A Book of Spirits and Thieves

Her legs weakened, and she went to sit down on a nearby chair. “What’s going on?”


“Markus was ready to be exceedingly patient with you. . . .”

“Dad—”

“But he knows you lied to him. You’ve seen the Codex, haven’t you?”

There was no point in denying it now. “Okay, yeah. I have. But I didn’t lie to him. I really don’t know where it is.”

“I’ve been asked to tell you to go get it and return to the bookshop. Someone will pick you up there in an hour.”

“Dad, aren’t you listening to me? I don’t know where it is.”

“Yes, I am listening. And now you will listen to me.” There was no emotion in her father’s cold voice, which had turned her blood to ice. “You brought this on yourself. I don’t know what your mother has told you, but she’s a liar. She’s manipulating you.”

“Where is Becca?” she bit out, then raised her voice. “Where is she?”

“She’s with us.”

Crys went utterly still. “With you? You mean, with you and Markus? What the hell, Dad? Why are you being like this? Is . . . is she okay?”

“She’s fine.”

“I thought you loved me. I thought you wanted the best for me and for Becca.” Her voice broke.

“I do. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” He paused, but only for one tense moment before he spoke again. “An hour. Be ready, have the Codex in hand, and all this will turn out perfectly fine.”

Before she could remind him, yet again, that she truly had no idea where it was, he hung up.

Crys stared at her phone, then yelled an obscenity at it so loudly that the nurses and patients in the hallway looked at her with alarm.

Hands shaking, she scrolled through her contacts and called her mother as she headed out of the hospital.

It went directly to voice mail.

“Markus knows that we have the Codex, and he knows what it did to Becca. They took her from the hospital, and now Dad says I need to hand the Codex over. If I don’t, I don’t know what’s going to happen. . . .” Her chest was so tight it was nearly impossible to breathe. “Call me as soon as you get this. I don’t know what to do.”

She hung up and immediately tried Jackie’s phone, which also went to voice mail. She left Jackie a similar message.

Who else could help her? She thumbed through the other names in her phone until she came to one that made her pause.

F. GRAY

She stared at it, her heart thundering in her chest.

DELETE

Crys ran the rest of the way home and started searching.

“Damn it, Mom, why didn’t you tell me where you put it?” She had a half hour left to find it—that was it.

She checked under beds and in closets as she sped through the apartment as fast as she could. She even checked inside the oven, since her mother rarely ever used it for cooking. It would make a great hiding spot.

But, like everything else, it turned up empty. Where was it? She didn’t even know if it was still in the building. It could be anywhere—a safe-deposit box, buried in the ground, hidden in the hollow of a tree trunk.

No. Her mother was practical and would want to keep it close, just in case.

And where better to hide a book than in a bookshop?

Crys ran down the spiral staircase to the Speckled Muse, nearly twisting her ankle in her rush.

“Come on, think. Where would she put it?” Crys turned around in a circle, trying to get inspired. Trying to think like her mother.

She scanned the shelves as she walked up and down the aisles, searching for that plain brown leather spine, but the shop had thousands of titles and the shelves seemed to be more endless than usual. There was no way she could search the entire place in a handful of minutes.

Crys ended up in the children’s nook, yanking books off the shelves, searching for hidden compartments she might not have noticed before.

Nothing.

She had only five minutes until her mystery ride showed up.

She wasn’t going to find it. Neither her mother nor Jackie had replied to her messages with a miraculous solution to save the day. She was on her own with no clue what to do.

Hot tears of frustration slid down her cheeks before the dam broke and loud, wracking sobs escaped from her. She couldn’t hold it in anymore; it was all too much. The pressure of the truth, and all the lies and deception, all the fear and uncertainty she’d encountered on the way to discovering it: It all finally crashed down on her with the weight of a collapsing building.

This was all her fault.

She dropped to the ground, surrounded by all the fallen books—books she’d read when she was younger, when she’d loved the written word and the escape it offered. She ran her hand over a fantasy novel that had been one of Becca’s favorites.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, then pulled her legs to her chest and lay there, her cheeks wet, her heart aching. “I wanted to help you, but I failed.”

Charlie entered the nook, now at eye level with her. He came closer, and, as if sensing her distress, he nuzzled his face against the top of her head.