The Truth About Liars
I was happier than I had been in a long time. I threaded my fingers through Charlie’s and half-dragged him along the streets of Dublin. The Scholar’s Library was here somewhere!
The satchel bounced on my hip, the leather strap biting into my neck. It was already late morning, and that made me feel a little nervous about missing our appointment. Charlie had wanted to spend some time with The Book of Kells and wandering around the Long Hall at Trinity College, but I’d convinced him that we didn’t want to go in there with an artifact of our own. I’d promised Charlie we’d see it later, mainly because he swore far too many times that no librarian could ever come to Ireland without seeing the famous illuminated manuscript.
I had paused to talk to the gatekeeper at the Trinity College Library and ask him if he knew where the Scholar’s Library was. He had misunderstood and sent us to a rare books library around the corner. We’d been at the second library for a good thirty minutes before realizing we were lost. I had asked one of the security guards if this was the Scholar’s Library and he had laughed, telling me there were many rare books libraries in Dublin alone, all riddled with scholars.
After that lovely but wasted time in the second library, I’d checked my messages from Dru and realized I should’ve followed her instructions all along. The problem was I’d found out too late that Dublin wasn’t laid out like a grid. It was easy to get lost as one street turned into another. We retraced our steps to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, using that as a starting point as Dru had suggested. From there, we followed her instructions to a side street, then around a long curve to an iron gate in the middle of a stone wall with a complicated entryway to make it easy to fight off intruders. The gate was open just enough for us to slide through.
Charlie pulled back. “I don’t know, Lilah. This doesn’t look safe.”
I glanced around. We stood before a stone wall that had stairs winding up two levels, and atop of it was a spectacularly maintained garden. Not unsafe at all, but concealed, protected. Outside was a busy street that seemed entirely unaware of this hidden gem. I nodded toward the stone steps that led up and away.
“It fits Dru’s description. Come on.”
Charlie sighed and followed me. About twenty steps up, a slightly-open door came into view. We slid through into the building. A tall, wooden staircase led up out of sight. The stairs creaked under our footfalls. As we rounded the corner onto the next floor, we saw the large, black, wooden door. How could such an important library be so well hidden in the heart of a busy city?
I raised my hand but before I could knock, the door opened. The man standing there wore a black suit and black tie and a blue name tag imprinted with the word Raven. More importantly, he had the same familiar style as Jakin. Long hair, a deep brown that was almost black in the low light, gathered into a bun and secured with two small sticks. A well-trimmed beard. Eyes that knew me to the core. As an empath, I could sense a softness in him toward me as though we’d been important to one another in a forgotten dream. My skin sizzled momentarily as if lightning had struck me.
“I’ve been expecting you.” He spotted the satchel draped around my chest. “Please come in—quickly.”
I followed the tall, well-built guardian. On the wall behind the door was a large plaque. Darbyshire Memorial Scholar’s Library. In memory of Stewart and Erica Darbyshire. Beneath a few paragraphs I didn’t take the time to read was a discreet Walking Lightning bind rune of the Priesthood of Daegan that might, by untrained eyes, have been mistaken for a flaw in the design. Above it hung two large portraits of the couple, a man with Raven’s eyes and a woman with flowing black hair and dark eyes.
Charlie followed closely on my heels and, as soon as he was through the door, Raven locked it. Four different locks, four different deadbolts, one after another. Charlie chuckled as Raven flipped the last of the deadbolts.
The man in black frowned down at Charlie. “Is there a problem?”
My lover and soon-to-be fiancé reddened. “No. It’s just that… as a librarian myself, I’m used to trying to get more patrons in, not keeping them out.”
Raven smirked. “We’re not that kind of library here. And, as you can see” —he motioned down a long hall to two other visitors, both women younger than Charlie and I— “we have patrons enough here.”
Charlie slid one arm around my waist, pulled me close, and whispered in my ear, “Maybe we should try this to market our library. Tell people they’re not allowed in and watch them insist on showing up.”
