“As mayor of New York,” he proclaimed reaching inside his jacket and withdrawing an oblong black case, “I hereby present Everson Croft with our city’s highest honor.” When he opened the case, a ceremonial key to the city glittered for everyone to see. “May you remain a trusted friend.”
A fresh storm of applause rolled in as cameras flashed and audience members stood from their seats. Budge signaled for me to stand as well. He seized my right hand and held the open case between us.
“You’re one lucky bastard,” he said through his enormous smile. “City was ready to rip you to shreds. Press had practically written your obituary.”
“No shit,” I replied through my own fixed smile. “Thanks for bringing me back to life.”
“Thank Caroline. Hell of a body count you left down there.”
“Wasn’t all me,” I said. “But I am sorry about the wolves.”
“Ehh, I never much cared for them. Wife excluded, of course.”
“About that…” I started to say, but he gave my hand a harder squeeze.
Following the photo op, the interview turned into a campaign platform for Budge, which was fine by me. Among other things, he announced a wave of hirings in government security—the werewolves’ former domain—trimming New York’s unemployment rate by a half point. I sat back and studied the key, wondering how long the good will would last. New York had a short attention span and an even shorter memory.
When the interview concluded, Courtney, Budge, and I stood and shook hands. While the audience filed out and the camera crew packed it in, Budge pulled me aside.
“Listen,” he said in a lowered voice, “you don’t need to apologize about my wife. I was there last spring. I saw what happened. Heat of battle, and all that.” He snuffed out a laugh. “She was a helluva fighter, though, huh? I wanted her to pull through, I did, but … The damned thing of it is, if she’d lived to know you finished off Arnaud, she’d have forgiven you everything.”
“Really?”
“Hey, I know my Penny.” He smiled sadly before changing the subject. “Do you know how long you’re gonna be away?”
“I don’t,” I said, thinking about the Order, blood magic, my mother…
“Well, be sure to check in when you get back. I could use you around here for my second term.”
As he gave my hand a final solid shake, it struck me that from our meeting in the warehouse until now, a few attempts at coercion aside, Budge had shot pretty straight with me.
“Will do,” I said.
I watched him walk to the wing of the stage, where Angelus and Caroline were waiting for him. Caroline glanced past his shoulder. When our gazes met, her face showed recognition but nothing deeper. Per her arrangement, her feelings for me had vanished. Poof.
I raised a hand anyway. She responded with a nod before turning and disappearing with her husband and the mayor.
I stared after her for several seconds.
You didn’t have a choice, I reminded myself. Neither of you did.
And the truth was she was becoming more and more fae by the day. Her sacrifice to help me had only sped her departure from my world. I thought about our final moments in Columbus Park, her awesome power riffling through the conduit that connected Ed back to me, restoring my mind, my magic. I would have had to let her go eventually. The knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less, though. I blinked and rubbed the heels of my palms across my eyes.
“There he is.”
I gave myself another moment before turning. I spotted Vega limping up the steps to the auditorium, her son clinging to her trailing hand. She flashed a smile when she saw me walking over.
“Somebody’s been dying to meet you,” she said to me.
When my brow wrinkled in question she cocked her head down at her son.
“Oh, yeah?” I lowered myself to a knee and extended a hand. “Tony, right?”
The one time I’d seen him had been after Arnaud’s slaves had returned him to Vega. He’d probably been too shocked to remember me then, and I was frankly surprised Vega was introducing him to me now. I guess blowing up the vampire responsible for his kidnapping had boosted my stock in Vega’s portfolio. I smiled when the six-year-old boy edged further behind her braced leg.
“Go on,” Vega said to him. “Shake the man’s hand.”
Eyes fixed on Grandpa’s ring, which I’d recovered from a vault in Arnaud’s office, Tony stretched an arm forward and clasped my fingers.
“He’s been talking about you ever since the story broke,” Vega said. “Thinks you’re a superhero.”
I shook his warm hand and stood again. “What, and you don’t?”
“Well, you’ve got more lives than anyone I’ve ever met. I’ll give you that.”
“You’re partly to blame this time,” I pointed out.
