The Accidental Alchemist (4 page)

“You were there,” I whispered. “Watching.”

“I see it as clearly on your face now as I could see it then. You do not feel as if you belong. You never have.”

It was so close to the truth that sadness overcame me. Dorian must have known that feeling, too. He was a gargoyle. In the shadows. Always watching, but never able to join in.

“It was
you
who saved me from being discovered that day,” I said, staring at the little creature and seeing him in a new light. “You created the distraction by throwing pebbles off the roof, stopping me from telling the French police the truth about how I solved the puzzling crime, giving me time to think it through.” On that day eighty years before, I was recovering from an experience that had left me shaken and prone to acting without thinking. I would have been discovered had it not been for my anonymous savior who created a commotion on the roof.

He shrugged. “We are alike, you and I. I have suffered the same fate. Of course I would do what I could once I realized what you were. I do not believe you understand more about why you are alive than I do. Alchemy is about one true thing, no? Yet it is not that simple. This book can help explain it.
To both of us
.”

We stared at each other for several seconds before my phone chirped the soothing sound of a sandpiper.

Dorian shook his head. “Americans,” he mumbled. “Never silencing their phones during meals.” He tossed his napkin on the table and began to clear the plates.

I saw my contractor’s name on the phone’s screen and picked up. “Mr. Macraith.”

“Eight in the morning work for you to get started? I like to get an early start on the day.” His voice was gravely, as I remembered, but even rougher than in our previous conversations. I hoped the jack-of-all-trades handyman was up for the large job I’d given him.

“That works,” I said. “Thanks again for scheduling something on such short notice. I’m eager to get started
fixing up this place.”

“Until then.” He clicked off.

Dorian cleaned the dishes while I spread out on the dining table with his book and a cup of chamomile tea. Dorian wouldn’t tell me more about the strange tenets in the book. “Simply have a look,” he said.

Now that I knew how we’d crossed paths before, how could I say no?

The fact that this wasn’t a straightforward alchemy book made it easier to focus. It allowed me to avoid dwelling on the old memories of alchemy that were trying to push their way to the front of my mind. I thought it had been long enough that I was ready for anything. I didn’t want to be wrong.

I spent a short time searching for information online, before realizing that was a dead end. I then turned to unpacking my crates in search of alchemy books that might be helpful, but I wasn’t hopeful. I already knew what was in those books, and I doubted they could help me. But it had been a long time since I’d opened those books. I wondered what I would find if I reacquainted myself with their secrets.

I fell asleep at the table with one of my alchemy books resting under my head. Not a good position to sleep in if you happen to like moving your neck without searing pain.

I woke up at dawn. My body is so attuned to planetary shifts that I wake up with the sun, even when it’s a cloud-covered day and I’ve slept for only a few hours in an upright position. Since it was wintertime, shortly after the start of the new year, it was a few minutes after seven o’clock
.

I saw no sign of Dorian, even after a thorough search of the house.

After taking an alternatively freezing cold and scorching shower that made me glad Charles Macraith would be arriving soon, I made myself a breakfast smoothie of blended fruits and vegetables. There was still no sign of Dorian. I hadn’t asked him where he slept—or even
if
he slept—so I wasn’t sure where else to look. He’d taken care of himself without being discovered before he met me, so I told myself not to worry. Perhaps he hadn’t liked my suggestion that he return to the shipping crate while the contractor worked on the house, and had hidden elsewhere.

I had a little time before our scheduled meeting time, so I set out on a walk. Dorian’s meal and my morning juice had used up most of what I’d bought the day before, so I stopped at a small market to buy fresh produce.

Though I’m attuned to plants and planets, I don’t have an inner compass. I got turned around rather badly and didn’t arrive back at my new house until shortly after eight o’clock.

I walked up the narrow path overgrown with weeds, feeling the stillness of the day. I loved how the house was centrally located but at the same time set back from the street, giving me the privacy I liked. I didn’t see anyone waiting for me on the raised porch in front of the house. I was wondering when Charles Macraith would show up, when I realized he wouldn’t.

Not alive.

Lying on the ground in front of the rickety porch was the prostrate body of my contractor. The acrid scent of poison
overwhelmed the fragrant oranges that dropped from my hand as I knelt over his dead body.

four

In the hours following
the dea
th of Charles Macraith, I was back in 1692. Between the whiff of poison and the suspicion directed at me by well-dressed men in positions of power, I was transported back to my first experience with death, when I was sixteen years old and the Salem Witch Tr
ials were going strong.

I felt an irrational sense of panic rise within me. Though I had no connection to the murder, I knew firsthand how easy it was for innocent people to get caught up in hysteria. A false answer is often easier than a complicated truth. Even if it destroys the innocent.

