The Book of Blood and Shadow (7 page)

“Come on.”

“What? Into the sunset’s a long ride. I’d want to be comfortable.”

“Nora …”

“I’d say yes to coffee,” I granted her. “Maybe even a movie.
If
he asks. Which he won’t.”

“But—”

“But if he did, then yes. A movie. As long as it’s not a crappy one.”

“Fair enough.”

13

The Hoff had given me a key to his office, and whenever I wore out my stay in Adriane’s house or Chris’s dorm, the dungeon of books was always a more tempting refuge than the public library or the nearest Starbucks—both of which were themselves more hospitable than home. Chris still showed up for the nine hours a week he needed to fulfill his history requirement, but most of the time, I found myself alone with Max, both of us scribbling into our notebooks long after the sun had gone down. I had no idea why he spent so much time there, or why, when he had so much work of his own to get through, he kept offering to help with mine. I could hear Adriane’s voice in my head, pointing out that
no
guy was that into his homework. On the other hand, historically speaking, no guy had ever been that into me, either.

I turned down Max’s offer, every time. Elizabeth’s mystery was mine to solve, and I was sure that, although so far she’d done nothing but string her brother along with vague references to her dark and dangerous secret, eventually, she’d have to tell him.

She told him everything.

E. J. Weston, to her brother John Francis Weston, greetings
.

There are those who would go to great lengths to learn my secret, and even revealing as little as I do in these letters may prove a mistake. Many a morning I resolve never to speak of it again. But then night comes, and with it, the shadows, and I once again crave your strong hand to lead me through the dark. We are no longer children, and I can no longer flee to you for succor from the beasts that once menaced my sleep. Even
if those beasts have now been reborn in waking life. I have enlisted a dangerous ally, as our Father commanded. My very presence seems to enrage him, and I suspect that were it not for the great reward we both seek, my time would be short. This is the man our Father trusted most in this world? This is to be our salvation?

Enough. I will stop this now, with apologies for my distress. I have not forgotten that, as our Father impressed upon us, reason is the last and best weapon of the powerless man. He taught me well the many uses of emotion, the blade that can so easily be turned against its wielder. His lessons are engraved on my soul, so quiet your concerns, and trust that, as always, I can tend to myself
.

I will, however, admit, dearest brother, that your suspicions of Johannes Leo were well founded. He has begun to pay me the most absurd of wrongheaded compliments, as if I would believe that my hair smelled of linden leaves or my lips were rubies and my eyes sapphire. If he spoke the truth, I would have jewels enough to outfit our Mother like a queen. He speaks of my beauty as if I were a vase or canvas he coveted for his estate. To my mind, to my words, he gives little thought. He imagines me his Galatea, a mechanical doll with waxen beauty and empty head. Worse, he has begun to speak of the future as if it were a destination we shared. Yesterday he offered a bouquet of lilacs, and the foul scent nearly made me swoon. Weakness, especially my own, repulses me, but for Johannes it is an aphrodisiac. I cannot say, nor imagine, what might have ensued had Thomas not appeared when he did. This is Thomas’s power, always appearing when and where he is
most needed, especially when I am the one in need. Johannes, of course, treated him like a dung beetle, simply because of his low station at court. Johannes has worked tirelessly on our family’s behalf, interceding with the Emperor when my own pleas have been ignored, and I am grateful. But on the other matter, my mind is made up. Despite what our Mother may believe, the bounds of gratitude go only so far
.

I know your time is precious, my most loving brother, and so I will trouble you no longer with my small concerns. As always, prayers for your good health are on my lips and in my heart
.

15 November 1598 Prague
.

“She’s never mentioned this Thomas guy before,” I said. “But then, there are a lot of missing letters. I don’t understand what she’s talking about half the time.”

“But she ends up with the other guy?” Max said.

I nodded. She’d married Johannes in 1603 and had seven children with him, dying as the last was on its way out. Any danger posed by the mysterious “dangerous ally” was apparently nothing compared to chasing happily ever after in an era without epidurals, antibiotics, and, more to the point, birth control.