“And you managed to make me not regret it.”
We both smiled and looked over at Tony, who had picked up my cane from the chair I’d been sitting in for the interview.
“It’s all right,” I said before she could tell her son to leave it alone. “It’s safe. He won’t be able to open it.” For several seconds, we watched him cane-fight an imaginary foe.
“So what’s this about you taking time off?” she asked.
I reflected on the past several weeks. In one form or another, I’d been involved with clearing the ghouls from the subway lines, the goblins from Central Park, not to mention decimating the city’s werewolf and vampire populations. And that was on top of learning about the dark mage. “I haven’t earned it?” I teased Vega. “Nah, it’s just some personal time.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Anything to do with Lady Bastet’s murder?”
Crap. We’d never buried that hatchet. “A lot, actually,” I admitted. “I think the person who killed her also killed my mother.”
“You never told me your mother was murdered.”
“I didn’t know until that night you caught me at LB’s. I saw something in her scrying globe.”
“Do you have a name for me?”
“Not yet.” I checked my watch. “And I’ve gotta run.”
“We’re not gonna play this game again, are we?” she asked.
She was right. I owed her more. “I’ll tell you anything I find out. If,” I added, “you let me call the shots.” And if, I thought, I’m not in terminal trouble with the Order. “This is a whole different level of menace.”
Vega’s lips torqued as she considered my terms.
A small hand tugged at my pant leg. I looked down to find Tony holding my cane up for me.
“Here, Mr. Croft,” he said, his brown eyes as intense as his mother’s. “To fight the monsters.”
“Thanks, big man.” I smiled at Vega. “He’d make a great sidekick.”
She ruffled his feathery curls. “Yeah, when he’s not too busy making trouble.”
“Hey, listen,” I said. “I’m glad we’re talking again.”
When she replied, it was with an edge of warning. “Let’s try to keep it that way.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I assured her.
“I’m counting on it.”
I kissed her cheek in farewell—why not?—and gave Tony a high five. Vega seemed not to mind either gesture. As I pattered down the auditorium steps, her son’s voice rang out behind me.
“Bye-bye, Mr. Croft!”
34
“You’re late,” Chicory said when I entered my apartment.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” I hung my cane on the coat rack and hustled to the sitting area in front of the stone fireplace. “The interview went longer than expected. Can I get you anything?” I ran through a mental inventory of what I had on hand. “Water? Um … cheese?”
“No,” he said. “Have a seat.”
From the reading chair, my mentor nodded to the couch opposite him. He was buried under Tabitha whose purrs sounded like a small tractor. His eyes glowered at me over her orange mass.
“The Order received your communica
tion.”
I’d thought his scheduled visit might have something to do with that. I sat carefully.
“Let me hear it from you,” he said.
“Okay.” I cleared my throat and started into a verbal account of what I’d sent the week before. Bringing my mother’s hair to Lady Bastet, the mystic’s murder, the residue found on the slaughtered cats, my attempt to cast through said residue and the resulting encounter with the dark mage, the vision in the scrying globe of my mother’s murder … I told him everything. Even the part about the mage stealing my blood. Blood I had given to Lady Bastet willingly.
My only omission was Arnaud’s claim that Grandpa had stolen the wizard artifacts.
When I finished, Chicory watched me for several long seconds, fingers digging into the hair on Tabitha’s crown. Sweat dewed over my brow. For a moment I was back in Romania awaiting Lazlo’s verdict: train me or destroy me. I flinched as the repaired AC huffed on.
“You violated a cardinal tenant of the Order,” Chicory said at last, “Several, in fact.”
“Several?”
He arched a bushy eyebrow. “Summoning a shadow fiend?”
“Oh, c’mon. You’re going to stick that on me? I was under a vampire’s control. I didn’t have a choice. And in case you didn’t notice, I took care of the vampire in question. The shadow fiend, too.”
“Yet another example of giving your blood willingly,” Chicory said.
“What, you think I offered Arnaud my neck? ‘Here, turn me into one of your mindless undead. Enslave me for all eternity. I’m begging you.’” I sighed at the ridiculousness of it.
