The Sinner's Bible: A Novella (The Natalie Brandon Thrillers) Page 5

  “Then she’d better earn her keep.” Crawford tapped his watch. “Your presentation starts in an hour. I’d better see just how useful she’s been to you, or there will be consequences, Ms. Brandon.”

  “Y—yes, sir.” Her sister waited until Crawford’s shoes had squeaked halfway down the hall. Then she shut the door and pressed both hands against it, as if she were holding the door of the Ark against the flood.

  “Beth,” she said softly, opening the conference room door.

  Her sister spun, blue eyes wide, hand pressed to her chest. “Jesus, Nat, don’t scare me like that.”

  “I’m sorry.” She stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. “For everything.”

  “You have to be more careful. What were you thinking?”

  “I thought I could handle it, but Belial wouldn’t shut up. He said it’s coming for us.”

  It is, the angel said.

  “What is?”

  “The Stuart curse.”

  “The Sinners’ Bible has nothing to do with the Stuart curse. It’s a book with a typo, nothing more.”

  “I know that. The vodka knows, too. It’s only Belial who doesn’t.”

  “Why were you drinking in the bathroom?”

  “I didn’t disturb anyone, I promise.”

  “I know, babe,” Beth sighed.

  “I can’t stand feeling like I’m holding you back. Like Crawford hates you because of me.”

  “You’re not holding me back. Remember that whole polynomial thing? Sometimes I need you just to function.” Her sister shrugged. “If Crawford doesn’t see that, he’s an asshole.”

  “Belial said that if you talk about the curse, Crawford will listen.”

  “He won’t. He cancelled Rodriguez’s class on heresy and witchcraft in medieval Europe after it had full enrollment and fifty names on the wait list. I’m giving the talk exactly as you wrote it. I trust you a hell of a lot more than I trust Belial.”

  The angel sniffed. All these years, and your sister still hates me.

  “I hate you, too.”

  The angel tapped her with the edge of a wing. A spear of lightning zapped the right side of her skull.

  Her eyes filled with tears of anger.

  “Come here,” Beth said, wrapping her arms around her. She leaned into Beth’s chest and breathed in her sister’s perfume—light, airy, with a hint of vanilla. Beth rocked in place and smoothed her hair. “We’ll be fine. We always have.”

  “I’m sorry for the way I am.”

  “Hush,” Beth said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

  No one understands you, the angel said. As long as your sister stands by your side, they will believe of her what they do of you.

  I know, she thought.

  They’ll hate her and fear her, just like they do you.

  I know, she thought.

  A minute later, Beth let her go. She dredged her index finger under her eyes and smoothed her hair. “Crawford has both of us on a short leash tonight. Let’s start walking to the library. I might need to hurl before Avi’s talk.”

  “Might? You’re like the Old Faithful of puke.”

  “Nat.” A shadow darkened Beth’s eyes. “Are you absolutely sure can you keep Belial under control for the next two hours? You can’t drink in front of Crawford, not now.”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “Get your notes. Let’s go.”

  She waited until Beth turned her back, then grabbed the scissors on the desk and shoved them into her bag. You will leave us alone tonight, she told Belial. Do this for her, or I swear, I’ll stab myself in the heart just to shut you up.

  Be careful what you wish for, the angel said, folding his wings and bowing his head.

  Chapter Ten

  February 6, 1685

  Whitehall Palace, London

  The courtiers were whispering. He wondered what had set them off this time. Had they placed bets on the hour of his death? Or were those Whig bastards plotting again? He hoped it was the former. He would tell Killigrew to place a bet for him on 4 a.m. That’s how he wanted to go down in history—Charles II, the sovereign who won the betting pool for his own time of death.

  If he won, he would instruct Killigrew to give the money to the queen.

  That poor woman, he thought.

  He wished it had been possible to love others without casting the specter of dishonor on her. Every time he told himself to stop, he found that he could not—not after the horrors of civil war, when Cromwell’s men had hunted him like game. If I survive, he had told himself in those dark moments. If I survive, I will never take this life for granted. I will be grateful for every warm bed and willing woman and every moment I am given to enjoy them both.

  It was not something he could make poor Catherine understand, nor was it something he could give up. For him, it was the meaning of being alive. But she, a good Catholic, always forgave him. She found a different meaning in being alive.

  Before his mother had died, she told him that her father’s adultery and multiple conversions had cursed their family. If that were true, what he was about to do would only anger God further. “Do not blame them,” he whispered, thinking of the ones he left behind—his brother and two plump nieces. “Have mercy on us all.”

  But God had shown precious little mercy to the Stuarts so far.

  His great-grandmother, Mary of Scots, had been beheaded by her cousin.

  His grandfather, James I, had written pious treatises on demonology and witchcraft, and still the Catholics had tried to blow him up.

  His own father had been beheaded by that monster Cromwell.

  They said his beloved sister had been poisoned.

