The Accidental Alchemist (11 page)

fourteen

The empty concrete basement
smelled of mildew and beer. The scents alone would be distracting to the point of causing failure. I looked at the harsh light bulb suspended from the ceiling and considered my options.

Becoming an alchemist takes years of study. Learning the foundations is essential to be successful at your transformations. I was an impatient young woman when I began my alchemical studies. Nicolas Flamel had taken me in, with my brother in tow, when he received word from an acquaintance about my aptitude with plant transformations. Since alchemy, at its core, is about transformation, he had high hopes of training me to be an alchemist like him and his wife Perenelle. But my alchemical training was incomplete. I had given it up after my brother Thomas died. I was his big sister. I was supposed to take care of him, but I failed.

I shook my head at the memory, and my hand automatically flew to my gold locket. I pushed the painful thoughts from my mind and forced my hand to let go of the locket. I couldn’t let myself get distracted by misfortunes that had caused me to act rashly. Though I had never completed my training, there was still a great deal I knew about alchemy. But so much time had passed. I was sure that was a big part of the reason I was having difficulty understanding Dorian’s strange alchemy book. Getting back into hands-on practice would help me see what I was missing.

That was the idea, anyway.

When I’d had the foolish notion that I might have a normal life for a little while here in Portland, I thought I might be ready to practice alchemy again. Not right away, but I wanted to give myself the space I needed to see if I was ready. It’s why I had wanted a house with a basement in need of renovation.

This basement was the reason I had hired Charles Macraith. Working with a contractor with a versatile set of skills who was known for keeping his mouth shut, it would have been possible for me to build the type of alchemy lab I thought I might want again. Not merely a room, but a carefully organized laboratory including a tower furnace.

Even before Dorian came into my life with his peculiar book, the reason I was drawn to practicing alchemy again was because I wanted to feel whole. Alchemy had dominated so much of my life that even though I had run from it, I couldn’t escape it. But while I was running, I was also running from myself. I wondered if I needed to practice alchemy to find myself again.

My plan, when I bought this house, had been to ease myself into it. Finding a place to call home, working the land to create an edible garden of herbs and vegetables, and fixing up a working laboratory to practice alchemy. The
last
step would be creating spagyric plant transformations to heal myself both physically and psychologically. Now that fate had forced my hand, that final step had to jump to the forefront.

I had already found the Elixir of Life, but the elixir is only a small part of alchemy. As I had explained to Brixton, alchemy is about the transformation of the impure into the pure. Transforming lead into gold. Transforming the body to free it from its bonds of mortality. Transforming the spirit into mental well-being.

I had lost sight of myself over the last century. I had been taking care of myself physically, because I could make simple healing foods without thinking. But I wasn’t really living. Ever since Ambrose.

Besides my brother, Ambrose was the only person I had ever loved. After Thomas died, it was Ambrose who taught me how to live again. For a while, at least. But that, too, ended in a tragedy I didn’t anticipate. Because of me, they had both died painful deaths, alone. How could I have known what Ambrose would do?

But that was all in centuries past. I had been running without looking back for long enough. I felt my gold locket again. The metal was warm from where I wore it close to my heart. The only two people I had ever loved with all my heart were gone. There was nothing I could do about that now. But I could save those I cared about in the present.

I had to have a clean workspace free from distractions before beginning an alchemical transformation. I had never shied away from hard work, so even though I couldn’t build a proper lab, I could clean the basement and set up the old alchemy laboratory supplies I’d shipped from Paris. I needed to buy some new materials, but I would be able to do some simple transformations right away.

I hoped.

———

After I saw Brixton off to school the next morning—listening to him grumble about water torture from the malfunctioning shower—I got to
work.

With a combination of vinegar and strength of will, four hours later my basement no longer smelled like a dank moldy brewery. Now it smelled like a fresh-scented brewery. A previous owner must have brewed his own beer down here. I was going to do my own brewing, but not of beer.

Now that the floor was clean, I noticed a scrape running across the center of the large room. Had someone previously built the basement into separate rooms? I thought again of the plans I had wanted Charles Macraith to execute, immediately followed by a pang of guilt. The man was dead. And I didn’t know if his death was related to me.

