by Gigi Pandian
I was done playing things safe. I had to find out what was going on.
“Lucien is dead,” I said.
The platter of cookies dropped to the floor, as did Percy’s phone. The screen cracked as it struck the hardwood floor. He left it where it lay.
I could have sworn Percy’s reaction was genuine. Unlike his sincere expressions of regret from earlier that day, this was true shock.
“You saw him? Where?”
“He’s the dead body they found in the woods.”
The color drained from Percy’s face. “But you said—I mean, how—?”
“I know you lied about Lucien being the one to ransack my attic and basement in search of Non Degenera Alchemia. It was you.” I yanked the icepack from his head and pulled back his hair.
He howled with pain.
“It’s only a scratch,” I said. “It stopped bleeding right away. You didn’t even bother reapplying bandages after your shower. You also didn’t back up your lie by breaking down the door to get inside. You unlocked the door with the key I lent you—which you’re going to give back to me. Now. Did you think keeping track of your lies wasn’t necessary because I trusted you?”
“How can you—”
“Your most convincing lie was that you believe that silly legend about alchemists not being able to kill anyone.” I let go of his hair and let him sink back onto the couch.
“It’s true!”
“How can it possibly be true when you’re the one who killed Lucien?”
“I would never. I could never. It was awful with Father—” Percy stopped himself.
Ambrose? My heart beat furiously in my throat. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” He clutched his head in his hands. “I’m in shock over hearing that Lucien is dead. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“What was awful with Ambrose?”
“Nothing. Truly. I didn’t mean anything.”
“Yes, you did. When you tell the truth, you lose the cocky tilt of your head. You did it a moment ago. That means you didn’t know Lucien was dead—I stand corrected there. I believe you about that.”
“Why are you looking at me like that, Zoe? You’re scaring me.”
“You believe that old wives’ tale from personal experience.” My pulse raced. “Did Ambrose find out you had turned to backward alchemy, and that’s the real reason he killed himself? No … Oh God, Percy, was your father’s suicide the death you needed?” With Percy providing no answers, my imagination began running wild with horrible thoughts. The room spun. I couldn’t catch my breath.
“You’re unbalanced, Zoe. You always were.”
My focus snapped to Percy. The spoiled little man who only superficially resembled his father. The physical similarities were striking, but not their souls. “I’ve never been more clear-headed,” I said. “I’ve always worked to protect the people I love.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“You don’t understand everything that’s going on, Percy. I’m someone with nothing left to lose.”
Percy tried to stand. I pushed him back onto the couch and stood over him. His beautiful eyes, so like his father’s in appearance but not spirit, opened wide with fear.
“This is how it’s going to go,” I said. “You’re going to tell me the truth about what happened to Ambrose.”
Percy’s eyes filled with tears. “I never meant to hurt either of you. I only wanted what you had. Can’t you understand that? It was so easy for you. Not for me.”
“What happened with your father? And what does it have to do with that stupid superstition?”
“You don’t know that it’s stupid, Zoe. You didn’t believe backward alchemy was real at first either.”
“That’s different. The death rotation makes sense. It’s sacrificing one element for another, or even one living being’s energy for another’s.” I thought of how creating Dorian’s Tea of Ashes depleted my own energy. “If anything, killing should make a backward alchemist stronger, not kill him.” I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. But alchemy is science, and that’s what made sense scientifically.
“How would you know?” Percy snapped. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you don’t know. It would kill you—or, if you’re strong, only bring you to the brink of death.” Percy’s lower lip trembled. The shaking spread to his whole body. He truly believed what he was saying; he truly was afraid of something.
“Oh God, Percy. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” he said too quickly. “I’m not talking about myself.” His eyes didn’t meet mine.
“What did you do?”
“I told you—nothing! I didn’t mean to do it. It was Father’s fault. And yours. The more I think about it, it was your fault. You put him in that awful place. That’s why it happened.”
“Why what happened?” I’d had no choice about sending Ambrose to Charenton Asylum. I was worried he would harm himself. The psychiatric hospital was known for its humanitarian treatment of patients, unlike so many other “lunatic asylums” of the time. It had been good for him, even though in the end they hadn’t been able to stop him from taking his own life. But that couldn’t have been what Percy was talking about.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You’re a bully. You always were.”
I stared at the stranger in front of me; funny how the resemblance to his father faded more with every passing moment. Ambrose had been generous to a fault, never petulant or petty. “I’ve always showed you kindness, Percy. Always.”
“By rubbing my nose in your own perfection? By stealing my father from me?”
“Is that what you think I did?”
“He didn’t tell you everything, Zoe. My father is the one who told me about Lucien and Olav. He’s the one who told me how I could find the backward alchemists.” In my stunned silence, Percy rose and pushed past me.
“No, he would never—”
“You don’t know everything.” Percy rolled onto his heels and thrust his chin out, the same spoiled mannerism he’d had when he was twenty. Yet, he hadn’t regained control of his quivering body. He wasn’t nearly as confident as he wanted to appear.
“Sit down, Percival,” I said in my most commanding voice. “You’re going to tell me exactly what you’ve been dancing around. What do you know about Ambrose being in the asylum?”
