Disappearing Nightly (6 page)

“How about pursuing Evil and power?”

He sighed. “Well, yes, that’s also an option.”

“And…no one notices?”

“Notices what?”

“Notices people like you. And the things you do.”

“Well, sometimes, of course. But we do try to be discreet. For most of my life, after all, mundanes have been tormented by dark superstitions that make many of them somewhat intolerant of the esoteric arts.”

“Intolerant as in, oh, torture, imprisonment and execution?” I guessed.

“Yes. Times have changed, of course, but not necessarily for the better. In recent years, some of my colleagues have been committed to psychiatric wards, and several others have been hounded by tabloid writers.”

“What about something like these disappearances? Don’t such events raise speculation?”

“Until I intervened to protect you, you had no suspicion of the true nature of Golly Gee’s disappearance, did you?”

“No.” And I initially thought the truth sounded crazy and impossible.

Max said, “People explain events through reasoning which is already familiar to them. And they have a strong tendency to shrug off that which they
cannot
explain via a well-worn path of reasoning.”

“So what are the limits of this…this power?” I asked.

“That depends on the individual.”

“But there are limits?”

“Oh, of course! For one thing, as I mentioned, the work is tiring, and one can easily run out of power. Just as an athlete, no matter how fit, eventually runs out of energy. Or just as a singer, no matter how well trained, grows hoarse if she over-uses her voice.”

“I see.”

“And there’s no denying that I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Not as young…” Realizing that, like it or not, more shocks were in store for me tonight, I asked, “What did you mean, back in my dressing room this evening, when you said you graduated from Oxford University in…in…” It was so absurd I couldn’t say it.

“Yes, in 1678,” Max said. “I don’t normally brag about my education, of course, but the circumstances tonight seemed to call for some assurance of credentials.”

“Uh, Max, if you were a university student in the seventeenth century, that would make you more than three hundred years old now.”

“Nearly three hundred and fifty, in fact. I seldom tell mundanes, of course. But it seems there should be total frankness between the two of us, don’t you think?”

“Uh-huh.” I couldn’t seem to close my gaping mouth all the way.

“In that spirit, may I ask you something?”

“Uh-huh.”

He said seriously, “Does my age show?”

“Not really.” My head was throbbing. “But it does happen to be impossible.”

“Oh, no. Only very unusual.”

I started to point out that this was ridiculous, there was no such thing as a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old human being; it defied all laws of nature. Until I realized that the very thing I now believed in with all my heart—women magically disappearing nightly onstage—was also ridiculous, impossible, in defiance of everything I knew to be true and real and…

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I muttered, suddenly feeling nauseated.

“You should drink that brandy more slowly,” Max advised. “It’s very powerful.”

I laid my head on the backrest of my comfortable chair and gazed at a fixed point on the ceiling—which was now the only fixed point in my entire universe, it seemed. The heat from the fire was soothing. It was late April and the weather was mild tonight. But I felt cold in my bones right now.

After a moment, I said, “Okay, Max, let’s say it’s not impossible to be over three hundred years old. Let’s say it’s merely unusual.”

“Well,
very
unusual.”

“How is it possible?”

“That’s a fair question.”

“So glad you think so,” I said, keeping my gaze locked on my treasured fixed point on the ceiling.

“While I was at Oxford—”

“You distinguished yourself in science and theology. Yes, I know.”

“No, I mean to say, while at Oxford, I became interested in alchemy.”

“Alchemy is in the syllabus at Oxford University?”

“Well, things have changed a great deal at my alma mater,” he said sadly. “And not always for the better. Still, a dangerous art like alchemy, such a volatile science…Perhaps it’s for the best.”

“Which is it? Art or science?”

“Both. And certainly my theology studies were very helpful, too.”

“Certainly.” I stared hard at that ceiling, wondering if I’d wake up in a hospital soon and be told I’d been unconscious for days after an explosion in the dry-cleaning shop beneath my apartment.

