Chapter 11
Claire went to her office to arrange the job swap, and I headed to the Books of Dubious Origin department to start my first day. Miles led me through the magicked doors while Jasper escorted Eloise. Tariq and Olive entered on their own.
“If you become a permanent member of our team, I’ll teach you the way of the doors,” Miles said as we entered the special collection.
I dropped his arm and turned to face him. “Is that a bribe?”
“Would it work?”
I smiled. “No.”
“Then it’s just a fact.” His expression was chagrined.
“What if I only have basic abilities?” I asked. “Meaning, what if I’m not necromancer-level powerful?”
Miles shook his head. “Like calls to like, Zoe. The grimoire found you precisely because of your power.”
“Did it?” I frowned “Or was it delivered to me purposefully?”
“It opened for you.” Miles’s tone was decisive, as if that was the end of the discussion for him. It was just as well since, having woken up eight inches from my ceiling, I had no rebuttal.
“Are you ready to radiocarbon-date your book?” Tariq asked me.
I blinked in surprise. “Just like that?”
Tariq shrugged. “It might help you sort out where to begin with the translating.”
“Good point.”
“Jasper, we need to discuss your current project,” Miles said. There was a slight hesitation before he said project , and I wondered if he was choosing his words more carefully since Eloise and I were present.
“Right. Lots to report.” Jasper’s gaze lingered on me, and I would have thought he was referring to me, but that would be ridiculous.
Miles had said he was a field operative in charge of containment.
Other than the arrival of Eloise on my doorstep, which I felt I had managed just fine all things considered, there wasn’t much to contain.
“That leaves you with me,” Olive said to Eloise. I saw Eloise shift on her feet and found it oddly comforting that even a woman who’d been dead for more than thirty years found Olive intimidating. “This way.”
Eloise shot us a nervous glance and Tariq said, “Don’t worry. She doesn’t bite unless you give her a reason to.”
Eloise’s eyes went wide and Olive snapped over her shoulder, “I can hear you, Silver.”
“I know,” Tariq chirped, looking unrepentant.
As Eloise followed Olive, I turned to Tariq, keeping my voice low. “Baiting Olive? Do you also play with matches and run with scissors?”
“I can hear you, too, Ziakas,” Olive cried.
I jumped and Tariq chuckled. “You’ll get used to her.”
He turned and led the way to the lab, sparing me from having to correct him. I was positive that even if I came back from the dead like Eloise, I would never not be afraid of Olive.
The lab was empty when Tariq and I entered.
I took the book out of my bag. It felt solid in my hands.
I had no idea what Tariq would have to do to it and I felt a pang of protectiveness toward the grimoire.
I frowned. No, no, no. I wasn’t concerned with this particular book.
I was a librarian by trade. I would have felt this mindful about any book in my charge.
“What do you have to do to date it?” I tried to sound professional, but my voice slid up in pitch, revealing my concern.
Tariq smiled and reached over to pat my shoulder. “Don’t worry. I only need a tiny sample, about five millimeters in size. When you open it, we can look for a dried-out fragment that’s loose. I promise I will not harm your family’s grimoire.”
“It’s not—” I began, but Tariq interrupted me.
“Zoe.” His voice was gently chiding. “Whatever we discover, it’s going to be all right, yes?”
“Okay.” I put the book on the steel table, feeling as if I were offering up my child for circumcision.
“Everything getting sorted in here?” Jasper strode into the room, pausing beside me at the steel table. I didn’t think I imagined that the cold room was suddenly warmer and smaller than it had been just moments before.
“Yes. In fact, you’re just in time,” Tariq said. “Zoe is about to open the book.”
Jasper’s eyes glinted with interest. “Brilliant. Miles told me it was rather dramatic.”
“Speaking of Miles, I thought you were in a meeting with him.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want Jasper there…Well, truthfully, it was exactly that I didn’t want him there.
“I was,” Jasper said. “But he received a call that required privacy, so here I am.”
I nodded. Of course. Because I wasn’t already nervous enough, now I had to open the book with him watching me with those startlingly pale eyes from beneath those perfectly arched brows. Fabulous.
“Go ahead, Zoe. I’ll prepare my equipment.” Tariq handed me a first aid kit before crossing the room to his mass spectrometer.
