The Masquerading Magician (21 page)

Forty-One

After Max left, clearly
displeased by his abruptly requested departure, I gulped two glasses of lemon water. I mentally kicked myself for being so abrupt with Max, but I couldn't trust myself not to say too much. Beads of sweat covered my face. The corner of my lip twitched.

I slammed down the empty glass and stormed into the living room. “Dorian made
coffee
cookies!”

The music broke off with a discordant guitar chord coming to a metallic screeching halt.

“Dorian!” I shouted. “Dorian!”

“I'll go get him,” Brixton said, stumbling away from me as quickly as he'd fled from me the first day I met him.

“It was impossible not to hear the piercing banshee wail,” Dorian said from the top of the stairs. “I am sorry,
mon amie
, but did you not read the label I created as you asked?”

“I asked you not to bake caffeine into anything, because I knew this might happen.” My legs twitched nervously. “Before he left, I let it slip to Max about my not really being twenty-eight. Who knows what I would have told him next if I hadn't gotten him away from me.”

“Max isn't still in the kitchen?” Brixton asked.

“I shoved him out the door before I accidentally told him about you lot.”

“You're sweating an awful lot,” Brixton said. “Are you poisoned? Do you need to go see a doctor?”

“She's got someone better right here,” Tobias said, feeling my forehead. He shook his head.

“I'm not poisoned,” I insisted. “But I doubt I'll sleep for days.”

Tobias checked my vital signs and agreed this was nothing more than a case of an alchemist's reaction to coffee.

“Not cool,” Brixton said. “It must suck to be an alchemist. Except for the super-human part. That's pretty wicked.” At fourteen, Brixton was already a coffee convert. I expected that wasn't abnormal in Portland, although the amount of sugar he added to his coffee also explained it.

After he was convinced Tobias was medically qualified and I was all right, Brixton pulled the chocolate-covered blackberries out of the fridge. The kid, the gargoyle, and the former slave ate a simple yet delectable dessert. As for me, I walked up and down the stairs a few dozen times, then lay down on the couch and put a compress over my eyes. Neither worked. Nor did the herbal remedy Tobias insisted I try. I sprang up the stairs to try one more thing.

Brixton was packing up his guitar when I returned with a hula hoop in hand. It was time for him to meet his mom at Blue Sky Teas to help her clean up the teashop.

“You can let your mom know I'm feeling better and can bake pastries for the morning,” I said.

“But you're not feeling better,” Brixton said. “You said—”

“Since your mom thinks I'm the one who bakes the teashop pastries, we need to keep up the pretense. Now that Dorian has escaped police custody, he can resume his baking.” I put the hula hoop around my waist and began moving my hips. The hoop spun around me, with the sound of the tumbler inside following my movements. “I bet he'll make some great items tomorrow, happy to be a free man again. Or, I suppose he's a free
gargoyle
, and it's technically tonight, since Dorian will be baking before any of us are awake in the morning. Except for me. Since I won't be sleeping. For days. Dorian, do you need any ingredients? You must need ingredients. I could go to an all-night market if you—”

“Uh, Zoe,” Brixton said, “you're babbling. And you look ridiculous. I'm leaving.” With a departing eye roll at the sight of the 1950s hula hoop, he slipped out of the house. Tobias locked the door behind him.

“Well,
mon amie
,” Dorian said. “Now I realize why caffeine is not a method you wish to use to stay awake in the night. You are quite useless at present. Monsieur Freeman, may I interest you in a nightcap before it is dark enough for me to leave the premises?”

“Zoe, do you want to join us?” Tobias asked.

“Can't talk. Hula hooping.”

An hour later, I was still twitchy, but I'd calmed down enough to have a sensible conversation. Which was a good thing, because Tobias had to catch a flight the next day. This was our only evening together.

I found him in the attic with Dorian, drinking sherry with the gargoyle out of ornately etched cordial glasses. A nearly empty crystal decanter sat on a silver platter between them.

“You didn't tell me this little fellow could drink me under the table,” Tobias said.

“Moi?”
The gargoyle chuckled.

“I'm glad you two are getting along so well. Especially since tonight I alienated one of the few friends I've got here.”

“Monsieur Liu is not good for you,” Dorian declared.

“He seemed like a good man,” Tobias said. “We've all been around long enough to be good judges of character. And I judged him to be a kind man who cares for Zoe.”

Dorian raised his clawed index finger to make a point. “A good man? Yes. A trustworthy one? No.”

“You're just saying that because he's cooked in your kitchen.”

“
Mais non!
This is a problem, yes, but I am not being frivolous. Max Liu is the arm of the law. His men locked me up! How can you trust this man?”

