A Book of Spirits and Thieves (21 page)

Maddox didn’t reply. Instead, he moved swiftly toward Becca, focused on nothing but saving her. He grabbed for the spirit, but his hands went right through it, the smoky substance of its form icy cold.

“What’s happening?” Becca cried. Unlike him, she was able to make contact with the shadowy creature, Maddox assumed with growing panic, because they were both in spirit form. “How do I stop it?”

“
She will make a fine meal
,” the spirit said.
“Much gratitude for summoning me here, necromancer.”

He froze with fear. This spirit had the power to devour Becca, to destroy her. To kill her.

And he had been the one to bring it here.

Becca shrieked as the spirit swirled around her like a thick black snake, pulling her up into the air. She fought against it but appeared to be weakening. Her punches and kicks slowed, her skin became pale and ashen in mere moments.

“Maddox . . . ,” she managed. “Please . . . I believe in you.”

His fear vanished and was replaced with steely determination. He would not let the spirit hurt this girl. He would not let
anyone
hurt this girl.

He held up Barnabas’s ring and focused again, just as he had before the spirit was summoned. There was another shadow there, deep inside him. It was made of death magic. It called to the darkness.

“I command you, spirit! Leave her and come to me. Obey me now!”

The spirit stopped swirling, freezing in place. Then, letting
out a horrible, ragged cry, it streamed toward Maddox, toward the silver ring he held. It collided violently with the metal, then disappeared.

Becca fell to the ground and Maddox rushed to her side. He tried to gather her into his arms, but of course his hands slipped right through her form.

“Apologies,” he said, his eyes stinging as the fear and panic he’d been holding back now crashed over him again. He shoved the ring in his pocket, telling himself he’d bury it later, after he’d made sure she was all right. “A million apologies for putting you in harm’s way.”

She was a spirit who laughed. Who breathed. Who fell. Who got hurt. A spirit who believed in him when he didn’t believe in himself. Who’d given him something to fight for when he didn’t even know he was a fighter.

A spirit who’d come to mean so much to him so quickly that his heart ached at the thought of ever losing her.

“I’m okay. Thank God . . .” She reached up to touch his face, her trembling fingers hovering just over his skin.

He frowned down at her. “Trust me, I am no god.”

“I know.” She managed the slightest edge of a smile. “I forgot where I was for a second. But I’m not thanking any goddess.”

“You confuse me.”

“I don’t mean to, really. And if I might say it again, you’re amazing. You are
amazing
. Are you hearing me?”

“Amazing enough to nearly get you killed.” He watched with unguarded relief as the color came back to her face. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m not going anywhere just yet. I’m haunting you, remember?”

Barnabas watched, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression grim, as Maddox and Becca slowly returned to the campfire.

“No more spirit-summoning tonight,” Maddox told him fiercely.

He nodded. “But you did it. Of course I couldn’t
see
anything, but it looks like it went well.”

“Not well at all.”

“I disagree. You summoned the spirit and then you trapped it, just as I expected you could. Do you now believe in the greater possibilities of your magic?”

Maddox and Becca exchanged a long glance before Maddox looked at Barnabas, nodding once. “I do.”

Barnabas gave him a big grin. “Glad to hear it.”

Chapter 19

CRYSTAL

“E
xcuse me, miss, but can you help me find a book?”

Crys turned from the bookshelf she was organizing to face a customer, a tall man with thick glasses. Her mother had closed the shop for four days, but it couldn’t stay shuttered any longer than that. The doors opened for business again on Thursday, and both Julia and Crys were on duty—her mother at the front register, Crys shelving books and straightening up in the back.

“Sure, what are you looking for?”

“It’s for my daughter. Something about a princess.”

“Do you have anything more to go on?”

“I think there’s a dragon in it? Also, the princess wears some sort of grocery bag instead of a gown.”

Crys nodded. “That definitely narrows it down. It’s
The
Paper Bag Princess
by Robert Munsch, one of my all-time favorites. I think we have a few copies in stock.” She showed him to the children’s nook, where she located a copy. He inspected the cover happily.

“Thank you! Tracking down precious books must be your calling. My daughter will love this.”

He went to pay for the book as Crys tried to figure out if that was a compliment or a curse.

She knew that working in a bookshop all her life wasn’t her calling. Maybe Becca’s, but not hers.

