Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
Cryptanalysis is the process of cracking a code without a cipher. Not the analysis of crypts, as Tolliver was disappointed to discover.
There are different techniques—to cryptanalysis, not crypt analysis—but it usually starts by looking at symbol frequency and pattern recognition.
That, combined with contextual clues, will usually give you somewhere to start.
For simpler codes, you can do this by hand, but in general, this is done with a computer, and even then, deciphering a code can take anywhere from minutes to millennia.
The Voynich manuscript is written in a code that scholars have been trying to decipher for decades, without luck. No living soul can read it.
But we have something the scholars don’t:
Access to Dead people.
“So, the Afterlife is real,” Ezra says, pacing around my living room.
“Yup.” With a jerk, I lie back in the faux leather recliner Dante used for gaming.
We’ve placed it between the lumpy thrifted couch and the ornately carved stone fireplace. The room is really coming together, if your style is Tudor Revival meets college dorm.
“And you can go there whenever you want?” Ezra has dragged his fingers through his curls so much it looks like he was electrocuted.
“Yup.”
“And come back?”
“Unless you’re Dead.” I purse my lips, thinking. “Actually, that’s kind of what we’re trying to change.”
Tolliver has rigged up a makeshift Orpheus chamber using the recliner and a TV tray, where his monitoring equipment shows various graphs and wavy lines that he somehow interprets as my vitals.
I don’t allow myself to contemplate how much this is just like old times, or else I’ll start thinking about the last time Tolliver hooked me up to these machines.
Instead, I need to focus on today’s task: taking the grimoire into the Afterlife.
“Are you sure you should be going in alone?” Rook asks, leaning against the wall, arms crossed.
I give him a reassuring smile. “This is just a trial run. I won’t be alone for the real thing.”
He smiles back, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
Ever since LA, I’ve been mulling over the very real possibility that the Cult of Hades killed Rook’s sister, and I’ve got a number of theories as to why.
Perhaps some Crawford ancestor made a bargain with a demon, but Rook didn’t keep his side of the deal.
Or maybe the family was part of an anti-demon cult.
Or purveyors of holy water. Or demon slayers.
Or I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here.
But no matter the reason, if I’m reading Rook correctly, he knew about the Cult of Hades and kept it from us.
“And why are you doing a trial run?” Ezra asks, still pacing.
“Rule Number Fifty-Five,” Poppy calls from the kitchen. “Always do a test run when taking objects into the Afterlife.”
At that, CJ’s head pops up from where they’ve been napping on the floor. When CJ and Poppy arrived today—together—Poppy was her normal self. CJ, on the other hand, was blushing. Again. It’s all very concerning.
I grab Ezra’s arm to get him to stop pacing and nod to the couch. He sits, but his leg immediately starts bouncing.
“Taking manmade things into the Afterlife is fiddly,” I explain. “You’re taking a physical object into a metaphysical world. We have to see how it…behaves.”
He gives me a distraught look. “What does that mean?”
I shrug. “I could get to the Afterlife and the book won’t open, or maybe it won’t close, or all the pages have rearranged themselves. Or it’s turned into a bowl of petunias. We won’t know until we do the trial.”
He pulls on his left ear. “So, how does it work? Do you just hold on to the book when you fake die?”
“Codex!” comes Poppy’s muffled voice. “That’s what I’m doing! And for the record, I hate it!”
Ezra raises his eyebrows at me expectantly.
“She’s coating the codex in Soul Attaché,” I say. “She hates it.”
“And that is…?”
“A potion that has a bit of your hair or blood. You coat whatever you want to take with you in it, and then it’s like, attaché’d to your soul.”
Ezra wrinkles his nose. “Like a parasite?”
“Sure.”
Poppy walks out of the kitchen, bringing me the grimoire. It looks the same and feels the same, but the potion has fundamentally changed it into the transdimensional version of carry-on luggage.
“You know,” she says to Ezra, “you’re handling this whole thing really well.”
“By this whole thing, you mean learning that I broke into a museum full of possessed witches wearing dead people’s bones and then fought a literal demon?”
“Technically,” I say, “you ran away from the demon.”
Ezra smiles sarcastically.
Tolliver returns from the basement, a bag full of a pearlescent liquid hanging from the prosthesis he wears for alchemy, the one Poppy’s spelled with a bunch of runes for things like protection and steadiness.
He fiddles with some dials, then hooks the Miracle Max up to a vaporizer. “Ready?”
“Freddy,” I say, pulling the mist mask over my nose and mouth.
