The Masquerading Magician (4 page)

Six

Inside my makeshift alchemy
lab, I tried to focus. In the past three months, I'd made fourteen glass vessels explode, sent seven streams of green liquid shooting up to the ceiling—with a stiff neck from cleaning the ceiling to prove it—and had created four tinctures with scents so noxious I couldn't use the basement for days.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go.

In the eighty years since I'd pulled away from practicing alchemy, I'd lost my touch. Big time. Processes that were once second nature to me were now faded memories. When I recalled those years working side by side with my beloved Ambrose, my partner in both life and in alchemy for four decades, I felt as if I was watching an out-of-focus film about someone else's life. I'd continued working with herbs for food and herbal remedies, so my gardens always thrived, my dried herbs transformed boring soups into vibrant ones, and my tinctures and teas were effective remedies.

As for the more complex transformations I'd rejected for causing more grief than joy, such as unleashing the philosopher's stone—that's where I was blocked. I was unable to reach the white phase of a transformation where new energy rises from the ashes.

I reached for the locket I kept close but rarely opened. It was enough to feel the carved gold. I already knew every detail of the two faces inside, one a miniature portrait from 1701, the other a black-and-white photograph from 1904.

It didn't matter whether I worked in my alchemy lab with the plant transformations that used to come so easily to me, or whether I sat at my dining table surrounded by books that could shed light on the coded instructions in
Not Untrue Alchemy
. Nothing was coming back to me.

In the past three months, since meeting my unique friend, I hadn't made nearly as much progress on his strange alchemy book as I'd hoped. Perhaps my biggest failing was that I no longer knew how to find any true alchemists. I had wasted quite a bit of time that winter trying to find someone who could help, only to come up empty. I'd never finished my alchemical training, so there were missing gaps in my knowledge of the history of alchemy.

The thing about alchemists is that they love codes. After reading every word of the book myself and having the Latin translated by an expert, I felt I knew less than I did when I started. The Latin clearly stated that to reinforce the words, the practitioner must look to the pictures.

Retired chemistry professor Ivan Danko was helping me translate the coded messages hidden in the woodcut illustrations of the book. But despite his passion for alchemy as a precursor to modern chemistry, his assistance wasn't the same as having a true alchemist at my side. Ivan thought of our work as a scholarly exercise to understand history. He didn't know the true reason for my interest, nor did he know that alchemy was real. It was understandable that he devoted more time to his own historical research than to helping me with
Not Untrue Alchemy
.

And because I had to use so much strength to create the “quick fix” Tea of Ashes that kept Dorian alive in the short term, I didn't have the time and energy to fully devote myself to the larger issue of a solution that could cure the gargoyle for good. I knew there was a better solution within reach, though. I pulled Dorian's book from the shelf. It fell open to the same page it always did. The page with the Latin that had brought Dorian to life.
The book had to hold the key.

This image of a basilisk had always disturbed me. The creature with the head of a bird and the body of a serpent was nothing unusual in coded alchemical illustrations, but this basilisk was different. His serpent's tail was wound counterclockwise and hung down at an unnatural angle. Yet instead of writhing in pain, the creature was void of expression.
Too
void; he was dead. His stiff body clung to the sole turret that remained in a wasteland of castle ruins. Through the union of a bird and a dragon, the basilisk symbolized the blending of mercury and sulfur.

I was distracted by a sweet scent. I glanced around my lab, wondering where it could be coming from. I looked up to the ceiling, where some of my exploding experiments were still embedded, looking rather like constellations. It was a fitting image, since alchemists look to the planets in the heavens for guidance about when to begin different transformations. I wondered if any flowers had germinated on the ceiling and made a mental note to take care of that. But for now, I turned back to the book.

Birds are highly symbolic to alchemists, because an egg is the perfect vessel, hermetically sealed and representing the whole universe. Different birds symbolized different alchemical processes. For example, a self-sacrificing pelican signified distillation, and a phoenix represented the final phase that produced the philosopher's stone. In this way, alchemists could instill their teachings in codes that could be passed down through illustrated books that only the initiated would understand. During the height of alchemy in the Middle Ages, coded messages carved into public buildings were the norm.

