Strange Alchemy

by Gwenda Bond

  “I’m not your enemy. I never could be.”

  At the end of the bookshelf, Miranda whirls to face me. The wide spines of reference works, dictionaries, and encyclopedias frame her on either side. None contain the answers we need.

  “I have to go with you,” she says. “And you’ll use me to bargain for your mother’s life. You know why?”

  I don’t want to hear anymore. “I won’t.”

  “Because the part of me that shot that gun at your mother, that part enjoyed it.”

  I rise from the desk. The voices of spirits buzz — Listen, listen — you have to — but I do my best to accomplish the exact opposite of what they want. I don’t listen.

  When I reach Miranda, I tug her toward me gently. Our bodies touch, barely, the pressure slight. Pulling, repelling. I can tell she wants to run, but she doesn’t. She stands, silent, waiting.

  The raised voices of the spirits won’t let me forget that we’re not alone. I’m never alone here.

  Why won’t you —

  Hear this —

  It’s too late —

  The jumble of words swallows my own thoughts, leaving Mom’s chalk-painted features. I release her. “You’ll come then.”

  “I have to.” Miranda looks away. Her eyes travel down the shelves of reference books, down to…

  I’m confused when she bends, her hand exploring a gap between the bookshelf and the wall. She pulls on what appears to be a plastic tarp. But when I see the zipper, I understand what she’s found. She drops the plastic as she realizes it too.

  “Is that a body bag?” she asks.

  Just then the hatch above us flips open, light from the living room above brightening the space. Miranda kicks at the body bag, trying to get it stuffed back into the corner, and I shift to hide her motion from Dr. Whitson, who plunks down the steps. Bone is behind him, his face pasty instead of pink.

  “I found your girlfriend’s father to be much more polite, Grant,” the doctor says. He walks closer to me, then looks around my shoulder at Miranda. “Of course, he was deceased at the time.”

  Chapter 29

  MIRANDA

  Funny that I’m wearing the stupid snake when Roswell is one.

  Sara’s body lies across my and Grant’s laps in the backseat of Roswell’s hunter green Volvo. Bone rides shotgun. Heading across the island was our next move, but not like this. Not as prisoners.

  Roswell forced me to hand over the gun first thing. There went my bargaining chip. I planned to trade it to Dee in exchange for Sara’s health. I wasn’t going to give it up until Sara was back to normal. Too bad.

  Thick cords of rope, the kind used by fishermen in Wanchese, chafe my wrists. Bone pretended to take pleasure in binding me, but his shaking hands gave him away. He’s wigged, but still taking orders from his dad.

  Once Bone finished, I tested my restraints but quickly determined they were too tight to loosen. These ropes are made to withstand the pressure and high winds of the sound and ocean. I’ve used them to secure enough sails on the faux ship at the the-ater to know that all I’ll accomplish by fighting them is ripping up my own skin.

  “Doc,” Grant says, raising his own bound wrists. “Why are you doing this?”

  “After the time we’ve spent together, you don’t have a guess? You know this is my research, my life’s work.” Roswell seems amused. “You’ve always been such a sharp boy, surely you can make a guess.”

  Bone shifts in his seat when his father compliments Grant, clearly unhappy. Does it have to do with his father’s praise of Grant? Or was Grant near the mark when he theorized that Bone liked me? Doubtful it’s the latter given the overkill on the rope, but still. We’re going to need every edge we can get.

  Grant taps his fingers together. “You’ve always been a crackpot, haven’t you, Doc? Miranda was right about you. You trying to resurrect history won’t change that.”

  “I’m not a crackpot.” Roswell’s voice is clipped. “And I’ve already resurrected history. One hundred and fifteen people, to be exact.”

  Right. Souls of 114 settlers inhabit the bodies of the returned, plus John Dee inside my dad. There might be others, Mary Blackwood or Grant’s ancestor Virginia Dare in the mix. But these are the 114 people that history bothered to record as missing.

  “Which means you’re now killing one hundred and fourteen other people,” I say.

  “Well, in fairness, your father had to be killed for this to work, and technically the others are still alive. You’ve seen them for yourself.”

