The Fake Heart (Time Alchemist Series)

by Revelle, Allice

  I sighed. My eyes were puffy and swollen, but no tears came this time. I let my chin fall against my chest and closed them. I didn’t even feel myself fall, didn’t even feel the cold dirt against my cheeks as I laid there, with Leon’s head still cradled halfway in my lap. My own heart’s pulsing was fading farther and farther away. The last thing I saw as my vision began to black out was Leon’s sleeping, peaceful face.

  I smiled. Death wasn’t so bad after all. Because I, Emery Miller, St. Mary’s sophomore had finally achieved something spectacular.

  CHAPTER 31

  Beep….beep…beep…

  I groaned. That constant bleeping was starting to get on my nerves. My eyes were still closed, but my senses started to come back…

  I smelled lilac and bleach. I heard shuffling footsteps behind a door and a drip, drip, drip of something liquid. Snoring. I heard a grunting bear-like snore. And it sounded familiar. I cracked my eyes open, wincing at the brightly lit white room. I was in a bed, nestled in white soft sheets. My ankle was raised at a slight elevation, wrapped in a thick cast. I glanced to my left to see bandages, a few stitches and a needle in my arm. The dripping was from an IV, and the annoying beeping sound was a heart monitor.

  I was in a hospital. I was alive. And the person snoring away in a hard plastic chair, thick hairy arms crossed and a bit of drool dotting his stubble chin was—

  “Dad!” I croaked out. My whole body screeched in protest as I struggled to untangle myself from the pristine sheets. My dad, clad in his usual red striped button up shirt and muddy work jeans and boots covered in oil, jerked to his senses.

  His green eyes, just like mine, almost popped out of their sockets as he rushed forward, knocking the chair to the ground with a rumbling clang. I was instantly wrapped in a big bear hug, and I clung to him, crying. His familiar scent of men’s shampoo, dirt, and gasoline was like a baby blanket. He kissed the top of my head, murmuring my name over and over.

  “I thought I had lost you,” he babbled, holding me tighter, “When I got the call from the school, I felt like my heart had stopped. I thought you had—that you’d—”

  “Shh, it’s okay, Daddy,” I said, nestling into his neck, “I’m so sorry, Dad. I’m sorry!”

  We sat there and cried. This was the second time I’ve ever seen my dad cry. The first time was when I was a little six year old, peering into his bedroom when he thought I was in bed, clutching a dress my mother left behind. He cried his heart out onto that red velvet dress, as if that would bring her back. As I felt the fat drops of his tears hit my head, I cried harder too.

  I will never make him cry like that again. Never.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  “Are you sure I can’t get you anything, Emery?”

  I waved him off. “I am! I mean it Dad! Go get some coffee and a good lunch. The nurses told me you haven’t eaten in nearly three days!”

  Three days…that was how long I had been out, after I passed out in the cemetery, cradling Leon’s head. What had happened in those three days? Had everything really happened or was it all just some crazy dream? No—I knew now that none of it was a dream. Digging up an old family grave; Headmistress Margaret had been murdered; I killed…killed Ivan Novak and had found the Elixir.

  My bracelet was missing. But instead of feeling panicky and upset, I felt…relieved and content. Like it was a good friend that had to say goodbye forever; it was a melancholic state.

  But a more important thought churned in my head: where was Leon? And Dove?

  Dad started to protest again but I gave him a stern look as the nurse ushered him out. I waved until the door closed shut, listening to Dad’s heavy thudding boots and the nurses clacking heels fade down the hallway. Then I pushed away the covers and stumbled out of the bed, freeing my cast from its perch. I stood there a little, trying to balance, shivering in my thin hospital gown. My bare feet hit cold linoleum floor as I limped towards the tiny bathroom, using the walls and scarce furniture as support.

  Just as I hoped, a large silver mirror hung over the porcelain sink. I grabbed the top of my gown and pulled it down to my chest.

  The tattoo had changed.

  Instead of a light yellow clock face, it was a shining gold, like somebody had traced my skin with liquid gold. It was an intricate pattern of gears and grinds, with the same haunting clock face right over my beating heart. The alchemic Runes seemed to stretch over my chest and on my shoulders and neck.

