Twenty

“Maybe it wasn’t a deliberate lie,” Max continued. “Brixton loves dark things, like how he’s into Portland’s murderous history.”

“Not so much anymore,” I murmured, thinking of where that interest had led us earlier that year.

“His imagination probably got the best of him. But I’d have thought he’d find it exciting to find a mummified dead body.”

“Mummified?”

“That’s not exactly the right word, but I’d rather not talk about decomposition over dinner. Brix really didn’t tell you that? Maybe he was trying to tell a macabre joke that backfired and he didn’t know how to talk his way out of it.”

I shook my head. Something wasn’t right here.

“I’m surprised you kept our date if you thought Brixton was in danger,” Max said. “I’m glad you came, and that I could put your mind at ease.”

My mind was far from at ease, though. Brixton could be immature, but this wasn’t right. “Brixton told me there were alchemical items like the things I sell.” I took a moment to take a sip of the water placed on the table, deciding how much I should say to Max. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that was Brixton’s imagination, too, since he knows I collect healing and alchemical artifacts for Elixir?”

Max swore softly and shook his head. “I’d have thought the guys would tell him not to talk about the case. Don’t you want to talk about something else? How was your trip? How was the visit with your grandmother’s old friend? Did the boxes she found in her attic belong to your grandmother like you thought?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I don’t want to change the subject yet.”

Max rested his elbows on the table. “What can I tell you so we can properly begin this meal? At first the guys thought it was a drug lab, but it turns out Brixton got the part about alchemy right.”

“He did?” Brixton was right about alchemists being in Portland, but not about the state of the dead body?

“It wasn’t exactly like the stuff in your shop, though,” Max said. “Someone was using it as a lab to practice alchemy. Can you believe in the twenty-first century there are still people who believe in that nonsense?”

My shoulders tensed, and I instinctively reached for the gold locket hanging around my neck. A waitress came to take our orders, so I was saved from saying something I’d regret. If cayenne-spiced bean burgers with a seasonal early summer salad and white wine didn’t make me feel better, I didn’t know what would.

“I’m glad you ordered some wine,” Max said, his eyes lingering on my locket. “You still look tense. Don’t worry about Brixton. He’ll be all right.”

“Your grandmother wouldn’t have called alchemy nonsense, Max.”

“Being an apothecary is different.” He crossed his arms defensively. “That’s about healing people. It’s like the herbal remedies we both use, but with a different name.”

“That’s not how you talked about it before.” Sometimes it seemed like Max was so close to being open to the ideas I wanted to share with him, but other times he was closed off, as if two sides of himself were fighting with each other.

“I can get fanciful when I think about my childhood. False memories from photographs.” He gave me a shy smile and relaxed his arms. “I hope you like the guy in front of you more than eight-year-old Maximilian.”

“Not Maxwell?”

“Nope. Now you know everything about me.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I doubt that.”

The waitress dropped off our glasses of wine, and we raised them in a toast. “To eight-year-old Maximilian,” I said, “who saw the world as full of wonder, and who believed anything was possible. May we find him once again.”

Instead of laughing, Max frowned. What had gone wrong with my date?

On my walk home—alone—I replayed Max’s words again and again. Someone had been practicing alchemy in the woods. That was the relevant fact. But what I couldn’t stop thinking about was that Max thought my beliefs were idiotic. Of course, he didn’t know they were my beliefs. Not exactly. How could I tell him, especially now? But I had more urgent things to worry about.

I still couldn’t quite believe that Brixton had been right. I had to see that shed in the woods.

I climbed the stairs to my attic. The door was locked from the inside.

“Dorian?”

“Un moment!”

The door swung open a minute later. A gargoyle with one of his arms hanging limp at his side looked up at me. “I thought you were out on a date.”

“I was. It ended. Why did you have the door locked?”

He flapped his wings defensively. “You are the one who says I must be careful.”

“Tonight isn’t a night to be careful,” I said. “It’s a night for action. I need you to show me the cabin in the woods.”

While we waited for it to be late enough for Dorian to safely venture outside, I made myself a chocolate elixir in the blender, which I needed for energy to stay awake so late into the night.

Two hours later, I doubted the caffeine had been necessary. Adrenaline was more than enough to keep my eyes wide open as Dorian and I snuck across the grass in the no-man’s land between two neighborhoods.

From the outside, the cabin in the overgrown section of woods looked abandoned. Though a public path cut across this narrow swath of forest, a sign nailed to the cabin’s door marked it as private property. Holes and broken pieces of wood indicated the front door had once been nailed shut, but jagged pieces of wood now hung loosely around the door frame. The door itself, musty and half decayed from years of neglect, pushed open easily.