I stepped out of Charlie’s loose embrace. It wasn’t often that I saw him try to claim me in front of another man, except for a few times in the last few months, when Jakin had been around. I wasn’t sure if Charlie was being protective or insecure.
Awed, I studied the long, narrow room behind Raven. The carpet that stretched the length of the room was worn and had once been red. On either side were floor-to-ceiling bookcases, each shelf packed with old, thick books. Most looked as if they had not been touched by human hands since they’d been placed there. Tall windows glowed between the sets of back-to-back bookcases. Each window had been covered with a buff-colored sunshade, but as the clouds outside moved between the sun and the library, I could discern a pattern of metal bars on each exterior window. At the far end of the room, the hall opened into another corridor, this one wider and with even more books. Above the threshold to the larger part of the library hung a giant portrait in a gold frame.
“Exactly what kind of library is this?” I whispered.
The two women, poring over a book encased in a glass cabinet, glanced up at me for a second, then returned to their work. Each wore a simple black dress—expensive by the fabric, I guessed—and a string of pearls. Their white-blonde hair was pulled back into French twists. I sensed “guardian energy” around them both. I suddenly suspected that if I made a wrong move, either was as adept at pinning me to a wall as I was anyone who threatened the St. Augustine Special Collections Library. They weren’t just patrons.
Raven smiled as if he could read my thoughts. “It’s a scholar’s library.”
I detected a bit of an accent in his speech but couldn’t place its origin. Not Irish. Not British. A man who’d travelled extensively and assimilated a little bit of it all. I also both heard and felt the pride in his voice, yet I was certain he was not a librarian by training, any more than I was, even though he had probably spent his life caring for books and those who loved them. I felt a sense of connection to him that I couldn’t explain, even though I’d never seen him before in my life. Not that I remembered, anyway. Maybe something in my physical response to him was what triggered Charlie’s sudden insecurity.
“How many books are here?” I dragged my gaze away from Raven and squinted across the bookcases to my left and right, all the way to the end of the hall, and did the mental math comparing this space with the space taken up by books back home where my job was, apparently, the same as Raven’s. “Eight thousand?”
“In this area, yes.” Raven’s smile widened with appreciation. “Another twenty thousand rare books in the section of the library you can’t see. Plus five thousand of the rarest manuscripts in existence in an earthquake-proof, fireproof, burglar-proof vault.”
I laughed. “Not that burglars would know this place is here.” Except maybe Dru, who’d spent most of her life as a cat burglar in Europe. And book thief. I stopped laughing.
Charlie took a few steps towards one of the bookcases, reached out to touch the books, then thought better of it. “I’m aware of the holdings in most major libraries. How come I’ve never even heard of this place?”
“Perhaps you weren’t meant to. And thank you, Charlie, for not touching the books. Lilah, you, too.”
Charlie stiffened beside me. “How do you know who we are?” He was thinking of our fake passports and cover story.
The man in black shrugged, amused. “The woman who calls herself Drusilla St. Augustine set this up. You were to bring me a gift from a certain American politician, and I am to authenticate it before sending it to her for safekeeping.”
We’d heard as much from the senator himself, although I’d never heard anyone refer to the professor as “the woman who calls herself Drusilla St. Augustine” and now I’d heard it twice in two days.
“You brought the book?” Raven gestured toward the satchel around my neck and held out both hands to take it.
“Wait,” Charlie said. “How do we even know you are who you say you are? For all we know, the person we’re to deliver it to is dead somewhere in the back and you’ve taken his place.”
“If I were such a person, you would already be dead.” Raven turned to me. “But it’s a fair question. So that you know you are delivering such a valuable artifact to the correct person, I can prove that I am he.”
“Yeah, how?” Charlie tried to step between us as though he thought he could protect me. I waved him back.
Raven bent to whisper in my ear. “Cill Stuifin.”