  It was beautiful.

  I placed a hand to my chest. Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump. My heart was beating like normal again.

  But was it really normal or…not? I thought I had died in the cemetery. I thought that last extra shove of my alchemy had finally done me in. Why was my fake heart still working?

  When I pressed my hand harder over my chest, it felt warm; like somebody had held onto my heart with gentle hands until I had woken up.

  It felt as if I were…forgetting something.

  “It’s about time you woke up!”

  I let out a small shriek and whirled around, heart thumping madly from the scare and the familiar, calm voice. There, standing right in front of the window was Dove. Behind her, trying to climb in from outside the window (really, haven’t either of these two siblings heard of doors?), was Leon.

  “Oh my God!” I yelped, tackling the blonde, despite my gimp ankle, in a big hug. Dove’s laugh was as sweet sounding as summer rain. Her balance shook, but she returned the embrace, her thin arms squeezing my tightly. Leon sat on the window’s edge, a large, but very exhausted grin on his face. He looked bad—worse than me. His face was covered in bluish bruises and band aids, and there were stitches on his forehead. He looked a little winded (probably from climbing up a tree to the second story of a hospital building), but he was alive.

  He was alive.

  I wanted to race over and hug him and cry but made myself stop. What if he was still injured? And what if my boast of happiness sent us both flying out the window? (As if I need another reason to stay in the hospital any longer.)

  “We,” he said, giving me a loopy grin, “have a lot to tell you.”

  Dove nodded, “Better sit down for this one. It’s going to be a long story.”

  I grinned, feeling my insides warm all over. “Aren’t they always?”

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  So during the next week, I stayed in the hospital (Dad adamantly refused to let me go anywhere until I was 100% better. Besides the aching sores and swelling bruises, and a badly broken ankle, I was fine. Really!), Dove and Leon visited each day and gave me bit by bit of what happened, after I told them my story.

  I told them all about skipping out on the Winter Formal and being chased by the Ice Alchemist, who we all know was Marjorie posing as Headmistress Margaret. How I found a secret tunnel that led from the library’s basement to Bonaventure (with the thanks of an awesome friend), and what happened after Dove and Leon were knocked out by Marjorie and Jack/Ivan.

  I told them everything, even though my head throbbed and my stomach felt like a cold lump when I retold them the truth. Digging up Kathleen Hearst’s grave; how Ivan mercilessly killed Marjorie; as well as Ivan trying to make Leon into his next vessel.

  Leon looked sick.

  “I felt something,” he said, “Like…somebody was trying to force me out of my own body. It hurt, like my bones were on fire and it felt like my blood was boiling. It hurt so much but I couldn’t move an inch. It was like whatever was…inside me was trying to force me out and take over and…destroy me.”

  I placed a hand over his, which he enveloped. Even covered in bandages it felt warm; pulsating with life.

  The life I had saved.

  Or rather, the life that the Elixir had saved.

  “But the fact that you tapped into your core at such a crucial moment…” Dove said, “That is beyond anything I have ever heard of!”

  I shrugged sheepishly, not really wanting to go into the details of what kind of warmth and power I felt thrumm
ing inside my chest. True, it had been exhilarating, so much so that remembering it made me shake, like I was forced to quit cold turkey on caffeine and I needed a fix fast. It was such a rush—it was astounding.

  But what I had done—I had killed somebody. And even though it wasn’t Jack anymore—it was the essence of a person using his body— it still made me nauseous.

  I felt like a horrible, horrible person.

  I skimmed over much on how I managed to defeat Ivan until I reached the conclusion of finding the Elixir, right there under my nose.

  On a day that Dove left to do something (a secret she refused to tell us), it wasn’t until then, alone in my hospital room, that Leon sort of…broke down.

  I wouldn’t say he cried, but the way his voice cracked, as if his throat was scratched raw, and how his shoulders hunched so low it was as if he were holding up a large, invisible boulder, and the way he couldn’t seem look me in the eyes without drawing away from the guilt gnawing inside him.

