by Gigi Pandian
“Don’t you see?” Brixton said. “He could help you!”
Brixton knew I’d accidentally discovered the Elixir of Life in my twenties. Aside from my hair, which had turned white centuries ago, the Elixir prevented me from aging. He also knew alchemists weren’t exactly immortal. Even though some of us have unlocked the secrets that transform energy into eternal life, we’re flesh and blood and can be sickened or injured. With my herbal skills, sickness is less of an issue, but I have several scars that remind me how precarious life is.
It was typical of the young that Brixton had never asked me when and where I was born. He knew I used to run a shop in Paris in the early 1900s before returning home to the US and traveling around the country in my 1942 Chevy truck and my 1950 Airstream trailer. He’d never asked, as Dorian had, for the details of my birth and upbringing, so he didn’t know I’d been born in Salem Village in 1676, or that because of my way with herbs and plants, I’d been accused of witchcraft at sixteen. Both I and the world had come far since then.
“Oh, Brix—”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Brixton asked. “I’m telling you—”
“The same way you told me about Mrs. Andrews?”
“That was different.” He scowled and busied himself with the mug of cocoa.
Brixton had sworn that one of our neighbors hadn’t aged in ten years, from Brixton’s first memories at age four to his current age of fourteen. I’d taken him seriously—only to find out the woman had gotten plastic surgery.
“And Jonas Latham?” I said.
Brixton scowled again. “Even though I wasn’t right about him being an alchemist, I was right that he was up to something.”
While riding his bike to my house, Brixton had noticed a man carrying laboratory supplies that looked similar to my alchemy vessels. As the man slipped into his garage, Brixton caught a glimpse of his “alchemy” lab.
Again, I’d given Brixton the benefit of the doubt. When I went to investigate, the police were at the man’s house, arresting him. Brixton claimed it was a witch hunt and that the police had arrested him for being an alchemist. I asked Max about it, inquiring as a curious neighbor. It turned out the man had been running a meth lab in his garage.
A woman who had plastic surgery. Then a man dealing drugs.
“All right, Brixton. What is it this time?”
Four
“Um … ” Brixton appeared suddenly fascinated with the criss-crossed scratches in the linoleum floor.
“Brix.”
“Well, the thing is … He looks really familiar.”
“He looks really familiar? That’s all you’ve got this time?”
“This isn’t like the meth dealer or Mrs. Andrews.”
“You probably saw posters of the magic show online before it came to Portland,” I pointed out.
“Would you let me finish? The magician is familiar from history. I swear I’ve seen him in a history book.” He paused to lift the last coconut cookie from the magic-lamp-shaped cookie jar on the counter and pop it into his mouth.
“A former president, perhaps?”
“Not funny, Zoe. Not funny. I’m being serious!” With a mouthful of gooey cookie in his mouth, Brixton wasn’t making his case very effectively. “You didn’t recognize him? There’s not, like, a registry of alchemists?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Well, it should. How am I supposed to remember everyone I’ve seen in a history book?”
“If this man is an alchemist who’s discovered the Elixir of Life, do you really think he’d choose a profession where he could be famous? Wouldn’t that make it much more difficult for him to keep his secret?”
“I know you’ve been good at making sure you never get publicity or anything, but there are a lot of people with bigger egos than yours. People who want the attention. And don’t you remember how he said he needed a volunteer of legal age ‘in these modern times,’ like he’d known previous times?”
I frowned. The magic show that night was straight out of the 1800s, it had sparked an uncomfortable sense of familiarity, and Prometheus clearly enjoyed the spotlight. Was it possible Brixton was right this time? I shook my head. “Living out of the spotlight isn’t a matter of personal preference,” I said. “It’s about survival.”
“Immortals are always famous in the movies—”
“Exactly. In the movies. Not in real life. There are only a handful of alchemists out there who’ve succeeded in extending their lives. They stay so well-hidden that I haven’t managed to find a single one since I started looking earlier this year.”
“Which is totally why it’s awesome that an alchemist is here in town. You should invite him over to the teashop.”
Brixton was right that I needed help, but if he was also right about this man being a figure from history, that meant this alchemist was a dangerous wild card. Before approaching him, I needed to know more. Not only whether Prometheus could be an alchemist, but if he could be trusted.
I tried to think about how best to explain my concerns, but Brixton was no longer paying attention to me. “That’s weird,” he said, staring at the screen of his phone.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just a website that got hacked.” He tucked the phone into the pocket of his jeans.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I climbed two flights of stairs to reach my attic office. A three-foot section of the roof was missing, but had been patched with a quick fix—like everything else in my life these days. The attic flooring below the rooftop hole had collapsed too. The gaping hole, located directly above my bedroom closet, was now covered with a sturdy wooden plank and a Qalicheh Persian rug.
A combination of plastic, plywood, and decorative coverings kept the rain out until I could reverse Dorian’s deterioration and resume work on the fixer-upper house. Saving Dorian’s life was a bigger priority than saving the house from dry rot. Besides, this hole in the roof provided an easier way for Dorian to come and go from the house without being seen. Unlike the rooftop opening he used to squeeze through, this one was large enough that he could maneuver through it and replace the tarp even with a stiff leg.
