Elixir

by Hilary Duff

  Finally Rayna pulled up to the airport curb and let us out. I had been concentrating on Sage so hard the whole ride that I was shocked to see Rayna had tears in her eyes. I hugged her tightly, and when we pulled back, we didn’t let go.

  “Call me,” she said. “Let me know you’re okay … with everything. I’ll worry, and I’m not good at worrying. I don’t do it a lot.”

  I leaned close, touching our foreheads together and looking her straight in the eyes. “I will be fine,” I said. “You will never lose me.”

  I didn’t know if I believed it, but it was her line, and I knew she’d appreciate that I was turning it around for her. We hugged again, then she grabbed Ben’s arm and whispered in his ear, “Look out for her, okay?” Ben promised he would. Rayna gave Sage a cold stare. She walked back to her car and drove away.

  Inside, none of us spoke as Sage bought our tickets and we went through security, then walked to our gate. Sage sat first. I wondered if he’d actually get up and move away if I tried to sit next to him.

  Ben moved close to me and lowered his voice. “Want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head. “Want to go for a walk?”

  “Yeah.”

  I wondered if Sage bothered to look at me as we walked away. I wouldn’t turn back and check. It would be too awful if he didn’t even care enough to look. How had everything changed so much in just one night?

  Ben waited until we’d put some distance behind us before he spoke.

  “I totally respect that you don’t want to talk about it. You don’t have to. At all. I just want to know … did he hurt you?”

  “Ben …”

  “Just tell me—did he hurt you?” The words scratched out of Ben’s throat. I realized his whole body had tensed, and his hands had balled into fists.

  Yes, he did. Horribly. In this life and probably all the others.

  “No,” I said. “He didn’t. I’m fine. I promise.”

  It was the biggest lie I could possibly ever tell. I sold it hard. I even smiled and squeezed Ben’s hand to prove it was true.

  In a long breath, Ben let out all his tension. “Okay, good.”

  How had I ever doubted that Ben loved me? It seemed so obvious now. I wondered if things would have been different if I’d known it a year ago, before I ever saw Sage. If I’d spent a year loving Ben, would the pictures of Sage have had the same effect on me? Would I have even noticed him? Would he have even been in the pictures, or would he have dissolved away, our connection broken because I’d found someone else?

  I could make that choice now, I realized. I could block out every memory of the seismic activity Sage inspired in me and instead commit to concentrating on everything sweet, easy, and wonderful I felt about Ben. Even if I didn’t love Ben quite in the same way he loved me, I did love him. Wasn’t that enough? Ben would never torture me the way Sage was. He’d be good to me forever. All I’d have to do was kiss him, right now.

  I imagined myself doing it. Standing on tiptoe, wrapping my arms around his neck as I tilted my lips to his, and with that single kiss promising to be as faithful to him as he always had been to me, no matter what else happened.

  Instead I checked my watch. “We still have lots of time. Want to get some magazines?”

  “How about I buy you a coffee? I saw a store with a gingerbread mocha. You love ginger—you’ll go crazy for it.”

  “Never going to happen, Ben. Never,” I lilted as I walked off, officially stepping away from the rapids and back into the simple currents of our friendship.

  Sage still hadn’t moved by the time we got back to the gate. He didn’t look up, either.

  I felt a small flicker of anger leap into my chest.

  Yes. That was better. That made me feel stronger.

  How dare he? After what we did last night, how the hell dare he?

  If he was my soulmate, my soul needed to develop better taste.

  I strode toward him and sat next to him. He didn’t get up and leave. He also didn’t look my way.

  I wasn’t letting him get away with it anymore.

  “Look at me, Sage.”

  I saw his jaw muscle working. He didn’t move.

  “Into my eyes. Look at me.”

  He did. As always, I saw the truth there. His feelings hadn’t changed from last night, but something had.

  “Don’t play games with me. I deserve better than that. If you want to leave me, just leave. I don’t need you to find the Elixir or my dad.”

