The Accidental Alchemist (20 page)

Today, however, I found myself at a sprawling supermarket with harsh fluorescent lighting. I’d be able to get all the items on Dorian’s shopping list as well as a lock for the basement door. There was something to be said for convenience.

In the produce section, I saw a familiar face. His unshaven stubble remained unchecked and was growing into a scruffy beard.

“Ivan,” I said, greeting Olivia’s friend next to a pyramid of tangerines. “Nice to see you.”

“
Dobrý den
,” Ivan said. “It is Zoe, is it not? Lovely to see you.”

I forced myself to keep smiling, even as I felt my blood turn cold. I gave an excuse about being late for an appointment and rushed off.

At the checkout counter, I felt myself shaking. I had never heard Ivan speak before, since he was always with the talkative Olivia. I’d seen him reading a book in a Cyrillic language, but hadn’t wondered exactly where he was from. But his accent was unmistakable.

Ivan was Czech, from Prague. The center of alchemy.

The missing connection to alchemy had been in front of me this whole time.

twenty-eight

Prague had been the
center of alchemy in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Alchemists flocked to Rudolph II’s Court, establishing it as a center of alchemical innovation. The king of Hungary and Bohemia invited over two hundred alchemists to Prague, and the impact has lasted to this day.

Rudolph was before my time, but I had visited Prague many times. I knew it well, and I could identify a Prague accent. Ivan had one.

Being from Prague itself wasn’t enough to make me worried. Olivia had given me the missing piece of information about Ivan, without realizing she’d done so. When she was bemoaning the fact that her own nephew had given up academic pursuits, she had told me that Ivan was a professor of chemistry who had retired early due to fading health and frequented the teashop promoting good health.

Olivia didn’t know what that convergence meant. But I did. Alchemy was a precursor to modern chemistry. Ivan was a chemist from the center of alchemy who was ill and wanted to cure himself.

I felt certain I was onto something, but I was missing some piece of the puzzle. I tried to think back on when I’d first visited Portland and found Blue Sky Teas. Had Ivan seen me then? Even if he had, so many things still didn’t make sense. Finding Dorian’s book could have been a crime of opportunity, but how would he know I was an alchemist in the first place?

Nearly dropping my bag of groceries, I sprinted to my truck and drove like a mad woman on the way home.

Thankfully, Brixton had gotten bored and left, allowing me to speak freely with Dorian. I didn’t want Brixton to get any ideas about dealing with a murderer himself. With how much he cared for Blue, I didn’t doubt for a minute that he would act rashly.

“
Mon dieu!
” Dorian exclaimed upon hearing my theory. “This makes perfect sense!”

“We need to learn more about him.”

“Google?”

“Google.”

An Internet search told us that Ivan Danko had been a well-regarded chemistry professor in Prague before he retired early for medical reasons.

“Listen to this,” I said. “One of the courses he taught was a history of alchemy as a predecessor to modern chemistry.”

“This is uncommon, no?”

“Very uncomm
on. Alchemists who were also scientists have almost always had to hide the alchemical side of their research. Isaac Newton was incredibly secretive about the alchemical experiments he conducte
d.”

“
The
Isaac Newton?” Dorian asked.

“Oh yes. Newton carried out more alchemical experiments than anything else. He wrote all about them, too, but most of those works were never published. Newton himself felt the world wasn’t ready for the power of alchemy.”

“
Mon dieu
.”

“I wonder,” I said, “if, like Newton, Ivan became ill while doing his own alchemy experiments.”

“I must question him,” Dorian said.

“Um, no. That’s not going to happen.”

“I am not a pet! I am Dorian Robert-Houdin!” His wings flew open, crashing into the wall and taking a large swath of plaster with it. His mouth hung open, shocked at what he’d done. He was losing control of his body.

“I didn’t mean—”

The doorbell sounded. Wonderful. I hadn’t had time to install the lock on the inside of the basement door. At least the handyman was half deaf, so hopefully he hadn’t heard a French voice shouting.

Dorian folded his wings as best he could, glowering at me the whole time. “I will be in the basement,” he whispered. He puffed up his chest, grabbed three paperback novels from the coffee table, and limped down the stairs.

I greeted the handyman and got him to work patching the roof. As soon as I was certain he’d be occupied for a short time, I installed the new lock on the inside of the basement door so Dorian wouldn’t have any unexpected visitors. Home handiwork wasn’t one of my talents, but the installation wasn’t bad. It wasn’t pretty, but it was functional.

While the handyman worked, I had a chance to do more research on Ivan, but there wasn’t much more to learn. He didn’t have an online presence after leaving his university several years before.

Two hours later, the handyman had finished patching the worst hole in the roof and taping the worst leaky pipes. He said the roof should hold for now, but he’d need to pick up supplies for further patches, and that I really needed to hire a proper roofer and plumber. I gave him a bag of ginger cookies to take along with his payment, and scheduled another appointment with him later in the week. It was the only dessert Dorian had cooked that Brixton hadn’t liked, and there was no way I was going to eat three dozen cookies.

