Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5)

by Brad Magnarella

  The smile again, as though he was enjoying a private joke. “A Himitsu painting cannot be rushed, Everson. It takes time to fully express itself. Hurry the job, and you’ll end up with nothing.”

  “Well, can I be doing anything in the meantime?” I asked in frustration.

  “No, honestly. Like I said, the attacker did a good job covering his tracks. But he’s locked into a mirror pattern now, most likely unknowingly. And those are extremely hard to escape.”

  “The infernal bag,” I said. “The ingredients are common, except for devil’s ear. The crushed leaf is sold in a handful of specialty shops around the city. I can talk to the shop owners, see if they remember anyone buying some.”

  “If you wish,” Pierce said, consulting something else on his desk.

  “It beats waiting around for a painting to talk,” I muttered. But if he heard me, he gave no sign. I took a few calming breaths. He wasn’t trying to be a dick, I reminded myself. Or was he?

  I stood with my cane. “I have a meeting with the mayor later today,” I said, for no other reason than to sound important. “He’s worried about another attack. More than anything, he needs to be reassured we’re making progress.”

  “Oh?”

  “So if you learn anything more before this afternoon, could you let me know?”

  He raised his eyes. “If you want to hang around, I’ll be checking in with the painting shortly.”

  Did he seriously expect me to operate on his timetable?

  “Can’t.” I headed for the door. “I need to get a head start on the shops.”

  “You’re more than welcome to the car,” Pierce offered. “Cheaper than a cab.”

  “Thanks, but I’m feeling extravagant.”

  11

  I caught a cab and gave the driver the address of a medicinal shop on the Upper West Side. I hadn’t forgotten Gretchen’s request to come straight home following the meeting, but I felt a burning need to find a lead before Pierce did.

  It wasn’t just the way he’d talked down to me. It was the subtle critique of my magic and then my incubus. It was the insinuation that I couldn’t possibly understand the complexity of the Himitsu paintings. But most of all, it was the way he’d dismissed my father’s and my efforts to repel the Whisperer.

  He’d called it luck. And while, yes, luck had played a part, it didn’t change the fact we had spared the world—including him—from Chaos. A little gratitude would have been nice.

  To top it off, none of Pierce’s sleights had seemed deliberate—which only made them more humiliating. It was as if he didn’t even have to try. And then he’d had the gall to offer me his car.

  “Pfft,” I said as I looked out the cab’s dirty window.

  I knew I needed to get a handle on my ego, to be the bigger wizard…

  Screw that, I thought. I’ll let him in on this one case, and then he can go back to covering the boroughs.

  I didn’t ever want to hear about Himitsu art again.

  By early afternoon, none of the shop owners I spoke to recalled any recent purchases of devil’s ear. Several didn’t even keep it in stock. My next-to-last stop was Mr. Han’s Apothecary in Chinatown. Because I was in the domain of Bashi, the local crime lord, I had the taxi idle while I hustled inside.

  I found Mr. Han at the register, ringing up a woman customer. Her small daughter tapped on the side of a fish tank full of live scorpions. I browsed the narrow aisles as I waited, looking for devil’s ear. As I went, I picked out a few items I was getting low on. Though I shopped at Midge’s Medicinals for convenience, Mr. Han still had the best prices in the city.

  “That Mr. Croft?” he called in his sharp accent.

  I turned to find the shop owner standing ramrod straight behind his register, a collared shirt buttoned to his chin. The door made a tring sound as the customer and her daughter left.

  “Hey, Mr. Han.” I walked up and deposited the items on the counter. “How are things going?”

  The last time I’d been here was almost a year before when I helped the Blue Wolf. I braced now for Mr. Han to ask why the upstairs room he’d rented to Jason had been trashed and bloodied, but he fell back to his old refrain.

  “Oh, you know, just chilling out.” His fingers punched the register as he inspected each item and dropped it into a bag. “You see special on dried bull wang today? Buy one get one two-third price.”