  “I’m leaving the minute I can.”

  That was it. He wasn’t even going to try and explain. I felt devastated inside, like the silent aftermath of a massive hurricane.

  Fine. I wasn’t going to beg. He could leave whenever he wanted. I was done.

  An hour later we were in the air, Sage across the aisle from Ben and me. Ben offered a cribbage game. I wasn’t in the mood. I willed myself not to think about Sage. I flipped through a magazine, I watched a movie for a bit … and finally I fell asleep.

  This time I didn’t dream about Sage. I dreamed about my father. It was such a simple dream. Dad, Mom, and I back home doing nothing of any consequence: eating dinner together and teasing Mom for going on one of her random and bizarre homemade cooking jags; Dad bent over the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle—much harder than Sunday’s—and recruiting Mom’s and my help; all of us cuddled up and watching TV together: Dad with his arm around Mom, me sprawled out across the couch, wrapped in an afghan, my head resting on Dad’s leg. Dad looked a little older, a little thinner, but he was fine. He was there. The whole year he’d been missing was a distant memory now, something we didn’t dwell on because we’d moved so completely past it.

  It didn’t feel like a dream, it felt like a premonition. I woke up many hours later, just in time for our descent into Tokyo. The dream and the long sleep energized me. I felt hopeful. Optimism and drive surged through me like a shot of straight caffeine. I was suddenly sure we could succeed, but only if we worked together. That meant Sage too, and he couldn’t help if he and I weren’t speaking.

  My feelings didn’t matter right now. After we found the dark lady, after we found the Elixir, after we found my father, then I could deal with Sage rejecting me. Until then I didn’t have the luxury of being heartbroken.

  I surprised both Sage and Ben with my upbeat small talk as we trekked through the airport, waited for the bus, then took the long ride to Shibuya station. I don’t think either of them expected me to sound so positive and chipper. That was my new attitude though—anything to make the team work.

  We stopped at a hotel in Shibuya and got a couple of rooms. We hoped to find Magda right away, but in case we didn’t, we needed a place to stay. We also wanted to drop off our bags. We did everything as quickly as we could, but it was still past sundown by the time we emerged onto the street.

  Shibuya felt like Times Square, crammed with towering buildings, each covered in blinking lights and shining neon signs and constantly changing video billboards that threatened to overload the senses. Cars whizzed by in a constant stream, their headlights adding to the visual blur.

  We saw it right away: the soaring cylinder of Shibuya’s top fashion store, its electric pink 109 blazing through the night sky. It seemed like the least likely place to find the key to an ancient mystery, and for just a moment I wondered if we could have possibly misunderstood my dad’s messages.

  No. They were clear. As incongruous as it seemed, we were in the right place.

  When we were just across the street from it, I turned to Sage. “Have you ever been to this part of Tokyo?” I asked.

  “A couple times.”

  “This is my favorite part.”

  That was when the traffic lights changed and all the cars stopped, in every direction. Pedestrians flooded the intersection, filling crosswalks that ran every which way. We joined the mad scramble, walking among throngs of tourists from all over the world mixed with Japan’s hippest scenesters, all crammed into the street
and lit by the waiting headlights of cars, cabs, and buses.

  As we maneuvered through the crowds, I noticed people looking at us. It was weird. Young, giggling fashionistas weren’t the type who usually recognized me, but today they did. Pairs and groups of Japanese girls did double takes as we passed them, their eyes going wide as they clutched one another’s arms and waved their hands in front of their mouths, whispering and giggling. Some even snapped pictures with their wildly decorated cell phones.

  “Ho-ly crap,” Ben said, and I followed his openmouthed stare upward to the giant screen on the side of the QFront Building. It was airing some gossipy entertainment show … featuring the pictures of Ben and me at Carnival. Right now the one of him staring at me while I shot pictures of the Samba Parade was up, and while I couldn’t read Japanese, it wasn’t hard to imagine what the swirly pink script accented with hearts and flowers implied.

