Until Daphna’s phone rang.
Daphna, who’d been distracted by the faint memory of a man at the Vatican yelling stop just before she and Dex were hauled, bleeding to death, into the Light, frantically squeezed at the phone in her pocket. She managed to silence it before the third ring. But it was way too late.
“The basement!” someone shouted.
Quinn and Daphna were already leaping down the steps. Quinn reached the wardrobe first, which they wisely hadn’t closed. He held the door open for Daphna, but she didn’t get in.
“Come on,” Quinn urged. “I’m sure the cops are long gone!”
“No,” Daphna told him. “We’re trying to find out who these people are, right? So, let’s ask them. They only watch, remember? And it sounds like they know a way—”
Daphna and Quinn turned around to find themselves confronted by a group of six mostly ordinary looking people in slacks and sweaters, three men and three women. They seemed middle-aged, but were all rather fit and trim, and unusually tall. A man with incongruously youthful hair swept over his forehead stepped forward. He wore a button-up wool sweater over a black turtleneck.
“Daphna Wax,” he said. “I imagine this fortuitous turn of events is the result of Guillermo’s overzealousness this morning.”
“We’ve been to Heaven,” Daphna said, getting right to the point. “My brother and I. But we can’t get back. We had a book that took us there.”
“A golden book?” Turtleneck asked. From his voice, it was clear he was Mr. Brown. His question was followed by an audible holding-of-the-breath in the room.
“No,” Daphna said, “a small silver book full of colorful light. But it was destroyed there. We can’t get back.”
Mr. Brown took this in for a moment. Everyone seemed to be digesting the information. There was murmuring all around. The group seemed both disappointed and thrilled.
“Are there books, there, in Heaven?” asked Mr. Brown. “Other books?” His face was neutral, and he asked the question rather casually, but it was clear he was beyond anxious to hear the answer. The others were, too.
“Yes,” Daphna said. “It’s full of books, an endless amount of books. It’s a Library. One book is missing, and all the angels are looking for it. Is that what you’re looking for? By the way,” Daphna added, trying to mimic Mr. Brown’s composed tone, “a book—with a key in it—it was opened—and flames came out. And now Heaven is on fire.”
Mr. Brown’s nonchalant composure cracked. He nearly choked. Everyone did.
“Do you see?” he cried, turning to the group. “Do you see! We have no time!”
The group nodded.
“Then I have your consent?”
No one spoke, but it was obvious that positions had shifted.
“I alone will pursue this. If you all think it wise to continue the search here, you should do as you think best.”
Heads nodded all around.
Daphna’s phone rang again. She eyed Mr. Brown and then the others, but no one seemed poised to interfere. She took the phone out and put it to her ear.
“Dex!” she cried, having read his name on the display. “Are you okay? What’s happening?” She listened awhile, then said, “What? It’s what? Oh, my gosh. So, they’re—” She went quiet a moment, then said, “Jack the Ripper? Are you serious?” Daphna listened again, shaking her head. Finally, she said, “Horns. Yes, I see. They could actually be about the same size and shape as the ribs—Dex, are you safe? Okay, listen.
“Mr. G is part of a group looking for this other book, this Golden book—the missing book from Heaven, I think. We’re with them now. And I think this book can fix, well, anything and everything. Even what’s happening up in Heaven. They think it’s in some kind of realm, one of them does anyway, the one in charge.” Daphna looked at Mr. Brown as she said this. He was looking right back at her, but his eyes didn’t give away what he was thinking.
“And he seems to know a way to get there,” she added. “What?”
Daphna listened a while again, her expression growing increasingly dark.
“Oh, my gosh!” she cried. “That’s in less than three hours! Are you sure? Where do you think they have it? The cops did tell us the Masons want to talk to us about the book. It does? Okay, but please, Dex, please be careful! Call me if there’s any—Okay, okay. Be safe!”
Daphna wanted to tell Dex about this mysterious painting someone had been, or was going to be, threatened about, but she didn’t want to risk alienating these people right now.
“What happened?” Quinn asked when she put the phone away.
“I know where your parents are.”
“Where?” Quinn was instantly nearly out of his skin.
“The book you found,” Daphna told him. “It’s called The Book of the Living. It—”
Daphna saw her audience turn to one another in mild but genuine surprise.
“Do you know of it?” Daphna asked Mr. Brown. “The Masons are going to vanish world leaders with it at two o’clock.”
“We must act swiftly,” Mr. Brown declared.
“Where are my parents?” Quinn begged.
“I’m sorry,” Daphna said, taking Quinn’s hands. She ignored the electricity she felt when their skin touched.
“We were right about the book,” she said. “You must have your name in it to, well, live. It’s a book with the names of everyone who’s living. Your parents—they’re in Heaven, I guess. And I think we have ten days before they’re stuck there forever.”
Quinn went weak in the knees. “But if we—” he stammered, “if Dex and Nora get it back—maybe we can write their names back in. Maybe that would bring them back!”
Daphna looked to Mr. Brown to see what he had to say about this.
