Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1) by Brad Magnarella

Author:Brad Magnarella [Magnarella, Brad]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Published: 2016-07-30T06:00:00+00:00

After a dinner that was—I had to hand it to Tabitha—pretty stellar, I climbed the ladder to my library and lab.

The city model in the corner was dim, which disturbed me. I’d already decided that whoever had supplied the conjurers the shrieker spell was up to something big. What, exactly, I didn’t know. But for him or her to stop now?

No, I didn’t like it at all.

Best case, the Order had addressed the matter. But apart from disciplining their own, the Order almost never acted with that kind of speed. Even if they had, they wouldn’t necessarily tell me. Which left me on the hook with Bashi. No matter how I squinted at the situation, I was going to have to track down the East Village conjurer and find out who supplied the spell.

Right now, though, the cathedral case was the more pressing. There was my job at the college, sure, and needing to get the promised info to Detective Vega by tomorrow. But there was also Father Vick. The more I thought about what Vega had told me outside the cathedral, the more certain I became that the investigative noose was drawing around his neck. If I didn’t deliver a more compelling suspect, Father Vick was going to get strung up for something he hadn’t done. And given the nature of the crime, capital punishment was not out of the question.

My best lead—all right, my only lead—was the druid cult in Central Park, who might or might not call themselves Black Earth and might or might not have any connection to Father Richard’s murder.

Slam dunk, right?

I set a portable range on my table and placed a cast-iron pot onto each of the two burners. I split a bottle of green absinthe between the pots and set the burners to medium. Given the kinds of horrors that lurked in the Park—and that the druid group was an unknown quantity—my objective was to get in and out unnoticed and to keep anyone or anything who tried to kill me from doing so.

That meant potions.

I didn’t have time to prepare the more elaborate ones I’d been planning, but I had a couple of quick and ready recipes to fall back on. Into the left pot I scattered brown clumps of rabbit’s hair, a heaping spoonful of baking soda, and about half that of chameleon scales. With a wooden spoon engraved with casting symbols, I stirred the ingredients of the stealth potion.

“Furtiva,” I chanted, directing energy through the spoon.

The liquid bubbled and thickened to a gray sludge. Satisfied the mixture was on its way to becoming the potion I wanted, I twisted the burner’s knob to low. In an hour or so, it would thin to a liquid I’d be able to drink.

One down, one to go.

I turned to the other steaming pot and took a focusing breath. This would be for self defense, and with a just-purchased vial of sloth urine on hand, I decided to go with an encumbering spell. I uncapped the vial and tipped it over the pot.

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