The leather-bound volume was nothing remarkable. To an ordinary historian, it would have looked no different from hundreds of other manuscripts in Oxford's Bodleian Library, ancient and worn. But I knew there was something odd about it from the moment I col ected it. Duke Humfrey's Reading Room was deserted on this late-September afternoon, and requests for library materials were fil ed quickly now that the summer crush of visiting scholars was over and the madness of the fal term had not yet begun. Even so, I was surprised when Sean stopped me at the cal desk. "Dr. Bishop, your manuscripts are up," he whispered, voice tinged with a touch of mischief. The front of his argyle sweater was streaked with the rusty traces of old leather bindings, and he brushed at it self-consciously. A lock of sandy hair tumbled over his forehead when he did. "Thanks," I said, flashing him a grateful smile. I was flagrantly disregarding the rules limiting the number of books a scholar could cal in a single day. Sean, who'd shared many a drink with me in the pink-stuccoed pub across the street in our graduate-student days, had been fil ing my requests without complaint for more than a week. "And stop cal ing me Dr. Bishop. I always think you're talking to someone else." He grinned back and slid the manuscripts-al containing fine examples of alchemical il ustrations from the Bodleian's col ections-over his battered oak desk, each