by Gigi Pandian
Yet if he could believe the drawings made by multiple artists, the old carvings on the façade hadn’t simply been vandalized. At different points in the cathedral’s history, the carvings on the façade had been altered to give them new meaning.
That meant not all of the destruction had been done to deface the monument, as he’d been led to believe.
Viollet-le-Duc hastily unfurled the official plans and sketches in his possession. None of them showed the strange writing carved into the facade. He turned his attention back to the drawings that showed the real carvings. With a magnifying lens, he looked more closely. Riddles. These words made no sense. What a strange thing!
And what was this? He looked more closely, focusing the magnifying lens. A drawing of the cathedral before the French Revolution showed a man holding a book. The stone book bore the Latin words Non Degenera Alchemia.
Viollet-le-Duc chuckled to himself. Stonemasons often bemoaned that they were uncredited for their efforts. To be remembered, they would sometimes carve representations of themselves into their work. The stone carvers who worked on this section of Notre Dame must have had a good sense of humor. They had put their own secret joke in a place that would be seen by scores of people. He appreciated the effort, and regretted that he was obliged to restore that section to its original meaning.
Suddenly seized with inspiration, he cleared the desk and sat down with his notebook open in front of him. With an expert hand, he began to sketch. A winged creature took form beneath his pen. This was no angel; it was a gargoyle.
He paused, picturing the current cathedral in his mind. Weathered stone gargoyles already surrounded much of the old church. Though far enough from the ground that one had to squint to see their details, those gargoyles had always inspired his imagination. It was a shame that their function as waterspouts also meant they naturally crumbled within decades rather than centuries. He wished to carve larger chimeras that could be appreciated both from the street below and up close. Grotesques that would not be hindered by being functional waterspouts. Viollet-le-Duc imagined a gallery high atop the cathedral, where commoners could climb to view the splendid city and also get a closer look at the architectural details of the cathedral itself. High above the stonemasons’ alchemy joke, this would be his Gallery of Chimeras.
Nine
When I reached the sidewalk in front of my house, the first thing that came into view was the rooftop tarp that covered the hole Dorian used to climb out from the attic. Since his stone form had been carved as a prototype for a statue on the gallery of gargoyles that adorned Notre Dame, he felt most natural coming and going through the opening high above the ground.
Rushing up to the house, I found Brixton sitting on the bench on my porch, calmly strumming his guitar. There was no emergency in sight.
“It’s him, Zoe.” Brixton set his guitar aside and picked up a hard-bound book with library markings on the spine. “Prometheus. The alchemist.”
I groaned. “Brixton! I don’t have time for more theories. I was in the middle of something import—” I broke off when I saw the page he’d turned to. Brixton was holding the old library book open to a page with a photograph of the man we knew to be Peter Silverman. I lifted the book from his hands.
“The website where I first saw his picture is still down,” Brixton said, “so I went to the library and got a library card to check this out to show you.”
On the page was a photograph of the stage magician I’d seen last night. He looked roughly the same age he was now, around fifty, but with a different hairstyle and mustache. There was something eerily disturbing about this photograph. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but it wiped the smile off my face. I’ve never been a fan of mustaches, but that wasn’t it. In this closeup photograph, the man I knew as the magician Prometheus stared past the camera with vacant eyes that sent a shiver down my spine.
“He’s dead,” I whispered, realizing what was wrong with the photograph. “This photograph was taken after he was dead.”
“He was supposedly killed in a shootout with the police, after he killed some guy during a robbery.”
I flipped to the cover of the frayed hardback book. It was a book about infamous Portland murderers throughout history. Brixton wasn’t simply claiming Peter Silverman was an alchemist. The man in this photograph was a murderer.
The caption read: Franklin Thorne, killed by Oregon state troopers in 1969.
1969. Nearly 50 years ago. The murderous magician hadn’t aged a day.
“I told you he’s an alchemist,” Brixton said. “He must have found the Elixir of Life like you did, so he wasn’t really dead. Just pretending. Now you know he really could help you with Dorian’s book! I told you my idea for a database of alchemists was a good one. It would have saved me from getting a library card.”
I shook my head. “The magician from last night’s show must be related to this man. I’m sorry I doubted that you recognized him, but you can trust me on this point. The simplest explanation is usually the right one.”
I’ve been around long enough to know the most straightforward answer is almost always the right one. Almost being the key word. But I didn’t want to admit my doubts to Brixton. It was still much more likely that the magician was simply related to this infamous murderer. Striking resemblances occur within families. That reality is why people readily accepted that I’m the granddaughter of a woman who looked remarkably like me. That’s much more believable to people than the truth that I’m the same woman. But what if my secret situation was true for this man, too?
Brixton took the book back. “I looked up more about Franklin Thorne while waiting for you to get here. Truly, they’re not related. This guy Thorne didn’t have any family.”
Franklin Thorne. Why did that name sound familiar?
“The Lake Loot!” I cried.
“Yeah. Duh.”
The missing train heist loot had recently been discovered. That’s what must have brought Peter Silverman to town.
