CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kitty was waiting for him in the lobby of the hotel. “Let’s see it,” she said, her eyes lit up with desire.

Angelo shook his head and kept moving toward the elevator. “It’s packed to get through customs.”

“Well, what does it look like? Is it a book? A scroll? On parchment or—”

“I haven’t seen it yet.”

“What?” The smile slid from her face. “You just authorized my husband spending—”

“I saw the outer box. It has an ancient Jewish inscription on it. I met the seller. I know what I bought is authentic.” He wasn’t about to tell her his faith came from a story about angels from the mouth of a child.

“What you bought? I don’t think you bought a thing, Angelo,” she snapped. “And it sounds like we bought an old box. Let’s go check and see if you owe us five million dollars.” She pushed the elevator button.

“We will check, and you’ll owe me an apology when you see that I’m right about what’s in the box, but not here,” he said quietly as the elevator doors opened. “We need to get it out of the country first. And then we’ll need to go somewhere secluded to open it.”

“Why?”

“You never know what might happen when you open a book.” It was a lesson he’d learned from Mouse.

Kitty followed him into his hotel room as he started gathering his things. “What do you mean? What might happen?” She sounded both accusing and excited.

“If it’s truly a thing of power like I think it is, sometimes other . . . creatures can be drawn to it, or bits of the power can slough off, like dead skin. Things can get out of control. I don’t want to take that risk in the middle of a city full of innocent people.” Angelo grabbed a rolled-up pair of pajama bottoms and crammed them into his bag. “Do you?”

Her answer was another question. “What’s that?”

Angelo turned his head to look where she was pointing. He turned back to his bag quickly, working fast to mask his face. “Nothing. Just an old trinket of mine.”

It was a small stone angel, sitting on the table beside the hotel bed. It had once belonged to Mouse, a christening gift from Father Lucas a very long time ago and a token of his faith in her goodness. She had carried it with her for more than seven hundred years, leaving it with Angelo when she’d gone to Megiddo to confront her father.

“It looks very old,” Kitty said.

“I’ve had it a long time,” Angelo lied. Mouse had teased him about giving the angel back to her, but Angelo claimed it as a penitent offering for the hell she’d put him through. After Megiddo, the stone figure had been his anchor during the three days Mouse had lain dead in the convent in Haifa. Angelo had cradled it when he wept, and it had given him hope. He had caressed it like a rosary while he prayed over Mouse’s pale, cold body. The angel had watched over them both when Mouse, against all odds, took her first resurrected breath.

“Is that blood?” Kitty’s hand stretched out, about to touch the chipped wing covered in dark streaks. Angelo wrapped his fingers around the angel and laid it gently among the socks and T-shirts in his bag.

The angel had been with him in his backpack at Lake Disappointment, and, like him, it had miraculously survived. He ran his thumb softly over the delicate stone face. Angelo had pulled the statue out last night, like he did every night, trying to remember Mouse’s face, her smell, her touch, her sound—anything that belonged to his own memory of her and not Kitty’s implanted vision of Mouse broken and bloody and dead. He’d gone to sleep empty once more.

But today, the little girl had given Mouse’s voice back to Angelo. He could hear her again in his mind, saying his name. Angelo D’Amato. Angel loved by God.

His back turned to Kitty, he lifted the angel to his lips.

“Well, hurry up,” she said. “The pilot’s got the plane ready. I know the Reverend will be anxious to see what he’s bought.”

“Do you always call him the Reverend? Does he call you Mrs. Ayres?”

Angelo swung his bag over his shoulder, leaned against his crutches, and moved to the door, the muscles in his back tight against his shirt.

“Someone needs a nap,” Kitty said. “You should sleep on the way to Moscow.”

“We’re not going back to the house at Australia?” he asked as the elevator doors closed.

“You want secluded. I have just the place.”

An hour later, Angelo dropped into one of the deep leather seats on the Reverend’s private jet and pulled out his phone. He wanted to let Khalid know that he had made it through customs without a single agent asking to examine the Petra statue. He wanted to thank the man for his kindness and to ask him to call when the kids got settled in Germany.

Kitty stretched out on the couch on the other side of the cabin, watching him. Khalid did not answer the phone.

Angelo dialed again, trying to silence the whisper of foreboding as Amman fell away beneath the ascending plane.

The Reverend met them, in his bathrobe, at the door of what Kitty called the farmhouse. It was a renovated Russian castle.