The small metal box had a surgical needle in it. It was packaged, which I assumed meant it was sterilized. This was actually welcome, as the nick on my finger had just started to heal and I didn’t want to pick the scab to draw blood.
I blew out a breath, thinking how appropriate it was that an inherited artifact was making me bleed. It was the cherry on top of the three-scoop sundae of neglect, family secrets, and emotional distance that had made up my familial relations over the last two decades.
Overly aware of Jasper watching me, I used my thumb to press my middle finger until it was red, then I stabbed it.
I felt him wince in sympathy, but I didn’t look away from my purpose.
The blood beaded up immediately and I moved my finger over the hexagonal lock.
I let three drops land in the center before I moved my thumb over the pinprick, pressing on it to stop the bleeding.
I waited. Just as before, right when I thought nothing was going to happen, the medallion began to turn and the metal bands popped out.
“Bloody hell,” Jasper muttered, and I couldn’t have agreed more.
Again, I had the sensation of the book sighing in relief and I did, too.
“May I?” Jasper gestured to my hand. I nodded and he gently dabbed an antiseptic wipe from the first aid kit on the tip of my injured finger and then put a bandage securely around it.
“Thank you.” My voice sounded stilted. I wasn’t used to people helping me. It felt…odd.
In an effort to escape his perceptive gaze, I turned my attention to the book.
I opened the cover, letting it lie flat.
I flicked through the pages. I still didn’t recognize the symbols.
I had no idea what the dark brown ink was made of.
I supposed it depended on how old the book was.
I did note that the parchment in the beginning of the book felt very different from the pages in the middle and the end.
They had a different weight and texture to them.
Jasper lowered his tall frame so that his elbows rested on the steel table. He didn’t touch the book, but I glanced at him and saw his eyes scanning the page as if looking for something, anything, that he might recognize. His frown deepened and I knew he was just as stumped as the rest of us.
“We need to collect any loose fragments,” I said. “Just five millimeters in size for the carbon dating.”
“Seems simple enough,” Jasper said. He grabbed a pair of tweezers and an empty vial out of the first aid kit. “Lead on.”
This seemed like a terrible idea, since I had no idea what I was doing.
I glanced back at the book. Unlike yesterday, when I had been completely freaked-out, today I felt as if I was finally seeing the book for what it was.
A mysterious little tome, full of strange symbols on a variety of parchment and paper types. This made me pause.
Why would the creator of the grimoire have used different materials? I picked up the book and studied the hand stitching at the top of the spine. Several tiny bits of dried parchment fluttered to the tabletop.
“Well done, Zoe. That certainly made it easy,” Jasper said.
I watched as he carefully tweezed the little bits and dropped them into the vial. I could feel the heat of him as his side was pressed against mine. It was a welcome warmth in the cold lab, but I refused to be distracted by it or him.
I put the book down and examined the cover.
The calfskin and the Celtic-style lock seemed newer than the painfully fragile parchment used in the beginning of the book.
It occurred to me that if what everyone believed was true and this was a family grimoire, then it could have been handed down through the ages, and perhaps whoever had bound it together had done so decades, potentially centuries, after the first pages had been written.
I flipped the pages. The ink changed color halfway through, the brown turning into black and remaining that color until the end.
Despite this change, the pages were still handwritten and consistently used the same symbols, but it was definitely a different hand doing the writing.
Several different hands, I suspected. I wondered how many Donadieu witches had contributed to the book.
Had it been passed mother to daughter? Or grandmother to granddaughter?
“Oh, there’s another one.” Jasper tweezed up another fragment. This one was larger than the others and I felt my anxiety spike. I didn’t want the book to crumble under my inexperienced hands.
“It’s all right,” Jasper’s deep voice crooned. “You’re doing just fine.”
I tried to ignore the flash of awareness I felt. I was certain every woman alive between the age of nineteen and ninety would feel the same thing in his presence. It meant nothing.
I studied the book as a whole. There was a feminine energy about it.
Maybe it was the precise way the cipher was written, like a handwritten recipe card for carrot cake you’d get from your favorite aunt.
The symbols were softened with little flourishes and embellishments and what looked like notes in the margins—exactly like if an aunt had added little bits of wisdom to her recipe. Interesting.
“Any luck finding a fragment?” Tariq asked as he returned to the table.