Silver Basilisk (Silver Shifters 4)

Kaydi Jackson then proved herself to be every bit as much of a badass as Godiva’s friend Jen when she hauled Barth out of the back of his van, and though he writhed in her grip, she slung him ungently into the back of another van, then slammed the door and locked it with the heavy thunk of serious security.

Alejo said to Godiva, “Barth clearly didn’t expect any trouble, so everything was right out in plain sight, both here in his car and at hi

s place. After I called in his address and other info, I searched the car and found this ledger. I spent the night looking at it while they tossed his house.” Alejo turned the woman with the ancient book. “I know you have to turn over the evidence. But can you wait while I take a look? I want to compare the two.” He held up the ledger and nodded at the book she held.

The woman looked from the ledger to Alejo, frowning. “My orders are clear, but considering the fact that this ass-clown duped you for years, I think you’re owed. Why don’t you hold this for me while I go talk to the management here. There’s a worker who has some explaining to do. And that person, we can report to the feds.”

She handed Alejo the ancient book and walked away.

Ordinarily Godiva would be fascinated by something so obviously old, but her mind was trying to grapple with too many things at once, her overriding emotion fury. This was behind the long silence, the hurt, the wondering—a scammer?

“Why?” Godiva asked, appalled. “What did he get out it? What’s the meaning of all these letters from unknown people addressed to your birth name?”

Alejo said, “I think the letters are customers. I spent the last couple hours studying this ledger. It’s mostly abbreviations, but this much I sussed out.” He flipped it open to a page. “Date, initials—my guess that’s the customer—address, amounts of money, and each entry has a number off to the right here, in the last column.”

He pointed to a column down the right-hand edge of the page, then tucked the ledger under his arm and carefully opened the old book. “I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why the column of numbers was so random. But now I wonder if those numbers correspond to pages in this book.” He peered down at it. “Which is hand-written. In . . . I think this is Latin. Which I don’t know. Mom?”

He looked hopefully at Godiva, who had to shake her head.

Lance held out a hand, and Alejo surrendered the ancient book to him.

Lance frowned at those age-darkened pages, then pulled an expensive fountain pen from a pocket, and used it to carefully turn the leaves. “This is not classical Latin. It’s been a while since I studied it, and most of my study pertained to law, but I think this is late-medieval Latin.”

Godiva said, “What’s the difference?”

“Mostly a lot of added vocabulary from what they called Vulgar Latin. The Vulgate. Greek. Other influences as various tribes blew through Rome. Anyway, I can decipher enough to see that what’s written here are recipes for charms.” He frowned. “The Propagation of Internal Warts. Unappeasable Itch. Dissolution of the Joints . . . And those are under the category of Simple Torments. The back of the book seems to be the heavy artillery. Damn.”

“Let’s test my theory about the numbers.” Alejo flipped open the ledger again and glanced from it to the old book. “This entry has the number 72. Is there a page 72?”

This time, Lance’s expression was one of distaste as he used the fountain pen to leaf through the book. He stopped at 72, read briefly, then looked up. “It’s a charm to . . . I’d have to look up some of these words, but it has something to do with molting. And one of the ingredients is the venom of an adder. So my guess is, whatever is being molted is probably something you don’t want to have fall off. Yeah, definitely bad.”

“That book needs to be destroyed,” Rigo said.

“I don’t disagree,” Lance murmured as he ran his eyes down another page. “Wait a minute . . . This word here, remedium. The root of ‘remedy’ or ‘antidote’—if the antidotes are also there for the charms, the Guardian—the entire council is going to want their hands on this book yesterday.”

Alejo took the fountain pen as Lance held the book. Alejo began looking from the ledger to the book, then paging back and forth, as Lance said to Godiva, “As for why . . .” He shook his head. “I’m beginning to wonder if I’m at fault here. I don’t think I ever glanced behind me once in all the years I came here.”

Alejo briefly looked up. “Who would? I certainly didn’t. But Mom’s right. Why’d he pick us? I get the grudge thing, but as I recall, he was in trouble with half the town.”

“Is this really about teenage squabbles?” Godiva burst out. “That box was in my name. Whatever is going on here is aimed at me as much as it is Alejo.”

Lance glanced at Barth’s brand-new Mercedes van, which Kaydi was now methodically going through. “My guess, pre-questioning, is that what started as a grudge became a convenience. I think at first he just destroyed the letters as petty revenge.”

Godiva let a sigh hiss between her teeth. “Meanwhile, he knew the combo, and he knew that the box was only used by two people, is that it?”

“Correct. I suspect what we’re seeing here is that he ran his scam through your post office box, selling charms out of this book to any who would pay. And meanwhile kept on destroying the letters, probably hoping you two would give up writing.”

Godiva shook her head. “He must know little about family bonds.”

It was just a mutter, but to her surprise, Lance gave a short nod. “I think you’re right.” And at Godiva’s look of surprise, he went on, “I hated Barth’s guts when I was a kid, but once I reached adulthood, I began to understand at least a little about where he was coming from.”

Alejo said, “If you mean coming from what they used to call a broken home, hell, half the kids in school were familiar with that situation.”

“But they aren’t wolves.” Lance shrugged. “Wolves run in packs. His dad was a crappy alpha, but he was an alpha. I found out a couple years after you left, that when Barth Senior was taken down by Ralph Gaines and his pack of straight-up hoodlums, the Barth pack was shattered. That’s why Doug Barth made his own pack, by threats and intimidation, the way he was raised.”

Alejo was still paging as he said, “What else did you learn about him?”

Lance said, “After high school his pack broke up. Half ended up in jail, and the rest bailed. My guess is, he’s been a lone wolf ever since.”