Still, as she shelved, a part of her—the part that had once loved this shop and its books with the same fierceness of the family members who’d founded it—rose to the surface. Surrounded by the intricate cover art, the grand-sounding author names, the intriguing titles that promised adventure and escape between the crisp covers . . .

“Crys,” her mother called, breaking her reverie. “Come up here.”

The
Paper Bag Princess
customer had left by the time Crys emerged from the maze of shelves. “Yeah?”

“A package just came for you.” She nodded at a box on the counter.

Crys approached it cautiously. “From who?”

“I don’t know. There’s no return address.” She paused. “Well, are you going to open it?”

“I haven’t had much luck opening mysterious packages this week.”

“At least this time it’s addressed to you,” she replied pointedly, one eyebrow arched.

Wincing at her mother’s sharp tone, Crys began to open the parcel slowly and carefully, not knowing what to expect inside.

She pulled away the tissue wrapping to reveal something she had to blink twice to believe.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she said aloud.

“Who on earth sent you that?” her mother exclaimed.

It was a Canon EOS Rebel DSLR camera, a top-of-the-line digital model. Unlike the old Pentax, this one came standard with a powerful auto pop-up flash. So out of her price range that she
could never, ever even consider purchasing it on her own, at least until she had established herself as a professional photographer.

There was an envelope inside with Crys’s name on it. She opened it up so quickly that the edge of the paper sliced her index finger. The unexpected paper cut stung terribly, and she sucked on her finger as she read the card.

I’m very sorry your sentimentally valuable camera got smashed. I know you’ll take many incredible pictures with this one. Might this oh-so-shiny gift from your newest friend help change your maybe into a yes?—Farrell

Farrell Grayson had bought her a new camera. An amazing new camera she’d never dreamed she could have. While she had had a deep fondness for the Pentax and the memorable black-and-white shots she’d taken with it and developed herself, this one . . .

Well,
this
was too good to be true.

“Who’s Farrell? I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” her mother said, glancing at the note before Crys could tuck it back into the envelope.

“I don’t.” She bit her bottom lip.

“A suitor?”

Now her cheeks warmed. “Mother, nobody’s used the term
suitor
in a hundred years.”

Julia seemed amused that she’d successfully flustered her daughter. “He must be someone very special, and he must think
you’re
someone very special, to send you something like this.”

He
was
someone special—she wasn’t denying that.

“I can’t keep it,” she said, staring at the camera box wistfully.

“Why not?”

“Just . . . I need to talk to him, I need to call him. I need to tell him that expensive gifts aren’t necessary to be my friend.” But now she knew that he definitely did want to see her again, that he wanted her in his life. The thought was just as scary as it was exciting.

Why did she have to meet this amazing guy in the same week that everything else in her life felt so out of control?

She checked her phone. He’d put his number into her Contacts under
F. GRAY
.

Her thumb hovered over the Call button, her heart pounding hard in her ears.

Then the phone began to ring.

DAD

Crys’s eyes bugged. She quickly left the store to stand outside on the sidewalk so her mother wouldn’t hear, and composed herself before she answered it.

“Dad, hi.”

“Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I wanted to wait for the right time and . . . well, it’s done. Markus will meet you today. If the meeting goes well, he promises to consider you for initiation . . . if that’s what you still want.”

“Of course that’s what I still want,” she replied without hesitation, the lie spilling easily from her lips. “Thank you for doing this, Dad.”

But maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe she did want to be part of a society that held the key to a better world. Or maybe she’d learn that Jackie and Dr. Vega were right—that Markus King was a monster.

One way or another, though, she was closer to the truth than ever before.

“I’ll pick you up in an hour,” he said.

He didn’t pick her up at the bookshop, of course. He picked her up in front of the Tim Hortons around the corner at Bloor and Spadina, the spot where, once upon a time, the Hatchers used to go for hot chocolate, coffee, and donuts, as a family.

“What T-shirt is it today?” he asked when she got into his car. He wore mirrored wraparound sunglasses over his pale blue eyes.

“I just changed to a plain black one,” Crys said. “I figured, if I’m meeting the leader of a secret society, he probably isn’t the kind of man who appreciates whimsical fashion choices.”

The corner of his mouth turned up into a small smile. “Don’t be nervous.”

“Do I look nervous?”

“Yes, you do. Extremely.”

She managed a shaky grin. It still completely blew her mind that she was sitting in a car with her estranged father, on her way to meet with the leader of a secret society. “I guess I get nervous about things that matter to me.”

