The Sea of the Dead by Amy Kuivalainen

Author:Amy Kuivalainen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, contemporary fantasy, atlantis, dead sea scrolls, magic, mystery, history, Venice
Publisher: BHC Press
Published: 2020-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

PENELOPE HAD DOZED off after her phone call with Marco. Alexis was gone, and she was starting to wonder if he ever slept more than four hours a night.

When she woke again, it was to a cat sitting on Alexis’s side of the bed. Its pale-green eyes were studying her in a bored way before it started licking its silky, brown paws.

“How did you get in here?” Penelope grumbled, giving its ears a scratch while she checked the time. Two o’clock. With a sigh, she sat up and noticed someone had left her clean black jeans and underwear.

“Someone’s been doing laundry,” she said to the bored cat. There was no shirt, so she took it as permission to take another of Alexis’s before heading to the shower.

By the time she got out, the cat was sitting by the door, waiting for her. It mewed plaintively and scratched at it.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Penelope said irritably. “You know, if you hadn’t wandered in here uninvited, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

She opened the door, and the cat scampered along the path in front of her. The day was sunny and warm, and despite her urgent need for coffee, Penelope took her time wandering back to the main house.

The house felt different in the daylight and, unlike during their rushed arrival, Penelope now had time to study all the treasures Elazar had on display. He seemed to have inherited Zo’s fondness for poetry, with a whole bookcase dedicated to classical and modern poets with prints of verse by William Blake and Milton on the wall beside it. On another wall hung a large, colorful depiction of the ten emanations of the Kabbalah’s Sefirot. A painting of the Tree of Life hung on another, the geometric Flower of Life pattern illuminated in golden paint.

Drawn always to the books, Penelope found copies of The Book of Raziel, Zohar, The Hermetic Corpus, Sefer Yetzirah, and other Jewish texts.

Penelope was studying a photo of an older-looking Zo and a child of about eight years old at the beach when a throat politely cleared behind her.

“That was in Caesarea in the seventies,” said Elazar.

“Zo looks older there than he does now.”

“That’s because he asked Nereus to do some aging magic on him so no one would ask questions as I aged and he didn’t.”

“That was clever.”

“No, what was clever was when he turned up at his own funeral as a distant nephew. He shamelessly consoled all the women and got drunker than I’ve ever seen him.”

Penelope burst out laughing. “What an asshole.”

“He loved it.”

“I hope you don’t mind me looking at your collection. What’s your field of research?” asked Penelope. His book tastes went beyond a simple interest or a hobby. The house felt like one giant academic office.

“My area of interest is huge. Mostly it’s traditional Jewish mysticism and magic.”

“I thought the magicians would’ve had that covered.”

“There are only six of them, and they don’t have time to look into all the magic that’s around, even if they had the inclination.

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