Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  She wasn’t even trying to sound convincing.

  “Yeah, last night and for like ten minutes!” I took several calming breaths. Tabitha’s no-craps-given attitude had a way of spiking my blood pressure. “Look, it’s for both of our safety. Not everyone holds me in as high esteem as you do. And anything strong enough to smash through my wards isn’t going to turn gooey at the sight of a house cat. Especially one so … galling.”

  Tabitha yawned.

  I placed the bottle in the fridge and closed the door. Tabitha could get into a lot of things, but not the fridge.

  “No report, no milk,” I announced.

  The cat didn’t stir for a full minute. At last, she sighed heavily.

  “Maybe I won’t come back,” she muttered, dropping from the divan with a graceless thud. At the neighboring window, she shot me a final slitted look before shifting her rump and squeezing through the cat door.

  Tabitha not coming back would do wonders for my savings, but it was only noise. Besides the pull of endless goat lactose, she didn’t have the strength to break through my wards. Not that she’d ever tried. Like a tired married couple, we’d developed a begrudging dependency on the other. She would be as disappointed to never see me again as I would to never see her.

  Of course, you’d have to tear out a few nails to get either one of us to admit it.

  I poured half the milk into a small pot on the stove and lowered the burner to a guttering flame. Then, licking a finger, I decided to take advantage of the cat’s absence to make a call. (Tabitha had an annoying habit of providing background commentary.) I carried the desk phone from the counter to my favorite reading chair and rotary-dialed from memory. For wielders of magic, mechanical telephone switches trumped microchips every time. I’d fried more than my share of the second.

  “Hello?” Caroline’s pleasant voice answered.

  “Working late, Professor Reid?” I teased.

  The voice fell flat. “Hi, Everson. Working, yes, but it’s not even two o’clock yet.”

  “Really?” It felt much later, but I decided that saying so would make me sound like a loafer. Not an impression I wanted to reinforce, especially since I was preparing to ask her for another favor.

  “What did Snodgrass want?” she asked first.

  Though my colleague had lowered her voice to a whisper, her concern came through loud and clear. I felt a stab of guilt for evoking it and decided to play things down.

  “Oh, you know. ‘Your class size is too small. You’re not a real historian. You’re a disgrace to academia.’ Same old refrains.”

  “Are you sure that was all?” she asked skeptically. “He was practically skipping after your meeting.”

  The image made my face burn. “The man probably found a discount on paperclips.”

  Caroline laughed into the phone, a beautiful, effusive sound that always cheered me up. I imagined the backward spill of hair, the point-perfect dimples in her cheeks. She cleared her throat. “So, what’s up?”

  “Well, without being allowed to say too, too much, something happened at St. Martin’s Cathedral last night, and—”

  “You mean the murder?” she asked. “Isn’t that awful?”

  “You know about it?”

  “My dad told me.”

  Of course. Caroline’s father worked as an attorney for the mayor’s office. I’d met him once, a barrel-chested man, iron hair combed back in severe lines, somber face. To hear Caroline tell it, he was the last honest broker in City Hall. That took brass. I wasn’t sure whether to envy the bastard who would one day ask for his daughter’s hand, or fear for the bastard’s life.

  “Right,” I said. “Well, I was consulted for my knowledge of arcane languages—there was some writing at the scene, you see.” Oh, if Detective Vega could hear me now. “But I need some more info.”

  “What kind?”

  “Well, like who might have something against the church or rector.”

  For time’s sake, I’d decided it was going to be easier to narrow down the suspects and see if I could link any to the message, versus starting with the message and performing the equivalent of a city-wide radial search. Caroline understood the city and its web of power brokers as well as anyone.

  “I can think of a few,” she said after a moment, “but let me look into it.”

  “Is lunchtime tomorrow too soon? We could meet at your favorite deli. My treat, of course.”

  “That should be fine.”

  “Hey, ah, I really appreciate you doing this.”

  “Well, it’s nice to see you taking something seriously.”

  She left out the for a change, but it was there, in her tone. Moments like these were when secret wizarding tended to suck the most. There were no explicit rules against my telling people what I did, but the less who knew about my other life, the better—for their sanity as much as for my safety. I didn’t have time to dwell on the question after we hung up. While Caroline was working on her list, I would need to get started on the shrieker case.

  But first things first…

  My cat had been right about one thing, I thought as I shed my coat and shoes and shuffled toward the shower.

  I did smell like crap.

  12

  My first stop upstairs was a table that held a three-dimensional model of the city. Purchased from an architect friend of Caroline’s, it was as marvelous to me as any magic. From the great upthrust of downtown to the relative plains of the Villages to the spires of Midtown and the wilds of Central Park, it was all there: every street and structure, built to scale.

  And fortunately, all presently dim.

  Through magic, I had bound the model to a series of wards placed throughout the city by the Order. If the wards detected so much as a whiff of taboo magic, a red gas light appeared on the model. The light effect was accompanied by a fog-horn, more psychic than auditory, so I could hear it even when away from home. It was then up to me to hunt down the offender.

  Last night the ruins of the East Village had lit up like hellfire. That should have tipped me off to the magic’s demonic nature.

