Thirty-Six

I led Tobias to my basement alchemy lab. The light switch at the top of the stairs turned on a solitary twenty-watt light bulb. It was one of my many failsafe’s to make sure nobody looked too carefully at what I was working on in the basement. I’d removed bulbs from the other light fixtures in the basement and used a combination of kerosene lanterns and candles to light the laboratory for my work. They served the dual purpose of keeping prying eyes from easily seeing what was there, and providing the natural energy of fire that fueled my alchemy.

I found a match and began lighting lanterns and candles.

“How is it possible that Dorian is dying?” Tobias asked. “Isn’t he made of stone?”

“Dorian was once a piece of stone. He was a gargoyle carved by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, as a prototype for a gargoyle on the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.”

“Wait. Robert-­Houdin. You said that was his surname. Like the French magician?”

“One and the same.”

“You’re telling me that magician was an alchemist who somehow transformed himself into a gargoyle during one of his experiments? It certainly gives a whole new meaning to his being the Father of Modern Magic.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Jean Eugène Robert-­Houdin was Dorian’s father—in a way. He was reading from a book of ‘magic’ as a prop for an illusion he was creating. He didn’t realize it was alchemy, or that it could bring a piece of stone to life.”

“It can’t.”

“That’s what I thought too. But you saw Dorian with your own eyes.”

“There’s got to be something else going on with him.”

“I think there is.” I finished lighting candles and swept my arm across the room. “That’s why I’ve resumed practicing alchemy after decades. I was planning on setting it up properly and easing into it, but Dorian sped up my plans.”

“None of this is very stable for laboratory experiments,” Tobias commented, eying the folding tables serving as countertops. “It isn’t very secret either.”

“The best laid plans … ” I murmured to myself in the flickering light.

“What was that?”

“When I bought this place at the beginning of the year, I did it with the intention of fixing up the whole house. It’s so rundown that it was the perfect cover for doing extensive renovations. I hired a jack-of-all-trades contractor to fix the roof, patch up the house, and create a true alchemy lab in the basement.”

“So what happened?”

“It didn’t work out.” I didn’t need to distract Tobias by telling him about how the handyman ended up dead on my front porch.

“What you’ve got here is what you did yourself?” he asked.

I nodded.

“In that case, you’ve done a pretty decent job.”

“Not the world’s most ringing endorsement. I put a lot of effort into this.”

“You know there’s still a garage sale tag on that card table. And it smells like beer.”

“Touché.”

“And what’s that on the ceiling?”

I sighed. “I couldn’t get all the nettle spurs off the ceiling, so I’m pretty sure it germinated.”

Once Tobias stopped laughing hysterically, his mood shifted. His hazel eyes flecked with gold could show great warmth, but now their brightness turned fierce. The transformation was jarring. Tobias grew more serious than I’d seen him since picking him up at the airport that morning.

“This isn’t like you, Zoe. The haphazard nature of this lab. It’s not true to alchemy. It’s not true to you. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with that little gargoyle gourmet? What are you holding back? What’s really going on?”

I hesitated. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words backward alchemy out loud to another alchemist.

“This is why you’re sick, isn’t it?” His angry eyes flitted across the laboratory. “You’re practicing alchemy, but you’re not doing it right. Is he forcing you—”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

“What’s going on, Zoe?”

“This isn’t what I wanted. I haven’t practiced true alchemy in ages. You saw my trailer parked in the driveway. I was living out of it, for most of the time, since the fifties.”

“Since we can never stay in one place for too long … ”

“When I came through Portland, I felt such a longing to put down some roots, at least for as long as I could. For a few years at least. I thought I could at least have that.”

“As much as I’d love to get caught up properly and discuss all the things I can’t talk about with anyone else, that’s not why you asked me here. I’ve gotta tell you, you’re even better at avoiding the subject than your stone friend. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on with him?”

I looked up at the nettle hooks on the basement ceiling. “Whatever is killing him, it’s only affecting his body. Not his mind. You saw his limp. He used to be able to turn from stone into flesh and back again with ease. Now it’s getting harder and harder for him to do so. But when he’s trapped in unmoving stone, he’s perfectly conscious. If I don’t figure out a way to save him, he’ll be awake but trapped in a stone prison.”

“Damn. Not dead, but trapped in a stone coffin. That’s worse than death.”

“I know, Tobias. I know.”

“You two go way back?”

I gave a weak laugh. “I only met him three months ago. He hid out in my shipping crates when I had them sent from a storage facility in Paris. The only thing he had with him was an old book.”

“The alchemy book the magician read from?”

“At first, I didn’t think it was alchemy.” I paused and lifted it from the bookshelf. “Non Degenera Alchemia. Which roughly translates to Not Untrue Alchemy.”

But Tobias wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he picked up the framed photograph of Ambrose.

“I wondered about him,” Tobias said.

I froze. What was going on? Tobias couldn’t have known Ambrose. I hadn’t yet met Ambrose when I knew Tobias. A tickling sensation ran from my spine to my nose. “What do you mean? I know different alchemists are sensitive to different things, but I didn’t realize any of us were capable of being psychic.”

“What’s my knowing him have to do with being psychic? We’re scientists, Zoe. There ain’t no such thing as a psychic.”

“When I was helping the Underground Railroad, I hadn’t yet met Ambrose. You couldn’t have seen this photograph.”

Tobias gave me a strange look, a cross between bewilderment and enlightenment. A look common to the faces of alchemists.

“I mean,” he said, “I knew him in person.”

“How wonderful! So you knew him in the late 1800s, before I did? We didn’t meet until 1895. I knew he’d spent some time in America, but I didn’t realized he worked with other alchemists.”

Tobias shook his head. “It had to have been the 1950s.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then nodded slowly. He opened his eyes and snapped his fingers. “1955.”

I felt myself shiver. “That can’t be right. Ambrose killed himself in 1935.”

Tobias gave a start, then looked intently at the photograph. “I didn’t mean to shake you, Zoe. You know that over time, faces begin to blur together. I must be mistaken.” But his words were too quick, stumbling over one another. Whatever Tobias really thought, he didn’t think he was wrong.

Was it me who was mistaken? Was there any way that Ambrose could have survived? The asylum had shown me his body. Unless it had been an illusion. My stomach lurched. Why would they have lied? There was no reason for them to have done so.

There had to be another explanation. Ambrose had had a son, Percival, who hadn’t taken to alchemy. But maybe Percy had fathered a child, unbeknownst to us. He had never married, but it was the kind of thing the cad would do. It must have been a family resemblance that Tobias had seen in the man he met in the 1950s. After all, that had been the case with Peter Silverman. It was the easiest explanation. Was it the right one?