> “Rita observed the two resourceful children and came to the decision quite easily. ‘No longer will you want for food or shelter. And you shall be educated in the old ways and the modern. Should you prove your mettle, when I pass from this world, you will inherit my name and all that comes with it. Do you accept this?’ The brother and sister stared at each other, bewildered, before nodding. ‘Good,’ said Rita. ‘Good.’”
My jaw dropped immediately when I saw the disaster that greeted us as we exited the elevator on the fourth floor.
“What the hell happened here?” I said to Emma’s invisible figure. “You said the alkahest ate through the glass no problem. You didn’t mention anything about it destroying half of the case!”
The display was somehow still precariously balanced on three legs because where the fourth leg had been, now only air remained. And the same went for the contents of the case that had been in the front corner. I shuddered to think how much destruction one tiny drop had caused.
“Hmm,” said Emma. “Guess I put more alkahest on there than I originally thought. Oh, well.”
“Oh, well?” I said, trying not to raise my voice. “They’re going to find this tomorrow and then…”
“And then what?” Emma shot back. “They’ll call the police? Write us an angry letter? We’ll be long gone by then, if they ever even figure out who the hell we are. You need to calm down right fucking now or else you can just wait here.”
“Fine,” I said.
Phil Farnsworth’s badge appeared in mid-air, and I followed it to the double doors we had passed through yesterday. It waved itself over the badge reader to the left, the red security light turning green, and with a click, the doors unlocked.
“Let’s go,” said Emma as the door pushed itself inward. I trailed her through the gap, breathing a sigh of relief once we were clear on the other side and no alarms had gone off.
“That worked surprisingly well,” I said.
“Easy part’s over, though,” said Emma. “Whoever unlocked the box didn’t just leave the vial out on some table for any rando to take. Need to expect some sort of countermeasure is in place. That’s where these rings come in.”
Emma held up her left hand, which sported even more rings than I remembered.
“Right,” I said, the small pit in my stomach growing ever so slightly. I had let Emma fully take the lead on the rest of the mission as a show of confidence in her ability. But the fact that she really didn’t have any idea what we were up against was incredibly disconcerting. Then again, who knew what else she had in that magic bag of hers?
Lights from the wedding down below cast an eerie glow on the hallway of colors, but we turned away from the atrium and walked casually into the adjacent laboratory.
Emma appeared out of thin air, her cloaked figure looking ominous among the tables scattered throughout the room. I followed suit, undoing the gold clasp on my own cloak, and she nodded at my now visible features, before quickly shedding her garment and partially stuffing it into the top of the flannel bag.
We crisscrossed the room, ignoring the numerous paintings wrapped in plastic, but quickly concluded that this floor of the lab seemed to be destitute of pigment samples. Climbing the wide staircase back at the front, we reached the summit of the Raid and our last chance to find the prize.
This floor of the lab was situated differently. Instead of tables of artwork, there were benches with microscopes and computers. Vials and cans of samples and standards dotted the workspace, and the gentle hum of machines reminded me of my old office. Again, our survey turned up empty, and we regrouped at the top of the stairs.
“It doesn’t seem to be here,” Emma said. “You’re absolutely positive that the Dragon’s blood was transferred to the lab?”
“No, and I never said I was,” I replied. “The inventory page just said that-”
“Shh,” said Emma, holding up her left hand. “I think I’m getting something.”
She held her palm flat and moved it around in a circle, and I could just make out the vibrations emanating from the druithyl in her rings. Moving a couple of feet forward, Emma repeated the exercise, shook her head from side to side, and then walked to a different set of benches. Finally, she stopped in front of the lone piece of artwork in the lab: a seven-foot tall painting of a woman in a red dress that was suspended between a wooden frame resting on an easel. The figure was striking, with red eyes and hair that matched her dress, and she stood behind a looming horde of knights on horseback. At the bottom of the frame, a small label read “Girl on fire, Artist unknown, 1495.”
“What is it?” I said.
“The Dragon’s blood,” she said. “It’s in the painting.”
I looked at the portrait. The color of the red fabric seemed to pop from the canvas, almost as if the woman was about to step out of the painting into the real world.
“The note in the inventory,” I said. “Exodus. But, what … why did they do that?”
Emma ran her finger across the dress and it came up clean.
“They’re moving it. Maybe they were expecting us, or someone else. Knew we’d be on the scent of a vial in a locked wooden box. So they repurposed the Dragon’s blood. Coated over the regular paint with it. Makes sense. It was hidden in the pigment collection, after all.”
“So now what?”
“I don’t know,” said Emma. “I’m thinking.”
She circled the easel with her left hand out in front of her to detect more hidden alchemy. The silver rings continued vibrating as she surveyed, but to my untrained eyes, it didn’t look like there was anything else there.
