by Gigi Pandian
“You know I do—”
“But you can tell Tobias things you’ll never tell me. I can see it in the way you two look at each other. This past year, getting to know you, has been the most wonderful year … I love you, Zoe Faust, but you won’t let me in.”
“Okay.”
“Okay … what?”
“You want to see the real me?” I took his hand in mine. “Come inside.”
I led Max to my half-put-together basement alchemy lab and lit one of the kerosene lamps I used to illuminate the space. I didn’t like to use modern electricity in this room. The light from natural flames made it easier to get into the calm, meditative space I needed to practice alchemy.
“This isn’t storage for extra goods for Elixir, like I thought.” Max’s eyes swept over the wooden tables, glass vials, and dried plants.
“No, it’s not. This is my contemplative place.”
Max smiled as he picked up a mason jar of dragon’s tongue. “This place is beautiful. This is going to sound silly, but it reminds me of my grandmother’s photos of her apothecary shop.”
“It doesn’t sound silly at all.”
Max put down the jar and took my hands in his. “No, it doesn’t does it? I’ve always felt you were an old soul.”
“I am.” I inhaled deeply, breathing in the scents from centuries of love that I’d brought here to this room. Dried herbs from plants I’d grown myself. The pulpy, friendly fragrance of old books. The faint bitter scent of sulfur balanced by the sweet hints of natural sugars from the plants I transformed.
“I didn’t mean to start a spiritual conversation.” Max traced his fingertips in my palm.
“No. But it’s time for me to show you what I’ve been afraid to. That this is who I really am.”
“I love that you’ve got a place for meditation. It’s okay for you to have kept it to yourself—”
“This place isn’t for meditation. Not exactly. You know how the two of us garden similarly? How plants respond to us? It’s been that way since I was little. And it scared people. That’s why my brother and I ran away.” I felt Max’s hand tense as I spoke.
“The bullying was that bad?”
“We were taken in by the childless couple I told you about. They were the ones who taught me how to turn my aptitude with plants into something more.”
“That’s why your herbal concoctions, and even your simple soups, seem almost magical.”
“It’s not magic. It’s alchemy.”
Max laughed. “Exactly. Transformation.”
“True alchemy. I’m older than I look.” I waited for a reaction, but Max remained silent. “You’ve always sensed it.”
“So how old are you?”
“Far older than you.”
Max’s laugh turned to a nervous one. “Zoe … ” His expression changed as he watched my face. “You believe what you’re telling me? You do. You really believe it.”
“Because it’s the truth. Think about everything you know about me. And what you learned from your grandmother all those years ago.”
“My sister knows some good doctors.”
“A psychiatrist? That’s what you think I need?” Tension seized my whole body, leaving me feeling like a stiff stone carving, not a person of flesh and blood. “Why do you think all the hair on my body is white? Why do my scars look centuries old?”
Max shook his head. “I have an interview for a case. I’m already late. I have to go.”
“Max?” I called after him as he rushed up the basement stairs.
The door slammed.
“You shouldn’t have told him,” Tobias said when I reached the kitchen.
I ran my hands through my white hair, which Max had always told me was beautiful, even though he knew it was real rather than dyed, and held back tears. “How did you tell Rosa?”
“I had it easier. You’ve got yourself a strategically rational man there. He’s consciously chosen to reject things he once believed, to help him make sense of the world. He’s a cop, for God’s sake.”
“I have to try. If we don’t want to lose our humanity—if we truly want to let people in—we have to take risks.”
“He’s a good man. I hope he comes around.”
“I do too.”
Tobias gave a worried glance at his phone.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Still no word from Detective Vega. Which is odd, considering how hard she was trying to reach me before.”
“So where is she?”
forty-four
Prague, 1597, and the French countryside, 1700
Perenelle didn’t know where she was. She’d been taken to a cell with a bag over her head. But with Edward’s cruel servant no longer a threat, she held her head high and walked out as if she had every right to do so. It worked. Nobody paid her any attention as she walked confidently with the painting under her arm. She had been in a small house inside the walls of Prague Castle, luckily not in the dungeons or an outpost.
She planned to let the guard go once she reached Nicolas. Her husband would be there if she had any trouble with the man, who would undoubtedly be confused when he was pulled from the painting.
Perenelle wished to collect her possessions and present her remaining paintings to Rudolf before returning home to Nicolas, but it was too big a risk with Edward on the castle grounds. She hoped that after she disappeared, the Emperor would find her finest work left behind in her rooms and take it for his library. His grand library would survive, and with it the knowledge contained within its walls.
She stole a cloak from a scullery, leaving a piece of gold in its place. With her face hidden, she heard two men speaking as they passed.
“They’ve imprisoned him at Most Castle,” she heard. “Can you believe Kelley told the Emperor he could lift gold from a painting? I always knew he was a fraud. His ears and hands, you know.”
It took all of Perenelle’s will not to turn and engage the men for more details, but she couldn’t draw attention to herself. This was an unexpected development. She couldn’t help laughing. A few years of solitude would do Edward good.