With the storm damage, my attic office rivaled the basement alchemy lab as a work-in-progress. The top of the Craftsman house contained my public persona; the lower regions hid my private one: Zoe Faust, the twenty-eight-year-old proprietor of the online secondhand shop Elixir, a descendant of the woman who’d started an apothecary shop named Elixir in Paris in 1872; and Zoe Faust, the 340-year-old alchemist who’d accidentally discovered the Elixir of Life 312 years ago, and who ran an online business because she was no good at transmuting lead into gold.
Stepping past a collection of antique books on herbal remedies, a row of Japanese puzzle boxes, and the articulated skeleton of a pelican, I grabbed my laptop computer. When I entered the kitchen a minute later, the fridge door stood open but Brixton was nowhere to be seen.
Then the crown of his head popped into view from where he stood behind the fridge door, and he kicked the door shut with his foot. In each hand he was balancing a stainless-steel storage container with a platter of treats on top.
“The desserts wouldn’t have run away in the few moments you took to come back for them,” I commented.
“Yeah, that coconut cookie made me wicked hungry and I couldn’t decide what I wanted. It’s cool, right? Dorian said there was more than you two could eat.”
I lifted the more precariously-perched platter with my free hand and led the way to the dining table.
“I already looked them up while we were at the theater,” Brixton said. “I knew that magician looked familiar as soon as I saw him, but it wasn’t until the intermission that I could use my phone without Veronica punching me. But then I couldn’t find you to tell you. Anyway, the
magicians Prometheus and Persephone are a married couple, Peter and Penelope Silverman. They didn’t announce their secret identities or anything.”
“Now you think they’re both alchemists?”
He shrugged. “I only recognized Prometheus, but who knows? That’s why you should look into it. With two alchemists helping you, that could totally save Dorian.”
I opened the laptop while Brixton inhaled a piece of chocolate zucchini bread. Peter Silverman’s website bio was short, but as a magician he was well-known enough that an online encyclopedia had listings for both himself and Penelope, who was both his wife and magic show partner. They were both in their early fifties, and Peter was the child of Marge and Herb Silverman of Silver Springs, Ohio. Penelope Silverman, née Fitzgerald, began her career as a circus performer and she’d been an expert lion tamer and knife thrower before she ran away from the circus to become a magician.
Peter and Penelope met in Las Vegas, where they each had their own stage show. Penelope’s page had a photograph from her solo show, and Peter’s showed an illustrated poster of their joint Phantasmagoria act, similar to the one I’d seen that night. Before the two met, both of them were struggling, performing only as opening acts or at hotels nobody sober would stay at. About five years ago, they’d become the marginally successful team of Persephone & Prometheus. There was nothing controversial except for one thing: Peter had once punched a theater patron for taking a photo of the show.
I looked again at the poster illustrations. Their likenesses were approximate, but not photographic quality. There were no photographs on either their own website or the external listings. That was odd. I typed in an image search. Hundreds of images of Penelope popped up, most of them showing her as a young woman in a skimpy costume with a whip. Though Penelope was stunning in her fifties, she’d aged normally.
But I couldn’t find a single photograph of Peter Silverman.
“What is it?” Brixton asked.
“Nothing.” I tried one more quick search, finding more of the same. Penelope had several social media accounts, but Peter had none.
“What are you looking at?”
I closed the laptop. “I’m sure your mom is worried that you’re not home yet. Let me put your bike in the back of the truck and give you a ride home.”
It was a fifteen-minute drive to the cottage where Brixton and his mother were staying while Blue was gone. Brixton slipped on headphones as soon as he sat down in the passenger seat, which was fine with me. I needed time to think.
Peter Silverman was hiding something. That didn’t necessarily mean he was an alchemist. In fact, it was more likely to mean any one of a dozen other things that had nothing to do with alchemy. Maybe he’d changed his name to get away from a life of crime. Or perhaps he was running away from alimony payments. I briefly considered that he could be a hero in the Witness Protection Program, but they’d never let him appear on stage.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
After I dropped Brixton off at the cottage, I selected one of my favorite songs to listen to on the drive home. I had installed a compact cassette player in the early 1970s, about thirty years after buying the truck. I had a sentimental attachment to the countless mixed tapes I’d made myself for my long drives across the country, so I’d never upgraded. I found the cassette that included “Accidental Life,” a 1950s song by an artist who called himself The Philosopher. It combined a spiritual sound with the danceable rock rhythms gaining popularity in the fifties. What I loved most about it was how The Philosopher used his deep, soulful voice to tell the story of a man who wandered the earth for a thousand years. It wasn’t only the lyrics that spoke to me; there are some voices that simply feel like home.
The song ended long before I pulled into the driveway. I drove the rest of the way home through side streets, enjoying the late-night silence. In the driveway, I took a moment to breathe in the crisp night air. The spring scents of cherry blossoms, daffodils, and hyacinths came on a gust of wind.
Inside, I walked through the house to check that all the doors and windows were locked. After being burglarized shortly after I bought the house, it had become my nightly ritual. Despite the break-in, this dilapidated house felt like a real home. Aside from my Airstream trailer that I’d lived out of for decades, this was the first place that had felt like home in the last century.
