Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5) Page 3

  She gave an exasperated sigh that Buster attempted to imitate. “What do you think I was trying to do? You burst in here, not even bothering to knock. Then you let my babies run right past you, and don’t even tell me?” She snatched up my mug from the table. My biggest fan was telling me it was time to go.

  “So I guess I’ll start looking for them?”

  “You do that.” She turned and made for the sink.

  “Oh, just one thing.”

  She rounded on me, her look telling me not to press it.

  “That spell book, the Khafji Scrolls? I’m going to need it to find them.”

  She grunted and gestured for me to take it. I thanked her and told her I’d be in touch. With a Word, I broke apart the locking spells I’d placed on her doors and entered the bedroom. Peanut shells slid off the cover as I lifted the book and flipped through the pages. At least I could prevent her from calling up any more nether pets. I’d worry about Buster later.

  Shaken, I tucked the book under an arm and headed back down the corridor. This was my first call in more than a year where I hadn’t succeeded in putting down the creature that had triggered the alarm. And all because I had a weakness for bossy old women on walkers, apparently.

  “Close the door behind you,” Mae shouted. “Tight!”

  Buster punctuated the order with a tiny shriek.

  I complied.

  4

  I arrived at Midtown College with ten minutes to spare and headed straight to the faculty restroom. My pre-class routine included a shirt change, a face scrubbing, a hair combing, and an application of cologne, all done inside five minutes. I also spoke an affirmation into the mirror:

  “I will strive to be my best professor today.”

  I felt stupid, but better. Routines—and yeah, affirmations—did that for me. I’d learned the value of both in a book I’d picked up almost a year back called Magical Me. Contrary to what the title suggested, this wasn’t an esoteric tome. It was a self-help book.

  Smirk all you want, but by the time I arrived at my classroom, the morning’s fiasco at Mae’s had evaporated from my thoughts. I even had a slight pep in my step. Of course, knowing that a classroom of adoring students awaited me didn’t hurt.

  Though my reputation as a wizard had faded for the average man and woman on the street, at the college, a mystical aura still enveloped me. I had played down my role in the mayor’s eradication program, of course, suggesting that the reporting had been grossly exaggerated, but the rumor mill at Midtown College had other ideas. More than a year later, my ancient mythology and lore courses boasted wait lists ten and twenty deep. Most of the students weren’t even history majors, just curiosity seekers. More than a few had become ardent fans.

  I smiled at the thirty-odd attentive faces, most of them female, as I passed through the door and fake-limped to my desk. Probably a good thing I was already spoken for. Sort of. Detective Vega and I had started dating shortly after the episode with the Whisperer, but in the last few months our relationship seemed to have stalled. We had plans to meet that evening for dinner, where she wanted to talk. I couldn’t imagine that last part was good.

  After some friendly banter with the students, I got right to the morning’s lecture: the Hero’s Journey Across Cultures.

  My wizard’s voice began working on the students immediately, lulling them into light trances. Not an intentional act on my part, just an effect of speaking to an impressionable audience. I felt good as I spoke, in control. And not just because of the entrancement. After researching and writing on mythology topics for the past fifteen years, I’d attained a kind of mastery in my field that I’d not yet realized in wizardry.

  I was getting there. I was making progress. But not fast enough.

  Before I knew it, our hour and twenty minutes were up. With a sharp clap, I broke apart the misty currents of energy that bonded us. The students blinked, images of strange beings, mystical assistants, and foreign battles evaporating from their minds’ eyes.

  “The reading for next week is in your syllabus,” I said. “There’s a chapter from Gertz and two articles for you to pick up in the library. They all deal with atonement with the father as a theme. Be ready to discuss. Oh, and I want the proposals for your term papers—with a sample bibliography of no fewer than five sources.” I held up the fingers of my right hand.

  Playful groans sounded as students gathered books and backpacks.

  “Have a great weekend,” I finished. “Try not to strain yourselves.”

  One of the students lingered. Heather, I think. I needed to do a better job learning my students’ names. Anyway, she was this term’s bold student. While the others exercised degrees of discretion when probing into my wizard’s life, Heather was direct. Too direct. In fact, she was starting to become downright aggressive. As the rest of the class filed out, she strode up to my desk. She was bigger than me and probably stronger. She scared me a little.

  “And how are you spending your weekend, Prof?” she demanded.

  “Oh, you know, research.” I pretended to become occupied with digging through my satchel.

  “No magic stuff?”

  The thought of having to return to Mae’s apartment to finish the job squeezed my gut. I suppressed the feeling and gave Heather one of my practiced answers. “Only if you consider a comparative analysis of early Serbian and Baltic folklore magical. Most outside my field wouldn’t.”

  “So when are you going to give us a demonstration?” she pouted, her hands balling into fists.

  “A demonstration?”

  “Your magic.”

  She stepped closer until she was all but towering over me.

  “Professor Croft,” a prim voice called from the doorway. “Might I have a brief word?”

  I never thought I’d be relieved to hear that voice. “Professor Snodgrass,” I called back. “Sure, come on in.” I turned to the student. “I’m sorry, Heather. We’ll have to finish our discussion another time.”

