The Elusive Elixir

by Gigi Pandian

  “Now?” Brixton said, pulling away from his mom. “They can’t just—”

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Heather said softly.

  Brixton looked to his stepfather. With a clenched jaw, Abel nodded at Brixton. Then Max, Abel, and Brixton followed the detectives out the door.

  Blue tried to assure everyone that it was a private family matter and nothing to worry about, but the party broke up after that.

  I walked home alone, wondering what the detectives had found out about Heather’s father. Why wouldn’t they answer Abel’s question? It seemed simple enough.

  Walking up my driveway, my senses tingled. I haven’t survived as long as I have without listening to the subtle cues surrounding us that we pick up as intuition. Something was different, but what? I chastised myself. I had a house guest. I must have noticed the subtle movement of him moving behind a closed curtain. I continued walking, but stopped as soon as I passed my Chevy truck and Airstream trailer.

  The front door was ajar.

  I ran to the door and pushed it open. The living room had been ransacked.

  “Percy?” I called out.

  No answer.

  I ran through the house. The lock to my basement alchemy lab had been broken open. I grabbed a heavy flashlight and crept down the stairs. With each step, my heart pounded more loudly in my ears.

  At the base of the basement stairs, Percy lay unconscious on the concrete floor, his hair wet with blood.

  Thirty

  “I’m all right,” Percy croaked. But he clearly wasn’t. Blood covered the side of his head.

  “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No.” He grabbed my wrist. “Too many questions. You know that.”

  He was right. But he was also in bad shape. In worse shape than my natural remedies could fix.

  “All right,” I said as Percy struggled to sit up. “Let go of my arm and I promise I’ll get supplies, not call an ambulance.”

  He obliged then sank back to the floor. I rushed upstairs to get supplies.

  After I’d cleaned his head wound, I saw he wasn’t as badly off as I’d feared. Head wounds tend to bleed a lot, but the gash itself wouldn’t need my sloppy stitches after all. I led him to the bedroom he was using, exchanged his bloody shirt for a fresh one, and applied a healing salve that would serve as a natural antibiotic.

  “Was it Lucien?” I asked, holding an ice pack to the side of his head.

  He nodded and winced in pain.

  “I don’t suppose you have any Paracetamol? No, I didn’t think you would.”

  “He was after Non Degenera Alchemia?”

  “It appears that way. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop him—”

  “I’m sorry I left you alone. Neither of us should be on our own right now.”

  A knock on the door sounded from below.

  “You’ll be all right.” I tucked him into bed before running downstairs.

  At the front door I found Max. He looked infinitely more frazzled than he had an hour before. Brixton sat on the porch steps behind him, a banjo slung over his back.

  “Abel is with Heather at the police station,” Max said. “I thought I could look after Brix—”

  “I’m almost fifteen,” Brixton cut in. “Nobody needs to look after me.”

  “But I was called into the station,” Max continued. “So I can’t keep an eye on him. I hate to impose upon Blue the day she’s out of jail. Can he hang out here until his mom can pick him up?”

  I hesitated for long enough that Max picked up on the delay. At the sound of creaking floorboards overhead, he stepped in front of Brixton and shifted into a combative stance.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Everything is fine. I just have a visitor. Ambrose’s son Percy is staying here.”

  “Oh,” Max said, his voice curt. “I didn’t realize he’d be staying with you. We can go. Sorry to have bothered you. I’ll figure out something else.”

  “It’s no bother,” I said. “Brix, since the party got cut short and you were busy making music, I bet you’re hungry. There’s a lot of food in the fridge.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Brixton glared at me. “But I’ll pretend to eat something so you two can talk.” He pushed past us and disappeared through the kitchen’s swinging door.

  “Smart kid,” Max said.

  “I don’t think he likes being treated like a kid. Come inside. What did you want to talk about?” I took a step toward Max, but he turned away. He strode across the living room and gripped the back of a dining room chair.

  “What’s going on, Max? Is the man Brixton’s grandfather? Why the secrecy?”

  The sound of scales being played on a banjo came from the kitchen.

  “This case keeps getting stranger,” Max said. “The lab guys got things wrong. This isn’t an old case after all. Some of those chemicals we found in the shack’s laboratory messed with the speed of decomposition. The man Brixton found was killed this past week.”

  Oh no … “That means Brixton is a witness to a murder.” Had Lucien killed a new apprentice in a makeshift alchemy lab here in Portland? Was that what Percy was hinting at?

  Max swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Then why,” I asked, “were the detectives interested in Heather and Brixton, if it’s not Brix’s grandfather after all?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “So it is Heather’s father? That’s why they’re questioning her?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean, not exactly? It’s both her dad and not her dad?”

  “He hasn’t been identified yet. There are no teeth to test for dental records, and DNA testing doesn’t work that quickly. But now that we know it’s a new death, it’s unlikely to be Heather’s father.”

  “Then why—”

  “Those guys don’t have the best social skills. Because of the new information about the probable timing of death, they wanted to get more details from Brixton about what he saw. As a minor, they needed his mom present.”

  “So it was Brixton they wanted?”

