Thirteen

Against the will of my aching body, I sat up. “I slept for a whole twenty-four hours?”

“Oui. This is why I needed a strong scent to wake you.” Dorian waved the roses in front of my face again. “Your phone rang many times, yet you did not awaken. It was Max.”

“Max? Did you—”

“Of course I did not answer. He phoned many times. He must have missed you very much.” Dorian frowned. “But the ringing was most distracting. I asked Brixton to tell him you had horrific jet lag and needed sleep.”

“A whole day?” At least it was one day closer to receiving the book from Paris in the mail. I stretched my cramped neck. My velvet couch wasn’t the most comfortable bed. “I slept for an entire day?”

“Is your hearing affected?” Dorian shouted into my ear. “Yes! A whole day!” He raised his arms above his horns to pantomime the rising and setting of the sun.

“My hearing is fine. At least it was until a moment ago.”

“Ah, I understand. You were being incredulous at the amount of time you slept.”

“Where’s my phone?”

Dorian scampered across the room and brought it back to me. Ivan had left me a voicemail asking me to call him because he had something to show me, and my sort-of-maybe-boyfriend Max Liu had sent me several welcome home text messages. In spite of everything else going on, I couldn’t wait to see Max. In his last message he said he was working on a case today, so unfortunately I wouldn’t get to see him quite yet.

I looked up from the phone and felt a pang of guilt that I’d been thinking of Max and ignoring a problem right in front of me. “Your left arm and leg,” I said, abandoning my phone on the coffee table. “The Tea of Ashes didn’t work?”

Dorian hopped up onto the couch next to me. “Yes and no. They are easier to bend than before you returned home, yet I still cannot control them very well.”

“I’m so sorry, Dorian.” I groaned. “I know what must have gone wrong. Brixton was the one who’s been keeping up the garden. The plants I sacrificed didn’t have much of my own energy in them.”

“C’est rien. The book will come and you will capture a backward alchemist. Then he will tell you what we need to know to save me and my poor brother.”

“I don’t know if it will be that easy.”

“Oui. You will need assistance to get them to reveal their secrets. I have read many thrillers with ingenious methods of torture.”

I gaped at Dorian. “We’re not torturing anyone.”

“It is not difficult. And your basement is perfect. Brixton has returned the books to the library, but I can ask him to check them out again.”

“Absolutely not. No torture.”

“But the professor is probably torturing my brother as we speak! Chipping away at his stone flesh. By the time we rescue him, there may be nothing left of him!”

“The professor doesn’t want to destroy the statue—”

“Statue?” Dorian sniffed and stood tall. The dignified stance was only slightly marred by his limp and awkwardly hanging arm. “This is what you think of me? That I am nothing more than a piece of stone?”

“Of course not. All I meant is that the other gargoyle is in stone form right now. And yes, the professor will probably take small samples of stone to test—”

Dorian’s good hand flew to his mouth and his black eyes opened wide with horror.

“He’ll be fine,” I added. “You were fine after your toe chipped off.”

Dorian squirmed uncomfortably. “If you would be so good as to ship me to Paris in an express delivery crate, I could stage a hostage rescue.”

“The book that I hope will lead us to a backward alchemist should be here any day now—”

“No books arrived in the mail while you slept. Only advertisements. These Americans and their advertisements … ” He shook his head. “You are confident about this book?”

“It sounds like a good lead. If there are any practicing backward alchemists left.”

Dorian narrowed his eyes. “You suspect there are.”

“I do. But until we find one—”

“You are the smartest, bravest person I have ever met, Zoe Faust. Even more so than my father.”

“Flattery won’t convince me torture is okay.”

“No?”

“No.”

Dorian muttered something under his breath and hopped down from the couch. “It is almost eight o’clock in the morning. The market will be open. I have taken the liberty of drawing up a shopping list. Brixton was helpful, but he could only do so much.”

Dorian used to slip meat products into his lists, hoping I wouldn’t notice.

“No bacon?”

He pointed a claw. “Smoked salts are even better.”

“No cream?”

“I have five pounds of raw cashews.”

“Maybe my hearing was affected after all. I could have sworn you said five pounds of cashews.”

He beamed at me. “Wait until you taste the new recipes I have created during your absence.”

Three pints of lemon water, a mug of healing ginger and turmeric tea, and almond butter and sea salt drizzled on freshly picked fruit gave me the energy I needed to start a nettle infusion and pick up groceries.

Making a full alchemical preparation, with the steps that distill the core essence of a plant into ashes, takes time. To extract energy from my nettles more simply, I poured hot water over a tangle of nettles in a mason jar and left it to steep on the back porch.

I usually walked to the market, but the length of Dorian’s list and the heaviness of my legs led me to the truck in my driveway. My 1942 Chevy took a couple of turns of the engine to get started, but I’d taken good care of it over the years and it repaid my love with reliability.

An hour later, I hauled in five bags of groceries. Dorian jumped up and down with glee. With his good arm, he pulled his stepping stool to the counter next to the bags.

“You’re happier to see a kitchen full of food than you were to see me,” I said.

He pulled his snout out of the bag containing grains and dried beans. “Would it offend you if I admitted to equal amounts of happiness?”

I left him to his food and went to the other room to make my phone calls in private. With the time difference I couldn’t call the bookstore proprietor to check on the status of my book delivery, but I could call Max and Ivan. Max’s cell went straight to voicemail, so I tried Ivan next.

Though Ivan knew alchemy was real, he didn’t know that my interest in unlocking Not Untrue Alchemy’s secrets was to save Dorian’s life. Everyone aside from Brixton and Tobias believed I owned a gargoyle statue that I liked to move around the house and had an interest in alchemy because of the business I used to run out of my Airstream trailer and now ran out of my attic. Ivan assumed I was passionate about understanding alchemy because I was an accidental alchemist who wanted to understand more. Ivan was a scholar, so that’s what made sense to his own worldview. Alchemy was a quest for knowledge.

But I’d been too passionate in my attempts to understand the bizarre woodcut illustrations in Dorian’s book. Approaching the problem from an academic angle, Ivan had insights that hadn’t occurred to me. These insights had helped me understand some of the book’s illustrations. I’d subsequently let my guard down and accidentally allowed Ivan to see that alchemy was real.

“Dobrý den,” Ivan said when he picked up the phone.

“My friend, how are you?”

“Me? Never better.” The enthusiasm in his voice came through over the phone. I knew what it was: hope. His realization that alchemy was real had given him hope.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I have a newfound appreciation for alchemical riddles,” Ivan said. “I’m so glad you called. I wish you were back from Paris so we could talk in person, but this will do.”

“That’s actually why I’m calling. I’m home.”

Ivan paused for so long that I wondered if the connection had been dropped. “Where are you?” he rasped. “Can you come over?”

“Are you all right?” I waited for a reply that didn’t come. “Do you need me to call a doctor?”

“No, no. I’m fine,” he said. But the tone of his voice said otherwise. “Zoe, now that you are home, there’s something you must see.”