The Blood Alchemist (The Final Formula Series, Book 2) (2 page)

Rowan, Lord of Flames, leader of the magical community, and my former lover, stood at the counter.

I stopped, not sure what to make of his presence here—or how he’d even found me. He’s made no effort to contact me since the day I’d healed Era.

“Are you busy?” His gray eyes skimmed over me, no doubt taking in my lab coat.

“Not at the moment.” My level tone surprised me. I swallowed and forced myself to start walking to the counter. I eyed him as I approached. He didn’t look angry; he looked…tired. Was it just my imagination or did he look even more run down than the last time I’d seen him?

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I need your help with something.” He pulled out his phone and turned his attention to the screen. For a moment, I thought he’d gotten a text, then he offered me the phone.

Curious, I took the device, rotating it so I could see the picture. I gasped. It was a photo of a man lying face down, a glossy pool of dark red beneath his prone form. “Who—”

“I doubt you know him. Look at the floor beside his hip.”

I zoomed the photo and discovered four symbols written in blood. “The alchemical symbols for the four elements.”

“Go to the next picture.”

I did as told—with some trepidation. This one showed a woman slumped over in a recliner. I didn’t need Rowan to direct me to the message written in blood. It was smeared across the wall beside her:
alchemy kills
.

“What the hell?”

“There’s one more photo,” Rowan said.

I scrolled to the next one. Another man lay on a tiled floor, his back to the camera. The only blood I saw had been smeared across the tiles behind him:
need a hint?

“I don’t understand.” I handed Rowan the phone.

“Donovan just called. There’s been another shooting.” A muscle ticked in Rowan’s jaw. “It’s the fourth magical death in the last three weeks.”

“The suspected serial killer,” I said, remembering the article in the paper.

“He’s targeting my people.”

I took a breath. “And what do you need from me?”

Rowan tapped the screen on his phone then turned it to face me. Donovan’s text included a photo. Smeared across what looked to be a coffee table were the words:
ask her
.

I stared at Rowan for one long moment, trying to understand why he was showing me this. So some nut was shooting the magical and smearing alchemical symbols in their blood. What did that have to do with me, unless—

I forced myself to speak. “You think I’m involved?” My stomach rolled over. Like he needed another reason to hate me.

He frowned and pocketed the phone. “No. I want you to come to the crime scene.”

“Why? I don’t know what any of this means.” Nor would I do well with a gory murder scene. Hell, I’d probably pass out.

“You won’t come?” The muscle in his jaw ticked again.

I couldn’t let him down. “Let me get my jacket.” At his nod, I ducked back through the curtain.

“Interesting development,” Ian muttered when I stepped into the room.

“Didn’t your mother teach you not to eavesdrop?” I kept my voice low. “And get rid of that.” I waved a hand at the dead animal. Was it my imagination, or had the room begun to smell of wet dog? I went to get my jacket from the coat rack by the back door.

“The blood will lose its potency,” he replied. “Shall I purify it for you?”

“Sure.” It was handy to have another alchemist around. When I got called away, he could finish whatever we had brewing. And he was more than talented enough to handle it. His technique might differ from mine, but he would’ve made Master if he’d been trained at the Alchemica.

I picked up the small shoulder bag that held my vials. I hadn’t a clue what I’d need, but something inside might prove useful.

“And start another batch of burn salve,” I told him. “I’ll need to deliver more tomorrow.”

“Yes, Mistress.” He gave me an elegant bow, though the mocking twist of his lips made it clear that I wasn’t his master.

I rolled my eyes and pushed through the curtain.

“Rowan?”

The shop was empty.

I snatched up the keys from behind the counter and hurried to the front door. Flicking off the lights, I turned the sign to closed and stepped outside. I could have left Ian in charge of the shop, but I’d rather Rowan not know about him. He wouldn’t be thrilled to learn that I was working with a necromancer—much less the one that had tried to kill him.

Rowan’s black Camaro—complete with the flames on the hood and front fenders—sat at the curb. The man himself leaned against the rear quarter panel, arms crossed.

I locked the door and hurried over to where he waited. “Here.” I offered him my bag as I drew even with him.

Dark brows rose in question.

“My vials,” I explained. When we first met, he’d refused to return my vials until he trusted me. I figured the events of last fall had negated that trust.

“Keep it.” He stepped off the curb and circled the back of the car to the driver’s side.

I didn’t know what to make of that. Did he trust me to keep my vials or…what?

