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

spend their tuition money on courses entitled Ancient Mythology and Lore. I couldn’t exactly fault them. There wasn’t a glut of job openings in the field, something our department chair was all too happy to point out.

But the Order seemed to believe the course might attract natural magic users who, for various reasons, had fallen through the cracks. Indeed, given the current budget crunch, the only thing keeping me employed at Midtown College were my research grants, all of them from foundations just stuffy-sounding enough to discourage scrutiny. I’d long interpreted the grants as measures of the Order’s pleasure with my work. Lately, though, the amounts had been dwindling. And teaching was my sole source of income.

“All right.” I clapped my hands once and eased into a seat still warm with Caroline’s heat. I’d left my satchel with all of my notes at home, and hadn’t the faintest what was on the syllabus for today. “How did the reading go?”

I was already checking out as I asked, contemplating last night’s demonic summoning and who might have supplied the conjurer the spell and to what end and what I would need to do to find out. It was serious business. I finally noticed the students’ puzzled faces.

“What reading?” one of them asked.

“Oh. The, ah…” I twisted around to face the chalkboard I sometimes wrote on. Whatever I’d last scrawled up there was dated September 14, and it was now late October. “Didn’t I…?”

“We’re still working on our literature reviews,” another student spoke up, sparing me further bumbling. “For our term papers?”

“Right.” I remembered now. “Excellent. And how are those going?”

I directed the question to a young woman sitting to my right. To my knowledge, no magic-born types had passed through my door, but every semester saw at least one overachiever. This semester it was Meredith Proctor.

“Me?” she asked, straightening her cat-eye glasses.

I nodded in encouragement. She was the one undergraduate student in my graduate-level course, and for good reason. She had the gift of gab and the smarts to back it up. Once she got going, I’d be able to slip back into problem-solving mode, hmming here and there in pretended interest, asking open-ended questions. It made me a less-than-exemplary professor, but there was demon magic afoot.

Meredith cleared her throat. “Actually, I found your thesis paper in the library—on the roots of medieval European beliefs?”

“Extra credit if you burned it,” I said to laughter.

“No, no, it was fascinating.” She blinked beneath her brunette bangs and leaned forward. “I was hoping you could tell us about it.”

Well, that went nowhere fast.

“Please?” she pressed.

The paper to which she was referring had been a biggie, actually, placing me on the academic map. I still took a certain pride in it, even if it had chaffed some religious denominations. “Well, as a graduate student, I’d heard stories of an abandoned monastery deep in the Carpathian Mountains. Its founding monks were rumored to have transcribed several ancient texts believed lost. For my PhD dissertation I went to Romania in search of them.” I shrugged modestly. “Lo and behold, the stories were true.”

“That is so cool,” the lone male student, a goateed beatnik, said.

The other students nodded, faces rapt. Wizards’ tales tended to have that effect. I hadn’t told them the entire truth, though. I actually went to Romania looking for a certain occult book I hoped would uncover the mystery of who my peculiar grandfather had been—and who I was. Finding the other works in the monastery’s vault of forbidden texts had been a happy accident.

Meredith raised her hand, a hint of boldness in her fluttering fingers. “I was especially intrigued by your theory of that one legend being a precursor to the stories of the seven deadly sins.”

“Ah, yes. The First Saints Legend.”

I could see by the students’ intent faces that I was going to have to give at least a Cliff’s Notes version of the legend. I began by presenting an overview of the period in which the story had its oral roots, in ancient Rome. The legend was later transcribed into Latin, deemed heretical for challenging the Biblical stories of Satan and Michael, and then lost to history.

“I read where a coalition of church leaders attacked your findings,” Meredith said.

“Well, not physically,” I replied, to another flutter of laughter. “But, yes, that’s one of the occupational hazards of scholarship in our field.”

“So what’s the legend, Prof?” the beatnik asked.

“Right.” I checked my watch. “In the earliest days, nine elemental demons were said to inhabit the world. They seeded discontent, sowed misery, and terrorized humankind. Not exactly stand-up guys. In response, the Creator sent nine saints, their virtues the antitheses of the demons’ sins.”

As I spoke, the students settled in. I felt the ley energy in the room drawing toward their circle of desks, as though listening too. I wasn’t calling that energy. A wizard’s story-telling voice, coupled with an interested—and, yes, impressionable—audience, was usually all it took.

“For hundreds of years,” I continued, “the two sides battled until there remained only three demons and three saints. They battled for a millennia more. Demons held the advantage during the dark of night, the saints during the day. Similarly, the demons gained ground in the winter months, when the world turned dark and brittle.” A subtle chill descended, and Meredith hugged her arms. “The saints did the same in the summer months, when light and life prevailed.”

Though I didn’t describe the battle in words, I could sense my students slipping out of time, experiencing the struggle on a deep limbic level. Their pupils expanded beneath hooded eyelids.

“At last, they agreed to an accord,” I said. “Both sides would retreat from the world and no more involve themselves in matters of humankind. But it was a trick. Following the agreement, the demons slew two of the saints.” Several students flinched. “The third and most powerful of the saints, Michael, escaped. He represented Faith. Through his strength and virtue, he ultimately overcame and banished the three remaining demon