A television blared from a room to the left of the foyer. The modern sounds clashed against the old stone walls and rich wood bannister that twisted up to the second and then third floors.

“Where is it?” the Reverend asked, greeting neither his wife nor Angelo.

Angelo patted the satchel hanging from his shoulder.

“Bring it in here—the game’s on.” He led them toward the television, an enormous flatscreen mounted over an even larger fireplace. The wavering glare filled the otherwise dark room. The walls were lined with empty bookshelves.

“Now just a minute, Rev—” Kitty stopped herself and took a step forward, laying a hand on the Reverend’s arm. “Kevin, it’s been a long trip. Why don’t we get a drink and let Angelo tell you what he knows first? And then we’ll see about opening it.”

The Reverend kept his eyes on the television. “I don’t care what he’s got to say. I paid for the thing. It’s mine.”

Angelo lowered himself onto a large settee in the corner near the vacant fireplace. Hours on the plane and then the long car ride had the nerves in his back and legs screaming. His tolerance for pain was reaching a threshold, his vision blurring and his mind a fog of worry about Khalid, who still had not answered his calls.

The Reverend was suddenly yelling at the football game, and Kitty was directing a maid to bring in drinks and something to eat. Demons and angels and ancient books had all felt natural in Mouse’s world, but here, against a backdrop of wealth and banality, Angelo felt unsteady; the landscape seemed unreal. He lowered his head into his hands, pressing against his eyes. He needed his head clear for the battle to come.

After a few minutes, he heard the slap of the Reverend’s foot against the gap of stone floor between the carpets at the corner of the settee. “It’s halftime. Give me what you got, boy.”

Angelo looked up at the Reverend, trying to mask his hatred. He knew his best chance was to play a careful game of feigned aloofness. If the Reverend saw how much Angelo wanted to be alone when he opened the book, he’d do anything to make sure it didn’t happen.

He pulled the crated Petra statue out of his bag and laid it beside him on the settee. “Here it is.”

The Reverend picked up a poker from the fireplace and jammed it against the loose slats, prying.

“Oh, honey, be careful! That thing’s priceless!” Kitty said.

“It’s never been opened,” Angelo said, trying to keep his voice steady. “If it’s as old as I think it is, depending on what it’s made of, it might disintegrate in the wrong air.”

“What do you mean?” the Reverend asked as he popped another slat free and reached in to pull the Petra statue out of what was left of the splintered crate.

“Well, once it’s unsealed, if it’s made of some kind of parchment, the fresh air might be too hot or too humid or too dry, and the book could just . . . dissolve. All five million dollars’ worth.”

“It’s hidden in the back here?” the Reverend asked, turning his head back to the television.

“Yes. Would you like me to—?”

“No.” The Reverend strode across the room to a desk and pulled out a letter opener, digging the point into the seam at the back where Khalid had glued it.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, honey, you’re going to tear it up. Let me do it.” Kitty took the opener from him and sat down at the desk, more carefully dislodging the back of the statue.

“Khalid did a nice job of hiding it, don’t you think? Customs officers barely even gave it a glance,” Angelo said. “I tried to call him to thank him, but I couldn’t get through. Have you spoken to him?”

“No.”

Kitty almost had the back off. “You should tell him what you told me, Angelo, about what might happen when we open it.”

The Reverend looked at him, waiting.

“Objects of power, like I think this is, often release a bit of that power when they’re opened or disturbed. It can sometimes draw—”

“He thinks something might come, Kevin. Something bad.” Her voice was laced with awe.

But the Reverend’s face twisted into a disdainful sneer. “That’s bullshit, Kitty. He just wants to open it by himself, be the first one to see what there is to see. He’s trying to scare you off.”

Angelo shrugged, but his heart was jackhammering against his chest as he watched the Reverend snatch the statue, tilting it until the stone box tumbled free into his fat hand.

“That’s a little thing for how much I paid. There better be something worth a whole lot inside,” he said. He shook the box. A sharp, bright clink sounded and then was eaten by the commentators on the television discussing rushing yardage.

Kitty gasped. Angelo held himself still.

“That sounds like something solid in there. Not paper,” the Reverend said, a new gleam in his eye.

“It would likely be a scroll rolled on a wooden dowel. If you open it, it might—”

“I didn’t build an empire on being scared of what might be. I can’t be so afraid of losing something that I won’t take a risk.” He wrapped his thick fingers around the top of the stone box.