The uniforms were different today, as were the formal attitudes about innocence before guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But people were still fallible, victims of their own minds trying to make sense of things. And death was the same. A tiny amount of the right poisonous plant extract could fell a healthy man in his prime.

I knew little of Charles Macraith beyond the facts that he was a man of few words, a skilled home renovator who charged a rate I could afford, and that he had only recently returned to work after an injury sustained on the job. How had he come to die on my front porch?

As soon as I was certain he was dead, I didn’t touch anything else. I also stopped myself from entering the house to look for Dorian. After a few frantic moments of calling Dorian’s name and getting no response, I gave up and called the police from my cell phone.

That was how I came to be waiting at the police station to talk to a detective while my new home was roped off as a crime scene.

Three people, with expressions ranging from curt to eager-to-please, told me I was welcome to help myself to coffee. All of them registered shock or confusion when I said I didn’t drink coffee. This was apparently the wrong town for such admissions.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” a friendly voice said. It wasn’t the tone of the voice itself that was friendly, I realized, but my positive association with it. How odd for me to have had that reaction. It was the detective who had visited my house the previous night.

“Hello again,” he continued. Unlike the night before, he was now dressed in a charcoal gray suit and tie. Both were cut narrowly, matching his frame.

“Detective Liu.”

“And you’re Zoe Faust. Interesting last name.”

“It’s an old family name,” I said, answering with a partial truth. Unlike Zoe, the name Faust wasn’t one I had been born with, but it was a name I felt a connection to on many levels. Johann Faust was an alchemist who lived in the early sixteenth century and died during an alchemical experiment. The Faust most people think of when they hear the name is the character in the play by Goethe—the man who sells his soul to the Devil. The Puritan preachers of my childhood in Salem Village sp
oke unrelentingly of the Devil, and as a child, he was as real to me as anything in this world. Once I realized what I had become, Faust felt a fitting name to assume.

“You okay?” Detective Liu grimaced at his own question. “Sorry, dumb question after what you saw today. Did anyone offer you coffee?”

“I’m not a coffee person.”

He took a moment to look at me before answering. “You and I may be the only two people in Portland who feel that way.” He stopped speaking as he glanced at a commotion taking place at the other side of the floor. “C’mon, let’s talk somewhere quieter.”

“Small world,” I said as we walked through the large station.

“I’m here because I’d already been over to your house—” He paused as we reached a door, which he held open for me.

We entered what I assumed was an interrogation room. He hadn’t read me my Miranda rights, so I wasn’t going to jump to the conclusion that I was a suspect.
Breathe, Zoe.

“You’ve had quite a day.” He set a bottle of water in front of me.

“This wasn’t what I was expecting the second day at my new home.”

“Where’d you move here from?”

“You saw the trailer in my driveway? I’ve been living out of it for a few years. Traveling around. I wanted to see the country.”

“Taking some time to see the world after college?”

“Something like that,” I said. “But I didn’t go to college.” It was true. I had never earned a formal degree. I’d studied with some brilliant scholars in the United States, Europe, and Asia, but couldn’t risk the records that would be created if I had applied for a formal degree. It was easier to stay out of sight as much as
possible.

Modern technology and the Internet were a mixed blessing. At first it seemed like it would make it impossible to keep one’s identity a secret. But with a little bit of effort, one could be even more anonymous online than in real life. That was true of my shop Elixir, now an online store where I didn’t have to stand behind a counter to greet customers.

I had shown the police my Massachusetts drivers license that listed my age as twenty-eight years old. According to official documents, I was the child of an American mother who looked remarkably like me and also bore a strong resemblance to my French grandmother. People often commented on the uncanny resemblance, but nobody ever suspected that we were the same person.

“So.” Max rested his elbows on the table. “How did you know Charles Macraith?”

I looked at the ceiling. Low and confining. “The real estate agent recom
mended him to me. I only had money to buy a fixer-upper, but I really wanted a house. I’ve been traveling so long …” Longer than I could say. “Sorry. I’m tired. I haven’t finished unpacking yet. I didn’t sleep well in the new place. I’m usually on my second cup of tea by now
.”

“I won’t keep you long.”

“I don’t know what else I can tell you. I have no idea who would poison him.”

Max Liu’s body jerked back. “Who said anything about poison?”

“The smell. It was obvious.” I thought back on the awful sight of Charles Macraith’s still form on my porch. I hadn’t detected anything that anyone familiar with herbalism wouldn’t have sensed, had I? I tried to think about that moment. The scent was fleeting. Familiar fragrances mingled with unfamiliar essences. What exactly
had I
detected?

The intensity of his eyes grew as he sat back and studied me in silence. “It was obvious?” he repeated with an intonation that said it was anything but that. His strong reaction faded as quickly as it had surfaced, and he was once again calm in the seat across from me.