I made Brixton wait while I looked it up myself. As far as I could tell, Brixton was right that the two men weren’t related. And neither had any connection to alchemy.
“A publicity hoax!” I said. “Maybe he cultivated the look. It would be great publicity for a guy who goes by the stage name Prometheus to pretend to be immortal.”
“He couldn’t have altered this library book,” Brixton said. “The pages are all faded.”
“No, and he probably wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble,” I whispered. I knew it was technically possible to create an illusion with so many layers of complexity, but a hidden library book didn’t make any sense. Why go to the effort? “Wait, you said at first you remembered this man from a history book, and then realized you originally saw this photo on a website?”
“Yeah, that Murderous Portland site I follow.”
After being trapped by a real murderer earlier in the year, Brixton had given up on daring activities, such as the B&E that had caused him to meet me and Dorian. In place of this risky hobby, he’d taken to the more macabre, but safer, activity of learning about Portland’s murderous history. He was enamored with a website set up by a graduate student at Portland State that was devoted to Portland’s seedy past, from its founding in the 1840s through the end of the twentieth century. Brixton had seemed most interested in the earlier Wild West era, but apparently he’d read about more recent crimes as well.
“But the site was hacked and it’s still down,” Brixton continued. “What’s the matter?”
“That’s an awfully big coincidence for the site to be down as soon as Peter Silverman arrived in town. I don’t like it. If this was a publicity stunt, Prometheus would want to get the photograph out all over the Internet. But instead, the biggest site that makes his photo available is down. It’s as if he doesn’t want to be found.”
“That’s what I said,”
Brixton grumbled. “It’s like you’re not even listening to me.”
Brixton had cried wolf twice in as many months, but that’s not what made me skeptical. It was the fact that alchemists were so few in number. Even when I’d been studying alchemy, before I ran from it, I knew very few people who’d discovered its secrets. Granted, I knew fewer alchemists than my male counterparts did. Aside from Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel, most were skeptical of female alchemists. I’d apprenticed to Nicolas at the start of the eighteenth century, two hundred years after he and his wife had faked their own deaths in Paris. Because he was a cautious man who valued his privacy, even Nicolas didn’t know many true alchemists. And I’d lost track of the Flamels in 1704. I didn’t even know if they were still alive.
There had once been a larger number of practicing alchemists. However, even in periods of time where there had been a flurry of alchemical interest and activity, few people unlocked the secrets of alchemy. Most alchemists died either accidentally poisoning themselves in their laboratories or naturally of old age. Very few of us had found the Elixir of Life. There were more plausible explanations as to why Peter Silverman resembled Franklin Thorne.
Still, there was no way the complexity of a publicity stunt included altering obscure library books. There was more going on here than I understood.
“Shouldn’t you be getting over to the teashop to help your mom?”
Brixton rolled his eyes, but he stood up and slung the guitar over his back. He paused before hopping onto his bike. “You know you’re wearing Mom Jeans, right?” he said.
“That bad?”
“Worse. So much worse.”
That was the last straw. My bank account was too low to commission the tailored clothing I was used to, I didn’t want to put in the hours required to sew myself clothing from scratch, and I doubted I could afford anything decent from a department store—not to mention the fact that I didn’t understand the social mores of shopping in a multi-floor department store inside a mall. That was one modern invention I’d only watched from afar. One of the few times I’d ventured inside a mall, my senses had been assaulted by a barrage of perfumes and powders that the “helpful” sales clerks wanted to show me. I fled before making it through the cosmetics section. But I was only putting off the inevitable. I was too old to get better at transmuting lead into gold, but learning how to shop in a mall had to be marginally easier. Didn’t it? As soon as I figured out how to save Dorian, I would reinvent myself.
“I’ll look after the library book,” I said. As soon as Brixton disappeared down the driveway, I hopped into my truck. I had my own destination to reach. I didn’t know what to make of the alchemical woodcut that showed an angel turning to stone, but there was something much more immediate I could do.
The library’s newspaper archives were extensive. I had no trouble finding scans of the original newspaper editions from the spring of 1969, when the infamous train robbery had taken place.
In the days following the crime that had killed guard Arnold Burke—and resulted in the thief’s death as well—the local newspapers reported on different aspects of the train heist. Several reporters quoted conflicting accounts of the heist from eyewitnesses, one reporter wrote a profile of the heroic guard, and an enterprising investigative journalist dug into the past of Franklin Thorne so quickly that his story appeared the day after the heist. There was also speculation about what would have driven Thorne, a toy maker, to become a thief. The most widely accepted explanation was that the Thorne family had once been quite wealthy, but had fallen on hard times a generation before. As wide-ranging as the stories were, all of the reporters agreed on one thing: aside from a childless older sister, Franklin Thorne had no family.
I read through newspaper stories from the first few days after the theft and shootings, then I rested my head on the library table and closed my eyes. The fake wood surface smelled of plastic and bleach. Peter Silverman, aka stage magician Prometheus, aka murderous thief Franklin Thorne, had nothing to do with me. He wasn’t here to find a fellow alchemist. He was here to retrieve riches he stole decades ago, now that renewed interest meant that someone else could get their hands on it.
