Twenty-Eight

Dorian was gone, taken into police custody as evidence.

I didn’t know how my life could get any worse. My closest friend had been forcibly removed. The longer he stayed in police custody, the more likely it was that he’d remain trapped in unmoving stone forever. The first man I’d been interested in in years thought I was insane. I was a failed alchemist, unable to create enough gold to make any of my other problems go away. My hair was falling out. And now, after decades of not drawing attention to myself, I was being questioned by the police for the second time since moving to Portland.

Max hovered nearby while the investigating officer asked me a few questions. The pitying look on his face made it easy for me to ignore him. I kept my focus on the other officer as I explained how I brought the statue to the theater to tell the magicians about my business, because I thought they might like some of my wares as props. The magicians would back up my story. I had no connection to Wallace Mason, and I had no idea why he would be interested in a stone toe that rolled away. He was a treasure hunter, so had he thought it was a treasure?

I again neglected to mention that I’d seen Wallace Mason and Earl Rasputin sneaking around the theater. That admission would bring further scrutiny. Scrutiny I couldn’t afford. All it would do was lead the police down a path they would never believe.

“You have a roommate?” the detective asked.

I looked at him closely for the first time. As tall and thin as Ichabod Crane, his drawn face and dark craters under his eyes completed the look.

“No,” I said. “I started cooking earlier and haven’t yet cleaned up.” Luckily Dorian hadn’t started the oven, or I would have had more explaining to do. The detective raised an eyebrow at my messy housekeeping, but seemed to accept my explanation.

I didn’t have to go to the police station to answer further questions, but I had the distinct impression they’d be looking into any possible connections I had to the victim.

Max stayed behind after the other officers left. The look of concern on his face was too much.

“Maybe you could take a few days off,” he said softly. “The teashop can survive a few days without your cooking.”

“Sorry for my emotional outburst.” I couldn’t look him in the eye. “I just need to get some sleep.”

“Maybe you could talk to someone. I hated when the department made me talk to a psychologist, but—”

My gaze snapped to his. “I’m not crazy.”

Memories flooded my mind of what different societies have done to “crazy” people over the years. Doctors had explained and treated mental illness in many different ways. What was called “hysteria” in the 1800s became known as “nervous complaints” in the early 1900s, then a “mental breakdown” in the 1940s, followed by what we currently categorize as depression. Many of the poisonous drugs and physical traumas inflicted upon patients did more harm than good.

But many of us who institutionalized our loved ones did it because we truly wanted to help them. When Ambrose snapped after his son died, psychiatrists were still called “alienists,” and I believed they could help him get better, or at least prevent him from harming himself while he took the time he needed to recover on his own. One of the ailments Ambrose was diagnosed with was “dementia praecox,” a condition later recharacterized as schizophrenia. I was able to find him one of the most humane asylums that existed in early-twentieth-century France. Charenton was located only a few miles outside of Paris, so I was able to visit Ambrose regularly—until he took his own life.

I steadied my breathing enough that I could continue speaking. “I was simply trying to explain my emotional attachment to my statue. I got a little carried away.”

“But you said—”

“I want to be alone, Max.”

What I really wanted was to try telling Max the truth again. But with how he’d reacted by not even giving me a chance to explain, how could I? It pained me that no matter how much we had in common and how much we were drawn to each other, his worldview was so different from mine in so many important ways.

Even if Max would listen to me, I didn’t know the whole truth of what was going on. Why was Wallace Mason clutching Dorian’s stone toe?

Without Dorian, the house felt strangely empty. After all these years, I was surprised by how quickly I’d become accustomed to living with someone. Though Dorian left the house during the darkest and quietest part of the night, he was always here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not to mention tea, appetizers, desserts, and snacks.

A tear slid down my cheek when I noticed what Dorian had been cooking in the kitchen. The thoughtful gargoyle had been fixing me an extravagant dinner with my new favorite dish—a smoked paprika macaroni and “cheese” made of creamed nuts. Soaking raw nuts ahead of time, then blending them with water and a little salt and lemon juice created a thick cream more decadent than the heavy cream Dorian used to cook with before he came to live with me. My old blender was far more versatile in the gargoyle’s hands.

I called Heather and told her I was sick and that I’d be unable to bake pastries for Blue Sky Teas the next morning, or for the foreseeable future until I was better.

Brixton would wonder what was wrong with Dorian, since the gargoyle was the real chef, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Maybe I could figure out what was going on and get Dorian back before Brixton knew he was gone.

But how could I get Dorian back? After cleaning the kitchen and fixing some of the healing lemon balm tea I’d been drinking regularly to combat the effects of backward alchemy, I tried to sleep. I failed miserably.

There was no point in lying in bed not sleeping while Dorian was trapped in a police evidence locker, slowly dying. His capture was only obscuring the real motivation and clues surrounding Wallace Mason’s death.

I dragged my tired body out of bed, unlocked the door to the basement, and lit every candle. I didn’t know what I could do to get Dorian back, but once he was returned to me, I needed to have a real cure figured out. It was my best hope for being able to awaken him from stone after having to hold still for so long.

I pushed all thoughts of Max out of my mind. Intent is essential in alchemy, and focus is key. I couldn’t let myself be distracted with regrets about Max. Maybe it was for the best that he hadn’t believed me. If Max had seen Dorian in living form, how would he have processed the information? With his attachment to the rule of law, would he have let Dorian escape, or would he have captured Dorian as a suspect? I didn’t want to know the answer.

I brought Non Degenera Alchemia to the best viewing table in the lab, a slanted wooden desk once used by monks painting illuminated manuscripts. The desk was one of the high-end items for sale on my website, but until it sold, it was a great book stand. Standing in front of the old pages that had weathered the years so well, I willed my mind to understand the morbid woodcut illustrations. My vision blurred as I stared at the counterclockwise circle of bees. Through my unfocused eyes, the black ink of the dead animals underneath blended into a smoky haze.

