by Dan Willis
On young Jessica’s other side there was an older man, though probably only mid-thirties. He was dressed in an old-fashioned suit with shiny shoes and a silk hat on his head. A sign in the foreground was partially visible and read Sciences Building.
“Let me see,” Sorsha said, leaning in close to get a look at the picture. “This must be Dr. Kellin,” she said, pointing to the woman.
“That’s Kellin’s assistant, Jessica O’Neil,” Alex corrected her.
“No,” Sorsha said, pointing to the man in the suit. “Look at that hat. Those have been out of style since the turn of the century. This picture is at least thirty years old.”
Alex looked at the picture again. The girl did look like Jessica, but could just as easily have been the doc. He flipped the picture over and moved the tabs that kept the frame together. Opening it up, he set the frame and the glass on the counter and turned the picture over. On the back was a single line of hand-written text.
Connie, Charlie, and Me. - 1892
“I guess you’re right,” Alex said. “This must be Dr. Kellin when she was in college.”
“She went to Harvard,” Sorsha said, looking at the medical degree on the wall.
“No,” Alex said, staring intently at the picture.
“I’m looking right at her diploma,” Sorsha said in an exasperated voice.
“Look at this guy right here,” Alex said, ignoring her comment. He pointed at the short man with the glasses. “That’s Charlie, right next to the doc.”
Sorsha leaned close to the picture for a moment, then looked up at Alex.
“How do you know? It could just as easily be Connie.”
“Because I’ve seen this guy before,” Alex said. “In the pictures on the wall in the back of Charles Grier’s shop. He’s Charlie.”
Sorsha shrugged.
“Okay,” she said. “But it’s probably still Harvard.”
“No,” Alex said again, “Charles and the doc were an item when they were at school studying alchemy, but something happened, and she left. She told him she was going to go to medical school.”
Alex turned to the wall and moved along until he found a bachelor’s degree in Alchemical Science.
“This is it,” he said, pointing to the name of the school. “This picture was taken when Dr. Kellin and Charles Grier were attending Columbia.”
“Okay,” Sorsha said again. “I suspect that you’re right, but why is it important?”
“Because,” Alex said, putting the picture down on the counter. “Before Jessica and the doc left, they took the exact potions and ingredients that the burglars were looking for the other night. And somewhere along the line, somebody took this picture down and looked at it.”
Sorsha moved the picture aside, and picked up the glass, holding it up to the light.
“I think you’re wrong about one thing, Alex,” she said, moving the glass so that Alex could see the magelight on the ceiling shining off its surface. Right where Charles Grier would have appeared behind it was a lip-shaped smudge. “I don’t think Dr. Kellin left here of her own volition. I’ll bet whoever has Charles Grier called her and they threatened to harm him if she didn’t come.”
25
Leon’s Libation
The pale light of dawn had already begun to light up the fog by the time Alex staggered up the steps to the brownstone. He pulled the flask of rejuvenator from his pocket before he remembered it was empty again and he just held it in his limp arm, not bothering to put it away. He’d drunk its entire contents over the last hours, trying desperately to do something that would reveal where Dr. Kellin or Jessica had gone. Efforts that had all been in vain.
Leaning his head against the stained-glass window of the front door, he swore. He had used everything he could think of as a catalyst for his finding runes — Dr. Kellin’s hairbrush, Jessica’s makeup, even unmentionables from both women, all to no avail. The finding rune had more success with Dr. Kellin, and seemed to indicate that she was somewhere in the inner-ring, maybe even in the core, but that was as good as he could get. The rune simply failed to find Jessica at all, and he hoped that meant that Dr. Kellin had sent her to Albany for safekeeping.
What it really meant was that despite his best efforts, he wasn’t any closer to finding any of them — Grier, Jessica, or Doc — and he couldn’t help feeling that he was running out of time.
A click sounded in front of him, and suddenly the window Alex was leaning on vanished as the door was pulled open. He staggered forward, nearly running into Iggy, who stepped back quickly.
“Good heavens, lad,” he said, seizing Alex by the hand. “You look a fright, and why do you smell like blood and Miss Kincaid’s brand of perfume?”
“Sorry I didn’t call,” Alex said, struggling to make his eyes focus. “Been a...a really long night.”
“You look dead on your feet,” Iggy said, grabbing his arm and half-leading, half-pulling Alex inside. “Let’s get you to bed and you can tell me about it later.”
Alex shook his head.
“No time,” he said. “Put on a pot of the strongest coffee you’ve got. I’ll tell you about it now.”
“Nonsense,” Iggy said, guiding Alex toward the stairs. “You’re barely able to speak in complete sentences.”
Alex focused his mind and pulled back against Iggy’s guiding hand, breaking the old man’s grip. He took a deep breath and did his best to sweep the cobwebs from his brain.
“No,” he insisted. “Two lives are at stake. Jessica’s life might be at stake, too. They’re depending on me. I need your help.”
Iggy considered him for a long moment, then nodded, taking Alex by the arm again. He led Alex into the kitchen and put him in one of the heavy oak chairs. A few minutes later, the smell of percolating coffee roused Alex enough to talk.
