The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

as the threshold. A curtain of energy hummed and pushed against me. I felt Thelonious shift uncomfortably, a dark spirit shying from the divine light.

“Are you coming?” the guide asked impatiently.

She was standing just beyond the threshold, the tour group filing through a metal detector behind her.

“Oh, can I come in?” I asked.

“You paid for the tour, right?”

I showed her my wrist band. “So that means I can…?” I gestured toward the door.

Her eyes widened as though to ask, What are you, some kind of idiot?

Just give me a goddamned invite, lady, I thought.

“Yes?” I prompted, gesturing at the door again.

“Um, yeah.”

That was all it took. With the personal invitation, the threshold relented. Though the ley energy here wasn’t as powerful as at St. Martin’s, I felt a portion of my wizarding power fall away as I stepped through the doorway and into the church’s cool interior. Fortunately, I was only planning on casting a few minor invocations.

“All right,” the guide said when we had reassembled beyond security. “If you’ll look straight overhead, you’ll see…”

I tuned her out as I got my bearings. We were standing at one end of the massive nave. At the other end, past a series of statues, stained-glass windows, and iron gates that led onto side chapels, was the main altar. According to Chicory, the robe was on display near the altar, in the baptistery.

It took almost the full hour for the tour to arrive at the baptistery, a small, circular room with a child-sized baptism pool on a raised dais at its center. The water gurgled quietly as we moved past the stone basin.

“If you’ll direct your attention up here,” the guide said, “we have a very special piece on exhibit.”

I stopped looking for a pump in the basin and raised my eyes to the far wall. About halfway up, between a pair of colorful saints images and encased in glass, was a tattered brown cassock, sleeves spread.

“The robe belonged to John the Baptist and was worn during his later years,” the guide continued. “For centuries, it was believed to bestow divine protection on the wearer.”

Let’s hope you’re right about that second bit, I thought.

As the tourists moved in to snap photos, I peered around. The security appeared basic. Iron gate over the entranceway, one security camera, probably an alarm on the glass case. I imagined that a guard or two patrolled at night, but the acoustics of the cathedral would make them easy to keep track of. Underneath my shirt, tucked into the back of my pants, was the ringer.

The tour ended back in the nave with an invitation for us to look around on our own for the final few minutes. Stepping into a shadowy archway, I pulled the wand from my inside coat pocket and whispered, “Oscurare.” Even though the church threshold had sheared off a chunk of my power, the wand had no trouble absorbing the immediate light, deepening the shadows around me.

I proceeded through the archway and into an empty corridor.

Before long, I found an unlocked office that looked as though it was being used for storage. I slipped inside, hunkered into a corner behind a stack of chairs, and waited for nightfall.

From my hiding place, I listened to the cathedral being secured, the echoes of doors closing, locks snapping home. I waited another hour for a wandering set of footsteps to taper off before I emerged with one of the chairs. The patrolling guard had taken up a post beside the front door. Music with an electronic beat issued from a phone whose screen outlined his face in white light.

Thank God for youth culture, I thought.

I eased across the nave and into the entrance to the baptistery, beyond the guard’s view. A padlock secured the iron gate. One of these days I was going to have to learn how to pick these things. I inserted the wand into the padlock’s shackle and whispered, “Vigore.”

The expansion of energy was enough to crack a shaft. I waited to ensure the guard hadn’t been alerted to the sound before removing the lock and opening the well-oiled gate.

Beyond a short entranceway stood the stone pool, the robe mounted on the wall beyond. I expanded my wizard’s aura until something crackled inside the security camera above me. Then, calling light to the wand, I rounded the pool and placed the chair beneath the mounted robe.

“Still can’t believe Chicory is having me do this,” I muttered.

As I climbed onto the chair, a series of bubbles glugged from the pool behind me. I looked back, causing the chair to teeter. Nothing there. Swearing, I retrained my focus on the glass box.

A simple plunger lock with a lever arm held the box closed. Yeah, definitely alarmed. I swelled out my wizard’s aura again. Behind the backing against which the robe was mounted, something popped and sent up a drift of smoke. I just had to hope it was the final piece of security. I had already worked out an escape plan for if things went sideways. And if sideways veered south, Vega was monitoring a police scanner, ready to intervene.

But Chicory was right. If I was going to have a chance against Marlow, I needed the robe.

Aiming the wand at the plunger lock, I whispered a force invocation. With a scrape, the lever slid out and the door opened. A hay-like odor of old fabric seeped out.

Easy enough.

I listened to ensure no one was coming before pulling out a series of slender pins that mounted the robe to the backing. How long would it take for someone to notice the camera was out of commission and come to investigate? I didn’t know, nor did I intend to find out.

A minute later I slung the robe over a shoulder and began pinning up the ringer. It was my bathrobe, actually. Chicory had cast a powerful veiling spell over it to mimic the robe of John the Baptist, down to the frayed threads. As long as