“Tell that to my tax attorney,” I muttered. “How’s this help us?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Joe, I don’t see how it does. Al-Asiri’s book was largely discredited. At most it’s a footnote in the history of math.”

“If it was dismissed, then why is it even a footnote?”

“Discredited,” Bug corrected, “not dismissed. And it was only that particular book that was discredited, not the author. Al-Asiri was a very important man from a very, very important family. He was second cousin to Saladin and was involved in many of Saladin’s most historically significant treaties during the Crusades.”

“Saladin’s name keeps coming up in this. Rasouli made a point of mentioning it, so maybe there’s a clue there,” I mused. “What about the word ‘Saracen,’ I know that relates, but how exactly?”

Bug tapped some keys. “Easy one. During the time of the Crusades the Europeans called all Muslims Saracens. Later that changed to Mohammadan and then Muslim. Purely a European word choice.”

“Okay. What about the other one? The Book of Shadows?”

“Yeah,” said Bug slowly, “that’s where we go out of the blue and into the black. And by black I mean magic. Or, maybe it’s white magic. What do I know from magic?”

“Magic?”

“Uh-huh. the Book of Shadows is the book of spells for witchcraft.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Serious as a heart attack, Joe. What the hell are you into over there? I mean … is the DMS suddenly at war with the forces of darkness?”

I thought about the freak with the fangs.

“Right now, Bug, I’d believe just about anything. Look—keep digging and get back to me with anything you find.”

I hung up and lingered in the alley for a moment wondering if Bug’s information moved me forward toward understanding or pulled a bag over my head.

“Witches. What do you think?” I asked Ghost.

He lifted his leg and peed on the wall.

“That’s what I figured,” I said.

We kept moving.

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty

The Warehouse

Baltimore, Maryland

June 15, 1:48 a.m. EST

“Hey! I got something,” cried Bug as his image popped onto a view screen. His face glowed with excitement.

After signing off with Aunt Sallie, Circe had buried herself in the material from the flash drive, and Rudy had followed her in, picking up the thread of her logic and working with her on the psychological aspects of the case. They looked up from the semicircle of data screens.

“We’re in the middle of something, Bug—” Circe, began, but Bug overrode her.

“I’ve been tearing apart the documents on the flash drive,” he said. “At first there didn’t seem to be anything more than what we already had, but on a whim I matched the volume of data we’ve downloaded against the drive’s storage potential and there was a discrepancy.”