Elixir

by Hilary Duff

  I raced back to the computer, and we scanned his folders until we saw one labeled “Shakespeare.” In that was a folder labeled “Dark Lady,” and in that was a Word document named “DLLXR.doc.”

  “Dark Lady L-X-R … Dark Lady Elixir!” I cried.

  “YES!” Ben cheered, and we took a second for a nerdy high five before we opened the file.

  “‘This file is password protected,’” I read.

  “Come on!” Ben groaned.

  “Passwords … what are Dad’s passwords? He wrote down all his passwords, he couldn’t remember anything. Look around, and I’ll try some things.”

  Ben knew the way Dad kept his passwords: printed on labels and stuck on the inside of drawers and cabinets. Ben opened everything and wrote them down, while I tried every kind of password I could imagine might have meaning to my father. I tried several combinations of my name, Mom’s name, Dad’s name, Rayna and Ben’s names, our birthdays, the word GloboReach, the date GloboReach was formed, Mom and Dad’s anniversary.…

  “Nothing. I’m getting nothing,” I snapped, frustrated. “Now what?”

  “Wait, wait, I’ve got some,” Ben said. He read out a list of over twenty passwords. None of them were right.

  “This sucks! The one file on the whole computer that’s password protected!”

  “Exactly,” Ben said. “Let’s think about this. Why would Grant password-protect this one file?”

  “To frustrate his daughter and her best friend to no end?”

  “Good guess, but probably not.”

  “Because it’s important.”

  “Right,” he said. “Your dad believes in the Elixir. It’s everything for him—he finds it and he changes the world. The wrong people find it and bad shit goes down. So if this file is the key to finding it, of course he password-protects it.”

  “But we already looked through all his passwords.”

  “We looked in his usual places,” Ben said. “Something this important, he’d want somewhere really safe—somewhere only he could get to it, and it would be with him all the time.”

  “Like where?” I asked. “The only thing that’s with him all the time is …”

  Ben and I both realized it at the same time, but I said it out loud.

  “His watch!”

  Immediately I dug into my camera case and pulled out his watch. I studied it all over, searching for anything that could be a password. Mom’s inscription, maybe? I looked at it, then noticed the tiny scratches underneath the words.

  “What do you think about this?” I asked, showing it to Ben. “Are they just scratches?”

  “I’m not sure … it’s so small …”

  “A loupe!” I remembered. “Dad has a loupe here to magnify pictures!”

  Ben ransacked drawers until he shouted, “I got it!”

  He tossed me the loupe, and I looked closely at the scratches. They read “faithvalorwisdom.” Faith, valor, and wisdom—the three petals of the iris. I grinned and entered it in the box on the computer.

  “We’re in!” I cried.

  Ben joined me and read over my shoulder as we scanned the file. There was a ton of material, but the gist of it was that while Dad was researching the Elixir of Life, he’d found an obscure reference book that tied the Elixir to Shakespeare. The book cited a lost play in Shakespeare’s canon: Love’s Labour’s Wonne. Only the title remained, and while many assumed from that title that the play was a sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost, Dad’s reference book said it was actually a story about a pair of lovers brought together and then ripped apart because of the Elixir of Life. Furthermore, the book said the story was inspired by a lover of Shakespeare’s—the Dark Lady.

  From there, Dad did more research. He wanted to know who the Dark Lady was, to see if she might have some connection to the Elixir. Dad pored over volumes of analysis on the subject, as well as the sonnets themselves. After exhaustive study, he wound up rejecting all the mainstream theories about the Dark Lady’s identity. He believed the Dark Lady was a woman named Magda Alessandri, whom many thought to be a sorceress. Dad wondered if her reputation as a sorceress came from an entanglement with the Elixir of Life, and he tried to find out more about her. He even managed to track down her living descendants, and had been visiting and interviewing them during his trips to various GloboReach outposts around the world.

  At the very bottom of the document, Dad had written “EUREKA CURRENT MAGDA ALESSANDRI CLEA’S ROOM 121.”

