Caleb started to protest, but his face fell into a crooked smile instead.
“I can’t argue that,” he said, then gave a nervous look around the back room. “Let’s get to work shall, we? So . . . you want to regain control of your gargoyle, yes? Where do you want to start?”
“We’ll get to that soon enough,” I said, gesturing for him to slow down, “but first, I have some questions.” My eyes met his, my own steady and unwavering.
How much control Desmond Locke did or didn’t have over him remained to be seen, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be offering up too much on Stanis right out of the gate. And I knew that someone as clever as Caleb was wasn’t going to be too willing to just hand over certain aspects of his arcane knowledge, but if we were going to establish any kind of trust, I needed him first to cooperate with the tone I was trying to set between us.
Uncertainty filled Caleb’s face for a moment, but then he gave a reluctant nod. “Sure,” he said. “Shoot. Although I do charge by the hour.”
I stared at him, my eyes darkening. “Really, now?”
Nervous laughter escaped his lips, and he held up his hands in surrender. “Just a little freelancer humor,” he said. “Consider this round a freebie.”
His confidence and flip manner made me want to shake him, but I reined it in. I needed knowledge, and if I had to endure a little attitude in the process, so be it.
“So how did you come to know about my great-great-grandfather?” I asked, forcing myself back to the business at hand.
Caleb shifted from foot to foot as he thought for a moment before answering.
“I didn’t really know about him,” he said, “but this city is full of dark and mystical rumors. The legend of Alexander Belarus just turned out to be one of them.” He looked down at his feet, his face reddening. “But once I was on the trail, I might have gone a bit stalkery concerning him.”
“Way to keep it creepy,” I said. “Define ‘stalkery.’”
“I might have bartered and traded a few of my alchemical mixes for more and more of those tales,” he said, “ones further involving Alexander. And they didn’t come cheap, either. Talk of the lost secrets of the Spellmasons has always been a bit of a Holy Grail out there.”
I turned to him, unable to hide the surprise on my face. “Wait,” I said. “I thought what my great-great-grandfather did was a lost and secret art. There are people who talk of Spellmasonry?”
Caleb nodded. “Not just people,” he said. “Whole arcane communities.”
“Jesus,” I said, sitting along the edge of one of the upright tables. “There’s a whole community?”
Caleb laughed and looked at me with sincere curiosity on his face. “You really don’t know, do you?” he asked. “Alexandra, there’s a whole magical world out there. Just because Alexander Belarus chose to hide away the arcane art he knew doesn’t mean there wasn’t a world out there looking for them. The secrets that you hold are just the tip of a very large iceberg.”
“Really?” My mind reeled at the idea. With the secrets at my family’s disposal, I had always thought of this knowledge as ours, and all of a sudden to hear that there was a much larger world that sought those out . . .
“Really,” he said. “I told you I was a freelancer, didn’t I? That implies there’s other magic out there to be had. Do you think I could make an arcane living without a client base? Much of arcana’s written off by your average nonmagical person as quackery or old wives’ tales, but arcana is a much bigger world out there than you know. And for me, it definitely pays the rent.”
“Speaking of rent . . . where do you live?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. “Clearly you know where I live, breaking and entering aside.”
Caleb held his hands up again, this time sounding a bit more defensive. “Baby steps, Miss Belarus, baby steps.”
I backed down, letting a short silence fall between us as Caleb placed the tiny figure back on the table before he stepped away from it.
“There are lots of books on alchemy,” Caleb continued, taking off his coat. He turned it inside out before hanging it on the back of one of the chairs around the table. The lining was stuffed with sewn-in bandoliers that held all sorts of vials, tubes, and metal flasks. I had a newfound respect for the man, if only for his sewing and organizational skills. He set about picking through the contents. “Not that there’s any all-encompassing tome written on alchemy, mind you.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Surely, there’s been research. My family has hundreds of volumes dedicated to everything my great-great-grandfather ever learned.”
He stopped picking through the collection and looked up at me, his face curious. “More than the Libra Concordia has?”
“It’s all secure, don’t worry,” I said, in hindsight fearing I might have offered up too much in mentioning it. “If you know of Alexander’s practices, it’s heavily coded and cross-referenced, so it’s not like anyone could just read it and know everything. Frankly, it’s as much a pain in the ass as it is a boon.”
Caleb’s grin went wide. “I’d like to see this boon.”
It was my turn to hold my hands up. “Baby steps there, Caleb. To borrow your words.”
“As you wish,” he said, and turned back to his coat, picking through it.
As you wish. The words Stanis always used when put to task. I nearly fell over hearing the phrase. The sting of them was as fresh as if Stanis himself—the kind one I knew, anyway—had uttered them. As I tried to process my emotional reaction to them, I stayed silent and simply watched Caleb as he continued selecting several of the items from his coat, mixing them.
“Much of the magical world operates a bit differently from Alexander’s version of it,” he said.
“How so?” I asked.
“Your great-great-grandfather was organized in way that most magic I deal with isn’t,” he said. “He wrote it all down in books, kept a library. He was smart enough to code them, to hide that powerful information away. But the rest of arcane knowledge isn’t conveniently gathered together like that.”
“Why not?” I asked. “If it’s a science, as you’ve said, why wouldn’t it be accumulated in the same manner?”
Caleb shrugged. “It’s a science to a point,” he said. “It’s still arcana, after all, and the people who practice it get freaky proprietary over their secrets.”
“What about all that stuff the Libra Concordia has gathered? That’s more than enough to fill a library. It’s enough to fill that church downtown, at least.”
Caleb shook his head. “The information caged off there looks like a lot, yes,” he said. “But it’s nothing comprehensive. All bits and pieces, really, accumulated over centuries, only a fraction of the secret knowledge of the unknown world. It’s an impressive collection, sure, but consider the mission of the Libra Concordia. They’re trying to keep that knowledge secret from the world. It’s not like they have enough knowledge to do anything with it. Unless, say, there was an industrious freelancer willing to piece it all together for themselves.”
“And here I thought you were going to that church just to do some community service for the Lord,” I said.
Caleb gave me a get-real look, then set back to mixing the contents of his vials. “There’s a reason the magical world wants to stay hidden, Alexandra,” he said, “and it’s done a fair job of it, if you ask me. Think about it. It took the Libra Concordia centuries to accumulate the small amount of knowledge they do have, and that’s only a tiny percentage from around the planet.”