The Darkest Magic (A Book of Spirits and Thieves) Read Online Free PDF Page A

society members followed his every order without stopping for a second to question his motivations.
    Markus may have had his entire following convinced that hewas a good man who wanted to make the world better, safer, more peaceful. But Crys saw him for what he really was: a power hungry freak who was beyond ancient, yet had the face and body of a young male model. And he wouldn’t think twice about killing anyone who got in the way of what he wanted most.
    If he ever found out what Crys’s father had done . . .
    Becca put her hand on Crys’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
    “Hmm? Oh, nothing.”
    “You’re not as good of a liar as you think.”
    “Fine. I’m worried about Dad,” Crys admitted, her voice now hoarse.
    “I know,” Becca said in her most comforting tone. “But he can take care of himself. He’s been doing that for years.”
    “I’d still feel better if he were here with us.”
    “You know Mom and Jackie would never be okay with that. He’s still under Markus’s control, right? He helped us, but who knows how much pain and resistance he had to go through to defy Markus just that one time. He’s still dangerous to us.”
    “The logical mind of Becca Hatcher.” Crys nodded, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “Present and accounted for.”
    She knew what Becca said was true, but she couldn’t get it out of her mind. What her dad had risked. What he’d done to save them . . .
    “Let’s try to think about something else,” Becca said in an upbeat manner, though her expression was still haunted by her nightmare. “Like . . . Angus’s library.” She slipped out of bed and pulled on a fuzzy blue bathrobe. “Let’s go check it out again.”
    The only thing that was almost as fancy as—and definitely more interesting than—Angus Balthazar’s penthouse was his personal library.
    Angus had tons of rare and impressive early editions in his library—Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, even a signed UK first edition of
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
, which Crys personally coveted. But he also had many unusual titles in his collection, most of which shared an undeniable theme: magic.
    There were big tomes on witchcraft, Satanism, paganism, voodoo, séances, hauntings, exorcisms. Handwritten grimoires in dozens of different languages. Journals of real people accused of being witches in England and the States, who were sentenced for crimes that no one could really prove.
    She explored the library with Becca for a few minutes, but her buzzing head became so distracted that she had to take a seat on one of the oversized leather armchairs in the center of the room. Becca kept searching the shelves until a title caught her eye. She took the big volume and sat on the floor, cross-legged, in front of Crys.
    Then, with a jolt of tension to her gut, she thought back to that day—that horrible day when Becca’s interest was piqued by a different book, the Codex, which had arrived at the Speckled Muse wrapped in brown paper and string, mailed from England by Jackie herself. The book looked old, ancient, and was handwritten in a weird language Crys hadn’t recognized. She’d been unimpressed, but Becca was immediately taken with it. She’d grabbed hold of it, flipped though the pages . . . and then something had grabbed her,
literally
grabbed her, and she fell into a coma for over a week.
    Well, to Crys it was a coma. To Becca, the Codex was a ticket to a magical place filled of witches, thieves, and beautiful boys.
    Crys’s heartbeat quickly doubled, slamming against her ribcage. Her chest grew tight, and suddenly it became hard to breathe. It felt a whole lot like a panic attack—and she hadn’t had one of those since her father first left.
    She tried to keep the thoughts at bay, but they stormed and whirled in her mind like a furious tornado.
    Becca isn’t my sister.
She’s my cousin.
    Becca is Aunt Jackie’s daughter, not my mother’s. And her real father isn’t my