The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Brad Magnarella (ink book reader txt) 📖

I raised my gaze to Bertrand, who was absorbed in his own book. Holding him there, I slid the Book of Souls into a sleeve in the back of my pack where the internal frame had been. I covered the opening with a sweatshirt, then stood and pulled another book from the shelf.

When Bertrand and I switched pads an hour later, he looked over my list and smiled companionably. “Oh, the knowledge that will come from these works, Everson. It will alter the trajectory of scholarship. Open new avenues of thought.” He squinted up the steps. “I am glad it was you who found them and not the others.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You are green, but at least you are an academic.”

“Well, James too,” I pointed out. “At Oxford.”

Bertrand sniffed. “So he claims.”

“What do you mean?”

“I asked him about a professor in his department. He talked like he knew him, but I could tell by his face he did not.”

I thought about that. Flor had said his story checked out. Then again, she had also said Bertrand was a fraud—and yet here he was, displaying an interest and understanding of the texts that went far beyond a layman’s. As though picking up on my thoughts, Bertrand sniffed again.

“I do not trust the Spaniard, either. I believe she means to steal these. We must watch them closely, Everson. Even a single missing text will compromise what might be gained here. The works must be studied as a whole.”

I nodded, then lifted my pack with the hidden book and turned it so the sleeve was against the wall.

“But where did they come from?” James asked, looking from the texts to Bertrand and me. “They weren’t here yesterday. How’s this possible?”

“How are gargoyles coming to life possible?” I replied, bristling at the suspicion in James’s voice. “Hell if I know. One minute the shelves were empty, and then they were full. In any case, Bertrand and I catalogued the collection and made lists.” I handed one each to James and Flor.

“Why didn’t you wake us?” Flor asked, her eyes moving down the entries.

I searched for an answer that wouldn’t sound defensive or patronizing. But before I could speak, Bertrand spat, “Because in the confusion you would have stolen what you wanted.”

“How do we know you didn’t do the same?” Flor shot back.

“Guys, c’mon,” I said. “We checked each other’s work.” Standing so that my legs blocked my pack, I clapped my hands, anxious to change the subject. “All right, there are a lot of books but not a lot of time. So here are the ground rules. Find the ones you’re interested in. They can be checked out two at a time and taken anywhere in the monastery. But they must be returned by the next morning to give someone else a chance to read them. Are we all agreed?”

Seeing nothing objectionable in that, James and Flor nodded.

I chose two books, one because it contained a legend that went into the origins of a Saint Michael, possibly the one referenced in the Book of Souls. The second was the approximate size and weight of the stolen tome in my bag.

I left my traveling companions to their selections, climbing back up to the prayer cell where I had slept the first part of last night. There, I sat in a shadowy corner, facing the door. After listening to ensure no one was coming, I pulled the Book of Souls from my backpack and shoved the other one into its place.

Energy hummed over the book’s binding, like a life force. The same force that had pulled me back to the vault last night.

I opened the cover and began to read.

14

The sound of crying pulled me from my reading. I looked up from the book, half startled to find a room around me, so completely had I fallen into the book’s mind-bending world of prisms and power lines, spells and symbols, summonings and supernatural beings—Grandpa’s world. Mystifying and yet oddly familiar.

Was this what Grandpa had been getting at ten years ago when he spoke of those of our blood?

The only clues to Grandpa’s mysterious existence were the things I had observed from his closet when I was thirteen and the few odd items I found rummaging around the house after his death. A death that lacked the mystery of his life. He was struck by a car while crossing a street near our house, a no-fault case of him stepping from between two parked SUVs at the very moment a bee flew into the face of an oncoming driver. The distressed woman, on her way to pick up her son from nursery school, had the welt and stinger to prove it.

Just one of those things.

Among the items I found was Grandpa’s cane, his ring with the dragon, and rolled up beside some maps in the back of his closet, an old poster advertising “Asmus the Great! Master Magician!”

The poster depicted a tuxedo-clad man with rosy cheeks reaching into a top hat. He looked like a younger version of Grandpa. Remembering the sleight-of-hand trick Grandpa had taught me, I wondered if he’d done a stint with “Barnum’s American Museum,” the advertised venue. There had been a Barnum’s Museum in the city, I would later learn—the only problem was that it had burned to the ground in 1868. Had Grandpa’s grandpa been the stage magician?

There was no one around to ask. A month after Grandpa’s death, Nana succumbed to pneumonia, though I always suspected heartbreak to have played its part.

The muffled crying started up again. I hid the book in my pack, swapping it for the one I’d check out, and consulted my watch. More than ten hours had passed since I’d begun reading.

Outside my room, the gray light of dusk fell onto the courtyard. I had been dimly aware of the others coming and going throughout the day, no doubt relaying texts to and from the vault. Across the open space, the light of a small