The Elusive Elixir

by Gigi Pandian

  I stared at him. “Jasper?” I whispered. “Jasper died in the fire?” My God. Poor Jasper. I always believed he’d been a coward and had run off when the war began. It wasn’t as simple to find people in those days.

  “Aha!” Madame Leblanc exclaimed. “You admit you were alive in 1942.”

  My shoulders shook. “My grandmother mentioned him often. He helped her with the store.”

  “Yes,” Gilbert said. “The shop called …” He consulted his notes again. “Elixir.”

  “Yes, that was my grandmother’s shop. But I didn’t realize anyone was killed, or that the police would investigate such an old fire.”

  “There’s no statute of limitation on murder, mademoiselle.”

  “Murder?”

  “The fire was arson. The person who owned that shop is quite possibly a murderer.”

  Five

  A murderer? A murderer. A. Murderer.

  My brain was having trouble processing the information. Slipping up and being found out to be over 300 years old, I could understand. But a murderer?

  “There must be some mistake,” I said. “I—my grandmother, she wouldn’t have killed anyone.”

  “We all think we know people,” the policeman said in his heavily accented English, “but we do not truly know the depths of their souls.”

  What an utterly French thing to say. Under other circumstances, I would have been amused, and perhaps had a conversation with him about Sartre or Foucault.

  “You say she is dead?” he continued.

  “Yes. Many years ago.”

  “Where is she buried?”

  “What? Buried? No, she was cremated.”

  “At what crematorium?”

  “I have no idea. My mother was the one who handled it.”

  “Where can we find your mother?”

  “She died many years ago too.” My head throbbed. “Why do you need that information?”

  “We need to confirm your grandmother is truly deceased. You must understand, she has been on the run since 1942. What is it you Americans say? On the lam?”

  My mind raced as I willed hazy memories to come into focus. The fire had been an accident, started by someone trying to stay warm, and nobody had died. But what if that wasn’t true? What if the fire that drove me from Paris had been deliberately set, and had killed Jasper?

  Who would have done that? And why hadn’t I known?

  It was the fire that had prompted my immediate departure from France in 1942, but I’d been ready to move on. Ambrose, the man I loved, had killed himself several years before, after the death of his son Percy had driven him insane, so there was nothing keeping me in Paris.

  I still felt this policeman must be mistaken, but I thought back on that place and time, so different than today. In Paris during the Occupation, the rules of life were different. People looked out for each other on an individual level more than in times of peace, but at the same time, authorities had more pressing problems than sorting out the aftermath of a fire that seemed to be accidental.

  After Paris was taken, an underground network sprang up that made it possible to travel to neutral European countries and leave for the United States from there. I’d left with a family that was fleeing Paris with a sick child. One of their daughters, Cecily, was stricken with influenza and shouldn’t have been traveling at all, but the family insisted it was more dangerous to stay in the city. Ambrose and Percy were dead and my shop was destroyed, so I took the opportunity to help Cecily and start anew. I’d been so focused on administering to the child and hurriedly packing the intact half of my shop that I hadn’t sought out the authorities to make an official report. It wasn’t the kind of thing that mattered at the time.

  “I’m truly sorry to have distressed you, mademoiselle.” Gendarme Gilbert’s demeanor shifted. He appeared genuinely distressed to have upset me.

  “I know you’re only doing your duty.” I looked at his young face, which might not have been as young as I originally suspected. As he leaned across the small table, I saw that his skin was drawn and sallow, especially around his eyes. He wasn’t sleeping well. I found myself thinking of tinctures that might help him.

  I shook off my natural inclinations and got back to the matter at hand. “I can look into the information you requested, but it will take time. I simply can’t imagine … Can you tell me more about the fire?”

  A shrug. “I do not have all of the details. It was only my aunt’s call that alerted me and caused me to make inquiries. I’m not sure how much you know about the French police, but this is not my jurisdiction. I am not with the Police Nationale.” Another shrug. “But my aunt is a persistent woman.”