“So, naturally, I was apprenticed to a learned alchemist after completing my university studies.”

“Naturally.” Or perhaps my last date, a musician whose conversation was, alas, no match for his Byronic looks, had slipped some weird psychedelic drug into my wine, and I would wake up from this bizarre dream with a terrible hangover and wearing clothing that wasn’t mine.

“I learned a great deal from my master,” Max said, “it cannot be denied. However, he co
ntinued his researches and experiments past the point in life when he was in full control of his faculties.”

“Indeed?” I didn’t think I was insane. I did have a great-aunt on my father’s side who claimed she’d been abducted by aliens, but she was the only person in the family whose mental health was in serious doubt; and, besides, she was only related to me by marriage.

“I fell ill during my fifth year of study with him,” Max said. “The ailment probably wasn’t life-threatening, but the fever did weaken me too much for me to attend closely the nature of the medicaments he was giving me.”

The other possibility, of course, was that this was really happening.

“And, as I’ve hinted,” Max said, “he was no longer the best judge of his own actions.”

And if this was really happening…

“There have been times when I have regarded what happened next as a misfortune,” he continued, “and others when I have felt it a great gift. Mostly, however, I believe it is simply my destiny. At least, believing so is how I have maintained such a clear mind all these years.”

If this was really happening, I needed to pull myself together and assist Max. If for no other reason, I realized, than the fact that he had quite possibly saved my life by preventing me from getting into the crystal cage. And he was trying to save other lives, too: the next potential victim…and the women who’d already vanished.

“What did happen next, Max?” I asked, feeling the brandy taking effect as I accepted that this was indeed really happening.

“Instead of a potion to ease my fever, he fed me the Elixir of Life.”

Abandoning my fixed point at last, I lifted my head and looked at him. “What’s that?”

“Well, it wasn’t
the
Elixir of Life, it was
an
elixir of life,” he amended. “But the effects have been pronounced.”

“Go on.”

“The elixir did not confer immortality on me—”

“Immortality?” I blurted.

“—but it did substantially slow down the aging process.”

“How? How is that possible?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“I recovered from my illness shortly thereafter, but it was quite some time before I realized what must have happened.”

“How long a time?”

“About thirty years.”

“Oh. That long a time?”

“My master was long dead by then. To this day, I don’t know if he never drank of the elixir, or if, for unknown reasons, it just didn’t affect him as it did me.”

“So he was dead, and thirty years later…”

“I noticed that I had changed very little, while my contemporaries were clearly in their declining years, if not already dead.”

“I guess nothing slips by
you.
”

He looked embarrassed. “Well, to say that
I
noticed it is perhaps an exaggeration. I suspected something, but it was my wife who actually brought the matter to light.”

“She was aging normally?”

“Yes. And once she raised the subject with me, it was some time before I could convince her that I did not know why I wasn’t aging and that I was certainly
not
withholding the relevant potion or spell from her. Time and time again I explained that, now that it had come to my attention, I was as bewildered by my slow aging process as she was! But would she listen? No, of course not!” He was off and rolling now. “I lost count of how many nights I was forced to sleep in my laboratory because my wife had barred the bedroom door against me! I tried reasoning with her, but to no avail. I
swore on every book that a person could deem holy that I was not lying to her or hiding anything from her, but the woman was simply
irrational,
I tell you! Do you know, she even—”

“Max!” I said.
“Max.”

“What?”

“I’m not good at math, but I gather this all occurred well before the American Revolution?”

“Well…” He blinked. “Yes.”

“Perhaps it’s time to let it go.”

“Hmm.” He sighed. “Perhaps you’re right.” Then he added, “After her death, it took me a century to contemplate marriage again.” The expression on his face indicated that grief over his loss wasn’t why he’d remained single for the next hundred years.

“So how did you figure out what had happened?” I asked.

“Well, once I realized that there was something distinctly unusual about my aging process, I reported it to the Magnum Collegium.”

