The Accidental Alchemist (3 page)

“I live in the neighborhood,” he said. He reached into his pocket and brought out his badge. “They found me at the teashop down the street.”

“I bought this place last month,” I said, “and moved in today.”

“Why?” the girl next to Detective Liu asked. She gaped at me, ignoring her friend who was jabbing her with his elbow. Even in ballet flats, she was several inches taller than either boy. She was beautiful, but from the way she held herself I could tell she couldn’t see it. She hadn’t yet figured out how to hold her long limbs gracefully.

Her friend remained silent. With a white t-shirt, leather jacket, and I’m-the-cool-silent-type expression on his face, he looked right out of a 1950s movie. But he wasn’t fooling me. His inquisitive eyes betrayed a curiosity even greater than the girl’s.

“I love a challenge,” I said—but the words were drowned out by a crash from overhead. My body tensed. I stole a glance at Dorian, stock still as his stone self next to the fireplace. It wasn’t Dorian who was upstairs.

The girl screamed. Brixton jumped. The other boy’s body jerked in surprise, followed by a cringe at the fact that he hadn’t played it cool.

“Should you check on whoever that is?” Max Liu asked.

“There’s nobody else here,” I said.

Before I’d finished speaking, the detective was already bounding up the stairs.

“Stay there,” he called down to us.

“Another friend?” I asked the kids.

They shook their heads in unison.

I followed the detective up the stairs. What was going on? Was there another stowaway in my boxes?

“Miss,” Detective Liu said, rushing out of the master bedroom and nearly giving me a heart attack. “You shouldn’t be up here while I—”

“I know what’s going on,” I said, pushing past him.

He followed me as I knelt down and picked up a sheet of plywood.

“This,” I said, “used to be attached to the frame of this broken window. The wind must have dislodged it.”

The detective groaned.

“Sorry to have worried you, Detective,” I said.

“Max,” he said. “Since we’ve caught a rogue piece of plywood together, I think you can call me Max.”

“Sorry, Max.” I tried to ignore the effect Max’s voice was having on me as I wrestled the piece of wood back into the window frame. The thin wood had warped and refused to stay in place.

“You’re
living here
already?”

“I’ve got a repairman coming first thing in the morning to fix up the place.”

Brixton and his friends appeared in the doorway.

“False alarm,” I said.

“The house moved on its own?” the girl asked. “Spooky.”

“Not really.” I held up the warped piece of wood.

“Come on, Veronica,” Max said. “We should leave our new neighbor in peace to fix up her house.”

“Good luck,” Veronica said, a timid smile on her face.

I smiled back at her. My smile was genuine, but I was also wondering what to do about Brixton. I couldn’t have him telling Max Liu about Dorian after they left. Brixton knew he could get in trouble if I told the detective he’d broken in. I had the bloody latch to prove it. Was that enough? I wasn’t into taking chances.

“I know the place needs a lot of work,” I said. “That’s why I was so grateful that Brixton offered to help me weed the yard. Isn’t that right, Brixton?”

Brixton had a sudden coughing fit.

“Tomorrow after school?” I said, patting him on the back.

Brixton looked from me to the detective and nodded. How had a fourteen-year-old cultivated such a wary look?

A gargoyle, a hoodlum, and a detective. And I’d been in my new home for less than a day.

three

“They’re gone,” I said.
I ran my hands through my short white hair, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. I needed to keep an eye on Brixton to make sure he didn’t start talking about things nobody would believe. When I turned to face Dorian, he had already uncurled himself from his stiff perch at the fireplace.

“You
have good instincts, Alchemist,” he said. “The boy does not wish you to press charges, so he will help you and not tell anyone what he saw of me.
”

“I hope so.”

“Do you always worry this much?”

“You aren’t worried?”

He gave a Gallic shrug. “I have hidden from people since the day I was brought to life by my father. It was a mistake, you see. He did not know what he was doing.”

“What do you mean he—”

“I have learned,” he continued, ignoring my half-formed question, “that people discount what they do not wish to believe. We can run, Zoe Faust, but we cannot truly hide. You are only fooling yourself if you believe you can control those around you. The boy may tell his friends. There is nothing you can do about that. But rest assured, they will not believe him. They will think he has an overactive imagination.”

And here I was thinking that the day couldn’t get any weirder. The gargoyle’s words reminded me of my mentor, the alchemist Nicolas Flamel. Nicolas and his wife Perenelle discovered the secret of eternal life in the fifteenth century, as well as how to turn lead into gold, but they were wise enough to know the world wasn’t ready for their secrets. They donated huge sums of gold to charity before “dying” of old age in Paris. In truth, they faked their deaths to avoid scrutiny, living their lives in the shadows after their official deaths, only revealing their true identities to alchemists like me. I wished I hadn’t run from them during a difficult period of my life. I had never been able to find them again.

“I have but one question,” Dorian said. “Why is everyone speaking English?”

“Why wouldn’t we be speaking English? You’re speaking English.”