I lifted my head, and my hand moved instinctively back to the archives. I stopped myself. Peter Silverman isn’t your problem, Zoe.
But if Brixton was right, could he be my solution?
Ten
“Why are you sitting on the sofa in your imperméable?” asked my gargoyle, his dark gray brows drawn together.
“I was all set to go out and confront a problem, until I thought better of it.” I sat stiffly on the green velvet couch, my silver raincoat buttoned over my awkward clothing and the keys to my truck in my hands.
If Peter Silverman was a murderer who was back in town to find the loot he thought was lost, why would he admit to being an alchemist? Even if I could get him to open up to me, was an alliance with a dangerous alchemist worth the risk? I’ve survived for centuries because I listen to my intuition. And my intuition was screaming at me that I should steer clear of Peter Silverman. But at the same time, if his help could save Dorian’s life …
Dorian hopped up on the couch next to me. His feet didn’t touch the ground. “I suppose it is too much to ask an alchemist to avoid speaking in riddles.”
“I don’t mean to be enigmatic. Take a look at this book.” I lifted the library book from the coffee table and opened it to the bookmarked page.
“The Fire God magician,” Dorian remarked. “Prometheus. I would not have thought him good enough to merit being featured in a book. It is an unflattering photograph, no?”
“Take a look at the title of the book. It’s a book about Portland’s infamous murderers.”
Dorian’s snout twitched as he looked from the front cover to the information about the photograph. “But this is … How is this possible? It says this man was killed by les flics in 1969.”
“I think he’s an alchemist. A real one who’s discovered the Elixir of Life.” Something was wrong with that picture, though. Alchemists aren’t immortal. If he was truly dead, as this picture indicated, there were only two ways he could have come back to life. One, he could have faked his death in the first place. Two, it was possible he could have used backward alchemy, the same unnatural alchemy that had brought Dorian to life and was now killing him.
“C’est vrai? Is it true? But this is wonderful! You have had such difficulty locating another true alchemist all these months. Monsieur Danko means to help you, yet he is not a true alchemist, and cannot know your true mission. Why is your face grave, Zoe? Working with a learned alchemist who may have been alive longer than you, this could help you decipher my book, no?”
“He’s a murderer, Dorian.”
Dorian waved his hand through the air. “You fail to see the big picture. Ah! I am settling into American life so well that I am using American idioms! Did you hear?”
I sighed. “I’m glad you’re feeling more at home in Portland, but the big picture generally includes staying far away from murderers who the police felt necessary to shoot several times.”
“Yes, but—” He broke off. “Attendez. Why did he come back?”
“Look at his name.”
“Franklin Thorne? Ah! He is the man who stole the Lake Loot that has enticed these meddlesome treasure hunters.”
“He would have been forced to leave town quickly at the time, unable to get the loot without being found out. But now that enough time has passed, he most likely wants to retrieve the rest of it before someone else finds it, since part of the stash has already been discovered.”
“Mais, why would he care for jewels?” Dorian asked. “He could simply make gold.”
“As you’ve seen, not all alchemists are good at transmuting lead into gold.”
Dorian frowned. “I thought you were a special case.”
“It’s a huge depletion of
energy for anyone. It’s the level of difficulty to complete the transformation, and how quickly we recover, that’s personal. But we’re getting off track. Dorian—if he truly died in that shoot-out, and it’s the same man we saw on stage last night, he had to use unnatural means to bring himself back from the dead. He would have to be using backward alchemy.”
“That is even better! He might understand my book.” Dorian grinned, his wings wriggling in his excitement.
“If he doesn’t steal it first.” My hand flew to my mouth. I hadn’t realized the implication of my words until I’d spoken them out loud. There was another reason besides the valuable jewelry that could have lured an alchemist who practiced backward alchemy to Portland in the first place. “An immoral alchemist,” I said slowly, “might want Not Untrue Alchemy to use himself.”
Dorian gaped at me, his dark gray tongue hanging over his light-gray little teeth. “You think,” he said, “he is here to steal my book?”
I shook my head, shaking free of my confused thoughts. “I can’t see how it’s possible. Even if he knew of the book’s existence, there’s no way for him to know it’s here.” Alchemists can’t sense each other from afar. Up close, there are subtle cues, mostly inadvertent slip-ups that show we were alive during periods of time we couldn’t possibly have otherwise experienced. It’s not like we’re surrounded by an aura that other alchemists can see.
“The scent of the book is most strong,” Dorian said. “Could he have sensed it that way? I have never smelled anything like the strange scents in this book. And as a chef, I have smelled many things.”
“The sweet scents in the book aren’t unique. It’s only odd that they’re coming from an antique book.”
“I believe you are correct,” Dorian said. “I cannot imagine my book is what drew him here. ”
“The much more plausible explanation,” I said, “is that he’s simply here to find the rest of the jewels that washed up in that mudslide along the Willamette.”