Alchemystic (32 page)

Alexandra shouted the final words and the wind started to settle, her hair falling back to the sides of her face. The energy dissipated as the stone coiled in my chest wound itself closed over the gems embedded there, but like the last time, fresh memories unlocked in my mind and came to me. Akin to when the first soul stone had been placed, those familiar stone walls rose up around me. I awaited the great and terrible crushing sensation that had come with it as well, but it did not occur. Instead, the walls around me were moving—no,
I
was moving through them, this time recognizing them for what they were a part of.
A castle.
I ran through corridor after corridor, the dull glow of torches lighting the way, all sensations foreign to me. My wings were gone, I realized, and something else…My footfalls no longer had the heavy sound I was now accustomed to. I attempted to focus my thoughts, but the crushing sensation returned and overtook me, the pain becoming unbearable until my mind’s eye jumped to another memory. My maker, Alexander, stood before me as foreign and confusing emotions were fading from me, four gemstones in his hand, the coils under my chest closing over themselves. I pressed myself to work out the meaning of the ebbing emotions but my mind’s eye slammed shut like a door and it rushed my thoughts back to the present.

The pain still burned in my chest, and my mind raced with confusion, pitching me forward. I was falling, and I could only hope my maker’s kin would move in time. Alexandra jumped back in haste and the stone of the roof met with the stone of my skin, calming and cooling against the burning sensation in my chest.

“Stanis!” Alexandra cried, the pain radiating off of her doubling my own. Her soft hands wrapped around my left arm and shoulder. “Guys! Help me.”

Aurora and Marshall’s hands joined hers, ready to try to lift.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Marshall said.

“Stop being so logical!” Alexandra said, her tone serious. “Now, lift!”

The three of them pulled at my inert stone form, but to no avail.

“I told you,” Marshall said.

Alexandra’s anger rose, bringing mine with it, but I felt compelled to stop it. I pressed the flats of my hands against the roof, pulling my wings against my body and rolling onto my side until I was able to sit.

“I am fine,” I said. “It has simply been a while since I had felt such…pain. Or anything, really.”

“That’s what I feared,” Alexandra said. “Each piece we find is bringing back different parts of you, including an ability to feel. In this case, pain.”

“You felt it, too?” I asked her.

She nodded. “That’s growing as well, whatever this connection is. But not just feelings. There was…a castle, too, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was running through it, only…I did not feel like myself. I felt different. Am I—
was
I human?”

Alexandra looked up in my face. “You think you were human once?” she said. “I’d always assumed you were simply a marvelous creation of my great-great-grandfather, but seeing Devon transformed…” She paused, sadness flashing across her face. “What I’ve discovered in his notes so far says very little about your past beyond the rules set upon you, but yes, I think that makes sense. That you had been human once. I don’t know who, but we’ve seen firsthand that it’s possible for humans to take some kind of stone form. For example, my brother.”

I stood in silent contemplation of the thought. It struck me as beyond the beyond that I could have once been like these fragile creatures.

“Don’t look so sad,” Aurora said. “It’s not so bad to be human.”

“Humanity is overrated,” Marshall added, in what I assumed was an attempt to make me feel better. He turned to Alexandra. “Although if your great-great-grandfather took
this person and trapped him in this form while taking the core of his soul away, that’s messed up. Maybe your brother is right. Maybe Alexander was a dick. Maybe your family has evil tendencies, after all.”

Anger rolled off of Alexandra; I could feel it touch me, but I also felt her trying to calm it. “I’m going to forget you suggested that,” Alexandra said, giving him a dark look. “If Alexander Belarus did something like that, he must have had a good reason.”

Marshall did not say anything more and Alexandra turned back to me. “Do you remember anything new?”

I let my mind drift back through my past, looking for anything out of the ordinary. I raised my hand to my chest, which was now smoothed back over. “Since placing the first stone, I remember Alexander more and more,” I said. “And now I remember when he created these soul stones.”

“So what
did
he do?” Marshall asked.

“I remember nothing of my own world before that day,” I said, my mouth forming into a grimace. “I do remember when he pulled these stones from me, however. He said he was taking them from me for my own safety. I asked him what he was keeping me safe from, but he would not say. The less I knew, the more he said I could live with myself.”

Alexandra sighed, closing the book and slipping it back into her pack. “I don’t suppose he told you where he put all four of them…?”

I shook my head. “He only alluded to them, but would not tell me anything direct. Again, for my safety.”

“Looks like Alexander had issues,” Aurora said.

“I cannot speak on that,” I said. “He did, however, have a great love of puzzles.”

Alexandra laughed. “We know,” she said. “You should have seen the puzzle box he left that last piece in. Have you even seen how many are in his studio? It’s filled with them.”

I smiled. “He used those in my education.”

“Education?” she asked.

“Once he had taken those gems from me, there was much for me to learn,” I said. “Or relearn, it seems. He thought
thinking through solutions for his many puzzles was the perfect tool for it.”

Alexandra looked to Aurora. “Looks like I’m going to have to homeschool Bricksley.”

Rory shook her head and put her face down in her hands.

“Who is Bricksley?” I asked.

“You’ll meet,” Alexandra said. “What did Alexander allude to about the gems?”

I pressed through my newfound memories. “One thought seems to linger,” I said. “It does not feel wholly mine, however. I can hear his voice, talking about something called the Eye of God. I do not recall what that is exactly.”

Alexandra smiled, sliding her book back into her bag. “I think I have an idea about
that
one,” she said, looking up at me. “That’s one of the things Alexander mentioned in the Spellmason primer I found in the base of one of the puzzle boxes. I’ve been rolling it around in my head and I think I have a possible location for it that Alexander helped build.” She looked up at me. “How do you feel about a night out on the town?”

