Alchemist Academy: Book 2 (14 page)

“He said Ash Down?” Niles asked.

“Yes.” Mom looked back at him. “Does that mean something to you?”

“It’s a forest just outside London. He lived in London. Maybe that’s where he’s buried. But….”

“But what?”

“That forest is thousands of acres.”

Mom sighed and turned back to me. “We need to get more time with him. I think he’s screaming to us about a location.” She glanced at Mark. “It would probably only take seconds.”

I fidgeted in my chair. I didn’t care about all this other stuff. It wasn’t part of my mission. I’d wanted to get to my mom and save my friends. With the first part of that completed, everything else felt like we were diverting away from getting back to my friends.

“We get my friends back first. Once they’re out of there, I’ll use that stone.” I felt sick using leverage on my mom.

She stood and turned to face Niles. A look was exchanged and she turned back to me. “Fine. We need something from there anyway.” She turned to Jackie. “Allie says you have a thorough knowledge of the Academy. Do you think you can draw a map of it, especially where this room five is?”

“Yeah.”

Mom walked to the cabinets and pulled out a few pieces of paper and a pen. She set them on the table and pushed them closer to Jackie. “Show me.”

Jackie frowned and picked up the pen. I watched her drawing come to life on the page as she deftly drew in the lines making up the Dark Academy. Each doorway and wall was laid out on the page. She added in the teachers’ hall and the endless hallway we had used. She even drew the storage room where I suspected that man was still sitting, permanently frozen. I took a deep breath, thinking of his son getting sizzled into a stone and absorbed into Mark.

“Very good,” Mom said, and Jackie soaked up the praise.

“There are a few rooms I’ve never been in, like room five and the other single-digit rooms,” Jackie said.

Mom looked to me. “Can you describe room five again?”

I tried to elaborate in as much detail as I could. I had looked at many of the books, but not closely enough to name them. Verity kept a large tome on her desk that seemed to interest Mom.

“What are you looking for specifically, Cathy? This mission needs to be about getting the students out of there first,” Jackie said.

“Of course,” Mom said, but she had the look of her thoughts being elsewhere. “There’s a book Verity acquired recently. I suspect she keeps it in her library. Although, if she had any clue about what she has, she’d keep it taped to her body.” Mom chuckled.

“Great. Then what’s the plan?” Mark asked.

“Why are you two so inquisitive? I’ve had many infiltrators in the Intrepid, and they always start off asking more questions than they need to.” Mom raised a brow.

“I’m not here for the research of a stone,” Mark said. “I’m not trying to get inside your club. I don’t want any of this. The only reason I’m here is for Allie, and Jackie, and for the rest of our friends who need our help. If you can help us get into the Academy to free our friends, great. But if this is only about grabbing a book for you, then you can count us out.”

My mom’s lips pursed and Niles moved closer until she put a hand on his arm and shook her head. She took a few deep breaths before speaking again. “Mark, I applaud your dedication to my daughter. I can see she feels deeply for you. However, it’s clear you have no idea what’s coming if we don’t get this philosopher’s stone—or even worse, if they make it before us. The whole world would slip into an age of darkness. It’s our goal to keep alchemy hidden from the world. We aim to nurture the young and teach alchemists to live in a world that wasn’t made for them.”

“As long as you don’t hurt Allie to get to your end, we’ll be cool.”

“I’d never hurt my daughter,” Mom said.

That was the first lie I knew of for sure. She
had
hurt me, badly. Her leaving me was a pain that hurt deeper than anything else I’d ever felt. It still hurt, and she was only a few feet away. She smiled down at me and I wanted to be alone with her again. I wanted to ask her more about the past.

“So, what’s the plan? When are we going?” Jackie said, pointing at her map.

“We’d better get to our base camp first, organize, and come up with an entry and extraction point.” Mom rubbed her eyebrow. “If they have one of those cinder stones again, we’d better be really sneaky about it. We can’t afford another loss like that.” She moved her hand to her necklace.

The mention of the stone stung. I had made it, and had even lied to my mom about it. Mark knew I’d made the stone, as well as Bridget. I’d made the stone to save Mark, but I had also made two that had cost the lives of others, and I’d only been at this for a short time.

“They have a portal room here.” Jackie pointed to the small room at the end of the spoke.

“That would be the safest spot,” Niles said, peering at the map.

“How big is that room?” Mom asked.

“About ten by ten feet,” I said.

“You think you can recall that place well enough to use a portal stone?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“A portal stone requires the user to have near perfect knowledge and concentration on the location for it to work properly. You let your mind slide a tad and we could end up in the ocean.”

“Bottom of the ocean,” Niles added, and Mom nodded.

I stared at the four lines on the paper. Yeah, I knew the room, but did I really know it? Could I risk everyone’s lives?

“What about how that place jumps?” Jackie asked. “Do we even know where it is right now?”

Mom looked to Niles.

“We have a way of knowing where they are,” he said. “We sent a man in with a tracker, and right now they’re still in L.A.”

“The dad?” I said and thought of the man who had to watch his sun turn into a stone. A man frozen forever with a suspended animation stone I made.

“Yes, and we aim to get him out with the rest,” Nile said.

“The second they hear us coming, they’re going to jump,” Jackie warned.

“Then we’d better make sure they don’t hear us,” Niles said.

“How many students are in there?” Mom asked.

“A hundred students and ten teachers,” Jackie said. “Unless they haven’t replaced us yet.”

“Ten full-grown alchemists?” Niles said. “Jesus, Cathy, we’re going to need some help. Deegan alone is enough.”

“
And
Verity,” I said.

