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

one end of the table as two guys fished balls from pockets and racked them at the other. I was reaching for one of the mounted pool sticks when James said, “Don’t bother. This’ll be quick.”

I now understood Vega’s eye roll. The guy was an arrogant ass.

I lowered my arm and watched him break. More specifically, I watched his lips. With the help of a whispered incantation, he sunk three solids. He strode around the table and lined up his shot. Magic fluttered across the green felt. The cue ball split two solids, knocking them into opposite side pockets. He used another force invocation for his next shot, hopping the cue ball over one of my stripes, and nudging his target into a corner pocket. With one solid remaining, he banged it off three cushions before dropping it into another corner pocket.

The jeers started from the crowd.

“NYPD fixing to get his ass run!” someone shouted.

James circled the table, eyeing the eight ball in relation to my scatter of untouched stripes. Passing on a direct shot into a side pocket, he indicated the far corner and crouched over his stick. Like the final shot in the last game, it was a challenging angle with way too much traffic. James wasn’t just playing for money. He was playing for reputation.

I was going to enjoy this.

James snapped the cue ball into the eight, sending it on another arcing circuit toward the corner. Without a pool stick to hold, I had tucked my cane nonchalantly beneath one arm. Now, standing behind the corner pocket, I angled the cane’s tip down and whispered, “Protezione.”

The shield that spread over the pocket was too thin to be visible, but too thick to allow the eight ball passage. Instead of sinking, the ball rattled around the edge of the pocket and popped out.

A collective “oooh” pushed from the crowd.

James straightened slowly, staring at the missed shot in disbelief. I switched my aim to the cue ball, which was still rolling idly, and changed its trajectory by a few degrees. It clunked into a corner pocket. Stepping forward, I clapped James’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“Tough break,” I said.

For another moment, the crowd around the table remained entranced in a questioning silence. Then, like waters breaking a dam, they shouted and clamored at once. “Holy crap, he scratched!” “James just blew twenty G’s!” It was clear they were delighting more in his loss than in my win. Their voices coalesced into a chant of “Pay up! Pay up! Pay up!”

With a tight grin, James pulled out two of the rubber-banded billfolds from his pocket and pressed them into my hand like we were shaking around them. But instead of releasing them, he clenched and drew me up against him. I could feel the hard breaths from his nostrils.

“What the fuck was that?” he whispered.

“An unlucky shot, apparently.”

“Who are you?”

“Someone who needs to talk to you. Now.”

He clenched my hand harder. “You cheated me.”

“Hey, man, I was only playing your game.”

James didn’t have an answer for that. The breaths cycling against my ear began to tremble in anger. I sensed him debating whether to hit me with an invocation, felt the charge building.

“Do it, and the gig’s up,” I warned. “Word will get out, I’ll make sure of it. I’m guessing there are more than a few stiffs who will come looking for their money. Maybe even a few in this crowd.”

The power around him ebbed. “I’m not telling you shit,” he whispered.

“Tell you what, take a walk with me, and maybe you can earn back what you lost.”

His breathing smoothed. His grip relaxed around my hand and his money. When we separated, he was grinning again. He shrugged at the crowd as though to say, Win some, lose some.

“Gonna take a little break.” He tossed his pool cue to another player.

The crowd broke apart and started their own games at the other tables. James strode from the pool hall ahead of me, leaving me to follow in his path. When he reached the bar, the bartender had a bottle of beer waiting for him. James grasped it wordlessly and turned toward the exit, taking a pull from the bottle as he shoved the door open with a leather boot.

We stepped out into the sun. James leaned against the building and took another pull, then let the bottle dangle at his side between a pair of hooked fingers. I couldn’t see his eyes beyond his sunglasses..

“You some kind of magic-user?” he finally asked.

“Just like you,” I said. “We belong to the same organization.”

“Never seen you before.”

“Seems to be how the Order likes it.”

James tipped the bottle to his lips again, face aimed at a boarded-up building across the street.

“Do you mind telling me how it all started for you,” I said.

“How all what started?”

“You know, discovering your abilities. Getting noticed by the Order. Your training. Your work.”

He pulled in his lips in thought. Despite the heat, he made no move to remove his leather jacket. Underneath, he wore a plain undershirt. A silver cross hung over his chest. His jeans were stonewashed, shredded at the knees. I knew the type: too cool for school—and definitely too cool to answer to authority. But he was having to weigh that against the itch to get his money back. Blow me off, and he could kiss his twenty grand goodbye.

“I was in boarding school,” he said at last. “St. Mary’s, though we called it Catholic lock up.”

“Your parents sent you?”

He shook his head. “Never had any.”

Another magic user who’d grown up without a mom or dad. Orphan tales were a dime a dozen, apparently. Either that, the voice in my head whispered, or Lich claimed them too. James caught me looking at him. “I don’t know their story, so don’t bother asking.”

“You were telling me about your boarding school?” I prompted.

“Yeah. Roomed with three other guys. We were sort of a pack.” He gave a small snort of reverie. “Around the time