  Not that the look on his face needed any added explanation.

  A deafening sea of horns spurred us across the street, and we just made it to the curb before all Shibuya Crossing again flooded with traffic.

  “Wow, um, that’s … um …” Ben couldn’t even finish his sentence.

  “It’s trouble.” Sage sounded irritated. He nodded to another girl snapping my picture. “You don’t think that’s going up on the web?”

  I winced. He was right—we had a far bigger problem than Ben or me feeling embarrassed. We had worked so hard to remain off the grid, and now countless people had probably Tweeted and Facebooked my image all over the world. If Cursed Vengeance or the Saviors of Eternal Life were scanning the Internet and looking for me, they’d be rewarded soon enough.

  The Saviors of Eternal Life web forum I’d seen in Dad’s studio flashed into my mind. Should we check it to see if we’d been spotted?

  No, it wasn’t like it was comprehensive—it wouldn’t tell us anything for certain. It would be a waste of time.

  What we could do was get a little less conspicuous. After all, we were at the mall.

  We went inside Shibuya 109. Japanese pop music rang in our ears, and the hottest fashions leaped out of each crammed storefront. Every inch of its ten floors was packed with shoppers. Rayna would have gone nuts. She’d at least appreciate it if I did a little shopping while I was here.

  I asked Sage for the credit card, then ducked into the first store I saw that looked right. It took no time at all to grab a short black wig, large sunglasses, a pair of ripped jeans, and a tank top.

  I changed in the fitting room, then stepped out to find Ben at the entrance of another store, confused and transfixed by a pink Hello Kitty cell phone case absolutely covered in Swarovski crystals. As I watched him, he turned it curiously, then pressed a button on the side of the case. The crystal kitty head popped up to reveal a hidden compact mirror.

  “I think it’s you,” I chirped.

  Ben wheeled around and smiled approvingly. “I like it. Very Japanese.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I also got something for you.”

  “I’m not wearing a wig.”

  “You’re such a downer.” I handed him a baseball cap, then took off my camera case and slung it around his neck. “There: Generic American Tourist. No one will look twice at you.”

  “I’ll choose not to take that as an insult.”

  “You look fine,” Sage said, all business. “Let’s find The Little Door.”

  I checked the directory. “Sixth floor.”

  We raced upstairs to the store and asked for Magda Alessandri. We knew she might not be working this shift, but figured we could at least nail down when we might find her.

  But no one by that name worked in the store. On any shift.

  “So if she’s not here … where is she?” Ben asked.

  Neither Sage nor I had an answer.

  “Okay … maybe I was being too literal,” I said. “Maybe Dad’s note didn’t mean the store The Little Door. Maybe we’re supposed to be looking for an actual little door.”

  I would be the first to admit that it sounded odd, but I wasn’t sure what else to try.

  “So … we just search the entire mall looking for particularly tiny doors?” Sage asked drily.

  “I’m totally open to other ideas if you have them,” I said.

  Neither of them had another idea. We decided to be methodical: The cylindrical mall had ten stories, two of them below ground level, so our smartest move felt like heading downstairs and working our way up, looking into each store for anything that might qualify as a “little door,” then asking at those places for Magda. It was incredibly daunting, and it could take an insanely long time—far too long if the wrong people had seen us on the Web and were coming after us—but we didn’t see another way.

  We found very few little doors, and no Magdas at any of them. By the time we got to the top floor, we moved slowly, none of us wanting to believe the truth.

  We had failed.

  “Maybe Grant wrote the wrong coordinates on the board,” Ben finally said.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I argued. “If he went out of his way to etch tiny numbers inside a cribbage board, he’d be careful enough not to get them wrong.”

  “We’ve been through everything here,” Sage said. “Your father must have made a mistake.”

  “Stop saying that! It’s not possible!” I insisted. “I can’t believe you’re both ready to give up!”

  “It’s not giving up,” Ben said. “It’s just …” He let the sentence trail off, which said it all. He thought it was hopeless. Sage looked like he agreed.