“She did say reason was her best weapon,” Max pointed out.

“I know.” It was my favorite part. She spent so much time in these letters obsessing about her weakness, but you could tell that, deep down, she knew she was strong.

“Wouldn’t be very rational to ditch the wealthy lawyer for the dung beetle,” he said.

“I know that, too, but …”

He nodded. “But you think it’s sad.”

Something about the way he said it—not quite patronizing,
but just a little too understanding—made me feel like some cheesy-soap-opera fan craving a Thomas-Elizabeth mash-up. (Thozabeth? Elizamas?) “I get that romantic love is a modern concept and all that, and marriage back then was just a contractual agreement, so obviously it would make sense that she got together with the guy so she wouldn’t end up on the street. All I’m saying is that—” I swallowed the rest of it.

“What?”

“Forget it. I’ll stop now.”

“Stop what?”

“Ranting like a total freak about the love life of some girl who’s been dead for four hundred years.”

Max offered up a cautious smile. “You’re here to satisfy some kind of school requirement, right?”

I nodded.

“And I’m here voluntarily,” he said. “On a Friday night, no less. So which of us is the freak?”

“I guess that would be you?”

“You calling me a freak?”

It took me a second to be sure he was joking. And another to decide that I was actually starting to like him. Not in the Adriane kind of way. The speckled green eyes were admittedly nice, and unlike Adriane, I preferred them behind the glasses, which sharpened his blurry features. The hair, brownish blond, and nearly long enough to sweep over his eyes when he lowered his head to avoid attention, was, as she put it, acceptable. But it was also somehow beside the point.

“What were you going to say?” he asked.

“When?”

He tapped the letters. “About Elizabeth.”

He said her name like she was someone we knew who’d just stepped out for a slice of pizza but would be back in ten. “It’s just
strange to read someone’s private letters,” I said. “It’s not like history, like Lincoln or Hitler or something. She’s …” I couldn’t find the words.

“Real?”

“I know, that sounds stupid obvious.”

“It’s not stupid,” he said, with uncharacteristic intensity. “She is real. They all are.”

We were quiet. Max rose and opened a window—one of the few that actually opened, as the majority were sealed stained glass, good for a flickering rainbow on a sunny day, less helpful when the ancient, clanking heaters went mad and turned the room into an oven—letting a welcome blast of air into the room. After all this time, it felt almost normal to be working in a church, maybe because the Hoff had so successfully colonized the sacred with the mundane. Giant cardboard boxes filled the empty altar, and leaning shelves crammed with books blocked several of the stained-glass panes, transforming the familiar scenes. Goliath stood tall without a David; Daniel never entered the lion’s den. The head of John the Baptist still stared up from its platter, but Salome’s pride in her offering was hidden by a shelf of
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History
, 1987 through 1991.

Max sat down again, straightening his already neat stack of translations.

“You guys having any luck?” I asked. “You know, with the ‘real’ work?”

“It’s all real work.”

“Right.”

“No luck at all, if it makes you feel better,” he said. “Kelley’s always talking about the Book, but he’s vague. The Hoff’s convinced we’re onto something. He thinks Kelley’s about to lead us to the missing pages—you know there are twelve missing from the Book, right?”

“He may have mentioned that about a thousand times.”

Max smiled. I liked the way his eyebrows curled up at the edges whenever his lips did. “And we keep finding these references to something called the
Lumen Dei
. See anything like that from Elizabeth?”

I shook my head, though the phrase sounded oddly familiar. “
Lumen Dei. The light of God?
” I said. “What is it?”

He shrugged. “Could be anything. Kelley was a weird guy. Thought he could raise the dead, turn people into animals. Alchemy. Black magic. Good stuff.”