Alexandra

“W
e’re going clubbing?” Rory asked as we stood in a long line of costumed people on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twentieth Street. “On Halloween?”

For the sake of carrying Alexander’s arcane tome, I had come as a modern Goth witch with a tombstone-shaped backpack, opting for thigh-high striped stockings to give it a Tim Burton-y kind of vibe.

“Not quite,” I said, looking at the old stone church and bell tower that stood on the northwest corner of the intersection. “Cathedral was actually a real church before it became a hot spot. It was the last church my great-great-grandfather built before he stopped doing them. From what Stanis said about the Eye of God and what I’ve deciphered from Alexander’s notes, we should find one of Stanis’s gems here.”

“Good,” she said. “I’d hate to have put on a costume for nothing.”

“You look cute,” I said. It was true. Blue fairie wings that matched her hair peeked over her shoulders. Killer black knee-high boots and an aqua-colored Tinker Bell–cut dress completed her ensemble. “Not that you had to do much. All of that came out of your closet, except for the wings.”

Rory’s face went red. “Actually…those came from my closet, too. My ex had a thing for fantasy characters.”

Marshall coughed. “TMI,” he said, adjusting his bloody suit and blood-drenched lab coat. His face was made up so his eyes and cheeks looked sunken in.

Rory looked him up and down. “And what are you supposed to be?”

“I’m patient zero from the coming zombie apocalypse.”

She patted him on the head. “Of
course
you are,” she said.

A low grumble came from behind me. “You okay? I whispered over my shoulder before turning to Stanis.

His wings were tucked close to his body and his figure was as it always was except for several false, artistically placed joint lines I had painted on him to make his true form look more costumey. I thought about asking him what he made of my costume, but repressed the urge.

“This is…
unique
,” he said.

“What is?”

“Being among your kind like this, being so…close.” He turned and looked down the line. “You understand it violates one of Alexander’s rules. I am supposed to remain hidden away from humanity. This is truly fascinating.”

The sexy Red Riding Hood standing behind us in line looked up at him.

“Great costume,” she said, the tone in her voice driving a surprising spike of jealousy into me.

Stanis looked down at her, unaffected, his face as blank as ever, allowing my flash to pass. “Thank you,” he said after a long, awkward moment. His clear discomfort, I had to admit, was kind of adorable.

“How long did it take you to make?”

He paused again in thought. “Several hundred years.”

She laughed. “I used to watch
Gargoyles
, too,” Red Riding Hood said.

Something about her flirting got under my skin, and I stepped forward, grabbing his arm. “Come on, now, Stan, hon,” I said, spinning him back around. “Line’s moving.”

It didn’t take long before the four of us entered Cathedral.
Its interior was still reminiscent of an old church, with the addition of multilevel dance floors, a bar, platforms, and cages with dancers in them that hung from the high-vaulted arches of the old church’s interior.

“Wow,” Marshall said. “It’s like a Goth’s dream in here. Very spiritual and creepy all at the same time. First round’s on me.”

He headed off to the bar as we walked around the outside of the dance floor where superheroes, sexy cat ladies, and hipster zombies danced the night away. Despite my artistic attempt to hide Stanis’s true form, everyone in the club gave him at least a glance or stared, but nothing that indicated that anyone thought for a second he might be an actual gargoyle. Why would they? Until a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have given it a thought that it wasn’t a costume, either.

Rory looked around the club. “So we’re supposed to find this gem somewhere in this throng?” she asked. “We’re talking the proverbial needle in a haystack here. Of course, the only difference is that all these needles are dancing their asses off.”

I pulled off my backpack, patting the book within. “That’s why I brought this. My great-great-grandfather said that the gemstone is located in the Eye of God.”

“The stained glass windows, maybe?” Rory asked. “Lots of angels and saints depicted up there…Maybe one of their eyes?”

Both sides of the massive church held long rows of what looked to be the original stained glass. They were gorgeous, backlit by lighting units hidden in boxes that protected the club from ever seeing the light of day, a Goth or vamp’s paradise. I turned to Stanis.

“I don’t suppose you know where it might be?” I asked. “It
is
a part of you, after all.”

Stanis didn’t respond, looking almost as statuesque as he had for years in the daylight on the roof of my family’s building.

“Stanis, what’s wrong?”

His smooth stone eyes turned to me. “Perhaps you are used to being in such a crushing sea of humanity, but I am not. I have
seen the people of this city for centuries, but I have never walked among them. I find myself…incredibly distracted.”

I nodded. “I can only imagine. But you’ve no sense for the location of the gemstone…?”

Stanis closed his eyes in concentration for at least a minute, then opened them. “I am sorry, but no.”

Marshall came back cradling four glasses in his arms, handing one to Rory, then me, and finally holding one out to Stanis.

The gargoyle looked down at it. “I do not drink,” he said.

Marshall laughed. “In recovery, eh?”

Stanis cocked his head. “Recovery?”

Ah, the modern-day idiom, still lost on him. “It’s what they say about alcoholics who are trying to stop drinking,” I said. “That they are in recovery.”

He straightened his head, nodding. “I see,” he said. “Then no, I am not in recovery. What I meant to say was that I am incapable of consuming food or drink.”

Marshall kept the glass out in front of him, still offering it. “At least hold it, then. You’ll blend in better. Look less conspicuous.”

Stanis took the glass in his large stone hand, looking rather absurd. “Thank you.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s take different sides of the church and check out the stained glass up close. You see anything that looks like an Eye of God, let the rest of us know—got it?”