When Lucy woke up the following day, the power was still out.
She hadn’t just blown all the fuses in her house—she’d caused a streetwide blackout. In a lucky break, the storm had provided the ideal cover for the surge that fried the mains.
With a yawn, she finger-combed her hair and pulled her unicorn dancing in the rain T-shirt over a pair of leggings. Although a DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE sign would have been more appropriate. She tugged a loose thread from the seam.
Why hadn’t Lucy experienced a seizure or lost consciousness with a thousand volts rushing through her? Biology dictated that not only should she have seized, her heart should have stopped, and Lucy should be very much dead. Not that she was looking a gift horse in the mouth. But she had a theory.
When Lucy was holding the wires, she’d had this sense of pushing the energy outward, like water spraying from a firehouse, and her whole being quivered with what she could only describe as euphoria. By contrast, the two previous incidents when Lucy had lost consciousness—at the New Yorker Hotel and in the physics lab—it had felt more like the energy was trapped, burning her up from the inside.
Somehow Lucy had to learn how to control the direction of the energy, push it out of her before the inevitable happened and it boiled her alive. But how was she going to do that on command? Now would be the time for some kind of wizened electrical Merlin to show up. That’s what would happen in the fantasy novels Claudia loved so much.
She yawned again. Lucy could go for one of her bestie’s highly caffeinated concoctions in a major way. Opening her bedroom door, a parcel blocked her path. Hmm.
Lucy crouched down and removed the gift card attached to the front.
Sorry I left without saying goodbye. See you soon, kiddo. Love, Dad
She sucked in a breath. Her father’s handwriting was crisp and clipped. The script of someone who’d spent decades taking lab notes. What would his reaction be if he knew his daughter had caused a neighborhood blackout?
Lucy thought back to the writing on the back of the fateful photograph. Those letters were also square but more slanted. Her mother always wrote in cursive: elegant, controlled loops. Who had written on the back of that photo? And why? She’d been so focused on understanding her new symptoms that she’d nearly forgotten about what had sent her to the New Yorker Hotel in the first place.
Lucy dropped her gaze to the rectangular box and, curiosity piqued, ripped off the blue wrapping paper. A picture of a robot dog wagging its tail greeted her. The cardboard was covered in Japanese kanji.
Lucy’s mouth pulled upward. She’d wanted one of these for a while. Flipping the box over, she found instructions in English. It was a DIY kit.
Dr. Victor Phelps subscribed to the “teach a man to fish” philosophy and believed if you made something yourself, you appreciated it more. She doubted Schrödinger would truly appreciate an animatronic Fido running around the house, but she’d seen neither hide nor hair of the cat for days. Her former feline companion had detected there was something seriously off with Lucy even if nobody else could.
Would it ever be possible for Lucy to turn a metaphysical dial and zap the robot dog just enough to bring it to life without liquefying its circuits?
Wait. What was she even thinking? She should be focused on trying to get rid of her electrical freakiness, not trying to master it.
There was only one avenue of experimentation she hadn’t yet explored: medical science. Most of the time she dreaded them, but maybe she was due for a checkup with Dr. Rosen. If her new abilities had a physical manifestation in her brain, an EEG—electroencephalogram—should pick it up. She couldn’t risk an MRI scan, however, because that was basically a giant magnet.
And so was Lucy.
Before she considered spilling the beans to her parents, she wanted to be in possession of all the possible evidence, present them with a complete data set. As well as a cohesive argument as to why she should still be allowed to attend college.
“Lucy? Are you up?” Her mom’s voice carried down from the attic, cutting into her speculation.
She set the box down on her bed, then padded down the hallway and hoisted herself up the ladder to the study. At the top, she was overpowered by a peppermint fog. Uh-oh. There was no Beethoven today because of the power outage, but there was a steaming mug of peppermint tea on her mother’s desk next to the battery-operated kettle they brought on camping trips.
Definitely not her first mug of the day.
Lucy skimmed her mother’s profile. A pencil was gripped between her teeth, her cheeks were sunken, and she was wearing the same clothes as the day before. She’d seen her mom hyperfocused on a book deadline before, but not like this. Strategically positioned on a bookshelf was an industrial-strength flashlight aimed at the manuscript over which her mom was hunched.
Had she been up all night?
“Mom?” Lucy said, hesitant.
Her head snapped in Lucy’s direction and she spit out the pencil.
“Oh. It was you,” said her mother as if she hadn’t summoned her. Who else would it be? “You found the gift?”
Lucy nodded. “Not sure Schrödinger will approve.”
“Perhaps not.” A weak laugh. “Your dad thought you’d like it. He’s going to be in Tokyo at least another week.”
“Another week? This is a record. Even for him.”
