Forty-Nine

“Can you tell me anything?” I asked the firefighter.

“Everyone got out safely.” His face was coated in soot, and his kind eyes showed relief. “Whoever you’re worried about, they got out and were taken to the hospital.”

I knew the fireman believed he was speaking the truth, but there was no way paramedics had taken a gargoyle to the hospital. I’d been waiting on the outskirts of the blaze, and I hadn’t seen Dorian through the thick smoke. Had he made it out? If I sifted through the rubble, would I find the charred remains of a stone statue? I might be all alone in this world once again.

“Zoe!”

I turned and saw Max running toward me. He swept me up in his arms and held me in a comforting embrace. I didn’t want to let go, but after a few moments he stepped back and looked up at the smoky night sky.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me to find you here?” He took my hand and pulled me farther from the smoldering wreckage. “Are you all right? You look like someone died. It’s okay. I heard on the scanner that everyone got out.”

“Death and destruction follow me,” I whispered.

“Don’t talk like that. We’ve both had our share of—”

I stopped his voice with my lips. He didn’t object. Across the street from the glowing ashes, I let myself exist purely in the moment. For a few minutes, I lost myself in the kiss, enveloped in a combination of warmth, caring, and the scent of vanilla.

It was the scent that shattered the dream and brought me back to reality.

“Whatever happens in the future,” I said, pulling back, “I want you to know that’s how I feel about you.”

“What do you mean, whatever hap—hey, where are you going?”

I slipped out of his arms and backed away. “I need to check on something.”

I didn’t trust myself to drive, so I ran home on foot. I heard Max calling after me, but I didn’t turn back. With my silver raincoat billowing behind me, the rows of shops and houses passed by in a blur.

I’d traveled around the United States for decades, all alone in my truck and trailer with my window box plants as my only living company. I’d been foolish to think I could stick around Portland for a while, no matter how much the city and its people spoke to me. If Dorian was dead, being back on the road would make it easier to hang onto my fond memories of him, and of Brixton, Max, and the other friends I’d made here.

When I reached my front lawn, I wasn’t sure if my heart was pounding so hard from physical exertion or from the fear of returning home to an empty house.

“Mon amie!” Dorian called out as I closed the front door. He flung his arms around my waist, and curled his wings around me. “When you did not return home immediately, I was afraid you had followed me into the theater when I went in because I heard Earl Rasputin’s voice. With so many onlookers, I could not return.”

I hugged Dorian back, glad he couldn’t see the tears of joy in my eyes. “That was brave of you, Dorian. I think you saved his life.”

“Oui. It is true.”

My immodest friend led me to the dining room table, where he was eating a large dinner after exerting himself, and told me what he knew. Earl had indeed been trapped in the theater. But either from the effects of the smoke or from seeing a heroic gargoyle, Earl passed out before he could tell Dorian anything.

“I left him in the back alley,” Dorian said. “I could not find you, but I watched until I saw the ambulance. I knew, then, that he would be safe. As for my book—you will see if there is anything that can be recovered?”

“There are too many people there tonight, but as soon as I can, I’ll search every inch of the ashes for what we can save. Whatever happens, I’ll do whatever I can to save you.”

Dorian blinked his liquid black eyes at me. “I know this, Zoe.”

I didn’t dare tell Dorian I was convinced we wouldn’t find anything. As I’d experienced that very evening with Max, living in the moment, however temporarily, could be a wonderful thing.

Now that I knew Dorian was safe, I wanted to return to the theater to get my truck and drive to the hospital. I’ve always been uncomfortable inside hospitals, because of what they used to be like many years ago with treatments that often did more harm than good, but I wanted to visit Ivan and find out what had happened to Earl. I checked the clock—I had less than an hour before visiting hours ended.

The optimistic gargoyle insisted that I eat something before leaving the house. I wasn’t sure I could stomach anything, so Dorian fixed a delectable consume with freshly toasted croutons.

I hugged Dorian and kissed the tip of his head between his horns, causing his cheeks to turn dark gray with embarrassment, then grabbed my silver coat and slipped out the door.

My own cheeks flushed red when I found Max at the hospital. He didn’t bring up my confusing actions from earlier that night, but simply led me to the hospital café. As we drank tepid peppermint tea, he filled me in about what he’d learned.

Earl was awake and recovering. Thankful to be alive, he confessed everything that night. As I’d suspected, he admitted to accidentally killing his friend. The two of them had broken into the theater to spy on Peter Silverman, and Earl spotted a Baby Bigfoot hiding in the shadows. Wallace didn’t believe him, so Earl snuck away from his friend in an attempt to find the creature. When Earl felt a hand on his shoulder, he was frightened it was Baby Bigfoot attacking him. He lashed out, only to realize too late that it was his friend.

Earl had spent time in a psychiatric ward in his youth, so he was afraid of what would happen if he came forward with the truth. I thought back on Wallace Mason’s obituary, which had mentioned how he took in troubled souls, and how Earl had told me about his rough times Wallace had helped him through.

Earl and Wallace had figured out that Peter Silverman was really the son of thief Franklin Thorne, and they thought he’d have the inside track to recovering his father’s lost hoard. Seeing us all at the cemetery, especially with a detective, had spooked Earl. He thought there was additional evidence he’d left behind that the police would put together with him. He set fire to a portion of the theater to cover up his crime, but the blaze got out of control. Earl hadn’t realized the flames in the show were fake and that the theater wasn’t specially equipped to handle a contained fire.

Earl maintained it was Baby Bigfoot who saved him from the fire. The doctors chalked up his overly active imagination to a near-death experience.