  For the first time that shocked us both, I hugged him. The last time I had held him like that was when he was nearly on his deathbed. For a flitting moment, I thought I would never be able to hold him again, and tell him “Thank you.”

  He stiffened at first, but I felt him relax, letting down his guard. His body warm against mine. I could hear his steady heartbeat against my ear. When he pressed his face into the top of my head and I heard silent sobbing escaping his throat, I knew that he was okay.

  He wasn’t going to live the rest of his life believing that it was his fault. I chose to save his life, even when my own was in danger.

  I would remind him, again and again if I had to.

  Every day.

  CHAPTER 32

  Their story was a bit plainer than mine—both Dove and Leon headed to Bonaventure together but split up soon after to look for the gravesite of the Hearst family…my great-grandmother’s family. That’s when Dove ran into Marjorie. And as you can see, it didn’t really end too well. Leon stayed hidden in one of the large oak trees, waiting for the right time to act until he saw me. Then when he saw how Jack came to “rescue” me, his alchemic instincts (those really exist?) took over and he attacked.

  Leon claims he can’t really remember what happened after Ivan had stabbed him, but he does remember one thing.

  “It was like…an angel was looking over me,” he told me one early morning when Dove went out to fetch drinks, “I thought you were an angel.”

  Needless to say, I felt red from head to toe, glad that the white sheets of the hospital bed covered my body.

  Dove told me, after she regained consciousness and saw what happened, she ran off to get help. Her eyes were full of tears, a rare occurrence for her, as she explained. “God, I was so powerless against that woman, and when I saw you were being hurt, I couldn’t do a thing. I left my brother behind—how could I do that to him. To you—”

  “You have nothing to apologize for, Dove!” I had said, giving her one of the longest lasting bear hugs of the year. I reassured her, saying that if she hadn’t rushed off to find and send help, I wouldn’t have survived. And it was true. From what Dad told me, the police and the ambulance arrived just minutes after I collapsed, and rushed both Leon and I to the nearest emergency room.

  A day or so after, the police showed up to question us about the now missing Jackson Alexander and Margaret Willows. It was only natural that if a handsome, rich and charismatic boy suddenly disappears after his school Formal, shortly after his girlfriend left, and was never heard from again, questions would be raised. And of course, I became the first witness for questioning.

  I came up with the best lie I ever knew I could muster.

  I told them that Jack and I planned a secret rendezvous at Bonaventure for a date of sorts (and even though I was lying about the whole real reason, just seeing the looks on those stern looking cops and my father thinking I skipped Winter Formal to go do “it” with a guy at a gravesite did not make things better. At all.), but when I wanted to stop, Jack became …angry and rough with me, hitting me and yelling and screaming. I still felt my insides go cold remembering the pure hot hatred in his oily eyes.

  They seemed to buy it, judging by my face and the broken bones I had. I saw one of the police officers shaking his head as he jotted down things on a notepad, and heard him mumbling something about “abusive relationship” and whatnot. They asked about my relationship with Jack, and I told them the truth:

  “He wasn’t who I thought he was.”

  Leon’s reasons where as such: he took off early from work to go exploring at Bonaventure, claiming to be very interested in the paranormal and hoping to see some spooky activities. He said it with such a straight face; I almost choked on my milk. He said he heard Jack and I fighting (taking my lead), and rushed in to help, but was badly hurt in the process.

  Dove also was interviewed, and went along with our lies. She had gone to the cemetery with her brother; saw the fight that was happening and rushed away to get the police.

  The police asked what happened to Jack. “I don’t know.” was all I could say. And it was sort of the truth. I couldn’t exactly tell them that he was nothing more than a pile of dust because the soul of an ancient, evil alchemist took over his body.

  Everybody deemed Jackson Alexander a runaway, but what happened to Headmistress Margaret?

  Since her body was never found, buried underneath the earth near the Hearst Family graves by Jack’s alchemy, she also was dubbed a runaway. Even many of the faculty said she had been acting strange for the previous year; often locked away in her office and sometimes disappearing for days at a time with no notice. But since she was the Headmistress of St. Mary’s, nobody really spoke out about her odd behavior (even when she gave undeserving punishments to students).