“We have that in common.” He shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb as Crys started to put on her seat belt.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

His lips thinned. “I can’t tell you exactly. To be honest, Crissy, I can’t tell you much about the society unless you become an initiated member.”

He’d always been a careful driver, hands at ten and two, and it appeared that nothing had changed. Crys had her driver’s license but rarely asked to borrow her mother’s car. The subway or her own two feet worked fine to get her where she usually wanted to go.

“Does your mother know we’ve been in contact?” he asked.

“No,” she said, watching him carefully to see if he detected her lie. His expression remained even, but she wished she could see his eyes to know for sure.

“How has she been?” he asked.

“Same as ever. Grumpy, always working at the shop, sometimes modestly pleasant to be around.”

“And her cooking?”

“She still makes fantastic scrambled eggs.”

He laughed. “So she hasn’t bothered to learn how to cook.”

“You were the great chef in the family. I think I’ve lost ten pounds since you left us.” The sentence ended on a much heavier note than she’d intended.

“And Becca? How is she?” he asked after an uncomfortably silent moment.

“She’s fine.” She couldn’t tell him about Becca. Not yet. She still had so many unanswered questions and was still uncertain about him. “She misses you, too. You should, I don’t know, e-mail her. Or something. Just let her know you’re okay and you’re thinking about her.”

“I’ll consider it.”

She pressed back in the seat. “Do you think you ever would have gotten in touch with me? I mean, if I hadn’t been the first to text you?”

He was silent for a moment. “Your mother was adamant that I stay away.”

“I usually take her adamant requests with a grain of salt, but that’s just me.”

Again, they went quiet as Crys tried to think of a question to ask that might actually get her some answers.

But he spoke first. “Crissy, there’s something about this meeting that you’re probably not going to like.”

She braced herself, half expecting him to finally unburden himself and tell her everything. “What?”

“This.” He pulled something out of the glove compartment. It was a long black piece of cloth.

“Is that a blindfold?” she asked uneasily.

He nodded. “You can’t see where I’m taking you, and you can’t know the route.”

“Why not?”

He let out a long sigh. “Please, Crissy, just do as I ask. Don’t argue or the meeting is canceled.”

She regarded the blindfold with apprehension and considered her options. But nothing other than doing as he asked came to mind.

“Fine,” she said. She took off her glasses, slipped them into her bag, and then put on the blindfold, tying it into a knot at the back of her head.

The world went dark all around her.

“This is all very cloak-and-dagger,” she said, trying to sound natural, as if putting on a blindfold to meet someone like Markus King was totally routine for her.

He snorted softly. “If I’d known years ago that all it would take to get you to behave was to tell you that you might be able to join a secret society . . .”

“I really don’t like the word
behave
. A lot of rules were meant to be broken.” Crys bit her bottom lip. “Aren’t you concerned that someone will notice that you’re driving around with a blindfolded girl in your front seat?”

“Not particularly.” His voice was now edged with amusement. “These windows are tinted.”

After about fifteen minutes, the car pulled to a stop. She heard her father get out of the driver’s side and come around to the passenger side to help her out.

“This way,” he said. He guided her over a hard surface and up ten steps. A door creaked opened and they went through it.

The door clicked shut.

“Through here.” Taking her elbow, he directed her twenty paces forward, opened and closed another door, and then came to a stop. “You can remove the blindfold now.”

Crys didn’t hesitate. She pulled the material off her eyes and blinked as she took in her surroundings, blurry until she put on her glasses. They’d entered a large room, with cherry wood paneling and antique furniture. Gorgeous oil landscapes graced the walls and were, she assumed, all original and more than a century old, like something she’d find hanging in the AGO. The rugs were embroidered with intricate detail. A crystal chandelier hung from the high, ornately molded ceiling.

The room struck her as one she might see in a landmark museum like Casa Loma, roped off and untouchable as tourists walked through it.

“This is his home, isn’t it?” she asked.

“It is. He’ll meet you in the library, where he does most of his work. This way.”

Crys followed him through the door on the far side of the room, which led to a hallway. They went down a flight of stairs and then along another corridor. Finally, they entered a huge, lofted room with books displayed floor-to-ceiling and sliding ladders to reach the volumes on the uppermost shelves. The room smelled like leather, smoke, and roses.

There was someone leaning against the shelf to her left,
reading a book, near a multipaned window that looked out toward an expansive backyard with a large marble pool and sculptured bushes and trees.

She recognized him immediately.

“You,” Crys said with surprise. “I know you.”