He snorted. “Why would I tell you anything?”
I drew a deep breath and took a huge gamble. I could have played more on his superstitions, but there was a seed of a good man in Percy that I hoped I wasn’t mistaken about.
“Because you’re not a bad man, Percy. You never were. You’re weak, though. Whatever you’re holding in is what’s killing you even more quickly. The weight is crushing your soul.”
“I’m dying anyway, Zoe.” Percy closed his eyes. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Was he praying? When he opened his eyes, I caught a glimmer of humility in them.
“I might as well die with a clean conscience,” Percy said. “My father didn’t kill himself.”
Thirty-Two
“The story begins,” Percy said, “when I came back to Paris to see someone. A woman.”
Of course, I thought to myself.
“I didn’t visit you and Father,” he continued, “because you believed me dead. I had no choice but to let you believe that. They forced me—”
“Stop with the excuses. If you want to die with a clear conscience, you need to own up to your actions.”
Percy nodded, but the motion was erratic, as if he was battling himself. “Lucien kept an eye on you and Father when you were in Paris,” he said with a trembling voice. “He knew that Father was raving about alchemy after you put him in Charenton Asylum. He was going to ruin alchemy for
all of us. He shouldn’t have been in that asylum.”
“I believed it to be for the best,” I said through my tightly clenched jaw. “He was distraught when he thought you’d died. He thought he’d failed you as a father, that it was his fault you were so unhappy, even though he’d given you everything he possibly could. He was talking about hurting himself.”
“Instead,” Percy said, “his actions threatened to hurt all of us.”
“They believed him a mad man, Percy. Nobody took his ravings about alchemy seriously. He also talked about how he’d opened the gates of Hell at the Cabaret de L’Enfer. Which obviously wasn’t true.”
Percy grunted. “You thought you were so much better than him because you hated nightclubs.”
I clenched my teeth. Percy was the type of man who thought he understood everything, even if he only had a small sliver of the truth.
I had rarely accompanied Ambrose when he went to le Cabaret de L’Enfer nightclub. Not because I didn’t appreciate the macabre beauty or the dancing, but because staying awake late into the night has always been a challenge for me. Ambrose understood that, and he went out of his way to bring me the joys of the nighttime I otherwise would have missed.
The memory washed over me. One winter morning, nearly a century ago, Ambrose had awakened me a few minutes before dawn with a wicked grin on his face. “I have something to show you,” he’d said. “Put on your dancing shoes.” He’d discovered how to sneak into the nightclub while it was closed. While most of Paris slept but my own energy was surging, he lifted me onto his shoulders and helped me squeeze through a narrow window with a faulty latch. Once inside, I let him in through a larger door. He lifted two glasses from behind the bar and poured us drinks from the bottle of claret he’d brought with him. Carvings of devils and imps hung from the walls. Like the debated purpose of gargoyles, it was unclear whether the inhuman creatures were there to warn revelers or to tempt them. As the sun rose above Paris, Ambrose spun me around and around on the dance floor we had to ourselves.
“They could have believed his rantings,” Percy said, shattering the memory. “He could have revealed everything. That’s why Lucien asked me to visit Father and talk sense into him.”
I bit back tears. I didn’t want to hear the rest of the story.
“We looked alike, he and I,” Percy continued. “That’s what made it possible. I approached the gates of Charenton, pretending that I was Father and that I’d escaped. I couldn’t very well walk in as a visitor, as I was supposed to be dead.” Percy ran a shaking hand through his dark hair that was so like his father’s. “As I expected, a nurse opened the gates for me, letting me inside. She was such a tiny thing, with a fragile heart-shaped face, I don’t know how she could work in such a place. It was easy to administer the chloroform. I didn’t hurt her. She was asleep before she knew what was happening. With her keys, I let myself into Father’s room. He was the one who became violent. Not me. I only meant to talk sense into him.”
Percy was pacing furiously now and knocked over the coffee table, but he didn’t seem to notice. I barely noticed either. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t have been how my beloved Ambrose spent his last moments on earth.
“He must have been forced to take drugs or something that made him crazed. It wasn’t my fault. I did only what I had to do to save myself. He said I was a hallucination sent there by God, telling him to reveal alchemy to the world.” Percy’s voice shook. His eyes darted around the room, looking everywhere but at me. “It was the exact opposite of what I meant to achieve. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was an accident. I was only trying to stop him shouting, blurting out our secrets. My hands went around his neck—”
He broke off in a sob as I felt myself crumpling onto the velvet couch. Instead of feeling soft and comforting, the texture was like razor blades. The asylum had found Ambrose with a broken neck. They told me he’d hung himself.
“When I stopped,” Percy whispered, “it was too late. He was dead, and I was nearly dead myself.” He continued through hiccupping sobs. “It took all the strength I had to get myself out of there. Lucien had to take care of me while I recovered. I w-w-was lucky to survive.”