I would have laughed, but I wanted to cry. Dorian’s book, and the secret to save him, must have burned down with the theater. It didn’t matter that I’d photocopied and photographed the pages. As I’d learned since then, the pages had a life of their own through backward alchemy. It was the book itself that mattered.

“You look exhausted, Zoe,” Max said. “Can I drop you at home?”

“I’ve got my truck here, but thanks.”

We walked to the parking garage together, and Max kissed my cheek before he got out on his floor. I hesitated for a moment, then pushed the button to return to the hospital.

It was now the middle of the night, certainly not visiting hours, but I wanted to at least try to look in on Ivan. Max had mentioned where his room was located, so it was worth a shot. I expected I’d find his door closed, but it was ajar. I poked my head inside.

“Zoe, is that you?”

I stepped inside the narrow private room. “I’m sorry to have woken you. I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“It’s real,” he wheezed. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes, I’m really here. You’re not dreaming. But you should go back to sleep.” I moved back toward the door.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you about what?”

“About alchemy.” His voice rattled. “That it’s real.”

I froze in the doorway, half of my body in the gloomy darkness of the room, half in the fluorescent light of the sterile hallway. Shivers ran down my spine to my toes. “You’re dreaming, Ivan,” I said. My voice shook.

“The more I thought about what you did to that book, the more I saw—”

“You are dreaming,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

Ivan sat up in the hospital bed. “Turn on the light.” What his voice lacked in strength it made up for in severity. This was a command I couldn’t ignore.

I turned on the light and walked to his side. “Whatever you think you saw—”

“You know how I got involved in the study of forgotten alchemists?” Ivan asked sharply.

“You were a professor of chemistry. Alchemists were early chemists.”

“I understand chemistry. Science. What you did to that book, at my home, defied the natural order.”

“The ashes,” I whispered, closing my eyes. After Dorian’s disappearance, I’d been so desperate that I’d slipped up and let Ivan see what I was doing. I’d been too upset to think about acting secretly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” The edge was gone from his voice. In its place was disappointment.

“Would you have believed me?”

“If you had showed me—”

“You would have thought it was a magic trick,” I said. “People have never been ready—”

Ivan snorted. “You think of me not as a friend but a mindless member of the public?”

“It’s because you’re a friend that I didn’t want to burden you with the truth.”

“A burden? You think the Elixir of Life would be a burden to a dying man?”

Now I understood. “I don’t know how to find the Elixir of Life, Ivan. I wish I did—”

“But you did find it once, didn’t you? You’re not simply an old soul, as you always joke with me. Your body is old too.”

As much as I wished it were Max who was ready for my secret, it was Ivan who was more than ready to believe me. I nodded slowly. “I don’t know how I found the Elixir, though. It was an accident.”

“Surely your notes—”

“They’re gone.”

The look of desperation in his eyes pained me. I didn’t know what I could say that would comfort him.

“Non Degenera Alchemia,” Ivan said. “You’re deciphering it to find the knowledge you once lost?”

“Not exactly.” I couldn’t tell Ivan about Dorian. That wasn’t my secret to reveal. “Backward alchemy is dangerous, and I want to understand what’s going on with this book—but not use it.”

Ivan’s eyelids drooped. He nodded. “I must sleep, but when I’m released from the hospital, you will come see me, to tell me what you know?”

“I will,” I promised. “But Ivan—”

He chuckled sleepily. “I know what you are going to say. The world has never been ready for alchemy. This is what the alchemists have said for years. Don’t worry. I will not speak of this to a soul.”

I slipped from the room and flattened my back against the hallway wall. How could I have been so stupid? I had behaved recklessly after Dorian was confiscated, and now Ivan knew my secret. If I thought it could have helped him, I would have told him before. I worried that I’d given him false hope. But maybe, just maybe, false hope was better than no hope at all.

Fire crews were still at the site of the theater fire, so I couldn’t yet search for the charred remains of Non Degenera Alchemia. Dorian wasn’t at home, and after finishing off the last of my solar infusion in the kitchen, the large house felt eerily empty. I tried sleeping, but the stressful events of the day prevented me from nodding off. I popped my “Accidental Life” cassette into the car stereo, and drove around the city that was beginning to feel like home.

Shortly before dawn, I saw that there was no one left at the theater. I parked on a side street and snuck into the wreckage, clinging to my own false hope. A fragment or two of the book might have survived. I didn’t care if the roof fell on my head. My best friend was dying.

As I stepped through the smoldering wreckage, the scent of honey wafted through the soggy, charred remains. Was it only my imagination? I followed the scent to its origin in a lump of ashes. Reaching into the sodden mess, I pulled a book into my hands.

Non Degenera Alchemia was intact. It hadn’t burned.

It had seemed too much to hope for. A gasp of joy escaped from my lips before I tucked the book under my coat and retreated to the safety of my truck.

I opened the book. It fell open to the page it always did. The scent of honey and cloves overwhelmed my senses so much that I nearly shut the book again. Only one thing stopped me. On the melded cathedral illustration were details that hadn’t been there before.

The fire had done more to the pages than the ashes I’d used. Background details appeared on the page, giving life to the cathedral. The intricate stained glass rose window. The island. It was the Île de la Cité. This was Paris in the 1500s. This was Notre Dame de Paris.

And rising up from the cathedral was the outline of a fierce phoenix flying upward, away from the flames. Death and resurrection.

The difference between Dorian and the garden gnome and Buddha statues wasn’t their different materials. It wasn’t intent. The difference was that Dorian himself was connected to Notre Dame. That was the key.