Th
e idea would have been easier to dismiss as paranoia if not for the reaction of other contractors I tried to hire. I was willing to settle for a handyman who could do basic repairs to the roof, broken windows, and pipes. I’d deal with real fixes later. If there was a later.

But as soon as I mentioned the address of the house, everyone I contacted gave excuses for why they couldn’t come. They were booked. For how long? For the foreseeable future. They hung up without saying goodbye. One person even had a bout of shingles come on while they were talking on the phone. I knew the economy was doing better, but were they all so worried about the possibility that I was a lunatic murderer that they didn’t want such a big job?
Oh.
When I thought of it like that, maybe they were being prudent. It had made the papers that Blue was under suspicion. But Blue Sky Teas was a Portland institution. I, on the other hand, was new in town. The day after I arrived, a man was not only poisoned but stabbed right outside my front door. If I didn’t know me, I’d probably run away screaming.

I sighed and took a look at what I’d been able to accomplish on my own in the basement. At least it was no longer a moldy room that reeked of hops so strongly as to overwhelm the senses, I reminded myself.

I had a few more hours before Brixton was due back from school. Enough time to get started.

I’ve never liked the expression that something you used to do but haven’t done in years is “like riding a bike.” I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was over one hundred years old, shortly after the miserable contraption was invented. It was called a
velocipede
at the time. And it never came easily to me. Maybe it was because of the discomfort of those first bicycles that didn’t have air-pressurized tires, giving them the nickname “bone shakers.” Give me a motorcar any day. Now
that
was an invention I related to. I took to driving almost as naturally as I did to plants. I was quite disappointed when speed limits were introduced.

Setting up my alchemy lab turned out to be
exactly
like riding a bike—meaning I completely failed at picking it up again.

Though I didn’t have everything I would need for a full laboratory, in theory I had enough to get started. Several glass retorts—long-necked containers that could be heated over a flame and sealed with a stopper—and other glass containers that had survived the journey, including a hermetic vase, skull cup, angel tube, spirit holder, and tomb of the dead. I never said alchemists weren’t creative. I was missing an athanor—the furnace Charles Macraith was going to build into the wall below the living room fireplace—and I’d need to restock several ingredients.

When Dorian crept down the stairs to bring me a sandwich, he nearly dropped the plate when he saw me. I didn’t blame him. My arms were covered in green sludge. Perhaps the consistency would have been better described as slime. If I thought my creaking old house was actually haunted, I would have sworn a ghost had vomited ectoplasm on me.

“Take a break,” Dorian said. “Brixton will return from school soon. I’ll keep this sandwich warm in the oven for you. ”

After taking a quick, icy shower in the upstairs bathroom that needed plumbing help, I joined Dorian at the dining table. Brixton was already there, inhaling a sandwich.

“Thith ith tho good,” Brixton said through a mouthful. “What ith thith?” He swallowed. “I thought Zoe didn’t eat meat or cheese.”

Dorian grinned and removed my roasted mushroom sandwich with truffle cream from the oven. The cream sauce was made from blended cashews, not dairy, with the mushrooms giving the sandwich its hearty “meaty” texture. It was the same thing Brixton was eating, and it was every bit as good as he said. I hadn’t realized how famished I was until I took a bite of the heavenly toasted baguette sandwich.

“Can we go see Blue?” Brixton asked.

Dorian raised an eyebrow at me, then lifted another two un-toasted open-faced sandwich slices into the oven.

“Why don’t you give your mom a call,” I said, “while I call and see about Blue.”

Brixton sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “The gargoyle has my phone.”

“
Mon dieu
,” Dorian said. “You may have the phone to call your mother, but I will be watching.
N’est pas?
”

Two minutes later, we all returned to the table, disheartened. Brixton’s mom hadn’t asked him about Blue during their brief text message conversation. On my end, I was told that the hospital wasn’t allowing visitors.

As we ate in moody silence, Dorian threw his hands into the air.

“I cannot stand this!” he said. “If you wish to eat without speaking to savor the flavors I have created, that is one thing. But this? I cannot tolerate such a maudlin mood while eating. I will at least tell you of some interesting news stories I have been reading in
Le Monde
.”

“What’s
Le Monde
?” Brixton asked.

“You may never have seen one of these before,” Dorian said, scampering off his chair and picking up one of the folded newspapers from the far side of the table. “It is called a
newspaper
. A very civilized inventio
n that has neither pop-up ads nor viruses.”

