Alchemy of Glass

by Barbara Barnett

  Gaelan shook his head, gazing back toward the horizon. The sun was now full up; he’d meant to be back at the fair long ago. The cacophony of gulls filled the air as they dove for prey among the white-caps. The waves sloshed over the rickety dock and the gravel of the narrow beach, pulling the pungent aroma of fish and algae a bit too close by.

  “What is this place called, if I might ask, and where is . . . or rather . . . was . . . it located? The site to which you referred—the ruin?” Tesla asked as he scuttled away from the encroaching water.

  Gaelan followed. “It was called in its day the House of the Holy Trinity, at a place called Soutra in the Scottish Borders, near Fala.” A house of science and study, art, and history. Of medicines far beyond any known capability of the time. And for him, a sanctuary, a rescue from certain death.

  CHICAGO NORTH SHORE, PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 2

  Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Gaelan Erceldoune was dead, and Dr. Anne Shaw just needed to get on with it.

  A full two weeks since he’d disappeared down the falls at Glomach in northwest Scotland, mouthing to her over the deafening crash of water, “Trust me.” How many times had she passed through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief in those two weeks? Five? Ten? At least. And each time she circled back to denial only to begin the whole bloody process again.

  Anne had known Gaelan less than a week, hardly worth the mention. How had he managed to engrave himself into the depths of her soul? She would dismiss the relationship as nothing more than infatuation on the rebound. And then she would recall those few short days and nights. The exhilarating collaboration as they deconstructed his astonishing, ancient healing book with its alluring illuminations, the shared elation of discovering its brilliant magic—no, its hidden and highly improbable science—and, together, watching it work.

  Then there was the sweet hesitance of his lovemaking the morning after he’d revealed his deepest secret. Yet how could a man for all appearances her own age be nearly half a millennium old? His shy smile while he tried to explain how it had been nearly two centuries since he’d last been with a woman. And that woman? Eleanor Bell, her great, great, great . . . grandmother. The way he’d touched Anne—courtly, reverently. His sleepy, stoned gaze in the aftermath of sex . . .

  Why did it feel significant pieces of her heart had been ripped from beneath her ribs after this briefest of encounters? Why could she not get on with it when Gaelan Erceldoune should register only as a minor blip on Anne’s romantic radar?

  She knew the answer to that question. So much better to be swallowed by the agony of grief than deal with a truly failed relationship. Dr. Paul Gilles, who’d sold his soul to pursue riches untold. Never bloody mind the consequences. How could she ever have agreed to marry that venal wanker?

  So much safer to lose herself in tormented fury than confront the ramifications of her own research on the immortal jellyfish. Turritopsis nutricula, a fascinating biological anomaly, its chromosomal end caps—telomeres—the stuff of wonder and imagination. What-ifs and unbridled quests without constraint. The exalted possibility of curing incurable diseases without considering consequences of the technology borne of it. The price to be paid should it be exploited.

  The gentle ebb and flow of Lake Michigan waves washed the rocks at the base of the narrow ravines, thirty meters beneath the long granite outcrop upon which Simon Bell’s Highland Park mansion stood. Anne closed her eyes, concentrating to set her breathing to the cadence.

  How could she have done telomere research her whole professional career and never reflect—really consider the practical application of T. nutricula’s telomeres taken to some nth degree? Human immortality.

  She’d been naive not to understand the fortune to be had by someone with zero ethics and a penchant for playing God. Dr. Paul Gilles.

  But what, then, to make of one Mr. Gaelan Erceldoune, whose genetic mutation rendered him as immortal as her jellyfish? Infinite tissue regeneration. An embodiment of immortality’s promise, but traumatized. Crushed. Tortured. Broken. And decidedly not the product of twenty-first-century genetic manipulation but a biological rarity, centuries old.

  She peered out over the vastness of Lake Michigan and out toward the horizon, trying to rid Gaelan from her mind. A futile exercise, damn him.

  The wind switched direction, sweeping in off the lake, hard and chilly, transforming the water from mirror calm into a roiling white-capped surf, bathing her face in a cold, freshening mist as the waves thrashed the bluff below.