Other animals were used in alchemical codes as well. Toads symbolized the First Matter (itself a riddle), and bees signaled purification and rebirth. However, the bees in this book didn't seem to have gotten the message. In the woodcut illustrations in
Non Degenera Alchemia
, the skies were full of bees swarming in a counterclockwise direction, with rogue bees stinging the eyes of the people and animals on the ground. I shivered.

I turned the page to get away from the disturbing basilisk illustration, only to come to an even more disturbing one. This page showed the Black Dragon, which symbolized death and decay, and was a code for antimony. Antimony was Isaac Newton's favorite substance, because of its starlike crystal shape, which he thought could explain light and the universe. This Black Dragon was picking his way through another set of ruins. Death surrounded him, yet he appeared to be alive. Fierce flames escaped the dragon's mouth. I slammed the book shut, wondering if I was subconsciously avoiding working with it because of its psychological effect on me.

Something had to change. I couldn't keep this up much longer.

The book had shaken my ability to focus, so it would be pointless to either work in the lab or try to translate the obscure symbols in the book's woodcut illustrations. A knot formed in my stomach as the images from Dorian's book swirled through my mind. I had to get out of the house.
Away from the book.

I nearly ran from the house as I left to take a walk to clear my head. I walked through Lone Fir Cemetery, a peaceful park not far from my house. I couldn't stop thinking about the strange scent from my bookshelf. I knew I must have imagined it. Books might become moldy and begin to smell stale, but not sweet. And even if my plant transformations had resulted in plant seedlings sprouting in the basement, they wouldn't give off the aroma I'd smelled. Clove-scented honey.
That's
what the sweet scent had been! The scents of spring that surrounded me in the cemetery made it impossible to ignore the memory.

I hurried home and went straight to the bookshelf in the locked basement. I again pulled
Not Untrue Alchemy
from the shelf. I brought the pages to my nose and breathed deeply. I inhaled the musty, woody aroma that I found in most centuries-old books. Underneath the obvious was the distinct scent of honey. This was where the scent was coming from.
Dorian's book.

I've worked with a lot of old books, but I'd never encountered anything like this morphing sweet scent. I wondered if Ivan had.

I hadn't seen Ivan in several weeks. He'd come down with pneumonia at the tail end of winter, which hit him hard because he suffered from a degenerative illness. He didn't like to talk about the specifics, so I didn't know what was wrong with him. After getting back on his feet, he'd been intent on making up for lost time in his own research. I'd brought him a healing garlic tincture when he was sick, but I had respected his wishes and left him in peace to catch up on his own research now that he was well. But this wasn't the time to be polite. If Dorian's book was truly
changing
, this was a breakthrough I couldn't ignore.

I reached for my phone.

“
Dobrý den,
” Ivan's voice said on the other end of the line, and when I identified myself he switched to English. “I'm so glad you called, Zoe,” he said in his Czech accent. “I wanted to thank you for the tincture you brought me when I was sick.”

“I hope it helped.”

“Do you want to know something about being Czech?” he asked. “People often think my accent sounds Transylvanian. They encourage me to dress up as Dracula for Halloween. Especially a young girl who lives next door to me. Her name is Sara. She wears a scarf around her neck each day. I thought it was a fashion statement for a seven-year-old finding herself, but I learned from her mother it was because she was protecting herself from Dracula. One night, when her parents did not realize what she was doing, she watched an old black-and-white Dracula movie, and it made her think she lived next door to a vampire.”

With Ivan's graying hair and scruffy beard, I couldn't imagine him as the romantic Hollywood version of Dracula. But there was a stoic strength to Ivan. He didn't dwell on his health problems, instead undertaking an ambitious research project he wanted to finish before he died. His light blue eyes always shone with intelligence and determination. No, I couldn't see him as Dracula. But I could see him as Vlad the Impaler.

“Thanks to your garlic tincture,” he continued, “Sara says there's no way I could be Dracula.”

I laughed. “I hope it helped your infection too.”

“That it did.
D
ě
kuju
. I'm back to work on my book. Sara has christened herself my research assistant, fetching me the books in my home library I can no longer climb to retrieve.”