  “I understand,” I said, wondering what a Leblanc family Christmas was like.

  “The crime did not come to light at the time but was noted after the war. Perhaps it was disguised as a casualty of war by the person who owned this shop.” He paused and consulted a palm-sized notebook. “Yes, the murderer had intimate knowledge of the shop. A note was made in l’ordinateur—comment dites-vous?”

  “She understands French,” Madame Leblanc said. “She knows you said computer.”

  “Bon,” he continued. “A note was made on the computer decades ago when the records were entered in, but no suspects had been found. Alors, it was forgotten. Until my aunt called me today.”

  “I see.”

  “In this modern age, forensics can find many things that were once not possible. Again, I am sorry to have distressed you! You look like an honest woman, mademoiselle. You are too young and innocent to have this burden.” He shook his head. “If you give me your word that you will send me evidence of your grandmother’s cremation, I see no reason to confiscate your passport. But if you do not—”

  “Gilbert!” Madame Leblanc cut in abruptly. Her face flushed. “You’re letting her go? I remembered the dead man found in the shop after she left and called you to exact justice, yet you betray me?”

  “Tante, what can I do? This woman was not even alive in 1942. She is not responsible for anything that happened seventy-five years ago.”

  What had happened all those years ago? Killing is the antithesis of what true alchemy stands for. It chilled my 300-year-old blood to think I could have been so close to a murder and not prevented it.

  Alchemy is about life, not death. Alchemical transformations strengthen and purify the basic nature of both inanimate objects and people. Corrupted metals being transmuted into pure gold and mortal people stopping the deterioration of their bodies. The Philosopher’s Stone and the resulting Elixir of Life are found through rigorous scientific study and focused pure intent.

  We alchemists aren’t immortal. It’s an oversimplification to say the Elixir of Life is a path to living forever. We can be killed; we simply don’t age in the same way as normal people. It’s a science that the world hasn’t proven ready to embrace. Those of us who’ve gone public have rarely met with a good end. That’s why there was no way I was speaking up now.

  I felt the gold locket I wore around my neck, with a miniature painting of my brother and a photograph of Ambrose. I’d always felt responsible for the deaths of my little brother and the man I’d loved with all my heart. Was I responsible for Jasper’s death, too?

  “This is very serious, you understand. I realize she is your grandmother, but if we find you are shielding her because she is elderly—”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m trusting you, mademoiselle.”

  I nodded in what I hoped was a show of meek acquiescence. One of the advantages of looking young is that people underestimate you. Even when I truly was only twenty-eight, most people had no idea what I was capable of. I was an accomplished simpler—a person especially good with plants—by the time I was a teenager, and I unlocked alchemy’s deepest secrets a decade later.

  “I am truly sorry
about your grandmother,” Gendarme Gilbert said. “I hate to see it trouble you so. Remember her for the woman you knew. You are not the same woman as she, not responsible for her deeds.”

  I stole a glance at Blanche Leblanc. She wasn’t convinced.

  The world is a constantly changing place. Technological advances made it both easier and harder to hide. Yet I’ve always found that the best way to stay safe is to hide in plain sight. I was so certain I would no longer know anyone in Paris. It never occurred to me that a child would remember me.

  I tossed a handful of Euros on the table and fled from the ambush. It took every ounce of my willpower not to break into a sprint as soon as I stepped out of the café. When I turned the corner, I ran.

  My chest burned. I was still weak. Too weak to be running across Paris from a threat out of the past.

  I was out of breath and wheezing when I unlocked the heavy blue door to my building, pushed on the thick brass knocker in the middle of the door, and used the worn wooden railing to pull myself up the three flights of stairs. My lungs were on fire by the time I reached my apartment. I caught my breath and bolted the door behind me.