My focus snapped to attention.

Why did the image trigger a disturbing memory as soon as my vision blurred? I stared at the bees, as if the intensity of my gaze could capture the animals through sheer will. The memory slipped from my grasp.

I needed to get away from the book for just a moment. I stepped back and sat down in front of the table containing the glass vessels and the mortar and pestle I’d used to make Dorian’s Tea of Ashes. Though I’d cleaned it well, I could still smell the ashes. Backward alchemy called for using fire too early in the transformation, burning too hot.

Fire and ash.

My eyelids felt heavy.

The next thing I knew, a faint glow of light was coming through the narrow frosted glass window high on one of the basement walls. It must have been shortly after sunrise. While I’d accidentally slept, the candles had extinguished themselves and the dim sunlight was the only light in the room.

A lurch in my stomach reminded me that Dorian was gone, and a kink in my neck told me I’d slept all night with my head resting on a table. Damn. I’d tried so hard to stay awake! But it’s not my nature to be awake in darkness. Ever since I was a small child, the perceptiveness that made me understand plants affected my body the same way. When plants slept, my eyelids drooped. I was called a “simpler” at the time. The people in Salem Village thought of it as magic. But being observant of the natural world isn’t magic. If I’d been born in the late twentieth century and was the age I looked, I would probably have been a botanist. As it was, I became a plant alchemist.

The planetary cycles and light and darkness don’t affect all alchemists equally. Living with Ambrose in early-twentieth-century Paris, I begged him to go out to the bal-musettes without me, since I needed to sleep and renew my energy. There was no need for my weakness to prevent him from enjoying himself. He wouldn’t hear of it. He argued I was the best herbalist around and could make myself an energizing tonic so I could go out dancing with him all night. It usually got me through to midnight.

I unlatched my locket chain and looked at the images inside—a black-and-white photograph of Ambrose and a miniature portrait of my brother. I had a larger photograph of Ambrose somewhere. I’d kept it hidden from sight for so long because it was too painful to have a daily reminder of my loss. But the more I thought about it, that was backward. Suddenly, I desperately wanted to find that larger photograph.

Aside from my journal of alchemical notes, I’ve never kept a proper diary. But my notebooks serve much the same purpose, holding pressings of flowers, ticket stubs, sketches, and photographs. The photograph wasn’t in my notebook that encompassed 1935, the year of Ambrose’s death. I ransacked the attic in search of the photograph. It wouldn’t be in an articulated bird skeleton, an apothecary jar, or any glass vessel. It must have been inside one of my notebooks. Half an hour later, I found it tucked inside a palm-sized sketchbook from the 1950s, the book I’d carried with me for the first few years I traveled around the country in my brand-new Airstream trailer that was now six decades old.

Ambrose’s kind eyes smiled up at me. For many years after his death, his image had caused me pain. But looking at him now, I felt hope. Ambrose would have told me he had faith in me.

I thought back on what I’d been working on before falling asleep. My eyes had glazed over while staring at the pages of Dorian’s book. No, that wasn’t quite right. They hadn’t glazed over. My tired eyes had made the illustrations blur together. Much like the blurry image of the German book Ivan had showed me. I’d gotten sidetracked by too many other things to research that academic book. I hadn’t prioritized it because the scholar who wrote it clearly didn’t have an understanding of the backward alchemy illustration he’d included.

But what about the backward alchemy image itself … an angel turning to stone? Or was it a stone angel that had been brought to life? Death and resurrection. Mercury and sulfur. Fire and ash.

I needed to talk to Ivan. It was too early to talk to him now, but after watering my garden and fixing myself two cups of tea, I called him.

I brought Dorian’s book to his house, along with the printout from the art of alchemy book he’d given me with the disturbing image of the stone angel, dead jesters, and bees.

“This substance,” I said, pointing to the sooty markings on the edge of the page. “Do you have any thoughts on what it might be?”

“No,” Ivan said with a shake of his head, “but I take good notes about where I find all of my reference materials.” With unsteady hands, he searched through an electronic document on his computer.

A few minutes later, he found the location of the German book that had been written by a nineteenth-century scholar of alchemy. Ivan had found it digitally archived by a Czech university. Not much was known about it, but the cataloguing librarian’s notes indicated that the book had been damaged by a fire, and some soot remained on the pages.

Fire and ash.

“You have a working fireplace, don’t you?” I said to Ivan.

“Is it cold today? I hadn’t noticed, since I’m always cold these days. I rarely use the fireplace. Would you like me to turn up the central heat?”

“That’s not what I meant. Can I see your fireplace?”

Ivan gave me a strange look, but motioned me through to the living room.

I scooped up a handful of ashes from Ivan’s fireplace and brought them back to his study. There, I smeared the ashes onto the page of Non Degenera Alchemia that the book always opened to, the one with the Latin that had brought Dorian to life.

“What are you doing?” Ivan cried. “You will ruin the book!”

“I don’t think so.” I spread the cold gray ashes across the paper. “If I’m right, I’m revealing its true meaning.”

I had assumed that the ruined stone buildings illustrated in Not Untrue Alchemy were what they appeared to be: fragmentary ruins that symbolized death. But that was only half of the story. Death and resurrection. That’s what we were missing.

Before our eyes, the ashes turned the opaque pages translucent. Remaining on the transparent paper was the black ink of the illustrated plates. The individual woodcuts that showed desolate landscapes with crumbling ruins weren’t what they had seemed. They weren’t barren landscapes at all. Five illustrations were lined up, and their individual pieces made up a coherent whole.

The backgrounds of crumbling remains weren’t ruins at all. Together, they revealed one intact building.

A cathedral.