“About your library,” I said, “I have a question for you.” I paused and chose my words carefully. “Have you ever encountered an old alchemy book that smelled sweet, compared to the more typical moldy smell?”

He chuckled. “Once, at the Klementinum, a patron was banned for sprinkling a rosewater perfume on a foul-smelling book.”

“What about the scent of honey?”

“Honey?” Ivan hesitated, and when he resumed, there was a change in his voice that caused my skin to prickle. “It's curious that you mention honey. I think I may have something that would interest you.”

I gripped the phone. “You have a book like that?”

“I remember it because of the unnerving nature of the woodcut illustration.” He paused, and I could picture him shuddering. “I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned honey, but now I see it clearly in my mind.” As he spoke, the tone of his voice changed from casual to agitated. “Perhaps it's best to leave it alone.”

“Why?” I asked, the tenor of my own voice reacting to his worry.

“It's an image I don't know that I will ever forget, Zoe,” Ivan said hesitantly. “I don't know if you want to see this.”

Seven

I assured Ivan that
I could handle looking at a disturbing image. He told me he was at Blue Sky Teas and had his research with him on his laptop, so I told him I'd be right there.

The teashop was on Hawthorne, walking distance from my house. My mind always calmed down several notches as I walked through the door beneath the sign that read “
There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be diminished by a nice cup of tea
—Bernard-Paul Heroux.” Inside, a weeping fig tree stretched up to the high ceiling, casting peaceful shadows across the redwood tree-ring tabletops.

A woman in her late twenties rushed out from behind the counter so quickly her blond braids whipped around her head.

“Zoe!” Brixton's mom stood on the balls of her bare feet and threw her arms around me. “You really outdid yourself with today's treats. Can I double my order for weekend mornings? I'm nearly out of these oatmeal cakes. Who knew so many people would think vegan food was so tasty?”

“Definitely,” I said, looking around at the long line of patrons. Dorian would be thrilled.

Blue Sky Teas was started by our mutual friend Blue, who'd been cleared of a murder charge but was currently serving a short jail sentence for a previous crime. During Blue's absence, Brixton's young mom, Heather, was keeping Blue Sky Teas open for limited hours, which helped both women. Heather was trying to become a professional painter. She had the talent to pull it off, but she hadn't made much money at it yet. I was surprised Brixton wasn't helping her today. It was midmorning on a Saturday, so maybe he was still asleep. When I was young, there was no way a fourteen-year-old kid would be allowed to sleep in. Then again, when I was young, fourteen-year-old's weren't thought of as kids.

Brixton and Heather used to live only a few blocks away, but they were now living temporarily at Blue's cottage in a field on the outskirts of Portland. At the cottage, Heather had more space for her painting. The recent floods that had swept through Portland inspired her to create a new series of paintings featuring water, and the cottage was strewn with painted canvasses in various stages of completion. Brixton had a stepdad, too, who he adored, but I hadn't met the man. Abel was out of town for work most of the time. The nature of his work hadn't been volunteered, so I hadn't enquired.

Heather retreated behind the counter, and I joined Ivan at a table near the window. A quart-size mason jar filled with yellow daffodils and white trillium declared that spring had begun. The vase of wildflowers dominated the table, dwarfing the emaciated man sitting there.

Ivan Danko hadn't been this small a man when I'd met him earlier that winter. Although his ongoing illness seemed stable, his recent bout of pneumonia had taken its toll. His blue eyes had a cast of gray, and his short beard was ragged. He'd barely touched his breakfast.

“I thought I had an image of the book on my laptop,” Ivan said after we exchanged pleasantries, “but I was mistaken. I'm sorry to have sent you on a fool's errand.”

My heart sank. Each time I thought I was coming close to a breakthrough with Dorian's book, something got in my way. It was as if the universe was teasing me. “Do you remember anything about it?”

“I don't know exactly how to explain it,” Ivan said. “It would be easiest to show you.”

I stared at him. “Wait, I thought you didn't have it.”

“Not here. In my home library. I'm nearly done with my tea. Do you want to accompany me back to my house?”

“I'll get my tea to go.”