I took a step back in surprise, then nodded at Charlie. “He’s the one.” Charlie tried to ask a question, but I shushed him. “You know that the senator’s dead?”
Raven nodded. “Of course. He returned to his birthplace and took a misstep. According to the news.”
“Something like that,” I muttered. “Still, it was nice of him to donate the book to the library.”
“It wasn’t a donation. He was simply returning the book to us. It had been on loan to him for fifty years. Some men are destined to do good things and, with a little help from the right people, they have the power to do them. The senator far exceeded our expectations.”
“Our?”
“This library is a haven for the Historical Society.”
“What historical society?” Charlie quizzed.
I ignored Charlie. “Whoa, wait a minute.” Raven was full of surprises, good ones. “You’re a member of the Historical Society, too? So am I.”
“I know.”
“If you know that I’m a member, then why don’t I know that you are?” The membership was tiny, and I’d met every member. Or so I’d thought. I decided to make a joke of it. “Guess our organization directory needs some updating.”
He grinned. “I outrank you. No one, except at the very highest levels, knows who else is in the Society.”
“What about the senator? Was he in it?”
“No, but his best friend was.”
Charlie and I looked at each other, then back at Raven, who was looking elsewhere, above our heads. I turned and squinted up at the recent portrait of an older man who looked vaguely familiar. I’d seen a photograph of him, much younger, amid Dru’s private treasures. I’d also seen a photo of an older version of him in the newspapers last fall. He had been murdered while trying to deliver an artifact to Dru, a book known only as The Key of Hell and Death.
Charlie capped my shoulder with one palm and read the brass nameplate at the bottom of the portrait, “Sir Terrence Vanderholt? Hmm, name is familiar for some reason. Was he the librarian here?”
“Curator,” Raven answered.
The portrait at the other end of the room caught Charlie’s eye. “You hang portraits of all your librarians? I wish I got that kind of respect from my employer.”
“Our founder,” Raven corrected. “He founded this library in 1703 and named it a couple of decades ago in honor of his best friends.”
Couldn’t be Terre if— “In 1703?”
“Previous incarnation.”
Charlie missed Raven’s murmured explanation and shook his head with a grin. Charlie waved his hand toward the bookcases, then dug his fingers into his jacket pocket. “This is so fucking cool. I need photos for our social media campaign back home.”
Charlie barely had his smart phone out of his pocket before Raven clamped one fist around Charlie’s wrist and with the other hand plucked away the phone.
“No photos,” he growled.
“Why in heaven’s name not? I could write a few articles, get you more patrons like I did for Dr. St. Augustine. This is a beautiful library no one knows about.”
Raven, without releasing Charlie’s wrist, tossed the phone onto a cushioned chair. “And we are going to keep it that way. Your camera’s flash could damage sensitive material. Plus, security is my job here and I’d like to not give away too much information to people without a need to know. We have rare books here, and we have dangerous books here. Scholars by appointment may see the ones that don’t really matter. The rest are for those of us who seek special knowledge.” He softened his grip on Charlie’s wrist, but let their hands hang in the air for emphasis.
I gasped. On the inside of Raven’s right wrist was a bind rune I’d seen before today. On Jakin Crutchfield’s wrist. Walking Lightning.
“You’re… a priest of Daegan.”
Everyone in the library froze. The two women down the hall exchanged wide-eyed glances.
Raven nodded. “The priesthood has a vested interest in this library.”
The twin portraits of the Darbyshire couple. The bind rune etched into the plaque beneath them. The symbol of Daegan and the tiny sect of men and women around the world who still worshipped an old god.
I looked up at the portrait of Sir Terrence Vanderholt. “He was one, too, wasn’t he?” That explained so much. The connection between Dru and the dead librarian. Between Jakin and the dead librarian. Between the dead senator and the dead librarian.
“Yes. I’m the last male initiated, and that was five years ago. Not many want to follow our ways. I certainly didn’t.”
Charlie jerked his arm away from Raven’s grip. “Not many know you exist.”
