nineteen

At dawn the next morning, the house was silent. I’d like to say I knew something was wrong right away. That the house was “too still.” But I didn’t.

On my way downstairs, I noticed that Brixton’s door was ajar. I poked my head in. The bed was empty.

“Dorian!” I called out, rushing down the stairs. “Brixton!” I opened every squealing door in the house, one of which fell off its hinge when I yanked too firmly. I even checked under the beds, holding out a false hope that they were playing a joke on me. I circled the house, thinking maybe they couldn’t sleep and had gone outside to eat an early breakfast. I checked inside the trailer. They weren’t there, but a strong odor was. The confusing scent rattled me until I remembered that Brixton had broken several bottles. I continued my search. My truck was parked in the driveway behind the trailer as usual. There was only one thing out of place. Brixton’s bike, normally resting in a spot next to the back door, was missing.

I had once known a Native American tracker, but I had no idea how the skill was executed. I couldn’t even detect a bike track leading out of my yard. I had no way to know where they’d gone. Could I have slept through the two of them being abducted? I’m a sound sleeper to start with, and I’d been exhausted.

The sound of wheels skidding echoed in the early morning stillness. I sprinted to the front door. An out-of-breath Brixton ran through the open door a second later, Dorian right behind.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

Brixton bent over and breathed deeply, his gloved hands on his knees. “I think we lost him.”

Dorian nodded, clicking off the living room light and peeking out the windows. “You have it?”

“What are you two talking about?” I looked between them but neither of them looked back at me. “What’s happening?”

Brixton stuck his hand into the pocket of his bomber jacket and removed a small glass vial.

This couldn’t be good.

“What is that?” I said.

“The poison that hurt Blue.” Brixton handed the vial to Dorian. “Don’t worry, it’s not blood or anything. It’s the liquid remains they found of whatever she drank.”

“I will hide this with Zoe’s other alchemy supplies,” Dorian said.

“You didn’t,” I said. “The police lab? You broke into the police lab?” I sat down, not feeling so well.

“Dorian said you could learn more about the poison than the police,” Brixton said. “You said you were trying to help her.” When he spoke of Blue, his eyes weren’t those of a jaded teenager but of a worried child.

“Brixton, this isn’t a movie. You can’t go around breaking into places you don’t belong—especially police labs—no matter what Dorian says.”

Dorian coughed indignantly. “I resent the assumption it was my idea.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Mais oui. Of course this was my idea. But I did not wish the child to come with me.”

“I’m not a child!” The outburst made him sound more like a child than usual.

“He followed me,” Dorian continued, “on his bicycle.”

“What?” Brixton said when I gave him a pointed look. “He told me what he was doing. Did he really think I wouldn’t follow?”

“It is not my fault that he followed!” Dorian said.

This must be what it felt like to have children. I took two deep breaths to moderate my voice when I spoke. “Just tell me,” I said, pausing to take another calming breath, “what happened.”

“The boy could not sleep during the night,” Dorian said. “I was here reading, and I made him a snack. He asked about what you and I were doing to help Blue. You did not have a large enough sample of the poison from Blue’s house. He told me the police lab would have it. He knows much about this city. He knew where the lab was.”

“How did you get inside?”

“It was not difficult,” Dorian said, tapping his claws together.

“But there was an alarm,” Brixton added.

I put my head in my hands. “Of course.”

“It was a silent alarm. We didn’t know—” Brixton broke off and looked to the gargoyle.

“Until the police arrived,” Dorian finished.

I groaned. “How did you get away? Did they see you?”

Brixton flipped up the hood of the black hoodie he was wearing under his jacket and held up his hands. Between his shadowed face and gloved hands, even in close proximity it was difficult to identify him.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve broken in somewhere,” Brixton said. “I know what I’m doing. I’m the reason we got out of there.”

“He is a very intelligent boy,” Dorian chimed in.

“You’re not helping, Dorian,” I snapped. “How could you let him go into the lab with you?”

“He was already there! Would it not have been worse to leave him outside?”

“No,” I said. “It would have been a million times better if he hadn’t broken into a police lab.”

“We’re back,” Brixton said. “And we got the poison. No reason to be so upset.”

“No reason?” I said. “Do you realize you’ve broken the whole chain of evidence? Anything we learn from this can’t be used as evidence.”

I took measured breaths, trying to calm myself. I really shouldn’t leave those two alone.

“Who cares about evidence?” Brixton said. “I just want you to fix Blue.”

It was difficult to be blindingly angry when I knew why they were each doing it. Desperate times called for desperate measures. My exasperation faded. But only a little. “What happened when the police arrived?”

“I’d hidden my bike a little ways away,” Brixton said. “We ran there and I put Dorian on the handle bars.”

“The police didn’t follow?”

“It was weird,” Brixton said. “I didn’t think they had seen us, but then one guy caught up. I took us through the Shanghai Tunnels to get away. My bike got beaten up going down the stairs, but Dorian was able to fix it in the dark. We stayed down there for a little while, to make sure nobody was following us. That’s why we’re back so late.”

I hadn’t noticed until now that they were both dusty. The underground tunnels explained it.

“Get cleaned up,” I said. “I’ll drive you to school.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“Oh, well, then… take a shower to clean that tunnel dirt off.”

“Your shower is either freezing or boiling. It’s torture.”

“Then let the cold and hot water run together and take a bath.”

He grumbled on his way upstairs.

“Is this enough?” Dorian asked, holding up the vial.

“This is a bad idea,” I said.

“Do you have a better one?”

———

Dorian cooked breakfast—brown bread fresh from the oven with wild blackberry preserves from wild blackberries he found in the woods during one of his recent nights out exploring.

“I have not yet perfected a vegan butter,” he lamented. “Nut butters are not the same. I will master it yet. Dorian Robert-Houdin does not walk away from a challenge.”

I had a challenge of my own to tackle. I waited until Brixton climbed into bed before getting to work on the poison.

With fear as a motivator, I was more effective in the laboratory than I’d been the day before. In a strange way, I was also happy. I had experienced some of the happiest moments of my life when Ambrose and I worked side by side.

We each worked differently—he with metals and me with plants—but we complemented each other. They talk about couples completing each other’s sentences. Ambrose and I completed each other’s thoughts about our alchemical transformations. If I needed a glass retort for the next phase of a process, Ambrose would hand it to me moments before I moved to get one myself. If he needed a crucible to move his creation into the fire of the athanor, I knew when he was ready for it. In alchemy, a practitioner’s energy is transferred to the vessels they work with. Therefore most alchemists didn’t let other alchemists touch any of the items in their labs. But with two of us, it was as if those rules didn’t apply. We were so in synch that our alchemy transformed us into one. I had never felt so connected to life as I was when I was in the laboratory with Ambrose.

Remembering those moments, I found my rhythm. Like many alchemists before me, I was so caught up in the moment, so focused on the process, that I forgot I was dealing with an unknown substance. I should have been working more carefully, but I was giddy with getting back into the rhythm of alchemy. Through the distillation process, some of the liquid from the vial had turned to steam. It was too late to stop the process, or to leave the room. I breathed in the noxious fumes.

I felt myself falling. I must have been physically falling to the hard concrete at my feet, but that’s not what it felt like. I was falling in slow motion, through the sky.

I knew, then, what I was feeling. The toxin in the air was the most essential metal in all of alchemy: mercury.

The last thought I had was that I was being killed by an alchemist.

Then everything went dark.