Brixton rolled his eyes.

“Listen to this,” Dorian said. “Three museums on the continent are reporting that gold pieces from their museums have been switched for fakes! None of them know how the switch was made, but the fakes are crumbling.”

“What’s ‘the continent’?” Brixton asked.

“
Mon dieu
. The European continent. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Luxembourg—”

Brixton grunted a laugh. “You made up that last one.”

Dorian sputtered.

“I don’t think he’s had geography or world history yet,” I said.

“Yeah we did.”

“You’re not helping yourself, Brixton.”

“What? I know all about local history. That what’s important, isn’t it? Did you know there’s a wicked series of tunnels that runs under Portland? Mr. Strum took us on a field trip to the Shanghai Tunnels in his class last fall. It was pretty funny, because he had to walk hunched over the whole time; otherwise he’d smack his head on the low beams in the ceiling. He showed us all sorts of hidden areas—that was before th
e tunnels were boarded up even more and he couldn’t take anyone back. We learned all about the history of this place. In the old days, guys who went to bars would be kidnapped and sold to ship captains. It was called Shanghaiing, since they were put on ships heade
d to Asia. Pretty wicked, huh?”

Dorian gave up at that point. We were done eating anyway.

It was raining again that afternoon, so instead of fitting in weeding first, I sent Brixton upstairs to do his homework, asking him to let me know if he needed any help.

“I know what we must do,” Dorian said, speaking quietly so as not to be overheard.

“Brixton is only in ninth grade. It’s okay that he hasn’t been paying attention in class.”

“Not that. I know what we must do as a next step in our investigation.”

“What do you mean
our investigation
? There is no
our investigation
.”

“Things are moving too slowly.”

“I know. That’s why I set up my lab. I think it’s the last step I need to figure out the riddles of your book. I’m already beginning to remember mor
e.”

“And the specific pages from the book? You have had more success translating the pages you have?”

“It’s tough without greater context, but I’m getting closer to an overall understanding—”

“It was difficult,” Dorian said, “for me to shift from stone to life today.” He gave one firm shake of his head. “We can no longer wait for you to see what you can accomplish with only those few pages.
We must find the book
.”

“I can’t stand seeing this happen to you, but how do you propose we get it?”

“Blue Sky possessed your other stolen items. Is it not possible the police missed something? They did not know what they were looking for. We must go to Blue’s house.”

“It’s a crime scene, Dorian.”

He tapped his claws on the table. “Then we must break in.”

fifteen

Getting a closer look
at Blue’s house was a tempting thought. Tempting, but dangerous. I wasn’t into danger these days. I’d had enough of it for many lifetimes.

“I’m not breaking into someone’s house,” I said.

“Why not?” Dorian asked.

“It being
illegal
is the first thing that springs to mind.”

The gargoyle rolled his eyes. “For someone who lives outside of normal society, you have a strange concept of justice.”

“I’m not talking about it being
wrong
to break in.” I’d lived through the execution of enough unjust laws that “the law” wasn’t high on my list of things I respected. “I’m talking about it being risky. I’m trying to stay under the radar.”

He squinted at me.

“Oh,” I said, “‘under the radar’ is an idiom that means I don’t wish to be detected.”

“Ah yes, I understand now. But this is not the time for an English lesson. If we wish to learn what has become of my book, there is much more we must learn of Blue, no?”

“There are other ways.”

“Such as?”

“I haven’t thought of them yet,” I admitted.

“You know why this is so important to me.” His eyes bore into me.

“I know, Dorian,” I said. “I know.”

———

That’s how a few hours later I found myself making an energizing chocolate elixir to stay alert in the middle of the night.

“Brixton is getting ready for bed,” I said as I came through the kitchen door with a coconut. After dinner I’d made a quick stop at the market for the coconut and checked on Brixton.

Dorian was finishing cleaning up the kitchen after the three-course dinner he’d cooked us—a potato mushroom soup starter, a pumpkin loaf crusted with poppy seeds as the main dish, and a bed of arugula with fennel and orange for the third course. Brixton had eaten everything except the fennel, which he refused to taste. I thought the licorice flavor of fennel would appeal to him, but not s
o much. He’d accepted a lot that week. I wasn’t going to push.

