By the time their plane landed in Stockholm two hours later, Mouse and Angelo had come up with a plan for gaining access to the Devil’s Bible, which was carefully guarded in the National Library of Sweden. Thanks to her stints as a graduate student and professor, Mouse was familiar with the stringent protocol for accessing Special Collections in a research library. Typically, a visit would take weeks to schedule, but they didn’t have that kind of time. They would have to bluff their way in. Mouse certainly knew how to lie about who she was. A little fake paperwork, some new clothes so they looked the part, and a lot of luck might open the doors they needed to walk through to get to the Devil’s Bible. It would take a day to prepare.
The moment they checked into their hotel room, Angelo sank onto the bed.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Mouse said as she leaned over him, pulling on his shoulders trying to get him up again. “We need to rehearse who’s doing what tomorrow.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and flipped her onto her back beside him on the bed. “It’s today already, which means we have at most three hours to sleep.” He let the last word drawl out slowly and closed his eyes. Mouse started to get up. He rolled toward her, his body half on hers, and put his arm across her. “You sleep, too.”
Mouse tried to reach the lamp to turn it off, but she couldn’t move under Angelo’s weight. He was already asleep. She closed her eyes, too, and tried to lose herself in the silent rhythm of his breathing, but it kept tickling the hair just behind her ear, making her think about things besides sleeping. With a sigh, she opened her eyes; Mouse had her own decisions to make about what would happen at the library. The shadows cast by the lamplight seemed to be moving, shaping themselves into hooded bishops and crouching Molochs that oozed into the blackness.
She still held the little wooden mouse in her hand and rubbed it gently with her thumb, like it was a worry stone with the magic power to carry away all her troubles.
After showers, a quick breakfast, and a stop at the hotel ATM, they went their separate ways. Mouse went to buy clothes; Angelo went to buy cameras. They would meet again that afternoon. Mouse never asked God for anything, but that day, her mind trickled with the words of a thousand memorized prayers to keep Angelo safe.
Her part of the mission was to outfit them like people sanctioned from the Vatican. Angelo was to be an official sent on a task from the Commission for Sacred Archaeology, which meant he needed to look comfortably wealthy, like any good Roman citizen—expensive suit, shirt and tie, all silk. Mouse would play his assistant and so opted for a more conservative, tailored suit in appropriately British black.
Costumes in order, she headed for a ProCenter in Stureplan where she could edit and print the materials for Angelo’s fake portfolio. The forged letter from Bishop Sebastian made her the most nervous. She had tried to get Angelo to think of someone else they could use for the necessary reference, but Angelo had argued that they had the best chance of forging documents and a signature from someone he actually knew. Mouse didn’t want to think about what might happen if the library staff actually called to confirm Angelo’s credentials; she couldn’t afford to have this go wrong. If she had any hope of stopping her father and preventing this war Bishop Sebastian thought was coming, she needed the rest of the spell in the Devil’s Bible.
Trying to shake a growing sense of foreboding, Mouse sank herself into the fun of culling through Angelo’s work. He had given her his password to access the pictures he stored on his laptop. She loved getting to play editor and to build a collection of photos she thought genuinely captured Angelo as an artist. The last file in the folder held the pictures from Monster Park.
Mouse clicked rapidly through the string of images. She was stunned at what she saw. She hadn’t realized that Angelo had taken pictures of her. He’d said he wasn’t good with people, but he was wrong. Mouse knew she didn’t really look the way his pictures made her look—the last of the sunlight shining in her hair, her eyes less dark, the green in them sparkling and alive. What she saw had to be a trick of the light.
“I love that one.”
Mouse jumped at his voice, banging her shoulder into his chin. She had been studying a photo of herself reaching toward the stone face of Echidna, the mother of monsters, and she hadn’t heard the door open.
“Ouch.” Angelo rubbed his jaw.
“Sorry.”
“Me, too.” He nodded at the computer screen. “I didn’t exactly ask permission, but look at you shine. You’re beautiful.”
Even Mouse could see the light glowing around her in the picture.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“That’s not me. That’s you—it’s like you’re lit up from within. I could see it when I turned my lens on you. I couldn’t help but take the pictures.” Her stillness made him worry that he’d crossed a line. “Mouse?”
What could she tell him? That what he called a shine looked just like the glow she saw in people but could never find in herself? That his picture captured her in a way she had never believed possible? That she was seeing herself for the first time?
“Really, it’s fine.” She shut down the computer.
“Well, come on then.”