  “At first.” Max rubbed his eyes. “But Heather’s manner made them suspicious.”

  “So now they’re talking more with her alone.”

  Max nodded. “She wasn’t doing herself any favors. The first time they talked with her, she wouldn’t agree to a voluntary DNA swab when they thought it was her dad, which could prove or disprove a familial match, since there weren’t teeth for a dental match.”

  “She had every right to refuse an invasive test.”

  “It’s a swab across her cheek, Zoe.”

  “Which you said was voluntary. Of course she’d decline.” I feared the day when modern technology would make it impossible for me to keep my privacy. I’d already avoided many educational and job opportunities because I didn’t want to be in more databases than necessary.

  “Even when it could have helped her learn if it was her dad?” Max said. “Look, never mind. I don’t want to have a stupid fight. I get it that privacy rights are important. I don’t think she behaved suspiciously. But it’s not my case.”

  “Meaning you’re going to let them—”

  “They’re good cops, Zoe. We all want the truth.”

  “How’s Brixton doing with all this?”

  “Not great. If he was okay, he’d be fine on his own at home.” He glanced at his phone. “Look, I’ve gotta run. You sure it’s okay for Brixton to be here with you while your houseguest is here?”

  “Positive.” With Lucien on the loose, I wanted Brixton close.

  “You two aren’t … ” He cleared his throat. “You sure you don’t need privacy?”

  “He’s Ambrose’s son, Max.”

  “Yeah, but he’s a lot closer to your age.”

  “Age is meaningless.” I took
his hands in mine. I believed the words I spoke, and he must have seen it in my eyes. He squeezed my hand and gave me a slow kiss on the cheek before departing. The fresh scent of citrus lingered even after he was gone. A small piece of his comforting presence remained with me.

  In spite of his claims that he wasn’t hungry, I found Brixton eating a sweet potato pie straight from the pan.

  “I thought you and Max were a couple,” Brixton said through a mouthful.

  “We are.” Maybe. I hoped.

  “Then who’s the guy singing in the shower?”

  “Percy. You met him tonight.” From the kitchen, if I listened carefully, I could hear the singing coming from the bathroom above us.

  “Your ex’s kid? No offense, but he’s kind of a tool.”

  I tried not to laugh.

  “See?” Brixton said. “I’m totally right, aren’t I?”

  “I wouldn’t say you’re wrong.”

  “So is alchemy, like, hereditary?”

  “It’s easier to find out about alchemy if you know an alchemist,” I said, “but it’s not inherited.”

  Brixton nodded thoughtfully. He set down the half-empty pan of pie and hopped up onto the counter. Dorian hated it when he did that, but I liked how it made the house feel more like a home.

  “I don’t want you to teach me, Zoe. I don’t want to learn alchemy.” He picked up a sprig of spearmint from the kitchen’s window box and twirled it in his fingers, looking at the spinning green pinwheel in his fingertips as he spoke. “I know Ivan wants to learn, since he’s dying. But I think it would suck to outlive Veronica and Ethan, and anyone else I’ll ever care about. I’ll probably already outlive Abel and Mom.” He squished the mint in his hand, releasing the scent into the air.

  “Max told me what the police discovered.”

  “About the skin under his fingernails?”

  “I meant how long the man had been dead. They found skin under his fingernails?” Was that the real reason they wanted Heather to voluntarily give her DNA? I decided now wasn’t the time to worry Brixton about his mom. It wouldn’t be her DNA under his fingernails regardless.

  “I told you I wasn’t lying about the body being new.”

  “We need to talk about something else serious.” I lowered my voice. “Quickly, in case Percy is feeling better and comes downstairs. I hate to do this right now, when I know you’ve got so much else on your mind.”

  “It’s cool.”

  “Percy came to Portland because he knows the man you saw spying on Ivan. The man’s name is Lucien, and he’s a dangerous backward alchemist. Percy fell in with him a century ago, and got caught up in backward alchemy, but Lucien is after Dorian’s book, so Percy wanted to warn me.”

  “Whoa. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d look out for other people.”

  “With everything that’s happening around here, I’m glad you’ve got good intuition.” Even though I could hear Percy still singing Spice Girls songs in the shower, I kept my voice low. “You’re right. I don’t trust him completely, so I haven’t told him about Dorian or that I have Dorian’s book. He’s not the most altruistic of men. He also wants my help. He’s suffering the same alchemical fate as Dorian,”

  “His body is returning to its original form?” Brixton asked.

  I groaned. Brixton’s concise summation made me realize I’d made a significant oversight. I knew that with his life force deteriorating, Dorian would be alive but trapped in stone because he was originally made of stone. With a human backward alchemist’s life force quickly deteriorating, they’d transform into their original flesh and bone—as their flesh and bones would have with age.

  “Zoe, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

  “Something much worse. I think I’ve seen the truth about a backward alchemist.”

  “Wicked. What is it?”

  “I need you to tell me exactly what happened when you saw Lucien go into the shack in the woods.”

  “I told you, I saw that Lucien guy, who’d been spying on Ivan, go into the shack and then kill some guy.”

