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

I was leaning back to examine my work, when something tapped my right shoulder. I jerked my head around, but there was no one there. Another tap, this one on my left shoulder. Then on the crown of my head. When I touched the spot, my fingers came away moist.

What the…?

Droplets pattered the floor around me. I craned my neck back and nearly shouted in alarm. Wavering above me was a giant snake’s head, saliva dripping from its jaw. No, not saliva—baptism water. The entire creature was composed of it, its slender neck ending at the pool from which it had quietly risen.

A water elemental? I thought dumbly. In a church?

I dropped from the chair. With a sputtering hiss, the elemental drew back its head to strike.

I aimed the wand at it and whispered, “Vigore!”

The creature curled deftly around the brunt of the blast and dove down. Seizing the chair, I heaved it up like a shield. The impact of the elemental’s head cracked the chair’s wooden seat and knocked me to the ground. Water sprayed everywhere.

I scrambled to my feet, slipping and sliding toward the pool’s other side. The elemental curled around and headed me off. It undulated from side to side in a menacing dance.

With my wand poised at ear level, I held out the fractured chair like a lion tamer and backed from the elemental. The moisture on the floor was already compromising my magic. If the elemental got a hold of me and dragged me into the pool, I was a dead man.

Even so, the analytical part of my mind was still trying to determine what it was doing here. Elementals made excellent guards, sure, and this one was taking its duties as seriously as cancer, but they also required powerful magic to manifest. I highly doubted the church kept a wizard on staff, given the institution’s suspicious stance toward the arcane.

The elemental started into another sputtering hiss.

“Vigore!” I whispered harshly, this time directing my wand at the pool.

The force dove into the water, erupting in a massive spout that pulled the elemental with it. When the water collided into the ornate dome high above, the snake burst apart and rained down in a sudden cloudburst. I hoisted the chair overhead like an umbrella, sparing myself a drenching.

An elemental separated from its source was a doomed elemental, and this one was no exception—regardless of how it had come to be. I splashed through the water and retrieved the robe of John the Baptist from the floor. I then climbed onto the broken chair and closed the glass box. Channeling a force strong enough to swing the lever arm closed took more time, thanks to the moisture, but within moments, it was done. Exhaling, I stepped off the chair.

Wasn’t pretty, I thought, but mission accomplished.

My gaze dropped to my feet. In the second it took me to realize the floor was no longer soaked, the elemental coiled around my upper body, crushing my arms to my sides and the air from my lungs. Magic had reconstituted the damned thing. The elemental made two more swift passes around me and jerked me into the air, its face hissing inches from mine.

“Respingere!” I grunted, not caring who heard me now.

Energy sputtered through my mental prism but expired before it could manifest from the wand I held in a death grip.

Shit.

The elemental upended me. I kicked my legs as the room swooped. In the next moment, I was being plunged headfirst into the pool. I tried to twist and break free, but the elemental held me fast, the top of my head grinding against stone.

Think, think, think!

If the elemental hadn’t come from the church, what did that leave? The robe of John the Baptist possessed magical properties, but the origin story—a monk and a vow of silence—didn’t jibe with a guardian creature. Not as Chicory had told it, anyway, though my mentor’s disorganized nature hardly inspired confidence.

I remembered looking skeptically at the wand he’d given me that morning, despite his insistence that he’d wiped it of any lingering magic. “As much of it as I could, anyway,” he’d added before tossing it to me. Hadn’t he said it once belonged to a seafaring wizard? A light went off in my head.

Oh, I don’t frigging believe this.

I tightened my right fist to make sure the wand was still in my grip. I then worked my left hand over and grasped the casting end. As black spots began to crowd the edges of my vision, I bowed the wand away from my body. I grunted with the effort, forearms trembling—

Snap!

My inverted body dropped, and I fell from the pool. I landed on the floor of the baptistery on my back with a hard splash. I remained there for several moments, gasping and stunned. The culprit came to a rest in two pieces beside my head: the damned wand. Its nearness to water and a magical item, in this case the robe, had triggered the wand to call up a guardian elemental, something the seafaring wizard had no doubt trained it to do.

“Wiped it of any lingering magic, my ass,” I muttered, pushing myself to my feet.

Chicory was going to get an earful when I got back. Right now, though, footsteps were approaching from the nave. I retrieved the pieces of wand, jammed them into my back pocket, and lifted the dripping robe. A beam of light swam around the entranceway. A moment later the guard appeared, and he directed his flashlight across the room.

I stiffened, having just pulled the robe on, hoping to hell it was as good as advertised.

I watched the guard unclasp the holster holding his firearm. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “I need everyone down here,” he said. “Something’s going on in the baptistery.”

Well, wonderful.

But when the guard’s light reached me, it kept moving, hesitating on the pool before flashing back to the toppled chair. “The lock on the