Chapter Sixteen
Different Choices
Oliver tried not tolet his feelings betray him, but the heavy silence growing between him and Felipe did it for him. Keeping his back to Felipe, Oliver filled the percolator with water and spooned coffee grounds into the upper chamber. He flinched as he lit the burner, but the ritual soothed the thoughts tumbling through his mind. Felipe didn’t think he could do it. He probably thought him defenseless, and he wasn’t wrong. Somewhere along the way, acting small and unworthy of further scrutiny had become reality. In trying to show everyone he wasn’t violent like other necromancers, he had never learned to defend himself. He never expected to go from potential monster to prey, yet he still couldn’t find solid ground in the middle. No matter what he did, he was always unsuitable.
Oliver swallowed hard and watched Felipe from the corner of his eye. He shuffled through his notepad at the table, brow furrowed in concentration. Oliver’s gaze flickered to the supply closet. He had been working up the courage to show Felipe his room since they got out of bed, but if Felipe thought he fell short now, he certainly would when he saw his sad, hodgepodge of a bedroom. As the coffee pot chortled, Oliver reached for the stack of clean cups tucked up on the top shelf. Pausing at the snick of the lock, he added a third cup.
“Gwen’s coming,” he declared a second before the laboratory door blew open with a clatter and a muffled curse. Oliver plastered on his best company smile as he gestured to the percolator. “Coffee, Gwen? Felipe?”
“Yes, please. Someone from the dining room just dropped off your cream, too.” Levitating the creamer to the bench, Gwen gave Felipe a nod and took her customary spot. “I came down hoping I would have you both as a captive audience during coffee time. We havea lotto talk about.”
“You have a specific coffee time I haven’t been privy to?” Felipe asked as Oliver added a spoon and a half of sugar into Felipe’s and cream up to the small scratch in Gwen’s cup.
“Oliver usually has coffee between noon and one. A slightly late fika, as the Swedes say, or an early teatime for the English.”
“My nana called it kaffepause, though the Germans call it Kaffee und Kuchen. I don’t have a specific coffee time, per se, but the lull in my day is usually around noon.”
Handing each of them their cups, Oliver bit his lip at his misstep. He had purposely not mentioned his family around Felipe. Even if they only had a few days left, he didn’t want Felipe to ask about them, especially knowing how lovely Louisa and Agatha were. His history was just that: history. A past that should stay buried but, much like corpses, had a habit of popping back up. Oliver watched Felipe’s face as he doctored up his own cup. When a small smile graced his lips as he took a sip of his drink, Oliver released a silent sigh of relief that he hadn’t caught the slip.
“So that’s how you knew the dog’s name. Do you actually know any German?”
“I can only read it, and probably not very well outside of medical contexts. It’s been useful for my research purposes. Some good papers come out of Germany that might never be translated into English.” The tension in Oliver’s chest loosened a fraction at the smokey heat of the coffee soothing him from the inside out. “You said you had something you wanted to talk about, Gwen?”
Putting her cup aside, she straightened. “Yes, so the good news is that the book that was stolen from your friend’s gallery probably wasn’t about demons or summoning creatures from beyond the veil.”
Felipe let out a tense breath. “Thank god. Agatha will be very relieved to hear that it isn’t dangerous.”
“Now, I didn’t say that.” Gwen fished a packet of papers out of her dress pocket and slipped her spectacles onto her nose. “From the picture and the descriptions your friend provided, I believe the book was a volume of theClausum Librumand not a copy of the alchemical textThe Chrysopoeia of Cleopatralike the shipping papers said. In her notes, Miss Pfeiffer mentioned that the pages seemed different, like it might have been two books spliced together since it switched between what she thought were alchemical and religious texts abruptly. She wasn’t wrong as the original book, the older part, was broken into multiple volumes.”
Oliver’s chest tightened at Gwen’s pause. He knew that bracing pause from his autopsy explanations. Nothing good came of those.
“TheClausum Librummeans ‘the locked book.’ Originally, it was one book on magic that had been transcribed in the early medieval period, probably from much older works or knowledge passed down orally. Knowledge that was meant to be kept away from those who are not ‘worthy’ or experienced enough, hence the title. It was originally written in a sort of code only certain paranormals can discern. The author, or authors, of the original book are unknown, but it was said to contain instruction on how to do things like raise the dead, cure diseases, grow fantastical plants, weaponize forests, create magical relics, and things like that.
