Twenty-Five

“The twenty-first century suits you well,” Percy said, resting his elbows on my dining table and tapping his manicured fingertips together. Like his diction, the way he carried himself was more refined than the slovenly man I’d known. “Vegan restaurants are everywhere in this strange new century, you can buy unusual herbs and minerals without being hunted as a witch, and your white hair looks good in this short, modern hairstyle.”

“You look good too, Percy. For a dead man.”

“I’m sure you’ve guessed that I found the Elixir.”

“Mmm. What I can’t guess is how you found me.”

“This is where things get tricky.” Percy pushed the chair back from the table and began to fidget. He tapped his breast pocket, and for a moment seemed surprised to find it empty.

“Recently gave up a smoking habit?”

“Something like that.”

“Nobody followed us back to the house. You don’t have to be so nervous.”

“If you knew what I know, you’d be nervous too.”

“You’re stalling, Percy. Why don’t you tell me what it is you know?”

“You have to hear me out—the whole story—before you pass judgment. Will you do that for me?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. What was his game?

Percy jerked backward as my phone beeped, nearly toppling the chair. What was he so frightened of?

The phone was set to only make a noise if one of a few people contacted me. I reached for the phone while keeping one eye on Percy. The phone notification was an email from Dorian. I expected he was in the attic along with my laptop, listening to us through the pipes.

Hear Percy out, Dorian’s message said.

“I owe it to Ambrose to give you the benefit of the doubt,” I said.

Percy’s lip quivered, giving his face the humanity of his father. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. When I found Lucien, he told me so many wondrous things about not untrue alchemy. Things you and Father never told me.”

“Oh, God, Percy.” The skin on my cheeks prickled, my mouth went dry, and I felt like I was looking through a tunnel. “What have you done? You found the Elixir through backward alchemy?”

I should have realized it as soon as I saw him. Both because he didn’t have the temperament for true alchemy and also because he was younger than he was the last time I’d seen him. He hadn’t simply stopped aging; he’d reversed the clock. I hadn’t seen it at once because of my feelings for Ambrose. I hadn’t wanted to believe Percy capable of such evil; I was already subconsciously giving Percy the benefit of the doubt. Ambrose and I had tried to teach alchemy to Percy and failed. But because Ambrose always held out hope, I did too.

“You said you’d hear me out,” Percy said, a flash of the petulance surfacing. There was the young man I remembered. “I told you it wasn’t an easy story to tell. Please, Zoe. Please let me tell you. Maybe then you’ll understand.”

I bit my lip and nodded. This was what I’d wanted: a backward alchemist who could explain to me how it worked. What was he going to tell me? Would it be possible to save Dorian’s life?

But now that I had a backward alchemist right in front of me, I was frightened of what he might say.

“Go ahead,” I said through trembling lips. “I’m listening.”

“I know now,” Percy said, “that there was a reason you didn’t speak of not untrue alchemy. But I couldn’t see it then, could I? I never had the same sense of discipline as you and my father. Back then, I blamed Father for spoiling me. Lucien told me I could be more. And that I could achieve it without the years of effort that might not ever pay off. He was so charismatic in how he talked about it—”

“Lucien? Are we talking about the same man? The bookseller at Bossu Livres?”

“He might not be charismatic now, but that’s only because he’s been alive so long that he’s begun to lose his humanity. He was different back then.”

It was one of the dangers of any type of alchemy. The longer you lived, the easier it was to disassociate from normal people, to begin thinking you were something more. I wondered if that was one of the reasons I hadn’t searched as hard as I could have for Nicholas Flamel. He’d been alive since the fourteenth century. If I found him and Pernelle again, I wasn’t sure I’d like what I found.

But something wasn’t quite right about Percy’s analysis of Lucien’s change. If an alchemist lost a firm grip on human emotions, it wouldn’t have made him less charismatic. Could it be that Lucien wasn’t the man I’d met?

“I was young and foolish,” Percy continued. “He told me my sacrifice would be cutting ties with the people I knew. Lucien was the one who arranged for the plot in the cemetery and a telegram with news of my death. I didn’t want to do it, but he insisted. That’s how we’ve lived without being found out.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Not many. Around a dozen at the time of my transformation, but only three of us left that I know of. It seems like a lonely existence, I know. But I believed the stories Lucien told me.” He broke off and shook his head.

“How does it work?” I asked. “How do you get a life force back?” This was the moment I’d been waiting for. The last pieces of the puzzle.

“There was a book, and we followed the formulas in the illustrations.”

My heart raced. “What’s the code?”

Percy blinked at me. “There’s no code.”

“There’s always a code, Percy. We’re alchemists.”

He shook his head and smiled. “The whole point of backward alchemy is shortcuts, Zoe. The founders were lazy, lazy men. Lucien and Olav.”

“Who’s Olav?”

“A Viking. Exceptionally strong, but very stupid. Like the Vikings were.”

I reminded myself this wasn’t the time to combat Percy’s stereotypes.

“The two of them were complementary,” Percy continued. “With Lucien’s brains and Olav’s brawn, they bullied alchemists into sharing the codes of true alchemy, then used the Death Rotation to cut through the clutter and skip straight to the Elixir.”

“But if there’s no code in backward alchemy, then what’s the secret?”

Percy swallowed hard. He sat back down at the table and reached for his water. After drinking it in one gulp, he slammed the glass down and met my gaze. “Are you going to make me say it? You’re a smart woman. You already know, don’t you?”

“Sacrifices,” I said without realizing I was speaking out loud. “You’re talking about the necessary sacrifices. It was people you sacrificed, wasn’t it?”

Percy nodded gravely.

I’d suspected as much, but I hadn’t let myself believe it because I was terrified about what that would mean for Dorian. I’d been able to keep him relatively healthy through plant sacrifices that also drained my own energy, but that wasn’t enough. Even with the knowledge a backward alchemist could give me, I would still have to go through with a sacrifice.

It was an impossible situation. I could never purposefully take a life. There was no way I could convince myself it was right to sacrifice a life, even if it was to save another.

My phone buzzed. I scooped it into my hand so Percy wouldn’t see Dorian’s message.

No sacrifice, Dorian’s email read. If it is my fate to live trapped in unmoving stone, so be it.

I swallowed a sob as I set the phone facedown on the table. Even if Dorian was ready to accept his fate, I wasn’t.