The Fake Heart (Time Alchemist Series) (12 page)

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so pissed
,
but I was. It seemed that I would get one step closer to all of this alchemy stuff and then get dragged back from reasons I couldn’t control.
Couldn’t understand.
I didn’t want any of this to happen.

Dove is the only person here who can answer my questions and give me a little stability in this stupid alchemy and Elixir and fake heart matter. Was it so wrong of me to get mad like this? I want to trust Dove, but—

“I’m just…tired of this,” I said, my eyes wet, and I felt like a stupid baby for getting teary eyed, but I was just so exhausted like you wouldn’t believe, “You’re the only person I can ask of this stuff! I can’t even tell my own Dad why I’m so on edge and worried and hurt all the time. I can’t even tell him that the last conversation we had might be the
last
time I ever get to speak to him again! I’m scared, okay? I’m scared of everything that’s going on right now, but I need to know so I can g
et through
this, okay?” There was a painful tightness in my chest and I forced myself to breathe. My heart felt like it was being crushed on; the slightest breath made it difficult to even move.

“Dove—” My voice began to crack. “
Please—
”

“He’s my brother.”

She said it just so out of the blue that it didn’t click. I was still standing there, clutching the hem of my shirt knuckled finger, glaring at her and breathing heavily, like a bull about to be set loose in a china shop.

Then, like an ice cube sliding down my spine, her words seemed to sink into my skin, burrowing into the muscles and veins, settling into the marrow of my bones. I sucked in a breath, feeling my heart slow down.

“You shouldn’t have done this
, Dove
. None of this would have happened if you had just listened to me.”

“You’re…brother?”

Dove refused to look at me. “He is...technically my half-brother, but we share the same father.”

Dove and Leon…were brother and sister. Half-brother, step-brother, it didn’t matter.

Leon had tried to kill his own sister—his own flesh and blood—for what?
An Elixir that
may not
exist?

And he would have succeeded if I hadn’t jumped in the way to save her.

CHAPTER 11

I wish I could say that after that night, I
amazingly
discovered my true element of alchemy and totally trained my butt off, kicking the mysterious Leon’s
ass
, and Dove and I scurry off to find the Elixir like a pair of true adventurers, and my life finally returns to normal!

If wishes were horses, beggars
would ride, wouldn’t they?

But it wasn’t like that.
Far
from it
actually.
We spent every night trying to discover my
certain
element. Nothing would work. And every time it felt like I was getting there—the tight and warm feeling inside my gut—my fake heart would suddenly go crazy. In worst case scenarios, it actually
stopped
for seconds. It was the most terrifying experience to literally feel
and
hear your heart just…
stop
.
Almost like a ticking time bomb.

Like, one minute it would be thumping so fas
t I passed out from the exhaustion
, and then the next I would be laying on the ground, gazing at the stars as I felt the hands of the fake heart crawl to a stop. It was like, in that moment, I was paralyzed, Dove leaning over me, trying to resuscitate a heart that didn’t want to function.

It only happened three
times—and
those
times I cried myself to sleep, wi
shing for everything to be over; wishing I could wake up from this nightmare and just be the plain old, boring, stick-by-the-rules Emery Miller again.

But I wasn’t going to give up.
Crying never solved anything; sure, I could snivel a little after a failure, but if I let it get to me, I really
was
going to lose this battle.

Dove was clearly losing hope for me, and I was getting severely frustrated that this wasn’t going easier than I thought. Every night I would tromp through the woods fully determined to succeed, then come trudging back to my dorm in the wee hours of t
he morning walking in shame
, sweaty, dirty, and exhausted. After tha
t, I would scan that old
alchemic text
or the books Jack had loaned to me
, over and
over, to see what I did wrong, but it was all just a foreign language to me. None of the textbooks
ever explains
how
to tap into your alchemic core or even
find
it. It was like a manual to a new microwave when you had just purchased a vacuum.

School wasn’t going so great, either. The few moments I saw Jack were only at a distance—him, gorgeous as always
, like a ray of pure sunshine
, surrounded by his classmates;
pretty
girls like Mallory clinging to his arm
like busy little bees
. They fit so perfectly together it was like two pieces of a puzzle being put back together. The rumor mill swirled around them,
and the fact that I heard not once, but
dozens
of times that Jack and Mallory had once been an “item”
before I had come to St. Mary’s
made my cheeks flame with a mixture of humiliation, unfairness and jealousy.

Heck, even my studies weren’t going well. I couldn’t concentrate in class, my mind always replaying the events of the night before.
Why couldn’t I do it? What was I doing wrong?
Even the fun Humanities Club wasn’t helping my stress at all. Half the time I felt like I could just curl up in the chair and fall asleep, which was what I caugh
t myself doing one warm Wednesday afternoon; it was an
accident of course.

Somebody shaking my shoulders stirred me out of my sleep induced coma and I looked up to see one of the senior members, a boy with thick black f
ramed glassed
and curly black hair
,
staring at me with worried eyes.

“You alright, Emery?” he asked, and it took me a full minute to remember his name.  Oh, that’s right. I remember him now. He did that really neat introduction of Helen of Troy which sparked a debate on whether the Trojan War really did happen or if it was all some elaborate make believe story told by a blind man.

