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

year before, where Snodgrass had motioned to have me fired, I’d managed to stay off his radar. Part of that had entailed getting to my classes on time. The other part had meant avoiding him whenever possible. I’d just managed to blow both.

Snodgrass checked his watch. “Don’t you have a seminar this hour?”

“Right, I’m headed there now.”

“Ten minutes late, I see.” He stepped nearer, sniffing the air. “And what’s that I smell?”

I met his snooty gaze. “Alcohol.”

He blinked twice in surprise before his lips pinched into a smile. “So you admit that you’ve been drinking, that you were preparing to instruct your students in an inebriated state?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Please, Professor Croft.” He stood back, hands clasped behind the back of his tweed suit. The man could barely disguise his glee. He would finally have a bulletproof case for my termination. The prestigious college would not tolerate a drunkard for a professor.

“All right,” I said with a sigh. “I ducked into a West Village bar to watch the mayor’s press conference.”

“And how many drinks did you have?”

“Drinks? None, actually.” I watched Snodgrass’s smile fracture. “The bartender threatened me with his shotgun, so I jumped onto the bar and made a run for it. He started shooting. Bam! Bam! Glass and liquor flew everywhere, like something out of a freaking Western. I’m fine, obviously—I know that has to be a relief for you—but I did get soaked.” I chuckled. “Hence the smell.”

Snodgrass’s lips trembled. “I can see this is all one big joke to you, Professor Croft, but I assure you, the board takes the matter of alcoholism very seriously.”

“As they should,” I said. “But absent proof, you’d just be wasting their time. Again.”

The final jab was probably one too many, but with my nerves still raw from the mayor’s announcement, not to mention Arnaud’s harsh toxin, I wasn’t in a good place to be fucked with. I stepped past Snodgrass, but I had only gone a few paces when he called to me.

“You might be interested to hear that I’ve done some investigating,” he said.

“Congratulations,” I called back.

“I admit, it baffled me how you were able to get your arrest record expunged by this Detective Vega.” He said her name with bitter scorn. “A few inquiries later and, lo and behold, I discover you’re working as a consultant to her department. On supernatural cases,” he added.

I stopped and turned. “What’s your point?”

“Oh, no point.” He adjusted his bowtie. “Just that I find it all very interesting. A professor of mythology and lore—one who had been serving a probation, no less—suddenly in the pay of the NYPD. That would require a very compelling skill set, I should think. A compelling expertise.”

“So I’ve taken an academic interest in the supernatural,” I said, a little too defensively. “Big deal.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?”

Panic sped my breaths. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Given your grants, the board might be willing to overlook certain … tendencies. But I doubt the same could be said for the parents who are paying their children’s tuition. Especially now that the city has declared war on those with said tendencies.”

“You’re still speaking Urdu, and I’m late for my class.”

“If history has taught me anything,” Snodgrass shouted after me, “it’s that when the leaders fail to act, you go straight to the people.”

I reached my classroom to find the oscillating fan blowing a rattling circuit across the ring of desks—all empty. Dammit. By the college’s rules, students only had to wait ten minutes for a tardy professor. I consulted my watch. My own students appeared to have followed that law to the second.

“Thanks, gang,” I muttered.

I tossed my satchel and cane onto my desk and unbuttoned my shirt to my chest. Taking the fan cage in both hands, I leaned down until the lukewarm rush of air bathed my face and billowed my shirt.

As much as I hated to admit it, Snodgrass’s words had rattled me.

There’s no way the man knows about my wizarding life, I reassured myself. He may have his suspicions, but that’s all they are. Snodgrass isn’t going to risk his reputation by calling up parents and making wild accusations. That would only put his own job in jeopardy.

But I had to wonder. With the mayor’s announcement sure to alarm the public, would merely insinuating someone was a supernatural be enough to alienate him? I considered the ring of empty desks. Of course none of it mattered if I couldn’t get to my own classes on time.

I smiled bitterly, remembering an era when I would have arrived to find Caroline lecturing in my stead. Afterwards, she would have scolded me, insisting it was the “last time”—like she did every time. I had started calling her “Sub,” short for substitute, a joke she eventually warmed to.

Closing my eyes, I imagined her faerie-scented skin from our night together, her soft whispers, her golden tendrils of hair spilling around me. I remembered the way our bodies, our magic, had moved against the other’s. Had that night even happened? A night that was becoming more ethereal with the passing months? But there it was: the ache around my heart, the bruising emptiness, like what I’d felt when I’d awoken alone the next morning.

Yeah. It had happened.

The fan blades chopped up my forlorn sigh and blew it back in my face.

“Is this a bad time?” a woman asked from behind me.

I hurried to button my shirt back up and tuck my coin pendant away. The noise of the fan had washed over the voice, so I wasn’t sure who it belonged to. Someone from administration, with my luck. Maybe Snodgrass was already sowing the seeds of suspicion. But as I turned and the woman in the doorway came into focus, my arms fell slowly to my sides.

“Professor Reid,” I said.

“Professor Croft,” Caroline replied, her lips pressing into a smile.

5

The last time I had seen Caroline was the night she’d come to my apartment. She disappeared the next