“Maybe it wasn’t as strong by the time the authorities arrived,” I suggested.

He nodded slowly, but the skepticism in his expression was apparent.

“I’ve studied some herbalism,” I said. “I’ve always been a natural with plants. I grow herbs, dry them, and cook with them. I have a good sense of smell.” God, why wouldn’t I shut up? I wanted him to believe me. I knew my innocence would be proven, but it was more than that. I hated the way he was now looking at me.

“You want to start over? Tell me what happened at your house this morning?”

My mouth was dry, but before my hand touched the bottle of water, I stopped. Fingerprints. He wanted my fingerprints. I breathed deeply and swallowed.

“I went on a walk,” I said, “and got turned around on my way home. Charles Macraith had already arrived when I came through the gate. He must have been waiting for me on the porch when someone found him and poisoned—”

I closed my eyes and thought back on what I remembered. I hadn’t imagined the scent of poison. But I should have seen signs in addition to the smell. Many poisons would have resulted in the victim vomiting, but not all poisons had that effect. I tried to think back …

“You didn’t find him robbing your house?” Detective Liu asked.

My eyes popped open. Many of the items I’d taken out of storage were valuable antiques that were my livelihood.

“I didn’t give him a key,” I said. “He was meeting me on the porch.” I groaned and put my face in my hands. “The door knob,” I said. “It broke off yesterday. What was s
tolen?”

Max Liu’s expression shifted from detached to confused.

“You didn’t go inside?”

“Why would I have done that? A man was dead and I had no idea anyone had been inside my house.” My house with my living gargoyle. “Wait. I’ve been unpacking. It’s a mess. How do you know anything was stolen?”

“Broken glass and an antique book with ripped pages. Didn’t look like something you would have done yourself. Uh, you don’t look very well. I’ll be right back.”

I nodded, my head spinning. The faint voices coming from outside the room weren’t the voices of rational police officers but the voices of an angry mob. I wasn’t inside a rather pleasant modern-day police station, but in a grimy cell awaiting trial.

When the door opened, I snapped back to the present. Detective Liu set a steaming mug of tea down in front of me.

“Chinese privet,” I said as the steam reached my nostrils. “For calming the nerves of someone who’s stressed out. That’s the scent you had on your hands, along with lavender, last night.”

He sighed. “You weren’t lying about smelling a poison, were you?”

“You didn’t bring me this tea to help my nerves, did you? It was a test.”

“Can’t it be both?”

“Why would I have made up that I smelled poison?”

He ran a hand through his black hair. “Could you tell what it was?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t something I could identify. It was harsh. Toxic. I’m trying to think what would help narrow it down.”

“We’ll run a tox screen.”

I knew that toxicology wasn’t magic. It wasn’t as simple as testing blood for “poison.” You had to know what you were looking for and run a specific test to find it. When it was a new science about a century ago, it did seem rather like magic, working backward to detect a particular poison inside the complex human body.

“You don’t want the tea?” he said.

“I’m all right. It smells wonderful though.”

He watched me for a moment before speaking. “We already have your fingerprints from your house, you know,” he said. “It had been cleaned before you moved in and it looks like only you and Brixton touched the doors and windows without gloves since then. Computer databases are a wonderful thing for expediency. I know you’re not in the system.”

I laughed nervously. “Guess I watch too much television.” As part of being careful with my identity, I’d never held a job that required fingerprinting. I took a sip of the tea.

“Where did you get this?” I asked. “It’s incredible.”

“I grow it in my backyard.”

“You made this yourself?”

“Yeah, I learned about it from my grandmother.” It wasn’t exactly a smile on his face when he spoke, but his face softened when he spoke of her. “She and my grandfather were apothecaries in China. That’s what they were called back then.”

I wished we’d met under other circumstances. I wanted to ask him about his garden, about this tea, and about his grandmother, but it was a ridiculous thought at that moment. A man was dead, I had possibly been robbed of all of my possessions, and my new, unbelievable friend was nowhere to be found.

“Have I given you enough information to narrow down the poison?”

“We don’t need more information about what you thought you smelled.”

“What do you mean
thought
I smelled?”

“We don’t need to run a tox screen to know what happened.”

“You’re saying you already know what poisoned him? Then why ask me all these questions? To gauge my reaction?” I mentally kicked myself. He wasn’t a genuinely nice guy. He’d been playing “good cop” to get at what I knew.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Detective Liu said. “Charles Macraith didn’t die of poisoning.”

My hand clamped over my mouth. “He’s not dead?” How could I have been wrong? No, there was no way I had been mistaken. I’d seen more dead bodies in my lifetime than I liked to think about.

“You misunderstand me,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do by misleading us with talk of poisons, but we’ll find out. Charles Macraith wasn’t poisoned. He was stabbed. That’s what killed him.”