The Blood Alchemist (The Final Formula Series, Book 2) (4 page)

At the sound of the bell jingling, I turned to watch Era walk inside. Her short blonde hair was a little wind-tossed, and a hint of color bloomed in her cheeks. Dressed in jeans, a hoodie, and a long wool coat, she didn’t look like an Element.

“Addie!” Era cried as soon as she saw me. A couple of long strides and she pulled me into an embrace. The floral scent of her shampoo brought back our first meeting. She’d huddled against me in fear of Rowan’s reaction when he caught her going against his wishes and using an oven.

“Hey.” I tried to return the hug, hoping she wouldn’t notice my hesitation. What was with people hugging me lately? But my social awkwardness wasn’t the only factor at play here. I hadn’t seen Era since I’d repaired her mind. Apparently, no one had told her that I’d been responsible for the damage. But that didn’t make this situation any less uncomfortable for me.

“Roe just told me that you opened a shop.” She released me and glanced around the room. “I’m pissed he didn’t tell me sooner. I would have come by and helped you…decorate.”

Aside from a few mismatched bookshelves laden with a sorry collection of vials, there wasn’t a whole lot to my
shop
.

She continued her survey of the small space, turning to look back at the front door where the name of the shop was stenciled on the half-pane of glass. “The Addled Alchemist?”

“If the shoe fits….”

“Right, the amnesia.”

Rowan must have filled her in. “Right,” I agreed.

“You’re the furthest thing from addled.”

“You might be surprised.” I made a final adjustment to a sample on the shelf. “Not to be rude, but I’ve got an appointment this morning, and to be honest, I need to get moving.” It wasn’t a set time thing, but I didn’t like to keep Dr. Albright waiting—nor could I bear the suspense.

“Let me give you a ride,” she offered.

“That’s okay. I was going to call a cab.”

“I show up, you rush off, and won’t even let me give you a ride.” Era crossed her arms. “You’re going to give me a complex.”

“I don’t want to put you out.”

“Would I have offered if it put me out?”

I considered the cab fare. Money was tight right now. Besides, if I was getting drawn back into the Elements’ world, I had to get used to being around her. “Okay, but won’t folks be suspicious when the Elements’ limo drops me off at the curb.”

Era laughed. “Clearly, you haven’t seen Marlowe in action.”

“Marlowe?”

“Our driver.”

Five minutes later, I stood outside my shop, my mouth hanging open.

“See?” Era gave me a wink.

I stared at the Volkswagen Beetle sitting at the curb. “That’s amazing.”

The driver’s door opened and Marlowe stepped out. He looked so ordinary in his dark suit that I would have never guessed him to be magical. He closed the door and it even sounded like the rattling echo of a decades-old car. But when he took his hand from the rusted surface, a sleek silver limo once more sat at the curb. It didn’t fade or morph into existence. It just was.

“Damn.” I watched Marlowe circle the car and open the back door for us. “That’s impressive,” I told him.

“Thank you, ma’am.” He said nothing else, holding the door until we’d climbed inside.

“Humble, too,” I said once we were alone. “Is he doing that all the time?”

“It’s not as necessary as you’d think.” Era picked up a coffee cup from the nearest cup holder. “Cincinnati is a big city, and this isn’t the only silver limo.”

Marlowe got in and eased the car away from the curb.

“So, you’re making some kind of alchemical salve for the burn patients?” Era asked once we were on the road. She blew into the cardboard cup she held. The scent of freshly brewed coffee filled the air, making me almost wish I liked the stuff. “What does it do?”

I explained how my salve accelerated healing, at least for first- and second-degree burns. There wasn’t much my salve could do when there was no skin left to heal. But I was working on that.

“Amazing,” she said when I finished. “I had no idea alchemy could be used that way.”

Inwardly, I cringed. I’d used my burn salve on Era when she’d burned herself on that oven Rowan had forbidden her to use. Maybe it was a good thing that she remembered little from the time she was mentally damaged. Though it did surprise me that she remembered me as well as she did.

“That’s because alchemy has rarely been used that way,” I said. “The discipline seems to attract the self-absorbed megalomaniacal types.”