  Sara’s breath hitches, shuddering in and out, and Grant turns toward her, worried. As I maneuver to check her pulse, her breathing settles into a more normal — if shallow — pattern.

  “She’s okay,” I say. The words are a promise. Sara Rawling has to stay alive, even if it kills me.

  Grant’s fingers clench. He’ll never be much of a poker player, I think. His body is too expressive.

  “What’s wrong with my mom?” He directs his question to the front seat.

  “I knew you had the weapon,” Roswell says. “It was obvious, once I considered it, that the Blackwoods would have it secreted away. And then fail to keep it safe, like they’re destined to fail at everything.” He pauses. “Sorry if that sounds harsh.”

  Roswell sure loves the sound of his own voice, I think.

  “At any rate, the first stage is blackening,” he continues. “Gunpowder — sulfur, potassium nitrate, and charcoal. They used to call it black powder. Grant had a hint of it on him at the courthouse, and that was when I began to suspect. Then, albedo — the whitening stage. Purification. Salt, chalk. The third is rubedo — well, we will all see that effect together. It is the Great Work. Only he knows its secret.”

  Grant sighs again. “This really is all about alchemy?”

  I watch the edge of Roswell’s face as it angles into an approving smile. “Nicely done, Grant. Such a bright one, you are.”

  I tilt my head toward Grant. Inches separate our faces. His criminally long eyelashes are so close I could count them. I almost expected him to forgive me in the library, in those last moments we were alone.

  “Can you believe this guy?” I say softly.

  “Magic and science,” Roswell continues, “have never been in opposition the way we think of them now. Dee knew that and found the key to uniting them. To finally fulfilling the alchemist’s greatest ambition —”

  “Making the first home chemistry set?” I interrupt. I won’t give Roswell the satisfaction of holding court.

  “Eternal life.”

  He says it in a huff. I’m getting to him.

  Grant clears his throat, flattens his palms together. “Alchemists were always looking for some kind of edge they could scheme out of the natural world. Making base metals into gold, sure, but their other great project was figuring out the secret to eternal life. Of course”— he rolls his eyes — “they should have known that eternal life is the opposite of natural. Why would nature provide a process to do that? It’s a dream, nothing more.”

  “It’s real enough,” Roswell says. “The greatest discovery ever made. Does your mother look unaffected?”

  I realize what Grant is doing — he’s trying to make Roswell doubt the process will work.

  “She doesn’t look immortal,” Grant says quietly. “Is a failed experiment worth all this death?”

  “The experiment won’t fail, my boy,” Roswell says. “I’m sorry you and your mother had to be a part of this. But this is my life’s work. No one in my family has ever gotten this close to bringing him back.”

  “What family?” I ask.

  “John White’s, obviously,” Roswell says.

  Grant’s head drops, something suddenly clicking into place. “Whitson. White’s son. That’s why you had access to his private letters.”

  So Roswell is relate
d to John White. I picture the stick-in-the-mud who overacts the part in the play. Figures.

  Flashing lights up ahead distract me. A smattering of police cars are pulled off next to the roadway, a few cops milling around outside. No one else in the car has spotted them yet. If we can just keep Roswell talking, distracted, maybe we’ll get flagged over. Grant’s dad will help us.

  “Why did you bring him back?” I ask.

  “To finish his life’s work, the greatest work of all,” Roswell says, like we’d approve if we understood. “Now the time is right. None of those people were doing anything with their lives. Not like what he and his followers can accomplish.”

  “Lives aren’t measured like that,” Grant says. “Every person gets their own. One. Alchemy honors nature, and this is unnatural. It won’t work.”

  I don’t miss Grant sitting up straighter, and I know he sees the cops too. Roswell will notice them, but maybe too late. Morrison Grove isn’t that far, which means the officers are at the entrance to Fort Raleigh and the theater. Odd place for a roadblock.

  As we get closer, though, I realize it isn’t a roadblock. It’s just a cluster of police at the lip of the parking lot. A couple of TV trucks too. Hard to say what they’re doing there.