  The fresh green scent of late spring wafted in the breeze, up from deep within the forested ravines and mingled with the flowery perfume of the garden. Not even such lavish aromatherapy managed to lighten her mood.

  Anne withdrew Simon’s letter from her trouser pocket, the rough fountain pen ink, the flowery cursive, remnants of an earlier era. Simon’s era. And Gaelan’s. The letter had arrived for her at Mum’s by courier back home in the UK a week ago—seven days after she’d last seen Simon alive.

  My dearest niece,

  If you are reading this, you will know I am dead, and that Gaelan was successful in creating the antidote for this two-centuries-long curse of a life I have too long lived. At last, I am free from my beloved Sophie, whose ghostly apparition has plagued me now for almost two centuries. I can now join her in eternity, where we both belong, her grave no longer unquiet and both of us at peace.

  As my sole heir, I have left to you my entire fortune, my house, and all future royalties from my numerous books. This information is with my London solicitor, and all you need do is to see him at your convenience. Amongst my effects you will find a series of diaries kept by my sister, Eleanor, who passed on in 1902, and me. I hope you might read them and through them know both of us—and Gaelan too, I think.

  As for the house, you may, of course, keep it, or sell as you wish. Its sale and my estate entire will grant you and your family a life of little want.

  With great affection,

  Your great (many times removed) uncle Simon Bell

  What good Anne might accomplish with such wealth at her disposal, begin to make amends for whatever small part she might have played in the wrongdoing perpetrated by her former employer, Transdiff Genomics.

  For the moment, Anne was far too jet-lagged and exhausted to focus on much of anything useful. Too little sleep; too little food. Too much coffee. French-pressed and caffeine-rich. Maybe that explained her mood.

  That, and the phone call from Paul Gilles. Fuck him, the bloody wanker! Until that unwelcome call, every ringtone, every chirp of a notification alert, rang up the faint hope that Gaelan was alive—and on his way to her side.

  Dr. Paul Gilles. Who else in her life had the unique ability to destroy everything with a single ring of her mobile? A kick to the gut in the guise of Paul’s fawning, feckless transatlantic plea to reconcile. Excuse upon excuse. So many excuses and nothing to remotely explain why he was screwing that tart of a postdoc in her bed. Her bed! What a bloody, damn fool she’d been!

  “You must believe me, my darling. An error of judgment, and that is all.” Paul had whined. “It’s why I texted you that day.”

  “Which day? What text?”

  “You know, when it all went to hell, and your friend the immortal bloke went off the grid and abandoned Transdiff—and us.”

  “I got no text message from you. Had I done, I would have erased it, ignored it, and thrown the bloody phone into the Thames.”

  “You seriously didn’t get it? I used one of your favorite . . . It was my sole desire, my dearest Anne, to resurrect our moribund relationship. It can’t be over. Whatever you need from me, I’ll do it and more. I want a fresh start. Bring us back from the dead. Like Sherlock. You know . . . ‘The Empty House.’ I can’t believe you didn’t get the reference.”

  Paul? That was Paul. Not Gaelan?

  That had been the moment.

  Two fucking, soul-sucking, agonizing weeks she’d placed her hopes upon wh
at was almost certainly a clue. A secret, texted message. Two weeks she’d waited to hear again from him. Where to meet up à la Sherlock and Watson after Reichenbach Falls. “The Empty House.”

  Two weeks she’d put herself through hell believing that Gaelan Erceldoune was alive and well and would ring her up at any moment. But there would be no Sherlockian “ta-da” comeback on the horizon. No “Empty House” reunion after Gaelan’s Reichenbach “fall” at Glomach.

  What an absolute fool she’d been. Again. What lingered now were the too-familiar stings of betrayal and humiliation. Anne had allowed girlish romanticism to get the better of her. Again.

  She was done. Finished. Better to be rid Gaelan Erceldoune. A tortured and broken man, irresistible in the odd Regency novel, but not so much in real life. She was lucky to be done with him.

  Someday, she might even believe it.