Percy was bawling by now. My normal instincts to comfort and heal were absent. I couldn’t find it in me to forgive the man who’d killed Ambrose. He’d felt such guilt that it sickened him to the point of feeling like he was going to die. He wasn’t an evil man, but I couldn’t look at him for one more second.
“Get out,” I said. “I never want to see you again.”
Thirty-Three
I was shaking so much that I could barely shove Percy’s bag into his arms and lock the door behind him. I somehow got the door bolted before sliding down onto the floor.
I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. I was too numb from shock. I’d grieved for Ambrose, but this was different. Yet strangely, along with my horror, I also felt a sliver of peace.
Ambrose had grieved for his son. He’d lost himself in his guilt over finding the Elixir of Life when his only son could not, and he found it difficult to move on in the months that followed Percy’s supposed death. But he hadn’t been so lost that he’d taken his own life.
I gripped the wallet in my hand. As I’d shoved Percy’s bag into his arms, I’d also lifted his wallet. It was done sloppily with shaking hands, but he’d been too upset to notice. There were still many blanks about Percy’s current situation, but I couldn’t bear to keep asking him questions. I hoped the wallet would provide some answers.
I took several deep breaths and picked up the coffee table Percy had knocked over. The simple action gave me a measure of reality to focus on. By the time I’d collected the books and newspapers that had fallen to the floor, I had mostly stopped shaking. I sat down on the couch and opened the wallet. Percival Smythe had a driver’s license from Britain with an address in London, a membership card for a gym in a town in a suburb of Paris, and a library card from Edinburgh. A black credit card and several hundred dollars in cash indicated he was living well.
Two photographs were tucked inside the wallet. The first photograph was of Percy and a glamorous young woman. They sat together at a Parisian café, a cigarette in her hand and a pipe in his. They weren’t looking at the camera, but at each other. She looked like a movie star. She reminded me of an actress from a 1930s Charlie Chan movie.
The other photograph was a faded black-and-white picture of Ambrose. The print was nearly worn through in the center, as if fingers had run over its surface many times. Percy had saved the photograph of his father and looked at it countless times. Damn. I couldn’t dismiss him as completely heartless.
A tentative knock sounded on the front door.
“Zoe?” The voice was hesitant. “You don’t have to look at me again, but I think my wallet fell out. Could you check the couch cushions?”
If it hadn’t been for that well-loved photo of Ambrose, I wouldn’t have opened the door. But now …
I opened the door and pressed the wallet into Percy’s hands. “I hope you find peace before you die, Percy. But never show your face here again.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “For everything.”
By the time I locked the door again, my anger hadn’t subsided, but it was a calmer rage. Clarity washed over me, showing me an important fact.
Percy was either one of the world’s greatest actors, or he truly felt remorse over killing his father. He wholeheartedly believed the myth that alchemists can’t kill one another without suffering grave consequences, and thought it was this old wives’ tale that had brought him to death’s door, not his own guilt. I would have bet my gold locket that he sincerely believed he’d nearly died from the wrath of a magical legend.
Meaning he couldn’t have killed Lucien.
Filled with a confusing mix of fury and anticipation, I couldn’t stand to be indoors. I went out to the backyard and s
tepped into the garden. It was a clear, crisp night. Pinpricks of stars dotted the indigo sky above. Amidst the sorrel, garlic, and nasturtiums, I breathed in the early-summer scents.
A desperate sound escaped my lips, half laughter and half sob. Finding a backward alchemist had been a distraction, not Dorian’s salvation. An experienced backward alchemist had died because he came to Portland in search of Non Degenera Alchemia, and a less experienced one wasn’t able to tell me anything truly helpful. All Percy had done was devastate me.
I lay down in the garden, not bothering to look at which plants were beneath me. I didn’t mind that I happened to be in the midst of blackberry brambles. I took pleasure in the pain of the thorns pricking my skin. It was a distraction from the mess of a situation I had to climb out of. I stared up at the star-filled sky.
I’d wasted too much of my life wallowing. Five minutes was enough time to compose myself. I had a gargoyle to save.
I brushed the brambles from my hair and clothes and went back inside to climb the stairs to the attic. There, surrounded by my alchemical and healing artifacts, I emailed Dorian to tell him I’d kicked Percy out.
I can come home? he emailed back immediately. Tres bién. Julian Lake’s housekeeper does not like me. She is suspicious that I will not let her see my visage. I believe she will try to sneak into my bedchamber tonight—little does she know I do not sleep!
It’s not late enough for you to walk across town, I wrote back. I’ll pick you up at the end of his driveway in 20 minutes.
On the drive across town, I second-guessed everything I’d done not only that day, but since deciding to leave Paris several days ago. If I had stayed in Paris, how would things have played out with Lucien?
I pulled up in front of Julian Lake’s estate. House wasn’t a big enough word to describe the castle-like mansion, complete with stone lions standing guard. I didn’t plan on walking up to the house and ringing the doorbell, so I idled the engine and waited with my thoughts.
A hunched figure in a black cape carrying a small satchel sprinted across the lawn. His bad leg gave him a limp, but it didn’t slow him much. He looked rather like a hunchbacked Little Red Riding Hood with a book-shaped picnic basket.