Now that Edward Kelley was imprisoned, it was easy for Perenelle to send word to Nicolas that she would be returning home, and return to her rooms to pack her alchemical possessions. She could also finish her last painting and present it to the Emperor. It would only take a few days.
She worked quickly, using existing pigments she’d transformed into paint to create what would be her last masterpiece for Rudolf. On the third day, after staying up most of the night to capture the essence of the night sky, she was awoken by a sharp knock at her door.
“Edward’s leg is broke, sir,” the page said. “He was trying to escape. I don’t expect he should live. The Emperor says you may take what supplies of his you want, sir.”
She swore. The injury would most certainly be a death sentence. No medical treatment would be given to a prisoner. Edward might deserve his fate, but Perenelle remembered how he’d spoken of his beloved daughter. She could send his family gold … But when there was more that she could do, she could not live with herself if she did not at least try. She pressed a small coin into the page’s hand, an idea forming in her mind. One that would also allow her to solve another problem.
Her plan was simple. At least it was supposed to be. She would paint a good amount of gold into the painting of Edward’s brute of an associate. Once she had done so, she sent for the page, giving him a more than fair payment to ensure the painting would reach Edward in his cell. “I wished him to at least have a small bit of beauty for him to gaze upon as he dies,” she told him.
The painting would be searched for hidden weapons, of course, but there were none that people would see. But Edward was smart. He would recognize his servant inside the painting and the stack of gold, and know what to do. He c
ould pull both from the painting and bribe the guards.
With a clear conscience, Perenelle headed home to Nicolas.
Perenelle put that part of her life behind her for another hundred years—until she saw her former self in a young woman who wore a curious mix of fear, serenity, and wonder on her face. Zoe, who came to them with her brother Thomas.
Nicolas had a steady stream of apprentices in their homes. He’d never before taken on a woman, though not for lack of trying. Perhaps that was why he was so pleased when an acquaintance contacted him about Zoe and her brother.
Zoe reminded Perenelle so much of her old self. Too much, which is why she tried to distance herself from the young alchemist-in-training. Perenelle would have been happier if she’d never listened to Nicolas’s advice that a woman could do anything she wasn’t allowed to. It simply wasn’t true in this world. Those who tried received only pain and suffering for their efforts.
She reminded herself that the girl could make her own choices. But Zoe was too curious too early in her alchemical training. She asked about backward alchemy. No good would come of that. Nicolas warned Zoe of the danger, and Perenelle hoped the girl believed it. They didn’t dare tell her the truth that the backward alchemists were stealing the lives of other people to extend their own.
After Thomas died tragically of the plague and Zoe left them before her training was complete, Nicolas didn’t take on another pupil. Not only because he was sad to have lost Zoe, but also because he saw the growing threat of the backward alchemists—men who used alchemical shortcuts and the deaths of others to steal life to give it to themselves.
The Flamels set out on their new mission. Perenelle hoped Zoe was happy, living out her natural life with people who loved her, wherever she was.
forty-five
With my two best friends beside me, I couldn’t help feeling hopeful.
“We cannot wait for the detective,” Dorian said as he paced the floor, having convened a meeting in the attic.
“I know,” I said.
“And what of Heather’s unknown attacker? Moreover, can you risk the police confiscating the painting? Nicolas is ill-equipped to break out of an evidence room.”
“It’s not evidence,” I said. “Police search warrants don’t cover everything in a house.”
Tobias swore. “Dorian is right. Isabella’s son-in-law thinks that painting is a forgery.”
I groaned.
“Monsieur Freeman,” Dorian said, “did you blow your cover with the artist-forger Isabella?”
“Do you mean am I still on good terms with her? I should be. I didn’t confront her about the secret workshop before I took off this morning.”
“Bon. You must break into the secret studio you believe contains the painting—”
“How do you propose I do that?”
Dorian blinked at him. “You do not know how to pick a lock?”
“Why would I know how to pick a lock?”
Dorian shook his head and flapped his wings. “D’accord. This means you must take me with you.”
Tobias turned to me with his eyes wide. “He’s a thief?”
“His father was a stage magician who was originally a clock-maker,” I said. “Dorian’s claws are better than lock picks.”
“I cannot misplace them,” Dorian said, chuckling as he drummed his claws together.
“Damn,” Tobias said. “I forgot Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin raised you.”
“Shall we depart?” Dorian asked. “My plan is brilliant in its simplicity. I will turn to stone form. You can say you wished to show Isabella a beautiful gargoyle sculpture. She would appreciate this, no?”
It turned out the answer really was no. Something must have raised her suspicions.
I’d accompanied Tobias and Dorian to the Castle, and was hiding in the bed of the truck with a tarp above me and my cell phone at the ready. But when we reached the front gate, Isabella’s screaming voice sounded so loudly through the speaker that even I could hear her.
“Spies!” she shouted. The gate speaker distorted her voice, but the words she yelled were clear. And chilling. “The phoenix is rising. You can’t be here. Leave!”