During dinner that night, Brixton had continued to ask intelligent questions about alchemy. He was understandably confused about what was real and what wasn’t, due to pop culture’s treatment of alchemy th
at gave it magical properties. The more answers I gave him, the more questions he had. That was alchemy.

Once Dorian finished washing the dishes, he untied the apron from around his waist and hung it on the door hook. “I do not understand why we cannot make the boy a dessert and add something to it that will
help
him sleep while we are out tonight.”

“I’m
not
drugging Brixton,” I said emphatically.

“It would be safer.”

“I draw the line at drugging a kid.” I slammed a butcher’s knife into the fresh young coconut, splitting the thick white husk on the first try. Two more firm pounds with the edge of the knife and I had a triangular hole in the coconut.

Cutting into a coconut is daunting if you’re not used to it, but coconut was an important part of the energizing elixir that helped keep me awake when I had to be up well past dark. Being alert during the middle of the night was nearly impossible for me. My only chance at being coherent was natural sugars and fats with a little bit of caffeine.

“Now that you have successfully massacred the coconut,” Dorian said, “you should place it in the fridge.”

“I need to drink this before we go.”

“How long does it last? We should not venture out until after midnight.”

“After
midnight
?” I set down the knife. “Can’t we go earlier?”

He shook his head resolutely.

———

I stayed awake by again looking through the pages of Dorian’s book, this time hoping the mental preparation of setting up an alchemy lab was enough to spark further understanding.

I p
aused on a woodcut showing a menagerie of animals. At the bottom of the illustration, the land was covered with toads, symbolizing the First Matter. Yet even in the still illustration, the toads were clearly dead. In the sky above, bees swarme
d, symbolizing purification and rebirth. The carving alluded to motion, showing the wind pushing the bees in a counterclockwise direction, pushing them toward the earth.

The stress of not understanding, while knowing what was at stake, did a decent job keeping me awake. Still, I felt myself fading. Midnight might not be a bewitching hour, but it effectively turns me into a pumpkin.

At a few minutes to midnight, I grabbed a jar of unsweetened cocoa powder from the cabinet and scooped a few tablespoons into the blender, scraped vanilla paste from a vanilla pod I kept in a glass jar, added the coconut meat and liquid from the fruit I’d split open earlier, and blended the mixture. I offered half to Dorian. He politely declined.

Before we left, I walked by Brixton’s room, trying not to make too much noise on the creaking floor. I could see through the one-inch space between the door and the floor that his light was off.

We drove my truck to an isolated field near Blue’s house. Dorian took my hand to lead me through the field. His eyes were able to see in the dark much better than mine, so it allowed us to move without a flashlight.

“Is that it?” I asked, pointing to a house blanketed in shadows.

“Yes,” Dorian agreed, “I can see the police tape.”

We had reached the edge of a growth of trees but were still at least fifty yards from the storybook cottage. I hadn’t had much time to study the yard the first time I’d visited. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the moonlight, I couldn’t help noticing some of the more interesting plants. Caught up in the bounty surrounding me, I lost sight of Dorian.

I whipped my head around. I didn’t see him. Some of the weeds grew higher than three feet, so he could have been anywhere in the field.

“Dorian,” I whispered.

He didn’t answer, but I heard a click. I followed the sound. He had just opened the front door.

I hurried to the door, following Dorian inside and closing it behind us.

Unlike the wild nature of the outside of the house, the inside of the cottage was well maintained. In the kitchen, colorful handcrafted dishes filled open cabinets. The remnants of dried herbs hung from hooks on the ceiling. The police must have taken the rest as evidence.

One thing was lacking from the house: photographs. I wondered at first if it was the police who had taken the photos as evidence, until I saw that there were a few photos on a bookshelf. One was a photo of Blue with a younger Brixton. I didn’t recognize the people in the other photos, but they all had Portland backdrop. There was no evidence of Blue’s life before she moved here.
The life she’d been running from.

I took a step from the dining room bookshelf into the living room. This was the room I’d seen from the window. The room where Blue’s unconscious body had been. As my foot touched the carpet, the sensation hit me like a gust of cold air. Only there were no doors or windows open.

“What is it?” Dorian asked.

“There’s poison here,” I murmured. I crouched down. “The glass has been removed, but some of the contents spilled onto the rug here.”