  “But you didn’t see him do the actual killing.”

  “No.”

  “You saw Lucien sneak out?”

  Brixton hesitated, and I knew I was right.

  “I might not have actually seen him,” Brixton said. “But it was all loud, like a fight, and then it was quiet.”

  “You didn’t see anyone else coming near the shed?”

  “No. I waited a while, and after it was quiet for a really long time, I looked inside. That’s when I saw the dead guy.”

  “A dead man who didn’t look like Lucien.”

  “No, this guy was way older. That’s how I knew Lucien must have slipped out the back when I was too far away to see him.”

  “You didn’t see the body until a few minutes after he died.”

  “So?”

  “That means,” I said, “that the dead man is Lucien.”

  “I saw the guy, Zoe. He’s not—”

  “Lucien was a backward alchemist. His life force was reversing, so once he died, his body would wither much more quickly than that of a normal person. That’s what’s confused this whole situation. You saw him shortly after he died and thought he was an old man. The police saw him a short time later and thought he’d been dead for a decade.”

  Brixton kicked a kitchen cabinet. “And the police don’t know about alchemy, so once they figured out the body was changing they thought it was the chemicals from the alchemy lab. So, he did an experiment wrong or something?”

  I gripped the edge of the counter. “I don’t think so. Percy isn’t here to warn me. He fooled me, making me think he was being thoughtful tonight when really he wanted time alone in my house. Percy followed Lucien here to kill him and to steal Dorian’s book for himself.”

  And by telling him I had a copy of the contents of the book, I’d pretty much admitted to him that I had it.

  Thirty-One

  “Whoa.” Brixton looked from me to the kitchen ceiling. The singing from overhead had stopped.

  “We’re leaving,” I said. “Now.”

  I scribbled a note to Percy about having to go to the police station for Heather, so he wouldn’t think I’d discovered his secret, grabbed my silver coat, and shoved Brixton out the door.

  “The scent in this truck is always so weird,” Brixton mumbled as he climbed inside.

  “It’s not weird,” I said as I put the key in the ignition of the truck. “Myrrh is a great air freshener. It works well in toothpaste too.”

  “I remember. Like frankincense, from the Bible. My life is too weird.”

  “Frankincense is too strong for an air freshener. Seatbelt.”

  Brixton rolled his eyes but obliged.

  “Is it possible that Lucien was already injured when he made his way to his alchemy supplies in the shed?” I asked, trying the engine again. That’s what I got for having a 1942 Chevy. I hated to think that Percy was stealthy enough to get into and out of the cabin without Brixton seeing him.

  “Yeah. He was kind of disoriented, but I figured it was because he’d forgotten exactly where the shack was. It’s pretty overgrown out there. You think that could explain why I didn’t see Percy or anyone else?”

  “Because Percy had already dealt him a fatal blow.”

  The engine of my truck turned over three times before finally starting, just long enough that I wondered if Percy had disabled it. I gave silent thanks as we peeled out of the driveway.

  How could I have been so stupid as to think Percy believed the old wives’ tale about alchemists not being able to kill people? He’d been trying to misdirect me this whole time. Had I fallen for it because he looked so much like Ambrose? Or because I’d wanted so badly to believe him because of my love for his father? Or maybe
it was simply because I wanted to believe in the goodness of humanity.

  Percy must have knocked himself out to cover his tracks after he searched my house for Dorian’s book. A superficial head wound was a good choice. Even a minor wound in that location would bleed profusely and could easily look more serious than it was. He hadn’t left the party to give me and Max space; he left so he’d have time alone to search my house. And I’d sent Dorian away, so I had no way to prove it. At least I’d asked Dorian to take Not Untrue Alchemy with him.

  “Where are we going?” Brixton asked, gripping the dashboard as I turned a corner faster than was prudent. He winced.

  “Is your hand still hurting?” I glanced at Brixton, expecting to see a bruise forming. Instead, I saw a bleeding scrape. “You didn’t tell me you cut yourself on the table.”

  “It’s nothing.” He wrapped his sleeve around his hand. “And you didn’t say where we’re going.”

  “Your mom didn’t do anything, so I’m guessing they’re going to let her go soon.”

  “We’re going to hang out at the police station?” Brixton rolled his eyes. “I should have brought the rest of that pie with me.”

  “How can you be so relaxed?”

  “That guy Percy doesn’t seem like an evil mastermind. You and I could totally take him on. And with Dorian in the mix, he wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  I pictured Dorian clawing at Percy’s perfect hair and burst out laughing. It was nervous laughter, brought on by the stress, but it was a welcome release of tension.

  “See?” Brixton said. “You sure he could really be the killer?”

  “I’m not taking any chances.”

  I left Brixton with Abel, apologizing for not being able to hang out with Brixton because my houseguest was unwell.

  When I got back to the house, Percy had his feet up on the couch with an icepack on his head and a tray of ginger cookies on his lap, watching a sitcom on his phone. He’d found the beer in the fridge. Two empty bottles sat on the coffee table, and a third was open on the floor next to the couch.

  “How’s your friend?” he asked.