CHAPTER FORTY THREE
Luca had talked his way in and out of plenty of sticky situations before – sweet-talking witnesses, smooth-talking waitresses, even charming the sour-faced secretary back at HQ – but conning his way into NYU's archives was a new level of hustle, even for him.
The woman who approached him looked like she'd been vacuum-sealed in tweed. She introduced herself as Dr. Patricia Warner, and her salt-and-pepper hair had been pulled back so tight it made Luca's own scalp ache in sympathy.
‘Dean Harper said to expect you.’ Warner's glasses perched on the tip of her nose like they'd been magnetized there. ‘Though I must say, the FBI doesn't usually take an interest in our restricted collection.’
‘First time for everything.’
His charm offensive with Dean Harper had worked better than expected. Her resistance had melted under the combined assault of official credentials and what Luca’s mother called his silver tongue. Harper had even expedited the paperwork, though Luca suspected that had more to do with the dean wanting to stay on the Bureau's good side than any real desire to help.
Now, here he stood, following Warner down a spiral staircase that belonged in a Victorian ghost story.
‘These texts are quite delicate.’ Warner pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves at the bottom of the stairs. She offered him an identical pair. ‘Some are hundreds of years old.’
‘I'll treat them like newborns.’
‘See that you do. Is there anything specific you’re looking for?’
The archivist had that look Luca recognized from a dozen bookish types. The kind who'd rather spend their days communing with dead poets than alive normal people.
'Yes, actually. But I don't know what,' Luca lied. He wasn't about to say the name of the book in question, just in case the Order had ears around these parts. For all he knew, there were still seven cultists out there who might gun him down on Ezra Crowley's orders.
‘Very well. Any section in particular?’ asked Warner.
‘The alchemy section, if such a thing exists. ’
Warner unlocked the basement door with a comically-large key and pushed it open. ‘No alchemy section, but lots of books relating to magick, mysticism, astrology. The books are ordered by subject and period, so you might need to search a little to find what you’re looking for.’
‘Got it. You have English translations in here?’
‘Plenty. Remember that most of these volumes are irreplaceable. Some are the only surviving copies in North America. The University takes their preservation very seriously.’
‘I’ll be a perfect gentleman.’
Warner's expression suggested she'd heard that one before. She led him inside, past shelf after shelf of leather-bound volumes where Medieval Latin gave way to Renaissance Italian. Greek texts sprouted between German translations. Some pure English, thank God.
‘I’ll leave you be. I'll be outside if you need anything.’
Luca nodded his thanks, turned to the shelves and began his search. The restricted section sprawled before him like some bibliophile's fever dream. This was no sterile modern library with its neat rows and perfect organization. The collection inhabited a kind of organized chaos that probably only made sense to its curators.
The most delicate specimens seemed to be in glass-fronted cabinets against the walls. Leather volumes lay on velvet cushions, their spines boasting titles in faded gilt that Luca could barely make out. Some volumes looked ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
The main shelving units formed a maze in the center of the room. Dark wood rather than institutional metal, with brass plaques marking different sections. Unlike the preserved specimens in their glass coffins, these books stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the shelves. Some leaned drunkenly against their neighbors. Others lay flat, too fragile to stand upright.
Display cases dotted the space between shelves. One held what looked like scrolls sealed in climate-controlled boxes. Another contained loose pages covered in illustrations that might have been astronomical charts or the ravings of medieval mystics or anything in between.
He started with the wall-mounted cabinets first. The gloves made his fingers clumsy as he noted titles. Picatrix. The Key of Solomon. Arbatel de magia veterum. Nothing close to what he needed.
The freestanding shelves came next. Here the books showed their age more openly - cracked spines, foxed pages, smoothed corners. The organization system seemed to follow some arcane logic that escaped him. Latin texts neighbored Greek translations, which butted up against volumes in languages he couldn't even identify.
Luca worked methodically, shelf by shelf, section by section. He lost himself to the search and soon found his neck aching from craning at spines. Some volumes were bound in materials he didn't want to think about. Others bore strange symbols embossed in their covers - pentagrams, astrological signs, geometric patterns. He found entire shelves dedicated to alchemy, but the books were arranged by date rather than author.