  It appeared that he had fallen victim, now, too. After twenty-three years of marriage, he had sired at least twelve bastards…and no legitimate offspring to inherit his throne. He had failed in one of the primary duties of a king. His brother, Dull Jimmy, would become James II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

  He moved his left hand. James, standing at his bedside, knelt beside him. He thought about warning him, making sure his brother understood the curse that flowed in their veins. But if James was daft enough to remain oblivious, let him deal with the consequences. He could not summon the breath to enlighten him. “Be well to Portsmouth,” he said, “and let not poor Nelly starve.”

  James’s dark eyes glittered. “Only for love of you, dear brother.”

  “Send them away now,” he said. “It is time.”

  James nodded. “Gentlemen,” he said, turning to the small crowd ringed around his bedside. “The King wishes everybody to retire.”

  He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of more whispers as the throng dispersed. Without them, he felt lighter.

  A small door opened across the room. Through this narrow arch stepped John Huddleston, the priest who had helped him escape from his father’s murderers thirty-three years before. He wished he had the breath to congratulate Huddleston on his foresight.

  Huddleston hurried to his bedside and knelt. “Your Majesty, do you wish to be received into the Roman Catholic faith?”

  “He does,” James said.

  “I do,” he whispered.

  Huddleston smiled a beatific smile that made him sure of his choice. The country wanted a Protestant king, and he had given them one. Now, in the hour of his death, let the country give God a Catholic king. If God cursed his family for their vacillation in their faith, there was no help for it now. He had made a promise to his sister, Henriette, all those years ago in Dover, when Louis XIV had sent her to negotiate with him in secret.

  Promise me, Charles, she had said. I could not bear the thought of you in hell. I have had to bear so much, but I would let it fall upon my shoulders willingly, if I knew that you were assured a place in Heaven. She had reached up to his face, st
roking his cheek with her tiny fingers. You are the only man who never hurt me. Be that man in life and in death.

  She was the only woman who had never wanted anything from him.

  Castlemaine and Kéroualle and Villiers, he loved them, yes, but they wanted his favors, his time, his kingly beneficence. From the day she was born, Minette had only wanted him. Now, she would greet him at the gate of Heaven, smiling and reaching for him with both hands.

  “All right, Minette,” he whispered, turning his head into the pillow as Huddleston made the sign of the cross over his body. “It is done.”

  Chapter Eleven

  March 2014

  San Francisco, California

  The taxi pulled up next to the student union. Ezra thrust a $20 bill at the cabbie and slung his backpack over his shoulder. The cuffs of his stolen blue sweatshirt barely reached his wrists. He forced himself not to yank on them again.

  Jacob got out of the cab and stared at the four-story building, a gleaming glass-front structure with its name emblazoned in silver letters: THE JAMES SIMONS MEMORIAL STUDENT UNION. “How much money you think that guy had?”

  “All of it.” The sleeves of his sweatshirt crept up his forearm and he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from tugging at them. “Stop staring. We’re students, remember?”

  A skateboarder rode by, flipping his board as he jumped three steps to the grassy quad between the student union and the library. There were paved walkways all around the quad, but the kid held his board and walked across the grass.

  He fell in behind the kid. At least one of them would look like they belonged.

  Jacob’s long legs kept up with fewer strides as they cut a path through the grass. From the corner of his eye, he saw his brother gawk at the six-story library looming at the other end of the quad. “I told you not to stare. It’s just a library.”

  “It looks like the Death Star.”

  “So it’s the Death Star. Who cares? I’m Han Solo and you’re Chewbacca. We make it out of this just fine.”

  “What about the sequels?”

  “We renegotiate our contracts for script approval.”

  Ezra waited for Jacob’s smile, but it didn’t happen. A tendril of fear wound its way around his heart. Something had changed over the past few weeks. Jacob moved slower, ate less, and tired easily, but he didn’t have the memory problems the doctor had warned them about. There’s still time, he thought. There has to be.

  “You could have made it in a place like this, you know,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah.” He glared at the neck tat on kid in front of him. “I fit right in with the guys in Sigma Phi Asshole.”

  “I wish you’d—”

  “Stop,” he said. “Just stop. I need to concentrate.”

  But he didn’t. He’d already planned everything, from the minute he’d pull his gun to the route they’d take to reach the getaway car. It was stashed behind the grad student housing unit, where older students wouldn’t look out of place. There were two sets of license plates in his backpack, courtesy of the United States Postal Service. This is what I do, he thought, looking sideways at Jacob. Everything else is just a fairy tale.

  But his brother wouldn’t believe it no matter how many times he said it, so he crossed the quad in silence.

  A walking path separated the library from a sandy rectangle, where hundreds of bikes rested their tires in hollow concrete blocks. Some were rusted out, with flat tires or bent wheel frames. He shook his head. There was something wrong with a kid who’d pay tens of thousands of dollars for a degree, but couldn’t learn to change a tire.

  He looked at his watch.

  5:57 p.m.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s time.”

  They crossed the walking path and the concrete pavilion that led to the library’s entrance. He pushed through the revolving door and glanced over his shoulder.

  Jacob stood outside, staring at the door.

  “Come on,” he muttered.

  What if Jacob got a headache? Or lost his balance and fell? Or…

  No, he thought. Not that. Not yet.

  He gripped the straps of his backpack. Finally, his brother shook his head and pushed through the revolving door. “What the hell was that about?” he hissed, once Jacob had caught up.

