A Book of Spirits and Thieves - Morgan Rhodes Page 0,55
And then it clicked. “That’s what the book’s called, isn’t it?”
He drew in a ragged breath. “So you do have it?”
She wasn’t going to admit anything. Not now. “I didn’t say that. Jackie just said you’d tell me what it is and what it can do. Can you do that?” Jackie hadn’t been that specific, but he didn’t have to know that.
“The Bronze Codex is my life’s work. Of course I can.” He stared into her eyes so deeply she thought he might be trying to see her brain. “Very well, if Jackie says the full monty, the full monty’s what you shall get.”
He stood up and went to his bookshelves, then pulled a full set of volumes off a midlevel shelf, tossing them carelessly to the floor. They had hidden a safe behind them. He worked the combination lock until it clicked, then opened the door and pulled out a thick black binder, nothing more extraordinary than something she might carry around at school.
He brought it to his desk and placed it down gently.
“Jackie sent me digital photos of each page when she first acquired it.” He flipped through the photos, and Crys watched with amazement as images of the pages that had been burned into her memory flitted across her eyes as three-hole-punched black-and-white printouts. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”
“You said it’s your life’s work.”
He nodded. “It was my father’s obsession first. The Codex was brought to him by its original owner many years ago for an initial assessment of the language and origins. My father named it the Bronze Codex, after the bronze hawk on its cover, a symbol that is repeated on twenty-four of its pages.” He flipped through the binder, brushing his index finger over every hawk illustration he came across.
“So your father saw the book in real life. Who was the owner?”
Vega’s brows drew together, studying Crys as if to second-guess how much of the “full monty” he should actually divulge. “A Toronto woman who had been a classmate of my father’s. She trusted him more than anyone else. He is the one who persuaded her, after a time, to get rid of it.”
“Why?”
“Because, while he was unable to translate it himself, he still knew it was dangerous. So, yes, the book has been lost to us for well over twenty years.”
“Didn’t your father know where it ended up? Or the woman who brought it to him, at least? Couldn’t you have asked?”
“Both of them died fifteen years ago.”
Crys’s chest tightened. “They died . . .” She hated to ask, but she had to. “From natural causes?”
“No. The woman . . .” He swallowed hard. “She fell from the twenty-fifth floor of a high-rise building. My father . . . he drowned. Which is suspicious considering he was a silver medalist for the Canadian Olympic swim team in his youth.”
A chill swept over Crys, raising the fine hairs on her arms. “You’re saying that you think they were murdered because of this book.”
“Yes, I do. I believe they were murdered by Markus King.”
Her breath caught in her chest.
Dr. Vega raised a bushy eyebrow. “You know the name, don’t you?”
All she could do was nod.
“And you know that your aunt wants to use this book to draw King out of his hiding spot—wherever that is. To make him pay for his many crimes.”
“I don’t know all the details, but yes.” She chewed her bottom lip, staring down at a black-and-white sketch of a hawk parting a column of indecipherable words with its wide wings. “How did she find it, after all this time?”
“Nothing more than a lucky break. We found a listing of it in the online archives of an exclusive auction house. I received a tip that a—quote—‘unreadable book’ had been secretly sold into the private collection of a British family who had no idea what they had actually acquired. The family had simply placed it in a curio as if it were nothing more than a valuable first edition to display in their library. It had been hidden there in plain sight for at least a decade, lost to the world, until Jackie found a way to procure it from them.”
“You mean she stole it.”
He shrugged. “Procured. Stole. Your aunt certainly has her ways to get what she wants.”
Crys could easily picture her pretty blond aunt talking her way into a stately British home, scanning the shelves while she flirted with whoever stood in her way, wearing a short skirt and stiletto heels that