  I stepped over a silver casting circle and emptied what I’d gathered from the conjurer’s apartment onto an iron table that ran along the railing of the loft space. The spell elements I inspected were common. The power for the spell must have been in the ritual and incantation.

  I turned around to a steep wall of mundane books.

  “Svelare,” I said.

  In a rippling wave, encyclopedias and classical titles became magical tomes and grimoires, the majority of them handwritten in lost languages, centuries old. Some of the very titles I labored to keep out of the hands of amateurs. I scaled the rolling ladder, walked my fingers over binders, and returned with a small stack of reference books dealing with demonology and subterranean beings. I spread the books over my corner desk and spent the next several hours deep inside them, emerging only for swallows of coffee.

  When I closed the final book, I had some answers. Namely confirmation that the amateur conjurer hadn’t acted alone. A shrieker summoning required the power of a magic born or a higher demon. And since there didn’t seem to be any of the second bandying about, I was putting my money on the first.

  I drew a piece of parchment paper from a drawer, dipped a quill in lampblack ink, and began penning my report to the Order.

  To the Esteemed Oracular Order of Magi and Magical Beings,

  Re: Amateur Magic/ Summoning

  Urgency: High

  (They were very particular about how these were to be composed: part Jane Austen, part inter-department memo.)

  I. Practitioner: Apparent AMATEUR. Middle-aged male of minimal means. Name unknown. No identification found. Domicile apparently settled by occupation versus lease or purchase. Due to post-conjuration mental state, AMATEUR could not be immediately interviewed. Healing initiated.

  II. Location: Avenue C, East Village, New York City, United States

  III. Source of Magic: Unknow
n at this time (see above, I). AMATEUR appears to have conjured from common components, but spell was incinerated, likely to obscure origin. ADVANCED MAGIC USER suspected. Plan to interview AMATEUR following full restoration of senses. Estimated recover time: forty-eight (48) to seventy-two (72) hours.

  IV. Creature summoned: SHRIEKER

  V. Outcome: Banished

  (I decided it better to leave out the specifics, especially the part about Thelonious.)

  Unless otherwise instructed, I plan to pursue the investigation into the origin of the spell and will report further discoveries as I attain them.

  Humbly Submitted,

  Everson Croft

  I reread the report and, satisfied it was sufficiently informative and deferential, folded it into a six-sided disc. At my lab table, I waved the hexagon over a silver cup with a plum-colored flame: my direct line to the Order.

  “Consegnare,” I said.

  The report smoked, then went up in a bright flash.

  The flame in the pot shifted to orange before returning to its plum-colored hue, telling me the message had gone through. The tension in my neck and shoulders let out a little. There would be more work on the case, but I would have the Order’s muscle in my corner—even if it was the slow-twitch variety. And who knew? Maybe this would be my break, the case that would promote me from the wizarding basement, as it were. Ten years was starting to feel like long enough.

  I checked my watch, surprised at the late hour. It was nearly ten.

  “Don’t bother fixing dinner.” Tabitha hopped onto the end of the iron table and collapsed on her side. “I fended for myself.”

  “Fended?” I asked before spotting the tuft of gray feathers stuck to a corner of her mouth. “Pigeon?”

  “What else is a girl threatening to be shoved out the door supposed to do?”

  Translation: See how low you made me go.

  I snorted a laugh. “So it’s gone from ‘Maybe I won’t come back’ to ‘He’s throwing me out’?”

  “Gotta survive somehow,” she went on in her hurt voice, as though she’d been done a terrible injustice. She stopped talking long enough to tongue-probe a back tooth. “I think I cracked a molar.”

  Translation: You made me crack a molar.

  I didn’t need to look to know her molars were fine, but since ninety percent of any relationship was knowing when to argue and when to accede… “I’m sorry,” I said. “Let me see about putting some magic to it.”

  “You’ll just make it worse,” she pouted, turning her head away.

  The other ten percent was knowing when neither one did any good.

  I sighed and began returning the research books to their dusty slots. I could feel her succubus eyes on the back of my head. “Aren’t you going to ask for my report?” she asked after a moment.

  “Do you have something?” I said from the ladder, trying to appear more interested in the title of the book I was holding. When her voice took on that dangling quality it meant she did have something.

  “Oh, I might’ve caught someone watching our building.”

  Cold fingers brushed the back of my neck. “Man or woman.”

  “Hmm. You can never tell these days, can you?”

  I turned. “Which did it look like?”

  Tabitha licked a paw and began combing it over an ear. After several passes, she blinked up at me. “Did you say something, darling?”

  “Man-looking or woman-looking?”

  “Couldn’t see much beneath the coat, but given the long hair … woman-looking.”

  I flipped through a mental Rolodex of women who might come calling—or who even knew where I lived. Of course, there were locating spells for the second, assuming the female in question had a magical bent. But I narrowed it down to the mundane: Caroline Reid or Detective Vega, one bearing a gift of info, the other coming to demand it. But why not just walk up? Or call, for that matter?

  “When?” I asked.

  “Couple of hours ago.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Average in every way.”