  “You think he found the descendant of the Dark Lady he was looking for?” I asked Ben.

  He nodded. “And her name is also Magda Alessandri. But what’s ‘Clea’s Room One-Twenty-One’?”

  “Another code? Double protection for the woman’s location? Did he hide it somewhere in my room?”

  We looked at each other and raced out of the studio and up the two flights of stairs to my room. Once we got there, I flipped on my computer. “Maybe he put a file on here.”

  Ben nodded. “Look for any file you didn’t make. Maybe it’s password protected with ‘one-twenty-one.’”

  I agreed, but after a half hour of scouring my computer, I found nothing on the hard drive that I hadn’t put there.

  “No!” I cried. “Come on … we’re so close!”

  “Don’t get frustrated. It has to be something else. One-twenty-one … a date, maybe? January twenty-first? Or is it twelve-one—December first? Check iCal—maybe he put something there.”

  “Nothing,” I shook my head. “Now what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’re wrong about the computer.” Ben’s eyes darted desperately around the room for inspiration.

  “Clea!” Mom’s voice rang out from downstairs. “Come on down! We’re breaking up, and I want to see you before we go!”

  Ugh, we were doomed. The Secret Service was about to leave, and we still had no idea—

  “Cribbage!” Ben raced to the cribbage board and grabbed it. “What’s the final score in cribbage?”

  “One-twenty-one,” I said, then my eyes widened as I realized, “One-twenty-one—that’s it!”

  Ben looked all over the board, then turned it upside down and slid away the metal panel that closed the peg compartment. He dumped the pegs into his hand, looked inside, and closed his eyes … in defeat?

  “Ben?” I asked nervously.

  He grinned and held up the board so I could see it. Written very small inside the peg compartment were two numbers stacked on top of each other. The bottom one began with a minus sign, and both included decimal points. Below them was written, “Little Door.”

  “What are the numbers? An equation?” I asked.

  Ben’s grin spread even wider. “Coordinates. Latitude and longitude.”

  “The location of the ‘current Magda Alessandri’!”

  Ben nodded. I screamed and threw myself into his arms.

  “Clea?” Mom called.

  “Coming!”

  Knowing there was a good chance we’d be away from the house for a while, I grabbed a duffel bag and tossed some clothes inside. I also threw in some makeup. There was no reason I had to look like a fugitive just because I’d be acting like one. I rummaged through my purses and grabbed any cash I had. I was sure Larry Steczynski’s black AmEx would cover us, but I liked having my own money, even if it was just a little bit. The last thing I threw in was my cribbage board with the secret coordinates inside.

  Mission accomplished, we raced downstairs and into the foyer just as everyone was leaving. Rayna beamed as she hugged everyone good-bye and accepted their wishes for a long and happy relationship. Sage looked dazed.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “I think your mother just arranged peace in the Middle East while brokering a marriage deal for Rayna and me.”

  “I’m not surprised. How many kids are you having?”

  “Four. But we can’t start until she’s twenty-six, three years after the wedding. Oh, and we’re honeymooning at the minister’s beach house in Tel
Aviv.”

  “That’s nice. I’ll have to pop in for a visit.”

  Sage just shook his head, still shell-shocked.

  “Piri forgive you yet?” Ben grinned.

  “I don’t think so. She put an inch of garlic on everything she served me.”

  “Don’t take it personally. There’s lots of garlic in Hungarian food,” I assured him.

  “Including my chocolate torte,” Sage added.

  “Okay, you can take that personally,” I admitted.

  Mom was the last of the politicos left in the house, and she turned to me with a sad pout on her face. “I can’t believe I barely got to see you and now I’m leaving!”

  “I know! Here—we’ll walk out with you. We’re leaving too.” I didn’t want to be anywhere near the house for even a second after the Secret Service left.

  “You didn’t even get any of Piri’s desserts,” Mom lamented as the five of us walked out the door. “She made Hungarian butterhorns with apricots. Your favorite.”

  “Were there any left?”

  “I think a few. You may have lucked out,” Mom said.

