From the Typewriter of Dorian Robert-Houdin
The Culinary Alchemist’s Toolbox
The tria prima of cooking
1. Fire — the flame of brimstone on the stove, and the heat of the sun over vegetables, fuels the transformation of ingredients.
2. Curiosity — Mercurial curiosity, ruled by the moon, is the element of experimentation that brings new creations to life.
3. Salt — The element that brings any dish to life.
Dorian sat at his Remington typewriter in the attic. He was at a stand-still on his latest Gothic novel, a tale of a lonely alchemist who was trapped in a tower. Therefore, he had returned to his magnum opus, Culinary Alchemy: The Art of Transforming Simple Ingredients into a Feast of the Senses. Each chapter would be prefaced with a few words of wisdom for a culinary alchemist’s “toolbox.” Advice he could impart with his curious readers for them to keep in mind to think more broadly of the recipes that were to follow.
He sat back and stretched his wings.
Technically, the Gothic novel he had abandoned in favor of his cookbook masterpiece was not his “latest” novel, for he had not completed any of his earlier stories. He had abandoned his drafts after each case he investigated with Zoe was solved. It was only after their last case that he realized the novels were how his subconscious worked through the baffling events that surrounded them. Yet as soon as the baffling was made rational, usually by way of Zoe explaining what had truly transpired, there was nothing left for him to write! No magic left in his prose.
Currently, he had a different problem. No crime to solve. No puzzling mystery to delve into. No cryptic enigma to solve.
Yes, it was true that Zoe was wary of the new interest in the portrait of her and her brother. But she was meeting with a scholar this afternoon who would surely put her mind at ease. He could work on his cookbook in peace. Why, then, was it so difficult to turn his thoughts into words? He was a master chef who intimately understood the connection between cooking and alchemy. Perhaps he should try writing in Latin or French, his first two languages. That might—
A door slammed downstairs, breaking his train of thought.
Dorian instantly tucked his wings closely to his side and scurried to the attic door. He cracked the door, yet did not step outside of the room. Zoe was not supposed to be home.
“Dorian?” A voice called from downstairs. Not Zoe’s voice. The voice of a young man. “I let myself in with my spare key. You got any food?”
Dorian smiled as he swung open the attic door. This was a welcome visit indeed. A friend to feed. He scampered downstairs to meet his young friend.
Brixton Taylor, now sixteen years old, sat sulking at the kitchen table. A pile of mail, which he must have brought in, was strewn messily across the table.
“Veronica bailed on me,” the boy said. “Thought you’d be home since it’s daytime.”
With dark curls and tan skin, on a superficial level, Brixton looked nothing like his fair, blonde mother, Heather. Yet as he matured, his features had begun to look more like hers. The boy was now recognizable as being her son. Dorian had not known any teenagers before accidentally moving to Portland, yet there was something else familiar about Brixton that Dorian had noticed, especially lately. A curiosity in his eyes that was unmistakable. Oui. This was what Dorian recognized. His expression that included the mixed emotions of youth was very much like that of Zoe’s brother, Thomas, in the Brother and Sister portrait Perenelle had painted.
Brixton was not someone to whom Dorian would normally have revealed his identity as a gargoyle, but the boy had accidentally seen Dorian speaking with Zoe. Brixton’s curiosity had led him to sneak into the house that was in such a state of disrepair it was thought to be abandoned. There was much drama during those early days, which Dorian was pleased was behind them.
“I was indeed home,” Dorian said to his friend. “I was working on my cookbook in the attic.”
“I’ll go,” Brixton mumbled as he stood.
“Nonsense. You will do no such thing. You are hungry. I have much extra food.” Dorian had come to learn that referee psychology could be employed to good effect with teenagers. “Feeding you will help me with my cookbook. Sit.”
Dorian was an exacting chef and baker. He baked pastries for Blue Sky Teas, and if a pastry did not look as magnifique on the outside as it would taste inside, he would not include it in the finished products that would be sold that day at the café. Instead, he brought misshapen pastries home, for Zoe and their friends like Brixton to snack on.
Dorian had learned his craft from a French chef who had lost his sight from injuries sustained in a kitchen fire. It had been the idea of Dorian’s father—the man who raised him after accidentally bringing him to life. Close to the end of his own life, his father wished to find an avocation for the gargoyle that would allow him to thrive once he was on his own. Therefore, he introduced Dorian to a blind friend who would not know he was employing a gargoyle.
The chef believed Dorian’s reticence in meeting others was due to a deformity that embarrassed him. The chef instructed Dorian as his pupil and live-in cook. Dorian thus began his career as a chef for people who had lost their sight and needed help around the house—and good food.
His skills as a chef were already formidable when he left France, and Zoe’s plant-based preferences had stretched his creativity, so he was now one of the greatest chefs on the West Coast of the United States. This was a self-appointed designation, of course. It was not worth the risk of exposure to open his own restaurant.
“Veronica is busy this afternoon?” Dorian asked as he placed a baking tray in the oven to gently reheat two leftover pastries. A pumpkin croissant and a caramel oat bar. When he had baked dozens of pastries for Blue Sky Teas before dawn, these two had been in the far corner of the baking sheet and had charred on the bottom. Blue’s old oven in the café kitchen needed servicing.
“Don’t ask,” Brixton said.
Dorian narrowed his eyes, yet he held is tongue instead of mentioning that the boy was the one who brought up her name in the first place!
The first smile Dorian had seen on Brixton’s lips appeared when he bit into the misshapen croissant. The boy did not appear to mind that the monstrosity looked more like an amoeba than a crescent.
“V’s taking an art class this semester,” Brixton said once he had finished eating a second pastry. “She made plans with a friend to do ‘plain air’ painting after school today. Sounds really boring to paint plain air, but whatever.”
“Plein air,” said Dorian with a chuckle. “A French phrase for the art of painting outside. They will be painting nature, I imagine. Not the air.”
“Oh. I guess that makes—” Brixton broke off as his phone made a pinging noise. He grinned as he read the message. “It’s starting to rain, so they gave up.” He grabbed the caramel oat bar, lifted the backpack at his feet and stood. “Thanks for the snack and company, D.”
With that, the boy left through the back door.
Dorian made sure Brixton had locked the door securely (he had) before returning to his typewriter. He would soon need to figure out who would be his “front.” The Culinary Alchemy cookbook would surely be a runaway bestseller, and Dorian himself was in no position to give television interviews. Zoe’s privacy was important, so she could not be the public face of the cookbook.
Perhaps Nicolas Flamel? He, too, was an alchemist who did not age, yet Nicolas was of an indeterminate age where it was quite possible for him to get away with looking like himself for the next twenty years without raising suspicion. Outwardly, Nicolas appeared to be roughly fifty years old, with salt-and-pepper hair and a scruffy form of dress and mannerism that made it impossible to guess if he was a bedraggled forty or a fit sixty-five. The centuries-old alchemist had boundless curiosity for new experiences. Yes, Nicolas might do quite nicely as the front for Culinary Alchemy.