The Apothecary's Curse (24 page)

Hearing this truth spoken aloud was an unwelcome validation of all he'd feared these past weeks. Simon nearly crumbled beneath its weight. Erceldoune said no more, propelling himself from the bench and toward the house, leaving Simon staggered and in shock to numbly consider this incredible turn of events.

Simon pursued Erceldoune across the lawn, catching up easily with the hobbled man. “It is unbelievable, Mr. Erceldoune, what you confess to me—all of it. Beyond comprehension. I cannot fathom it,
if
what you say is true!”

“It is. My two hundred and fifty . . .” He paused, counting to himself. “Two hundred and fifty-six years of living is testament to that. To be honest, I've no clue about what caused your . . . condition, and without the book, I fear I never shall.”

“But you must solve this puzzle. Then reverse it, and
posthaste
! Delay not another minute. I've a laboratory in the house, and you may make full use of it as you desire.”

“I cannot.”

“What do you mean you cannot?”

“Without the book—its formulas, recipes—it would be but a useless occupation, I'm afraid. And I have no idea where my book has gone, or whether it yet exists.” Erceldoune glowered. “Last I saw it, I was being hauled to the Old Bailey, and I've not seen it since. Perhaps it is . . . in a safe place here in London, perhaps not. Had I only not been convicted of Lil's murder, I might yet be able to do something to help you, but I am afraid it is quite impossible.”

CHICAGO'S NORTH SHORE, PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER 29

Gaelan Erceldoune wanted only to be left alone. And that was the problem. They knocked on the door, calling out his name at all times of day and evening, hoping to get a glimpse of the “Miracle Man” as if he were some sort of Promethean monster.

The Instagrams and YouTube videos multiplied like cockroaches in every corner of the Internet. Even CNN's site had a small piece, thankfully buried in the human-interest bits below the fold. He thanked the reliable idiocy of American politics for the latest dire warning of a government shutdown, which claimed the news in endless cycles, pushing the story of his miraculous recovery further and further down into the dregs of Google News.

Simon assured him it would all eventually pass and Gaelan Erceldoune would fade into the annals of unexplained medical recoveries. Until then, he was trapped, afraid to venture past his threshold, where religious groupies had now set up camp. A string of votive candles was lined up along his building, flowers, wreaths, sticky notes—a bloody shrine. What, for fuck's sake, did they want with him? He could hear them murmuring, chanting at all hours.

The universe wasn't totally bleak. Two weeks had passed since the article on the Bedlam diaries, and nothing more. Perhaps Simon had been right.

He removed the gold pocket watch from his waistcoat for the third time in an hour: half past two. Middle of the fucking night and he was still wired, restless—stalking from the shop up to his flat and back again. Prison. No combination of whisky and drugs seemed to knock him back more than a notch or two, and when sleep finally claimed him, he was back in Bedlam, his screams echoing through the decades, waking him. Rinse, repeat.

The chanting at his door seemed to have stopped for the night. Gaelan put his ear to the glass. Maybe they'd given up, gone home, and finally left him the bloody hell alone. Daring to lift the blind, he looked out onto the sidewalk. Empty. Even the votives and flowers had vanished.

He grabbed a wool cap from behind the counter and pulled his leather greatcoat around him, collar up. Maybe just a short walk down to the lakefront, where he might be calmed by the reassuring rhythm of the waves as they crashed into the breakwater. A tentative step beyond the threshold . . .

“Hallo.” A muffled woman's voice.
British?

Gaelan jumped at the unexpected sound, which originated from somewhere within the fur-trimmed hood of an oversized navy blue anorak. He sighed.
Even at fucking two in the morning?
He staggered backward, retreating into the shop, slamming the door behind him.
No fucking way.
He sank to the floor, back against the wall.

The door opened again.
Fuck!
He'd forgotten to lock it. “Go the bloody hell away! Give me a moment's peace—”

“I didn't think you'd mind . . . my clearing away the clutter in front of your shop? It's amazing how people are always looking for something . . . novel . . . to worship. I guessed you might not be too keen on the shrine. . . . Gave me something to do other than freeze out there on your sidewalk—”

“Leave. Now. Please?” Gaelan grumbled, not looking up, his head buried in his hands.