She laughed, leaning back against the white leather seats across from me. “Are you speaking from experience?”

“Yes.”

Her smile faded to confusion. “I thought you had amnesia.”

“I do, but I’ve met my colleagues. They weren’t nice people.” I watched the city beyond the dark tinted windows. “I was one of them.”

“And you know that how?”

“They told me.” And gave me one of my old journals.

“You believed them?”

I didn’t want to talk about it—and certainly not with her. “It’s the past.” I shrugged. “I get to try again.”

“You say that like
you
did wrong.”

“I can’t remember what I did.” That was as close as I wanted to take her. I took my eyes from the scene outside the window and faced her once more. “I want to take alchemy in a new direction. Make it available to others. Help instead of hoard.”

“Like this burn salve?”

“Exactly.”

“I bet Rowan approves. He’s got some major empathy for burn victims. Not surprising, considering what happened to his family.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, when he came into his power. How it slipped his control.”

Actually, I didn’t. Cora had once implied that something had happened, but she hadn’t given me the details.

“Oh, right,” I said. “I know his family suffered…”

“Not really. I doubt they felt anything.” Era looked down at the coffee cup she held. “Except his niece. He incinerated the house and everyone and everything in it. I suspect he recognized her at the last moment and tried to pull out.” She shook her head. “I guess she lingered in a burn clinic for months.”

I swallowed. Oh, Rowan. “Who all was in the house again?”

“His parents, younger brother, and his sister, her husband, and daughter. I guess they got together every Christmas.”

I remembered again when Era had burned her arm and Rowan had nearly freaked out. He was the one who told me to take my burn salve to the medical profession. I was trying.

“It’s always amazed me how he could lose control like that, then go on to become what he is.” Era looked up, meeting my gaze once more.

“I suspect that is what made him what he is,” I said. A control freak without peer. “He knows what happens when he loses it.”

The limo had reached the hospital and pulled up near the curb. It had begun to rain on our way over, but that didn’t deter the protesters. Near the far door, a small cluster of rain-soaked folks stood holding their smeared and drooping signs. I had to admire their persistence.

The limo door opened, and I glanced up to find Marlowe shielding the opening with an umbrella. “Thanks.” I gave him a smile and started to climb out.

“Let me walk you in,” Era said. “I don’t like the look of that mob.”

I stopped and glanced back at her. “It’s hardly a mob and what would you do?”

She arched a brow and her amber eyes took on a metallic sheen.

“That won’t be necessary. Besides, they don’t let nuts like them inside. Thanks for the ride.”

“I’ll give you a ride back.”

“Era—”

“I insist.”

I decided not to argue.

Chapter
3

I
t took the entire elevator ride and the long walk through the sparsely populated hospital hallways to get my mind around what Era had told me. My heart ached for Rowan, but it also made me even more determined to see my burn salve accepted by the medical profession. It wouldn’t help his family, but maybe it would give him some comfort to know that burn victims would no longer have to suffer the way his niece had. I could do that much for him.

Ian’s concerns on the earliness of my visit proved to be unfounded. I caught Dr. Albright just fifteen minutes before he needed to be elsewhere.

“Thank you for stopping by,” he said once we’d exchanged greetings and a handshake. “This won’t take long.”

I sat in the chair across from his desk, an uneasy flutter in my stomach. Why did I suddenly feel like I’d been called to the principal’s office?

Dr. Albright settled into his chair with an ease that belied his apparent years. He folded his weathered hands atop a manila folder, and his intelligent blue eyes bored into my own.

“I’ll come right to the point. The last batch of salve you sent us failed to have any positive effect as a burn treatment.”

“What?” I sat up straighter in my chair. I’d been expecting a request to increase his order, or maybe some repercussions on the questions the protest had raised. This wasn’t anything I’d even considered.

“The salve failed. We need to—”

“No,” I cut in. “That’s not possible. My formulas don’t fail.”

“Miss Daulton, I’m not saying it’s a personal failing, but these things happen.”

“No, they don’t. I’m a master alchemist; my formulas never fail. That’s what makes me what I am.”