  “You’re both wrong,” I said. “We must have missed something. We’ll come back tomorrow. And the next day if we have to. Maybe we spoke to the wrong people—people who don’t know Magda.”

  Neither Ben nor Sage answered, and neither of them would look me in the eye. They both knew we had a limited amount of time in Shibuya. We couldn’t avoid the people chasing us forever.

  Then Ben tilted his head, as if curious. He wandered away from Sage and me, down a hall. We’d seen it already—there wasn’t much there except bathrooms and the elevator.

  “Clea! Sage!” Ben called, and we joined him.

  “We’ve been so sure the little door is in one of the stores, but what if it isn’t? What if it’s tucked away somewhere?”

  Ben nodded to the door in front of him. It was a regular-size door labeled STAIRS in Japanese and English.

  “In a back stairwell?” Sage asked.

  “I guess it’s possible,” I said, “but how would a little door there get us to Magda Alessandri?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t take us to her directly,” Ben said. “Maybe it’s where we get another clue that’ll help us find her.”

  I nodded. It was frustrating to imagine yet another step before we found the dark lady, but at least Ben’s idea offered hope.

  “Let’s look,” I said.

  We opened the door and started down the staircase. The public rarely used this route. It was stark, and our footsteps echoed as we followed it down and down, floor after floor, until we reached B1, the top basement level.

  Nothing.

  “Clea—,” Sage began, but I cut him off.

  “Not yet. We’re not done yet.”

  “You’re right,” Ben said, and there was awe in his voice. “Look.”

  We’d reached a landing between the two basement floors … and there was a perfect little door at chest level on the wall.

  “Unbelievable,” I breathed. I reached out, turned the knob, and opened the door … to reveal a long hall, dimly lit by bare, low-wattage bulbs. I hoisted myself up and climbed inside the tiny entryway.

  Once through the door, the hall was tall enough to walk through easily, though everything was disconcertingly dim. We could see exposed insulation and metal beams, but not much else. No matter how softly we walked, our footsteps seemed to scream off the walls.

  The light grew brighter up ahead, and all three of us moved toward it, huddling close
together as we walked farther and farther away from the door and the outside world. Finally we reached the source of the light: a tiny, cramped room, every inch of which was packed with vases, tapestries, and strange, curious antiquities. A standing golden birdcage leaned over a low carved wooden pew, which rested under a huge mirror with a frame of black wrought-iron wilted roses. Shelves teemed with dark Fabergé eggs, carved nesting dolls painted like wild animals, ancient goblets and tureens tarnished and worn … everything dark, old, and mysterious in a way that made my stomach roil. The stench of the room didn’t help: It was musty and dank.

  We tiptoed in and peered around, but saw no one at all.

  I heard a creak and jumped, only to come face-to-face with an openmouthed stuffed bobcat, teeth bared for attack. I gasped.

  Sage put a hand on my arm. I felt like it was the first time he’d touched me in years.

  “It’s okay.” He took his hand off my skin, and I missed it immediately. He reached up and gently touched the bobcat’s incisors.

  “Sharp,” he noted, “but harmless.”

  The three of us walked farther in. What were we looking for? Off to the side I noticed some ornate red netting, inlaid with beads. It was pretty. It blocked off another part of the room. Curious, I walked over and pulled it back … and started screaming hysterically.

  Right in front of me, only inches away, a human body sat on an old velvet couch. It was the worst thing I had ever seen. It looked like a mummy without its wrapping. The tissue-thin skin had sunken to a speckled gray sheet that clung to its wasted body, falling into every crevice between each bone. The ghost of parchment lips peeled back from yellow teeth, and long, stringy strands of white hair snaked over its withered skull.

  At the sound of my shrieks, its eyes popped open.

  I lurched back, gasping, and slammed into Ben and Sage as the milky orbs rolled around in their sockets, taking us all in, then came to rest on my face.

  And I was out.