“Get in,” he said over the roof, then followed his own advice.

I realized I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk staring at him. I gave myself a mental shake and hurried to climb in the front passenger seat. He started the engine and the stereo came on. It was one of the CDs I’d discovered in his console the first time I’d ridden in this car.

“Seat belt,” he said without looking at me.

Overcome with nostalgia, I complied. The faint scent of his cologne flavored the small space, reminding me of more than my first ride in this car. I gripped the bag in my lap as he pulled away from the curb.

I expected Rowan to take me to some seedy apartment in a rough part of town, but after a twenty-minute ride in awkward silence, he parked at the curb in a nice-looking suburb. The driveway held several cars, and I recognized Donovan’s big green Suburban among them.

Rowan got out of the car and started for the well-lit house without waiting for me. I was half tempted to just sit still and see if he noticed, but that wouldn’t answer my questions. I gritted my teeth and climbed out. Lengthening my stride, I was only a few paces behind him by the time we entered the house.

My anger evaporated when I got a good look at the living room. A man lay on the threshold to the kitchen, a smear of blood marring the wall to the right of the doorway. By the angle of the smear, I suspected the victim had fallen against the wall before sliding to the floor.

Several people milled around, but they immediately joined Rowan as soon as he entered the room. Donovan wasn’t one of them. Was he in another part of the house? And where were the police? Then, too, if this was a magical matter, maybe Rowan was enough.

I glanced at the coffee table and the bloody message smeared across the top. It was the same one Donovan had photographed, but seeing it in person made it more…real.

I hung back, not sure what Rowan expected me to do. Nobody had much to offer him. One lady was a concerned neighbor who heard the gun shot. Another, a retired police officer with a few observations on point of entry and position of the body. The third, a lady who possessed a minor psychic ability.

“Maybe you should call Marian,” she told Rowan after admitting that she couldn’t find anything.

“I’m not subjecting a child to this,” Rowan said.

Marian might be a powerful seeress, but she was also a precocious eight-year-old in pigtails. I had to agree with Rowan on this one, but I held my tongue and just listened. The conversation drifted to the other murders, and I realized that all the people in the room were magical—even the neighbor. Unfortunately, none of them had any idea why this man had been killed.

I noticed something on the floor near the couch and moved closer to investigate. It turned out to be the TV remote. I leaned closer, noting that the battery compartment had popped open, but hadn’t spilled its contents. The remote hadn’t fallen far.

“Addie, don’t touch anything,” Rowan called.

Did he think me an idiot? “I know,” I answered without looking up. My attention moved to the couch, noting the splatter of red on the beige fabric.

“Really, Rowan,” a female voice said. “If you thought that little of her intellect, she wouldn’t be here.”

I turned to discover a familiar woman standing at Rowan’s side. She gave me a smile, or tried to. I still didn’t know if it had been an injury or birth defect that had given her features an uneven look.

“Hey, Lydia.” I returned her smile, not yet certain if she approved of my presence here. I hadn’t learned to read her expression, and her words could have been sarcasm.

She crossed the distance between us. “Addie. It’s so good to see you.” She pulled me into a hug. Not sarcasm then.

“Yes. Same to you.” I returned the hug, the gesture awkward. I wasn’t the sort to hug unless I knew a person well, but Lydia didn’t seem to mind.

She released me and continued to smile. “I’m glad Rowan called you in. We’ve really been up against it on this one.”

I glanced at Rowan, but he’d already returned to his conversation with the others. Hadn’t he told Lydia what I’d done to Era?

“Has Rowan brought you up to speed about the messages?”

“He showed me some photos.” I didn’t mention that he’d just dropped them in my hand with no warning. “Then this.” I gestured at the coffee table.

“
Ask her
,” Lydia read the words aloud.

“You think it refers to me?”

“Perhaps the killer knows that Rowan claimed you.”

“But I refused to sign the PIA’s forms.”

Rowan had wanted to register me with the Paranormal Investigation Agency. I would have been declared magical, at least as far as the PIA was concerned, and I would have fallen under New Magic’s jurisdiction. Rowan’s.

“PIA registration is for the suits in Washington. I’m talking about the magical world. Rowan claimed you.”

“How? Did he send out a memo?”

Her uneven smile made another appearance, but she didn’t answer my question. Instead, she turned toward the kitchen and the body in the doorway, her expression sobering. “Let’s see what we can learn before he has to call the PIA.”