  “Dad,” Bone says.

  “Down,” Roswell barks. “We’re too close to fail now. Put your heads down.” When we don’t react, he turns to Grant and adds, “Your mother is in a very precarious state.”

  He sounds like a nasty professor threatening a bad grade, but we can’t afford to ignore him. We both drape forward over Sara’s body, ducking below the lip of the window. The flashing lights reflect on the glass, and I hold my breath, hoping for capture.

  No one stops us.

  I lose my breath as I realize we’re out of options.

  I’m going to see Dad.

  It won’t be Dad. Not really. But the body will be his, will move and breathe like he still inhabits it. A lie dressed up like a miracle. I’ll never forget the sight of him on that metal table. He might not have been the perfect TV dad, but he doesn’t deserve to have Dee wear his skin like a new suit.

  Grant and I unfold from hiding as Roswell turns right into the Grove’s parking lot and selects one of the few open spots. The packed lot stands in sharp contrast to the few abandoned cars left in a lonely tic-tac-toe the day before.

  Roswell braces his hands on the steering wheel. “Dee’s soul was waiting there for me. Hundreds of years he’d been past the boundary of our reality, and yet he slipped out of death and into that man’s body like an egg from its shell. He understands how to unite the esoteric and the natural in a way the world has never seen before. He’s used them to beat death. Think of the research we can do, the advances to be made.”

  “Research?” Grant snorts in disgust. “You are the worst amateur historian ever. Eugenics, anyone?”

  “Perhaps research isn’t what I mean, but knowledge,” Roswell says.

  Beside his father, Bone hasn’t moved, gazing out the window toward the rental units that make up the Grove. Something in the set of his jaw has me suspecting he’s been subjected to a number of these self-serving pep talks. Poor Bone. My sympathy is genuine, if not total.

  “Knowledge,” Roswell continues, “is all we have. All that separates us from lower animals. It is the basis of civilization.”

  I can’t believe this jerk. “Bullfrak. This is about power. If you’re pretending it’s something else, even to yourself, then frak you, you delusional murdering excuse for a nutty professor.”

  There’s silence for a moment. Then Grant says, “I’d applaud if I could.”

  I wriggle my wrists. “I understand.”

  “This is bigger than any individual one of us,” says Roswell, his voice clipped. “He will build a shining city of light and knowledge. The New London. You’ll see —”

  He stops himself from finishing, and I know that deep down, he doesn’t know if we will. He doesn’t know what Dee has planned for us. Maybe we aren’t going to see anything for much longer.

  I look at Grant, stung by the fresh reminder that Roswell doesn’t matter so much anymore. He’s just a henchman, the equivalent of a faceless storm trooper in Star Wars. The mastermind behind everything, the man who defeated death, is the one wearing my father.

  Getting out of the car is awkward thanks to Roswell and Bone’s lack of skill in dealing with captives — particularly with Sara out cold. Bone is surprisingly careful when he lifts her limp body from the car. I’m thankful for that, anyway. Otherwise, Grant would need immediate payback, and I need him busy generating one of his grand schemes to end all this, to crack Dee’s stolen shell and send him back to Eggville.

  It doesn’t feel like something a traitor would want.

  Still.

  Dr. Roswell heads for the trail that leads through the trees to the houses. We march behind him. There’s no point in trying to escape. All paths would lead here eventually. Bone follows us, his steps landing heavier with Sara’s weight in his arms.

  Dust particles fly in the millions wherever sun pierces the canopy of trees. What do they call twilight on movie sets? Oh right — magic hour. Ha.

  This is my chance. I have to test Grant’s assumption, see if I can sway Bone to our side. I meet Grant’s questioning glance when I slow and nod my head for him to go on ahead. He hurries to catch the none-the-wiser Roswell, and I spin to face Bone. He’s paler than usual, if not as chalky as the woman in his arms. He wears another Tarheels shirt, this one with long sleeves pushed up to the elbow.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Bone, I just want you to know that I understand why you’ve always treated me like you have. If it wasn’t me, it would have been you.” Him with his crazy dad, him with no mother, him getting mocked. “But I don’t believe that’s all you have in you,” I continue. “You’re not just your father’s son.”