“Where are we going?” she asked as she lowered her new backpack onto the floorboard of the car Angelo had rented. She had told him it was impractical to lug the camera equipment onto mass transit, but Mouse had other reasons for needing the car.
“I asked the guy in the camera shop for a nice place to eat. Last meal before prison, you know.” Angelo’s nervous playfulness was contagious.
They spent hours over dinner, Angelo laughing as Mouse quietly told stories about the more ridiculous things she’d had to do or wear over the years. Finally, overfull on stuffed dumplings and too much wine, they headed upstairs to the restaurant’s club, their eyes and smiles a little too bright, both of them holding fast to the joy of the night as they worked to keep their fears about tomorrow at bay. After claiming a corner table, Angelo left to get them a couple of beers from the bar. Mouse was tapping her feet when he got back.
His lips tickled her ear when he spoke. “You’re seeming more like a girl than an ancient these days. Dollhouses and dancing feet.”
He smiled and pulled her out to the floor just as the music slowed. Mouse’s pulse quickened when she felt the muscles in his arm flex as he turned her in a slow circle. He bent his head toward her shoulder and his body pressed into hers.
“What are you doing?” she asked him softly.
“I thought I was dancing. What are you doing?” His mouth brushed the skin at her neck.
“I think you’re a little drunk.”
“Aren’t you?”
“I don’t get drunk.”
He pulled back and looked into her eyes. She saw his desire and couldn’t stop from pushing herself up and closing her lips lightly over his. His hand clenched her shirt at the small of her back, but when she pulled away to look at him, trying to figure out where this was going, she saw the indecision in his face.
Mouse pushed against him gently, giving him a little more space.
“You’ve had too much to drink, Angelo. This doesn’t mean anything.”
“This is my choice to make, not yours.”
“Then what do you want?” She knew what she wanted him to say, but she wasn’t prepared for an answer.
“Damn it, Mouse. I don’t know.”
She paused, then pulled away. “Well, I do,” she said. “I want to leave.”
Angelo led them out of the club. As they headed for the car, he reached for her hand, but Mouse wrapped her arms around herself against the chill.
When they got back to the hotel, Mouse crawled into her side of the bed and pulled her body as close to the edge as possible. She willed herself not to move and forced herself to sleep. She was determined to make this as easy as possible for both of them.
Angelo never said a word.
They woke early, nervous about the uncertainty of the day. They took extra time dressing, as if the new clothes might work like camouflage, transforming them into the people they were pretending to be. Before they left the hotel, Mouse tucked a leather pouch into the inside pocket of Angelo’s jacket.
“Protection if things go badly,” she said.
“Like the fish spell?”
“Yeah, like that.”
They tossed their bags into the rental car at the hotel parking garage and walked to the library. Angelo wheeled the large case of camera equipment behind him. As they neared the entrance, Mouse saw a man leaning against the corner of the building smoking a cigarette. He nodded, and the woman with him turned to watch as Mouse and Angelo wrestled the case up the stairs. The couple reeked of her father’s touch. Mouse had known he would have someone waiting for her. Even though Moloch had gotten the pages back, her father had no way of knowing whether or not Mouse had already found the spell in them. If she had, then her father knew her next move would be getting the rest of the spell out of the Devil’s Bible. This blank-faced couple was his insurance policy.
Her neck prickled in anticipation as she saw them come through the library doors moments later. The two of them paused near the restrooms just down from the information desk where Mouse and Angelo had stopped and asked to speak to the research librarian in charge of Special Collections.
Smiling and breathing in the soft mustiness of the library, Mouse suddenly realized she had another problem, something she hadn’t anticipated. She shuddered as she felt a powerful presence snake its way up her spine. She could only guess it came from the Devil’s Bible.
All those centuries ago, the book she and her father made together had soaked up bits of power from its cocreators. Bishop Andreas, the first to lay human hands on the Devil’s Bible, had felt it when he touched it. Jack Gray had felt it, too. Many in the intervening years had whispered about the dark secrets hidden in the ancient manuscript. Many had gone looking for those secrets in the text. But Mouse knew they wouldn’t find what they were looking for in the words or the pictures. The power lived in the book itself. And like any offspring, it bore more traits of one parent than the other. It was truly the Devil’s Bible.
Over the years, many had thought to use its dark forces for their own cause. Mouse had read about them—some famous, some not, some who spent an hour with the book, and others who spent years. The book changed them. The book broke them.