I knocked on the basement door. My knock was met with no response.

“It’s me,” I called out.

A few moments later, the lock slid open and Dorian peered out at me.

“We need a special knock,” he said, “to be sure it is you.”

“Can’t you just listen for my voice?”

“Interesting point. Yet a knock is more dramatic. That must explain why it is employed in fiction.”

“You’re enjoying the detective novels, then?”

“They are most entertaining—and also enlightening.”

“Enlightening?” That couldn’t be good.

“I have had an inspired idea,” he said. “I will tell you about it as I prepare lunch.”

I
followed Dorian into the kitchen as he began cooking. He banished me to the far corner of the kitchen, where I jumped up to sit on the pristine counter. The cleaning crew who had cleaned the house before my arrival hadn’t been able to clear away the years of grime as well as Dorian had. I watched as he created a
roux
out of olive oil, flour, and broth, tran
sforming an oily, clumpy mixture that looked like clay into a creamy sauce that made my mouth water.

“These books from the library,” Dorian said as he whisked, “it is interesting how they are all unique and stand the test of time, yet, at the same time, there is a common type of resolution.”

I eased down from the counter and poked my head out the kitchen door to look over at the assortment of books strewn across the room on the coffee table. Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayer
s, Arthur Conan Doyle, Margery Allingham.

“In this resolution,” Dorian continued, “the hero of the story has put together facts in his mind—using his
little gray cells
as Poirot would say—to reveal that the killer is someone we already know, and one of the least likely suspects.”

“Dorian—”

“This person,” he said, “we now know to be Ivan.”

“This isn’t fiction.”

“
Mon dieu.
Art imitates life. Life imitates art. This is why we must do what they do in the books. We must bring all the suspects together for a dinner party at which all will be revealed.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you
must
think so.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it is already done.”

My skin prickled. “What do you mean it’s already done.”

“While I was trapped in that dank room, I shared my plan with Brixton, via text message.”

“Wait, how? You don’t have a phone. You can’t even use a phone screen with your fingers.”

He pulled a Blackberry out of the apron pocket. “Brixton got this for me from his friend Ethan. I can punch the keys with my fingers.”

“You told Brixton you thought Ivan was a murderer?”

“It is not nice to keep secrets from the people we are working with.”

“He’s fourteen!”

“I explained the plan to ensure he would not run off and do anything stupid before the dinner party. What are you doing?”

“I’m calling Brixton to tell him to forget whatever you told him.”

“It is too late, Zoe.”

“Why?”

“He has already emailed all the guests. The teashop regulars were overjoyed to be invited over to a home-cooked housewarming meal tonight from ‘great chef Zoe.’”

twenty-nine

I spent the afternoon
preparing the house for the dinner party. There’s nothing like the combined fear of knowing a murderer might be coming over for dinner—along with your new neighbors. Surrounded by moving crates in my leaky house, I wasn’t sure which was scarier.

The party was to take place that night, just hours after Brixton invited everyone. Didn’t these people have lives? I supposed it was the same human curiosity that made people crane their necks to get a better look at a car accident. Whatever plans people had, they had cancelled them so they could be here. I wasn’t surprised. They were curious about me, had heard about my cooking, and had the natural human pull toward the macabre. And here I was throwing a housewarming party with gourmet food at the haunted house where a murder had taken place.

In addition to our suspect, Ivan, Brixton and Dorian had invited five other teashop regulars: Brixton’s teacher Sam, Sam’s aunt Olivia, Olivia’s friend Cora, Brixton’s mom Heather, and because the instigators claimed they were being responsible, Detective Max Liu was the final member of the guest list.

The plan was for Dorian to cook the meal ahead of time and for Brixton to serve the meal, leaving me free to sit with the guests and help steer the conversation where I wanted it to go. I would also be on high
alert for any hint of poison. Between my keen ability to detect the poison and our quest for justice and a cure for Dorian, I was confident in the plan. Somewhat confident. Okay, at least I knew it wouldn’t be a disaster that ended with someone dead. I admit I wa
s desperate.

Brixton enlisted the help of Veronica and Ethan to clear the worst of the weeds from the front yard, promising them a tasty snack plus cake to take home. Though the dinner party guests would be arriving after dark, I wanted to at least have the tall, wild grass pulled away from the path leading to the front door.

I had to run a couple of errands, so Brixton’s job was to make sure the kids stayed in the yard and didn’t come into the kitchen without warning. I’d rigged curtains in the kitchen so it was impossible to see in from the outside, including a curtain that blocked the herb garden’s glass window box, but couldn’t do anything about the swinging door leading from the living room to the kitchen.

After cooking, Dorian was going to turn to stone, playing the part of the antique stone gargoyle he originally was. I would have felt more comfortable with him hiding, because returning to life from stone was becoming increasingly difficult for him, but he insisted he wan
ted to be present to see what was happening.

