“I’m sorry Blake,” she said. “But I can’t go with you.”
Blake looked at her, eyes open wide in astonishment. Clearly that was not the answer he had expected.
Scarlet didn’t wait for a response. She turned and headed off, walking down the hall, thinking of Sage – and wishing the minutes would tick faster until she could see him again.
Chapter Twenty
Caitlin lost all track of time and place. She had no idea how many hours she’d been in this secret back room of this rare bookstore, combing frantically through stacks and stacks of books. There were mountains of them. Worse, they were all thrown in haphazardly, in so many different positions and directions, it was almost as if someone had deliberately tried to keep them disorganized. Perhaps that was the point: perhaps whoever did this wanted to hide that book.
Caitlin had seen chaos throughout her career in bookstores and libraries – but she’d never encountered anything like this. Not only were there so many books, but they were also each so rare, so valuable. She was astonished. She’d never seen such an abundance of riches under one roof. Some of the books that she’d already passed through her hands, she knew, would be worth millions of dollars on the open market. Why had anyone treated them this way?
Clearly, Aiden knew what he was talking about when he sent her here. And now she understood why the old woman was so reluctant to open her door. She was sitting on a gold mine. Each and every one of these volumes belonged in a museum, or university library, and a part of Caitlin wanted to stop and spend time with each one as she picked it up.
But there was no time. She felt a greater urgency than ever as she rifled through one book after the next, opening the binding as quickly yet carefully as she could, glancing at the title page, skimming through it to make sure it was not a printer’s error, and moving on.
Hours had passed, and she’d already managed to go through hundreds of titles. She was sneezing at a more rapid rate, the dust piling up, and was beyond exhausted, especially after not sleeping on the plane. A sense of hopelessness was starting to creep in. What if the book was not here after all? What if the page was missing? What if its ceremony didn’t work? What if she didn’t find it in time?
It could easily take weeks, she knew, to find the book in this room – if it even existed. She would have to get supremely lucky.
Caitlin scanned the room: there were thousands of titles yet to go, some stacked all the way to the ceiling. She swallowed, having no idea how she would even access those.
But she was not one to give up easily. She jumped back into the stacks on the floor, dealing with what she could in front of her. She rolled up her sleeves, reached over and hoisted yet another heavy volume. She went through books faster now, one, two, three at a time. Now, she just scanned the title pages and moved on. In some cases, she just scanned the spines, when visible.
After another hour or so, Caitlin, her back killing her, on her hands and knees, reached the far wall. At the very bottom of one of the tallest stacks, she yanked out one particularly large and heavy book – and as she did, the entire stack came crashing down around her; she quickly covered her head as the mountain collapsed, and got out of the way just before being completely crushed.
The books finally settled in a huge cloud of dust, and she looked up, dazed and confused. She felt like she wanted to cry.
But as she looked up, through the dust, suddenly, she spotted something that made her heart stop: the crumbled stack revealed another, smaller stack behind it, one she had not seen before. And there, right in the middle, was a book with a rich, red spine. She recognized it immediately. Suddenly, she felt an electric thrill. This was it. The matching volume.
Caitlin nearly lunged across the room, grabbing the book and holding it up to the candlelight with shaking hands.
Please God, let this be it, she thought. She pulled back the cover and nervously flipped to the title page:
De Fascino Libri Tres.
Her heart flooded with relief. She could hardly believe it. She had actually found it.
Caitlin quickly thumbed through the pages, going as fast as she could to the missing page.
Please, please be there. Please be the matching page.
She started to worry about what she would do if the matching page weren’t there. Or if this was all a hoax. She was shaking with anticipation as she got closer. 530, 532…
She turned the page, and her breath stopped. There it was. 537.
And there, before her eyes, was the other half of the page.
She was speechless.
She reached into her bag and extracted the other half. She held them together. The ripped edges fit together exactly. It was a perfect match.
Hand shaking, she read the complete text for the first time. It was all in Latin, and the words lined up perfectly. She read the ritual again and again. As she did, she felt in every pore of her body that this was genuine. For the first time, her heart filled with hope. Here it was, right before her eyes. A way to save her daughter.
With a twinge of guilt, Caitlin delicately tore the half page out of the book, placing it in her folder with the other half of the page. She set the book down, picked up her bag, and hurried across the room to the stone wall, banging on it.
In seconds, it opened.
Caitlin squinted at the bright sunlight that flooded in. It was hard to believe it, but it was daytime. A bright, sunny day. Caitlin wondered how many hours she’d been in there.
The old woman stood there, staring back at her.
“You found it, didn’t you?” she asked.
She stared at Caitlin meaningfully, and Caitlin suddenly realized that the old woman knew what she was after all along. How had she known? Had she been trying to hide it?
“You knew?” Caitlin asked.
The old woman stared back, expressionless.
“Why didn’t you tell me where it was?” Caitlin asked.
“It’s not for me to tell,” the old woman said. “It’s only for the worthy to find it. You, clearly, are worthy.”
Caitlin’s mind spun with all the implications. Had this woman been guarding a secret here? For how long? Her whole life? Who had asked her to guard it? Was she a member of some secret society? What had Caitlin stumbled into?
The old woman reached out and took Caitlin’s hand with both of her small, frail hands.
“I was in your position once,” she said cryptically.
Caitlin stared at her, trying to understand, wanting to know more. She wanted to know everything. But there wasn’t time.
“It’s real, isn’t it?” Caitlin asked, fearfully. “It’s all real?”
The old woman stared back.
“You will come to learn, young lady, just how real it is.”
Chapter Twenty One
Sage stood on the back terrace of the house, watching his final sunset over the Hudson River. His bags were all packed, securely in the trunk of his car, ready to go. No one had seen him pack, except his sister, the rest of his clan out and busy during the day. After their little argument, she had left him alone – going god knows where.
Sage felt bad about it. The two of them had a long and complicated relationship, about as complicated as a two-thousand-year sibling relationship could get. On the one hand, she was always his biggest critic, ready to point out his faults, and always the first one to complain to his parents about anything he did wrong. On the other hand, he always sensed that deep down she was attached to him, and truly loved him. There were, in fact, a handful of instances over the centuries when he could remember her actually standing up for him, completely surprising him. That was her: inscrutable. After two thousand years, he felt as if he still didn’t really understand her.