“The point, Everson, is that you contravened the rules. Something you’ve done time and again. Your potential for magic is enormous, but so too is your potential for causing great harm. You dabble in things you shouldn’t, despite any and all warnings to the contrary. You’re a danger to yourself, your city, and to the Order of Magi and Magical Beings.”
I could tell by his tone he was building up to a verdict. I made a circular motion with my shaking hand. “Just cut to the chase, please.”
“Everson, this is the part of my job I least enjoy…”
“You’re giving me more preamble,” I said.
Chicory let out a heavy sigh. “The Order is through issuing warnings. The penalty this time is … severe.”
“Death?” The word scratched from my throat.
I remembered the sensation of falling into the In Between, that realm of luminescent darkness and haunting gatekeepers. I hadn’t been ready to pass then, and I wasn’t ready now.
“Possibly,” Chicory answered.
“Possibly?” I stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tabitha stirred on his lap and murmured, “Less talking, more scratching.”
“The dark mage’s name is Marlow,” Chicory said. “He was once a member of the Order. A lot like you, in fact. Curious. Headstrong. Impetuous. And it was this last quality that got him into trouble. He discovered an old book by Lich, the member of the First Order who aspired to the power of his siblings and opened the seam to the Whisperer. The book contained Lich’s original notes. Notes on his spell experiments as well as pages of invective against the First Order: their iniquities, their disproportionate power. The charges inflamed Marlow’s mind. He formed a splinter group known as the Front to ascend to the power of Lich.”
“Why didn’t the Order stop him?” I asked.
“Marlow kept his activities well cloaked. When the Order began to suspect him, they sent an agent to infiltrate the Front to learn more.”
“My mother,” I said.
Chicory nodded. “It’s why the Order kept no records on her. Rest assured, Everson, I’m told she performed her job very capably. But all it took was one intercepted message, apparently.”
“And they killed her.”
“Marlow sent the Order her ashes in a trash bag.”
My face burned. “So why in the hell wasn’t he punished?”
“Marlow and the Front went into deeper hiding. By that time, they had acquired sufficient power to stay hidden.”
“Even against the Elders?” I asked, incredulous.
“I’m afraid so.”
“I thought you said there had only been one rebellion against the Order.”
“Yes, but a second is coming,” Chicory said. “Of that the Order has little doubt. It just hasn’t started yet.”
“So what does this have to do with my sentence of possible death?”
“The Order believes there was a reason Marlow didn’t want you to learn about your mother’s murder.”
“And what was that?”
“He knew you would want to come after him.”
I barked out a laugh. “Why should that bother him? The Elders can’t even find him.”
“This is different, Everson. As a descendant, you would be able to penetrate his veiling and defensive spells in ways others can’t. Perhaps even get close to him unnoticed.”
“Descendant? What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Based on the information you shared,” Chicory said, “the Order believes Marlow is your father.”
For a vertiginous moment, my soul seemed to leave my body. Far away, I felt the ice-cold brush of the AC, heard Tabitha’s chopping purrs. And then I was back, my heart resuming its hard, flip-flopping rhythm.
“How sure are they?” I asked.
“That’s what they want to find out. And that’s where your sentencing comes in. As of now, the Order is suspending your other activities. Your new mandate is to find Marlow and destroy Lich’s book. It’s where he derives his power. If Marlow is your father, you should succeed in the first.”
I didn’t like the qualifying should. “What about the second?”
Beneath the wiry shelf of his brows, Chicory’s eyes turned dark. “Marlow is also known as the Death Mage. There’s a reason for that.”
I nodded, fully present now. I didn’t care what his name implied. This was bigger than my mother’s murder, bigger than vengeance. I would be picking up where my mother had left off, countering a threat to the Order, to humankind. This was about legacy.
I met Chicory’s waiting gaze.
“When do I begin?”
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Books by Brad Magnarella
PROF CROFT
Book of Souls
Demon Moon
Blood Deal
Purge City
XGENERATION
You Don’t Know Me
The Watchers
Silent Generation
Pressure Drop
Cry Little Sister
Greatest Good
Dead Hand
Purge City (Prof Croft Book 3) Page 23