“Hmm,” said Emma, finally, after a few more minutes.
“What?” I asked.
“I can feel a second source of alchemy coming from somewhere around the painting. But…”
“What do you mean, second source?”
“The rings, they vibrate with a slightly different frequency depending on what they’re detecting. So I can feel the Dragon’s blood and then…”
Emma reached her fingertips forward to touch something at the bottom of the easel, and that’s when the whole damn thing caught on fire.
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The flames were blue, which I wasn’t expecting. They also had formed a neat ring around the canvas, but had gone no further. And finally, they seemed to be ice cold. It was at once amazing and terrifying.
“What the hell is happening?” I asked.
“It’s varutium,” Emma replied. “Only burns where a specific primer has been spread. I should have figured.”
“Varutium?”
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“Some call it hellfire. A bit dramatic, if you ask me. Used to create impromptu prisons back in the day for the virgins who were to be sacrificed in a volcano or stabbed on an altar or some other nonsense. Then they started using it to burn the girls straight up. Then finally it fell out of use and memory sometime around the 18th century. Obviously these fuckers found a lost stash of it somewhere.”
“How do you know so much about it, then?”
Why did every new alchemy discovery of mine have to have some terrifying past that needed reckoning with?
“Because,” said Emma, “it’s what killed my gran.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Yep,” she replied nonchalantly.
“Well, I guess I have to applaud your calm demeanor. If I ever came face to face with the scumbag that killed my mom, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Oh, I’m not calm, I’m fuming,” said Emma. “But I learned long ago how to channel my anger until I could release it somewhere useful.”
“If you say so,” I said, my growing unease making my arms twitch. “I’m guessing it’s not the kind of fire that water can handle?”
“You are correct. Damonium, on the other hand, would douse it in an instant. But I don’t have any of it in my bag, unfortunately.”
I couldn’t help but stare at the otherworldly blue flames as they danced around the woman in the red dress. Then the colors suddenly mixed together into a raging blaze of orange and sulfur, and I was back in the burning lighthouse, the ceiling about to collapse and two women splayed out on the floor in front of me. I felt my arm bring itself up to my face and then felt my palm violently connect with my cheek, nearly sending me tumbling to the ground.
I quickly regained my balance, Emma none the wiser, and that’s when a small whisper escaped my lips.
“Get a hold of yourself, Jade, or I will.”
Jade’s grip of control released itself and my body … well, her body, went slack. I closed my eyes, muttered a few soft words of self-encouragement, and then took my place next to Emma in front of the burning painting.
My partner-in-crime had retrieved a small footstool from her flannel bag and was now nearly eye level with the woman in the painting.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Being very careful not to set myself on fire,” Emma replied. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Umm, do you need any help with that?”
“Yes,” said Emma. “Stop talking.”
I nodded and watched as Emma slowly brought her hands to the top of the canvas. Several pieces of wire were fastened to both the burning frame and the painting’s support board. She extended her arm behind one corner of the canvas, ignoring the flames just inches away, and after about 30 seconds, she withdrew it and the painting dropped slightly. She moved on to the second piece of wire and soon detached that one as well. This continued on as she worked her way along the top of the painting until she reached the last bit when suddenly her whole body jerked forward.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Not really,” said Emma, who tried to detach herself from the painting only to find her right hand stuck.
“Why can’t you get your hand off there?”
“They must have…” Emma grunted as she made a second attempt at freeing herself. “…sprayed the canvas with neutral auragen. It’s bonded to my rings.”
“Who did?”
“Enough with the fucking questions, Jade! I need to think.”
I looked over at Emma’s bag at the foot of the easel. Inside was probably a magic hacksaw that could cut an auragen link and who knew what else.
“Your bag,” I said. “Is there anything in there that could help?”
Emma stared at the bag, and then at me, and her face recoiled.
“Yes, but…”
She tried to pull her hand free yet again, only for the auragen link to snap it back into place.
“…I can’t get anything out of it with my rings stuck. Unless…”
“What?”
“The alkahest. It’s in a tiny pocket on the outside of my bag. Get it, quickly!”
I complied and found the small vial that had once held the silvery liquid. It didn’t look like there was more than a drop of the alkahest left, but I knew what the stuff was capable of, so maybe that was enough.
“OK, now what?”
“I saw a larger stepladder right by the stairs on this floor. Bring it over here.”
I did as I was told again and positioned the metal steps next to Emma’s stool, climbing up to the top so that I was standing a few inches above her, the flames a little too close for my liking.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.
“You’re going to CAREFULLY pour the last few drops onto the portion of the painting between my fingers.”
“OK,” I said.
I unstoppered the vial and tilted it gently against the painting. Somehow, the alkahest must have dribbled out onto the canvas, because a tiny hole appeared in between Emma’s pinky and ring finger. We both waited with bated breath for what seemed like an hour for the alkahest to dissolve the auragen bond.
