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and said, “Need a signature?”
    The crackling “Yes” was just barely audible.
    He really had to do something about that intercom. Antiques were fine in their place, but that place wasn’t in a security system. Although the rest of the system was beyond cutting edge, one of Rarities’s security consultants had a brilliant, if bent, mind. Erik admired Joella’s work, even if he didn’t understand her genial paranoia.
    “I’m on my way,” he said into the intercom.
    Setting aside the virgin quill, he went quickly down the stairs and out the large remodeled kitchen to the side gate where all deliveries came. The driver was new, female, and didn’t look old enough to vote. But then, since Erik had turned thirty-four, more and more people had started looking young to him.
    “Thank you,” she said with a quick smile.
    He took the package from her and smiled back automatically, but his attention was all for the package. She left while he held the parcel with fingers that were sensitive despite the scrapes and calluses left by his rock-climbing hobby. The package was too thin to hold much of interest, unless some cultural moron had shipped him naked manuscript pages.
    Curious, he pulled a big pocketknife out of his jeans. The black plastic handle was deliberately rough, which allowed a good grip despite mud, rain, ice, or blood. The wicked, serrated edge of the knife could go through nylon webbing like lightning through night. The blade made short work of the package. He closed the knife with a distinct click and pulled some papers out of the parcel. The cover sheet was written in a modern hand that had no patience for beautifully executed letters.
Dear Sir,
    Enclosed please find color copies of two manuscript leaves. If you feel they are worth a formal appraisal, please contact me at the number on top of this page.
    Thank you.
    Serena Charters
    He raised tawny eyebrows at the energy that fairly crackled through the words. He wondered if Serena knew that her name, like his, dated back at least to the twelfth century. If she knew, she probably wouldn’t care. Twenty-first-century people were obsessed with the future, not the past. At least, most of them were.
    Erik wasn’t. It was the past that haunted and intrigued him, the past that was his passion.
    He flipped the cover page over to show the copy that lay beneath. He wasn’t expecting much, because color copies were difficult to judge even when they were made carefully. This one was barely adequate. The colors were faded and uneven, as though the printer had been out of ink or out of adjustment. The writing was so light as to be indecipherable.
    Yet his breath came in and stayed: what little he could see of the text was written in an elegant calligraphic hand that was as familiar to him as his own.
    The language of the text was Latin. The marginal commentary was in the vulgate that was Anglo-Saxon and Norman combined. The few words that were dark enough to make out sent adrenaline spiking into his blood.
    The Book of the Learned.
    The thought echoed in Erik’s mind, the pattern as clear to him as if it had been printed in letters an inch high. He had been enthralled by the Book of the Learned since he was nine and had seen his first leaf in a collection of old books and family papers his great-aunt had showed him. He had seen many other manuscript leaves since then, pages from books older and newer, more richly illuminated, more perfectly written script . . . but he had never seen a manuscript that moved him the way the Book of the Learned did.
    Perhaps it was simply that the name of the Learned calligrapher and illuminator of the book was also Erik. Whatever the reason, his fascination with the book had driven him to learn Latin, Old English, and the fine arts of illumination and calligraphy.
    Heart beating rapidly, he looked at the next color sheet and the next. The copies were so bad he wondered if it was deliberate. The pages weren’t