  “I’ll get ’em.” Ben tried to walk back inside, but Piri blocked his way.

  “NO!” she screamed. “Never turn back when you leave the house. Very, very bad luck.”

  “It’s fine, Piri,” Ben assured her. “I just want to grab the cookies.”

  “I’ll get them. You come here and look in the mirror. Give a dirty look, then everything’s better.”

  “I would, I swear, you know I would, Piri, but we’re kind of in a rush. I’ll just grab the cookies.”

  As Ben pushed past her and went inside, Mom hugged both Rayna and Sage, who apparently was going to be like a son-in-law to her. Ben loped out with the butterhorns, and everyone climbed into Rayna’s car, then Mom and I gave each other one last hug.

  “I have a big recess in April,” she said, holding my arms and looking into my eyes. “Let’s take a whole week and go someplace, just the two of us.”

  “I’d love that,” I said, willing myself not to well up. Mom couldn’t take that. We ducked into our respective cars and drove away.

  “Butterhorn?” Ben asked, holding out a bag full of the pastries.

  “Well, you did condemn yourself to bad luck just to get them for me,” I said, “So absolutely!”

  “Yeah,” Ben agreed, “they’d better be worth it.”

  “Mmmm, completely worth it,” I said with my mouth full. “The rest of you have to have some of these.”

  “Hmmm,” Sage mused, examining his, “no garlic. I’m not entirely sure my taste buds will know how to handle this.”

  “Um, you guys,” Rayna asked, “where am I driving?”

  “Excellent question—let’s find out!” I pulled the cribbage board out of my duffel bag and handed it to Sage, pointing out the longitude and latitude notations on the back. “Where is that?”

  Sage took out his phone, then entered the coordinates. “Interesting.”

  “What?” I asked. “It’s not Antarctica, is it? I didn’t pack a parka.”

  “The coordinates are for a building called ‘Shibuya 109’ in Tokyo.”

  “Shibuya 109?” Rayna asked. “The mall?”

  Shibuya 109 was indeed a mall, but that couldn’t be right … could it? Then I had an idea.

  “Sage, can I see your phone?” I asked. He gave it to me and I surfed to a listing of all the stores located there.

  Amazing.

  “You’ll never believe this, Ben,” I said. “There’s a store in Shibuya 109 named ‘The Little Door.’”

  Ben’s eyes went wide. “‘The Little Door’ … like what Grant wrote under the coordinates!”

  “Exactly!” I said. “Could that be where Magda works?”

  “Magda?” Sage asked.

  “Magda Alessandri, the Dark Lady’s descendant! That’s who my dad wanted you to see!”

  “Magda … Alessandri?” Sage asked.

  “We’re really going to Shibuya 109?” Rayna asked. “Is it completely wrong to spend my graduation money four months before I get it?”

  “We are not going to Shibuya 109,” I corrected her. “You have school. Wanda would kill you for skipping. And she’d kill me for helping you.”

  “It’s an educational experience. I’ll write a report about it when I get back.”

  “It could be dangerous, Rayna.”

  “How dangerous can it be? You’re going shopping.”

  We weren’t, but I understood what she meant. Shibuya 109 was the fashion pinnacle for Tokyo’s young and hip: ten floors of the most trend-setting shops and boutiques, all packaged in a giant cylindrical building that leaped out of the skyline. Rayna and I had done quite a bit of damage there on our last visit, but that was three years ago, and another onslaught was definitely in our future.

  Yet as much as I was dying to attack the place with Rayna by my side, this wasn’t the time. While it didn’t seem dangerous to look for someone in a department store, nothing on this journey had been what it seemed. This was maybe the only time in my life when I desperately didn’t want Rayna to be with me.

