“Is that what Matthew discovered in the Book of Life?” he demanded. “Did you unearth a spell that joins the two species?”
“Sit down, Gerbert.” Janet had been knitting steadily for hours, looking up every now and again to make a judicious comment or smile benignly.
“The witch must answer!” Gerbert exclaimed. “What spell is at work here, and how did you perform it?”
“The answer is in the Book of Life.” I dragged the tote bag toward me and drew out the volume that had been hidden for so long in the Bodleian Library.
There were gasps of astonishment around the table.
“This is a trick,” Sidonie pronounced. She rose and made her way around the table. “If that is the witches’ lost book of spells, I demand to examine it.”
“It’s the vampire’s lost history,” Domenico growled as she went past his chair.
“Here.” I handed the Book of Life to Sidonie.
The witch tried to spring the clasps, pushing and tugging at the metal fittings, but the book refused to cooperate with her. I held out my hands and the book flew across the space between us, eager to be back where it belonged. Sidonie and Gerbert exchanged a long look.
“You open it, Diana,” Agatha said, her eyes round. I thought back to what she’d said in Oxford all those months ago—that Ashmole 782 belonged to the daemons as well as the witches and vampires.
Somehow, she had already divined a sense of the contents.
I placed the Book of Life on the table while the Congregation gathered around me. The clasps opened immediately at my touch. Whispers and sighs filled the air, followed by the eldritch traces left by the spirits of the creatures who were bound to the pages.
“Magic isn’t permitted on Isola della Stella,” Domenico protested, an edge of panic in his voice.
“Tell her, Gerbert!”
“If I were working magic, Domenico, you’d know it,” I retorted.
Domenico paled as the wraiths grew more coherent, taking on elongated human form with hollow, dark eyes.
I flipped the book open. Everybody bent forward for a closer look.
“There’s nothing there,” Gerbert said, his face twisted with fury. “The book is blank. What have you done to our book of origins?”
“This book smells . . . odd,” Domenico said, giving the air a suspicious sniff. “Like dead animals.”
“No, it smells of dead creatures.” I ruffled the pages so that the scent rose in the air. “Daemons.
Vampires. Witches. They’re all in there.”
“You mean . . .” Tatiana looked horrified.
“That’s right.” I nodded. “That’s parchment made from creature skin. The leaves are sewn together with creature hair, too.”
“But where is the text?” Gerbert asked, his voice rising. “The Book of Life is supposed to hold the key to many mysteries. It’s our sacred text—the vampire’s history.”
“Here is your sacred text.” I pushed up my sleeves. Letters and symbols swirled and ran just under my skin, coming to the surface like bubbles on a pond, only to dissolve. I had no idea what my eyes were doing, but I suspected they were full of characters, too. Satu backed away from me.
“You bewitched it,” Gerbert snarled.
“The Book of Life was bewitched long ago,” I said. “All I did was open it.”
“And it chose you.” Osamu reached out a finger to touch the letters on my arm. A few of them gathered around the point where his skin touched mine before they danced away again.