The Masquerading Magician

by Gigi Pandian

  “Ambrose was a fellow gardener and herbalist,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Until I met him, I had never really gotten over my brother’s death. Not the fact that Thomas died, but the fact that I couldn’t save him from the virus that killed him.” It was the Plague that had killed my brother in 1704. Dumb luck that a small outbreak swept through France while we were there, and a dumber sister who thought seeking a cure in her alchemy lab could be more useful than simple loving care. “I got him the best care I could, but I should have been there with him.”

  “You thought you could be a miracle worker with your herbal remedies. I understand the impulse to save everyone, especially those we care about. But I wonder if I could have done something differently that day with Chadna, so I understand how you can still blame yourself.”

  “I traveled around for several years after that.” For over 150 years, if I wanted to be precise. Which I didn’t. I ran from my apprenticeship with the Flamels, ran from my alchemy research, and ran from myself. I traveled through the Far East and the fledgling United States of America.

  I carried only one satchel, though in my unhealthy state even the single bag was often burdensome. I’d abandoned alchemy when Thomas died, so I was no longer encumbered by the tools of an alchemy laboratory. My bag contained the bare essentials for creating tinctures, tonics, balms, and salves, along with a few items of dirty clothing, a dusty blanket, and stale bread. I walked in the one pair of shoes I owned, with my gold locket around my neck, and kept several gold coins tucked into a hidden pocket. Only in winter did I travel with dried herbs. Throughout the rest of the year, I found plants to work with wherever I went. They were there, if you knew where to look. After many years, I found myself back in France.

  “After I got tired of traveling,” I continued, “I went to work at my grandmother’s shop in Paris—the shop I now run as my online business Elixir. Ambrose was English, but I met him there in France. What are you chuckling about?”

  “Ambrose, such an old-fashioned name. I was smiling because it suits you so well. You’ve always struck me as wiser than your years. Immortal.”

  I froze.

  “Doesn’t the name Ambrose mean ‘immortal’?” Max continued.

  “It does.” I relaxed, but I felt my hands shaking. To cover up my nervousness, I absentmindedly bit into another cookie. The meaning of his name was one of the reasons Ambrose had been intrigued by alchemy in the first place. “Ambrose was an aspiring gardener when I met him. You would have been horrified by his sad garden. But he wanted to learn.”

  One day in the 1890s, when I was bringing an herbal remedy to an ailing household outside of Paris, I came across a striking figure. He wasn’t the most handsome man I’d ever seen, but there was something that drew me to him. Something beyond his thick black hair, dark blue eyes, and gently crooked nose.

  Next to a cottage along the dirt path, a man was kneeling in the dirt next to a row of unhealthy salsify. The spectacles that adorned his face shone in the sunlight. I watched as he ran a hand through his unruly black hair. Despite the failure of his potager, his face showed contentment instead of the frustration I expected. I couldn’t resist setting him straight about caring for his struggling garden.

  Just as I had never excelled at alchemy involving metals, Ambrose had never been good with plants. Yet he never gave up. In spite of years of failure, he continued to keep a range of plants in his garden and struggled to keep them alive. That was Ambrose. Never giving up. Until the end. We were at once opposites and the perfect complements to each other. I can’t believe I’d have forgotten you, but do we know each other? Those were the first words Ambrose had spoken to me, on that first day of our acquaintance, when he caught me pausing to look at him. No, I replied, but I know that poor salsify plant you’re strangling the life out of. May I show you how to care for it? After that, we had never left each other’s sides.

  “Even though I was always good with herbal remedies and healing others,” I continued, “I didn’t start taking care of myself until I met Ambrose. That’s when I began eating the healthy plant-based foods I eat today, to heal both my body and soul. It was a whole new way of life for me, and it was wonderful for a while. Until—” I needed a moment to compose myself. “Until Ambrose killed himself.”

  “I’m so sorry, Zoe,” Max said gently. “The look on your face. It’s guilt. You look like you blame yourself for his death too.”

  “Part of me does.” I stopped myself from saying more. That Ambrose had gone insane after hearing that his son Percival had died of old age. He couldn’t deal with the weight—the curse—of living indefinitely, so he ended his life.

  “When someone takes their own life,” Max said softly, “it’s about them. Not you.”

  “That doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Max said, a look of understanding dawning on his face. “That’s why you spent most of your twenties on the road.”

  My twenties. “That’s part of it.”

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  I shook my head. “I lost them a long time ago.” I’d lost them long before they died. When I didn’t adopt the norms of our time and was accused of witchcraft, they didn’t support me. If it hadn’t been for my brother, I would have been killed before my seventeenth birthday.

  “I’m sorry, Zoe. You’re so young to have lost so many people.”

  “I’m not so young, you know.” Why had I said that out loud?

  “I know. You’ve been through so much more than most people your age. But … ”

  “But what, Max?” I tapped my foot nervously on the linoleum floor. Why was I so jumpy?

  “We’re at such different places in our lives. You’re just starting out in life. Portland is a fresh start for you. I don’t want to hold you back.”