“True. But we are the future.”
“You’re an ancient priesthood to a dead god,” I reminded him. “What have you got? Maybe a dozen left? That sounds more past than future.”
“No one knows exactly how many of us there are, but our time will come again, and we will all be resurrected into a new Earth after the coming pole shift. Our ranking High Priestess, like her or not, is the reason an evolved humanity will survive the changes coming to our planet. Books, knowledge, will be more important than ever and must be preserved. That’s why these special libraries are so important and why our job of collecting and protecting these books is imperative.”
“All-l-l righty,” Charlie said under his breath.
“And this book?” I asked, handing the satchel to Raven. I’d heard more ludicrous things than Raven’s cultlike prognostications and I’d lived through far worse, so who was I to judge? “Where does a book on the Law of Attraction fit in?”
Raven held his breath as he laid the satchel on a table at his desk behind him. With the reverence of a priest—a Daeganean priest—he unlatched the clasp and opened the encasement. He didn’t exhale until he’d pulled out the cloth-wrapped book.
“Did either of you look at it?”
I felt the suspicion in him and the warmth in my cheeks.
“No,” Charlie and I answered in unison. At least one of us was truthful.
“The senator told us not to,” Charlie added.
“Good. I can’t express how dangerous it is if an untrained eye sees what’s in this book.” He gently unwrapped the package, layer after layer, just as I had done last night while Charlie was fetching dessert from the bar.
“How is it dangerous?” Charlie rubbed at the red marks Raven had left on his wrist.
“The woman who calls herself Drusilla St. Augustine didn’t tell you?”
“No.” I was as fidgety as Charlie. “She told us to meet the senator on Howth and bring the artifact here. And she told us not to read the book. She said even she wouldn’t look at it.”
“That’s interesting. I suppose she has some secret she fears might manifest if she read it.”
“Secret? You mean if someone with a secret reads the book, something bad will happen? Like the secret will come out?” Charlie shifted from one foot to the other. He reeked of nervous energy. Maybe he didn’t want me to know about the ring I’d found under the mattress below his pillow, that slight bulge in the mattress that I’d never dreamed was a hidden stash of his plans for our future.
“Ah, Charlie. The truth always comes out. Always.”
Charlie gulped. His eyes bulged. I was breathing hard, too, but I had a reason for my jitters. I’d never lied to Charlie until Ireland. But now I was lying to Raven and lying by omission to Charlie. I couldn’t let him know I knew about his proposal plans. I couldn’t let him know I’d stolen a peek at the artifact.
I’d watched the door close behind Charlie last night as he’d left to sort out his thoughts about his grandmother. I hadn’t protested his leaving because I had an ulterior motive. I had tiptoed to the door and watched him trudge down the hall, lost in thought. When I’d been positive he wouldn’t come back right away, I’d locked the door and secured the deadbolt. I’d plopped down on the bed with the book, and barely had it unwrapped when the bump in the mattress under his pillow had annoyed me enough that I slid my hand under the edge and pulled out a small box. My heart had pounded as I opened the lid and saw the diamond solitaire. I might have preferred something else—alexandrite or even a pretty quartz—but Charlie was a vanilla sort of guy, conservative and classic in his tastes. It made no sense why he liked me, let alone loved me, but of course, he’d choose a diamond solitaire!
I had slipped it on my ring finger where I normally wore the family heirloom Dru had given me, the one I’d left behind for fear of it betraying my real identity. I’d promised Dru I’d wear it but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Secure in my belief that Charlie would be gone for a while and that he was suitably locked out of our room, I’d happily left the ring on while I perused the pages of the famous book some thought was a myth.
I’d stared at the ring more, not paying attention to the book. I’d read a few lines in Latin, but it was ho-hum as far as most of the rare books I’d handled. The Celtic knots and woven lines on every page lured me in. I traced each pattern, barely thinking of the book and instead of Charlie and how I didn’t deserve a good man. Not after what I’d done years ago. Love wasn’t meant for me. I was cursed in matters of the heart, and always would be. I could barely believe that I’d found such a good man who loved me back. I kept waiting to wake up and find that it had all been a dream and that my destiny was to spend my life alone.
