The Fake Heart (Time Alchemist Series) (36 page)

When I pressed my hand harder over my chest, it felt warm; like somebody had held onto my heart with gentle hands until I had woken up.

It felt as if I were…forgetting something.

“It’
s about time you woke up!
”

I let out a small shriek and whirled around, heart thumping madly from the scare and the familiar, calm voice. There, standing right in front of the window was Dove. Behind her, trying to climb
in
from
outside
the window (really, haven’t either of these two siblings heard of
doors?
),
was Leon.

“
Oh my Go
d
!”
I yelped, tackling the blonde, despite my gimp ankle,
in a
big
h
ug. Dove’s laugh was as sweet sounding as summer rain. H
er balance shook, but she returned the embrace, her thin arms squeezing my tightly. Leon sat on the window’s edge, a large, but very exhausted grin on his face. He looked bad—worse than me. His face was covered in bluish bruises and band aids, and there were stitches on his forehead. He looked a little winded (probably from climbing up a tree to the second story of a hospital building), but he was alive.

He was
alive
.

I wanted t
o race over and hug him and cry
but made myself stop. What if he was still injured? And what if my boast of happiness sent us both flying out the window?
(As if
I need another reason to
stay in the hospital any longer.)

“We,” he said, giving me a loopy grin, “h
ave a lot to tell you.”

Dove nodded, “Better sit down for this one. It’s going to be a long story.”

I grinned
, feeling my insides warm all over
. “Aren’t they always?”

◊◊◊◊◊

So during the next
week, I stayed in the hospital
(Dad adamantly refused to let me go anywhere until I was 100% better. Besides the aching sores and swelling bruises, and a badly broken ankle, I was fine. Really!), Dove and Leon visited each day and gave me bit by bit of what happened, after I told them my story.

I told them all about skipping out on the Winter
Formal and being chased by the Ice A
lchemist, who we all know was Marjorie posing as Headmistress Margaret. How
I found a secret tunnel that le
d from the library’s basement to Bonaventure
(with the thanks of an awesome friend), and what
happe
ned after Dove and Leon were
knocked out by Marjorie and Jack/Ivan.

I told them everything, even though my head throbbed and my stomach felt like a cold lump when I retold them the truth. Digging up Kathleen Hearst’s grave; how Ivan mercilessly killed Marj
orie; as well as Ivan trying to make Leon into
his next vessel.

Leon looked sick.

“I felt something,” he said, “Like…somebody was trying to force me out of my own body. It hurt, like my bones were on fire and it felt like my blood was boiling. It hurt so much but I couldn’t move an in
ch.  It was like whatever was…
inside
me was
tryin
g to force
me
out and
take over and…
destroy
me.”

I placed a hand over his, which he enveloped. Even covered in bandages it felt warm; pulsating with life.

The life
I
had saved.

Or rather, the life that the Elixir had saved.

“But the fact that you tapped into your core at such
a crucial moment…” Dove said, “
T
hat
is beyond
anything
I have ever heard of!”

I shrugged sheepishly, not really wanting to go into the details of what kind of warmth and power I felt thrumming inside my chest. T
rue, it had been exhilarating,
so much so that rememberi
ng it made me shake, like I was forced to
quit cold turkey on caffeine
and I needed a fix
fast
. It was such a rush—it was astounding.

But what I had done—I had
killed
somebody. And even though it wasn’t Jack anymore
—it was the essence of a person using his body—
it still made me nauseous.

I felt like a horrible, hor
rible person.

I skimmed
over
much on how I managed to defeat Ivan until I reached the conclusion of finding the Elixir, right there under my nose.

On a day that Dove left to do something (a secret she refused to tell us), it wasn’t until then, al
one in my hospital room, that Leon sort of…
broke down.

I wouldn’t say he cr
ied, but the way his voice cracked, as if his throat was scratched raw,
and how his shoulders hunched
so low it was as if he were holding up a large, invisible boulder
, and the way he couldn’t seem look me in the eyes without
drawing away from the guilt gna
wing inside him.

For the first time that shocked us both, I hugged him. The last time I had held him like that was when he was nearly on his deathbed. For a flitting moment, I thought I would never be able to hold him again, and tell him “Thank you.”

He stiffened at first, but I felt him relax, letting down his guard. H
is body warm against mine. I could hear his steady heartbeat against my ear. When he pressed his face into the top of my head and I heard silent sobbing escaping his throat, I knew that he was okay.

He wasn’t going to live the rest of his life believing that it was his fault. I
chose
to save his life, even when my own was in danger.

I would remind him, again and again if I had to.

Every day.