“A whole cornucopia of potentially potent magic, but I think we can assume that the volume your friend is the volume on how to open portals or pocket spaces. Places much like the Paranormal Society. That one supposedly talked about how to reach places like Avalon or Saint Brendan’s Isle. As you both are aware, magic was said to flow from other realms into ours through doors that can be opened or shut, though some always leaks out or flows in. It’s essentially a guide to entering those worlds or creating them. What else it contains, I’m not sure.”
“How do you know which volume Agatha had at the gallery?”
“I figured you would ask that. So according toThe Great Book Binders’ Catalog,there were four volumes of the grimoire created during the late fifteenth century that we know of. Each volume of the book took a major piece of the original and elaborated on it with supplemental text from later authors, probably to avoid uncoding it repeatedly. One was partially destroyed in a fire with the remnants remaining in Paris. That’s the necromancer volume. Hence, why it was set on fire. Two copies are stored in the Vatican Archives, and the one with the plants is at the capital branch of the Paranormal Society. The capital branch has confirmed their copy is still under lock and key. The Vatican is very secretive regarding what their volumes contain, but Miss Pfeiffer’s notes mentioned clasps and she sketched out a few drawings she could remember. This one is particularly telling.”
From her small pile of papers, Gwen unfolded a hasty sketch of a landscape from above on the table. Leaning in closer, Oliver could make out the wavy outline of water surrounding an island obscured by twirly lines that could have been mist or wind. The island was populated with round, little trees that encircled a crenellated building that could have been a castle, a tower, or a church. While he had seen the beautiful artwork Agatha created hanging on the walls of her dining room, he never would have known she was an artist from the reproduction of the book’s page.
“Again, according toThe Great Book Binders’ Catalog, the two more dangerous volumes had metal clasps while the other two had leather straps. In her notes, Miss Pfeiffer mentions the only thing precious on the book were the straps. Your friend’s Italian contact, or someone he knew, stole a copy of theClausum Librumfrom the Vatican.”
Felipe paled, and without thinking, Oliver stepped forward to put a steadying hand on his shoulder. To steal from the Vatican Archives was nearly unheard of. They rivaled anything the Paranormal Society could amass in America, and while they outlawed the magical from joining their ranks, they supposedly protected their archives with complex spells. Since the Church’s founding centuries ago, they had been collecting volumes, gobbling up any powerful books they stumbled across during trials and purges to keep them out of “the wrong hands.” The Interceptors, England’s answer to a Paranormal Society but more bureaucratic, had amassed the second greatest collection through lying, theft, pillaging, and conquest, but the books that posed the greatest threat were far from magical hands in Italy or with private collectors all over the globe. Demons and monsters, while terrifying, were far from the sole threat magic could pose to humanity. Humans were deviously clever when it came to depravity.
“You don’t think Agatha could be blamed for the book being stolen, do you?” Felipe asked, keeping his voice low. “I don’t usually deal with magical object cases.”
“Someone more objective may want to speak to her, but she has no background in magical books and no motive for passing it off to someone else. She could have easily just handed it off, so I doubt she’ll be accused of staging the break-in. When I make my report, I certainly will be pointing the finger at her contact in Italy. I think he either wanted to get rid of stolen goods quickly or all along the book was headed for someone in the city to collect.”
Felipe nodded thoughtfully and jotted down a few lines in his notepad. Biting his lip, Oliver frowned.
“But what would Father Gareth want with this book in particular? We’re keeping his involvement quiet for now, Gwen, until we figure out how this all fits together, so don’t put his name in your report. I just don’t understand why a priest with compulsion magic would steal a magic book or receive a book from someone in Italy via theft.”
“Greed? Resale value?” Felipe replied running a hand over his face. “I would assume a book like that could fetch a small fortune from an unscrupulous collector.”
“Oh, definitely.” Looking between them, Gwen grimaced and added, “There’s more not so great news. I took the liberty of looking for information regarding the books themselves outsideThe Great Book Binders’ Catalogsince those entries are more systematic and scientific, or as scientific as they can be. I found several mentions of theClausum Librum, and two of them mention that the books are an example of anthropodermic bibliopegy.”
Felipe recoiled and looked back to see Oliver’s reaction when there was none. His relationship to the human body was a complicated one. Humans were good, bad, everything in between, but they were also useful. Their organs and bones could be used for study, and experience with the living and dead were how students became doctors. Lifeless bodies fed scavengers or fertilized the soil. The dead were the dead, and while some had explicit wishes that should have been followed after death, many remains were left up to fate and circumstance. Skin on a book or an anatomical heart in a jar weren’t much different when devoid of the context of their owners’ lives. Flesh given willingly didn’t bother him nearly as much as flesh stolen from a vulnerable corpse. Without context, how could he be expected to know how to react?