  And now here she was in a real empty house, abandoned but for the ashes of her benefactor, her ancestor, Simon Bell, his remains sitting in a ceramic urn atop the library mantel. As for the house, Anne had little use for a grand Gothic mansion in a foreign country. She couldn’t just pick up and relocate to Chicago permanently, could she?

  She turned away from the lake, taking in the lavish gardens, the graceful archways, and mullioned windows of Simon’s house. Her house. Impossibly, hers. She could do worse than this magnificent refuge from the muddle of her life.

  Glittery pinpoints of refracted light danced against the white pavement of the garden path. The tiny stones of her gem-encrusted labyrinth pendant, a gift from Gaelan the morning he disappeared. The morning she’d tracked him down in Thurso, Scotland, beneath a hawthorn tree. The hawthorn tree, its destination somehow encoded into that remarkable book. The ouroboros book, he’d called it.

  The book had vanished, he’d explained. Replaced, he thought, by the pendant. Something about Celtic deities. The goddess of healing. The fae. Fairies? Bollocks. Or was it?

  No more improbable than Gaelan’s own existence, was it? A man five centuries old, yet never looking older than thirty-five. And his mutilated left hand . . . his formerly mutilated left hand. How to explain that one? She’d seen it. Held it in her hand. Kissed the smooth stump, where, by his explanation, three fingers had been severed more than a century before. And that morning at Thurso? Whole. Nothing she knew of science could explain that one. Why not the fairies, then?

  But now, it was all quite beside the point. She should bloody rip the pendant from her neck, chuck it into the lake, and feed it to the gulls.

  Better idea. The useful graveyard for the detritus of love spurned. eBay.

  A large blue heron glided just above her head, distracting her back toward the lake as he alighted, ballet-like. Noisily skimming the water surface on the hunt, he disappeared into the whitecaps. She closed her eyes, inhaling the strange potpourri of fish and algae. Flowers and freshening breeze. Trying to banish all thought of the past two weeks from her thoughts.

  Turning from the promontory wall, Anne followed the small path meandering through the garden. White turned-iron benches dotted the way, one at each flower bed. No, not each flower bed. Only the rose beds, each plot a distinct color, a different species of Rosa. Some wild, some fringed, impossibly unnatural colors. Some in full bloom, others green, barely buds, full of promise.

  “Trust me,” Gaelan told her at the edge of the chasm. Was that not his promise to return to her? She assumed he’d staged the disappearance down the cataract at Glomach Falls to throw Transdiff—and the media—off his scent. Or had she misread him so completely? Misunderstood his wistful gaze just before he’d gone over the side?

  “Trust me” could mean a thousand things. She scarcely knew him, and certainly not well enough to translate the complexities of a centuries-old human.

  It was her own bloody fault. Why had she followed him to Scotland, put him in that position? He’d decided to end his life, and she should have simply accepted it. How unfair she had been to back him into a corner when all he wanted was to escape the hell his life would certainly become, exposed as immortal. A genetic anomaly.

  By now, too much of the truth was in the wild: tabloids, conspiracy websites, radio chat shows, podcasts. Grains of truth that would lead to nothing but catastrophe if confirmed. There was only one way to guarantee the immortal “Miracle Man” would remain the stuff of urban legend.

  His death.

  And now, after centuries, he had the means to do it. Who could blame him?

  She had to let it go. Let him go.

  Acceptance. Again. For now.

  Too weary for one more step, Anne stretched out on a low bench and closed her eyes. Good a place as any for a nap. A blur of fragrance. Of rhythm, of melody, of . . .

  An old-school telephone ringtone jangled near Anne’s ear, distant at first, jarring her from the first threads of sleep. More and more insistent, it dragged her back. Bloody hell!

  Resigned to never sleeping again, she answered.

  “Dr. Anne Shawe?” An American voice. Male. Unfamiliar. What was he selling?

  She cleared the grogginess from her throat. “Yes?”

  “My name is Preston Alcott—”

  “Who?” That name. Vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Her stomach tightened. What if he was nosing about for information on Gaelan—or Transdiff? She placed her index finger gently upon above the large red “end call” button, poised to punch it at the least provocation.

  “I . . . your name was given to me by a colleague of yours at Salk. In La Jolla. I understand you no longer work for them.”