  “That’s an interesting deal. I’m actually looking for devil’s ear, but I couldn’t find any.”

  “Because someone buy it all,” he said. “Devil’s ear on backorder. Be here two week.”

  A charge went through me. “Do you know who the buyer was?”

  “I never see him before.”

  “Can you describe him?” When Mr. Han looked up, I caught a glint of suspicion in his eyes. “I might know him,” I added quickly. “I was thinking I could maybe, you know, talk him into sharing some until you restock.”

  “Must want devil’s ear very bad.”

  “I do.”

  Mr. Han placed the final item in my bag. “Forty-two dollar, thirty-five cent,” he announced.

  I paid him in cash, then waited as he produced my change.

  “So,” I said, taking the bag, “about the person who bought the devil’s ear…”

  Mr. Han looked at me blank-faced. I’d known him long enough to recognize that as his thinking expression. But after another moment, he looked past me. “I no can say, Mr. Croft.”

  “No can or no will?” I pressed.

  Mr. Han’s response was to fold my bag and push it toward me.

  “All right,” I said, “how much did he pay you to remain silent?”

  Mr. Han didn’t hesitate. “One hundred dollar.”

  “Here.” I reopened my wallet and placed a scatter of bills on the counter. “That’s another hundred.”

  Mr. Han swept the bills into a pile, tapped them into a neat stack, and deposited them in his register. “White man, a little shorter than you. Wear long black coat.”

  “Well, that narrows it down to a million or so,” I muttered.

  “Oh, and he wear funny hat.”

  “Funny how?”

  “No, furry hat, with parts that go over ear. But look funny too, especially with big sunglasses and scarf around mouth.”

  I sagged as I pictured the ridiculous disguise. Knowing someone might come asking, the mage had not only concealed his distinguishing features, but paid Mr. Han to remain silent. I started to ask if the man had bribed him with a credit card, before remembering Mr. Han’s cash-only policy.

  “How much devil’s ear did he buy?”

  Mr. Han’s eyes canted to one side as he searched his memory. “Ten pound, I think.”

  I whistled inwardly. That would make a lot of infernal bags.

  “Do you remember what his voice was like?”

  “He talk in whisper. And he have … How you say? Lip?”

  “Lip?” I repeated.

  “Like when someone pronounce special spethal?”

  “A lisp!” I said.

  “Yes, yes, lisp.” He repeated the word a few times to lock it into his still-growing vocabulary.

  I hadn’t heard a lisp last night, but the magic-user had been speaking through a smoke golem. He could have manifested any voice he’d wanted. So, a lisp, I thought. That didn’t necessarily give me a lead, but it gave me an identifying feature rare in grown men. That was something.

  “Is there anything else about him you can tell me?” I asked. “The way he walked, maybe?”

  But Mr. Han had stooped down. When he stood again, he was aiming a fire extinguisher past me. I had begun to feel a vibrating in my inner ear, like in the theater last night—an unpleasant sensation of building energy. I turned to find sulfurous black smoke growing from the back of the store. And not just growing, but writhing toward us.

  Well, crap.

  My watch began to flash as my cane jerked toward the smoke.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m right he
re,” I told my alarm, dispelling it quickly.

  I caught Mr. Han as he tried to rush past me with the fire extinguisher. “Get down!” I shouted. I shoved him back behind the counter, pulled my sword from the cane, and called forth a shield invocation. Light burst from my staff into a dome that covered both of us.

  “Have to put out fire,” Mr. Han insisted.

  “It’s not a fire! We’re under attack!”

  No sooner than I’d said that, red-black flames began snapping from the smoke. At the center, the smoke was coiling into the same figure I’d encountered last night—another smoke golem.

  “Careful, wizard,” the golem said. “You’re putting your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Vigore!” I shouted, thrusting my sword forward. A shield hardened from the golem’s right arm, blocking and scattering the force invocation. The shelves to either side of him toppled in a Domino effect. The large fish tank fell and shattered, sending scorpions scrambling in every direction.

