Jakob scowled at the trio, at their artifice and pompous garb. He focused on the man in the center, clearly their leader, whose eyes were as black as his scarf. His complexion, what little that could be seen of it, was a pallid shade.
“You will never find the alchemist’s book,” Jakob assured the man, spitting a gobbet of bloody mucus at his toes. “It is already beyond your reach.”
“Nothing is beyond the reach of theConfrérie,” the man said.
The leader waved to the two men who flanked him. The pair dragged Elli’s body off. Watching her limp form be manhandled so callously, her arm scribing a bloody trail, inflamed Jakob’s fury. Anger tightened his chest and strangled his breath.
Once the way was clear, the tall man sidestepped around the pool of blood to approach the chair.
“Professor Haugen, I apologize. This savagery should never have happened. If I had reached your estate sooner, I would have prevented it. Our methods need not be so crude.”
Jakob had a hard time reading this one’s sincerity. The other’s eyes remained cold, his voice matter-of-fact. Jakob heard a slight French accent, but he could not even be certain of that.
The leader nodded to one of his companions, who carried a steel briefcase. The man crossed to a neighboring lamp table and snapped open the case. Jakob had expected to see a splay of sharp instruments of torture. Instead, a set of three syringes rested in velvet, along with a row of vials.
“Truth serums have been notoriously unreliable,” the leader intoned as his two companions prepped the drugs. “At least in the past. Today’s intelligence agencies have refined their methods, which are kept tightly guarded. Yes, analogs of thiopental and scopolamine continue to be useful, but the concurrent addition of oxytocin and MDMA encourages complete cooperation.”
Once the syringes were filled, the two companions closed upon Jakob. He fought and writhed, but strong hands pinned an arm. Needles stabbed: one, then another, but he never felt the third. By then, the room had darkened, and his chin fell to his chest.
Words trailed him into oblivion. “In twilight, no secrets can be kept.”
By the time Jakob woke again—which felt like no more than a long breath—he found himself alone. The forest outside had gone dark, but the room inside blazed with flames. Shelves and books burned all around. Smoke choked high. The heat seared with each breath. Panic cleared the haze from his head. He fought his restraints, but it was not the fire that set his heart to pounding. Death had already been coming for him.
Instead, it was the unknown that horrified him.
What did I tell them?
He had no memory of any interrogation.
He craned at the spreading flames and feared this manner of death was the leader’s cruel way of letting Jakob know that the truthhadbeen stolen from him.
Weeks ago, Jacob had been amused upon learning of the book’s next hiding place, a location that he had deemed sardonically appropriate, particularly considering the book’s contents. He had even shared an adage with Elli from a revered writer:Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
As the fire and smoke closed upon him, he knew these flames were meant as a final message to him—especially knowing where he had sent the alchemist’s diary.
For in the past, they burned witches.
3
October 31, 4:15 p.m. GMT
Exeter, County of Devon, England
Sharyn sensed the press of time, but she refused to rush her efforts. Due to the holiday, the library would be closing early, in less than an hour.
I must finish this . . .
Alone and ensconced in the reading room of the university’s Old Library building, she carefully centered the illustrated book under her digital camera, which balanced on a tripod. The volume was a hand-painted Elizabethan atlas, mapping the counties of Wales and England, drawn by the famed British cartographer Christopher Saxton, in 1579. She had it propped open to a double-page spread. Through her camera, she stared at the emerald hills, the buttery yellow county lines, the crimson townships. She tried to imagine the hands that had so meticulously illustrated this chart.
A voice spoke at her shoulder. “You’re wasting your time.”
Startled, she accidentally snapped a photo, but the heel of her hand nudged the camera and blurred the image.
With a pained exhalation, she turned to the student who had slipped into the reading room behind her. She recognized the young man, Duncan Maxwell, a fellow postgrad student. He was enrolled in her same program, but he was part of another study group, one composed of four friends who had graduated from Oxford. All were men, all from rich families, all full of themselves. She had heard Duncan was sixteenth in line to the British throne.
At present, he looked as if he had just arrived from a foxhunt, dressed in a tweed coat over a canary yellow vest with tan breeches and polished black boots. The only mark of casualness about him was the shaggy, rakish cut to his black hair and the persistent stubble that always darkened his face, which only accentuated the confidence that shone from his ice-blue eyes.
He stared at her with one brow raised—maybe in curiosity, maybe in disdain.
