A Book of Spirits and Thieves (24 page)

She reached into the copper box and pulled an object out.

Maddox cocked his head. “Huh. I expected something much shinier.”

Camilla held in her hands a book. And not even a particularly spectacular-looking one, at that.

Becca staggered back at the sight of it, her hand flying to her mouth. Maddox looked at her, alarmed by her reaction.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“That book . . .”

He glanced again at the brown leather-bound book, its cover emblazoned with a bronze hawk. “What about it?”

She looked stunned, as if completely petrified. Finally, she opened her mouth to speak.

“That’s the book that sent me here.”

Chapter 21

CRYSTAL

H
er father drove her back to the Tim Hortons where he’d picked her up. As soon as he gave her permission to do so, Crys peeled the blindfold away from her eyes.

“You all right?” he asked. They’d been silent for nearly the entire ride.

“I will be.” She rubbed her eyes, pulled her glasses out of her bag, and slid them back on. “You believe in Markus and his vision for the future, don’t you?”

“Yes. Without any reservations, yes,” he replied, those mirrored lenses still covering his eyes. “And now that you know all the things I could never tell you before, I know you’re going to make the right choice.”

Crys nodded and leaned forward to give him a quick hug. “Thanks, Dad.”

He patted her back. “Now, go. Your mother will wonder where you’ve gotten to.”

She got out of the car and watched him pull away. She stood there until he drove around a corner and his car disappeared from view.

Instead of going home or even heading to the hospital to check on Becca, Crys set out on a walk along Bloor Street. She needed time to think, to work everything out in her head.

Her entire world had shifted on its axis over the last week. So much of the information she’d learned was so far-fetched that it seemed impossible. She’d never been the type to read horoscopes, to get excited about visiting psychics, or to believe in the possibility that the rabbit hadn’t been in the magician’s hat all along.

This—this answer she’d received after meeting Markus herself—had been completely unexpected. What he’d shown her of his magic was real, and she couldn’t deny it even if she wanted to.

She looked down at her healed index finger and rubbed it with her thumb.

An immortal god
, she thought.
Did I really meet an immortal god today?

She stopped at the intersection of Bay and Bloor, waiting for the light to turn green and the pedestrian sign to switch on. Then something caught her eye. A black limo, its back window rolling down so someone inside could flick out a cigarette butt.

The window was tinted and didn’t roll down all the way, but it gave her enough of a view inside for her to see a face.

Farrell’s face.

Her heart skipped a beat.

But then, in the split second before he rolled the window back up, she noticed that he wasn’t alone. Someone was sitting next to him. Someone she recognized, but it took her a moment to place the face. And when she did, it made no sense to her.

It looked like the boy who’d tried to steal her bag.

Why would he be riding in a limo with Farrell? Her eyes must be playing tricks on her.

The light turned green, and the limo drove away.

She tossed and turned in bed all night as she wondered about Farrell, about her father and mother, about Markus.

The next morning, she went to the kitchen and sat down at the small table. The coffee had started to brew thanks to its automatic timer.

Soon, a bleary-eyed Julia Hatcher entered the room and headed straight for the coffee.

“Exactly what I need,” she murmured, pouring herself a mug and adding cream and sugar. “Good morning. You’re going to school today, I hope?” Crys just looked at her, her expression an exact translation of the concern she felt in her heart. “What’s wrong?”

“I know, Mom.”

Her mother sat down across from her and took a sip from the mug. “Know what?”

It was time to get it all out, come what may. She braced herself and took a breath.

“I know about the Hawkspear Society. I know that you and Jackie once belonged, too, along with Dad. And I know about the Bronze Codex.”

Her face went pale. “And let me guess. Your father told you all this?”

“Some of it,” she admitted. “But I learned the rest from Markus King.”

Her mother shot up to her feet so fast her chair skittered backward. “That’s impossible.”

Now, that was a reaction that told her plenty. If Crys had received a bland “
That’s nice, dear
,” she would have known that her mother was still doing her playing-dumb routine.

“Markus met with me. He invited me to his home.”

Her mother shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“He’s young and handsome. At least, he looks that way. He says he’s an immortal god. Then he created fire from thin air and healed a cut on my hand like it was nothing, so, yeah, I think I believe him.”

Her mother’s eyes widened with every word she spoke. “Everything he says is a lie.”

“So you and Jackie weren’t part of Hawkspear? My great-grandfather wasn’t the cofounder of Markus’s society?”

Panic had crept onto her mother’s face. “You have no idea what you’re getting involved in, Crystal. You don’t know what he really is, what he’s capable of.” She raked her hands through her hair. “No, this can’t happen. I won’t let you get hurt because of my choices. Everything I’ve done to protect you and Becca over the last fifteen years . . . and he still got to you.”

She’d never seen her normally calm-and-collected mother so frenzied. Even on the night Crys mentioned seeing her father, her mother had left Becca’s hospital room to clear her head before responding.

“I pursued this, Mom. Markus didn’t get to me;
I
got to him.”

“But your father introduced you, didn’t he? Of course he did. There’s no other way for you to get to him. All this time, I thought Daniel still had some good, some kernel of decency, inside of him. But I see now I was wrong.”

“He only did what I asked him to do. I needed to talk to Markus. What was I supposed to do? You’ve been keeping the truth from me this entire time!”

This accusation received a sickened look. “Whatever he told you is not the whole truth.”

Crys grabbed her mother by her upper arms. “Then tell me what is. Were you or weren’t you a member of Hawkspear?”