Of course. If it was a magical matter, the PIA would be called, not the police. I followed Lydia to the body. A smear of blood marred the linoleum near his right arm, but I saw no evidence of a greater injury.

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

“Clues to how he died.” Lydia pulled on a set of latex gloves from her pocket and snapped them on. “All the other victims have been shot.” She squatted beside the body.

“I assume you have the bullets.”

“Ballistic forensics suggest three different weapons, but all the same caliber.” Lydia lifted the victim’s arm, revealing a small bloodstain beneath. She pushed up his sleeve to the meaty part of his forearm and the bullet hole a few inches below the elbow joint.

I glanced at Rowan, but he didn’t seem to care that she was disturbing the crime scene—or maybe that was why she was here. I really had no clue how this type of situation played out in the magical world.

“Entry wound,” she said, then rotated the arm to reveal a larger hole. “Exit wound.”

“How would that kill him?”

“None of the wounds on the other victims should have been fatal.” She gently returned the arm to the floor.

“Something magical?”

“It’s a strong possibility.” She continued to examine the body. “I wondered if they’d been poisoned, then shot to confuse the investigators, but we’ve found no indicators in the blood samples.”

“We?”

“My colleagues at the Institute of Magical Research.” She looked up. “You still haven’t come for a visit. I meant what I said before: you really could teach us so much.”

“I’m not magical.”

She gave me another of those lopsided, mysterious smiles and returned to her examination.

With nothing helpful to offer, I looked around the living room. My attention settled on the remote and the bloodstained couch. The victim had been sitting when shot and must have run for the kitchen and perhaps a back door in an effort to escape. I backed away, trying to imagine the events. Considering the angle of the spray of blood on the couch, the gunman had stood near the front door or perhaps the landing on the stairs. That realization gave me an uneasy feeling. Had he been hiding on the second floor, waiting for the victim to come home?

Considering the possibilities, I climbed the four steps to the landing and surveyed the room. A large potted plant stood in the corner just past the end of the couch.

“Addie?” Rowan turned toward me. “What is it?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I hurried back down the steps and walked straight across the room to the potted plant. Pulling the leafy branches aside, I found what I expected: a bullet hole in the sheet rock.

“It was premeditated,” I said. “The shooter was upstairs, waiting for the victim to arrive home.”

Lydia joined me. “Why do you think that?”

“Judging by the bloodstain on the couch and the dropped remote, the victim was on the couch, watching TV when he was shot. From the landing—” I turned to point and froze. Donovan and James stood just inside the front door. James wore only a pair of sweatpants. His lack of clothing and tousled black hair suggested that he’d shape-shifted recently.

“Have you checked upstairs?” Rowan asked them.

James frowned. “No.” He took the stairs two at a time and disappeared into the darkness of the second floor.

Donovan chuckled, crossing the room to stand beside us. He gave me a smile—a flash of strong white teeth through his beard. “Hello, little alchemist.” At six-eight, Donovan could call a lot of people little.

“Hey.” I wasn’t sure what to make of him. He knew what I had done, what I had been, and yet he smiled at me. He should loathe me, like James and Rowan did, yet he looked so pleased to see me.

“Hello, Donovan,” Lydia greeted him. “Any luck tracking the perpetrator?”

“I’m afraid not.” Donovan glanced toward the stairs. He lowered his voice before continuing. “He’d need a sample of the shooter’s blood or a glimpse of his soul to track him.”

Lydia sighed. “I was afraid of that. Still, nice of him to try.”

“He’s a good kid.”

I warmed at their praise of my former sidekick. Out of everything, losing James’s friendship had been the hardest blow. I might have slept with Rowan and even believed myself in love with him, but the truth was, I barely knew him. James had been my confidant, my partner in crime, my best friend. It hurt.

A thump from the stairs and James vaulted the rail, landing lightly a few feet away. A faint glow lit his green eyes. “Addie’s right,” he said. “He waited in a spare bedroom upstairs. The window’s open, and the tree just outside would be easy to climb.”

Donovan shook his head. “You see,” he said to Rowan. “I told you she’d find the answer.”

My cheeks heated and I turned away, pretending to watch what Lydia was doing. She’d pulled aside the plant to study the bullet hole.

“Huh.” She leaned closer to peer in the hole.

“What is it?” Rowan asked.

“There’s something here. It might be…magic.”

“On the bullet? Could it be his blood?”

“My sensitivity to magic is a minor skill, but…” She straightened and looked at me. “It reminds me of the soil sample you sent. The one from the Alchemica.”