“You spoke to me first. You were speaking English. It was only polite that I reply in the language you spoke.”

“You know you’re in Portland, Oregon.”

Dorian’s snout twitched. His granite mouth opened but no sound came out. “Oregon?” he said finally. “You left
France
?”

“Where did you think my shipping crates were going?”

“I did not have time to find out! I wanted your assistance, but I could not approach you when you were with others. Your assistant turned her back for but a moment when packing. That is when I climbed into this crate. I could not ask her where it was being sent.
Mon dieu
, this explains why the journey took so many days!”

His wings flapped in a single violent motion. Though the movement was fluid, as if the gray wings were thick feathers, the tip of his wing clipped the edge of the fireplace, sending a chunk of brick crumbling to the floor. He closed his eyes and squared his shoulders, folding his wings back to their resting place.

“
Je suis désolé
,” he said. “I am sorry. I have control of myself now. I simply do not understand why anyone would leave France! But you are a grown woman who can do as she pleases.”

“A grown woman who didn’t expect to find a gargoyle in her living room in the town she thought was finally going to give her a normal life.” I crossed my arms and looked down at the little Francophile.

“If you are done being maudlin,” Dorian said, “we can have a more civilized conversation after we eat. What are you cooking for dinner?”

“Dinner? I was going to make myself a simple vegetable soup.”

The gargoyle’s black eyes darkened and widened. “
Mais non!
You cannot be serious!”

“Sorry to disappoint you. But you were also going to tell me why you’re a castaway in my crate.”

Dorian sighed and stretched his neck and shoulders from side to side. His movements were more controlled now. I suppose it must have been rather cramped in my shipping crate. “If I finish explaining about my book,” he said, “you will feed me a real meal?”

“That’s rather presumptuous for a castaway.”

He stopped stretching and locked intensely on my gaze. “Please?”

How could one say no to a polite gargoyle? Especially if that was the only way to get this curious creature to tell me how he knew I was an alchemist and why he had traveled across the world to show me the worn book he clutched.

“All right,” I agreed. “We’ll make dinner, then you’ll tell me all about this book of yours as well as how you found me.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Alchemist,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. The pupils of his eyes looked more like glass than stone. A fluid, moving glass. He extended his clawed right hand.

I reached out to shake it. His hand was cool, but didn’t feel like stone. It was a little bit rougher than human skin, but malleable in the same way.

“You have ham?” he asked.

“Ham?”

“Yes, the cured meat. Made from a pig—”

“I know what
ham
is,” I said. “No, I don’t have any ham.”

“Bacon, then,” Dorian said.

“No bacon.”

“
Mon dieu!
”

“You only eat pork products?” I asked. This gargoyle was making me more and more curious.

“Of course I eat more than ham and bacon.” Dorian sniffled, his little snout moving side to side. “But with a ham hock or a slice of bacon as a base starter, and a few herbs, I can create a masterpiece, regardless of the other ingredients you have available.”

“I see,” I said, unsure of what else one could say to that. A talking gargoyle was standing in my living room lecturing me about cooking. Even for me, this was pretty weird. “I’m a vegan.”

“
Pardon?
”

“I eat a wide range of plant-based foods, but I don’t eat animal products.”

Dorian swore in French and shook his head. “You at least have basic supplies?”

“Fresh winter vegetables and a few herbs are in the kitchen already, and cooking pans, oils, and more herbs and spices are in my trailer outside.”

I went to my trailer to retrieve a portion of my kitchen bounty, from a hanging bunch of dried cayenne peppers to newly ground garlic powder in a glass jar, which I carried inside using a copper saucepan. I’ve always been aware of the link between food and health, but didn’t always treat my own body as well as I treated the people I healed. It wasn’t until recently—a little over a hundred years ago—that I felt worthy of taking care of myself. I kept my cooking simple, but used pure, healthful ingredients.

Dorian conceded the high quality of my home-prepared dried herbs and infused oils, after which he banished me from the kitchen. I sat down on the couch with his book on my lap, hoping my instincts were right to trust him in the kitchen. I wondered if the smoke detectors had batteries.

Looking at the book more closely for the first time, the title gave me pause. This was an alchemy book. Translated from Latin,
Non Degenera Alchemia
would be
Not Untrue Alchemy
. What a strange title. What was the point of the double negative? Why wasn’t it simply
True Alchemy
?

It took me a few minutes before I could bring myself to open the book. I hadn’t practiced alchemy in years. I hadn’t been ready. Not after what had happened.

I breathed in
a scent I knew well as I opened the book. I work with lots of old books, but in spite of the familiar scent of its binding—seventeenth-century calf-skin, I guessed—this one held unfamiliar secrets. I carefully flipped through a few pages. The title was in Latin, as was some of the text inside, but it didn’t look like the alchemy I’d studied. It also included something similar to the coded images used by alchemists, but
these symbols weren’t quite like any I’d seen before. In the many woodcut illustrations in the book, the necks of the birds twisted to the left to an unnatural degree that reminded me of something seen in a horror movie. I shivered and shut the book. A woody scent wafted up to my nostrils as I did so.