“It doesn't sound like that was his fault,” Tobias said.

“Yet it would not have happened if Zoe could tell him the truth about she and I!” The dramatic statement was rendered less powerful because it was followed by a hiccup.

“If you two are done determining my love life,” I said, “maybe Tobias and I can get back to work on
Non Degenera Alchemia
. Toby, you said you wanted to see more about the Tea of Ashes.”

“Catch you later, little man,” Tobias said, shaking Dorian's hand.

“It has been a pleasure.” Dorian bowed his head.

The stairs creaked under my enthusiastic steps as we made our way down to the basement. We'd left Dorian in the attic with a stack of science fiction books from the library. I wondered what a drunk gargoyle would make of them.

“I wish I could stay,” Tobias said as I unlocked the basement's secure lock, “but I've got a shift tomorrow and I'm needed back home. There isn't anyone to cover for me.”

“Is your station short-staffed with medical techs?”

“Something like that.”

I wasn't up for creating the Tea of Ashes in my present agitated state, or so soon after having done so that week, but I walked Tobias through the process I'd pieced together from the counterclockwise motions in
Non Degenera Alchemia's
illustrations.

“Slow down,” Tobias said as I flipped through the pages. “You're going to destroy the book.”

He was right. I took a step back. “I should let you handle the book until the coffee is out of my system.”

“I don't know what it is about that stuff that messes up alchemists so badly. I'd wager it rivals mercury with its dangerous dual-faced properties. But only for us.”

“It's our own faults for being overly connected to nature's transformations.”

“Let's get back to these unnatural transformations here.” He pointed at the page I'd nearly ripped out of the book. “Jumping right to fire and ash. That can't be good.”

“It's not. Each time I light the fire with the intent of practicing backward alchemy, the effects begin. My skin begins to shrivel along with the plants I'm turning to ash.”

“The salt of the body. That makes sense.”

I nodded. “That's why it temporarily stops Dorian's body from reverting to stone.”

“I keep coming back to the gold thefts in Europe,” Tobias said. “The ones that you don't believe are thefts at all.”

“I'm almost positive,” I said. “We looked up the dates of the ‘thefts' where the thieves left behind gold dust, and they correspond precisely to when Dorian began to return to stone. The impure becoming the pure—and now transforming back again into dust.”

“And they're both connected to this cathedral.” Tobias tapped on the page of the book.

“Tobias!”

He jumped back.

“I didn't mean to startle you. I haven't thought much about the crumbling gold since I realized the book illustrations form a cathedral. This means there could be a
pattern
to the gold that's crumbling. It's not that
all
alchemical gold is in danger of disintegrating.”

“Are the gold pieces religious relics?”

“Not all of them. They aren't similar pieces. There's no pattern. At least that's what I thought—until now.”

“There's a pattern there, Zoe. You just need to find it.” Tobias yawned and his eyelids drooped.

I shook his shoulders, even more adrenaline surging through my engorged veins. “Are you all right? Is the book having an effect on you?”

He shook his head. “I worked the night shift right before flying in to see you this morning.”

“Why didn't you say so?”

“We don't have much time together. I didn't want to waste it sleeping. But after that sherry … ”

“Come on, Toby. You know there's no sense working on alchemy when you're so tired. I'll fix up a bedroom for you.”

Between the coffee's physical effects and the mental strain of thinking about Ambrose, the cathedral, Dorian's deterioration, and Peter's quest, I knew I'd never sleep. After I saw Tobias to his room, I heard him speaking softly to someone on his cell phone, followed by snoring that was anything but soft. I scribbled a note and grabbed my silver raincoat.

A light misty rain fell from the night sky. I breathed in the scents of fresh rain and blossoming fruit trees as I set off on a brisk pace. I had no destination, but I needed to keep moving. It was early enough in the evening that other people were out, but as soon as the rain began to fall harder, I found myself mostly alone on the sidewalk.

I walked past the restaurants and bars on Hawthorne, past the signs for hand-crafted beer, hand-poured coffee, and hand-made clothing and hats. Turning off the main drag, I passed households watching television for the evening, and parks vacant from the rain. The rainwater streamed down my face, nourishing my unnaturally dry skin. Once my hair was soaked, I began to get a chill, so I came home. The front door creaked loudly enough to awaken the dead bees in Dorian's book in the basement.

“Zoe!” Tobias's voice in the living room startled me. He leaped up from the green velvet couch. “Thank God you're back. You didn't take your cell phone with you.”