  Her face furrowed angrily. “It’s Hannah.”

  My department chairman smirked as she stormed past him and out of the classroom.

  “Tough start to the term?” he asked me.

  The relief I’d felt turned quickly to annoyance. “With all of my classes at full capacity? Hardly.”

  He snorted. “The glow of adulation will fade. Give it another couple of terms.”

  “Since you bring it up, how’s The Historiography of the Early British Empire going? I understand you’ve had a few drops.” He’d had more than a few. There were rumors of the course being cancelled.

  “Which is just the way I like it.” He clasped the lapels of his tweed jacket as he arrived in front of me and gave me a critical up and down. His gaze settled on my right shoe, where I’d missed a dash of flour from Mae’s apartment. “I bring rigor to the discipline,” he said, his cold eyes returning to mine. “If a student can’t handle it, I would prefer he or she seek instruction elsewhere. I’m an academic, not some magical story teller.”

  “Well, this magical story teller is tenured now, which means I’m practically untouchable.” I waggled my fingers toward his little oval glasses. “Whatever your latest beef, go ahead and get it off your chest so I can nod in my most unconvincing show of sympathy and be on my way.”

  Snodgrass only had to breathe to bring out the asshat in me. I was starting to think he knew this. In my defense, he had turned me over to the NYPD the year before, when the vampire Arnaud had tricked the city into believing I was working for the bloodsuckers. Never mind that I’d gone on to slay Arnaud or that my position at the college had been restored and then some. Things had almost ended very badly for me. And all because of dick nose here.

  “Practically being the operative term,” he was saying. “There are still offenses for which the board will not hesitate to revoke your tenure and terminate your employment with the college.”

  I couldn’t think of what the man could possibly have on me. Since becoming tenured,
I’d been a model professor. Besides filling my classes and getting to every one on time, I’d put together a conference, published several papers, and even begun to earn grants by my own sweat. And all of that despite that I was on wizard duty more than ever. As much as it made me blush to admit, I owed most of my turnaround to the Magical Me program.

  “All right,” I said, circling a hand, “let’s hear it.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Oh, a friendly visit? I’m flattered.”

  “That’s not why I’m here, either.”

  “I can keep tossing one-liners if you can.”

  “Professor Croft,” he said abruptly. “This has nothing to do with us.”

  I was preparing something snarky when I noticed he’d lowered his tone slightly. He snuck a look toward the closed door, confirming my suspicion that he didn’t want to be overheard. I wasn’t sure whether to be interested or creeped out.

  “Should I sit down for this?” I asked.

  “Stand, sit, whatever you like.”

  I hoisted myself onto my desk, which seemed to prompt Snodgrass to take a seat in the first row of desks. He looked smaller than usual, more petite, and then it struck me that this was our first one-on-one meeting where he wasn’t peering down at me from his massive desk.

  “I’m here at…” He cleared his throat. “I’m here at the behest of my wife.”

  “Whoa, let me stop you right there,” I said, showing my hands. “I don’t do that kind of magic.”

  “It has nothing to do with that,” he snapped. “Let me get right to the point so we can get this over with. My wife has built a very regimented life around herself. She lives and breathes her schedule, and if anything throws it off she … well, she falls to pieces. She’s weak that way.”

  He narrowed his eyes as though daring me to comment, but I had never met his wife. I only knew Snodgrass had taken advantage of her family connections to secure his position at the college. Hell, if I’d said anything, it would have been to express my sympathy for the woman.

  “For the last two weeks, our cable has been on the fritz,” he continued. “Miriam has been unable to watch her bedtime show, some sort of regency romance nonsense.” He snorted. “She couldn’t handle it. To pieces, like I said. When the cable company failed to find the problem, Miriam called in an energy expert.”

  “You mean someone in utilities?”

  “No, someone in your line of work,” he said bitterly.

  “Oh, someone who can sense energy. Gotcha.”

  “I told Miriam the expert was most likely a fraud…”

  “Many of them are.”

  “…but she wouldn’t be dissuaded, so I humored her. Naturally, the so-called expert spoke some mumbo-jumbo about an inconsistency in ley energy, whatever that is. Nothing he could fix, he said, but that didn’t stop him from charging a king’s ransom for the reading.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  “My wife read about your feats during the mayor’s reelection campaign. She knows you’re a member of my department, and she’s asked me to…” He tugged at his plaid bowtie. “To invite you to dinner.”

  I nearly burst out laughing. “Dinner? With you?”

  Snodgrass’s face reddened. “It’s just a pretext to have you look at the so-called energy problem. And let me make myself clear—I’m only doing this to humor her. You would come, eat quickly, say little, and then investigate the problem. If you can fix it with whatever it is you do, fine. If not, that will be the end of it as far as you’re concerned.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “In addition to dinner, I’ll reimburse you for your time.” He glanced at the door before lowering his voice further. “How does two hundred dollars sound?”

  Now I did laugh. “All the years you’ve been trying to get me tossed from the college, the last time because of my magic, and now you want to hire me for a consultation?”