  In addition to my pounding heart and burning lungs, my ears buzzed. At first I thought it was the stress of the situation taking over my whole body, but then I saw the source of the sound—half a dozen bees circled outside the kitchen window. Though I’d wrapped Non Degenera Alchemia well, it wasn’t good enough. Its scent was still attracting bees. Not the musty scent of a decaying antique book, but the smell of sweet honey and spicy cloves. It was as if the book was aging backwards.

  I walked across the main room to the kitchenette. A wood-framed window of thick glass separated me from the bees. I wasn’t normally frightened of the small insects. They lived in harmony with nature and were essential to the plant cycle of life. But these bees … I looked more closely. One of the swarm flew away. I hoped his comrades would follow suit. And then I saw my mistake. The bee that had flown away hadn’t given up. He was giving himself space to achieve more speed. He flew straight at the window. I jumped back as he smashed the glass with a splat. His fuzzy body fell to the window sill below.

  I looked away and shivered. I didn’t want to end up like the kamikaze bee. I hadn’t yet found what I needed to in Paris, but how could I risk what would happen if I stayed?

  There was no way to prove Zoe Faust from 1942 was dead, because she wasn’t. I’d have to fake a death certificate, which was possible but inadvisable. I keep my secret by being careful, and the one man I knew who could forge documents was dead. Plus it would take time I didn’t have. If I remained in Paris, I risked bringing my secret into the open. My life would be under a dangerous level of scrutiny, especially with Madame Leblanc and forensic evidence to fuel the accusations.

  I lit a burner and set a kettle of water on the stove. Tea would replenish my body, calm my nerves, and allow me to think. As I contemplated my options, a knock sounded on the door.

  “I know you are inside, Zoe Faust,” Madame Leblanc’s voice echoed through the door. “I have the information about your past that you crave. I can tell you what my nephew cannot.”

  Six

  I flung open the door and immediately regretted it. Though I was careful about leaving any evidence of alchemy in the open, I hadn’t been expecting guests and hadn’t taken stock of what was visible at the moment.

  “What do you want?” I stood blocking the doorway.

  “I want the truth,” Madame Leblanc said. “In return, I will tell you what you wish to know.”

  I gripped the side of the door, hesitating with the door open barely wide enough to see all of Madame Leblanc’s face.

  “The reason I remember you so clearly,” she continued, “enough to know the truth that you and your ‘grandmother’ are one in the same, is because the image of that man, Jasper Dubois, is seared into my mind. I will never forget it.”

  “What did you see?” My heart beat in my throat.

  “When the ashes from the fire were cleared, my friend Suzette and I played in the ruins. We were five years old. We were the ones who found him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I meant it. What an awful discovery for a child to make.

  She tilted her head in acknowledgment of the sympathy.

  “My grandmother didn’t tell me that Jasper was still in Paris when the fire broke out,” I said. Had he been hiding from me?

  “You are either wrong or lying. This is why I called my nephew. Jasper Dubois did not perish in the fire. He was stabbed to death.”

  I didn’t have time to react because a precocious bee had squeezed its way through a joint in the thick window frame. It flew straight toward Madame Leblanc. It landed on her wrist. She swore creatively and slapped her hand. The dead bee fell to the floor, but not before it left its stinger in her tender flesh. She pulled up her sleeve and I caught a brief glimpse of a black tattoo on her forearm. Had she been branded by a concentration camp? Was the discovery of a body one of her last memories of childhood freedom?

  “Come inside,” I said, my mood involuntarily softening. I could never resist helping people when I had the resources to do so. Refusing assistance wasn’t in my nature. “I have a calendula salve that should help the sting.”

  Madame Leblanc gave me a curious look. She hesitated for only a moment, then followed me inside and accepted the salve.

  “You should—” I began.

  “I know how to apply a salve. I’m familiar with most forms of medicines. Getting old has as many frustrations as it does pleasures. I do envy you.”

  “My grandmother taught me—”

  She snorted. “Grandmother.”