  “Please don’t fight me on this, Rayna. If you come with us and something happens—”

  She heard how upset I was, and the playful fight left her voice. “It’s okay,” she said, “you go. I’ll stay here … pining for my fiancé.” She said the last part with practiced melodrama, and I laughed with relief—both that she understood and that she’d be safe at home. As Rayna turned the car onto the highway and headed toward the airport, I turned on the car radio, leaned back in my seat, took a big, meltingly sweet bite of butterhorn, and let the taste linger on my tongue. For this one brief moment, life was simple and filled with joy. I wanted to savor it. I knew it wouldn’t last.

  ten

  IT TURNED OUT I’d have a little more time to enjoy things before we left. The fastest way to get to Tokyo was a direct flight from New York, but it didn’t leave until almost two the next afternoon. Sleeping at home wasn’t an option, and while Rayna waxed rhapsodic about making the most of Larry Steczynski’s black AmEx and treating ourselves like sultans for the night at a cool hotel in Manhattan, it made much more sense to just grab a decent room near the airport.

  “Okay,” Rayna agreed, “but seriously, we’re not going to just go to sleep, right? We need to all hang out. After I get some time with Clea. I’m having serious withdrawal.”

  “You’re staying the night with us?” I asked excitedly.

  “Hello—did you honestly think I wouldn’t? I was serious about the black AmEx fest. But a little hotel will be great too. We’ll do Holiday Inn Express. They have amazing cinnamon rolls.”

  “They do?” I asked.

  “Signature cinnamon rolls. All you can eat at breakfast.”

  “I kinda love that you know that.”

  Aside from cinnamon rolls, Rayna’s other request was that she check us in and set up the rooms: two rooms, each with two queen beds, on the same floor, but all the way down the hall from each other. I cringed, imagining Sage and Ben stuck in a room together all night. I couldn’t imagine how that would work.

  Rayna waited until we got into our room, then threw herself on one of the beds. “Finally! I thought we’d never get a second alone!” Sprawled on her stomach, she propped herself up on her elbows and kicked up her feet. “Spill—what’s the deal with Hottie McDreamMan?”

  “Sage?” I laughed.

  “No, I mean Minister Sanders.” She threw a pillow at me. “Of course I mean Sage! He’s the one, right? The guy from your dreams. Oh my God—he’s real and he’s hot! Does he kiss as well in real life as he did in your dreams?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I admitted. “We haven’t kissed.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “So the whole randomly-popping-up-in-pictures thing doesn’t bother you?”

  “Nope.”

  “The whole strange-cultists-chasing-after-him? That doesn’t
bother you either?”

  “Nobody’s perfect, Clea.”

  “How about if I told you he might be a serial killer? Would that bother you?”

  “Debatable. Elaborate.”

  I told her about the nightmares and about what I’d seen in his house. As I unrolled the story, her expression went from flip and giddy to openmouthed and riveted.

  “Oh my God, Clea.”

  “Crazy, right? And I still have no idea how he got into all those pictures.”

  “That part’s easy.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course,” she said. “You’re soulmates.”

  “Rayna …”

  “Fine, I know, you don’t like that word. But you can’t possibly deny that you have a deep, powerful soul connection. By definition you have that. You said yourself, he found you in four different countries and four different times. Out of all the people in the world at any given time, he found you. The only possible way he could have done that is if your souls were connected. He’s a soul-seeking missile.”

  “But he told me he wasn’t there for any of the pictures.”

  “Yes, he was! Don’t you get it, Clea? Your souls are connected—he’s always with you, whether he’s there physically or not. And you’re the one who told me about cameras capturing people’s souls, right? So that’s what it’s doing—capturing the soul that’s always with you, because you’re always connected. It’s very romantic.”

  I thought about what she said, ignoring the last sentence because I knew by now that everything was very romantic to Rayna.

  “Okay,” I ceded, “I’ll give you the connection. But what about the serial killer thing? What if we’re connected because he tracks these women down, acts like he loves them, and then kills them?”

  “Kills you. You’re them.”

  “Yeah, thanks, that’s a much nicer way to put it,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  Rayna considered it a second, then shook her head. “Nope. I don’t buy it, Clea.”

  “Why, because it’s not as romantic?”

  “It’s not as romantic, but that’s not why I don’t buy it. If he’s a killer, there are lots of other girls to kill.”