  He pressed his lips together. “Yes or no, Professor Croft?”

  “Two hundred, huh?” Between my raise at the college and monthly payments from the Order, I didn’t need the money. But I was curious. I squinted at him. “Why do I smell a rat?”

  “I’m not trying to lure you to my home for some nefarious purpose,” he said indignantly. “You can tell your detective friend where you’ll be, if it makes you feel better.” He was referring to Vega.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Tonight at seven. My wife is—”

  “No can do, chief,” I interrupted. “I have a date with said detective friend.”

  “Well, surely you can cancel. Surely you can reschedule. I’ve already told my wife to expect you.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “How about now, then? Or—or later this afternoon?”

  Something like desperation took hold in his smallish eyes.

  “That won’t work, either. I need to get in some research before my next class. And right after I’m done here, I’m going to the gym for a session with my personal trainer. That’s the rest of my day.”

  Naturally, I didn’t mention that I also planned to check the wards around Mae’s apartment. The rest was true, though—even the personal trainer part. I had started scheduling the workouts after someone, I forget who, remarked that I was getting beat up too much.

  Snodgrass’s lips began to tremble. “W-w-well—”

  I winced. As much as I enjoyed the shoe being on my foot for a change, watching him struggle like this was painful. I held up a hand for him to stop. “All right, how about this? If I get a break this weekend, I’ll set up a time to come over. You don’t even need to bother with dinner.”

  Basically a commitment to do nothing.

  Snodgrass’s mouth relaxed. He smoothed his thinning hair as though trying to restore some dignity to himself before saying, “That would be fine. You’ll find my number in the directory.”

  As I watched him stand up and make his way stiffly toward the door, I honestly couldn’t have said what was stranger: my morning encounter with Mae and Buster, or that.

  5

  Back at my apartment that evening, I dropped my gym bag and cane in the foyer, snapped home the three bolts, and checked to ensure my defensive wards were at full strength. As I turned up the floodlights, Tabitha let out a noisy yawn.

  “Shit, darling,” she muttered. “I can smell you from here.”

  “Yeah, there’s this thing that happens during exercise called sweating. You should try it sometime.”

  “I’d love to, but I don’t have the glands.”

  “Not the sweating, the exercising. You know, moving your arms and legs?” I demonstrated on my way to the dining room table.

  She made a scoffing sound and repositioned her forty plus pounds of bulk on the divan. “If you mean running in place and lifting metal plates only to put them back down, I’ll leave that to you mortals.”

  “Have you gotten up at all today?”

  She narrowed her green eyes at me.

  “I’ll take that as an ‘only to eat and—’”

  “What’s that concoction you’re holding?” she cut in. “My god, it smells worse than you do.”

  I held up the plastic cup with a straw poking through the lid. “It’s a tofu/wheat-germ shake. Supposed to be a good post-workout source of protein and healthy fats.” I took another sip as I deposited my mail on the table. I didn’t let on to Tabitha how awful it tasted.

  “Don’t even think about trying to sneak that crap into my diet,” she warned.

  “No, you’re getting a lamb shank tonight. But it’s going into a stew that you’ll need to remember to turn off at 7:30.”

  “Might as well go out and catch dinner myself,” she muttered.

  “I’d pay a lot of money to see that.”

  “Well, why am I having to cook?” she pouted. “Where are you going?”

  “You’re not. And a dinner date with Ricki.”

  “Oh. Her.”

/>   Vega had been over a few times since she and I had started seeing each other. I’d told Tabitha she could remain in the apartment if she promised to be on her best behavior—no evil stares or catty remarks. Of course I also spiked her milk with a sleeping potion as insurance.

  “You barely even know her,” I pointed out. “And I thought you said you liked her.”

  “I said she was tolerable.”

  “Given that’s where your rating system tops out, I took it as an endorsement.”

  “Whatever, darling. I’m just surprised it’s still going on. How often do you see her? Once a month?”

  “We both lead busy lives,” I said defensively. “She’s a homicide detective and single mother, and I’m a full-time professor and working wizard. Unlike certain cats, we don’t enjoy a glut of free time.”

  “Are you sure your little self-improvement projects don’t have anything to do with that?”

  I stopped sorting through the backlog of mail. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come now, darling. You’re up at five in the morning, which you never used to do. After chanting some nonsense or other in the bathroom, you spend the next three hours up in your laboratory doing spell craft. You’re out all day, and when you do come home, typically late, it’s straight to the lab for another hour or two. Hell, darling, I barely see you anymore. And to top it off you’re drinking wheat germ?”

  “Oh, that reminds me. I need to record my day’s calories.” I set the drink on the table and started searching around my reading chair. In the back of the Magical Me book was a great set of charts.

  “Would you look at yourself?” Tabitha said.

  I turned to her in annoyance and then felt my heart leap into my throat.

  “What are you doing? My book!”

  “What?” she said.

  The book was facedown and open beneath her divan, the front cover and first several pages jammed beneath one of its legs. Tabitha craned her neck as I fell to my hands and knees to rescue it.

  “Oh, that,” she said, relaxing again. “It felt like my perch had a wobble.”