Her mom made a dismissive hand motion. “One of their investors is being difficult.” She took a sip from the mug on her desk. “But don’t worry, your father can be very persuasive.”
“I’m not worried,” Lucy said, crossing toward her. Not exactly. Her father’s prolonged absence couldn’t be connected to her discovery of Tesla’s lab. He had no way of knowing what she’d found before he left. Nobody knew. Still. Her pulse quickened.
“Do you know what the project is they’re trying to fund?” she asked, snatching the scarab figurine from the filing cabinet. She began turning it over between her fingers, and her mom stiffened. Lucy put it back where she found it.
“You know your father,” said her mom. “He has so many deals in the works. It’s hard to keep track.”
“Anything to do with alternative energy?” she persisted.
“Maybe. Why?”
“Oh, no reason. Just interested.” Lucy twisted the hem of her T-shirt. If she pushed this line of questioning any further, her mother would ferret out her secrets. A diversionary tactic was required.
“How’s your work going, Mom?” she asked, pointing at the facsimile open on the desk.
Professor Elaine Phelps lowered a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
“You’re not usually interested in my research.”
“That’s not true,” Lucy protested. Okay, it was mostly true. She’d adopted her father’s anti–liberal arts prejudice long ago. It wasn’t like Lucy didn’t enjoy literature; it just didn’t have the same capacity to change the world as science.
She perched against her mother’s desk to take a closer look.
“This is alchemy, isn’t it?”
Her mom sat up straighter than if Lucy had sent several hundred volts through her, gaze sharpening to a knife-point.
“What makes you say that?”
Lucy pitied the student who claimed the dog ate his homework. She squirmed on the spot. “I just … some reading I’ve been doing for my independent-study project. There was a chapter about alchemy. I recognized some of the symbols from your manuscript…” She trailed off. Lucy hated lying to her mom but it seemed like a bad idea to mention her new teaching assistant had a tattoo. Or that she’d seen it.
“Oh, of course.” Her mother’s shoulders relaxed. “Which symbols?”
Lucy swallowed. “Um, one was an eight-pointed star.”
“And what did you learn about it?”
Crap. Neither of her parents was the type to spoon-feed her the answers. She wished she’d been brave enough to ask Ravi more about it.
“Creation. It means creation,” Lucy replied haltingly as she recalled brushing her fingertips against his wrist.
Her mom leaned back in the swivel chair and crossed her arms.
“Creation, yes. More specifically, transmutation.”
“Transmutation? Like turning lead into gold?” Lucy snorted. “Dad always says alchemists were charlatans.”
“Does he? Charlatans? That sounds like your father.” A low laugh rattled in her mother’s throat. “He’s very practical minded,” she said with fondness. He’s a scientist, Lucy wanted to defend him, but decided against interrupting. “Alchemists weren’t just interested in gold-making. They were interested in all chemical processes.”
“So you’re translating a textbook?”
Another low laugh. “Not quite.” Lucy scooped up the scarab from the cabinet once more and her mother took it from her hands. “The scarab represents creation. The alchemists were interested in the transformative processes of life.” She gave the turquoise stone an indulgent smile.
Funny how Lucy had seen the beetle for years and never given it a second thought. There had been a wistfulness in Ravi’s voice when he’d spoken about transformation. What had happened in his life that drew him to alchemy?
“Why the scarab?” Lucy asked.
Her mom glanced up from the stone beetle, a faraway look on her face, and Lucy watched her put on her professor cap.
“As I imagine you read, alchemy originated in Egypt, where the scarab was considered a sacred animal.” She paused, and Lucy nodded. “The scarab was revered because the Egyptians erroneously believed female beetles could reproduce on their own, like their god Atum.”
She passed the figurine back to Lucy. “Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and the oldest extant alchemical texts are therefore of Greco-Egyptian origin. However, they only survived because of Arabic scholars who translated the ancient texts when they conquered Alexandria.”
It always amazed Lucy how long her mother could lecture without taking a breath.
“I didn’t think you were interested in science,” she said, and her mom responded by pressing her lips into a line.
“The Ancient Greeks didn’t distinguish science from philosophy.”
Hmm. Tapping the corner of the manuscript, Lucy said, “So this is philosophy?”
“This is the Pharmakon of Kleopatra.” Her mom sighed, scrubbing the heels of her hands against her eyes. They were red and tired. “A fool’s errand. Worse than fool’s gold.”
“The Cleopatra?”
Exhaustion bled through her mother's laugh. “No, not the femme fatale. The alchemist. She lived in the third century and was said to be one of the four female alchemists who could create a philosopher’s stone.”
Lucy had never heard of female alchemists, but it would be impossible to grow up with a Potterhead best friend and not know the philosopher’s stone was the mythical transmutation agent that would transform base metals into gold.