“The Great College?” I guessed. “What was that?”

“It is…” He shrugged. “A varied group of individuals united by a common interest.”

“So it still exists?”

“Oh, indeed! And over the centuries it’s grown to several thousand members worldwide.”

“But what is it? What is the group’s common interest?”

“We confront Evil.”

“Well,” I said. “Hmm. Uh-huh. I see.” If someone ever tells you he’s a member of a worldwide club whose mission is to confront Evil, I defy you to come up with a pithy reply on the spot.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Max said.

“I sincerely doubt that,” I said.

“You’re wondering why, if we’ve been confronting Evil for centuries, there’s still so much of it in the world.”

“I definitely would have thought of that,” I said.
“If you hadn’t, you know, brought it up before I had a chance to.”

“It’s a very big job,” Max said sadly.

“What is?”

“Fighting Evil.”

“Oh. Of course. Yes, I can see that it would be.”

“And there aren’t that many of us,” he added. “Not when you consider the scope of the challenge.”

“Indeed. The Internal Revenue Service alone…”

“You see my point.”

“Uh, Max, when you say Evil…”

“The great, dark, spiritual Evil which is forever in opposition to all that is compassionate and virtuous.”

“Well. Okay, then. I can see how that would be a bad thing.” Returning to the original point, I said, “So you reported your strangely slow aging process to the Collegium…”

“And they investigated. When physical tests, many of which were unpleasant…” He grimaced and gave a brief shudder. “When they produced no answers, I was sent to a sorceress in China—”

“You went all the way to China? In, what, the eighteenth century?”

“The whole process consumed some decades of my life,” he admitted, “but those years were not without educational value.”

“And the Chinese sorceress figured out that your master had slipped you a Mickey Finn, so to speak?”

“She had special powers of insight t
hat enabled her to traverse the pathways of my memory.” He frowned. “Sadly, she was never the same again.”

“I totally believe that, Max.”

“That I had swallowed an elixir during my illness was a logical answer to the question plaguing me, since my master had devoted years of study and experimentation to the problem of immortality. And also since, when
not
feverish, I touched his cooking as little as possible.”

“But he had not, I gather, shared the winning recipe for slow aging with you?”

“No. Indeed, I think it entirely possible he never even knew he had succeeded to such an extent. As I’ve mentioned, his mind was a bit foggy with advanced age when I fell ill.”

“So you’re walking around very, very long-lived,” I said, “but with no idea what was in the potion that made you this way?”

“No idea,” he agreed wearily. “I experimented for years. And every few decades, I submit to more tests on my person performed by members of the Collegium in search of an answer.” He rubbed his head as if it was starting to ache, and repeated, “No idea. No idea. I don’t even recall what the elixir tasted like. I was very disoriented for more than a week in my illness, and my master and his servant fed me a variety of brews. It could have been any one of them.”

“Or a combination?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

“A combination,” I repeated. “That would certainly explain why he never drank the elixir himself, nor even knew he’d invented it.”

“Having thought of this, for years I experimented with countless combinations of potions, some of them quite unpleasant, before realizing that it made no sense to keep wasting, in this fruitless fashion, the long life with which I’d been gifted.”

“So then you turned to fighting Evil?”

“I made it my priority,” he replied.

“And now…” I said. “Now there’s Evil here.”

“Esther, this is New York. There’s
always
Evil here. It just happens to be focused in this puzzling manner at the moment.”

“Is this why you’ve come here? The disappearing—Oh, no, it can’t be them. You were already living here when Golly disappeared on Saturday, right?”

“I was indeed. But this
is,
in the larger sense, why I’ve come. A year ago, I was sent here as a representative of the Collegium, entrusted with the sacred mission of confronting Evil in New York City.”

“How many representatives of the Collegium do we have in New York?”

“Including all five boroughs?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Just me, really.”

“I see.”

“And it turns out that it’s a very big job.”