Ivan lived in a small house on the north side of Hawthorne Boulevard. We walked to his home, breathing in the sweet scents of plum and cherry trees, newly blossoming as spring took hold after an especially brutal winter. I made an effort not to speed up our leisurely pace to the brisk walking I preferred, since I knew Ivan hadn't been well.

One look at his house made it clear that the retired professor of chemistry was a scholar. Ivan had transformed the largest room of his house into an alchemy library. He was writing a book about the unsung heroes of science—scientists who experimented with alchemy as part of their work. Isaac Newton was one of the more famous scientists who conducted alchemical experiments. Knowing how men of science viewed alchemy, Newton had hidden his work, yet he felt it was important enough to continue in secret.

Finishing his academic book on unsung scientists who worked on alchemy was Ivan's goal before he died. I was again struck by the collection he'd amassed.

“It's here somewhere,” he said, rooting around in a stack of papers on a side table. “Now if only I could remember where I put it … ”

While he searched, I looked around the room. The oak bookshelves had been custom-made to fit into the dimensions of the room, including a low bookshelf that ran underneath the window that dominated one wall. The window looked out onto evergreen trees that towered over the house, making this the perfect room for contemplative research. On the window sill were several photos, including a recent one of him and Max smiling as they held giant beer steins. The two men were friends who'd met as regulars at Blue Sky Teas.

A photo album lay open on Ivan's desk. An enlarged photograph showed Ivan as a young man. I stepped closer to his desk to take a better look at the photograph. Ivan was pictured with two other
men in Staromestske Namesti, the historic Old Town Square in
Prague, in front of the famous astrological clock. He wore a beard even then, and his hair was just as unkempt. The buttons of his white dress shirt were mismatched. I smiled, amused to see he'd always been an absentminded professor.

Ivan reached across me and closed the album.

“I've never asked you why you left Prague,” I said. “Wouldn't it have been easier to write this book there, in the heart of alchemical history?”

He looked to the photo album, a mixture of joy and sadness on his face. “Too many painful memories. Someone so young will not fully understand—”

“I thought you said I was an old soul.”

Ivan gave me a sad smile. “Before I came to be at peace with my illness, I behaved quite foolishly. I tell people my condition made it necessary for me to take early retirement. This is true—up to a point. Had I acted better, the university would have kept me on as a professor emeritus, with my office and research privileges.” He closed his eyes and was lost in thought for a few moments. “But that choice was taken away from me, by my own actions. I couldn't accept that I was losing control of my body. I'd like to blame it on the illness affecting my mind, but that would be a lie; my mind is as sharp as it ever was.”

“Which is its own curse,” I murmured. “You're fully aware that your body is failing and everything that means.”

Ivan's eyes lit up. “You do understand.”

I thought of Dorian but didn't speak. I took Ivan's hand, which was far too frail for someone in his mid-fifties, and squeezed it gently.

“I was angry,” Ivan said. “I lashed out at everyone around me and went down a self-destructive path. I went back-and-forth between looking for false cures and drowning myself with alcohol. The university asked me to take an early retirement, to avoid a scandal. It was too painful to stay in Prague, where I spent so many happy years in my youth. And I did not wish the people who knew me before to see this is what I became. In this modern age, research is possible anywhere.”

“It's not the same.”

“I had the choice of staying in Prague but being too angry to do my research, or going somewhere else where I could focus completely on my book before I die.” He cleared his throat and looked away. I gave him space, but he didn't need long. “Ah! Here it is.”

I took a piece of paper from his hands. Not only was it a print-out of a scanned copy, but it was the image of a secondary source, not an original alchemy book. The top half of the page contained explanatory text in German, and the lower half showed a poor-
quality photograph of an illustration in an alchemy book. The yellowed page looked like a woodcut, as was common for alchemical reproductions. Though the image was blurred, I made out the central image of a cherubic angel trapped in a prison of flames, with bees circling above in a counterclockwise circle.

Backward alchemy
.

I felt myself shaking with fear and excitement as I took in all the details. On the edge of the image, outside the flames, two men were dressed as jesters. Though the book had been damaged, the image was clear enough to reveal that the bees were stinging the men's eyes.