Now it was playing with Mouse, just as her father’s power had in the ruins of Podlažice. Only this time, it didn’t addle her mind. This time, it toyed with her anger.
The young man at the desk was directing Angelo to a set of stairs. “You’re looking for Eva Hedlin’s office, two flights down and to your left at the end of the hall.”
“You go on,” Mouse said as she turned back to the man and woman who had started to move slowly toward the same stairs. It would make a nice secluded spot for them to ambush Mouse and Angelo. She felt the power fingering her anger like someone turning the volume up. All she wanted right now was a fight.
“Mouse?” Angelo could tell something was wrong with her.
“I’ll catch up.”
Aware that the librarian was watching them, Angelo nodded and, as he disappeared down the stairs, Mouse spun toward the library entrance, smirking when she sensed the man and woman tense as she passed them.
A burst of air played with her hair when she shoved the doors open and walked down the portico to the back of the library, where she’d seen a stand of trees nestled beside a wing of the building. Her body taut with expectation, she smiled as the couple moved into the shadows with her. She kept her back to them, luring them in. Mouse lowered her head to listen for the intake of breath that signaled the attack. Her laugh bounced along the stone façade of the building as she hurdled the man’s kick and spun to catch the woman’s fist.
It was as if a curtain had been pulled back. No longer just a whisper at the back of her mind, Mouse felt the powerful malevolence in the Devil’s Bible call to her like a child for its mother.
She elbowed the man in the throat and twisted the woman’s fist until the bones in her wrist snapped. As the man grabbed his neck, careening off the building and landing on his knees gasping for breath, Mouse slapped her hand over the woman’s mouth, catching her scream. It tickled Mouse’s palm; it tickled the vicious thing inside her.
Then she saw her reflection in the woman’s wide eyes—Mouse’s face was full of naked joy at the pain she caused. She let the woman go.
The man slammed into her from behind. She twisted just as she made contact with the wall. The impact forced the air from her lungs and she doubled over as she tried to catch her breath. The man grabbed her head and yanked her backward; Mouse landed hard on the ground. As he stood over her with strands of her hair still twisted in his fingers, he glanced quickly at the shuttered windows of the lowest floor of the library and reached into his jacket, going for the knife Mouse could see strapped to his waist.
Mouse kicked out hard. The spiked heel of her shoe hit the man in the groin. She scrambled to her feet as he sank to his knees. The woman was still huddled at the wall holding her wrist.
Mouse felt the power beginning to swell in her again, but this time she tensed like someone fighting the urge to vomit, refusing to let her body give in to its impulses. “I will not kill anyone today,” she said through gritted teeth, trying to anchor herself against the influence working on her. She would not be her father. She would not be his puppet either.
But she was barely holding onto her will, barely in control of herself. She needed these people gone or else they’d be dead like her father’s minion back in Nashville. She wasn’t sure if she could command someone already under her father’s control, but she had to try.
“Go away,” Mouse said. The woman looked at her but made no move to leave. “Get out of here,” she said again, more forcefully. Still nothing. Mouse was scared to tap her power to issue a more forceful command, but she had no choice. “I will not kill anyone today,” she whispered. And then she took a deep breath. “Go home!”
The reaction was instant. Both the man and the woman turned on their heels and started walking away. They moved stiffly, their injured bodies rebelling, but the will to go home was more powerful than their pain. It was not their will but Mouse’s that drove them. They had no choice but to obey.
Mouse leaned against the wall of the library as she watched them go. Her hands were shaking and she sucked in ragged breaths through her nose, her mouth clenched against the power and the bile rising in her throat.
None of the violence had been necessary. Mouse had hurt them because she wanted to, because the thing in the Devil’s Bible wanted her to. Because her father wanted her to. This is how it would be if he finally caught her and claimed her. It was what she had run from all these years. She had gotten a taste of it during those weeks with him at Podlažice. He charmed and teased it out of her, this thirst for power, this hunger for violence. He would fan it to full flame, and God help her, she would love it. And what if she truly had the power the Bishop thought she had?
Mouse needed the last line of that spell.
She closed her eyes, counting her breaths, measuring her heartbeats, and building a wall against the onslaught of power that still beckoned to her as she headed back into the library. Two steps down the stairs, then six to the landing, twelve more steps, the hall, and then she heard Angelo’s voice. Her mind grasped at it like a lifeline.
She found him in a large office sitting across from a woman with short, graying hair. They were laughing at something, both of them obviously already comfortable with each other. Mouse pushed back against a flicker of irrational irritation.
