Twenty-Six

“Lucien didn’t tell me about the sacrifices.” Percy’s chest rose and fell. He wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. “Not at first. It wasn’t my fault. I was already in too deep when I found out. He started me off performing processes that weren’t so different from the alchemy you and Father practiced—except that these processes involve counterclockwise Death Rotations shown in a book, skipping the long, boring steps. So it’s not necessary to use a long-burning athanor furnace to cook the vessel that becomes the Philosopher’s Stone. Only fire is needed, just like the book illustrations showed. The result is an ash-like substance.”

“The Tea of Ashes,” I whispered.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I’m thinking aloud. Go on.”

“The result is Alchemical Ashes.” Percy cleared his throat. “Could I get some more water?”

I filled Percy’s glass with more water from the kitchen. It gave me a moment to think. Now I knew the real term the backward alchemists used: Alchemical Ashes. But it was the same substance as in the tea I’d been making Dorian: ashes. I’d followed the coded instructions successfully. I wasn’t missing anything. Only the sacrifice.

“And the sacrifice?” I said as I handed the glass to Percy. I remained standing over him as he accepted the water with shaking hands.

“It’s the sacrifice who stirs the transformation that results in Alchemical Ashes.” Percy lowered his voice and his gaze. When he continued, he whispered his words to the table. “That’s how the energy gets transferred: through an apprentice who gives his life.”

“An apprentice ‘gives his life.’ As in gives up his life?”

“Or her life, I guess I’m supposed to say, now that it’s the twenty-first century.” Percy forced a laugh as he again wiped sweat from his forehead. “But as far as I know, it’s only been men.”

And I thought my alchemy apprenticeship with Nicolas Flamel had been difficult. Staying awake through the night to watch the fire burning steadily in the athanor furnace was nothing compared to an apprenticeship that ends with losing your life. “Apprentices willingly sign up for this?”

“Well, the thing is … ”

“They don’t know what they’re signing up for, do they?”

“I didn’t either,” was Percy’s indignant reply.

“You killed someone to be here today.”

Percy wouldn’t look up at me. “Not directly.”

“That’s splitting hairs, Percy.”

“It’s not, you know.” His gaze snapped to mine. “I couldn’t have killed anyone directly. The boy signed up for it himself.”

“Have you ever taken responsibility for anything in your life, Percy?”

“I didn’t mean to, Zoe! Please forgive me. I’ve never forgiven myself, but if you could forgive a child’s mistake—”

“You were far from a child.”

“When nobody ever treated me like an adult, how was I supposed to grow up?”

I tried to steady my breathing. “I don’t want to fight with you, Percy. I want to know why you came to me. I want to know what Lucien is doing here.”

“I’m getting there. I told you, you need the whole story if you’re going to understand.” He nervously tapped his fingers on the table. “I broke off contact with Lucien years ago, once I knew what he was. I was able to stay young through my plant sacrifices—never hurting another person, I swear. You were so good with gardening. I paid attention to that. I learned from you. I’ve got a garden now, so I make my own Alchemical Ashes every year or so, whenever my life force begins to fade. It’s only that first transformation that requires an external sacrifice.”

“It doesn’t hurt you to do that?”

“To do what?”

“Make the Alchemical Ashes.”

“Why would it hurt me?”

I didn’t want him to know I had the backward alchemy book and had made the Alchemical Ashes for Dorian, so I had to choose my words carefully. “Based on how alchemy works, I would assume it would be extremely draining.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“No?”

“Well,” Percy continued, “it’s not so bad as long as you only need to do it once a year. More frequently and you’re looking for trouble.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s what I’m getting to.” The petulant boy was back. “It’s why I’m here. Even though I broke off contact with Lucien, he kept tabs on me. Several months ago, there was a change that caused our backward alchemy to become unstable. Lucien got in touch with me to see what I knew.”

“Wait, you mean he didn’t know what the change was?”

“I don’t know either. That’s the problem. None of us know. Several of us have already died.”

This wasn’t how I imagined things would go when I found a backward alchemist. They were supposed to know what was going on. “Nobody knows?” I echoed.

He shook his head. “I don’t have the answers. That’s what we’re looking for. The book I mentioned, it’s called Non Degenera Alchemia.”

I held my tongue, even though part of me wanted to confide everything I knew. I was so close to answers. But I was also close to an unknown danger. Could I trust Percy?

“The book spelled out the secrets of not untrue alchemy,” Percy continued. “It was lost or stolen ages ago, but it didn’t really matter, because we had other practicing not untrue alchemists to pass down the knowledge. Lucien and Olav created the book at Notre Dame, and after that, a small secret society followed their work, meeting at Notre Dame.”

That explained the book’s connection to Notre Dame. And how Dorian had been brought to life by accident. He’d been created specifically for Notre Dame. Life forces were linked.

“Why did Lucien need the information in the book if he’s the one who created it?” I asked.

Percy shrugged. “Maybe he forgot. That’s the reason he wrote the information down, right? So he wouldn’t have to remember it.”

“But you just said he, Olav, and others passed down the knowledge.”

Another shrug. “Maybe there’s something special about the book itself.”

“You don’t know what’s special about it, though?”

“I already said that, didn’t I?”

I called upon every ounce of my will power to avoid strangling, or at least slapping, the lazy man in front of me. “If you had this book, would it save you? Is there something in there that would stop the shift? Something that doesn’t involve another sacrifice?”

“It doesn’t matter, because how would we find it? It’s been gone forever.”

“Nobody looked for it?”

Percy shrugged yet again. “Why would we? We’d already gotten what we needed from it.”

I shook with frustration. Backward alchemists and their shortcuts! They didn’t see the power of true knowledge. I circled the table. Clockwise. Was I subconsciously trying to counteract the backward Death Rotation?

“But now,” Percy said, “our energy is fading. It’s fading at different speeds, but fading all the same. Even mine.”

“You could have saved yourself a lot of my skepticism if you’d come right out and said you wanted help. That’s your real motivation for coming here, isn’t it?”

“Lucien really did follow you here from Paris. I’m not making this up.”

“I didn’t say you made it up. I believe you want to help me too. But it’s not your main focus. You want to save yourself.”

“Is that so bad? For all of time, man has been interested in self-preservation.”

“I’m all for self-preservation. Just not when it involves murdering others.”

“I didn’t kill anyone on purpose, I swear. And I stepped back from it once I knew. I’m not a bad guy. I didn’t have it in me to do it again. It was only Lucien. After the inexplicable shift, he made another sacrifice—”

I gasped. “He killed someone else? Now? This year?”

“The sacrifice didn’t work, though. He’s still aging rapidly. All of us who are left have been aging quickly for the past few months.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Percy. That would mean you were, what, twelve years old last month? Or ten?”

Percy smiled. I couldn’t believe he actually smiled moments after telling me a man he knew had recently murdered someone. “It’s thanks to you that I’m spared, Zoe. I was a few years younger a few months ago, and because of my thriving potager garden, I’ve been able to keep myself relatively young.” His smile faltered. “But I’ve run out of plants. We’re all desperate to discover what changed. Lucien thinks the answer is in Non Degenera Alchemia.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

Percy stood up and crossed his arms confidently. Several inches taller than me, he positioned himself to look down his nose at me. “Why were you in Paris, Zoe?”

“I used to live there, you know.”

Percy stood so close to me I could feel his stale breath on my face. Yet I refused to back away.

“You went to Lucien’s bookshop in Paris,” Percy said, “asking questions about alchemy. You made him suspicious. Lucien now believes you have this book. That’s why he’s here. He wants that book, and he won’t stop until he gets it.”