A Book of Spirits and Thieves (Spirits and Thieves #1)(80)

Her face went pale. “And let me guess. Your father told you all this?”

“Some of it,” she admitted. “But I learned the rest from Markus King.”

Her mother shot up to her feet so fast her chair skittered backward. “That’s impossible.”

Now, that was a reaction that told her plenty. If Crys had received a bland “That’s nice, dear,” she would have known that her mother was still doing her playing-dumb routine.

“Markus met with me. He invited me to his home.”

Her mother shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“He’s young and handsome. At least, he looks that way. He says he’s an immortal god. Then he created fire from thin air and healed a cut on my hand like it was nothing, so, yeah, I think I believe him.”

Her mother’s eyes widened with every word she spoke. “Everything he says is a lie.”

“So you and Jackie weren’t part of Hawkspear? My great-grandfather wasn’t the cofounder of Markus’s society?”

Panic had crept onto her mother’s face. “You have no idea what you’re getting involved in, Crystal. You don’t know what he really is, what he’s capable of.” She raked her hands through her hair. “No, this can’t happen. I won’t let you get hurt because of my choices. Everything I’ve done to protect you and Becca over the last fifteen years . . . and he still got to you.”

She’d never seen her normally calm-and-collected mother so frenzied. Even on the night Crys mentioned seeing her father, her mother had left Becca’s hospital room to clear her head before responding.

“I pursued this, Mom. Markus didn’t get to me; I got to him.”

“But your father introduced you, didn’t he? Of course he did. There’s no other way for you to get to him. All this time, I thought Daniel still had some good, some kernel of decency, inside of him. But I see now I was wrong.”

“He only did what I asked him to do. I needed to talk to Markus. What was I supposed to do? You’ve been keeping the truth from me this entire time!”

This accusation received a sickened look. “Whatever he told you is not the whole truth.”

Crys grabbed her mother by her upper arms. “Then tell me what is. Were you or weren’t you a member of Hawkspear?”

Her frantic gaze finally met Crys’s. “I was.”

A breath caught in Crys’s chest at the confirmation. “Why didn’t you tell me that yourself?”

“Because the less I think about the society, the more in control of my life I feel. It’s been fifteen years since Jackie and I walked away, Crys. Although sometimes it feels like just yesterday.”

“Why did you leave?”

Her mother went quiet, her eyes shifting back and forth rapidly as if reliving the memory. “Because Markus is a murderer.”

Crys inhaled sharply. “Dr. Vega told me that he thinks Markus killed his father.”

Her mother’s eyes widened. “You’ve been to see Dr. Vega, too? I’m seriously going to strangle Jackie when I see her. You remind me of your aunt so much sometimes. She’s relentless, too.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Okay, Crys. You win.” She cleared her throat nervously. “What do you want to know? There’s so much to say, too much to tell quickly. My family history is a sordid one, one I prefer not to think about much if I can avoid it.”

Crys sorted through the million questions that rose in her mind. She started with what seemed like the most perplexing. “Where did Markus come from?”

“All I know is one day, around sixty years ago, he just appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of my grandmother’s bookshop. Here, Crys. In the very same building we’re standing in right now. Everyone apparently thought my grandfather was crazy at the time, driven mad by the ghosts said to haunt this building. He was a vigilante who targeted men he thought were evil, and when Markus appeared, claiming to be a god of death, he felt justified in his actions.”

Crys stayed silent, listening, her hand now pressed to her mouth as if to stop herself from gasping at everything her mother had said to fill in the blanks of Markus’s story.

“My grandmother had become terrified of the husband she’d once loved more than anyone else in the world. And she was frightened of the man he called a god. For the first few days after his arrival, according to Grandma, Markus acted dazed and out of it. My grandfather looked after him. But he and Markus didn’t notice that something else had arrived in the bookstore shortly after he did. A book. The Codex.”

Crys pulled her hand from her mouth. “The Codex was sent here?”

She nodded. “Like magic. One moment it wasn’t here, the next it was. Instead of handing it over to her husband and Markus, Grandma hid it. It remained hidden for years as the men began their society. Grandma became a member, too, not that she was given a choice, but says she never felt the same as all the others initiated—she always felt that something was wrong.”

“Why didn’t she leave?” Crys asked.

Her mother shook her head. “It’s not that easy. But she knew Markus was not the guardian he claimed to be. That the more he used his magic at the meetings, the darker he became to her. Finally, after many years, she went to someone she trusted. Dr. Vega’s father. She hoped he could help her understand the book and where it had come from. Markus had never mentioned anything about it before, and she wondered how they might be connected. All she knew for sure was that the book needed to be kept a secret.”