Stepping through the crime scene tape across the rickety threshold, it became obvious that the disrepair was only an outward disguise. Though the police had taken most of the objects from inside the cabin—presumably why they hadn’t left an officer to guard the shack—enough remained to assure me that Max and Brixton were right. This was the workspace of practicing alchemists.

It was the scent that hit me hardest. Honey, charred salt, and ash. It smelled like Dorian’s Tea of Ashes.

This wasn’t simply an alchemical lab. This was backward alchemy.

A branch snapped in the distance.

Dorian’s horns twitched. He’d heard it too.

I turned off the flashlight and felt my way to the window on the far side of the cabin. I tensed as a weak floorboard moaned under my foot, but I needed to get to that window. That was the direction from which the sound had come. Dorian shushed me, but I had no choice. I had to see what was out there. Like the door, the window had been boarded shut long ago. Unlike the door, the window hadn’t recently been opened. My only view was through the uneven spaces between rotted boards.

Only a small sliver of moon hung in the sky, leaving our surroundings nearly pitch black. But it wasn’t too dark for me to make out the shadow of a figure, perhaps fifty feet from the cabin. A man.

“We need to leave,” I whispered. “Now.”

“What do you see?”

“There’s someone out there.”

“Let me see. You know I see better in the dark.”

“Cover yourself in your cape.”

Dorian didn’t fight me. I heard the sound of cloth flapping as he flipped the cloak around his wings. He took my hand and remained mute. Thank heaven for small favors.

My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness, but Dorian could guide us. He led the way out the front door.

“Un moment,” he whispered.

“Don’t—”

But it was too late. He’d already let go of my hand.

It couldn’t have been more than a minute that I stood alone in the crisp darkness of the cabin porch in the sinister woods, willing my eyes to adjust and for Dorian to return. But it felt like an hour. Every sound made by nocturnal creatures and plants blowing under the pressure of the gentle wind set my senses on edge.

I jumped as a familiar hand took mine. My eyes had adjusted to the dim moonlight enough for me to make out Dorian’s cape-shrouded form.

“A man,” he whispered. “With my leg, I cannot risk getting a closer look. But you are right. A man is out there. Watching.”

Dorian tugged at my hand, pulling me away from the cabin. “If we go this way, the cabin should block us from his view. As long as he cannot see in the darkness as I can, this path should be safe.”

I followed Dorian’s lead, creeping between the thick groupings of trees on our way out of the woods, hoping the man out there didn’t have night vision goggles. At the edge of the greenbelt, we waited in silence for a few more minutes before walking to where my old truck was parked. We didn’t need to speak. Both of us understood we had to be sure we hadn’t been followed.

“This is bad, Dorian.” I turned the ignition, cringing at the sharp sound of the engine revving. No sense in keeping quiet now. I opted for speed instead. The tires screeched as I peeled onto the street and pointed us homeward.

“It will be worse if you are given a speeding ticket.”

I gripped the gear shift.

“I wish to hear ‘Accidental Life,’ ” Dorian said.

The cassette was already in the player, so I hit the play button. Tobias Freeman’s booming voice filled the car. He’d written the song for his 100th birthday, in the 1950s. After I’d nursed him back to health when I met him in my work on the Underground Railroad, Tobias had discovered the Elixir of Life. His loved ones had not. One by one, he had watched them age and die. It was a lot to grapple with, as I knew well. He’d recorded the track under the moniker The Philosopher. The soulful song by my friend immediately made me feel calmer.

“Bon,” Dorian said with a grin.

“You asked me to play the song so I’d feel better, didn’t you?”

“Oui. I know you wish Tobias could be here. Now he is.”

Careful to drive the speed limit, I watched the nighttime greenery bounce off my headlights, then give way to houses. “What’s going on, Dorian? A long-dead man was found in a backward alchemy lab. Another man, ‘creepy guy,’ who must have known about the dead body, was following Ivan—possibly the same person followed us back there by the cabin.”

Dorian peeked out from the folds of the cape. He was sitting on the floor of the passenger side of the truck. “Do not forget the woman in Paris who wishes to expose you.”

The brakes screeched as I came to a stop at a red light. Dorian bumped into the glove compartment. “How,” I said, looking down at the scowling gargoyle, “could I possibly forget her?”

“You are upset,” Dorian said. “Perhaps we should continue our discussion in the morning.”

Feeling the effects of being awake so late at night, I had to agree with Dorian. Talk could wait for tomorrow. But I had one more thing to do before I could sleep.

I dialed the Paris bookseller’s shop to check again on the book he was sending. It was early afternoon in Paris, yet there was no answer at the bookshop. As the phone continued to ring, a disturbing thought tickled my brain. Someone was following alchemists. They’d spied on Ivan and they’d broken into my house. Had they also been following me in Paris when I’d visited the bookshop? Had they done something to the bookseller?

What had become of the bookshop proprietor?