He told Iggy about the events of the night before, starting with the men Lilith had cut down and ending with his failure to locate Dr. Kellin. Somewhere in the middle of the story, Iggy had pressed a cup of coffee into his hands. When he finished the tale and the coffee, Alex felt more awake.
“Do you believe the Sorceress is right?” Iggy said, refilling Alex’s mug.
Alex nodded.
“Kellin and Grier were dating when they were in college,” he said. “And when the doc left her house, she took the exact things that were on the list in Jimmy the Weasel’s pocket. It’s a cinch that whoever took Grier used him to get the doc to go along.”
“Why?” Iggy asked. “Why not just send someone to her shop to buy that stuff?”
Alex’s brain might have still been a bit foggy, but he knew that tone in his mentor’s voice. Iggy had spotted something that Alex had missed.
“Well, they’re both alchemists,” he said, “Maybe he needed a potion and Grier wasn’t up to it, so he brought in the doc.”
Iggy scowled and shook his head.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “Alchemists are like runewrights, they don’t share their recipe books with the competition. Andrea first noticed Grier was missing when she went to buy a potion she needed, so clearly there were things he could do that she couldn’t. If whoever took Grier needed him to brew a potion, then it stands to reason that he already knew how to do it. Why involve Andrea?”
Alex hadn’t thought of that.
“Whoever it is must be desperate,” Alex said. “Or they think all alchemists know the same recipes.”
Iggy stroked his bottle-brush mustache as he considered that.
“That’s possible, I suppose,” he admitted at last. “But most people know that potions vary greatly from alchemist to alchemist. There must be some reason, something that connects them, other than dating a long time ago.”
“Leon’s Libation,” Alex said.
Iggy looked at him expectantly.
“It’s something they were working on when they were at school,” Alex explained. “In the letter where Dr. Kellin told Grier that she was leaving for medical school, she mentioned it
. It kind of sounded like she thought it was dangerous, but she didn’t say anything about what it was supposed to do.”
Iggy went back to stroking his mustache and Alex went to take another sip of his coffee, but found his mug mysteriously empty.
“You need to find out what Leon’s Libation is,” Iggy said, refilling Alex’s mug from the coffee pot.
Alex drank deeply, enjoying the scalding heat of the liquid that was pulling his mind out of the fog of exhaustion.
“How am I supposed to do that?” he asked.
“You said they were in college when they worked on this?” Iggy asked.
Alex nodded, taking another swig from the mug.
“It was right before the doc went to Harvard for her medical degree.”
“But she does have a Bachelor’s Degree in Alchemy from Columbia?”
Again, Alex nodded, not sure what Iggy was driving at.
“That would mean that she left after she graduated,” Iggy said.
“Why is that important?”
Having never been to college, Alex had no idea how such things worked.
“Because it probably means that Leon’s Libation was Kellin and Grier’s senior project.”
Alex took another swig of coffee, but that didn’t help.
“So?” he asked.
“Research projects done at a college are carefully controlled,” Iggy said. “Andrea and her partner would have had to get their project approved by the dean of the alchemy school. They would have had to document everything they were doing and submit a report at the end.”
“Reports that the college would still have, forty years later?”
Iggy gave him an amused look.
“Academics never throw anything away,” he said. “I’ll wager that if you go see the current dean, he can get the file on Leon’s Libation in less than an hour.”
Alex drained his coffee cup and pushed himself to his feet.
“Thank God for paperwork,” he said. “Columbia’s not too far, even with the fog. I’ll go see the dean and get a look at the file and then …” He faded off as he tried to figure out what he would do once he knew what Dr. Kellin and Grier had been working on in college in 1892.
“Then,” Iggy said, giving Alex a penetrating look. “You ask who knew about Leon’s Libation other than Andrea and Grier? Whoever has them must have known about that connection — unless this is all one big coincidence,” he added.
Alex chuckled at that.
“No such thing,” he said. “Now where was I going?”
“To bed,” Iggy said. “You can barely stand, and the dean won’t be in his office for at least another five hours.”
Alex pulled out his flask of rejuvenator before he remembered that it was empty.
“I’ll be all right,” he said, putting the flask back in his jacket pocket. “But the doc might not be if I take too long.”
“Are you out of that?” Iggy said, ignoring Alex’s declaration and pointing to his pocket.
“I’ve been going through it faster than I used to,” Alex admitted. “It doesn’t have the same kick as before.”
“I thought you got that refilled a few days ago,” Iggy said quietly, his voice subdued.
Alex met his eyes and nodded.
“I don’t figure the doc changed her recipe,” he said, his voice just as quiet. “I guess it means I’m running out of time.”
It had been two years since Alex spent a significant portion of his life energy to power the spell that moved Sorsha’s falling castle out over the Atlantic. If he were honest with himself, he hadn’t expected to last this long.
When Iggy didn’t respond, Alex went on.