“And a pharmakon?”
“Pharmakon is a fancy word for medicine—or poison. I’m inclined to view it as a poison at this point.”
Lucy dashed her mom a quizzical glance.
“The Pharmakon of Kleopatra is her only remaining text. In theory, it contains the secret to her philosopher’s stone, except no one has ever been able to successfully translate it. Even Newton tried and failed.”
“Wow.”
Lucy hadn’t realized Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics himself, was so interested in alchemy. Apparently, Ravi was right about proper scientists being alchemists. And the transformation of plasma wasn’t so different from transmutation, she supposed.
Inching closer, wetting her lips, Lucy began flicking through the facsimile. Half of the pages were filled with hand-drawn illustrations of the cosmos or the ocean bordered in gold leaf. She couldn’t fathom the number of hours it must have taken to complete the excruciating detail of each miniature, from the scales on the fish to the tails of the shooting stars. The facing pages were scattered with the Greek letters and hieroglyphs Lucy had spotted the last time, as well as what she presumed were other alchemical symbols. She zipped her eyes across the lines but failed to deduce any patterns. It was totally random. Almost as if …
“It needs a cipher!” Lucy exclaimed, getting the same buzz in her chest as when solving a tricky calculus problem set.
Her mom touched Lucy’s elbow in a rare show of emotion, a smile spreading across her face.
“Exactly. Part of the cipher was discovered within a different Medieval Latin text from the thirteenth century. Regrettably, it’s not enough.”
Liber Librum Aperit. Lucy bit her lips together. Hard. Her mother was literally trying to use one book to open another. It had to be a coincidence.
Keeping her eyes trained on the folios, Lucy said, “This doesn’t seem like your usual research.”
“You’re not wrong. I blame too many glasses of wine at the last annual Antiquities Congress.”
Lucy afforded her mom a disbelieving side-eye. Professor Elaine Phelps would never lose a modicum of composure at an academic conference, and they both knew it.
“I like a challenge,” her mother admitted. “In Greco-Roman Egypt, chemistry was dominated by women, most of whom created perfumes and cosmetics. I became interested in the role of women in science in the ancient world.”
She sipped her tea and allowed her attention to wander back to the manuscript. “Once a colleague showed me the Pharmakon, I was enthralled.” There was a gleam in her mom’s eyes that made her seem not girlish, but definitely younger, less worn-out. “A linguistic Rubik’s Cube. I couldn’t resist.”
For once, Lucy saw the appeal of her mother’s research. She swallowed again, chest growing tight.
“Why would Kleopatra turn her formula into a riddle?” she wondered aloud. “Scientists normally want their students to be able to replicate their experiments.”
Her mother regarded Lucy with a sphinxlike expression, listing her head to the side. “Professional rivalry, perhaps,” she suggested after a moment or two. “Also fear of persecution. In Kleopatra’s time, the emperor Diocletian—and many after him—persecuted the alchemists, burning their works. Sometimes burning the alchemists as well, accusing them of witchcraft.”
Lucy shuddered. She probably would have been tied to a stake right beside Kleopatra.
Her mom leaned her face close to Lucy’s as she turned the page. “Some scholars believe the cipher is hidden in the manuscript illuminations,” she continued. “Many alchemists hid their formulas in allegorical dreams or visions. Often they took the form of a dreamer wandering around a garden.”
“Garden?” Lucy choked out, glad her mom couldn’t see her face.
There was the soft shushing of paper on paper and then Lucy was confronted with an intricately painted jungle garden scene. Jewel-green palm fronds, tangerine blossoms. And in the center, looming over the page, was a supernaturally large orchid plant. The exact same shade of magenta as in her dream.
“The Flower of Life,” her mother explained. “Six symmetrical petals, like a hexagon. It features in many alchemical texts. They believed it was part of a sacred geometry that revealed the secrets of the universe.”
Lucy lurched back, afraid to set the book on fire. Her heartbeat stampeded in her ears. How was this possible? How could Lucy have dreamed something from a book she’d never seen? And if Lucy had set the Flower of Life alight—did that mean Lucy brought death?
“Lucy?” Her mom launched to her feet. “Are you feeling well? You’re white as a sheet.” She reached out to check her daughter’s temperature but Lucy staggered farther back, out of her grasp.
“I … I think I must have eaten something funny.”
Her mother took another step, hands on hip. “Lu—”
“Really, Mom. Stop. I’ll go find some Tums.”
A resigned huff. “All right, honey. I’ll check on you later.”
“Thanks.” Guilt pricked Lucy as she rocketed down the stairs.
She needed space to breathe. To think. Unlike Kleopatra’s pharmakon, however, Lucy was coming to the conclusion that she was a code without a cipher.