Her frantic gaze finally met Crys’s. “I was.”

A breath caught in Crys’s chest at the confirmation. “Why didn’t you tell me that yourself?”

“Because the less I think about the society, the more in control of my life I feel. It’s been fifteen years since Jackie and I walked away, Crys. Although sometimes it feels like just yesterday.”

“Why did you leave?”

Her mother went quiet, her eyes shifting back and forth rapidly as if reliving the memory. “Because Markus is a murderer.”

Crys inhaled sharply. “Dr. Vega told me that he thinks Markus killed his father.”

Her mother’s eyes widened. “You’ve been to see Dr. Vega, too? I’m seriously going to strangle Jackie when I see her. You remind me of your aunt so much sometimes. She’s relentless, too.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Okay, Crys. You win.” She cleared her throat nervously. “What do you want to know? There’s so much to say, too much to tell quickly. My family history is a sordid one, one I prefer not to think about much if I can avoid it.”

Crys sorted through the million questions that rose in her mind. She started with what seemed like the most perplexing. “Where did Markus come from?”

“All I know is one day, around sixty years ago, he just appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of my grandmother’s bookshop. Here, Crys. In the very same building we’re standing in right now. Everyone apparently thought my grandfather was crazy at the
time, driven mad by the ghosts said to haunt this building. He was a vigilante who targeted men he thought were evil, and when Markus appeared, claiming to be a god of death, he felt justified in his actions.”

Crys stayed silent, listening, her hand now pressed to her mouth as if to stop herself from gasping at everything her mother had said to fill in the blanks of Markus’s story.

“My grandmother had become terrified of the husband she’d once loved more than anyone else in the world. And she was frightened of the man he called a god. For the first few days after his arrival, according to Grandma, Markus acted dazed and out of it. My grandfather looked after him. But he and Markus didn’t notice that something else had arrived in the bookstore shortly after he did. A book. The Codex.”

Crys pulled her hand from her mouth. “The Codex was sent here?”

She nodded. “Like magic. One moment it wasn’t here, the next it was. Instead of handing it over to her husband and Markus, Grandma hid it. It remained hidden for years as the men began their society. Grandma became a member, too, not that she was given a choice, but says she never felt the same as all the others initiated—she always felt that something was wrong.”

“Why didn’t she leave?” Crys asked.

Her mother shook her head. “It’s not that easy. But she knew Markus was not the guardian he claimed to be. That the more he used his magic at the meetings, the darker he became to her. Finally, after many years, she went to someone she trusted. Dr. Vega’s father. She hoped he could help her understand the book and where it had come from. Markus had never mentioned anything about it before, and she wondered how they might be connected.
All she knew for sure was that the book needed to be kept a secret.”

So that was how Dr. Vega’s father learned about it. Crys’s own great-grandmother had been the one who’d gone to him with the mysterious book. And that information had eventually led to his death because not all secrets could remain secrets forever.

A shiver sped down Crys’s spine. “Dr. Vega wrote a paper on the Codex. He’s the one who made it public after all those years of it being hidden.”

“A very stupid move by a very smart man. If he hadn’t done that, Markus might never have found out about it.” She let out a shaky sigh. “But Uriah wanted so desperately to please his father—to make him proud. His intentions were not malicious—I know that now. At the time . . . it was all so confusing, Crystal.”

Not much had changed in that regard. “Mom, Markus says the book is his. That the magic in it can help him save the world from evil.”

If that was true, how could Markus be the bad guy her mother believed him to be?

Her mother stared at her. “Markus mentioned the book to you?”

Crys nodded, her heart pounding. “He knows Jackie found it.”

Julia Hatcher’s expression turned bleak. “So it seems we’ll have to deal with him sooner than I thought we would.”

Her voice held both fear and resolve.

Crys still needed more answers, and she couldn’t let herself be distracted. “Mom, if Markus is evil like you say he is, why would Dad stay with him? Why wouldn’t he be with us instead?”

Julia sat back down at the table. “When one is initiated into the society, Markus gives them a mark on their left forearm. They’re given a second if they’re accepted into Markus’s trusted circle.
Markus carves the marks into their skin with a golden blade, and then he heals them with his magic. The first mark keeps his followers healthy, safe from any physical illness. It also ensures their loyalty to him and the society. The second mark improves their senses. They can literally see in the dark or hear whispers from across a room. The gift had its shortcomings, though, as we soon learned. Bright light becomes unbearable to the eyes and loud noises are deafening.” She ran her fingers gently over her skin. “And the arm stays incredibly tender for a very long time.”

Crys stared, speechless, at her mother’s forearm, the flesh unblemished.

“The effect was always weaker for me than for Jackie and Daniel,” she explained. “My senses, my loyalty, my health. I still got sick from time to time. I knew it hadn’t worked as well for me, but something kept me silent. It became my horrible secret. When we finally left the society, your father fought against the urge to return for nearly thirteen years before he couldn’t fight anymore. He was drawn back to Markus like a magnet because of the magic etched into his flesh. There are times when I also feel that pull . . . a little. But it has much less power over me than it does Daniel.”

“What about Jackie? Does she feel the pull of loyalty?”

“No. She hates Markus.”

“She thinks you can use the Codex to destroy him.”

“She knows the more time he’s in a world that’s not his own, the weaker he becomes. He needs the Codex to renew his strength, his magic. Right now, he’s vulnerable.”

“How does she know all that?”