  I leveled my gaze at her. “If that were any less helpful, it might actually be helpful.”

  Tabitha gave a self-satisfied smirk.

  “Young or old.”

  “Young but older-looking.”

  “Blond-haired or black?”

  “Brunette.”

  I could tell Tabitha was tiring of the game because her eyes had closed and she was giving responses more freely. But I was no closer to who the woman might have been. Based on hair color, Reid and Vega were out. Still, call it wizard’s intuition, whoever it was had been watching for me.

  I would need to find out why.

  “All right, if she shows up again, try to pick out a defining feature or two.” I slid home the last book. “Better yet, let me know right away.” I turned and found Tabitha fast asleep.

  I shook my head, but maybe it was time for me to do the same. After the day I’d had, I could use a solid twelve. Back at my desk, I grabbed my empty coffee pot and mug. The downstairs lights were glowing warmly up the unit’s tall windows. Somewhere on the Hudson, a ship’s horn sounded.

  No, wait…

  I spun to face the city model, and nearly choked.

  Not a ship’s horn, my alarm. The model was glowing that hellfire red again.

  This time in two places.

  13

  The narrow streets of Chinatown were deserted when the cabbie dropped me off forty minutes later. I tipped him the requisite one hundred percent for the after-dark run—the “danger premium,” New Yorkers called it.

  Aptly named, I thought as the cab motored off. Of course most New Yorkers didn’t know what horrors truly lurked in the dark, lured by the city’s vortices of ley energy and, more recently, a muddy fog of despair.

  I took a moment to get my bearings. The street that bustled with commerce by day was now an aisle of rolled-down steel doors, business names painted across the top in red Chinese characters. Some were accompanied by Oriental signs against evil. Above, lights glowed in solitary apartment windows.

  As I began walking, I noted that the sidewalks were infinitely cleaner than those in the East Village, thanks to the crime syndicate that ran the neighborhood. Besides dealing in the usual vices, the White Hand profited by taxing local businesses and residents for “protection and services,” which evidently included trash pickup. Of course, failure to pay meant your head would be in the next day’s pile.

  The White Hand didn’t care for outsiders, either, especially after dark. I would need to tread carefully.

  I was on the block where the ward had been triggered. The hunting spell I cooked up had been necessarily hasty—and I’d had to make two of them, the second for the alarm up in the One Forties—but with no rain in the forecast, it had a good chance of holding together.

  At that thought, a fish-like force wiggled my cane, tugging me northward. I obliged at a run.

  Half a block later, the force twisted me into an alleyway stretching between two restaurants and ending at a Dumpster. Chunks of pavement were piled up against the Dumpster’s brown metal side, as though someone had jack-hammered down to a water main and left the mess for somebody else to clean up. I slowed and sniffed the air. The demon stink from the night before remained a stale after-scent in my sinuses, but it seemed I was picking up a fresh wave.

  Not as powerful as the night before, but…

  Ahead and to my left was a green door, pieces of glass glinting over its stoop. Beside it lay a twisted window cage. I raised my eyes to the dark socket of a window two floors up. From the jagged outline of broken glass, the same blood-red haze I’d seen the night before was leaking out.

  I drew my cane into sword and staff and peered around, heart thumping rabbit-hard in my chest. The alley was still, but whatever had been summoned was loose in the city, dammit.

  I blew open the locked green door, entered a narrow stairwell, and ascended quickly. At the second floor, I open
ed a door off the landing and held out my lit staff.

  “Good God,” I muttered.

  Inside the apartment’s one room, I assessed the grisly scene at a glance: the spell circles, done in salt this time, the familiar ingredients, the burned parchment, the gunky trail leading beneath the kitchen sink and eventually to the window, where the shrieker had flapped to freedom.

  I went to the fallen conjurer.

  His mouth was agape, his dark eyes rolled upward, as though trying to see something atop his head. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to watch what was happening down below. His ribs shone pale white around the hollowed-out bowl of his torso. The shrieker had consumed everything.

  With gloved hands, I searched through his pockets for identification. Nothing there, but in a wallet on a back table I found a driver’s license. The face was a match.

  “What did you get yourself into, Chin Lau Ping?” I muttered as I copied his name into my notepad.

  By his other IDs, I gathered he’d driven an intercity bus. I took a final look at the photo before returning the wallet to the table. The trim-haired man couldn’t have been more different than the East Village vagrant, and yet the two had somehow gotten their hands on the same spell. Despite needing to get to the other summoning, like an hour ago, I made a quick circuit of the apartment.

  Something had to link the two.

  I stopped at a bamboo bookcase with a mirror on top and shone my light over the titles. But it was the standard amateur fare: religious texts, lay spell books, an encyclopedia of channeling and divination. Nothing that would contain the dark secrets of demon summoning. And why shriekers?

  At the window, I peered past the broken frame into the night. I listened for bloody screams but heard only distant car horns and sirens. With any luck, the creature had gone into a second gestation.

  I would need to alert the Order of the development, but first I had to get uptown.

  I returned to the alley at a run, shoes crunching over the broken window glass. I sensed movement an instant before my vision exploded in stars. The blow only registered as I was landing on my face.