by Matt Ryan
“Whatever. I needed a break anyway.” Jackie took a few steps back.
“You didn’t say where we’re going,” I said as she held the stone out above her bare hand.
“We’re going to see Blane. Mark, you want to scooch in here?”
Mark got close to me, wiped his hand on his jeans and stuck it next to mine.
“Keep safe, girl. And don’t freak out about where you’re going,” Jackie said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, and watch out for Blane! The dude’s a creep.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but my mom dropped the stone on our hands.
As I floated, I realized I had no idea where I was going; the travel time felt much longer this time and I panicked, thinking I was broken—stuck in a perpetual jump. I’d just gotten Mark back. This was the last thing I needed.
I stared at the stone walls and did a full circle in disbelief. The only difference in the room was a crack running across the ceiling, but everything else was the same; the same stone floor, and the same wooden door. I pushed on the hidden door in the back wall and it moved, cracking open and revealing the path to the endless hall. “Are we . . .”
“Back at the old academy?” My mom cocked an eyebrow. “Yes.”
“Why? How is this possible?” The words choked in my throat.
“Come on, let me show you. A lot has happened since you’ve been gone.”
Mark opened the door and stepped out first. I slid my feet along the stone floor and peeked out from the doorway. Down the hall, I saw what was left of the spoke. “I thought we blew it all up.”
“We did, for the most part,” Mom said.
“It should have stayed that way,” Mark said. “I heard rumors, but I refused to believe them. Why did you start up this place again?”
“I can’t believe this.” I pushed past Mark and stomped down the narrow passageway to the mouth of the tunnel.
Memories I had wanted to lose swept into my consciousness. House battles, getting attacked at the fence, the cruelty Verity had pushed onto all the students, the hate. Not to mention the retirements. I slowed down as I approached the opening. People were moving around, carrying stuff out of damaged houses. A boy had an armful of two-by-fours and another was carrying a five-gallon bucket. I wanted to scream.
The fence dividing the two houses still ran down the street, but as I looked toward the hub, the damage increased dramatically. The houses lay in complete rubble, with huge mounds of dirt piled on top of the debris. I stretched out to see if the Clymene statue was still there, but the hub looked empty.
“Really, Mom?”
“It makes perfect sense,” Mom said. “Quinn isn’t going to come looking for this place. There are also great resources here, and it was designed for the creation of stones.”
“So, you moved Chang’s academy here? Where’s Carly?”
My mom looked at her phone. “She should be in class right now.”
I stepped out from the hall and naturally went to the left side of the fence, the Red side. I gazed across to the Blue side. The doors still had the blue paint on them, and many of the old feelings rushed back, weighing me down.
“Does Jackie know?” I asked, looking up at her window.
“Of course. She’s been a great help setting this place up. Did you know how much dirt had collapsed into this building? We used hundreds of stones to dissolve it all.” I looked over to Mark and saw the same look he had given me the first time we stepped into this place. “We’ve made great strides in making this place operational,” Mom said with an air of pride.
“Some things should stay un-operational,” Mark muttered.
I walked down the fence line, with Mark and my mom to my left. I couldn’t get over being back in this place. It was as if someone had risen from the grave. “You have Blane down here, don’t you?”
“Of course. This is the perfect place.”
We walked past the first few houses, each with minimal damage, but as we got closer to the epicenter of the blast, the windows were broken and doors knocked in. Near the hub, the houses were leveled, with large amounts of dirt stacked on them.
A few people were walking briskly across the hub and one was carrying a mixing bowl.
“What kind of place have you made here?”
“This is headquarters for the stone. And Allie,” she said as she leaned toward to me, “we’re close to getting it.”
Dumbfounded, I made my way to the center, where a mound of dirt now stood in place of the statue that had killed one of my friends. I gazed at the ceiling and staggered back at how close it was, not more than twenty feet overhead. Before, this place must have had at least a hundred feet of vertical space.
“What did you do?” I asked, staring at the ceiling.
“You would have been amazed to see it all. Jackie helped with a lot of it. We used pressure stones to create pockets of space, then solidified it with stones to lock the dirt in place,” Mom said with a beaming smile.
“Jackie was helping?”
“Yes. She was pretty excited about changing this place into a ‘den of revenge,’ as she put it. She didn’t take your disappearance very well, and almost passed out from excitement when we received word that you and Bridget had made it back.”
Mom walked toward the curved wall and past the first few sets of doors, or what was left of them. She stopped in front of a door that hadn’t fared as badly as the rest. But I wasn’t looking at that one, I was looking at the door to the room we had locked the teachers in.
“Did you leave them in there?” I asked.
“What?” She followed my eyes. “Oh, the teachers? I sent them to the prison we have out in the Black Forest, in Germany.”
I searched her face for a lie, then looked away. I didn’t want to know the truth. The thought that I had killed a half-dozen people made me want to throw up. No, she had to have taken them out of here and sent them to that prison. I would ask Jackie if I truly wanted to know. It sounded as if she had been here from the start.
“Chang set up class here in room eighteen. It used to be a storage room, but the door was reinforced and much of the room was okay.”