Dr. Albright frowned. He didn’t look like he bought it, or he thought me the most arrogant person on the planet. Clearly, he hadn’t spent much time around the magical.

“Something’s happened,” I continued. “The salve was not used according to the directions I gave or—”

“The same nurses who’ve used it in the past were the ones administering it.”

“Might the patient be magical? Sometimes inborn magic can react in odd ways with alchemy.”

“There were three different patients and none of them admitted to being magical.”

I frowned. That didn’t mean they hadn’t lied, but it would be a striking coincidence if all three were magical. The greater Cincinnati area did have a higher concentration of magical folks, but the percentage of the population was still small.

“Contamination?” I offered, grasping at straws.

“Possible.” Albright sighed. “In light of the problems inherent with a handmade salve and the pressure we’ve been feeling from the public, I think—”

“Let me try again.”

“Miss Daulton.”

“Please. You said yourself that you’ve never seen people heal the way they have with my salve. Recovery time has been shortened by months. Scars are nonexistent. Can you just throw all that away because a handful of magic haters start waving signs?”

Dr. Albright bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose just above his glasses. The gesture reminded me of Rowan. Or maybe it was becoming everyone’s reaction to me.

“I’m also working on a formula to accelerate healing after a skin graft.” In truth, I wanted to develop a formula to regrow skin where there was none. But when dealing with the nonmagical, it was best to start small. Ease them into what I could do.

“That’s possible?” He looked up, interest erasing the frown from his features. When you get right down to it, Dr. Albright genuinely cared. He was willing to take chances—even on a controversial magical cure—if it meant helping people. I suspected that was why Rowan had sent me to him.

“Anything is possible with alchemy.”

A faint smile twisted his wrinkled face. “The hubris of an alchemist.” He leaned back in his chair. “Dr. Brant did warn me.”

I opened my mouth, about to ask who, when I remembered. Dr. William Rowan Brant. Once a well-respected volcanologist, now better known for his philanthropic endeavors—specifically those that benefitted burn victims. At least, that’s what you learned if you did a web search on him. Very few people knew that he was also the Lord of Flames.

It sounded like Rowan had warned him about me.

Dr. Albright sighed. “Very well, Miss Daulton. I’ll give you one more chance.”

I started to thank him, but he raised a hand to stop me.

“Our work here is coming under a lot of scrutiny, both from the hospital board and at the national level.”

“I’ll personally prepare the next batch.”

He came to his feet and I did the same. “Then I shall expect perfection.” He offered his hand and I took it.

Perfection. That shouldn’t be a problem.

The hospital halls passed in a blur once again as I walked back toward the elevators. What had gone wrong? I knew it wasn’t anything I’d done, but we’d made so many batches lately that I wasn’t certain if it had been me or Ian who’d prepared the last one. Still, I stuck by my assumption that someone had done something to contaminate it. Ian was far too talented to screw up a basic burn salve.

I arrived at the elevators and hit the down button. A newspaper machine sat to one side, my own face looking back at me through the glass.

“Oh shit,” I muttered, moving closer.

Flame Lord Supports Magic in Medicine
. The picture was the same one that had made a run in the paper almost two months ago. It showed James and me leaving the PIA offices in the presence of two hooded Elements: Earth and Fire. My upper arms were bare and my tattoos clearly visible. The black bands were a symbol of rank at the Alchemica. Was the photo just to show Rowan’s association with alchemy? Or had I been named?

I reached in my pocket, but I didn’t have any change. Maybe Ian could find another copy.

A hand gripped my arm and I jumped in surprise.

“Looks like you made the front page.”

I looked up into Henry Huntsman’s sneering face. A scruff of blond beard covered his chin, hiding any resemblance he had to his brother James.

“You’re famous, Amelia.”

I guess that answered whether the article had named me. I’d gone by the name of Amelia Daulton while at the Alchemica—though I remembered none of it.

Henry used his grip on my arm to pull me against him, poking something in my ribs.

“A gun?” I whispered. “You brought a gun into a hospital?”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“No problem. You’ve got that covered.”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. With something close to a growl, Henry shoved me forward—right into another camo-swathed chest.