“Possibly,” was his reply. “But I’m sorry to say the likelihood of your brother getting the book back, resourceful as he may be, is nil. The Masons are one of the most notoriously vicious organizations ever to exist, and they have been seeking this book for a very, very long time.”
Now Daphna was the one having trouble standing steady.
“This book you want,” Quinn said to Mr. Brown, “this Golden book—if we find it, could we bring them back with it?”
“Indeed,” Mr. Brown confirmed, “for the power that Book contains knows no bounds.”
“What is it?” Daphna asked. They’d find it, and Dex wouldn’t have to get mixed up with the Masons at all. Mr. Brown did not immediately respond, so she said, “I told you about The Book of the Living. I didn’t have to do that.”
Mr. Brown looked at the others, who all nodded.
“The book we are searching for,” he said, “is called the Sefer Yetzirah.”
“That’s Hebrew?”
“Yes, it means The Book of Creation. It’s one of history’s oldest manuscripts. It contains instructions on how to combine the twenty-two Hebrew letters and the ten primordial numbers to manipulate the very fabric of the universe. It gives one the power to create. Did you know the word ‘grammar’ derives from a word that meant ‘magic’?”
“I saw a book in Heaven,” Daphna said. “It had letters inside, moving around. English, though.”
Mr. Brown only nodded at this. “You saw what you could understand.”
“Can we get to this realm of yours quickly?” Daphna asked.
Mr. Brown nodded again.
“Good. Let’s go.”
“How risky is it?” Quinn asked before Daphna started heading for the steps. “What do we have to do?”
Mr. Brown hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m going to take you to a clinic downtown, to a brilliant doctor we know. He will reduce any risks in the procedure to the absolute minimum.”
“Fine,” Quinn said. “But what’s he going to do?”
“For just a few minutes, he’s going to kill you.”
CHAPTER 26
take us to your leader
“We need to get arrested,” Dex said, putting his phone away. He and Nor
a had managed to get out of the synagogue in one piece, though barely. They were in the parking lot now. It was even hotter. The sky was one sweeping blur.
“Daphna says the Masons want to talk to us,” Dex sighed. “She and Quinn might know where the Golden book is—in some kind of realm. I’m sure it’s incredibly dangerous, and I don’t even want to think about it.”
Nora didn’t seem to have heard any of this. She was doing that praying thing again. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were moving rapidly as she inhaled and exhaled deeply. Finally, she opened her eyes.
“That helps, you, huh?” Dex asked.
“When I feel pain or fear coming up,” Nora explained. “Or anger. I wanted to smash things just now, like everyone else.”
“And that makes it go away?”
“Yes—Did you say we need to get arrested?”
Dex nodded. “The Secret Keeper, the guy from the Pope—he told your dad that some leaders rejected the two o’clock threat to disappear them—”
“Yes—”
“That’s probably because they don’t believe the Masons can do it. Why would they? I wouldn’t.”
“I guess I wouldn’t either,” Nora said.
“Well, maybe this theory is dumb, but in the movies, the bad guys always show they mean business when they’re making a big threat.”
“You mean with some kind of demonstration?”
“Exactly. They’ve had the book all day. They’ve made the threat. If they really wanted the world to take them seriously, wouldn’t it make sense to make someone disappear already? Someone really big, probably.”
Nora contemplated this a moment.
“They don’t know how?” she guessed.
“Exactly. They must not know they have to scrape the names off, or exactly how. Or they’re just being cautious until they know exactly what they’re doing. Daphna says they’re looking for us. I’m betting they want to know what we know about it.”
“But getting arrested won’t keep us safe from them. Some cops are Masons, too.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Dex replied. “We’re going to get that book back.”
Nora looked afraid, but resolved.
“Okay,” she said. “So, how do you get arrested? What do we have to do?”
“Let’s find out.”
A police car was just coming up into the lot, no doubt responding to the near riot of people still fleeing the synagogue. Dex jumped up and down and waved his arms at it.
The cruiser wound its way through what was left of the crowd and pulled right up alongside them.
A window rolled down.
“Greeting Officers Richards and Madden,” Dex said, leaning in.
The two cops looked at each other.
“How’d you know our names?” Madden asked. He had a bandage on his head, and his arm was in a sling.
“We go way back,” Dex told him. “Anyway, we know all about that book you guys finally found. So take us to your leader.”
CHAPTER 27
the classic deception (part i)
Quinn followed Mr. Brown upstairs and through the little house while the rest of the group leapt into some kind of frenetic action, rushing off in different directions. Daphna followed Quinn, feeling guilty about how much pain he was carrying around. She’d lost so many loved ones, but she’d never accidentally killed any of them, or wiped them off the face of the Earth, anyway.
But his ridiculous story about her white outfit and falling in love with her as a child? It was sticking in her craw. But it didn’t matter. She’d do everything she could to help him get his parents back. Maybe doing a good deed under these kind of circumstances would help make up for some of the damage she’d done.
Yes, she’d help Quinn. And then she’d say good-bye to him.
Quinn turned around as he walked and tilted his head at her.
They were passing through a series of rooms, and it was obvious what he wanted her to see. There were bookshelves everywhere, but not a single book on any of them.
