I refused to get my hopes up. “So, he’s anxious about tonight?”

“Frantic would be a more accurate word,” she said, as she sat down at my desk. “I guess one of the most important books in the show isn’t finished yet.”

“The Faust,” I murmured. It was all I could do to keep the woefully bitter jealousy that was yapping inside me from creeping into my voice. “I hear it’s really something.”

That might’ve been the understatement of the year.

Here I sat, toiling away on a set of lovely but anonymous old medical treatises, while Abraham had snagged the dream commission of the century-the legendary Heinrich Winslow collection of rare antiquarian books and prints.

The Winslow book collection was considered one of the finest in the world, and the crowning glory was said to be a jewel-encrusted, gilded edition of Goethe’s masterwork, Faust, commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1880.

And it was cursed.

Some attributed the curse to the fact that it had briefly belonged to Adolf Hitler, who apparently had little appreciation for books-no big surprise. Der Führer had passed the priceless Faust on to Heinrich Winslow’s wife as a token gift for a dinner party thrown in his honor.

Shortly after that fateful dinner, Heinrich Winslow was poisoned and died a gruesome death. The books were distributed among the Winslow brothers, and several other family members died after taking the Faust into their homes. No wonder they thought it was cursed.

Nobody loved a good book curse more than I did. I was so jealous of Abraham that I could barely think straight.

“Hallooo? Brooklyn? I come with food?”

My eyes lit up as a pretty young Indian woman poked her head inside the doorway.

“Hey, Vinnie, come on in,” I said.

Her torn 501s and clunky biker-chick boots belied her chirpy voice and delicate features as she walked in carrying a shopping bag stuffed with little white cartons. “I don’t wish to interrupt but Suzie and I agreed you would like our leftover Chinese food. This is true?”