“But what about the creatures that might come, honey?” Kitty whispered, poised as if she was just as eager for him to open it as she was afraid.

“This thing belongs to me now. I don’t care who shows up to take it.”

Angelo sat up. He could feel the change in the air before the Reverend even started to pry the top. He’d felt this kind of energy before—with Mouse at the ruins of Podlažice and in the Onstad church with the Devil’s Bible.

He started to reach his hand toward the box, but the Reverend tugged and a tiny wisp of air escaped through the broken seal.

The Reverend screamed.

He either would not or could not let go of the box. The lamps around the room crackled and popped with raw energy, and the flatscreen flashed a blinding light. The voices of the commentators exploded into the room as the volume surged.

Angelo snatched the box from the Reverend’s frozen grip and the surface of the flatscreen shattered and went dark, the room quiet and still.

Kitty was crying. The maid brought in a candle. The Reverend had fallen back against the couch, his great round belly erupting from his bathrobe, which lay limp on either side of him.

“You okay?” Angelo asked as he touched Kitty’s hand.

She jerked it back like she’d been bitten and looked up at him with wide, tear-filled eyes.

“I’m so blessed,” she said softly and then started sobbing again.

An hour later, Angelo found the Reverend sitting out on the balcony smoking a cigar. They had put Kitty to bed.

“So, what do you need?” the Reverend asked gruffly, not looking at Angelo.

“A place where I can control the conditions, someplace fairly isolated. I need to work alone. And, assuming I get to open the box and read the book, access to a theological library would be helpful. I’ll need to be able to translate and contextualize what I read.”

“I know a place.”

“Okay.” Angelo looked out over the dark expanse, dotted with a few lights from the nearby village. The last of the summer insects were singing. They sounded sad. Maybe it was the touch of fall in the cool air.

“Anything else?” the Reverend asked.

“What happened to Khalid?”

“Heard he had an accident. He’s dead.”

Angelo could hear the monks still singing as he stepped off the boat on the shore near the Ascension Chapel of Valaam Monastery. Thin clouds drifted over the moon. He tasted rain in the air.

He followed his lamp-holding guide up a pebble path to the main buildings of the Gethsemane skete—a tiny complex for monks seeking a deeper isolation than the main monastery offered. Angelo could make out the spiked towers of the small church in the sketchy moonlight, but the low building where Angelo would be staying erupted from the darkness without warning. He stumbled against his guide, his crutches clanking, but he recovered his footing as the man stepped down into a narrow doorway and light tumbled out from the hall inside.

The Reverend’s helicopter had dropped Angelo off at the main complex of the Valaam Monastery just hours earlier. He had joined the Vespers service, staying at the back as dozens of black-clad Orthodox monks had led a small procession of locals and pilgrims into the ornate Saviour Transfiguration Chapel. The monks’ voices ran in two threads—a rich melody dancing along the ison, which droned underneath and anchored the music to its ancient predecessors. Angelo wondered if this had been the soundtrack of Mouse’s childhood growing up at Teplá Abbey centuries ago. Though the music drew him in, he held himself apart from the worshippers. The gilded dome decked out with brilliant mosaics of hundreds of saints bore down on him. He sensed judgment in their porcelain eyes.

Khalid’s death weighed heavily on Angelo. He wondered what his soul would look like to Mouse now—surely not nearly as bright or as full. He’d forfeited too much of it for this alliance with the Reverend and Kitty. But to stop would mean no vindication for Mouse. Khalid would have died in vain. At least that’s what Angelo had told himself when he’d climbed into the helicopter and let Kitty kiss him good-bye on the cheek. He had something he needed to do, he kept reminding himself. He was a soldier on a mission. The words now tasted like empty excuses in his mouth.

Angelo’s guide gave him the oil lamp and wordlessly directed him down a hall lined with monastic cells. Angelo’s was the last door on the left.

Valaam Monastery provided exactly what he needed to begin his exploration of whatever was waiting for him inside the stone box. Isolated on an island in the middle of Lake Ladoga on the border between Russia and Finland, the monastery saw only a few monks and a handful of locals who worked at the monastery farm. Valaam had also been the recent beneficiary of a wealthy patron and so had undergone sweeping renovations and updates. There was an extensive library and, in addition to the main complex, a dozen smaller churches with tiny communities of monks scattered among the little islands and inlets. Angelo had chosen to stay at the one they called Gethsemane.