They’re waiting for the right one, Daphna somehow knew. But her thoughts drifted again. What would Dexter do if he knew she was planning to let Mr. Brown kill her? He’d kill her, that’s what. But Brown couldn’t really mean kill her, kill her. Because if you kill someone temporarily, then you didn’t really kill them. At least she didn’t think so.
Anyway, she didn’t trust this Mr. Brown character for a second. It was because their agendas dovetailed so nicely that she was willing to go along, at least until she got a better idea of what he had in mind. And what was the realm he was sending them to if not Heaven? Ultimately, she didn’t care, as long as she got her hands on this Book of Creation, which seemed to be the answer to all her problems.
She was going to find it, and she was going to use it to make things right, above and below.
Simple as that.
Quinn cleared his throat. They were approaching the front door, but now he was head-tilting toward an office next to it. Daphna got a glimpse inside, though all she saw was a gorgeous wooden desk stacked with books. She couldn’t identify them, but it was clear they were all the same title. So, now there were books?
“Are you an author?” Quinn asked as Mr. Brown opened the front door. Daphna remembered he’d said something about signing something earlier. She’d been thinking maybe they were painters.
“Me?” Mr. Brown said, chuckling as the trio stepped outside. “I guess you could say that. Mindless fluff, really. Nothing you’d be remotely—”
It was unnaturally hot outside. Incredibly, unnaturally, stop-you-in-your-tracks-and-sear-your-lungs hot. Scores of people were out on the sweltering street anyway, pointing fearfully up at the sky. The lightning, which seemed already to have struck, lingered somehow. It looked almost like it had scratched itself into the surface of the sky.
“Must be well over a hundred now,” Mr. Brown remarked, following the pointed fingers as best he could under a hand tented over his eyes. “Remarkable,” he added. “They look almost like scars.”
“Those aren’t scars,” Daphna said. How dense could she be?
“No?”
“They’re cracks.”
Mr. Brown paled a bit at this.
“Good lord,” he said. “This may render the Mason’s threat child’s play. All the more reason to make haste.”
He hurried to his car, a grey sedan, and opened the back door. Daphna climbed in, noticing now that though she and Quinn had traveled fairly far underground, they were still in Southwest Portland. Quinn, looking ill but resolute, climbed in behind her.
Moments later, they raced through the streets, or tried to. People were out everywhere it seemed, and many of them were milling about right on the streets. Hundreds. Maybe more. Mr. Brown was forced to keep hitting the brakes and, every so often, to weave slowly around knots and clusters of anxious sky-gazers. The air of panic was almost as palpable as the heat. Explosions were coming, and not only from the sky. Daphna could feel it, and she could see that Quinn could as well.
“So,” she said to Mr. Brown to distract them, “will you tell us why you’ve been watching my brother and me? You’ve been watching all the Lamed Vavniks, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Because you’ve been hoping one of us would die and come back from Heaven with the book you’ve been looking for.”
“That’s also right. We make it our business to be there at the time of your deaths to inform you of the possible existence of the book in Heaven and the potential for you to bring it back to Earth. As absurd as not just telling you all early on might seem, consider what it has meant to your lives to know you are among the Righteous Ones. It is best you do not know until the end.”
Daphna had no quarrel with this at all. She wished she didn’t know. Oh, how she wished she didn’t know. Though she didn’t think for a second they weren’t told for their own sakes.
“And how exactly can one of us potentially come back from Heaven?” she
asked.
“We believe the life force in your ribs is so powerful that they give you the power to return from the dead. That is if circumstances allow. For example, if at the time of death your body has not been destroyed.”
Daphna was too amazed to respond.
“But you never really thought the book was in Heaven?” Quinn asked.
“Personally, no,” Mr. Brown replied.
“Then why are we killing ourselves?”
Daphna shot a quick look at Quinn when he said this, wondering if he really was planning to go through with it. Was she?
“What is this ‘realm’ supposed to be?” she asked.
Mr. Brown glanced in the rearview mirror at both Daphna and Quinn, then said, “It is my opinion that the book was somehow lost in Purgatory, the realm a soul passes through between this world and the next, and that is why it has never been found.”
“Can you not get there from Heaven?” Daphna asked, suddenly hopeful. She’d heard of Purgatory. This seemed promising.
“That is correct,” Mr. Brown confirmed. “Angels have no access to Purgatory. If the book was somehow lost there, it could remain hidden forever.”
“So your plan is to take us into Purgatory,” Quinn surmised, “but bring us back before we make it to Heaven?”
“Precisely.”
“How do you know all this?” Daphna asked.
“Theories,” was Mr. Brown’s only reply. “But Dr. Lewis is a genius, I assure you. He is at the absolute cutting edge of his field.”
They’d reached a highway ramp. Mr. Brown merged into traffic. There was a lot of traffic.
Daphna had no more to say, and it seemed Quinn didn’t either. They both looked out their windows.
Mr. Brown flipped on the radio.
“—Remind you that there is no agreement that the effects observed in the sky are evidence of ozone depletion. There is absolutely no cause for—”
Mr. Brown changed the station.
“Parents sedating their own children! Locking them in closets and—!”
Book of Names Page 16