  “If you’re trying to say you’re too old for me, I don’t care that the age listed on your driver’s license is greater than mine.” Nor did I care that I’d been born before his great-great-great grandparents.

  The older I get, the more I’ve seen how after adolescence, it’s our physical bodies that age us and constrain us. Shared experiences give people within a generation an affinity for each other that makes it easier to connect. While that’s a real connection, it’s also a superficial one. Aside from my relationship with my brother, all of the other meaningful relationships I’ve had in my life have been with people—and a gargoyle—who’ve had vastly different life experiences from mine. Different ages, classes, languages, races, religions, nationalities, occupations, passions. The more I saw people’s superficial differences, the more I learned those things weren’t important.

  In alchemical terms, our bodies are the salt that ages, our spirits are dual-faced mercury that changes with the times, and sulfurous fire is the key to our souls across the ages. Our soul is our true self, regardless of age or history.

  One of the reasons I didn’t mind falling out of touch with true alchemists was that they often lost sight of their souls. The older some alchemists got, the easier it was for them to abandon their humanity. I sometimes wondered whether I didn’t look hard enough for Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel because I feared it had happened to them.

  Thinking of them made me fidget even more. That was unlike me. Though I’d been more scattered than usual as I desperately sought out Dorian’s cure, my alchemical training has taught me how to focus.

  “I wonder if I’ve been selfish,” Max said. “You’re only twenty-eight—”

  “I’m not twenty-eight.” I clamped my hand over my mouth, horrified by what I’d admitted.

  I looked at the cookie jar. The label on the jar had been typed up on the antique typewriter Dorian used to make the labels I insisted on. These weren’t ginger chocolate cookies. They were coffee and ginger chocolate cookies. I’d just ingested several cups worth of caffeine.

  Max frow
ned at me. “Are you okay, Zoe?”

  “This has been great! Hasn’t this been great? Opening up to each other.” The caffeine was making me manic. Would it act like a truth serum? I had to get Max to leave before it made me say something I couldn’t undo. I took Max’s hand and pulled him toward the back door.

  “You’re trying to get rid of me? What did you mean you’re not twenty-eight?”

  “Just like you were saying earlier, that I’m an old soul, from everything I’ve gone through.”

  “Okay … ” His furrowed brow said otherwise.

  “Old Soul! That’s a great name for a band, don’t you think? I should suggest that to Tobias and Brixton. They’re so talented, don’t you think?”

  “Your hands are sweating. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “It’s later than I thought. I should get back to my guests.” I pulled open the back door. “You should go.”

  Forty-One

  After Max left, clearly displeased by his abruptly requested departure, I gulped two glasses of lemon water. I mentally kicked myself for being so abrupt with Max, but I couldn’t trust myself not to say too much. Beads of sweat covered my face. The corner of my lip twitched.

  I slammed down the empty glass and stormed into the living room. “Dorian made coffee cookies!”

  The music broke off with a discordant guitar chord coming to a metallic screeching halt.

  “Dorian!” I shouted. “Dorian!”

  “I’ll go get him,” Brixton said, stumbling away from me as quickly as he’d fled from me the first day I met him.

  “It was impossible not to hear the piercing banshee wail,” Dorian said from the top of the stairs. “I am sorry, mon amie, but did you not read the label I created as you asked?”

  “I asked you not to bake caffeine into anything, because I knew this might happen.” My legs twitched nervously. “Before he left, I let it slip to Max about my not really being twenty-eight. Who knows what I would have told him next if I hadn’t gotten him away from me.”

  “Max isn’t still in the kitchen?” Brixton asked.

  “I shoved him out the door before I accidentally told him about you lot.”

  “You’re sweating an awful lot,” Brixton said. “Are you poisoned? Do you need to go see a doctor?”

  “She’s got someone better right here,” Tobias said, feeling my forehead. He shook his head.

  “I’m not poisoned,” I insisted. “But I doubt I’ll sleep for days.”

  Tobias checked my vital signs and agreed this was nothing more than a case of an alchemist’s reaction to coffee.

  “Not cool,” Brixton said. “It must suck to be an alchemist. Except for the super-human part. That’s pretty wicked.” At fourteen, Brixton was already a coffee convert. I expected that wasn’t abnormal in Portland, although the amount of sugar he added to his coffee also explained it.

  After he was convinced Tobias was medically qualified and I was all right, Brixton pulled the chocolate-covered blackberries out of the fridge. The kid, the gargoyle, and the former slave ate a simple yet delectable dessert. As for me, I walked up and down the stairs a few dozen times, then lay down on the couch and put a compress over my eyes. Neither worked. Nor did the herbal remedy Tobias insisted I try. I sprang up the stairs to try one more thing.

  Brixton was packing up his guitar when I returned with a hula hoop in hand. It was time for him to meet his mom at Blue Sky Teas to help her clean up the teashop.

  “You can let your mom know I’m feeling better and can bake pastries for the morning,” I said.

