The Alchemist's Illusion

by Gigi Pandian

“What did you think of Ward?” I asked.

  “He’s a charmer,” Tobias said. “One of those people who draws out all of your own secrets but doesn’t tell you a damn thing about themselves, and you don’t realize it until it’s too late.”

  Were we too late now?

  fifty-three

  As the sun rose, we prepared to drive home. Mina had declared the Flamels stable enough to be moved, and Tobias and I could care for them just as well from my house.

  Tobias offered to drive, but I could see the tiredness in his eyes. I took the keys from his hands.

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” he asked. “You’ve been up all night. The planetary cycles affect you more than me. You’re in no shape to drive.”

  I pointed at the rising sun, breathing in the crisp air of the new day. “I am now. I’m tired, but the sun is waking me up. Get some sleep in the trailer.”

  He nodded, but paused as he stepped in. “Hey Zoe, when we get to the house, call me before you get out of the truck.”

  “Why would I—oh. Ward.”

  “We don’t know where he is. If he knows you’re the one who discovered his identity, he’ll be angry, and he might come for you like he did for Nicolas.”

  Before I started the engine, I called Dorian from the trailer to let him know we were on our way.

  “Will Max be with you, or only the alchemists?” he asked.

  “Max is away looking for Ward Talbot. No need for you to hide.”

  “The art dealer Ward? He is the murderous forger?”

  “He’s the alchemist Edward Kelley.”

  I heard the sound of claws tapping on a keyboard. “Bof! But of course. Talbot … He is a smart one. I believed the false trail of family lineage I uncovered. Très stupide! Kelley … Did you know some people believe him to have created the Voynich manuscript? Before it was called by that name, of course, but—”

  “We can talk when I get home. I’ll be there soon.” I hoped. It seemed that rush hour traffic began earlier and earlier each year in all the cities I’d visited in the twenty-first century. I needed to get on the road. But I had one more call to make first. I tried Max, but only got his voicemail.

  Just as I’d thought, we hit the beginning of rush hour, with drivers from outlying areas commuting into Portland. As I sat behind a line of cars on the paved I-5 freeway in my 1942 Chevy, with tech workers on either side of me and three centuries-old alchemists in the trailer behind me, I began to laugh.

  Tobias would have said I was slap-happy, but it wasn’t lack of sleep making me laugh. As if my life wasn’t strange enough, I needed to prepare Nicolas to meet Dorian.

  I eased into my driveway half an hour later. Tobias opened the trailer door before I could call him.

  “You weren’t sleeping,” I said as he met me at the door of the truck.

  “That Nick is a talker,” he muttered. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Tobias and I circled the house together, checking for any signs of Ward. We stopped at the side gate after doing a full loop.

  “I don’t think he’s here,” I said. “He’s probably fled the city by now. I wonder if he convinced Cleo to leave everything behind and go with him.”

  “More foolish decisions have been made by people with far fewer resources.”

  “Speaking of which,” Tobias said as we hurried back to the trailer, “the Flamels gave me the best gossip. Two centuries’ worth about the rich folks who owned the painting they were trapped inside. I only wish I knew which parts of their half-awake interpretations were true.”

  I paused at the door. “Did you happen to prepare Nicolas to meet Dorian?”

  “Perenelle did. She told him not to stare at their fellow Frenchman whose alchemical transformation went awry.”

  Moments after I opened the front door, Dorian hobbled down the stairs.

  “Where’s your sling?” Tobias asked.

  “I could not bake with it on. And I wished to fulfill my duties for Blue Sky Teas as well as cook breakfast for our esteemed guests.”

  “We have already broken our fast, good man,” Nicolas said after I introduced him to Dorian.

  “We would be honored to partake in a meal with you, sir,” Perenelle added. “I, for one, am hungry enough to eat a hundred meals.”

  Dorian beamed at her. “Bon! I will not disappoint you, mademoiselle.”

  We came together for a most welcome second breakfast. Due to Mina and Tobias’s care, Nicolas was doing better than anyone had expected, so he joined us at the table, still dressed in the purple scrubs Mina had given him. Perenelle remained in her brown dress. She’d declined my offer to loan her some of my clothes. She refused to wear slacks, and didn’t think my one dress of green silk included nearly enough fabric.

  “Where did you learn to cook such exquisite food?” Perenelle asked Dorian.

  “It is a long story,” Dorian said.

  Nicolas grinned at him. “We are alchemists. We have time.”

  “You are both from the 1300s,” Dorian said. “Many centuries before Viollet-le-Duc reimagined Notre Dame de Paris, but I believe gargoyles and grotesques had begun being carved a century before your births. You are familiar with such creatures?”

  Perenelle gasped. “You are not a man whose alchemical experiments went awry?”

  Dorian shook his head. “I am a proud gargoyle.”

  I was glad to have Perenelle and Nicolas pepper Dorian with questions about his life. It was a welcome distraction from thinking about what had become of Ward and the detective.

  “The iron sculpture in front of your hearth,” Perenelle said, rising from the table after finishing a second plate of food. “It’s exquisite.”

  “Isabella Magnus,” I said.

