Elias looked up. Standing by the mahogany shelf was a woman in a grey wool coat, her eyes fixed on the vellum. She didn't look like a scholar; she looked like a shadow that had stepped into the light.
The rain drummed against the stained-glass windows of the Bodleian Library as Elias Thorne turned the final page of The Book of Secrets . He had spent years hunting this specific edition, a leather-bound volume rumored to contain the true map of the "Invisible College"—an esoteric society that supposedly vanished in the 17th century. The book of secrets : esoteric societies and ho...
"You weren't supposed to find that," a soft voice whispered. Elias looked up
"Is this the hoax?" Elias asked, his fingers trembling. "The one the book claims was invented by bored aristocrats in 1890?" The rain drummed against the stained-glass windows of
As he reached the section on Modern Hoaxes , his breath hitched. Tucked between pages 322 and 323 was not a printed map, but a hand-drawn diagram on translucent vellum. It depicted a series of underground chambers beneath the very streets of Oxford where he sat.