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

“Let’s not be hasty, darling,” she said. “The mayor’s office is compensating you handsomely, after all. Your income from the college is nice, but it’s hardly adequate to our lifestyles.”

She meant her lifestyle, but I wasn’t processing anything past “college.” I dropped the receiver back in its cradle.

“Crap.”

Tabitha gave a startled blink. “What is it, darling?”

“My chairman,” I said. “Snodgrass.”

13

I burst through the front doors of Midtown College, tucking my shirt in as I ran. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before and so shouldn’t have been late, but I made the mistake of buying several morning papers from the corner newsstand and carrying them back to my apartment to peruse. Time escaped me, and for good reason. All but one of the circulars mentioned my inclusion in the eradication program. A few devoted entire columns to the story of the New York wizard.

I huffed out a curse. Snodgrass has been waiting for this, I thought as I pulled off the fake beard and sunglasses I’d donned to avoid public recognition. Waiting for something he can use to toss me from the college. And now he has it, dammit.

He would make good on his threat to alarm the parents of my students, to get them to yank their children from my courses. “After all,” I could hear him telling them, “you don’t want him corrupting your daughter’s mind with some enchantment or whatever else he decides to put in there. If he’s kept his real identity a secret for this long, what else might he be hiding?”

No students meant no classes. No classes meant no job.

I skittered around the corner of the hallway and was met by a wall of noise. “This is a graduate-level seminar,” I heard Snodgrass shouting as I drew nearer. “It cannot be audited.”

Huh?

I arrived at my classroom and peered through the half-open door to find my chairman standing and waving his arms at a mob scene, his face turning the same dark burgundy as his bowtie. “Did you hear me?” he demanded. “This is a closed course. If you are not registered, leave now.”

Was this my classroom? I leaned back to read the number over the door before looking inside again. This time I spotted my six regular students at their desks. But the remaining students, including the fifty or so jockeying for standing room, were completely new to me.

“There he is!” one of them shouted.

Heads swiveled toward me. A fresh clamor went up. The students surged in my direction, Snodgrass disappearing behind them. A multitude of mouths talked at once. “Is it true?” “Did you do those things on television?” “Are you a real wizard?” “Can I take your course?”

Several pushed newspapers and drop-add cards at me.

I held up my hand and cane in a warding gesture and backed against the door. The students, most of them young women, formed a jabbering semicircle around me, admiration bright on their faces.

My God, they’re serious.

Snodgrass fought his way through the crowd, fixing his skewed glasses as he arrived beside me. “Professor Croft,” he shouted above the commotion. “A word outside, please.”

I followed him into the hallway and forced the door closed behind me. He proceeded down the hallway a short distance, stopped suddenly, and wheeled on the high heels of his leather shoes.

“What in the devil do you think you’re doing?” he said.

I looked from him to the students’ faces crowding the classroom door window.

“Croft!” he snapped.

“I’m sorry … what?”

“This is an academic institution, not some camp for teeny-boppers. Is this a stunt to improve your enrollment?”

“Stunt?”

“Did you compel those students to attend your class through some inducement?”

A realization struck me. As impossible as it seemed, Snodgrass had yet to hear the news. I walked backwards until I reached the classroom door and opened it to a surge of noise.

“You,” I said, pointing to a young woman. “May I borrow your paper?”

With all the reverence of a virgin making an offering to a god, she stepped forward and handed me her copy of the Gazette. As she retreated back into the masses with a mad giggle, I closed the door and returned to Snodgrass. He accepted the paper as though I was up to some trickery.

“Page one,” I said.

I watched his eyes fall to the lead headline:

CITY: 1 MONSTERS: 0. MAYOR’S PROGRAM OFF TO BLAZING START

The photo underneath showed members of the Hundred firing on the final flaming ghoul while I covered the sprawled-out mayor. Snodgrass’s eyes skipped to the sidebar: “LOCAL WIZARD STARS IN EFFORT.” My smiling headshot had been lifted from the college’s online directory.

I still wasn’t thrilled about the exposure, but it appeared to have boosted my status with the students—something that was dawning on Snodgrass as well. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

“Those tendencies of mine you mentioned last week?” I said as he read. “Well, they’re out there now, and guess what? The students of Midtown College are loving them.” I embellished the word with a lascivious flick of my tongue.

Snodgrass’s eyelids blinked rapidly. At last, he folded the paper with a sniff.

“This changes nothing,” he announced tersely. “I still plan to phone parents. I would be remiss as department chair if I didn’t. In the meantime, I want those students out of your—”

At that moment, the chairman of the college board, Mr. Cowper, rounded the corner with the seven other board members. Cowper pulled up when he spotted me and smacked his flabby lips.

“Ah, Professor Croft,” he said. “We were just discussing you in our meeting.”

“Oh, yeah?” I tried to read the sagging folds of his face to discern whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe I’d turned on the cocky too soon.

“Yes, we’ve received a positive avalanche of inquiries this morning about your fall courses,” he said. “We were wondering if you might consider increasing your offerings. You’d be compensated, of course. And it couldn’t hurt your application for tenure.”

“Y-yeah, of course,”