Fifty-Five

“Like alchemy,” Dorian said, “cooking, at its core, is about transformation.”

“You truly found the Elixir?” I asked. “You’re not joking? Trying to make me feel better about failing?” I’d had so much false hope that I was scared to hope again.

“Il est trop vrai. It is as true as true can be. This is why I returned to Julian Lake’s house last night instead of coming to check on you. I knew you were safe, so I wanted to complete the transformation.”

“At his house rather than your own? I’m sorry if I haven’t made you feel like you belong—”

“Not inside his house. His backyard, you may recall, has an outdoor brick kiln. It is meant for pizza, but it is the same heat—”

“As an athanor.” The fire to cook the philosophical egg.

Dorian grinned. “I cooked many foods in that oven, each of which represented a step to create the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“You’re the one who was moving things around in my laboratory! I worried that was Lucien or Percy. I had the locks changed for nothing.”

“Oui. I apologize for the deception. But it was necessary.”

“And you weren’t even bleeding the other day, were you? I knew it wasn’t tomato sauce.”

He shook his head. “Cinnabar.”

“I knew someone had taken my dragon’s blood.”

“I am sorry, my friend. But as you know, alchemy is a personal process. That is why I roped off my own meditative space in the attic.”

“Your reading space.”

“Yes, only it was not a reading space. I was meditating on alchemy. Did you not wonder why I had not asked you to obtain more library books lately?” He smiled sheepishly.

“What was your philosophical egg?”

“Can you not guess?”

I smiled. “A food?”

“An avocado.” He beamed at me. “It was the perfect ingredient for the first step to my Emerald Tablet: Gourmet Food Version.”

I burst out laughing.

“It is perfect, no? The avocado is the shape of an egg, and it represents life and fertility. The tree lives hundreds of years. It is even green, like an emerald.”

“And your last step must have been salt.”

“But of course. Salt purifies and protects foods from being corrupted, as alchemy’s transformations purify the impure. Salt is the truest, most natural, and most essential of all foods.”

“The product of mercury and sulfur. The child of the spirit and the soul.”

“You alchemists are more clever than I gave you credit for. I knew there was a reason I sought you out, Alchemist. We are a perfect balance, you and I. You claim you are not prepared to train others in the art of alchemy, yet it was your guidance that enabled me to find the Elixir.”

“But I didn’t—”

“You are too humble, Zoe. You are the one who showed me that a meal need not be complicated to reach perfection. You are the one who taught me that salt is the child of the alchemical king and queen. And you are the one who sacrificed yourself for me by creating the Tea of Ashes, showing me that backward alchemy was not the way I wished to live.”

I hugged my friend, and he wrapped his wings around me. His wings were no longer the stiff-yet-malleable stone they once were. Now they felt like I imagined the wings of an angel would feel.

I squeezed Dorian’s strong, feather-like wings, then pulled back to look at his transformation. He looked much the same as when I’d met him six months before, but his gray skin held a radiance that hadn’t previously been there.

“Where’s Leopold?” I asked.

Dorian blinked. “Is he not in the attic?”

“I don’t think so.”

Dorian ran up the stairs. I tried to keep up, but now that he was healthy again, it was all I could do to keep him in sight.

“Merde,” Dorian said from the attic doorway. “He promised he was coming back here. I had to leave him so I could finish my transformation alone.”

“It’s not your fault. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

“Zoe, you do not understand. He has my book.”

“You don’t need it anymore. And what could he do with it on his own?”

Dorian rubbed his chin. “I wonder.”

We tromped down the stairs, me pestering Dorian about the fourteen food steps he used to create the Elixir of Life.

“To the kitchen,” he said. But as soon as he opened the pantry door, he flapped his wings in earnest. He turned around, clutching a mangled note in his clawed hand. “From Leopold,” he sputtered. “He has taken the last of my wine from the pantry. And look, that is the least of the affront.”

I eased the wrinkled note from his hand.

It is by universal misunderstanding that we agree with each other, it read. You have convinced me, my friend, that I must come to understand this foul alchemy that has given us this malady of life. This is why I must borrow your book, say farewell, and accompany my new friend Ivan to the land of alchemists.

Adieu.

L.B.

Leopold and Ivan together, with Dorian’s book? That couldn’t be good.

I quickly looked up the local Portland news on my phone to make sure there hadn’t been any gargoyle sightings. Thank goodness for small favors.

“Zoe,” Dorian interrupted. “I hate to alarm you, but your leg is bleeding.”

I put my phone down and looked at my healthy friend once more. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I had a lot to tell you about what happened last night.”

“Let me cook us breakfast. We have much time to talk, and much grand food to eat.”

the end