"The Sartanic Verses", the cover said. No one in the Akpo family had read them. The man who wrote them, Great-Grandpa Lazarus, was sixteen years dead and with him had faded the knowledge of how to read them. Grandma Iris had found them in his closet when she cleaned it out. A year later, she had begun storing them in the very center of her bookcase, spine in. Everyone wondered about the strange book with its pages facing out, but no one asked after it...except Sophia.
"Lazarus the Laconic", they had called him. Conditions had to be just right for him to speak his mind but when he did, it hit you like a bolt of lightning, or so Mom and Dad said. He was usually very soft-spoken, unassuming, and calm. He had such a natural gift for stealth that one tended to underestimate him and even forget his presence. Such mistakes could be costly, as very little escaped his notice. Sophia had no such memories, as she had been only five when he passed. She remembered only a sweet old oyinbo who doted on her shamelessly, amused her by pretending to sit on empty air, and sang soft music over her as she drifted off to sleep in his arms.
What a dark name to give his personal book, though... While it was true that Satanism was considered chic now, Lazarus Odysseus Bye had been a very pious man by all accounts, so why would he go so close to the word "Satanic"? When she asked Grandma Iris about it, Iris had told her it had something to do with a book series he had exposed her to when she was a teen. One of the races in the books had been called the Sartan. There was also the obvious pun on Salman Rushdie. Beyond that her memory was vague, as it had been a while since she read the books, but she did have them on hand if Sophia wanted to read them. Those books had been strangely important to Lazarus, so some insight into his mind might be found within the pages.
Now that Sophia had those books laid out in front of her next to the handwritten "Sartanic Verses", she was mystified yet again. The series was called "The Death Gate Cycle". Was old Lazarus secretly involved in the occult? Was he a Freemason? No one said he was, but it might explain the secrecy. And as a white man of his time, he surely had an inside line to power...right? That was what all her professors would have said, at any rate. His map of the family tree did show Merovingian ancestry... Was he Illuminati? A sorcerer? Sophia was determined to find out, so she had sought and received permission to take the books home. The subtle glint in Grandma's eye suggested that something truly astounding was about to be discovered.