How long I’d been lost in that dark reverie, I wasn’t sure, but Charlie had returned and was trying to bypass the deadbolt when I looked up. I’d stashed the ring first and the book second, apologizing the whole time for “accidentally” locking Charlie out. Just that quickly, I’d started lying to him.
Raven gave me a gentle shake. “Are you okay? You both look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just warm in here.” I’d not taken off my jacket but there was no heat in the library either. Probably climate control was a factor and the humidity needed to be kept either even or cyclical.
Charlie cleared his throat. “You said Dr. St. Augustine must have a secret if she declined to authenticate it herself. Why would you think that?”
Raven motioned for both of us to come closer. “There’s a history behind this book. And its predecessors.”
“There was more than one? Where are the others?”
“Destroyed, probably. The knowledge in this book is at least a thousand years old. Actually” —his brow furrowed— “we’re not sure how old the knowledge in this book is. We do know it’s been translated and copied more than once.”
“Anything lost in the revisions?” Most edits and revisions yielded changes in the content, even slight ones.
“Nothing lost. Much added. That’s the dangerous part.”
Charlie stepped away, pacing in small circles behind me. Why didn’t he want to see the artifact and hear everything the Daeganean priest had to say? This wasn’t like Charlie. He was such a bibliophile.
“Go on,” I urged. If Charlie wasn’t interested, I was.
“We know that the book was brought to Ireland when Rome was plundered about 1200 Anno Domini. The Crusaders brought back plunder—candelabras, gold, silver, altar trinkets, religious epistles, books, and manuscripts. The edition that preceded this one was part of that plunder. We don’t know what happened to the other books, but we assume they were all taken to Bective Abbey, which was founded fifty or so years earlier. That edition was in Latin, and manuscripts of that time were often illustrated, just as The Book of Kells is illustrated. Over the next three hundred years, the monks at Bective chose to make the book more accessible so they illustrated the Latin as colorful knotted mazes and spirals.” He carefully turned a page and pointed at the design with a long white instrument. “They weren’t mazes or puzzles.”
I watched as he turned a few pages with the pencil-like wand to show me what he meant. Charlie was pacing up and down the room now, looking at less important books, and on the verge of really annoying me. We’d come all this way, and he’d suddenly lost interest.
“See the bright colors?” Raven pointed to one of the illustrations. “Probably red lead, lapis lazuli, malachite, ochre, indigo. This is one of the ways I’ll use to authenticate it.”
“You can’t authenticate it now?”
He laughed. “No. I’m not the woman who calls herself Drusilla—”
“—St. Augustine. Yes, I know. I thought you were an expert.”
“Not like she is. Great care must be taken in looking at this book and spending time with it. Your professor doubts she has the training to avoid the darkness inherent in such an artifact.”
“Darkness? I thought this was a Law of Attraction, get rich quick, and rule the world kind of book.”
“Hmm. It can be for the right person. Your senator was such a person and Lord Verranyx—Terre Vanderholt—knew this through great study and ritual.”
“Lord?”
Raven smiled patiently. “In our priesthood, we refer to High Priests as ‘Lord’ and High Priestesses as ‘Lady.’”
“Terrence Vanderholt was both a Sir and a Lord?”
“One title was more important than the other.” Raven turned back to the book. “I’ve been specially trained so that I will not have the same weaknesses as almost everyone who has read this book.”
Weaknesses? Did that include me? Would I succumb to whatever darkness others had?
“Anyway,” he continued, “the monks illustrated the Latin incarnation brought from Rome and began to meditate and pray as they drew and painted. The meditative illustrations blended with the Latin teachings to create the possibility of changing the world, or at least the reader’s world. Over the centuries, the monks were well-practiced at using the book properly, but in the early 1500s, that began to change and those who used the book without proper understanding of it began to suffer their worst fears.”
