Free Echoes Through the Vatican: A Paranormal Mystery (The Echoes Quartet Book 2) by K. Francis Ryan

arrived. I am just leaving. You will find the Professore From Hell on the second floor, room 250. This building only has two floors. If there were more, the professore would be found in room 666.” Gio made the sign of the horns in the general direction of room 250.
    “Gio, you have been very kind. Please give me an email address. There are some contacts I can send you, along with a letter of introduction. I still have associates in New York. No one there has friends,” Julian said. “That is a thing you should remember.”
    Giovanni rooted through his backpack for pen and paper. He wrote out his address and phone number and shook Julian’s hand vigorously. Julian watched as the young student walked up behind an especially attractive coed and draped his arm around her. She was not displeased.
    Julian turned to look for the office and then stopped. Something was wrong. Something was out of place. What, he could not tell. That it was there, he had no doubt. Not a signature, but a presence, a darkness.
    He knocked lightly on the door to the professor’s office. The signature of the man on the other side of this door caused Julian to smile. He knew a man like the occupant of this room – Professor Bragonier. “One professor is much like another,” Julian thought.
    “Enter and state your business,” a man’s voice said in Italian. The voice was firm and brooked no disagreement. This was not a request, but a command and Julian understood the intent if not the words.
    “Professore Agostini? Mi chiamo,” Julian began.
    The professor held up his hand and interrupted. “Before you murder the language further, you are Mr. Blessing. Professor Bragonier told me to expect you. I have information for you and you are here to learn. That puts you in the top one percent of people on this campus. Students, Mr. Blessing, are a curse, but one with which we must live.” The man’s voice had softened. The accent was heavy, but the professor’s use of English was precise.
    He indicated a chair and Julian sat in front of a badly battered desk. Stacks of papers stood ready for grading. Books on well-ordered shelves lined two walls of the small office. Prints of long ago battles hung on the walls. This was a room both timely and timeless.
    The professor rose and walked to a locked file cabinet. Julian saw a small man with a huge presence. His signature was vital and strong. In his late sixties with a gray fringe of hair, he sported a goatee that gave him a carefully constructed demonic look.
    With a large envelope in hand, the professor returned to his desk and withdrew a sizable stack of papers. The pages were edged with annotations. Footnotes supported the text from the bottom of each page.
    Professor Agostini’s notes were plentiful. It was plain to see he had spent time with these documents. If he hadn’t learned anything from them, it would only be because there was nothing to learn.
    “You are searching for coins, Mr. Blessing?”
    “Professor, I am searching, if not for the truth, for a signpost pointing the way to it.” Julian smiled and inclined his head slightly.
    “Then, sir, we will get along famously. Of coins, I have none, but truths, of a sort, I have them in abundance.” The professor, eyes alight with mischief, had a class of one. He was now in his element.
    “I will begin by setting the stage slightly and correcting a misconception under which you labor. At the outset, and not without good reason, Professor Bragonier and I agreed with you. We were all of us wrong.
    “The Roman coins you found in Ireland we first believed to be half of a larger treasury. In fact the evidence supports the opposite. What you found in Ireland is only a tiny fraction of the whole.
    “Where to begin?” The professor laid both palms down on the papers. “Let me tell you a story,” he said.
    For two hours the professor spun out a chronicle of court intrigues, the illegitimate children of popes and petty kings, of greedy prelates,