THE SECRETS OF THE BOOK
1904—St. Louis
Jack Grew let himself into his suite and locked the door behind him. Once he turned on the lamp, he was welcomed by the sight of rich mahogany and silk, plush Persian carpets, and the glint of brass, but it was the silence that soothed him. Finally, blessed silence.
The past few hours at the Jefferson Hotel had been a mess of noise and confusion, but in the end only one thing mattered: Esta had escaped. The police and the Guard had both had her cornered, trapped, and she had still managed to slip past them.
After checking the lock once more, just to be sure, and pulling the curtains closed, Jack loosened his tie and took the Book from the secret pocket of his waistcoat. Sitting in the wingback chair by the fireplace, he ran his fingers over the now-familiar design on the crackled cover. The Sigil of Ameth—the seal of truth. He took a moment, as he always did, to trace the lines carved into the leather. There was something mesmerizing about the design. The figures seemed distinct and separate—rhomboids and triangles laid one on top of another. Tracing them, however, revealed a different reality—the shapes were not separate, as they appeared, but infinitely interlocking. Much like the pages of the Book itself, there was no beginning or end to the lines, simply the endless circuit that drew him deeper and deeper into the truth.
Calmed by this ritual, he took the vial of morphine cubes from his pocket and placed two on his tongue, welcoming their bitterness like an old friend. He could already feel their effects as he opened the small tome. Little by little he felt the tension of the day drift away as the morphine pushed back the ache pounding in his temples. Little by little, his senses came to life, and he felt more aware than he had all evening.
For two years he’d studied the pages of the Ars Arcana, and still he had not unlocked all its secrets. Some days it seemed like he could turn the pages endlessly, never reaching the back cover. Other days the Book seemed smaller and more compact. It was never the same volume twice, and the surprise of what would greet him each evening when he opened it was his favorite part of the day.
Tonight the Book’s pages numbered only thirty or so, and they were pages he’d seen many times before. His own handwriting annotated the incomprehensible markings on page after page, evidence of his devotion to the Book. Of his devotion to the craft and the science of magic. It didn’t matter that he shouldn’t have been able to read most of them. He never worried when he came out of the haze of morphine and scotch and found a new page deciphered, a new secret unlocked. It was simply part of the Book’s power, a signal of his own worthiness as the Book revealed truth to him when his mind was clear and open and ready to receive it.
He crushed one more morphine cube between his teeth as he searched for the passage he had been working on a few days before, but his mind kept drifting away from the Book and back to the fact that Esta Filosik and Harte Darrigan were here, in this city.
It wasn’t a surprise somehow. Almost from the moment he’d stepped off the train, he’d sensed that this trip wouldn’t be like the others. He’d sensed the promise in the air, but he’d assumed it was a political victory on the horizon.
Two years had passed without any sign of her or Darrigan. Of course there had been claims that she was responsible for any number of tragedies. The Antistasi were keen to claim the so-called Devil’s Thief as one of their own and to use her to further their aims. Which was just fine with Jack. The more the Antistasi tried to resist the march of history, the more they made themselves a target for the hatred and fear of the ordinary citizen. Every attack, no matter how small, had surely and steadily built support that allowed them to pass the Act. Every death the Antistasi caused had been another example of why the country couldn’t allow magic to go unchecked. Yes, two years had gone by without Esta Filosik, but they had been two very fruitful years for Jack Grew.
Ever since the train derailment, Jack had used the publicity it had garnered to work his way up the rungs of power. He’d started with the Order, using the Book to obtain a place on their council at the Conclave, where he’d spoken of the dangers of feral magic outside the city. That oration had caught the ear of a senator, who had asked for Jack’s help to accrue enough votes to pass an act outlawing magic. The president hadn’t paid attention until the Antistasi had started their attacks, but considering that Roosevelt himself was in office because of the act of the anarchist who assassinated McKinley, he had a keen desire to see any additional threats quashed. Once Jack had Roosevelt’s ear, he’d used it wisely, and it wasn’t long before he was an advisor the president turned to often.
After all, who better to fight the outbreak of magic, the destruction of national unity, than someone who had been so hurt by it?
For nearly six months he’d been traveling as an attaché for President Roosevelt, combing the country to collect intelligence about what remained of the illegal magic and the maggots that continued to cling to it. It wasn’t an official cabinet position—not yet at least—but Jack had hopes. No. Jack had ambitions. And he would not stop until they were met.
Flipping through the familiar pages, Jack relaxed into the clarity of the morphine and let his mind open to the possibility of the Book. He found the page he wanted—one that didn’t always appear. It was a sign, he knew, that this was what he was meant to do. His fingers ran down the notes he’d made in the margins, but when he read the words on the page, it wasn’t English he spoke but a language far more ancient.
Jack wasn’t an idiot. He knew there was a reason Esta and Darrigan had surfaced here and now, and he knew that their appearance in St. Louis had everything to do with the Society’s most recent acquisition: a necklace that they touted as an ancient treasure—a necklace that Jack had every intention of taking for himself. With it he would be one step closer to claiming the power within the Book as his own and wiping even the memory of the maggots who would try to stand against him from the face of the earth.