  “You truly believe in witchcraft, madame? I’m sorry it’s disturbing that I look so much like my grandmother.”

  Madame Leblanc walked to the narrow kitchen window overlooking the courtyard.

  “Those must be fragrant flowers in the window sill. I have never seen so many bees.” She closed her eyes and swayed.

  “Can I offer you a seat?”

  “You are still as kind as you always were,” she said, refusing the seat and standing as tall as her frail frame allowed. “But this is not over. You may be able to fool the rest of the world, but I know you are the same woman who disguised a murder as an accident. I will be sure Gilbert uncovers the truth about what you did to poor Jasper Dubois. My nephew will figure out what you did—and I will figure out what you are.”

  With that she tossed her silk scarf across her shoulder and turned on her designer heel. “Au revoir, Zoe Faust,” she called out from down the hallway. “For now.”

  Standing stunned in my doorway, I wondered where I’d gone wrong. My plan had seemed so simple a week ago. The book that had brought Dorian to life had pointed the way to Notre Dame. It was here I would find the last piece of the puzzle to save Dorian’s life.

  Only it hadn’t proven that simple.

  I’d been naïve in thinking Paris would hold obvious answers. I’d been hopeful because I hadn’t known about Notre Dame’s history with backward alchemists until Dorian’s book caught on fire that spring. Instead of reducing the book to ash, the fire had brought forth hidden ink and revealed its connection to the cathedral. The unexpected transformation was significant, I knew, yet I couldn’t see what exactly it told me about Notre Dame. I was missing something.

  I thought the second living gargoyle might shed light on the solution. Unfortunately because I wasn’t an academic, an architect, or a stone carver, I’d been refused access to the gargoyle who was trapped in stone. The university’s staff studying the bizarrely posed statue didn’t realize a living being was trapped inside, and I couldn’t very well tell them. I had to find another way to see the creature. And until now, I thought I’d have time to do so.

  I also wondered if there might be other backward alchemists out there. If there were, they might b
e able to help me. I hadn’t been able to decipher parts of Dorian’s backward alchemy book, which wasn’t surprising since alchemy is filled with secrets, obfuscation, and codes. Most alchemists learn through a combination of personal experimentation in a laboratory and an apprenticeship with a mentor. I hadn’t worked with a mentor since studying with Nicolas Flamel nearly three centuries ago, and I’d fled from my training before it was complete. I was only in touch with one alchemist—a former slave, Tobias Freeman, who hadn’t studied alchemy formally either, and who didn’t know any alchemists besides me. Even among properly educated alchemists, most don’t know each other because secrecy and suspicion are so ingrained in our training that we hide the truth from everyone. There was no one to help me.

  In other words, my trip had been a bust. And now, on top of everything, there was the murder of Jasper Dubois. What had I gotten myself into by returning to Paris after all these years?

  I locked the apartment door and breathed deeply. I closed my eyes, but the buzzing of the bees prevented me from relaxing. Rooting through drawers, I found a roll of tape and sealed the joints of the war-time building’s window frame to foil the bees.

  I wished I could call Tobias to think through my dilemma. But there was nothing more my one true alchemist friend could tell me about backward alchemy or alchemy’s connection to Notre Dame, since he’d had even less formal training than I’d had. It was his nonjudgmental friendship I craved.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to burden him. Not now. Though I knew he’d want to help me, he had his own life-and-death situation to deal with. He was caring for his wife of sixty years, Rosa, who was dying of old age in their home in Detroit. Rosa wasn’t an alchemist and had continued to age. Still, Tobias and Rosa had loved each other for more joyous years than most of us get.

  Instead I sat down, pulled out my phone, and searched for references to Jasper Dubois online. Millions of hits, but none of them my Jasper. Narrowing the search, I found reference to the 1942 fire in a French library’s online newspaper archives. It was only a small article, providing no insights. Much more space was devoted to the war. I wouldn’t find answers with the tools of the modern world.