“A curse?” I remembered what Dru had said. “If someone believes an artifact is cursed, it might as well be cursed.”
“This book is not cursed. It is Universal Law in its purest form. The Law of Attraction is not good or evil but flows between the riverbanks of your deepest fears and strongest hopes and can overflow in either direction. It’s neutral in power, but the reader decides how that power is used.”
I said nothing. My stomach felt queasy. I tried to understand what he was saying.
“Lilah, the last monk to use it saw his worst nightmares come to fruition. He saw the dissolution of the abbey coming and took the book to a peat bog in central Ireland to bury it. He couldn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. In 1922, one of our priesthood fasted three days and then dowsed for the book. It was found preserved along with the body of the monk.”
“The wrong hands. Like…?” Like Aoife Jung. I’d been warned. Or like me, stupidly looking at something I’d been told not to?
Raven turned another page. “There are people who can do great good with the book. Like the senator. He knew how to use it and made a positive difference in the world. There are people who will bring great heartbreak to themselves who do not know how to use it. Those are not the wrong hands. Foolish, but not wrong. Then there are the people who know how to use it and would use that power to create a world that is out of balance but aligned with what they want, whether that is wealth, power… immortality. I will spend the next three days preparing myself to read this book safely, without my mind shifting to the negative and eventually doing me great harm.”
I hadn’t read the book. I’d been fixated on Charlie, how lacking I was in deserving a good man, how eternal my loneliness and aloneness might be. But I hadn’t read it. Only looked at the pictures.
Charlie, near the end of the room, had stopped pacing and was staring up at the painting of the library’s founder. He was lost in his own world, none of it having anything to do with rare books.
I turned back to Raven, who seemed intent on the page before him. He had lapsed into silence. I waited, but he was frozen in thought.
“Raven?” I touched the sleeve of his black suit.
He shuddered and lurched back to wakefulness. Eyes wide, he glanced at me, then the book. Slowly, he exhaled. He lifted his hands from the table where the book was open and visibly collected his wits.
“That’s how quickly it can happen. I won’t try to authenticate it until I’ve prepared myself.”
“What just happened?” It hadn’t happened to me. I’d lost track of time, but I hadn’t frozen.
Raven pointed at the open page with the tool in his hand. “See the intricate knotwork? How the vivid colors and spiral design pull you in?”
He looked at me and I nodded, but I was sure he was looking at me to keep from losing himself in the book again. He didn’t look back down, but I did.
“Have you ever walked a labyrinth? You or—” He glanced at a distracted Charlie and shrugged. “You know how you can just let your feet walk the labyrinth without thinking about it while your mind is free to roam or to meditate? The monks combined their knowledge of labyrinths, meditation, and the original teachings of the Law of Attraction. The reader prayed extensively, then mentally followed the knotwork to induce a trance. While in the trance, the reader’s hopes and fears created a new reality. So if the reader, like the senator, wanted bipartisan support for a bill that would better the world, he used the book and his positive intentions and strong belief that he could write a new reality to get that support. In other cases, the reader entered a trance full of fear for a dark future, and that is what was delivered to him.”
I stumbled backward. Charlie had his back to me, staring at the portrait but a million miles away. I couldn’t breathe. I wrenched the zipper down on my jacket and pulled it open for air, for coolness, for freedom.
What have I done?
I turned to the quadruple-locked door and frantically fought the deadbolts. Raven just stared at me. Charlie and the others stared at me. I had to get out. I needed air.
I scrambled through the door, shoving past someone waiting on the other side, and made it to the banister before I felt myself crumpling, holding on, trying not to lose my grip on the rail, my grasp on reality.
She and I locked gazes, the redhaired woman on the stairs. I’d never seen her before, but she seemed to recognize me. I felt the fear in her.
A split second later, she yanked the hood of her red jacket over her head and leaped over me as she bolted down the stairs.
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