“This is my assistant, Dr. Emma Lucas. I have her on loan from England.” Angelo’s voice dripped with feigned arrogance, but he frowned as he noticed the bits of grass on Mouse’s skirt and the sweat beaded on her forehead.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Hedlin.” Mouse gave her a tight smile as she sat in the chair opposite Angelo. She licked her lips and worked to concentrate on keeping up with the conversation so she could play her part when it was time, but she was still walling herself up against the power, one counted breath at a time.
The librarian never took her eyes off Angelo. Mouse could see how well he had charmed her.
“As I was saying,” Angelo continued, “I’m afraid we have a last-minute request for access to one of your holdings in Special Collections. And I do apologize. Normally Dr. Lucas travels ahead and manages all of this for me, but not this time. We needed to take advantage of the opportunity. You understand, of course.” Angelo intentionally tangled the narrative so the most potentially difficult information came at the librarian’s request.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. What opportunity?”
Mouse knew her lines, but her hands, skin red and broken at the knuckles, trembled as she laid them her in her lap. “Deacon D’Amato is working with Bishop Bernardo Sebastian at the Vatican to produce a book highlighting 13th- and 14th-century Christian art. The Bishop hopes the book will raise funds to help with several restoration projects he oversees.” Mouse handed the woman Angelo’s fake portfolio. “He has a Papal Commission, you see.”
Mouse almost sighed with relief when the woman barely glanced at the letter of reference. Ms. Hedlin seemed more interested in Angelo’s photos at the back of the case.
“You are very good.” Ms. Hedlin nodded at Angelo, waiting for his pleased expression at her praise.
“Thank you.” He gave her just what she wanted.
“I’m still unclear about what I can do for you.”
Mouse felt heady with a fresh surge of power pulsing through her as she relaxed into the conversation and lowered her defenses. She almost abandoned their plan in a flash of arrogance. It would have been so much easier just to command the pompous woman to bring them the Devil’s Bible. The book belonged to Mouse anyway, and the longer she sat there, the more Mouse wanted it.
Angelo looked at her expectantly; she had missed her cue.
“We just learned . . . um, I’m sorry.” Mouse stuttered as she worked to catch up. “Two days ago we learned that you were about to start a preservation process on the Codex Gigas. The Devil’s Bible?”
“It’s only a routine procedure when one of our antiquities returns after a prolonged public exhibit. The Codex has just come back to us from Prague, actually,” Ms. Hedlin said.
“Yes, yes. This is why we’re here,” Angelo said. “The Bishop wants pictures of before and after. He wants to document the work you do to preserve these important artifacts of Christendom. We have similar photos of restorations of some German frescoes and of a small church in Ireland. But we have nothing for a textual work like the Devil’s Bible.” Angelo very softly stroked her ego.
“You want to photograph the Codex? Today?” The woman frowned and began thumbing through the portfolio again.
“Well we already have the equipment with us. We could take the before pictures today and return at your convenience for the after pictures.” Mouse tried to sound matter-of-fact.
“And who did you say you were working for?” She stopped on the letter of reference. “Oh, I see.”
She pulled out her phone and keyed-in the numbers.
Angelo shrank back in his chair, and Mouse tensed. They knew this might happen. It had been a gamble. They had debated putting a fake number on the reference, but if they did and got caught, the game was over. Instead they had rolled the dice that the librarian would see polished professionals and not bother to check on their credentials. So much for luck being with them.
“Bishop Bernardo Sebastian, please.” Eva Hedlin smiled at Angelo as she waited for the connection.
Mouse felt the room closing in on her. This was the part of the gamble that held the most risk. She and Angelo had very different ideas about how they thought the Bishop would respond if he did get called.
“Good Morning, Your Excellency. I’m Eva Hedlin, the chief librarian at Kungliga Biblioteket. I have a young man and woman in my office requesting permission to take pictures of the Codex Gigas on behalf of a project they are working on with you.” She let her tone ask the question.
Mouse and Angelo tensed as the librarian paused to listen to something the Bishop said. Then she smiled.
“Yes, that’s right. Angelo D’Amato and Emma Lucas.” Mouse and Angelo exchanged a glance. Ms. Hedlin’s forehead creased and her lips pressed into a thin line.
Mouse wetted her lips and prepared herself to do what was necessary; the power was jumping for release.
“Well, of course, Your Excellency. One moment.” Ms. Hedlin held out the phone, and Angelo reached to take it.
But the librarian turned to Mouse. “He wants to talk to you.”