Chapter Eleven
Eleven
He was able to do this for two simple reasons.
One: CCTV hadn’t been invented yet.
And two: Back then, no one really cared about the Mona Lisa.
The point is: It’s easy to steal something no one cares about when no one is looking. It takes true skill to steal something invaluable with all eyes on you.
I make Rook pay half up front, and thanks to his generous donation, I’m able to get my electricity back on, stock the fridge and pantry, and thrift enough furniture to hold a planning session at my house without anyone noticing I’d sold everything for some quick cash.
I move the piles of junk to my attic bedroom and add a few succulents throughout the house.
As long as no one goes upstairs, the crew will just assume I did some redecorating since Dante’s death.
Though I would have been ready for him, Rook doesn’t return the favor of showing up thirty minutes early. He arrives precisely on time.
By the time everyone is present, I’m buzzing with nervous energy. This is just like the old days, except I’m not sitting on the couch with the crew as we watch Dante with rapt attention. I’m the one they’re listening to now.
My living room is pretty typical for an old Tudor-style home: vaulted ceilings, exposed wood beams, stone fireplace.
But my parents knocked down the wall between the living room and kitchen and put in a breakfast bar that looks absurdly out of place.
It does make planning easier, because we can raid the pantry for snacks without leaving the conversation.
Tolliver lies strewn across the couch, his bare feet in Poppy’s lap while she throws popcorn into his mouth.
CJ sits in a cheap director’s chair across from them, still and quiet but throwing eye daggers at anyone who emotes too strongly.
Rook is standing at the breakfast bar, his laptop out, eyeing Crowlene as she hops ever closer to him each time he looks away. I’m pacing.
“So, this job is divided into two parts,” I say. “Part One: Steal the Voynich manuscript. Part Two: Steal a soul from Tartarus.”
“Part Three,” Poppy says, pointedly. “Put the soul we just stole back in her body and resurrect her using the Voynich manuscript.”
“Can’t we just say ‘book’?” CJ asks.
“It’s a codex,” Poppy corrects.
CJ looks at her questioningly.
“It’s more accurate,” she explains.
“Part C,” Tolliver says, a goofy grin on his face. A piece of popcorn hits him in the eye. “Get paid.”
Rook clears his throat.
Tolliver leans back and looks at him, head upside down. “Dude, sorry. Is it rude to talk about getting paid in front of you?”
Rook tugs on his cuff links. “A bit gauche,” he says, smiling uncomfortably.
Crowlene opens her beak and instead of a caw, she mimics in Rook’s voice, “A bit gauche!”
Rook takes a startled step back. I have to muffle my laugh behind my hand. The others aren’t as polite.
“Is there…” Rook says, “I don’t know, a cage or somewhere we can put the bird?”
Everyone stops laughing immediately and glares at Rook. It takes him less than a second to realize he’s seriously misstepped.
“Dude,” Tolliver says. “Not cool.”
“Crowlene does not go in a cage,” CJ snaps.
“Crowlene is not a pet,” Poppy explains, her polite demeanor splintering. “She’s a familiar.”
“A familiar?” Rook asks.
“You’re here by invitation,” I say, crossing my arms. “One that can be revoked. You’re a client, not crew.”
Rook straightens his tie. “I apologize for my rude comment. I misunderstood the situation.”
“A bit gauche!” Crowlene repeats, and honestly her impression is spot-on.
Rook gives her a tight smile before turning back to me. “But I do think it’s important that I remain. You could use my help on this job.”
“We don’t take tourists on jobs.” I scoff, even though he’s playing right into my hands.
He raises his eyebrows, unbothered. “I’m not asking to go into the Afterlife with you. I’m just asking to help with Part One.”
I look him up and down. “Do you have any special skills?”
His mouth stretches slowly into a seductive grin. “I do indeed.”
I hesitate. I really should flirt back, but there’s something about doing it in front of Tolliver that feels, I don’t know, wrong?
I take a steadying breath through my nose, turning to the others.
CJ snorts, and I know it’s because they can feel my frustration, and for some reason they always find that funny.
“Alright, so this book—”
“Codex,” Poppy interrupts. “And it’s at Yale. Are we breaking into Yale?”
“Back to New Haven?” Tolliver asks, another piece of popcorn bouncing off his forehead.
Crowlene hops from her perch to snatch it up. She crunches for a moment before swallowing. The masticated kernel falls out of a hole in her stomach onto the floor.
“Nope,” I say, popping the P. “Because the one at Yale is a fake.”
“Of course it is,” CJ mutters.
Poppy’s eyes narrow. “How do you know all this?”