  Jacob smiled. “Never thought I’d go through a revolving door again. You remember the one at the bank, when Mom used to take us?”

  “She left me in the car.”

  “I always brought you candy.”

  “Mom always brought me candy.”

  “I made the bank lady give us extra,” Jacob said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “She’d only give it to Mom in case I was pulling her leg.”

  “That was you?”

  “That was me.”

  A claw of fear tore through him, the way it always did when he realized Jacob was going to die. Someday he would let that fear take hold of him and do its worst, but not today. He had a job to do, and that required killing the fear. But how? Maybe fear was like fire. Maybe it died without oxygen. He held his breath until black dots began to dance in front of his eyes.

  “Ezra,” Jacob said. “We don’t have to do this.”

  He let out his breath in a rush.

  It didn’t work.

  Nothing did.

  The fear was there and it wasn’t going away.

  “It’s already done,” he said.

  §

  THE RARE BOOK & Manuscript Room was at the end of a long corridor. An easel in the doorway held a blown-up version of the flyer from the mail. As he watched, a blonde woman dashed out of the room, one hand over her mouth. She hurried next door into a bathroom.

  “That’s her,” Jacob said. “I remember her.”

  “Keep walking.”

  “She looked scared.”

  “I said keep walking.”

  “Why is she scared?”

  “Global warming. How the hell should I know?”

  “Promise we won’t hurt her.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You can hurt other people,” Jacob said. “Just not her.”

  He lowered his head and glared at the open door. No one in there was his friend. No one in there deserved mercy. “I’m trying to save your life. There are no rules for that.”

  A black man in glasses and a pinstripe suit stepped out of the room. He picked up the easel and moved it away from the door. “You’re late,” he said, glaring at him and then Jacob. “Take your seats.”

  If this is the Death Star, Ezra thought, that’s Darth Vader.

  He hurried into the room, with Jacob close on his heels. Apparently the Sinners’ Bible wasn’t a big draw. The room was sparsely populated, with only a dozen people scattered in four rows of folding chairs. He didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved. Fewer people meant fewer witnesses, but if this book was as important as they claimed, why hadn’t more people shown up? Most of the attendees looked like students, dressed in jeans and sweatshirts. He counted them off in quadrants, arranging them like an orbital diagram. The blonde woman, if she returned, would make thirteen.

  An uneven number, ripe for combustion.

  He shuffled toward the back row, where the slacker students always sat.

  Darth Vader closed the door behind them and sat in the middle row. He crossed his left leg over his right, revealing bright blue socks with the university crest woven in white. He runs this show, Ezra thought. He’s the one to watch out for.

  He slipped off his backpack and edged his way through the row of chairs. A woman sat alone at the far end, one black boot propped on the seat in front of her. Long dark hair fell over her shoulders. Princess Leia, he thought, stepping toward her.

  The woman stiffened.

  He took another step, and her lips began to move as
if she were arguing with someone.

  One more step, and she turned to glare at him.

  Not a princess, he thought, stopping dead in his tracks.

  Her eyes were so pale a blue they looked white. He’d seen old folks with cataracts whose milky eyes looked like that—but she could definitely see him. Her stare froze him to the spot, as cold as Jacob’s touch.

  He dropped his backpack and sat where he was. Jacob eased into the chair beside him, flexing the fingers of his right hand. Shit, he thought. He’s lost feeling again. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “I’m gonna need you in a few minutes.”

  Jacob nodded, his face tight in a grimace of pain.

  Ezra gritted his teeth. This was going to be harder than he thought.

  Chapter Twelve

  December 1688

  Faversham, Kent

  The fire sputtered. Sparks flew out like cannon balls, bursting orange and then red as they fell to the floor. He stomped one out with his boot and pulled his cloak tightly around him. Everything had gone against him.

  First, they had boarded his boat.

  Second, they had taken his cross. It had come from tomb of Edward the Confessor, plucked from the saint’s resting place by a chorister in Westminster Abbey and presented to him in 1685, the year of his brother’s death and his accession to the throne.

  Third, they had hauled him off said boat to this dark and dreadful inn, where someone recognized his long nose and thin lips. A seaman, who remembered him as Lord High Admiral, the Duke of York.

  James II, King of England, looked at the traitor who knelt before him. In place of a right eye, the man had a patch of reddened skin, shining like silk. Apparently, he had been spotted by the one man without the capacity to spot much of anything. There was more than chance in it—no one’s luck was that terrible.

  “Forgive me, Your Highness,” the man said.

  But there was no time for that. “Bring me paper and ink,” he said. “Now.”

  The man scuttled away and he flung himself into a chair beside the fire.

  How many times would he be forced to flee his own subjects? As a boy, when his father was still alive, he had escaped Oliver Cromwell’s guards by disguising himself as a little girl while playing hide-and-seek with his siblings. Now he would be forced to try again, for the rabid heretics in London were calling for him to stand trial, as his father had. His father would have said it was God’s will. But why would God will a king to die, when that king had been anointed in His holy sacrament? Did God change His mind about them, the way some of them changed their minds about Him?