Just as I was about to turn off the kitchen light, I spotted a wooden spoon that had fallen in the crack between the Wedgewood oven and counter. I reached it easily enough, but paused before washing it. The scent of vanilla, cloves, and cardamom wafted up from the spoon, along with a scent I couldn’t place. Though I’d been cooking for many more years than Dorian, he was the one who knew how to bring different flavors together in unexpected, complementary ways. Once I came to think of myself as worthy of a good life, I began using vegetables, herbs, and spices to make healthful meals. But my own purpose of cooking was to be healthy, not necessarily to enjoy the taste. Though I know how to dry high-quality herbs and spices for my alchemical transformations, and can create healing tinctures, teas, and salves, before Dorian entered my life I’d never thought about using the same ingredients to transform simple foods into heavenly masterpieces. My little gargoyle gourmet was a culinary alchemist.
These days, I’m considered a vegan. When I began eating a plant-based diet around the turn of the twentieth century, it was known as a Pythagorean diet, named for the mathematician Pythagoras, who advocated eliminating animal products from one’s diet. Dorian was horrified when he learned I didn’t stock bacon, butter, and heavy cream as kitchen staples. He’d been taught to cook with the traditional French methods, so learning to cook with the ingredients in my kitchen had been an adjustment. He rose to the challenge, though, and now declared that his vegan creations were the most impressive gastronomic feats in this hemisphere. Not only the best vegan creations, but the most delectable foods, period. I never said he was modest.
Dorian was still off on a nocturnal walk. He didn’t need sleep, so after his nightly walks he spent the hours before sunrise baking pastries at Blue Sky Teas, slipping out before anyone saw him. Baking vegan treats for the local teashop was Dorian’s contribution to our household expenses. Because nobody could know he existed, I was his front. Everyone besides Dorian and Brixton thought I was the chef who rose before dawn to bake fresh breads and delicacies. I hated all the lies I had to tell to fit into normal society, but this untruth provided a reasonable explanation for why I’d been so tired lately. With that thought, I yawned.
My last stop of the night was the basement. When I opened the door I kept locked at all times, my senses perked up. The second yawn that had been about to surface disappeared, replaced with a surge of adrenaline.
“Dorian?” I called out.
Silence.
I descended the stairs.
Standing on the bottom step, I had a full view of the room. The scent of home-brewed beer that had been so strong when I moved in had been gone for months, as were the putrid scents of my earlier failed experiments. After accidentally poisoning myself, I was now rigorous in my cleaning and storage of alchemical ingredients, and I kept the room locked at all times. Yet the harsh scent of sulfur dominated the basement. How could that be?
I stepped farther into the room, thinking I must have been so tired I couldn’t smell straight. This wasn’t sulfur. It was the pungent scent of cloves. No, that couldn’t be right either. It must have been mold from an old book. Figuring out which one wasn’t important right now. I had enough mysteries to deal with without worrying about the natural decomposition of an antique book. Besides, I couldn’t be sure what I smelled. The only thing I felt sure of that night was that the perplexing odor came from a bookshelf in the far corner. I paused before turning off the light, with one last thought flitting through my mind: how strange it was that the scent seemed to be getting sweeter, rather than more foul, with
age.
Five
When I walked into my kitchen sanctuary shortly after sunrise, Dorian was already there, wearing an apron and standing tall on his stepping stool as he fixed himself an espresso. I took a deep breath and savored the energizing scents surrounding me. A bowl of freshly made wild blackberry compote mingled with the fragrances of yeast from a loaf of sourdough bread in the oven and freshly ground French roast coffee beans. Next to the espresso machine sat two grinders, one for coffee beans and one for aromatic spices.
I tugged at the sleeve of my blouse, which was poking out from an ill-fitted sweater. I hated nearly all of the new clothing that I’d picked up at a local secondhand shop after my clothes were ruined. I supposed it was better the splintered wood had fallen into my closet rather than my bed, but I was unhappy nonetheless. I’ve never gotten used to wearing off-the-rack clothes. Even when ready-to-wear clothing supposedly fits properly, no two bodies are alike; it’s impossible to get a perfect fit without tailoring.
I hitched up my high-waisted, oversize jeans to avoid tripping, but my superficial concerns were forgotten as soon as my gaze fell to Dorian’s left foot. Not only was it fully stone, but another claw had broken off. Would it grow back after I healed him?
“Morning, Dorian,” I said, hesitating to mention his foot. I also thought better of mentioning the fact that there was a chance there might be another alchemist in town. It was much more likely that Peter Silverman was a criminal hiding from his past; that would explain why he hated photographs and shunned social media. Dorian had a habit of overreacting.
“If you visit Blue Sky Teas today,” he said, tamping down the coffee grounds, “you will see a new cake named after Brixton. I found a large patch of ‘wild treasure’ blackberries, which the boy loves. Brixton’s Blackberry Bread will be on the menu.” He turned from the espresso machine and his black eyes grew wide. “Mon dieu. I thought you were a morning person.”