  Rumors swirled like crazy at school when Spring term was just starting, how the two of them must have ran away to New York to elope, or that the Headmistress was pregnant with Jack’s child, or how the two were partners in crime for distributing drugs and were kidnapped and beaten and left to die in a ditch by some rival drug dealers, or that Jack was her illegitimate child and she kidnapped him to live with her back in Botswana. (Once I heard a rumor about the two of them being kidnapped and sacrificed to a demon or something.)

  Nobody really cared about the girl who Jack had supposedly tried to beat up in the graveyard. Although, I got the occasional scathing look from some girls who crushed on Jack at first, they quickly turned to looks of sympathy mixed with a little disbelief when they saw the state of my face and me limping along on my crutches. And let me say, it wasn’t a pretty sight—both of my cheeks were large, fading purplish blooms from being slapped to and fro; my lips were cracked and I had tons of scratches healing all over my face. The cut on my leg had gotten from sneaking into the library needed twelve stitches, and would probably leave a nasty scar. My ankle was broken so badly I had to walk with crutches for six weeks, and even go to physical therapy.

  Even Mallory, although she was crushed by Jack’s disappearance and loathed the fact that I probably had something to do with it, didn’t taunt me or accuse me of anything. Verbally, I mean. I could see the accusation like poisonous darts in her pretty eyes.

  My heart felt like it was ripping in pieces for Mallory. Not just her, but practically the entire school had lost their friend. Even the Alexander’s had no idea what happened. Nobody knew that Jack wasn’t Jack anymore. Who knew how long he had been forcibly taken over by Ivan’s soul? Was the Jack I hung out with just Ivan trying to get closer to me, or was that a bit of his real self trying to shine through, begging me to help him?

  I bet the real Jack Alexander had fought back hard, and I felt a little bubble of pride swell up inside me.

  One winter afternoon, the day before the second term began I sat on the floor in my dorm room; ankle propped on a cushiony purple pillow and nursed a hot chocolate. It was tough convincing Dad to let me come back to St. Mary’s—he wanted to whisk me away to sa
fety back in New York, but I put my foot down on that, determined to stay here for good and finish school.

  Besides, if I was up North, how would I be able to practice alchemy with Dove? And most of all, this is what Grandma wanted—excluding the getting-killed-and-saved-by-alchemy bit—for me to stay and finish my schooling at St. Mary’s. She left me that bracelet for a reason; if she knew of its powers she never let on, but I still felt as if she was watching over me with a proud, proud smile on her face.

  Dad caved after a while and surprised the both of us by having Uncle Ben ship his things down. Even more surprising (and I didn’t know if it was due to the fact that St. Mary’s felt responsible for my state or they just wanted to cover it up), he got a job as maintenance man-slash-janitor. The look on Dad’s face when Mr. Hogan—filling in as temporary Headmaster of St. Mary’s (the best choice of a Headmaster, if I do say so myself)—was so bright it filled up the entire room!

  So, I got to continue studying at one of the best schools in the South, talk to my friends and adjust to my new dorm room. And new roommate, Dove.

  That’s right. Dove and Leon were going to be official St. Mary’s transfer students.

  I watched as she adjusted her own pillows on the other side of the room (twice as large as the single I stayed; and how we managed to get such a room in the first place was beyond me. But hey, don’t look a gifted horse in the mouth, right?) as I gazed out the double wide window that held a variety of cute stuffed animals I had gotten as get well gifts from Karin, Samantha and a few other people I barely knew (and it was a pretty touching thought). I wondered how Leon was adjusting in his new dorm and how his new roommate would treat him. I bet it was much warmer than being holed up at an old out-of-date clock tower with little to no heat.

  It took longer than I would have expected for the question to come out. For one, I assumed we were past the mentor-slash-student lesson planning stage of our training. And two, I didn’t want to tire us both out the day before second term by worrying about things I couldn’t understand. And most importantly, I knew I would be bringing up even more sad and painful memories of Guinevere, but I still asked.