I had excelled in spagyrics, also known as plant alchemy, which uses alchemical techniques to extract the healing properties of herbs rather than the precious properties of metals. The general idea behind all types of alchemy is the same: transforming a substance into something greater than its original whole by making the corruptible into something pure.

I feared I was beyond my depth here. I closed my eyes and clutched the gold locket I wore around my neck. The locket I always kept close to me yet hadn’t opened in many years. I hadn’t even wanted to
think
about practicing alchemy for decades. Not since Ambrose.

Stop it, Zoe. It wasn’t your fault.

I repeated my mantra of that past century a few times before opening the book again. Pushing all thoughts of Ambrose to the back of my mind, I tried to focus on the calligraphy of the title page. I wasn’t sure where to start. Many of my old alchemy books were packed in the shipping crates. It would take some time to locate what I needed. For the time being, I took a cursory look at
how the book was organized and snapped a few photos of interesting pages with my cell phone. As I did so, I became more certain than ever that this wasn’t alchemy. The illustrations resembled alchemical symbolism only superficially, as if the person making the illust
rations had never studied it. Perhaps that explained the convoluted title.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been absorbed in
Not Untrue Alchemy
when a heavenly aroma wafted out from the kitchen. Sage, rosemary, and onions. Dorian carried a hot casserole dish from the kitchen and set it down on a cork matt on the solid oak table. He ran back to the kitchen for the plates and utensils I’d brought inside earlier.

“You made this with what I had in the house?” I asked, my eyes wide and my mouth watering.

He grinned proudly. “Butternut squash roasted in olive oil with onions, sage, and a hint of rosemary. The sauce is lemon tahini, with cayenne-infused salt and toasted pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top. The fat from the sesame seeds used to make the tahini fools the senses into thinking there is a ham base.”

“This is amazing,” I said.

Dorian ate quickly but with refinement, serving himself a second helping before I was halfway through eating my first. I ate slowly, savoring the exquisite flavors. With the same ingredients I was planning on using to create a simple meal, Dorian had created a feast.

“
Pardon,
” he said after a small burp.

“That meal was incredible,” I said.

“
C’est rien
,” he said. “It was nothing. I would have made something better if I was not so hungry.”

“I haven’t eaten such a gourmet meal in ages,” I said.

“You will help me with my book?” he said, looking across the table expectantly.

“You haven’t told me exactly what you need done with it, remember? If you’re looking for a translator, I’m not the best person.”

“
Mais oui!
” he said. “Now that we have satisfied our earthly needs, we may discuss practical business.” He scrambled off his chair and returned a moment later with the book I’d left on the couch.

“You are an alchemist. You can help me not only translate my book, but
decipher
it.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “Especially after you traveled all this way. But this isn’t an alchemy book.”

“You are correct it is not a normal one,” Dorian said, “but there are alchemy tenets inside. The philosopher’s stone, Alkahest, recipes with the three essential ingredients of mercury, sulfur, and salt. It is all here. It is the same principles for creating an Elixir of Life, no?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

“I,” Dorian said, cutting me off, “was once stone. This book is what brought me to life.”

I stared across the table at the gargoyle. “That’s not possible.”

The philosopher’s stone was the alchemical creation that enabled both the tr
ansformation of eternal life and the creation of gold. But it wasn’t something that could be used to bring an inanimate object to life. There was a natural order to things. Steps that had to be taken both outwardly and inwardly—planetary alignments, clockwise rotations, separating and rejoining elements in the proper order, connecting yoursel
f to the processes.

“The secret to immortality is personal,” I continued, “not something that can be granted to inanimate objects. Even if stories of the homunculus were true, it’s a transformation that doesn’t give a personality, a soul, or a mind of your own—meaning it can’t possibly be what happened to you. I’m glad you’re alive”—and I really was; the little creature was growing on me, especially after that meal—“but books can’t achieve that kind of transformation.”

“Yet here I am before you,” Dorian said. “
Regardez.
I am telling you, this is no normal book. I know about you. I know you can do this.”

“What do you mean you
know about me
?”

“There is something strange about this book. A secret that you, of all people, would wish to know.”

“Why me?”

He sighed. It was a slow, sad, movement. “I saw what you were doing nearly eighty years ago, after you closed your shop, Elixir.”

“How could you?” But as I spoke the words, I knew.

“I was there,” Dorian said, “when you were nearly discovered. You, as the woman you claim to be your grandmother, were called in by
un Commandant
to help with a strange occurrence at a manor outside of the city.”

I nodded slowly. I remembered it well. I was in bad shape, emotionally, at the time. It’s why I shut the shop for good and returned home to the U.S., buying a brand-new 1942 Chevy pickup truck, followed a few years later by an Airstream trailer. The truck and trailer allowed me to keep running.

“You may recall,” he said, “that the estate had gargoyles. I had been brought to life some years before, and had come to know Paris and its surrounding areas well. I would often hide as stone, as I was that day.”