  Perenelle stopped with her hand partly outstretched toward the metal sculpture of intertwined birds. “A relative of the man you believe Edward murdered?”

  “His wife,” Tobias said. “She’s a talented artist.”

  “That she is … ” Perenelle stifled a yawn. “I can’t quite believe I’m saying this after half-sleeping for all these years, but I feel like I need to rest.”

  I was exhausted myself, but I needed time to figure out what to do next. Being in the presence of Nicolas and Perenelle was all-consuming.

  I was preparing a bed for them when my phone rang.

  “Max.” I let out a breath of relief, but the feeling only lasted a moment.

  “It’s Isabella Magnus,” he said. “She’s in the hospital. It’s bad, Zoe.”

  fifty-four

  “Is she all right?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “You were right about the ergot poisoning,” Max said. “It looks like she’s been breathing in bad fumes from the moldy old books she was using as inspiration. She’s not in good shape, but it’s too soon to tell what’ll happen.”

  “Ergot is extremely toxic,” I said. “And hallucinogenic.”

  So Isabella had been accidentally poisoning herself. I tried to think about what herbal remedies might help ergot poisoning. Modern medicine was best to treat it in its acute state, and I would bring something to help her recuperate. If she made it.

  “So I hear,” Max said. “That’s probably what got her talking. She admitted she was the artist behind Logan Magnus’s success. He made his own paint and did the final technical execution of the pieces, but she gave him the subjects and composition, and set up the lighting with shadows that gave the work its unique qualities. She’s our forger, Zoe. She—”

  “That’s collaboration, not forgery.”

  “I know that.” Max’s voice was harsh. “I wasn’t finished. That’s not why she’s going to be arrested. She’s going to be arrested because the team found forgeries hidden in her secret art studio.”

  They had? What was going on? And it wasn’t only Max’s words. Snappin
g at me wasn’t like him. Not the Max I knew. Neither was the fact that he was telling me so much about an active case.

  “Why are you confiding in me now?” I asked. It wasn’t even his case, after all.

  “Because Detective Vega is officially missing now. Something isn’t right. It’s all hands on deck.”

  “I wish I could do more to help.”

  “Your friends … or step-parents, whoever they are … Mina told me they’re all right. I’m glad.”

  “Me too.”

  “Someone needs to interview Perenelle. She said Ward poisoned her, and he’s still missing.”

  “She doesn’t have any information.” I could only imagine what the police would think of Perenelle if she shared the information she actually had. I expected I’d only ever see her again in a room with padded walls.

  “We’ll be the judge of that.”

  “She’s not well enough to talk.”

  “You and Mina have both confirmed she’s okay. She can talk.”

  My hand gripped the phone. That was why Max had told me so much. Because he needed something from me. “Is this an interrogation?”

  “Of course not,” he snapped. “But we need to find Luciana.”

  “So you’re going to bust down my door?”

  For a few moments I heard only the faint sound of Max’s breathing. The time stretched on until I wondered if I’d lost the signal or if he’d hung up on me. I also wondered if he had indeed sent someone to the house. Dorian could escape through the attic skylight, but Nicolas and Perenelle …

  “This is serious,” he said finally.

  “I was serious about what I told you in my lab too.”

  “I can’t have this conversation right now, Zoe.”

  “We’re talking about the same thing. I can swear to you that Perenelle is telling the truth, that it’s Ward who did this to them—and I know with equal certainty that whoever questions Perenelle won’t believe her story.”

  “Because she entertains the same delusion as you do, that she’s hundreds of years old?”

  I clenched my jaw shut and resisted the temptation to scream at him. “Questioning Perenelle won’t tell you where Ward is. Max? Are you there?”

  The phone was dead.

  I rushed downstairs. “Change of plans. Nicolas and Perenelle are sleeping in the trailer.”

  “What’s going on?” Tobias asked.

  “Detectives are going to be showing up to question Perenelle.”

  She gasped. “Inquisitors?”

  “They won’t hurt you,” Tobias said, squeezing her hand. “But you don’t want to talk to them.”

  “I suppose alchemists are no more welcome in this century, eh?” Nicolas asked as he struggled to stand up. His body faltered and he gripped the side of his head. “Merde.”

  Perenelle and Tobias rushed to his side and helped him.

  I scanned the room. “Where’s Dorian?”

  “Cleaning up in the kitchen,” Tobias said. “He’s slower than usual with only one good shoulder, but he wouldn’t let us help.”

  “So thoughtful,” Perenelle said. She didn’t know it was more likely due to selfishness. Dorian didn’t like anyone to disturb his kitchen.

  I tossed my keys to Tobias. “Get them comfortable in the trailer. I’ll meet you in the truck in a minute.”

  I found Dorian scrubbing the counters and told him it was time for him to hide in the attic. “You’ll be my eyes and ears,” I said. “You can let me know if the police show up.”

  He frowned. “Where will you be?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “What if Edward Kelley finds you?”

  “I don’t think he’s after us.”

  Dorian clicked his gray tongue. “He searched for the Flamels for years, mon amie. He is a dangerous man.”

  “And there are four of us against one of him.”