“I've never gotten used to taking it with me everywhere. What's the matter?” I stood there dripping onto the floor.

“I woke up thirsty after drinking all that sherry, so I went to get myself a glass of water. The house was really quiet. Too quiet, like houses get when everyone is sleeping.”

“Dorian doesn't sleep.”

“I know. You told me. That's the problem. You said he shouldn't go out this early in the evening—especially now that the police will be on the lookout for a stone gargoyle.”

“He's hiding in the attic,” I said. “He's probably reading quietly.”

“I climbed up to the attic, Zoe. I wanted to be sure, so I checked the whole house. The gargoyle is gone.”

Forty-Two

paris, 1871

Sleep was not a necessity for the gargoyle. Without knowing any other state of existence, Dorian thought this neither a blessing nor a curse—until his father died. Jean Eugène Robert-­Houdin passed away from pneumonia, not long after the tragic news of his son's death due to injuries suffered in the Franco-Prussian War. Dorian found himself more alone than he imagined.

His new employer, the blind chef, understood Dorian's grief at his relative's death. But Dorian could not tell him this was the first person in his life he had lost to death. He had been brought to life only eleven years before, yet with his deep voice and keen intellect, it was important for him to maintain the illusion that he was a much older man. And a man, not a gargoyle, of course.

Luckily, Dorian found himself without much time to be maudlin. Between the distractions of Paris and the cooking lessons from his employer, Dorian could have filled more than a twenty-four-hour day.

At first Dorian objected to the part of the agreement that involved cleaning, but after some grumbling, he found washing dishes and dusting could be contemplative exercises. It was but a small price to pay for the lessons in French gastronomy he received.

The chef could not have been more pleased with how well Dorian took to the demands of French cooking. Dorian did so well that the chef pleaded with him to allow some former friends to come over for dinner parties, as he wanted very much to showcase the gourmet cooking of his successor. Yet Dorian was resolute. He had been traumatized by his disfigurement, he said. Nobody could be allowed to see him.

To keep up the pretense, Dorian pretended to wear the clothes his father had given him for the charade that was to be his life. To add verisimilitude, on his nocturnal explorations Dorian would bring a handful of clothes with him, which he would toss in the dust. Therefore he was able to have his clothing laundered with the chef's clothing without raising suspicions.

Dorian learned not only how to cook everything from creamy
aligot
to succulent
magret de canard
, but also how to find his way through the world without being seen. He learned through trial by fire, as he was in Paris during the short-lived War of 1870.

While the chef slept, Dorian pretended to use the very nice bed chamber created for him, when in truth he was exploring the City of Lights under the cover of darkness.

paris, 1881

Ten years later, when the chef approached the end of his life, he wrote Dorian Robert-­Houdin a reference so he could be a home companion to other blind people who did not have families to care for them.

Upon Martin's death, a small inheritance was bequeathed to Dorian. The gargoyle was unaware of the money until a letter reached him at the home of his next employer, an
avocate
who had long ago retired from practicing law and had recently been widowed. Not realizing the true form of his disfigured friend, the chef did not have the foresight to give Dorian his gift in person. Now, it seemed Dorian would not be able to claim his inheritance without being seen. But all was not lost. By that time, Dorian, even more than his father, was a master of illusion. His greatest skill was
not being seen
.

Dorian's penmanship was superb. This was not an easy feat, considering his clawed hands, which Viollet-le-Duc had never intended to hold a pen. Holding a whisk and beating eggs was one thing. But it was important for Dorian to rigorously practice writing, for written correspondence was his connection to most of the world.

Upon receiving news of his modest inheritance, Dorian asked his new employer, the barrister, for counsel. Explaining that he was far too embarrassed to show his disfigured face to anyone, Dorian gave the barrister permission to act on his behalf, and the lawyer declared under oath that the tragically disfigured Dorian Robert-­Houdin lived at his home and was who he claimed.

It was with methods like these that Dorian made his way in the world.

He moved from place to place with only a small travel case in which he kept a few remembrances of his father, including
Non Degenera Alchemia
. Dorian appreciated art, but he didn't especially care for the illustrations inside the alchemy book. He kept the book because it reminded him of his father, but whenever he opened the book, he felt a strange sleepiness overcome him. He suspected it was his imagination, that it was sadness he was feeling as he thought of the man who gave him life and raised him. The man who was no longer on this earth. His father had explained to him that something in this book had brought him to life, but Dorian was not a philosophical creature. He was a gourmand who appreciated the finer pleasures in life, not a philosopher. If it had been a cookbook, he might have spent time unlocking the book's coded messages. But why dwell on things that had no bearing on his life?