  No longer? Leading with the venerated Salk Institute for Biological Studies—not exactly the way to win her over these days. At least he’d not mentioned their quietly withdrawn job offer. Courtesy of Transdiff and Anne’s whistleblowing activities.

  Something disquieting about the bloke’s affable baritone. Silky smooth, a BBC presenter with an American accent. And that name, Preston Alcott. It prickled at the outer edges of her memory.

  Ignoring her reservations for the moment, Anne summoned her most professional “Dr. Shawe” voice. “Oh! Really! Referred you to me?”

  “Yes. I need a physician with your unique qualifications. Someone with expertise in your field of genetics. You’re a researcher as well as a doctor, right?”

  Straight to the point. Okay, he had her attention. “I’ve a Doctorate in molecular genetics. And, yes, I’m a medical doctor as well.”

  “Good. What I have in mind is of great personal urgency. First, do you know anything about me? I mean, have you heard of me? Good . . . bad . . . indifferent . . . ? I’m pretty famous over here in the U.S., but across the pond—”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Alcott. I’m frightfully sorry, but I don’t think . . .” She exhaled as she rose from the bench, casting a last lingering gaze over the promontory wall. Don’t go anywhere! I’ll be back! “Look, I’m out in the garden; hang on whilst I go back into the house. Fewer . . . distractions, I think.”

  Settling into a cushy sitting room sofa, Anne put the phone on speaker and opened her laptop. “There. Sorry. So. What do you have in mind, then?”

  “I’m in the financial end of high tech. Venture capital. Lots of little startups in dedicated incubators all over the U.S.: Silicon Valley, of course, Chapel Hill, Seattle, the Boston corridor, Chicago, Pittsburgh. Well, let’s just say I’m everywhere.”

  He had a warm, genuine laugh. Do not be taken in by it.

  “Anyway, Dr. Shawe . . .” He cleared his throat. “I . . . I could use your help. I . . . it’s . . .” A long beat.

  Why had his confident boasting suddenly turned hesitant? Hmm . . . “I’m listening.”

  “It’s . . . it’s personal, you see . . . I need a doc. But the right . . . most docs . . .” Another pause, this one longer. “You’ll be delighted with the compensation, by the way,” he added quickly.

  “I’m not sure . . .” Anne wasn’t really a clinician. Not since just after med school. And sh
e had little interest in taking on a patient. Besides, she lacked any of the paperwork to practice medicine in the States. On the other hand, maybe she could consult. She definitely needed some sort of new project. A job. Anything to divert her from Gaelan Erceldoune. Just enough to see her through . . . No. Not a good idea. Not before she know more about this Preston Alcott fellow. “Look, I’m on holiday right now. For an extended period. I’ve been through a bit of an ordeal and—” She typed his name in her browser address bar.

  “Where?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I mean, are you here in the U.S.? Or the Caribbean? South of France? Mallorca? Greenland? Where do you Brits . . . holiday, anyway? I can be in the air in an hour and meet you . . . wherever. I’m anxious to . . . I’m used to transactions on the fast track. Mine is a business of minutes. Five minutes late, and another guy swoops in. Of course, this isn’t about my business, like I said. It’s personal. Very. And I don’t want to discuss it over the phone.”

  A flood of matches scrolled down her ten-inch screen. Page one was all business and biography. The meteoric rise of the thirty-five-year-old multibillionaire Preston Alcott, founder of DigitX services, which drew the increasingly Internet-entangled world ever closer with his holographic meeting service. “HoliNar: like being there, only better.”

  Ah. That Preston Alcott. Anne had attended two HoliNar-hosted meetings over the past year. Impressive—and it was almost like live. So. What interest would he have in her? Did he want to step things up further, with some sort of bio-component? Remote medical exams? Virtual genetic testing? Intriguing possibilities there. No. He’d said it was personal, not professional.

  “Dr. Shawe, are you still—”

  “Sorry. Got distracted. You were saying . . . Actually, can you give me a minute? Sorry.”

  She clicked “Next,” taking her to the second of an infinite number of pages and 2,762,587 hits. She stopped at hit number three.