“What are you doing?” Dorian exclaimed. “We are not looking for poison. We are looking for my book!”

Ignoring Dorian, I touched the moist rug and smelled my fingertips. I felt a shiver spread from my fingers to the rest of my body. Something was wrong. This wasn’t a concoction infused with Blue’s personal touch. More than that,
it was something reminiscent of alchemy
.

I stood up hastily, knocking over a small wooden table.

“Are you well?” Dorian asked.

“We need to get out of here.”

“What is wrong?”

“This isn’t something Blue created,” I said. “I’m sensitive to the energies put into extracting plant essences, and Blue’s energy isn’t here.”

“What does that mean?”

“This was no accident. And no suicide attempt.”

“Who made it?”

“All I can tell from this small amount is that it was deliberate poisoning. Someone tried to kill her.” I didn’t say the question hanging on my lips. The question that sent a lightning-bolt shiver through me.
Was this the work of an alchemist?

Dorian’s head darted around. His eyes locked on a box of tissue across the room. He moved quickly. A few seconds later, he took my hand in his, wiping away the drops of poison with half of the tissues in the box.

I s
miled at the gesture. “I can feel it through my skin because I’m attuned to it, but it’s not going to poison me this way.” I hesitated. “At least I don’t think so.” I could handle toxins, as all alchemists must if they wish to perform laboratory experiments beyond theoretical exercises. But this was different
. There was something both strange and familiar about it. I tried to think what it could be, but there wasn’t enough of the substance remaining.

“
Mon dieu.
”

“We need to leave so I can tell Max that Blue is innocent.”

Dorian crossed his arms and glared at me. “You cannot think you are getting involved in a
police
investigation.
Les flics
cannot help us.”

“It’s all connected, Dorian. If we find out what happened to Blue, we find your book. Max seems like a good guy.”

“You propose,” Dorian said stiffly, “waking him up at two o’clock in the morning, telling him you broke into a crime scene, and explaining how you detected that Blue herself did not create the poison she ingested. You are not that careless.”

My body began to shake. What was going on?

“You are ill!” Dorian said. “Do you know what poison it was you touched? Is there an antidote?”

I shook my head as I sat down on the couch and pulled a small purple blanket over me. “I’m only shivering because it’s cold and it’s hours past when I should be sound asleep.” I silently cursed myself. Of course a poison would have a greater effect on me in the middle of the night! Like plants unfurling, I get my strength from the light. I had never before touched a poisonous substance after dark.

“But the poison?”

I shook my head again. “I can’t tell what it is. There isn’t enough here in the rug for me to determine what it is or who made it.” There was another possibility that I hoped wasn’t true. I had pushed my memories of alchemy so far to the back of my mind. Was it possible I could no longer access the knowledge?

“Your skin is pale.”

“I’m fine.”

“Can you walk?”

“Yes. Just give me a minute.”

“
Merde.
You sit here while I search the yard for anywhere my book could be hidden.”

“I told you—”

“Yes, yes. You are fine.
Mais non.
Take a nap here on the couch while I search outside. I will return shortly.”

Shortly after Dorian slipped out the door, I felt myself falling asleep. I hopped up. If I went to sleep now, I wouldn’t want to wake up. Instead, I pulled the blanket around me and continued searching Blue’s house for anything the police might have missed. I didn’t have high hopes. Now that I was certain Blue hadn’t poisoned herself on purpose, it was clear she was being framed. The person framing her would have left the stolen items where they would be easily discovered. Meaning Charles Macraith’s murderer must still have Dorian’s book. What did they want with it? And was that all they wanted?

Dorian returned while I was finishing leafing through the books on Blue’s bookshelf, which was full of books on tea, wildcrafting, meditation, plus several dozen romance novels. Dorian’s expression was somber.

“I didn’t find anything either,” I said.

We walked back to the car in silence. The cold chilled me to the point where I began to shake again.

“What you need is a bisque to warm you up,” Dorian said. “I have a container of broth in your fridge, so it will take no time to cook.”

I was too cold and tired to argue. I blasted the heat on our drive back to the house. There was no rain, but the wind was whipping up leaves and bending tree branches.

At first, that’s what I thought I was seeing as I approached the house. As we grew closer, I realized I was mistaken. It wasn’t swaying tree branches in my yard.

Two shadowy figures were creeping up to the house.