“Well, I’m sure Rook won’t notice that,” I say dryly as Poppy mutters a quick spell. Her eyes have gone all glowy, as has the rune.
Once she’s finished, she sits back, her eyes returning to normal though the rune remains activated. “There,” she says. “Cone of silence.”
“Okay, listen—” I start, but she immediately cuts me off.
“Have you lost whatever’s left of your mind?” Poppy asks, voice high and panicked. “Tartarus? Freakin’ Tartarus?”
There’s only one reason someone would put a tower obol in a dead woman’s pocket. If you end up in the Afterlife with a tower obol on you, a hellhound shows up to drag you to Tartarus. So, not only did these mysterious people murder Credence, but they also sentenced her to hell.
Officially—or as officially as it gets among supernatural thieves—Tartarus is a myth. Unofficially, we just really don’t like talking about it. In Greek mythology, it’s the lowest level of the Afterlife. The place where the gods put their enemies. A dungeon of torture. In reality, it’s…the lowest level of the Afterlife. The place where the gods put their enemies. A dungeon of torture.
It’s also the place where I think my brother’s soul is, but I don’t want to tell the others that just yet. That’s why I chose Rook. I knew about the obol, knew about Tartarus. I was just hoping to avoid this conversation for a bit.
Poppy flips her braids over her shoulder. “Is there a reason you waited to tell us all this until we were sitting in the client’s library?”
“Yes,” I say, “because now it would look bad if you backed out.”
CJ is still shaking their head, whispering, “No.” Tolliver hasn’t lifted his head from the table.
“Wehaveto back out,” Poppy says. “First of all, resurrection is impossible. That’s, like, Rule Number One.”
“Rule One is never lie to your crew,” Tolliver mutters.
“The Eleusinian Mysteries—” I start.
“Can kiss my Eleusinian ass,” Poppy snaps, her Lowcountry accent coming through. “I don’t care what they say. I don’t even care if itwaspossible a long time ago. It’s not anymore. There’s no Persephonean magic, probably never was. When he first said the job was to resurrect his sister, I assumed this was just one of your cons. Pretend we can get the sister back, get paid, get out. But youreallythink you can do this? No, girl. You’ve gone too far this time.”
CJ scratches at the shaved sides of their head. “Will you stop stressing out so loud?”
“And,” Poppy continues, “even if we could resurrect someone, we’d first have to steal the soul fromTartarus.”
“Let’s just not focus on the Tartarus part right now,” I say.
Poppy crosses her arms. “Oh, I’m gonna focus on it.”
I scoot forward in my chair. “How about this: Tartarus, the resurrection—we’ll worry about that later. You don’t have to make any commitment to that now. Just sign on for the first part of the job.”
“Which is?” Poppy gives me a suspicious look.
I grin. “We’re going to steal the Voynich manuscript.”
“Oh god,” CJ groans.
Poppy narrows her eyes. “I see where this is going.”
Tolliver lifts his head, a red welt across his forehead where he was banging it against the table. “What’s the…the void…nacho script?”
“The Voynich manuscript,” Poppy corrects. “A fifteenth-century codex written in an unknown language. They’ve had that thing at Yale for years. No one can translate it.”
I nod. “Discovered by Polish book dealer Wilafred Voynich—”
“Wilfrid,” Poppy interrupts.
“—in 1902—”
“1912.”
“—an illustrated manuscript that depicts unknown plants and animals, astronomical symbols—”