  I followed up with an attempt to trap the golem. But the mage animating him had prepared for that as well. A spiky suit of armor appeared over the golem’s form, breaking apart the light energy.

  “As for you…” The smoke golem trained his glaring red eyes on Mr. Han. “I thought we had an agreement.”

  The golem threw his left arm forward. Flames shot from his hand and blasted around our shield. Before I could stop Mr. Han, he shouted something in Mandarin and shot back with the fire extinguisher. A layer of thick foam coated the inside of the shield, rendering me blind.

  For the love of…

  I shoved Mr. Han past the curtained entrance to his living quarters with a force invocation and shielded the doorway. I then inverted my own shield so the foam was on the outside. With another invocation, I blew the foam away and shrunk the shield until it conformed to my body.

  The smoke golem rose up in front of me.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Your wizard friend isn’t here to help you?”

  My face burned at the suggestion. “I can handle you just fine on my own, thanks.”

  I drove my sword forward, but even though the runes glowed with power, it only passed through his body. With a laugh, the golem seized my wrist and twisted. Pain shot up my arm, until I could feel the ball of my shoulder straining in the socket. Grunting, I rotated with the pressure and ended up on my knees.

  “Respingere!” I managed.

  Light and force detonated from my shield, but the smoke golem didn’t budge.

  “I’m far too adaptable for you, wizard,” he said. “With each encounter, I develop more immunity to your magic. It was a deadly mistake for you to come looking for me.”

  He gave a hard twist. I shouted as the shoulder dislocated. The ball bulged beneath the front of my shirt like a baseball. Gritting my teeth, I drove my sword into his smoky form again. He reached for my face, flames licking from his fingers. Sweat leapt from my brow.

  Adaptable, huh? I thought. Then let’s try something you haven’t seen.

  I gathered all of my power, even the portion shielding Mr. Han’s doorway, and channeled it into a single word: “Disfare!”

  The invocation I used to banish nether creatures erupted from my blade and into the golem. With a pained cry, the golem’s smoky form blasted out in all directions as if it had been hit by an industrial-strength fan. The smoke didn’t coalesce again. My invocation had worked.

  I pushed myself to my feet and peered around the trashed store. Other than a few small fires, smoking scorpion husks, and the golem’s lingering fog, there was no sign of him.

  Mr. Han’s head appeared from behind the curtain. Seeing the coast was clear, the rest of him followed. He was still carrying the extinguisher. He ran around, putting out small fires.

  “I’m really sorry about your store,” I said.

  “Rented room, now this?” he asked sharply. “Disaster follow you everywhere?”

  I started to shrug, then winced as the pain of dislocation discharged down my arm. Mr. Han set the extinguisher down and walked quickly over to me. Clasping my shoulder in his small but surprisingly strong hands, he said, “Relax. On count of three, I fix. One…”

  With a sharp thrust, he jerked the shoulder. I gasped in surprise as I felt the ball pop back into the socket. I rotated the shoulder a few times. Everything stayed put. I would apply some healing magic when I left.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Here, let me help you get the shelves back up.”

  We worked together righting them. His wife appeared shortly with a fan to blow out the remaining smoke. She then began sweeping up the detritus with a small broom and dustpan. Every so often, Mr. Han would snatch up a live scorpion and drop it into a plastic bag he’d tucked into his belt.

  As we righted the final sets of shelves, I spotted what I’d been looking for: a small leather pouch like the one Pierce had discovered last night. While Mr. Han chased another scorpion, I picked up the infernal bag from amid a pile of books on channeling. A small amount of dark magic stirred inside the pouch. I slipped the bag into my coat pocket.

  When we got the last of the shelves up, I checked my watch. It was after two o’clock. Gretchen was expecting me back at the apartment. It had also been awhile since I’d checked my voice mail. The Order and the mayor’s office had probably called. I picked up my purchased spell items, which by some miracle had remained on the counter, and turned to Mr. Han.

  “If that man who bought the devil’s ear comes back, could you give me a call?”

