“I’m always the pig cadaver,” she whined. “Make CJ do it.”
“Oh, they are. Dot Parker always appeared with a bodyguard.”
I gave CJ a pointed look. Their eyes narrowed, and they made a weird grunting noise that I took for reluctant agreement.
If CJ were to practice their telempathy more, they would have a larger role in the job, but because their stupid moral code won’t allow them to learn how to emotionally manipulate people, they’realways stuck playing bodyguard or some other kind of muscle. If they won’t let me use their brains, I’ll have to settle for their brawn.
They pressed their thumb in the spot between their eyes. “I need some aspirin.”
By the look on CJ’s face, the aspirin didn’t help.
Most of the attendees have made their way to circle around Poppy, the perfect distraction. Rook and I are supposed to head into the museum at this point, but with Hecate looking down on us…
I turn to find her no longer on the balcony. Somehow that’s worse.
There’s still time to back out, and part of me knows it’s the smart call. It’s the call Dante would have made.
But a much larger part of me wants to keep going. How much cooler would it be for us to steal the grimoire right out from under Hecate’s nose? Besides, we’re already here. When are we going to get this opportunity again?
“Let’s go,” I say to Rook, and head toward the museum before he can argue.
We walk through a set of double doors and down a stone corridor to another courtyard, where there are a few entrances to various exhibits. As we wander from room to room, we act as though we’re perusing the artifacts. I’m not sure what’s usually here, but for the gala, the Coven has brought out all of their relics to display. The Skeleton Key. The Veil of Mist. Cerberus’s Collar.
We finally find the codex in the Temple of Hercules, a circular room with a mosaic-tile floor. A statue of Hercules stands in an alcove across from us, but in the very center of the room, a casedisplays what we came for. The Voynich manuscript. I step forward to examine it.
The pages have a yellowed, weathered look that makes me imagine them as crisp and brittle beneath my fingers. It’s open to a page with a circular drawing not unlike the pattern on the floor. An unknown language is scribbled around the edge.
“It looks…old,” I say.
“Imagine that,” Rook says under his breath, even though we’re alone in the room.
The codex is behind glass on top of a display stand that isn’t built into the room but is no doubt weighted down. I study the glass case to look for the seams but find none. No hinges for a removable panel. No keyhole to unlock it. The only way in would be to smash the glass, but I imagine it’s magically reinforced, so the only way to break it would be to drop something heavy on it from a great height.
What I’m wondering is how the codex got inside. They could have fused the glass closed after the book was already there, but the codex looks like it’s one sunny day away from bursting into flames. No way it would have withstood the heat required to melt the glass together. Perhaps some kind of transmutation magic, but the Coven specializes in illusion.
Perhaps the glass…
I tap my finger against it. Itfeelsreal, but illusion wouldn’t be as powerful as it is if you could tell it was fake. I could have Poppy take a look at this—she’s excellent at sensing all kinds of magic and finding the cracks—but she’s busy at the moment.
I bend to take a closer look at the codex, as though that will suddenly make the answer appear. It doesn’t, but it does give me a thought.
I wonder…
I search the room for cameras. I find one angled down from theceiling and wave. Then I point two fingers to my eyes, then open my hands like a book. After a second, the camera moves up and down like it’s nodding.
I give a thumbs-up and take in the rest of the room. Tile floors, painted drywall, domed ceiling, one exit that leads to a small vestibule. In contrast to the dome, there’s a vaulted ceiling over the column-flanked alcove hosting the statue of Hercules. I move closer to get a better look.
“What’s Hercules holding?” I ask Rook.
He turns to the statue, then turns back to give me a flat expression. “It looks like a club.”
I angle my head to get a better look at the long, phallic-shaped…thing in Hercules’s hand. I raise my eyebrows. “That doesnotlook like a club. It looks…fleshy.”
“Oh god,” Rook mutters. “Can we get on with this?”
“No, look at its—”
The lights shut off, replaced by the red glow of egress-pathway LEDs. Across the museum, the sound of doors shutting and locking echoes.