He told me more—how Kelley had tramped around Europe for decades duping people into buying his magic act, how he’d teamed up with the more reputable scholar John Dee and seemingly driven the man insane, how it was said his ears had been chopped off for some long-forgotten trespass, how some believe he was imprisoned only because the Emperor wanted him to yield the secret of the philosopher’s stone, and when he refused one too many times, the Emperor had punished his loyal court alchemist with death. At this, Max took off on a tangent about the eccentric emperor and the coterie of artists, philosophers, and mystics he’d assembled in his imperial court—but then broke off abruptly, cheeks pink, perhaps suddenly realizing he’d been monologuing for a good ten minutes. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s interesting.” Listening to him was oddly comforting, like the way my father’s lectures about Roman aqueducts had once lulled me to sleep in place of bedtime stories.

His shrug was nearly a shudder. “I highly doubt that.”

“It really is. I swear. Substantially more interesting than property liens and marriage proposals.” I found myself irritated all over again that I’d been assigned such a total girl job.

“It’s all important,” he insisted.

“Just because I’m in high school doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”

“Okay, maybe none of it’s important,” he allowed. “I’ve asked around, and most people think the Hoff is a nutcase. You know he used to be the world expert on the post-Hussite era and early Czech Protestantism?”

I decided not to admit I had no idea what he was talking about. “Really? Huh.”

“Got obsessed with the Book right after he got here, and hasn’t worked on anything else since.”

“It doesn’t seem like he’s working on much at all these days.”

“Yeah, he hasn’t published for years, not even in the fringe journals. It’s like he’s just going through the motions now. I think he might have finally given up on ever finding anything. It’s sad.”

“If you think that, what are you doing here?”

“Well …” Max shifted in his seat. “I told him it was because I really admired his work on religious sectarianism in Rudolfine Prague and wanted to learn from the best.”

“But really?”

“Really, it’s almost impossible to get a good research-assistant position when you’re a freshman. So it’s either picking a professor no one else would waste their time on … or serving slop in the dining hall. And, well … want to know a secret?”

“Always.”

We leaned across the table, our heads nearly meeting.

“I hate hairnets,” he whispered. Then he laughed.

“Am I hallucinating, or did you actually just make a joke?”

“What?” He looked wounded. “I’m funny.”

Funny-looking
, I might have shot back, if we were actually friends. “Prove it,” I challenged him instead.

“Uh …”

I tapped a pencil against the table. “Tick tock.”

“Don’t rush me! Okay. Okay, um. What did the fish do on Friday night?”

“I don’t know, what?”

“He went to a movie.”

I waited for the punch line, but he just looked at me expectantly. “Well?”

“He went to a
movie
,” he said again.

“I don’t get it.”

“See, he—wait, no, that’s it, he went to
see
a movie. Like
s-e-a
a movie. He’s a fish. Get it now?”

The snort sputtered out of me before I could stop it.

“See?” he said. “Funny.”

“I think maybe that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

“So … not funny?”

“Not funny.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Let’s just say I have other skills to compensate.”

The pause was, I suspected, more awkward than either of us had intended.

In the silence, we heard a noise. A rustling sound, just beyond the entryway. Then a soft patter. Footsteps.

“Chris?” I said, but quietly. “Professor Hoffpauer?”

We both watched the dark tunnel that led into the nave, but nothing emerged from it. And its shadows were impenetrable.

“You heard that, right?” I asked in a near whisper. “There shouldn’t be anyone in here at night.”

Max nodded. “Maybe a janitor? Or some kind of animal?”

We sat very still, waiting for something to confirm or deny his guess. There was nothing.

“We should check it out,” I said.

“Probably.”

We didn’t move.

“Could be those shadowy forces the Hoff is always worrying about,” Max teased, “come to steal the archive and silence the witnesses.”

My laugh rang hollow.

“I know,” he said. “Not funny. But like I said, I have other skills.” He stood. “This is me being brave.”

I stood, too. “Yes, let’s bravely go catch ourselves a scary janitor. Watch out for evil mops.”

Max gave me an appraising look. “You know, you’re not very funny, either.”

This time, my laughter was sincere. But it didn’t make me any more eager to step into the black.

14

“Did you hear that?” I whispered. The nave was dark, though I was sure I’d turned on the lights when I came in. “What was that?”