  “Give you call?” he said. “Only person I going to call is insurance company.”

  I glanced around his ruined store. “Good point.” I held up my shopping bag. “Well … thanks.”

  “Wait,” he said when I turned to leave. “Twenty dollar. For shoulder.”

  “Huh?” I said before realizing what he was asking. “Oh, right. The medical bill.”

  I reached for my wallet, figuring it was the least I could do, but he waved his hands.

  “Mr. Han make joke,” he said, turning to his wife, who started laughing too.

  That got me chuckling as well, even though the joke was only mildly funny, especially in light of the destruction around us. But I realized I had some things to feel good about. I had just defeated a smoke golem more powerful than last night’s, I had obtained a description of the mage behind it, and I had recovered an infernal bag with some magic still kicking inside.

  Add them up, I thought, and I just might be looking at an advantage over Pierce.

  12

  When I returned to my apartment in the mid afternoon, it looked like a bomb had gone off in my kitchen. The counter was scattered with mixing bowls, milk cartons, and heaps of flour; burnt pans and batter covered the stove top; and the sink was crammed with dirty pots and plates. I picked my way across a kitchen floor mined with egg shells to shut off the running faucet.

  “Where’s Gretchen?” I asked.

  Tabitha stirred on her divan. “She made breakfast and then went back to bed.”

  “Back to bed?”

  At that moment, I heard her choke on a snore in my bedroom.

  “I’m not surprised,” Tabitha said. “I’ve never seen someone eat that many pancakes in one sitting. You should have seen the stack. It was like something out of a cartoon. I’m surprised she didn’t fall into a diabetic coma. Or maybe she did.” Tabitha lowered her head back down, unconcerned either way.

  “Did she seem upset when I didn’t come back?”

  “She seemed more upset when she ran out of maple syrup.”

  “Have you eaten?” I asked.

  “Yes, darling. But not because she offered to share. In fact, she behaved as if I were hardly here.”

  “Join the club,” I muttered, thinking of my meeting with Pierce.

  “Thankfully, she fried up a pile of bacon and then forgot about it. A little greasy for my tastes, but sometimes a girl needs to indulge.”

  The girl in question always indulged, bu
t I didn’t say so.

  “Well, here, let me warm up some milk for your lunch.”

  “That would be marvelous, darling.”

  I opened the fridge—also trashed—and rooted around until I found a bottle of goat’s milk. I pulled out an apple for myself.

  “Any calls?” I asked.

  “At least one. I thought Gretchen was going to answer, but she was too involved in her breakfast.”

  I crunched into the apple while filling a pot with Tabitha’s milk and cleaning a burner to set it on. When I finished, I checked my voice mail. The service indicated one message, probably from the mayor’s office.

  But when the recording started, I recognized the voice as belonging to a functionary of the Order, an older man I’d met in the Refuge named Claudius. His messages always sounded harried, as if he was in perpetual catch-up mode, but that was the current state of the Order. In addition to stitching the tears in reality, the senior members were trying to track down magic-users. Still, even their delayed response time was a huge improvement over the artifice Lich had been running.

  “Yes, hello, Everson,” Claudius said. “We received your two messages. On the matter of the wards … let’s see … yes, we checked the wards in that sector and they’re operating as they should. It seems your colleague in the boroughs anticipated the situation some months before and investigated for himself.”

  Pierce? I thought.

  “He found the situation stable, so instructed the wards not to call you to that particular address.”

  My hand tightened around the receiver. He messed with my alarm system?

  “The signal must have leaked out,” Claudius continued. “In any case, I trust you found everything in order. Now, to the matter of last night’s attack … Yes, a mage casting infernal magic does sound serious. We’ll see if there have been similar patterns elsewhere. In the meantime, continue to work with … let’s see … oh, yes, Pierce. A fine magic-user. Extremely capable.”

  Sure, I thought. Everyone loves Pierce.

  “Also, you mentioned that Gretchen arrived. She can assist you as well.”