My mom kept talking, but I drifted off in thought. I didn’t want to hear anymore. It felt as if she was trying to sell me on something. “As much as I would love to get back into Chang’s class and see my friends, I don’t feel like that’s going to get us any closer to the stone, or any closer to ending this war.”
My mom smiled and shook her head. “Very well. What is it you want to see?”
“Blane. And on the way, you can explain everything you’ve found about the stone.”
Her smile widened. “And here I thought I might have to give you a nudge to get you back into things.”
Mark’s lips thinned, but he didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. We followed my mom toward the teachers’ rooms and I had a flashback of the battle. The large, wooden double doors were gone and down the hall, the teachers’ doors looked untouched.
I knew the door my mom was going to take, and when we arrived at the single painted door, I stopped her and looked back at the hub. “How close are you?”
“Days, maybe sooner, with your help.”
I sucked in a deep breath of relief. “Quinn said he was a few weeks away.”
“I wouldn’t trust a thing that man says. Without Blane, he doesn’t know the first thing about the stone, mostly hunches and speculation.”
“I don’t think he was lying, or at least he thought he was telling the truth.”
My mom went wide-eyed. “You used a stone on Quinn?”
“We used his own stone on him, a compulsion stone. He said some interesting stuff.”
Mom averted her eyes, and I knew she was thinking about how much Quinn knew about her. “What did he say about the stone? I want to know every word.”
I told my mom the tale and was glad to have Mark next to me. I didn’t want to repeat it. Just thinking
of the man gave me the chills. The idea of him using that stone on me . . . I couldn’t bear to think of it.
“Interesting. Did you ask him if he has a person helping him with the stone?”
“No, we were running out of time. We didn’t really have a good Q&A with him.”
Mom took a deep breath and looked down the endless hall. “Okay. I’ll tell you about the progress we’ve made.”
We ambled down the hall and I reveled in each brief description she revealed, feeling my jealousy building. She’d gone to China, Japan, Brazil, Madagascar, and even Iraq. I thought of my dad and lowered my head while she told me about the particular type of bitumen she’d had to collect there. She finished by saying they had collected all but two items.
“What are the two?”
“You remember A Practical Guide to Herbal Stones?”
“Yeah.” It was hard to forget, since the major reason my mom had wanted to get to this very academy was to get that book.
“Then I’m sure you remember Shulman’s metal?” she continued. “It’s one of the last two ingredients left before we can make the stone.”
“Okay, and the last one?”
She frowned and breathed in through her nose. “Something you’re going to learn soon is that Blane is set in his ways. He’s decided not to give us the final ingredient or the method for making the stone until we have this Shulman’s metal.”
I could hear Mark wincing. All the scheming among alchemists was incredible, and Mark had lived with one of the greatest schemers of all time, his mother, Sarah Duval.
My mom slowed to a near crawl and she kept her eyes on the floor, biting her lip. I waited for her to speak. Then she stopped and faced me. I’d never seen her look so nervous.
“He’s through this wall and down a ways.” She glanced back at the wall. If I looked at the right angle, I could see the passageway between the stones. “I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it. The guy’s a bit off his rocker and we’ve been supplying him with . . . his needs, if you will. I’m not proud of this, but I think we need to work with him for a bit longer. Plus, I think you’ll be most helpful in the procurement of this metal.”
I crunched up my face in disgust and confusion. Blane wasn’t far from me, and I didn’t like the idea of my mom supplying him with anything. What kind of stuff did an old psycho need?
“Let’s just get this over with,” Mark said.
“Fine.” Mom walked into the space between the stones and I followed her in. A light was shining near the end of the passageway and my mom picked up her pace as she got closer. “Oh,” she whispered, “and he’s under the impression we’re making this stone for him.”
As my mom sped ahead, I felt Mark grab my hand. He pulled me around to face him. “Your mom needs this guy, I get it, but if I’ve learned anything about the obsession with stones, it’s that alchemists play on each other for their own needs.”
“Blane is a lunatic. I’ll be careful.”
“I wasn’t talking about Blane.” He walked past me and I stood still in the dark hall.
I was sure my mom knew what she was doing with Blane, but was she manipulating me? In the end, it didn’t matter, I decided. Even if she was using me to create this stone, it was what both of us wanted. Though, if Mark and my mom weren’t going with me into this room, I wasn’t sure I would have the guts to face Blane alone.
The room wasn’t too big, maybe the size of my high school classrooms, but the shelves on the walls were filled with all kinds of metal cans, glass jars, glass tubes, wooden boxes, and stacks of paper. The center of the room held almost too many tables, and each one had a mixing bowl and ingredients strewn across it like a child had thrown a fit and spilled their toys.
My first shock was not only seeing Sarah, but watching as Mark rushed up to his mom and hugged her. I stared at them and wondered what she was doing in this place. Then I felt a heavy stare from across the room. I turned and faced the man who had tried to kill me not too long ago.
He seemed shorter than I had expected, and looked even plumper than before. His oily hair lay in clumps, in desperate need of washing. The clothes fit snugly around his rotund belly, including the brown jacket he wore with the sleeves pulled up. His scraggly beard topped off his unkempt look.