  “But you’re not feeling better,” Brixton said. “You said—”

  “Since your mom thinks I’m the one who bakes the teashop pastries, we need to keep up the pretense. Now that Dorian has escaped police custody, he can resume his baking.” I put the hula hoop around my waist and began moving my hips. The hoop spun around me, with the sound of the tumbler inside following my movements. “I bet he’ll make some great items tomorrow, happy to be a free man again. Or, I suppose he’s a free gargoyle, and it’s technically tonight, since Dorian will be baking before any of us are awake in the morning. Except for me. Since I won’t be sleeping. For days. Dorian, do you need any ingredients? You must need ingredients. I could go to an all-night market if you—”

  “Uh, Zoe,” Brixton said, “you’re babbling. And you look ridiculous. I’m leaving.” With a departing eye roll at the sight of the 1950s hula hoop, he slipped out of the house. Tobias locked the door behind him.

  “Well, mon amie,” Dorian said. “Now I realize why caffeine is not a method you wish to use to stay awake in the night. You are quite useless at present. Monsieur Freeman, may I interest you in a nightcap before it is dark enough for me to leave the premises?”

  “Zoe, do you want to join us?” Tobias asked.

  “Can’t talk. Hula hooping.”

  An hour later, I was still twitchy, but I’d calmed down enough to have a sensible conversation. Which was a good thing, because Tobias had to catch a flight the next day. This was our only evening together.

  I found him in the attic with Dorian, drinking sherry with the gargoyle out of ornately etched cordial glasses. A nearly empty crystal decanter sat on a silver platter between them.

  “You didn’t tell me this little fellow could drink me under the table,” Tobias said.

  “Moi?” The gargoyle chuckled.

  “I’m glad you two are getting along so well. Especially since tonight I alienated one of the few friends I’ve got here.”

  “Monsieur Liu is not good for you,” Dorian declared.

  “He seemed like a good man,” Tobias said. “We’ve all been around long enough to be good judges of character. And I judged him to be a kind man who cares for Zoe.”

  Dorian raised his clawed index finger to make a point. “A good man? Yes. A trustworthy one? No.”

  “You’re just saying that because he’s cooked in your kitchen.”

  “Mais non! This is a problem, yes, but I am not being frivolous. Max Liu is the arm of the law. His men locked me up! How can you trust this man?”

  “It doesn’t sound like that was his fault,” Tobias said.

  “Yet it would not have happened if Zoe could tell him the truth about she and I!” The dramatic statement was rendered less powerful because it was followed by a hiccup.

  “If you two are done determining my love life,” I said, “maybe Tobias and I can get back to work on Non Degenera Alchemia. Toby, you said you wanted to see more about the Tea of Ashes.”

  “Catch you later, little man,” Tobias said, shaking Dorian’s hand.

  “It has been a pleasure.” Dorian bowed his head.

  The stairs creaked under my enthusiastic steps as we made our way down to the basement. We’d left Dorian in the attic with a stack of science fiction books from the library. I wondered what a drunk gargoyle would make of them.

  “I wish I could stay,” Tobias said as I unlocked the basement’s secure lock, “but I’ve got a shift tomorrow and I’m needed back home. There isn’t anyone to cover for me.”

  “Is your station short-staffed with medical techs?”

  “Something like that.”

  I wasn’t up for creating the Tea of Ashes in my present agitated state, or so soon after having done so that week, but I walked Tobias through the process I’d pieced together from the counterclockwise motions in Non Degenera Alchemia’s illustrations.

  “Slow down,” Tobias said as I flipped through the pages. “You’re going to destroy the book.”

  He was right. I took a step back. “I should let you handle the book until the coffee is out of my system.”

  “I don’t know what it is about that stuff that messes up alchemists so badly. I’d wager it rivals mercury with its dangerous dual-faced properties. But only for us.”

  “It�
��s our own faults for being overly connected to nature’s transformations.”

  “Let’s get back to these unnatural transformations here.” He pointed at the page I’d nearly ripped out of the book. “Jumping right to fire and ash. That can’t be good.”

  “It’s not. Each time I light the fire with the intent of practicing backward alchemy, the effects begin. My skin begins to shrivel along with the plants I’m turning to ash.”

  “The salt of the body. That makes sense.”

  I nodded. “That’s why it temporarily stops Dorian’s body from reverting to stone.”

  “I keep coming back to the gold thefts in Europe,” Tobias said. “The ones that you don’t believe are thefts at all.”

  “I’m almost positive,” I said. “We looked up the dates of the ‘thefts’ where the thieves left behind gold dust, and they correspond precisely to when Dorian began to return to stone. The impure becoming the pure—and now transforming back again into dust.”

  “And they’re both connected to this cathedral.” Tobias tapped on the page of the book.

  “Tobias!”

  He jumped back.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you. I haven’t thought much about the crumbling gold since I realized the book illustrations form a cathedral. This means there could be a pattern to the gold that’s crumbling. It’s not that all alchemical gold is in danger of disintegrating.”

  “Are the gold pieces religious relics?”

  “Not all of them. They aren’t similar pieces. There’s no pattern. At least that’s what I thought—until now.”

  “There’s a pattern there, Zoe. You just need to find it.” Tobias yawned and his eyelids drooped.

  I shook his shoulders, even more adrenaline surging through my engorged veins. “Are you all right? Is the book having an effect on you?”