Ezra and Rook hover nearby as Tolliver makes the final adjustments, and as much as I love attention, it feels like I’m an animal in a zoo. Or a patient in an operating theater.
A few presses of buttons and then a twist of a valve, and I’m doused with Miracle Max. It smells like death. Literally. Magic with notes of rotten meat, feces, and mothballs.
You’d think you’d get used to it, but it always hits me like a punch to the gut.
Luckily, Miracle Max works fast. Within a few seconds, the world around me fades, and I’m adrift in an endless galaxy, stars and planets circling me as a tiny pinprick of light moves toward me, getting closer and closer, growing and growing, until it’s right up on me and it consumes me, and I…
take a breath.
Not a real one. I think we’ve covered that. Nothing here is real. Not my eyelids as they open. Not the living room—my living room—that surrounds me. Not the recliner that feels so solid beneath me.
Then I accidentally remember that the recliner’s not supposed to be here—that it should be in Dante’s room—and it suddenly stops existing. I drop in what feels like a very real thud onto the rug below.
The rug that wasn’t there a moment ago, because my mind hasn’t put me in my living room as it is now but as it was growing up.
When my parents were around and Dante was alive, and we had a huge red-and-brown rug that I recently sold for far more than it’s worth by convincing some blond woman named Deedee that it was made by Tibetan monks.
Which, honestly, is kind of on her, because the style was definitely art deco.
And there was a Target sticker on the back.
Across the room is the overstuffed couch where Dante and I used to watch movies during snowstorms. And the scratched coffee table where Mom kept hidden daggers “just in case.” And the coffin-shaped trinket bowl where Dad left jewelry he got from jobs.
Something tight and suffocating builds in my chest. But the feeling is interrupted by my watch beeping—one of Poppy’s runed inventions to keep track of how long until the Miracle Max wears off—and then I remember why I’m even here in the first place. To see how the codex behaves.
With a groan, I try to stand, stopping suddenly when I realize my arms are empty.
I frantically search the living room, but the grimoire’s not here.
It’s not like the recliner, which can stop existing if I don’t concentrate properly.
And it’s not like me, where I’m a thin ghost of myself, my existence still tethered to the Beforedeath.
With Soul Attaché, the codex is real and solid.
Should be real and solid.
Except it never made it to the Afterlife.
Don’t panic just yet. I had a feeling this would happen.
After all, the Coven had the Voynich manuscript for decades. Of course they would have realized that there were Dead who could translate it. If they could have brought it into the Afterlife, they would have. So there must have been some reason they hadn’t.
I prepared for this.
You may remember I accessed Infamous Pete’s safe-deposit box the day I stole the Rolls. The cash I found hadn’t gone very far and I wasn’t even going to touch the flask, but that’s not why I wanted the safe-deposit PIN.
When I was doing the Groundwork on Pete, I learned that he wasn’t just embezzling, he was also selling information and artifacts to rival syndicates.
Most of what he traded in was boring—manifests, filing rights, ancient shrouds—but one item caught my eye.
Late last year, he stumbled upon an early-sixteenth-century journal written in a code rumored to be the same as the Voynich manuscript. You can see where this is going.
His plan to sell the journal to the Coven was cut short when Charon got wind of his embezzling and sent him to the Afterlife for good.
All I needed to do after that was grab his passwords, which he conveniently kept on him at all times, even in Death.
A quick con, some sleight of hand, light bank fraud, and the journal’s now mine.
As soon as Tolliver brings me back to the Beforedeath, I run upstairs to my room and grab the journal from my messenger bag in a pile of dirty laundry. By the time I get back downstairs, the others are arguing about what we should do next.
“We can’t translate gibberish,” CJ says, arms crossed, slouched in the director’s chair.
Rook rolls his eyes. “It’s not gibberish. It’s code.”
“That doesn’t mean we can translate it ourselves!” Poppy snaps.
“Guys,” I say.
Rook clears his throat. “There are several types of writing systems: alphabetic, syllabic, logographic, abjad, and abugida.”
“Guys,” I say again.
“I’ve narrowed down this script to alphabetic or syllabic.”
“Good for you,” CJ deadpans.
“Guys!”
The room quiets, but I’m getting irritated looks like I interrupted something actually productive. I stride over to the coffee table, open the journal, and set it on top of the codex.
Tolliver gasps. CJ stands. A wide smile spreads across Rook’s face.
“They match,” Poppy breathes.
A giddy rush runs through me. “Alright. Here we go.”