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

“Wait,” I said. “He’s an elementary school teacher?”

“So, his talk about Harvard and the Sorbonne?” James chimed in. “The book awards?”

“His only publication is a personal web page,” Flor replied. “Pure drivel.”

I snorted, unable to believe the man’s audacity. So what was he doing here? Trying to garner recognition? To become the academic celebrity he’d already invented for himself?

“Wow,” I remarked, “and he had the nerve to call us amateurs.”

“That settles that, I suppose,” James said. “But what about us, love?”

Flor’s face whipped toward him. “What about you?”

“Well, surely you didn’t stop with our good man Bertrand.”

It took me a moment to understand what James was suggesting. Flor had her contact look into us as well.

“Do not worry,” she snapped. “Your stories check out. So far.”

And yours? I wanted to ask. But the road narrowed suddenly, the encroaching trees pressing us into a single file. Flor took the lead while I fell to the rear. Almost immediately, the temperature dropped several degrees, and the air thickened with humidity. A strange fatigue overcame me. But while I labored with each step, the other two marched ahead.

“Hey, American,” Flor called through the foliage. “Move your ass. We have many kilometers to cover.”

James turned around and tipped me a wink.

6

The first wolf call arrived late that afternoon, a long, chilling cry.

Flor and James stopped to listen, allowing me time to catch up. I stood on shaky legs, searching the seams in the trees. The forest we were ascending through had grown darker and more knotted with each mile until it looked like something out of a Grimm’s fairytale. My gaze darted toward the sound of a snapping branch. I thought I caught a figure duck behind a black tree, but the forest had been playing tricks on my eyes all afternoon.

“Sounded like quite a big one,” James said of the cry. “Assertive, too.”

“Yes, but it is far away,” Flor said. “Kilometers. We need to keep going. Bertrand had a four-hour head start.”

James consulted his GPS device. “We’re making decent time, in any case.”

“It could be better,” Flor remarked, glancing over at me.

Her shirt hiked up as she turned, and I caught myself gawking at a glistening show of skin above her right hip. I was going on six months since my last girlfriend kicked me to the curb, and the yearning for that kind of companionship was starting to feel like a clinical condition. Maybe when I returned to New York I’d look into getting a cat. Something uncomplicated.

“How you holding up, mate?” James asked, slowing to match my pace.

“Fine.” In fact, I was exhausted. “Hey, you’ve been talking to her most of the day,” I said in a lowered voice and with a shot of envy. “Any insights into her motive for wanting to go to the monastery? Or why she’s so hell bent on getting there ahead of Bertrand?”

“I’m afraid not. And if you intend on taking up the question with her again, I advise you to step carefully. She’s a bit of a minefield, that one.”

“So I’ve noticed.” My gaze locked onto the titanium case swinging from her arm.

Before I could wonder aloud about its contents, James said, “The folklore in these parts should interest someone in your line of study. Did you know they have a version of a werewolf called a pricolici?”

I ventured a glance at the dark forest behind us. “Is now really the best time?”

“Ooh, dreadful creatures,” he went on. “Fast, powerful, smart as humans, but nigh impossible to kill. And they don’t abide by the moon cycles as far as their wolf forms go. That’s a constant condition. As far as their temperaments?” He gave a knowing laugh. “The waxing moon is supposed to make them more blood thirsty. And I do believe we’re coming on a full moon this week.”

When another cycle of howling started, James’s eyes gleamed as though the wolves had just made his point for him.

“Thanks for that info,” I muttered.

While James trotted to catch up to Flor, I glanced around again, my anxiety needle trembling in the orange. Not that I believed in werewolves, or needed to—actual wolves were worrying enough. Then again, if magic could exist in our world, why not monsters? Because whatever I had witnessed from my grandfather’s closet that night had looked an awful lot like magic.

Magic I wasn’t supposed to have seen.

I stared at Grandpa’s face, shock icing over my own. His hazel-blue eyes studied the blood welling from my finger, the lines around his mouth turning down. One hand clamped my wrist, but I was more concerned by his other hand. The one gripping a sword that, only seconds before, had been his walking cane. A sword he had just drawn across my finger faster than I could blink.

The wound began to sting, then burn, pulling a murmur from my lips.

His eyes snapped to mine. Hard Germanic eyes. “You should not hide up here.”

With those thick, accented words, the attic room seemed to take form again, everything returning from some gray haze. The antique desk, the crowded bookshelves, the old steamer trunk. Though I couldn’t see the closet I had been crouched inside, I could smell the stuffy coats behind me.

“How did you get in?” he demanded.

“Wh-what?”

“How did you enter my room?”

My gaze shifted to the door. No latching system. Not even a keyhole to peek through. But always locked. Through the dense wood, I had often picked up vibrations of muffled words, liturgical-like chants, and once, a high, chilling voice that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard. The voice gave me nightmares for a month. But it didn’t keep me from coming back to listen.

“I-I opened the door.”

“How?”

The word. There was a strange word Grandpa would utter every time he stood outside his attic door before he turned the knob. As though he were muttering a brusque greeting to someone.

“I said what you say.”

His grip tightened on my wrist as