The bees in Dorian's alchemy book were used in a similarly unsettling way. But here in this image, there was something more. I realized why Ivan had said the image was so disturbing. The hair on my arms stood up as my gaze fell to the eyes of the angel. The absolute horror in her eyes cut through my core, bridging the gap between the printed page and the ground beneath my feet.

“I told you it was alarming,” Ivan said. “It is much worse than any horror movie, no?”

It had always amazed me how much life artists could breathe into an image, even when all they had was a knife and a piece of wood. “Why did my question make you think of this illustration?”

“Honey,” Ivan said. “The scent of honey. This is a book
about
alchemy, not an original alchemy book itself. The author of this scholarly book made a notation that when working with this alchemy book, he detected the scent of honey. Apparently, honey was used as a preservative. Counterintuitive, but alchemists have always been known for being ahead of their time.”

“Where did this book come from?” I asked. Ivan and the author's theory of honey as a preservative didn't ring true, but something was going on.

“The academic text is in a German university archive,” Ivan said, “but unfortunately the original source is unknown. The woodcut illustration was found as three single sheets of paper in a French bookshop.”

I nodded. “From the blackened edges, it's clear the book was badly damaged.”

“Ah!” Ivan said. “That's what I thought myself at first. But take a closer look. This photograph is of the three pages
together
.”

I squinted. “They're overlaid,” I whispered.

“Alchemists and their codes,” Ivan said. “Here, the author notes that the flames were from a subsequent page, yet when the pages are placed together, the flames trace the edges of the angel.”

The way the images were overlaid created a
new
meaning. Was it on purpose? Or by accident? Looking more closely at the photographic image on the page, it looked as if the paper had been scorched at the edges. And were those granules of soot? Without the original, there was no way to tell.

“Can you read me the rest of the text?” I asked. I'm good at picking up languages, but I never learned German. To blend in completely—to hide in plain sight—I've found it best to become fluent in a handful of languages, rather than gaining a superficial understanding of many more. Along with a deep understanding of a few languages, I'm good at picking up the local vernacular of a certain time and place. Unlike some alchemists I've known who would cling to outdated speech patterns, I've adapted.

Ivan explained that the rest of the text on the page theorized that the image was a warning about the dangers of alchemy. I knew better. This image told of backward alchemy's death rotation. Ivan knew of my “scholarly” interest in it, but he hadn't connected this illustration with backward alchemy. I shouldn't have been surprised; it was an obscure subject, even for alchemists and alchemy scholars. His oversight drove home the fact that Ivan's help wasn't enough. I needed to find someone familiar with backward alchemy. I needed to find a true alchemist. The magician Prometheus?

“The passage ends,” Ivan said, “by noting that half of the angel's body is stone.”

I gave a start, and my eyes grew wide as I looked to the lower half of the angel's body. This was one thing the scholar was right about. With the blurry quality of the photograph I hadn't noticed before, but now that I looked for it, it was obvious. The angel's legs fused into a stone boulder, the two becoming one. She was trapped by her own body.

It was exactly what was happening to Dorian.

My phone buzzed, startling me out of the disturbing implications of this new information. A text message from Brixton popped up on my phone, saying there was an emergency and I had to get back right away.

What emergency?
I texted back.

He didn't reply. I called him. He hated talking on the phone, so I didn't expect him to answer. But he did.

“Zoe! He's here!”

“Who's
where
?”

“Get over to your house.”

“Who—”

“It's the magician! I knew I was right. He's an alchemist—and he's right here—”

“He came to see me?” How would he know where I lived? And more importantly,
why
would he seek me out?

“No. He's a
criminal,
Zoe. He's—”

My blood went cold. “Brix, if he's breaking into the house”—the line went dead—“call the police,” I said to dead air.

I tried to calm my breathing. One day that boy was going to cry wolf one too many times … But I'd never forgive myself if this was something real. I'd given Brixton a key to my house when he'd stayed with me for a few days. He rarely used it after that, but what if he was at the house and the magician-alchemist was trying to get inside? All I knew was that Peter Silverman was a criminal of some kind. And a kid wasn't going to stop him.