Page 17 of Fangs, Frost, and Folios
René wandered over too. “A collector would have obtained one at some point, correct?”
Beatrice looked at the other Elizabethan collection. “There are multiple volumes from his contemporaries, and we’ve already gone through the Mortimer Shakespeare collection. I’m going to say that it’s definitely strange the poetry is missing.”
“Agreed,” Giovanni said. “Especially knowing how much Penny enjoyed poetry.” He nodded. “It’s a clue. Not much to go on, but it’s something.”
“What of these… academic works related to his poems?” René asked. “What of them? Have you looked through those for any leads?”
Beatrice smiled. “Good idea.” She pulled a paperbound volume with tabs sticking out. “Here’s something from the University of Warwick.” She flipped to one of the first tabs. “Uh… an essay here aboutHero and Leander.”
Giovanni perked up. “Hero and Leander?”
She looked up. “Based on the Greek story, right?”
“Yes, but it was unfinished.” Giovanni held out his hand, and Beatrice gave him the paperbound volume. “If I recall, there were two early editions of the poem published just after Marlowe’s death. One was the unfinished one with only Marlowe’s verses, and the second contained the conclusion that was written by George Chapman. That’s the version that’s most familiar now, but any original quarto that dates back to that first printing would be valuable.”
René’s ears perked up. “How valuable?”
“Depending on the condition, maybe twenty to thirty thousand pounds, but not hundreds of thousands,” Giovanni said.
“Mmm.” René shrugged. “This is not the play you are looking for. This is not even Shakespeare. We should keep looking.”
“It might not be Shakespeare,” Beatrice said, “but Marlowe was an inspiration to Shakespeare. Highly respected.”
“He was also a spy.” Giovanni frowned.
“Rumored but never confirmed,” Beatrice said. “Shakespeare put a shout-out to Marlowe inAs You Like It, in fact. It was a line fromHero and Leander: ‘Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?’”
“So we’re back to Shakespeare by way of Marlowe.” Giovanni frowned. “A missing volume of poetry in Marlowe.”
Beatrice echoed the thought. “A missing play from Shakespeare?”
He pointed at the Shakespeare collection they’d spread out on the table. “Look through the copies ofAs You Like It, specifically act three.”
They all rushed to the table, looking for different volumes. Most of the Shakespeare plays were in thick leather-clad volumes with gilt edging and elaborate binding, but one book stuck out to Beatrice. It was a heavy paperback—clearly well loved by the state of the spine—with a vintage illustration on the cover. It wasn’t expensive, and it had numerous notes and papers sticking out.
She opened the front cover to see a university bookstore stamp in the front and a name written on the title page.
Penelope Percy-Reed.
“This is Penny’s college copy.” She felt the rush of her blood, and her fangs dropped as she paged through to the beginning of the play.
As You Like It.
The letter was notable for the crispness of the paper. This wasn’t a mangled note or a receipt or even a well-loved card. Stuck in the middle of the third act was a piece of heavy cream stationery with one name on it.
Caspar Davidson.
Tenzin sat in the living room, reading one of Giovanni’s many journals she’d stolen from his office. It was so silly how the vampire continually changed their location, expecting her not to look for them. What did he expect? That she was just going to accept that he’d had hundreds of years of life and she wasn’t entitled to know about it?
Ridiculous.
She heard Sadia walk down the stairs, but she didn’t lift her head. In Tenzin’s experience, children of Sadia’s age responded to benign neglect. One couldn’t be too interested in them without garnering disdain, so Tenzin kept her eyes on the curled pages of Giovanni’s journal and ignored the girl.
After a few moments, Sadia gave a slight huff and wandered down the hallway toward Caspar and Isadora’s wing of the house. Tenzin silently floated from the wingback by the fireplace to a bench in the hall.
Tenzin eavesdropped mercilessly when it came to the people she cared about, and Sadia was as good as her own child. She’d murder a monk to protect the girl from any real danger, but she was also aware that at age twelve, most of the demons Sadia faced were of her own making.
“Grandma Isa?” Sadia kept her voice soft. “Are you awake?”