  Bone blinks. I don’t need him to respond right away, so I trot back to rejoin Grant. Roswell continues to barrel ahead, eager to reach his alchemical crush.

  The trail is damp, though I can’t recall the last decent rain we had, and leaves stick to the packed earth. The trees’ shadows made the trail dark, and the houses are quiet given the number of cars in the lot. I don’t even hear any birds singing to each other. The forest could be dead.

  That is until a rich, throaty bay pierces the quiet. I’d know that lonely howl anywhere. Sidekick.

  I dart around Roswell. “Stop!” he calls, but I lope clumsily on, my tied wrists at my waist. I track the howl through the open door of Polly’s apartment. I stop just over the threshold, uncertain how to proceed.

  Dad stands in the middle of the common room. He’s bent, a hand curled in the fur of Sidekick’s neck.

  The coffee table has been moved, along with most of the other furniture, turning him into a circus master at center ring. Women I vaguely recognize crowd the edges of the room, sitting in chairs raided from a variety of kitchens. Their backs are hunched over some task. Needles flash in their fingers, sweeps of gray fabric draped across their laps as they sew. Several of them look up, but none set their work aside.

  Sidekick struggles and whines against the fingers of the man in the suit. If I harbored the smallest doubt that Dad is really gone, I now know for sure. Dad might have complained about “that fool dog,” but Sidekick adored him, and he quietly rewarded that affection with belly scratches and the occasional table scrap. A piece of bread here, a crumble of bacon there. The worst thing is that this man in front of me, the one Sidekick is desperate to escape, is a perverse picture of the sober, cleaned-up version of Dad I wished for a thousand times.

  John Dee gazes at me through my father’s face. “Mary,” he says.

  Well, maybe not the worst thing.

  Dee gives my father’s head a slow shake and releases his grip on Sidekick. Sidekick immediately sc
rambles to me, his nails scraping the floor, and cowers beside me in a way that makes me ache. Tail between his legs, ears and head down. As if he’s done something wrong.

  Kneeling, I bury my face in Sidekick’s fur, managing to loop my arms over his head to hug him in spite of my tied wrists. He shivers against me.

  Dee’s footsteps approach, measured. I should cringe in fear. I shouldn’t provoke him. I have to remember Sara, uncon-scious. We have no way to wake her that doesn’t rely on Dee’s assistance.

  But I can’t help myself. I want nothing more than to send this devil back to whatever hell he’s been hiding in for the past four hundred years. He scared my dog.

  “Wrong girl,” I say. “I’m Miranda.”

  Chapter 30

  GRANT

  I should make some effort to hide my shock, but the scene in the house Miranda raced into is not something anyone could expect. No matter how weird the past few days have been. No matter the shadows that surround me, speaking loudly.

  The devil is HERE —

  He will know you —

  You must listen!

  But the minute I step inside, they quiet down. For once, I see no shadowy movements. Maybe they’re afraid the man presiding over this tableau will sense them.

  A bunch of women are sewing — yes, sewing — or, rather, they’ve stopped sewing to watch the drama taking place in front of them. Miranda stands from a crouch next to Sidekick. Her father stands opposite her, a sympathetic expression on his face.

  John Dee’s expression, Mr. Blackwood’s body, I remind myself. What surprises me is that the sympathy the man radiates toward Miranda actually seems sincere.

  “I would never hurt your pet,” Dee says. “Animals are more sensitive than most humans” — he looks over Miranda’s shoulder at me with curiosity — “and can sense when the forces of nature are in flux.”

  Miranda gapes at John Dee inside her dad. She’s clearly furious, and I don’t want her talking to him when anger is in control. I don’t believe Miranda shot at Mom on purpose, no matter what she said. It’s the snake, the curse. I’m still on her side, even though I have no idea what Gram would say about that. Protecting the island should come first, according to her letter. Thankfully, the whispers of the spirits — and they are whispering — are so quiet I barely hear them. If Gram’s among them, I can’t hear her either.