I’d been on the go from the moment I’d woken up that morning, so I returned home to have a moment to shower, think, and eat.
The first two were not to be. Dorian was waiting for me at the dining table, a sour expression on his face.
“You have not revealed too much about yourself to Dr. Graves, have you?”
“Of course not,” I assured him. “As I told you, the closest we can get to the whole truth is that Philippe Hayden was actually a woman who’d disguised herself as a man, and that Perenelle is part of a long line of women who learned from Hayden to mix paint recipes inspired by the techniques of early chemistry—”
“Alchemy,” Dorian corrected.
I smiled. “The world is ready to accept that many artists previously thought to be men were actually women, but I don’t know if they’re ready to hear the word ‘alchemy,’ even when it doesn’t mean the Elixir of Life or transmuting lead into gold.”
He agreed and went on to tell me about the missing publication of Dr. Graves.
“I came across something similar when I looked into her,” I said.
Dorian blinked at me. “You did? You did not tell me of this subterfuge!”
“Because it wasn’t a deception. It was a presentation more than fifty years ago, and my guess is that she was asserting her theories about Hayden being a woman before she had enough proof.”
Dorian scowled. “You cannot trust her, Zoe.”
“She can help right a historical wrong,” I said, “and get my painting back in the process. There’s a killer out there, and we don’t know why they’re after Perenelle’s paintings.”
“You also rightly care about helping Perenelle,” said Dorian. “And it is a worthy cause to seek justice for the murdered woman, who was desperate to help her family.”
“But you’re right,” I admitted. “What I think about when I close my eyes is the lovingly created portrait I’ve lost. Of Thomas.”
Dorian told me lunch would be ready in half an hour. I had time to take a quick shower and fix myself a mug of sage tea that I took to the backyard porch.
Standing on the small wooden porch and breathing in the earthy scent made stronger by the rain, I looked out over the sprawling garden. It wasn’t what modern sensibilities would consider desirable. My garden would never be featured in one of those home tours Brixton’s best friend Veronica loved to watch, even when it wasn’t bedraggled from the wind and rain.
To those who weren’t looking closely, the garden might appear unkempt. But in truth, it was carefully cultivated. A balance of nature and nurture. I listened to the earth and the sky, and to the plants already growing in the soil, to determine how best to cut back undesirable plants in favor of the delicious herbs and vegetables I wanted to grow for both good health and flavorful cooking.
I’d planted an assortment of healing herbs and desirable vegetables. I cultivated plants that would thrive and that I knew I’d use in abundance for meals and for herbal preparations. I prioritized varieties that were out of fashion and thus hard to find, plants that were tastiest when harvested an hour before eating them, and also flowers that attracted bees and fostered a healthy ecosystem.
Blackberry brambles wended their way through cucumber vines. Collard trees grew spindly yet hearty as they surpassed my height and produced hearty greens. Nettles were as contained as they could be in wine barrel planter boxes, though I feared they’d soon be leaning so far over the sorrel that the stinging leaves would make it tricky to harvest the spinach-like green below. A good problem to have.
I listened to my instincts with the plants. A cultivated knowledge learned from experience. To me, it was a near perfect garden. What it wasn’t was neat and tidy.
With so many people practicing herbalism once again, and selling local produce from organic gardens, it might have appeared that it wasn’t essential to grow my own food. But at its core, alchemy is about transformation, and the heart of its transformations are about intent, so growing food with my own hands added that necessary element.
I shivered as a gust of wind blew rain sideways onto the porch. My sweater kept me warm enough if I was dry, but I should have taken a coat.
“You have missed another message.” Dorian pointed at a blinking notification on my phone.
It was an encrypted message from Theo, the former FBI-agent-turned-ID-forger. He’d agreed to help, but he needed a few more details. I had expected him to question why they chose names of famous people from history for their fake identities, but that wasn’t his concern. He needed to know where exactly they’d lived at different points before a year ago, so he could build this into a believable backstory.
“I’ll be a few minutes,” I said to Dorian as I took my laptop to the living room and stretched out on my green velvet couch, thinking about how best to answer.
The truth was that Perenelle had used her powerful and unique skill of creating and using alchemical paint to save the life of Nicolas and herself. Imprisoning the two of them inside a painting was the only way to suspend their grave injuries caused by alchemist Edward Kelley until they could get medical help. Things hadn’t gone to plan, and they’d been trapped far longer than intended. Edward Kelley had finally been held accountable for attempted murder. Perenelle had made a full recovery from being forced to swallow toxic paint, but Nicolas’s head injury still sapped his energy.
They were adjusting to life in the twenty-first century quite well. I expected nothing less from the couple who’d lived through centuries that saw worldwide upheaval, colonialism, the invention of the movable type printing press, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution before their imprisonment that began shortly before the Industrial Revolution. They clung to a few remnants of the past—Perenelle refused to wear trousers, Nicolas wouldn’t entertain the idea of reading eBooks no matter how crowded their home became, and they both still preferred spoons and knives to forks—but they greeted the twenty-first century with a fierce curiosity.
When I’d first met them, I was enamored with the fact that they’d tailored their clothing to enable their curiosity. Nicolas customized his jackets with extra interior pockets for both paper notebooks and glass vials that allowed him to take samples wherever he went, and Perenelle added numerous pockets to her billowing skirts to hold her art supplies as well as any ingredients in the world around her that caught her attention.
They paid attention to the world around them, so they had a deep understanding of the dangers that came with alchemy. Would-be alchemists who failed in their experiments could be tempted to abandon true alchemy and seek out dangerous shortcuts. Backward alchemy grew out of this temptation, which is why the Flamels had always warned against it and tried to stop it for good.
But I couldn’t tell Theo any of that. Instead, I wrote back to him with the explanation that the Flamels had lived off the grid in various parts of France, hoping it would be enough.
I closed my laptop to find Dorian looming at the foot of the couch. I clutched my locket and caught my breath.
“Je suis désolé,” Dorian said. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“I was lost in my thoughts and didn’t hear you come out of the kitchen.”
“Do not fault your senses. I am practicing walking silently. Now that we have another case, it may prove useful.”
“No creeping,” I said as I tossed the laptop onto the coffee table. “Nothing we’re doing requires creeping.”
Dorian eyed me from head to toe. “Camouflage? This is how you plan to sneak around?”
I looked down at my clothes. I was dressed in an emerald green knitted sweater, dark gray slacks, and olive green woolen socks. While sitting on my green velvet couch. It was fair to say I blended into my surroundings.
“Green suits me.” I tucked my feet under me. Green is my favorite color, because it makes me feel like I’m outside in a garden, even when I’m not. I get complimented when I wear green, but I’m honestly not sure if it’s because it suits my skin tone or whether I’m happier in green and that’s what comes through.
“If you are done working with a criminal,” said Dorian, “lunch is served.”