CHAPTER 32

Their
story was a bit plainer than mine—both Dove and Leon headed to Bonaventure together but split up soon after to look for the
gravesite of the Hearst family…
my great-grandmother’s family. That’s when Dove ran into Marjorie. And as you can see, it didn’
t really end too well. Leon
stayed hidden in one of the la
rge oak trees, waiting for the right time to act
until
he saw me. Then when he saw how Jack ca
me
to
“rescue” me, his alchemic instincts (those really exist?)
took over
and he attacked.

Leon claims he can’t really remember what happened after Ivan had stabbed him, but he does remember one thing.

“It was like…an angel was looking over me,” he told me one early morning when Dove went out to fetch drinks, “I thought you were an angel.”

Needless to say, I felt red from head to toe, glad that the white sheets
of the hospital bed
covered my body.

Dove
told me, after she regained
consciousness and saw what
happened, she ran off to get help. Her eyes were full of tears, a rare occurrence for her, as she explained. “God, I was so powerless against that woman, and when I saw you were being hurt, I couldn’t do a thing. I left my brother behind—how
could I do that to him. To you—”

“You have
nothing
to apologize for, Dove!” I had said, giving her one of the longest lasting bear hugs of the year. I reassure
d
her, sa
ying that if she hadn’t rushed off to find and send help, I wouldn’t have survived
. And it was true. From what Dad told me, the police and the ambulance arrived just minutes after I collapsed, and rushed both Leon and I to the nearest emergency room.

A day or so after, the police showed up to question
us about the now missing Jackson Alexander and Margaret Willows. It was only natural that if a handsome, rich and charismatic boy suddenly disappears after his school Formal, shortly after his girlfriend left, and was never heard from again, questions would be raised. And of course, I became the first witness for questioning.

I came up with the best lie I ever knew I could muster.

I told them that Jack and I
planned a
secret
rendezvous at Bonaventure for a date of sorts (and even though I was lying about the whole real reason, just seeing the looks on those stern
looking cops and my father thinking I skipped Winter Formal to go do “it” with a guy at a gravesite did not make things better. At all.), but
when I wanted to stop, Jack beca
me …angry and rough with me, hitting me and yelling and screaming. I still felt my insides go cold remembering the pure hot hatred in his
oily
eyes.

They seemed to buy it, judging by my face and the broken bones I had. I saw one of the police officers shaking his head as he jotted
down things on a notepad, and
heard him mumbli
ng something about “
abusive relationship” and whatnot. They asked about my relationship with Jack, and I told them the truth:

“He wasn’t who I thought he was.”

Leon
’s reasons where as such: he took off early from work
to go exploring a
t Bonaventure, claiming to be very interested
in the paranormal and hoping to see some spooky activities. He said it with such a straight face; I almost choked on my milk.  He said he heard Jack and I fighting (taking my lead), and rushed in to help, but was badly hurt in the process.

Dove also was interviewed, and went along with our lies. She had gone to the cemetery with her brother; saw the fight that was happening and rushed away to get the police. 

The police asked what
happened to Jack. “I don’t know.
” was all I could say. And it was sort of the truth. I couldn’t exactly tell them that he was nothing more than a pile of dust because the soul of an ancient, evil alchemist took over his body.

Everybody deemed Jack
son
Alexander a runaway, but what happened to Headmistress Margaret?

Since her body was never found, buried underneath the earth near the Hearst Family graves by Jack’s alchemy, she also was dubbed a runaway
. Even many of the faculty
said she had been actin
g strange for the previous year
; often locked away in her office and sometimes disappearing for
days at a time with no notice. B
ut since she was the Headmistress of St. Mary’s
, nobody really spoke out about
her odd behavior (even when she gave undeserving punishments to students).

Rumors swirled like crazy at school
when Spring term was just starting
, how the two of them must have ran away to New York to elope, or that the Headmistress was pregnant with Jack’s child, or how the two were partners in crime for distributing drugs
and were kidnapped and beaten and left to die in a ditch by some rival drug dealers
, or that Jack was her illegitimate
child and she kidnapped him to live with her
back in Botswana. (
Once I heard a rumor about the two of them being kid
napped and sacrificed to a demon or something
.
)

Nobody
really
cared about the girl who Jack had supposedly tr
ied to beat up in the graveyard. A
lthough
,
I got the occasional scathing look from some girls who crushed on Jack
at first,
they quickly turned to looks of sympathy mixed with a little disbelief when they saw the state of my face
and me limping along on my crutches
. And let me say, it wasn’t a pretty sig
ht—both of my cheeks were large, fading
purplish blooms from be
ing slapped to and fro;
my lips
were
cracked and I had tons of scratches
healing
all over my face.
The cut on my leg had gotten from sneaking into the library needed twelve stitches, and would probably leave a nasty scar. My ankle was broken so badly I had to walk with crutches for six weeks, and even go to physical therapy.