Niles and Mom shared looks again and I srunched up my brow trying to figure out what they were hiding. Something about Verity; I was sure of it.

“What’s up with Verity? You know her?” I asked.

Mom walked to the door and opened it. “Can you all leave me and Allie alone? I think we have some things to talk about.”

Mark gave me the eye and I nodded an okay. Normally I would want Mark at my side at all times, but this was my mother and I desperately wanted to talk to her. Maybe ask her some questions I might not want others to hear the answers to.

Once they were gone, my mother sat at the table across from me. She fidgeted with her hands and for the first time seemed nervous. I knew what she was feeling, and I felt the same thing. The initial shock and joy of seeing each other was over and now the old feelings and maybe even resentments were creeping back in.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Yes, please.”

She went to a cupboard and opened it. Empty. She went to the next and found some bottles of water. Reaching across the table, she set one down in front of me.

“Thank you.” I opened the bottle. A bit of dust coated my hand as I twisted the cap off. After taking a long swig, I placed the half-empty bottle back down on the table and picked at the label.

“Mark is cute.” My mom’s voice cut through the silence.

I buried my face in another drink.

She laughed. “I’m a bit rusty at this. Allie—”

“It’s okay. I’m just still shocked you’re alive.”

She smiled. “Have I said how beautiful you look?”

“Yes.” I sipped the water again.

Silence.

“So…Jackie said you’re a natural at making stones?”

“Yes. I’ve been able to make anything put in front of me, really.”

“Amazing. But of course my daughter would be a special.”

“They called me that at the Dark Academy.”

She laughed. “They called me the same thing at Alchemist Academy. I bet you were one popular girl there.”

“Once Verity got hold of me, she was salivating. She tried to get me to make her stones and mostly I faked it. But Verity knew. She turned to hurting Mark to get me to make a stone.” Some of my muscles were relaxing and the edge of being with my once-dead mother was slipping away. I finished off the water and set my empty bottle back on the table.

“I’d like to see you make a stone,” she said.

Showing my mom what I could do sounded great. She could see what I’d learned in the short time I’d been an alchemist. I bet she could teach me to make all kinds of amazing stones.

She got up from the table and went back to the cabinets. I noticed she didn’t have trouble finding the bottom cabinet containing an alchemy mixing bowl and spoon. She brought two containers to the table, then pulled a small blue vial from her pocket and set everything down near me.

“What kind of stone are we making?”

“This is a fun stone. I’ll show you what it does after you’ve made it.”

“Okay.” I stared at the two containers and then opened one. Diamond dust. “Salt?” I asked.

“No, it’s diamond dust.”

I breathed out in relief. She wasn’t lying to me. “This dust creates stones of the mind.”

“Yes, but it’s what you mix it with that makes it interesting.” She pointed at the second container.

A silver powder. “What is it?”

“Magic dust,” she said with a smile. “You make the stone and I’ll show you what it does. I think you’re really going to enjoy seeing this particular stone used.”

“Okay.” I took a few breaths and tried to calm myself. I would have trouble summoning any anger with my mother watching. The feeling of her watching what I could do lifted me up too high. I closed my eyes and thought about burying her when I was a child. And about my dad and what he’d done to conceal my mother from me. I felt the good leaving my body and the hate entering. I followed with thinking about the Dark Academy and Verity killing all those kids in the globe, lying to them, telling them they were going home. Ira….

I opened my eyes, ready to mix.

After the magic dust, I poured in the diamond dust and then the solvent. I tried to not notice my mom getting closer to me with the addition of each ingredient. I lost myself and let all my feelings flow into the mix until a stone clunked around in the metal bowl.

“
Very
good.” Mom moved in close and plucked the milky, shiny stone from the bowl. It looked like liquid metal and my mom held it the same way Verity had held the stone I’d made for her—with open wonder.

“So, what’s it for?”

She cleared her throat. “We’ve been trying to make it for a long time. You
are
something special. Let me show you what it does.”

My mom placed the stone in a pouch and walked toward the door. “You coming?”

I jumped up and rushed after her. The outside air brushed over my arms and I shivered, the air misting as I breathed out.

Mark turned to face me, his gaze going from me to my mom. “She made you make a stone, didn’t she?” His head was shaking as if he already knew the answer.

“We’re going to use it right now,” I said with more defensiveness than I’d expected. Looking after my mom, I saw she was already walking down the street with Niles at her side.

Jackie left the wall she was leaning against and caught up to me as I walked by. “What’d you make?” she asked.

Mark flanked me on the other side.

“I’m not sure. Some kind of memory stone.”

“Like the one you wouldn’t make for me?”

“Umm, yeah, I guess.” I couldn’t look at her. Now that I knew more about her past, I wished I had complied with her wishes.

We followed Niles and my mother past many of the houses along the narrow street. As we passed each house, I began to see the pattern of how every fifth house was much longer, some reaching back into the forest. The windows had thick layers of dust, the roofs were covered in large swathes of leaves, and the stucco walls were cracked and stained from too many wet days. On several houses, moss was growing on the walls and plants had begun to infiltrate the wood siding.

“Where is everyone? I thought the Intrepid would be living a bit fancier than this,” Jackie said.

Mom laughed but didn’t turn around. “This isn’t for the Intrepid. It’s for the vile. We keep them here until we think they aren’t going to be any trouble in the world.”

I sucked in a deep breath. There were fifty buildings here, which could house hundreds of people, and not a soul would know. Even planes flying above might mistake this tiny town for a clearing in the forest. The roofs’ foliage and the weedy streets would provide the camouflage to fool most people.