“I will. I promise. Just hear me out. Five minutes. Less, if I can manage it.”

Gaelan said nothing. Defeated, he didn't know what else to do. “I bloody give up,” he said finally, each word a dagger flung blindly into dim light. “What is it I might do for you this
fine
night . . . erm . . . morning?” he hissed.

“Look. I'm not a reporter, not paparazzi. I don't want to make a cable movie about you, feature you on my talk show, or start a bloody religion with you as the new messiah.”

He waited for a follow-up sentence, which never came. Instead, she joined him on the floor, sitting cross-legged beside him.

“You've told me what you're not,” he said quietly, finally looking up, struggling to remain vigilant against the threat. She had discarded the anorak, revealing faded jeans and Doc Martens. M. C. Escher T-shirt. Long, thick auburn hair hung down her back, her dark blue eyes warm and alert, even in the middle of the night. “Now if you don't mind, your five minutes are quickly vanishing.”

“I'm Anne Shawe. Dr. Anne Shawe. I don't suppose you've gotten my e-mails or phone messages, have you? I've been trying to reach you for three days.”

“As you might imagine, I'm not quite in the mood for checking in on my e-mail.” Gaelan pointed to his watch. “Ticktock.” He'd stopped reading his mail on the third day, slamming his laptop shut after the fiftieth request for an interview.

“Look. Andrew Samuelson called me in on your case.”

The genetics doctor.
Figures.
Her five minutes had become what seemed like ten. “I've heard enough, and you can leave. Like I told him, I've no interest in bloody tests.” The conversation was quickly sapping what little energy he possessed.

“Please. Let me finish, and then I'll go. I promise. I slipped Samuelson two days ago. He has no idea I'm here; he actually thinks I caught a flight to San Diego.” She picked up her phone, glancing at the face. “Yesterday.”

The sincerity in her expression began to undermine his resolve. Should he believe her? Hear her out or send away this interloper, cast her out into the night, bloody anorak and all? Gaelan shrugged the coat from his shoulders and snapped off the wool cap. “Go on,” he said, leaning his head against the wall, curiosity piqued. Holding up his right hand, fingers spread, he mouthed, “Five.”

Her smile creased the corners of her eyes, and a fleeting image from long ago snaked through his mind, vanishing too quickly to take hold. “Five minutes. Great! I read your hospital file; as I said, I'd been called into the case by your doctor—”

“Samuelson. Except he wasn't my . . . 
official
physician. He had no right to—”

“I
disagreed
with Dr. Samuelson. He was far too comfortable skating around the rules of ethics. His intention was to either badger you into consent or do the DNA testing without it. I was disturbed enough that I mentioned it to his dean. I understood his interest; I certainly share it, but no matter how astonishing your case, it doesn't justify a breech—”

Gaelan mustered his last reserves of contempt. “Then why are you here? Do you think your confession of Samuelson's sins will render me more pliable a subject? Lay myself bare to your scrutiny because you came to the defense of my privacy?”

“No, I don't. But I did want to explain myself, and hope you might answer at least a question or two on that basis alone.” She turned out her pockets. “See? No test tubes or syringes to steal your blood whilst I distract you. Look. I came all the way from London to meet you.”

Gaelan's eyebrow quirked. “I'm flattered,” he spat, unimpressed.

“I would be lying if I said I didn't want to run your blood through a gene sequencer. I'd be a fool as well, given my field, but my interest in you—”

Gaelan summoned every bit of the exasperation he'd accumulated the past few days. “Dr. Shawe, I don't know what you saw in my file, but my physiology is no more unique than Samuelson's—or yours.” He forced a laugh, imagining the notes in his chart: instant recovery, rapid tissue regeneration. How many exclamation points followed each notation? “I can still barely stand for more than a few moments at a time; my head feels as if it's harboring angry bats, and my abdomen feels . . . Well, it's quite beyond description.”

“But it seems there is more in what you
aren't
saying. I saw photographs of a man, charred, severe burns, broken—”

“It's quite amazing what Photoshop will do, if you've a mind to manipulate an image.” It was a terrible argument. Someone would have to have been diabolical enough to alter . . . how many images? But under the circumstances, it was the best he could summon. “What exactly are you implying, Dr. Shawe? That I am some sort of superhuman miracle? Where is your scientific disbelief, that you would—”

“Yes. You are.”