Twenty minutes in and his optimism began to fade. He'd covered maybe a third of the collection. The texts blurred together into an alphabet soup of mysticism and metaphysics. Theatrum Chemicum. Splendor Solis. Mutus Liber. Fancy titles that meant nothing to his modern eyes.
Luca could feel precious minutes slipping by as he pored over page after musty page. Somewhere out there, a killer was preparing the final phase of their transformation and here he was, elbow-deep in the Ivy League version of a remainder bin.
Frustration mounted with each empty shelf. He'd pulled dozens of promising volumes, leafed through incomprehensible passages, then returned each one exactly as he'd found it.
The next section dealt with Eastern mysticism. Sanskrit texts that might have held the secrets of the universe, if only he could read them. Translations of Chinese alchemical works. Japanese scrolls in sealed cases.
A whole shelf of books on ceremonial magic yielded nothing but frustration. Next came the astronomical texts – star charts and planetary tables that made his head spin. The zodiac section could have stocked an astrologer's library.
His back screamed. His neck felt like concrete. The fluorescent lights had burned afterimages into his retinas. But he kept going, because what else could he do? Go back to Ella empty-handed?
There was no signal down here, but the time on his phone said 4:47 PM. Somewhere out there, a killer was probably selecting their next victim, and here he was playing librarian. There must have been 3,000 books here, so he'd probably find what he was looking for somewhere around Christmas.
Think, Hawkins. What would Ella do ?
His partner had a knack for finding clues in the most innocuous places – a stray hair, a scuff of dirt, a crumpled receipt. She'd say every scene held a story; you just had to learn how to read it.
Except this wasn’t a crime scene. It was just a huge room full of books.
Ella would have torn through these shelves in minutes. She had this trick – something about letting her subconscious do the heavy lifting. Luca remembered fragments of her explanation, caught between case files and coffee runs. The conscious mind could only process about forty bits of information per second, but the subconscious churned through millions.
He'd watched her do it a hundred times. Her finger trailing across words like a divining rod, information flowing straight past her conscious mind into that steel trap memory of hers. She'd tried explaining it once - something about occupying the analytical part of the brain so the pattern-recognition systems could work unimpeded.
‘Just let your finger do the thinking,’ she'd said. Back then, he'd been too busy admiring her silken locks to really pay attention.
Luca felt idiotic as he pressed his gloved finger to the spines. Like a kid learning to read. But he traced along the row anyway, letting the titles flow past his eyes without trying to analyze them.
One shelf. Then another.
God damn. It worked. Or maybe he was just paying closer attention, and this was some placebo effect. Either way, the names registered faster now, his brain assembling them into categories without conscious effort. Latin manifestos. Greek commentaries. Arabic translations. His finger moved faster, drawing him deeper into the stacks.
Then his heart stopped.
The spine was plain black leather, no gilt or decoration. But the words sent electricity through his nervous system.
Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus.
His pulse hammered in his throat as he eased the volume from its resting place. The same book. The exact same book they'd found at the cult meeting. But this one bore a small sticker: NYU Restricted Collection - English Translation.
Luca laid the book on a nearby reading desk, his hands trembling despite the cotton gloves. The leather felt alive under his fingers, like it contained some remnant of the knowledge inside. He opened to the introduction, employed Ella's trick again. Let his finger do the work while his subconscious absorbed the words .
He read it again. Then a third time.
Luca's heart slammed against his ribs like it wanted out. The blood in his veins felt carbonated, fizzing with adrenaline as the words burned themselves into his brain.
I, Hermes, once deformed and shunned, have used the primal elements to transform my wretched flesh. Through ritual and sacrifice, I have transcended this imperfect form and achieved the true Magnum Opus - the purification of both body and soul. Just as a base metal can be transmuted into purest gold, so too can the human vessel be reforged into a more exalted state.
Luca didn’t know if it was his conscious or subconscious doing the work, but it didn’t matter.
Because he suddenly knew exactly who this killer was.
His phone showed no bars. Of course – he was basically in a concrete tomb. Luca slammed the book shut and bolted for the stairs. He jabbed at Ella’s number as he burst through the door.
One bar. Two bars. Three.
‘Come on, come on, pick up...’
But the only answer was his partner's contralto, telling him to leave a message at the tone.