he closed the folio and returned it to its place on the shelf. “In any case, all of that was a long way of telling you that in the process of studying the Himitsu paintings, I developed an uncanny eye for authenticity. I become an appraiser, and here we are.”

  Judging by here, his services were expensive and highly sought after.

  I took a sip of tea. “How did the Order find you?”

  “Oh, I found them.”

  “You found them?”

  “Yes, through a painting I was working on. You asked about divination, and it is quite true that some paintings begin to speak to you.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Has that ever happened with one of your books?”

  “Yeah, but it was cursed,” I muttered.

  “This was about a year ago,” he went on. “I had been living back in England and was working on a large piece. By the time I finished, I knew the recent history of the Order and understood they were looking for magic-users. I had been taking nightly strolls though London, protecting its citizens from unnatural threats, if you follow, so it seemed a natural fit.”

  “Lich never came after you before that, never tried to recruit you?”

  “He didn’t. The ethos of the Himitsu masters was to be ‘soft in their practices,’ as they put it. Subtle. A history of persecution, remember. And this was the manner in which I myself practiced. I must never have made enough of a light show to be noticed.” For the second time, I picked up a hint of judgment in his tone. “Not only that, I managed to remain … unattached.”

  At first I thought he meant being a swinging bachelor; his fourth finger was ring-less. But when he gave me a thin smile, I realized he was referring to Thelonious, the incubus spirit that remained affixed to my soul. The anger I’d felt last night climbed my neck, and I set my tea down.

  “You mentioned the recent history of the Order,” I said. “You must have learned about the being Dhuul.”

  “Ah, yes. The Whisperer. Chaos. The effects were beginning to spread through London.”

  “Well, did you know I killed Lich?” My heartbeats pounded through the words. “Did you know my father sacrificed his life to repel Dhuul and collapse the portal to his realm?”

  Pierce became preoccupied with a document on his desk. “I did pick up something about that, yes,” he replied. “Quite a lucky break.”

  “It wasn’t luck.”

  He blinked up at me, startled by my show of anger. “Just a turn of phrase, Everson. No harm meant. Would you like Sora to bring you some more tea? How about something to snack on?”

  I glared at him another moment. What was the deal with his off-handed comments? His sho
w of disinterest? Were they deliberate tactics meant to demonstrate his mastery over me? Or was he just one of those types who became bored by someone’s company the instant the focus shifted from himself? Choosing to believe the second, I exhaled through my nose.

  “Let’s talk about the case,” I said.

  “Certainly. What exactly would you like to discuss?”

  “Last night you said you had enough information to name the suspect in a day or two.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well, I don’t see how that’s possible. I didn’t see a damn thing at the crime scene.” I stopped short of accusing him of taking evidence without telling me.

  Pierce smiled.

  “Is something funny?”

  “My being on Houston Street last night was no accident.”

  I stiffened, ready to grab my cane. Had he been involved in the attack?

  He seemed to take in my reaction, his eyes touching on my ring and coin pendant, before turning his back. “I mentioned mirror periods to you earlier? Well, they don’t have to involve major historical epochs. They can reflect smaller events too. Mirror events. While working on a recent painting to hone my intuiting, I picked up on a reflection. One that foretold the attack that occurred last night. Unfortunately, I arrived too late.”

  “How did it foretell the attack?” I demanded.

  When he turned to face me again, he gave another one of his thin smiles. “It’s impossible for someone unfamiliar with Himitsu paintings to fully understand. It would be like…” He rested his chin on his thumb. “Well, it would be like a sphere trying to explain its three-dimensional existence to a circle. There are almost no common points of reference.”

  He gave no sign that he’d just landed another one of his stinging jabs. Regardless, I believed that divination had led him to the crime scene. My body relaxed slightly. “Fine, let’s go back to last night. So when you told Vega you’d have an answer in a day or two, you’re going to divine that info?”

  “With the help of the painting, yes.”

  “Then what are you doing”—I threw a hand out—“appraising art?”