By four o’clock Sunday afternoon, when the kids came in from the yard for a much-deserved snack, the house was beginning to look like I envisioned it would when I bought it. Between the weeded front yard and the few boxes I’d unpacked, I allowed myself a moment to appreciate the transformation. I’d been so focused on my frantic search for a cure for Dorian that I hadn’t had many moments to step back and enjoy what was in front of me.

“Wow,” Brixton said, rubbing the soles of his sneakers on the welcome mat.

“Is this stuff from Paris?” Veronica asked.

“Some of it is. I lived there for a few years.”

She ran past me to the mantle, where I’d set up a display of antique alchemical items I found deep in my storage crates: two hermetic vases, a spirit holder, matrix vase, and in the center, a philosopher’s egg. Honestly, I sometimes think the secret language alchemists created had as much to do with trying to outdo each other with clever names than with conveying information. The pelican made sense, because the glass vessel resembled the bird’s beak. A snake was self-explanatory too. But a matrix vase? I was pretty sure that the motivation behind names had at least as much to do with guy trying to be cool as it did a spiritual connection to laboratory supplies.

I stood back and looked at the display. Rooting through the crates, I selected two brass apothecary boxes that would go nicely.

The curated display was my contribution to the plan. Dorian had initially suggested that once I gathered everyone together, I should lock all the doors and declare that I knew who the killer was, somehow forcing Ivan to confess. I countered with the idea that we let things unfold more naturally by placing alchemical objects on display in the living room to provoke a reaction from Ivan. Much more sensible than kidnapping people and making unsubstantiated accusations. I hoped it would work.

The boys made a beeline for a different section of the room. They headed straight for the dining table. Two large loaves of homemade bread, one a nut loaf and one a simple Parisian-style baguette, dominated the center of the table on a wooden cutting board from Marseille. A Spanish platter of nut cheeses sat to one si
de of the bread, its twin platter loaded with a pile of savory scones. Poking out from the baby lettuce leaves in a wooden salad bowl from Lisbon were tangerine wedges, thinly sliced roasted beets, and toasted almonds. I smiled to myself, watching the boys eat. I was glad I’d been able to unpack the special serving items I’d had in storage for too long.

Veronica ran her fingers along the carvings on the mantle before joining us at the table. I was glad Dorian was hiding for the time being; otherwise I had no doubt Veronica would have run up to a Dorian statue and patted it on the head. Dorian didn’t care about eavesdropping on the kids, so he was brushing up on his Poirot deductive skills in the basement before the kids departed and he could finish preparing the evening meal.

“Thank you, Ms. Faust,” Veronica said as she sat down.

The boys grunted in between bites of food.

“I can’t thank you enough for helping with the yard,” I said, pouring them ice water with fresh mint leaves.

“No problem, Zoe,” Ethan said. “I should be thanking you. Now Brixton owes
me
a favor.”

Veronica kicked him under the table. “Can’t you do anything out of the goodness of your heart?”

“That hurt! I totally came, didn’t I?”

“Remember,” Brixton said, “she’s paying you in cake too.”

Veronica and Ethan stopped glaring at each other, and they departed half an hour later with chocolate cake. Dorian would have been horrified at the brevity of the meal, but he had to finish cooking.

“Sorry, man,” Ethan said to Brixton in a low voice as he left.

“What was that about?” I asked, closing the door behind Veronica and Ethan.

“He thinks I’m staying longer to help out so you won’t press charges for that day I met you last week.”

Had it only been a week?
Before coming here, months could go by without much happening. I would tend to my small herb garden and go on long walks wherever I had parked my trailer. I’d stay for a short duration of time, ranging from a week to a year, careful to never put down roots. Occasionally I became immersed in something I didn’t plan on, but this had been the longest week I’d experienced in decades.

“I couldn’t tell him the truth,” Brixton continued, “that I’m helping you catch the guy who framed Blue and is keeping Dorian from getting better.”

“
You
aren’t catching anyone. Remember what we talked about. Anything bad starts to happen and you run out the door and call for backup.”

“I’ll go get Dorian,” Brixton grumbled, knocking on the basement door. “Hey, why isn’t he answering. Do you think he’s okay?”

“He doesn’t respond to knocks on the door unless it’s a coded knock you worked out in advance.”

“Oh. So how are we supposed to get him?”

“Just call his name. He’ll recognize your voice.”

Brixton’s summoning worked, and the gargoyle and his assistant spent the afternoon preparing dinner.

The guests began to arrive at five minutes after seven. At the sound of the doorbell, I nodded at Dorian.

He limped to the side of the fireplace and gave me a curt nod. He pulled back his shoulders, stretched his wings, and squatted into a pose resembling a watchful stance on a perch. Dark, cracked lines covered his soft gray skin. Dorian was once again stone. I shivered and pulled the door open.