  Dorian’s scowl deepened. “Yet Ward is the only one of you who possesses evil in his heart. He is only one person, but he will not pause before striking.”

  I grabbed Ashwagandha tinctures that might come in handy for energy on the run, then met the others outside.

  “Where to?” Tobias asked as I hopped into the truck.

  “We do what we’ve always done,” I said. “Hide in plain sight.” I directed him to a trailer park along the Columbia River.

  “We can’t hide out forever,” he said.

  “I know. And I wish we could ask for more help from the police, but if even Max won’t believe me about this … ”

  “He’ll come around.”

  I studied Tobias’s profile as he drove north on Highway 5. His broad hands rested on the large steering wheel, and he hadn’t glanced my way when he spoke.

  “You don’t believe that,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’d like to believe it.”

  The sun was at its zenith when we reached an RV park where we could rent space. We were all exhausted and no good to anyone in our current fatigued state. I cleared space in the trailer for the three of them to nap. But in the middle of the day, with a sun I hadn’t seen in days high overhead, there was no way I’d be able to sleep. As Nicolas began to snore, I slipped out of the trailer and went for a walk.

  I walked past towering oak and Douglas fir trees that lined the river. A few yellow and brown leaves were beginning to appear on the oaks as autumn approached. A blue heron swooped through the sky overhead. With its elegant long neck, it reminded me of a phoenix.

  I walked for what felt like both minutes and hours. Leaves gave a satisfying crunch under my feet, energizing me with every step.

  When I got back to the spot where we’d parked, I didn’t see the Airstream or my Chevy. I rubbed my eyes. I was suffering from exhaustion. I must have misremembered where we’d parked.

  But I hadn’t. Imprinted in the dirt were tire tracks from the truck and trailer. They were gone. And they’d left in a hurry.

  fifty-five

  I frantically searched my bag for my phone to call Tobias. When I found it, I also found I’d missed several text messages from him.

  Get back here.

  Where are you? All OK, but we need to go.

  Zoe, where are you??? Why don’t you ever check your phone? Nick woke up, left the trailer. Attracted unwanted attention.

  Will call to let you know where we are.

  I called him back, but the phone went straight to voicemail. I tried Dorian next, using our coded ring system, and he picked up the phone.

  “Les flics have not arrived,” he said. “You may return home. It is safe.”

  “I’ve lost them.”

  “The police were chasing you?”

  “Not them them. Tobias, Nicolas, and Perenelle.”

  “Pardon?”

  I told Dorian what had happened.

  “And you say I am the reckless one because I practiced flying at the river?”

  I gasped. “The waterfront where the warehouses are. That’s where you found the phoenix pendant. Which we now know that Ward dropped … ”

  “Though I cannot see you, I can tell you are thinking more than you are saying.”

  “When I first met Ward at the art gallery, he told Cleo he was glad she used this space for the gallery. That means she owns more warehouse spaces, many of which are still empty—”

  “You believe Ward could safely use these spaces, and this is where he has gone.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I know one way to find out.”

  The cab driver dropped me as close as I could get to the spot where Dorian told me he’d found the phoenix pendant.

  What had Ward been doing by the river? Why had he been here with Logan Magnus’s pendant? And what had led him to abandon it? I walked north along the path and realized it wasn’t as far fro
m the Logan Magnus memorial gallery as I’d imagined. How many of these warehouses did Cleo own?

  It was now nearly sunset. My energy would be fading with the sun, so I had to act quickly. A dim street lamp clicked on overhead as I circled a cracked asphalt parking lot. I walked from building to building as the sunlight faded. Most were empty spaces, so I was alone. I kept my senses on alert, but there was no sign of Ward or anyone else. It wasn’t the presence of a person that made me stop walking—it was a scent. The acidic aroma of paint.

  Given that there were warehouses around me, it could have been paint used for some legitimate purpose. But I was in the lot of an abandoned-looking building. A stone-and-metal exterior, wooden boards over two windows, and a padlocked door. Yet the scent came from inside. Along with my connection to plants, my sense of smell has always been acute.

  I tried the padlock. It didn’t budge. I wished I had Dorian’s claws, or at least his lock-picking skills. He’d told me it was a skill that could be taught …

  When I pulled my phone from my bag to call him, I saw I’d missed a message from Tobias with the location of the RV park where they’d moved to. He assured me he’d keep the Flamels inside until they were better acclimated to this century.

  “Dorian,” I said when he answered my call, “can you walk me through picking a lock?”

  “The first step is the most important.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Try the handle.”

  “What?”

  “The door. It has a handle, no? It is amazing how many times a door is unlocked to begin with.”

  “There’s a large padlock. I already tried it. It was properly locked, as I expected.”

  But I didn’t expect the footsteps behind me, or the searing pain that crashed down on my head.

  fifty-six

  I woke up with the room spinning and my head vibrating. I couldn’t see. My mouth felt like cotton and hay, and with my bruised body and spinning head I felt like I was trapped in a washing machine.

  “Can you hear me?” The voice of a woman. Did I recognize it?

  I tried to answer, but found that the cotton in my mouth was more than a feeling. A musty cloth had been wrapped around my jaw. “Mm-hmm,” I grunted.