“It’s not enough,” said Emma, surveying the partially dissolved painting. “You’re going to break the vial on my rings.”
“What?”
“I need to be sure the rest of the alkahest gets out. If I lose part of a finger, so be it.”
“You’re serious,” I said.
“Yes. Do you think you can handle this without flipping out?”
I nodded.
“Good. Aim for the ring on my pinky,” said Emma. “And with feeling, Jade. You only get one chance to get this right.”
“Thanks, that was just the confidence boost I needed.”
My hands immediately started trembling as I made a few practice motions, ending with me tapping the vial gently against Emma’s pinky ring. Finally, I took one more deep breath, and then swung the vial toward Emma’s hand.
But alchemy has a funny way of messing with your expectations of how the world should work.
Because at the last second, I felt my arm suddenly shift to the right, as if someone had jerked it with a puppet’s string, and instead of smashing Emma’s hand, the vial flew out of my grasp and into the burning frame.
“You always make sure.”
Emma stared at me as the words escaped my mouth, but they weren’t mine.
“No!” she shouted, trying with one last effort to pull her hand free.
The room suddenly exploded with a flash of blue light, and I was thrown backward. I landed with a hard thud against the leg of a nearby table and quickly tried to get to my feet. But my head was spinning, and my vision was cloudy, and so I collapsed onto the floor, unable to do anything.
Smoke was everywhere when I regained consciousness a few moments later, and I felt myself being pulled back into the memory of that night in the lighthouse again. I gasped for air and grasped for control, not wanting to surrender myself to the whim of the stone. Slowly, I crawled over to where the easel had been, my eyes struggling to stay open.
But only one truth remained.
Emma was gone.
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“BFD firefighters say they’ve never encountered a blaze like the one that tore through the fourth and fifth floors of the Carter Museum last night, taking nearly 13 hours to get the fire under control. Miraculously, of the two casualties of the night, one was merely the abrupt end of the wedding in the courtyard on the first floor, which was scheduled to last until 2 a.m. The guests were safely evacuated thanks to the quick thinking of the security guard on duty, who was found unconscious under the activated fire alarm. Unfortunately, the other casualty was the Museum’s near-priceless collection of pigments, paints, and varnishes, which was completely destroyed. A hundred years of curation, gone in the span of hours. Reporting live from Cambridge, Natasha Nettle, Channel 13 News.”
I flipped off the third newscast of the morning and resisted the urge to throw the remote control at the hotel room TV. But I had caused enough damage for one day. My body ached in every possible place, the three doses of healing serum I had ingested over the course of the night doing little to relieve the pain. Jade’s eyebrows, and maybe mine too underneath, were nearly singed off, and the hair on my arms would have been too if I hadn’t still been wearing the cloak.
That garment somehow had come out of the explosion unscathed, and it was buried somewhere within the folds of the sheets, as I hadn’t bothered to remove it before I collapsed into unconsciousness, if you could call it that. My eyes might have been closed but my mind had been wide awake, relieving the events of the disastrous evening in all sorts of different and horrible ways. But in every replay, the result had been the same: Jade had seized control of my arm and directed the alkahest toward the hellfire.
The stone—her stone, I realized—was tucked at the bottom of my suitcase. Her visage still clung to my body like an annoying relative who refused to leave after a family gathering. As much as I wanted to run to the Bunker Hill Bridge and toss the stupid thing into the Charles River, knowing my luck, that would only deepen Jade’s grip on me.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and dialed Emma’s number yet again. It went straight to voicemail. It was silly, I knew, to hold out hope that she had somehow escaped the blaze, that she was lying low while she recovered. But I had seen the burnt threads of her dress, the scorched strands of her pink wig, the melted metal puddle of what had been her necklace, and the singed scraps of the fabric that had been her bag. Maybe she was in a hospital bed somewhere, her body burned beyond recognition. But the most likely outcome was that the alkahest-enhanced blast had completely obliterated her.
I flipped over onto my stomach and let out a string of muffled cries into a pillow. But whatever catharsis I had hoped to achieve was diluted by hearing that alien voice come out of my mouth. And what followed was every anxious thought that I had been suppressing the previous few weeks. My hopes at joining the Guild, discovering why my mother had the gold token, ridding myself of this prison enveloping me, all now out of reach.
I screamed again and felt something inside me crack, like the last boundary between myself and Jade had finally been weathered away by whatever alchemy was powering the glamour. And then my body lifted itself off of the bed, walked over to my luggage, and retrieved the stone from its hiding place. I stepped into the bathroom and watched in the mirror as my hands gently placed the chain over my head and then tucked the gem into the confines of my sweater.
“That’s better,” said Jade’s voice with a smile, and that was the last thing I remembered for the next two weeks.