“I need to do this,” he said. “I’ve got to find Jessica and the doc. I have to make sure they’re safe, then...then I can rest.”
Iggy held his gaze for a long moment, then sighed.
“I’ll call the Dean’s office as soon as the college opens,” he said. “Which won’t be till nine and that’s over four hours away. So you go up to your room and sleep, and I’ll come get you once I’ve talked to the dean.”
Alex wanted to object, but couldn’t seem to figure out how to do that. Instead, he let Iggy lead him up two flights of stairs to his room, where he passed out on his bed, still fully dressed.
Alex felt like he hadn’t slept at all when Iggy shook him awake five and a half hours later. He wanted to be angry, but Iggy had pushed a full flask of rejuvenator into his hand on the way to the front door.
“Andrea brought this by the other day,” he’d said in response to Alex’s questioning glance. “For emergencies. I figure this qualifies.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, taking a swig from the flask. It was still weak, but Alex could feel his mind coming slowly into focus as he slipped the flask into his pocket.
“There’s a cab waiting for you out front, and Dean Richardson is expecting you,” Iggy said as they reached the front door. “He said he’d have someone pull the file so it should be waiting for you when you get there.”
Alex thanked him and headed out into the fog to the waiting cab.
Wesley Richardson, Dean of the Alchemy Department at Columbia University, was a pudgy man with a serious face, a receding hairline, and spectacles that made his eyes look comically large. When Alex was shown into his sumptuous office on the top floor of the Alchemical Sciences building, he was sitting behind his desk, just staring at a yellowed folder that looked to be an inch-and-a-half thick.
“Sit down, Mr. Lockerby,” he said, once his secretary had announced Alex.
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” Alex said.
Richardson took off his thick spectacles and wiped his face with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. Alex hadn’t noticed before, but the little man was sweating even though it was quite cool in the office.
“I agreed to see you under duress, Mr. Lockerby,” Richardson said, putting his handkerchief away. “When Dr. Bell called me, I told him I didn’t have time for wild goose chases. Then the President of the University called. He informed me in no uncertain terms that Dr. Bell has been a great help to the University and that I was to give him whatever he needed.”
Alex resisted the urge to smirk. Iggy did his share of private consulting work in his retirement, and it didn’t surprise Alex that some of it had been done here.
“I did as Dr. Bell asked,” Richardson went on, picking up the thick folder. “Had one of my grad students pull this file from the archives.” He plopped it back down on his desk, but with the underside facing up this time. Across the front of the folder, the word Restricted had been printed in large, red block letters.
“There’s a reason I’d never heard of Leon’s Libation,” he said, stabbing down on the folder with his index finger. “There’s a cover letter on this file from a Dean Bennett stating that this file is never to be released. According to him, this potion and the incident it spawned are scandalous.” He stared daggers at Alex. “I don’t care what the University President says,” he went on. “I’m not showing this file to anyone. Now get out of my office.”
Alex just sat there for a long minute, daring Richardson to say more.
“Dean Richardson,” he began. “Eight people are already dead because of what’s in that folder,” Alex said in a neutral voice. “And the two students who cooked up Leon’s Libation are missing. One of them is a personal friend of mine. Now I could threaten you with a visit from the police, the FBI, and the Ice Queen herself, but I don’t have time for that. So here’s what’s going to happen. Either you’re going to give me that file, or I’m going to take it — your choice.”
Richardson grabbed the file protectively, and Alex thought for a moment that he might try to run. After reconsidering, however, he released the file and sat back in his chair.
“I can’t let you read this file,” he said. “I’m the only one allowed to see it.”
Alex glared at him and he hurried on.
“But...but I can
tell you what’s in it.”
Alex smiled and relaxed.
“What’s Leon’s Libation?” he asked.
Richardson put his thick spectacles back on and opened the front cover of the folder.
“According to the summary, Leon’s Libation was supposed to be a restorative. It would produce mental and physical recovery from fatigue without the cellular degradation that is usually associated with lack of rest.”
“What does that mean?” Alex asked.
Dean Richardson looked up from the folder and pursed his lips.
“In layman’s terms, this potion would make it possible for someone to work or study for extended periods without rest and without the effects of fatigue,” he said.
“How extended?”
“Days,” Richardson said. “Maybe even weeks without rest.”
Alex whistled, thinking of the possibilities. He could follow leads day and night until a case was done; he could see Jessica at night, and work during the day. Of course if Leon’s Libation existed, Jessica would have used it to work on the polio cure around the clock, and he still wouldn’t be able to see her often.
“It would have been an amazing rejuvenator,” Richardson said with a sigh.
“What did you say?” Alex asked, his attention snapping back to the Dean.
“Well if it had worked, it would have rejuvenated the body of anyone imbibing it,” he said.
A shiver ran up Alex’s back and his hand dropped to the pocket of his jacket. He could feel the silver flask inside that held Dr. Kellin’s rejuvenator, the potion that wiped away the fatigue brought on by Alex’s diminished life energy.
“So what was so bad about Leon’s Libation?” he asked, his throat suddenly dry.