“Oh! Yeah, I am,” I said, rubbing the sand out of my eyes, “I’m just real tired. Sorry about that, John.”

He gave me a pointed look, “It’s Josh.”

“
S-
Sorry—” I tried to apologize but he just stomped off to the other side of the room and sat
back down in the far corner where the others were
listening intently to Karin’s newest debate. Josh glowered from his seat.
God, dude. Take a chill pill.
Yeah, I was a bit guilty for forgetting his name
,
but he didn’t have to act like that.

“So sleepy headed Emery!” Karin pointed at me, her rainbow colored ribbon swaying from her ponytail. Her bright hazel eyes were wide with interest, “Tell us your opinion.”

“I…” racking my brain, I blurted out the last thing the club me
t for, which was: if slavery really was the main factor of the Civil War, and if the Confederates had won, would slavery still continue to this day? “I think that it’s…wrong.
”

Silence, then the whole room burst into giggles. Even moody Josh cracked a smile and I felt my face flush with humiliation. But it quickly faded and I laughed too, although I still felt painfully stupid inside. Humanities Club was fun. I
loved
history! What was wrong with me, falling asleep in here like that?

“Oh Emery, Emery, Emery,” Karin clucked her tongue, “What’s so
wrong
about secret tunnels hidden underneath the streets of Savannah?”

Secret tunnels?
“Like the Underground Railroad?” I asked. She nodded, turning
on a borrowed projector
and flicking off the lights. There was an old map of
Georgia
with thi
ck red lines running through its divided counties. Karin took a bright purple eraser marker and circled the area of Savannah, right next to the East Coast.

“
You’re
kinda
close there, Emery. True, there are a couple of spots where the Underground Railroad still exists here in Savannah, but I’m not just talking about those kinds of tunnels
,” she began, and once
Miss President
Karin Foster started her
speech, nothing could stop her.
“
I’m talking about
tunnels hidden underneath bars and old hotels for transporting slavery. Has anybody been to the Pirate House recently?”

A few hands shot up. I had heard about a famous local spot called the Pirate House but I never got a chance to see it. Actually, I haven’t had a very good tour of Savannah itself except when I rode the taxi from the airport to the school. I certainly felt out of place here, being the only Northerner in the room (and possibly the entire school).

“Long ago, when pirates still roamed the high seas,” she put on her deep, spooky voice as other kids tried suppressing their grins, “Unexpected travelers would come to the Pirate House to relax and take a drink. But the bar heads back then had made horrible deals with the pirates—they drugged the unsuspecting victims and dragged them down the hidden tunnels into the harbor, where they sold the kidnapped slaves to the pirates. Could you imagine waking up the next day to find yourself miles and miles away from shore, stranded on a pirate ship and forced to do their bidding?”

I felt a chill swept through me. This was new, but judging by everybody else’s faces, it seems that hidden tunnels really did exist and people were sold to pirates. It was cruel and frightening to even think about it. It sort of reminded me of my own fate.

“Are those tunnels still used?” I asked.

“Not as often, but yes. Mainly for researching purposes, of course,
” she said, “And it’s not just underneath the Pirate House, but it’s all over Savannah, spreading far and wide throughout the lands of Georgia
and its neighboring states
. Why, there are even tunnels underneath the school, haunted by the poor souls who were taken from their loved ones, wondering through the endless darkness to find their way home—”

The lights came on so suddenly we all jumped. The librarian, Mrs. Callaway, scolded Karin before reminding us we only had five minutes until we had to leave. Everybody began gathering their things, but I went up to Karin who was unplugging the projector. I offered to help and we both rolled it to the next room.

“Were you serious about lost souls traveling in the underground tunnels?” I asked with a tease in my voice.

“Certain as I am Martha Stuart!” she chirped, but then lowered her voice, leaning close to me as she whispered in my ear, “Now don’t tell anybody I told you—‘cause I got in serious trouble for scaring a bunch of freshman last year about it—but I
know for a good solid fact that
the sororities around here use the tunnels underneath St. M’s for their initiation ceremonies.”

I stared. That was new info.
“St. Mary’s has…
sororities
?”

She gave a short laugh, “You
betcha
! Although it’s very top secret—supposedly only junior and senior members can get in, let alone hear about its existence. It’s supposed to be practice for college sororities and whatnot.”

We walked and ducked around groups of people and carts stacked high with books. The library had gotten much louder since the meeting had started, and already I could see nearly every space on the floor was occupied by students balancing their laptops on their knees and sipping iced tea or fruit juice.

St. Mary’s really was like a pre-college school. Sometimes even now, it
was
still overwhelming.

“Why would such…clubs need to use secret tunnels anyway?” I asked, curiosity peaked, and a meager attempt at stalling the mountain of homework that waited for me at the dorm.

Karin grinned, looping an arm through mine and dragging me behind a bookshelf, “Because I’m part of a sorority here. And I know firsthand where the tunnels lead to.”

I stood there staring, bouncing on my foot as I waited for her dramatic reveal
. Her eyes widened like a cat’s.
“Bonaventure Cemetery.”

“Bona—what?”

She laughed again, the tons of jangled beads on her bracelet clacking against each other, “It’s only one of Savanna
h’s oldest cemeteries! Ever heard
of Johnny Mercer?
Juliette Gordon Low? They’re just a few of the really important people buried there.
”