I shrug. “Groundwork. What have you guys been doing the past twenty-four hours?”
“Playing Nintendo, mostly,” Tolliver says. “Why? What have you been doing?”
I give him an indulgent smile, sit cross-legged on the floor, and open my laptop on a thrifted rickety coffee table.
“The real book,” I explain, “has been in the hands of the Coven since one of Hecate’s descendants was in charge of digitizing Yale’s rare books collection in the aughts.”
I open my schematic of the Getty Villa in Malibu and turn my laptop around so the others can see my screen. “And wouldn’t you know, it will be on display at the All Saints Gala that the Coven is hosting in two weeks.”
“What’s the All Saints Gala?” Rook asks.
“It’s like the Met Gala but attended by Dead people,” Poppy says without looking up from where she’s studying the blueprints on my laptop.
Rook blanches, but I don’t know if it’s from Poppy’s explanation or because Crowlene has placed her chewed piece of popcorn in front of him, tilting her head back and forth as she waits to see what he’ll do.
CJ sits forward. “So, what’s the play?”
I huff, massaging my temple. “As loath as I am to admit it, I don’t think we can con someone out of the book—”
“Codex,” Poppy says.
“—Codex.” I roll my eyes. “Maybe if we had a few months, we could do a Fiddle Game or a Kansas City Shuffle—”
“That one’s my favorite,” Tolliver whispers to Rook.
“—but the only time we know for certain the location of the book—”
“Codex,” Poppy and CJ say together, which suddenly makes CJ turn red. Interesting.
“—is Halloween, from eight to eleven thirty p.m. at the Getty Villa in Malibu.”
Tolliver jumps into a sitting position, hands clenched in excitement. “So, it’s a heist?”
I groan. “So, it’s a heist.”
Tolliver and Poppy high-five. CJ’s lips twitch into what could almost, in some cultures, be considered a smile.
“Heathens,” I mutter, but I’m grinning. This is just like old times.
“You know,” Tolliver says, “Dante would’ve called it a heist even if we were doing a Kansas City Shuffle.”
Despite myself, I laugh. “Dante would have called it a heist if we mugged someone on the street.”
“One time—” Poppy giggles. “One time, a barista thought he was cute and gave him his coffee for free, and he called that a heist.”
Tolliver doubles over laughing. CJ snorts.
“No, yeah,” I say. “He told me about that! He said it counted because he flirted with the intent to get his number. So even though he didn’t get the thing he wanted, he got something, and the intent made it a heist.”
Rook watches on with a strange expression as the rest of us laugh ourselves to tears.
“Who’s Dante?”
This was always going to happen. We can’t all be together in a room and not talk about Dante.
Our laughing dies down slowly.
“Oh, he used to be on the crew,” Poppy says, like we practiced. “But he moved on to bigger and better things.”
“Excuse me,” I say. “There’s nothing bigger and better than us.”
Poppy shakes her head. “That’s what I tried to tell him.”
And that’s it. Now we have control of the situation. We can talk about Dante all we want as long as we don’t mention two things: that he’s my brother and that he’s dead. So Rook will never know that this job is actually about Dante and use that as leverage to get us to do it for free.
I clear my throat. “So this b—codex.”
Poppy nods.
“If we lift it,” I continue, “it’ll be noticed pretty quick. We’re going to need to do a Raiders of the Lost Ark here.”
“A copy?” Poppy asks.
I nod. “Switch the real one with a fake so no one notices.”
Poppy grabs my laptop and starts typing. “I can make a replica,” she says, turning the screen to face me. “The entire thing is scanned into the Yale digital archives.”
“Not the entire thing,” Rook says.
We all turn to face him. One of the flying pieces of popcorn intended for Tolliver hits him on the shoulder.
He brushes it off as though it burned him, then checks his suit for a grease mark. “It’s pretty common knowledge that there are pages missing.”
I shake my head. “There are pages missing in the fake one at Yale. The real one, however…”
“You think it has all the pages intact?” CJ asks.
“I think that there’s a reason those pages were removed from the fake at Yale,” I say. “I also think what’s scanned into the archives isn’t accurate to the original. There’s no way the syndicates would allow public access to a grimoire, translatable or not.”
Poppy grimaces. “But that means our replica won’t be accurate. I can’t replicate what I can’t see.”
I wave off the concern. “If we could replicate the pages accurately, we wouldn’t need to steal the book. We don’t need the Coven to be fooled forever. Just long enough to get out.”
“Speaking of,” Tolliver says. “How are we getting it out? Or getting the fake one in, for that matter?”