He startled as the guide-monk closed the door behind him, shutting out the night and leaving Angelo alone. He had the skete to himself. The oil in the lamp swished as he swung his crutch forward. A sense of déjà vu pressed against Angelo as he made his way down the hall to his room. After a few steps, he realized why the place felt familiar—it was like the hall of doors he’d seen in the ruins of Podlažice with Mouse.

A sense of calm chased away his foreboding. This was as it should be. Mouse had come to a place like this to pay penance for causing the deaths of thousands of soldiers—an accident, but dead by her command all the same. She had crafted the Devil’s Bible to carry her guilt. Now Angelo would unlock the secrets of the Book of the Just as penance for his part in Khalid’s death. Mouse had put a book together; he would take one apart.

With a new assurance, Angelo turned the knob on the door to his cell. The room fit a single cot against the side wall and a desk at the window. There was a picture of Jesus over the bed. On the bed was the rest of Angelo’s luggage, including a new satchel, which he unzipped and flipped open to reveal an assortment of tools he would need to examine the book. Everything was at the ready. Almost.

Angelo grabbed a scalpel from the satchel and reached into his carry-on to pull out a bag of salts. He scattered them in a circle around the perimeter of the room and then quartered it with a cross. He pulled the blade across his forearm, let the blood drip at each end of the cross, and said the words of the spell. Just like Mouse taught him. He imagined her voice saying them, and for a precious moment, he felt her near. Then the moment was gone.

He wrapped his arm with the gauze he’d brought and pulled the stone box out of the bag that hung at his hip. He set it on the table in the glow of the lamp, put on a pair of archive gloves, and pried at the corner the Reverend had already loosened. And then he worked on another corner and another. There was no pop or buzz of overrun electricity like before, just the soft sound of rain falling against the window. He wiggled the stone lid gently until it finally slipped free of the lower box with a last hiss of air.

Angelo held the top carefully still against the bottom and waited. He looked out the window. Turned to look behind him. He listened.

But there was nothing. Where was the angel to tell him to stop as it had the girl in the cave and the tempted son, Angelo wondered, a little disappointed. He sat back as a thought came to him for the first time. The spell of protection he cast would keep out creatures of evil intent. What if the angels in the young man’s story were really demons, emissaries from Mouse’s father and not heavenly ones? It would explain how the supposed angel had known his name. It would also mean that whatever was in the box was most likely a trap.

Angelo stared at the loose lid on the stone box in the glow of the lantern. The rain fell harder. What choice did he have? He held the base of the box in one hand and slowly lifted the lid. His heart beat like a drum in his head.

His eyes narrowed and eyebrows pinched together as he worked to make sense of what he was seeing. The box was filled with ebony ash, but it wasn’t like any ash Angelo had seen—blacker than normal, powdery but with a shimmer, and with strange threads of silvery white ash snaking through the dark.

His heart sank as his worst fears lay splayed out in the lamplight. The book—or whatever it was—had been in the box, jostled on horseback or camelback across thousands of miles in the worst heat, stored God-only-knows-where in a Bedouin tent over hundreds of years. It would be a miracle for such a thing to survive. Angelo had been foolish to hope.

He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he let out a little sigh. The tiny burst of air sent the ash nearest him dancing, and underneath he caught the glint of gold. His eyes widened, and he turned to grab a feathered brush from the satchel on his bed. Angelo leaned close and gently pushed the ash to either side of the box as if he were a painstakingly precise street sweeper clearing a road of brilliant gold. Not a particle of ash left the box.

It took hours. His back screaming at him, he finally pulled up, stretching, his eyes blurred and his mind so languid with a need for sleep that he barely registered the soft light of dawn tapping at the window.

Angelo stood, holding the back of the chair for balance, and looked down on the exposed treasure. A rectangle of gold, embossed with symbols and script, some of which seemed familiar, lay framed in the shimmery ash. Two gold rings pierced the short end of the gold leaf and circled back to disappear in the ash. Angelo was sure they promised more gold leaves under the first.

The box didn’t hold a lost scroll after all. It was a book of gold plates. A book with writing. A book for him.

He knew he needed sleep or he was likely to make mistakes. He bent forward and picked up the lid and carefully placed it back on top of its base, enclosing the ash and gold. Was this the lost Book of the Just?