With eyes on mine, I knew he was trying to control his surroundings, as he’d done in the white world of his mind. What a change that man must be going through, going from king of an empire of one, to reality . . . with real people. Then he smiled.
“Look at you,” he said in his thick English accent. “You were right, Cathy. She’s alive.” He walked toward me.
I dashed around a table and made sure to keep something between me and Blane. Mark left his mother and joined me.
“Oh, come now, I don’t bite. I just wanted to get a better look at the world-famous special.” He licked his front teeth.
“Stop being such a creep,” Sarah said, and I saw my mom behind Blane, fidgeting with her hands.
“What? Look at us, three powerful alchemy families in one room,” he said, holding out his arms.
“We can make the binding stones and then Shulman’s metal, now that she’s here, Blane,” my mom said.
“Ah, yes.” He rubbed his beard. “Let me get the ingredients.” He turned around, and I was glad to have his eyes and thoughts off of me.
Blane went to a shelf and pulled a box out. After he’d set it on a table, he went to another shelf. He swept his arm through a few items, sending them crashing to the floor, before finding one he liked. He grasped a metal container and placed it on the table next to the box, then strode back to another wall. Again, he crashed through containers, tossing them to the floor in his search.
“Good to see you again,” Sarah said in a whisper.
“Thanks. Good to see you, too.” I looked at Blane, who was presently opening jars and smelling them before dropping them to the floor. “What am I making?” I asked.
“A binding stone. I didn’t even know they existed, but Blane says they can combine two or more stones into one.”
I turned to face her. “Quinn mentioned something about that. He talked about combining a compulsion stone with a memory stone.”
“Vile combination.” She looked disgusted to even hear the man’s name. “So, that’s who had you over the last month?” I saw the pain in her eyes as she assessed my body with a long look up and down.
“Sort of.” I didn’t feel like explaining it again, and the clatter coming from Blane made it hard to hear anyway.
Sarah hugged me. The gesture shocked me, and I could feel her chin quiver against my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I’m the one who brought you into this world.”
“It’s nothing. I—”
“We’re going to kill that man for what he did to us. If I can make it happen, you and I will be the ones who end it, I promise you that.”
I didn’t know what to say, and I looked to Mark, who kept his eyes on Blane. I wasn’t sure if he had heard his mom’s words or not. Quinn hadn’t mentioned Sarah, but he had mentioned my mom. I wondered how many lives he had affected, in alchemy or otherwise.
Sarah let me go and wiped her eyes.
“Bridget and I got out before anything happened,” I assured her.
She held on to my shoulders and looked at me with empathy. “You might not even know.”
I gritted my teeth and thought about my missing month. Quinn had said he hadn’t used the stone on us before, but even the possibility made me nauseated. That man represented everything that could go wrong with alchemy, and the last thing in the world I would let happen was for him to get the stone.
“There,” Blane announced as he plopped a bowl of white goop on the table. “Come on, special, make me my stone.” He waved me over.
I looked to my mom and then to Mark. “This is going to get us closer to the philosopher’s stone?”
Blane laughed and then spun in circles, stomping one foot as he did his little dance.
“Us! Us, us, us.”
“Blane . . .” my mom said, but Blane screamed.
“Us, us,” he said as he turned in furious circles. “No, this won’t do.” He stopped and glared at me.
Screw this crazy bastard. How the hell were we supposed to work with such a person?
“She didn’t mean it in that way,” Mom cooed, as if she were trying to talk a toddler down from a tantrum. “We’re all working very hard to get you your stone.”
“Only to steal it from me!” He gripped his chest.
My mom looked to me and nudged her head, trying to get me to appease the raving man.
I sighed. “I only meant us. We’re a team. As you’ve seen, we’re helping you a great deal. And I think you’d better start acting like a grown damn man or I’m not going to make this binding stone for you,” I said, hoping the last bit didn’t push things too far.
Blane’s lips thinned as he moved toward the table, then gripped the bottom. I thought he might flip it over, but he stopped. “When I’m the one holding the stone at the end, I won’t need specials like you. Now mix the stone and don’t mess up. We don’t have the ingredients to do this twice.”
“I don’t need second chances.” I walked around the table with all the ingredients.
On it sat a wooden box, a metal can, a bowl of white goop, and a blue vial. I opened the box and saw a pile of gray powder. Then I opened the metal can, and it was a mixture of sulfur and something else, like clear pellets of some kind. They didn’t look like diamonds. I leaned closer to get a better look.
“Best not spend too much time smelling that stuff,” Blane said, standing back from the table with his arms crossed.
I rose and closed the lid. “Is there a pattern to this?”
Blane raised his hands in the air with a shocked expression. “You think I’d write down something this important? It’s all up here.” He tapped his temple.
I closed my eyes and thought of the ingredients in front of me. That was when I felt it: a whisper of knowledge I knew wasn’t mine. The white goop was nothing more than rendered animal fat and bones—hide glue, as Blane would have called it.