Though I knew the sound of her voice had been transformed by the crackling speaker, Isabella’s words made me shudder. They rang of madness.
Since I was in back, I couldn’t see the reactions of my conspirators. But I felt it soon enough. My shoulder knocked into the side of the steel bed as Tobias backed up.
He couldn’t hear me, so I called him on my cell phone. As much as I hated to admit it, these things did come in handy.
“Pull over once we’re out of sight,” I said.
“Already on the lookout for a good spot.”
He clicked off, and less than a minute later I felt the truck transition from asphalt to dirt. As the scent of pine grew stronger, the truck came to a rest. I heard Tobias’s voice. “Nobody’s around. You can climb out.”
I lifted the tarp. Thick pine trees filled the sky above me. I climbed out and slipped into the passenger seat. If I was sitting on the seat with my legs curled under my chin, there was room for the three of us, with Dorian on the floor in front of the seat, though I doubted it was comfortable for his wings.
“Something’s not right,” Tobias said.
“I fear you are a bad spy, Monsieur Freeman,” Dorian said. “Through no fault of your own, of course, I must add. You are an honest man. This is why you prefer chess to poker. This—”
“Can we focus?” I said.
“Her reaction back there,” Tobias said. “I don’t understand it. Something really weird is going on.”
“Grief takes many forms,” I said, thinking of Ambrose’s madness after losing his son Percy. “She’s either a murderer who’s onto you, or she’s angry and lashing out because of everything that’s going on. Either way, Nicolas is captive at her house.”
“That place is a castle in more ways than its cosmetic appearance,” Tobias said. “Those iron front gates and the high fence that circles the property are no joke.”
The painting of Nicolas was so close but beyond reach. It was worse than not knowing where he was.
“There might be a way,” Dorian said slowly. “I cannot see outside. Can you tell me, is it safe for me to step out of the truck for a few moments here?”
Tobias nodded.
I opened the door and Dorian climbed out after me. He took a few steps and unfolded his gray wings.
“Mes amies,” he said, “I have been practicing.”
I stared at the gargoyle. I knew it was his biggest disappointment that even though his wings had become feather-like upon his discovery of the Elixir of Life, he’d still been unable to fly. “You’ve been practicing flying?”
He nodded shyly.
“That’s why you’ve been acting secretively and been gone at times when I hadn’t expected you to be,” I said, thinking back on the gargoyle’s unexplained absences. I should have been happy that he was achieving something that meant so much to him, and that it might help us, but I couldn’t help feeling hurt. “You could have trusted me.”
Dorian flapped his wings, causing a gentle gust of air to float over me. “You would have stopped me.”
“I would have stopped you from practicing anywhere dangerous. You were doing it near the river, weren’t you? That’s how you saw the glittering phoenix charm. Because you were flying above it.”
“It was late at night. There are large birds along the water. It should have been a safe place to practice. You would have said any location was dangerous. You are too careful for your own good.”
“Tobias will back me up,” I said.
Tobias was leaning with his elbows on the hood of the truck. He held up his hands. “I’m staying out of this one.”
Dorian chuckled. “Monsieur Freeman is a wi
se man. Alors, shall we rescue Nicolas?”
I didn’t want to risk it by day, but we really couldn’t be sure the police wouldn’t confiscate the portrait of Nicolas. We had to act.
“If you’re going to do this,” I said, “there are some ground rules. Even under these circumstances, our usual safety precautions are in place. Especially now, since we don’t know what’s going on with Isabella. Wear your cape, and turn to stone at the slightest hint of danger.”
Once Dorian had agreed, we got back in the car and Tobias drove the three of us to a spot in the hills behind the Castle.
“Remember,” I said as Dorian poked his head out of the bag, “if they see you—”
“Yes, yes, I will turn to stone. They will not believe their eyes, and think the true intruder got away and left behind this beautiful statue.”
“You’re sure you can pick the lock?” Tobias said.
Dorian glared at us. “My father was more skilled at all forms of mechanical tinkering than Houdini, who stole Father’s name for himself. Not only was I taught by the best, but I was made for this.” He tapped his clawed fingers on the dashboard and narrowed his liquidy black eyes. “Now, shall we rescue Nicolas?”
“You’re sure there are no cameras?” I asked Tobias.
“Not unless someone installed them against Isabella’s wishes. She’s adamant about her family’s privacy.”
Tobias carried Dorian in the satchel until we were close to the back fence. The gargoyle pushed the starchy hemp fabric down to the ground and stepped onto the soft earth. He tied the cape around his neck and took an object from my outstretched hand: the bag large enough to fit the painting. He gave us a curt nod and unfurled his wings.
In the clearing, Dorian beat his wings a few times. I held my breath, unsure what to expect. For him to take flight, would his wings vibrate quickly like the wings of a hummingbird? Or would he need to take a running start to catch the wind like a hang glider? Neither happened. With a sound in between that of a swoosh and a thump, the underbrush blew away from the spot underneath him. With another grand flap of wings, Dorian’s body lifted up from the ground.