Gaelan stood, keeping hold of the wall, and took an unsteady step, his blood pressure plummeting. Catching himself, his right hand planted on the wall, he sat again, waiting for the lightheadedness to pass. “As you can see, Dr. Shawe, I am not exactly recovered. . . .” He held up his left hand, a demonstration of an imperfect man. “Is this the hand of a miracle of a man?” It was a slightly more persuasive tack, although he suspected she already knew about his deformed hand and had a ready answer for it.

“Fingers—limbs—are more complex systems. Amputated, they'd never grow back. Yes, you're still injured, but the rate at which you've recovered is like nothing I've ever seen. No one's ever seen before . . . not in humans.”

“Perhaps, then, I'm part salamander?” He needed to get rid of her. He was too exhausted, too vulnerable; his fortress walls were under too much stress from weariness and wear. “Might we continue this—”

“I got into genetics, Mr. Erceldoune,” she continued, ignoring him, “for a very personal reason, one to which I've dedicated my career. My family thinks I'm obsessed; I've lost one fiancé over it and missed several other, shall we say, relationship opportunities over the years owing to it. When you came to my attention, I was intrigued enough—”

“To catch the next flight to the US?” he snapped.

“No. But to make a stopover that has lasted several days longer than I intended. I was actually on my way to join a project at the Salk Institute in California—”

Gaelan didn't know what to make of Dr. Shawe. Genuine as she seemed, she was no different than all the others who wanted bits and pieces of him. Yet he was curious.

“The women in my family have lived extraordinarily long lives, it seems,” she continued. “Going back at least five generations, but only in a single genetic line. Little sickness, and legendary rapid recovery from childbirth, from injuries—for my family at any rate. But it seems only the women, and only from one origin point in my family tree . . . and only down one branch. So I'd always wondered if there had been some sort of genetic component—that is, after I took my first university genetics class!”

“I'm sorry if you believe your family are eligible for their own Marvel comic series, or whatever. But why tell this to
me
? You think I'm a long-lost relation? A missing link?”

“I have only a few questions—”

Her five minutes had long since passed. “Why do you not run
their
blood through a sequencer?”

“My relatives? I have. And with extraordinary results, which brings me to you. I
need
to know.”

Gaelan made another attempt to stand, then thought better of it. He was too weary to do battle in the middle of the night with this woman, her indigo gaze piercing through him.

Dr. Shawe rose from her position with the grace of a dancer, helping Gaelan to his feet. He wanted to protest, wave her off, be rid of her altogether, but instead he allowed her to lead him to an overstuffed reading chair at the center of the shop. She sat in the other, crossing her legs beneath her, and turned on a table lamp.

“I cannot get over your collection, your books. There must be thousands. . . . Brilliant—”

“What?” Oh bloody hell; he was never going to rid himself of her at this rate! He rolled his eyes, sighing. “It
is
what I do. Erceldoune's Rare
Books
and Antiquities.”

His tone was brusquer than he'd intended; she looked hurt. Good. Maybe she would leave now. “So you've explained your ‘why'; it fails to impress. And I've granted you far more than the allotted five minutes.”

But she was already up and perusing the collection, examining the spines. “I've recently developed an interest in antiquarian scientific manuscripts. This is incredible,” she exclaimed, drawing out a large volume. “Culpeper? I have to look, please? And then I promise, I'll be out of your hair.”

Dr. Shawe settled back into the chair with the large book on her lap. “
Culpeper's Herbal
.” She ran her hands across the grooved leather of the cover, her index finger gliding along the perfect gilded edging—a solid brick of gold, it seemed.

Gaelan fought the urge to be drawn in, but the way she handled the volume, almost caressing it, entranced him. She opened to the title page, and her fingers traced down the page as she squinted through the difficult ancient typeface. “
The English Physitian
by Nich. Culpeper, Gent. Student in Physik and Astrologie, 1651,” she recited with the excitement of a child opening a gift box. “Don't you feel it, Mr. Erceldoune?”