Chapter 27
27
A listair was beside himself by the time they reached The Pride. Sam wasn’t at the jail, and none of the officers remembered seeing a prohee fitting Johnston’s description. Which led to an inevitable conclusion: Johnston had taken him.
Why the hell had Alistair brought Sam along to pick up the booze? He’d been so afraid of losing him to whatever Nagorski was planning, he’d forgotten there were other dangers in the world. He should never have assumed Johnston would just go away and leave them alone.
Now, all Alistair could think about was the things Johnston might do to Sam as punishment for Alistair’s defiance. Hold him hostage, beat him…
Dump him in the lake wearing a pair of cement shoes.
“Don’t panic,” Wanda said as she parked her roadster in the garage near The Pride. “Hopefully, Johnston will contact us. He might have already phoned The Pride. Whatever he wants, we’ll give it to him if it means getting Sam back.”
“This is my fault,” Alistair said as they climbed out. “I shouldn’t have pushed back against Johnston. I should have just taken the damned Emerald Tablet. I should’ve bonded with Sam before that fucker Nagorski came into the picture.”
Wanda growled at him. “No one can see the future, so don’t let your regrets distract you from what’s happening now.”
She was right, of course. They closed up the garage, then headed down the sidewalk and then the stairs to The Pride’s basement door.
Doris opened it, looking troubled. “There you are. Norman Rose came in, said he thought he saw Sam in trouble. I told him Sam was with you, but?—”
Alistair pushed past her. “Where is Rose?” he demanded, even as he frantically scanned the speakeasy.
There—alone at a table in the corner, half-shielded by enormous potted ferns. Alistair made a beeline for him, drawing complaints from the dancers and drinkers as he jostled elbows and stepped on toes. He didn’t care.
“Where is Sam?” he snapped when he reached the table.
Rose froze as he reached for his drink. “It was him, then! I knew it.”
Alistair lunged half-across the table, palms smacking to either side of Rose’s drink. “Where is he?”
The blood drained from Rose’s face, and he jerked back so fast he nearly upset his chair. “Down the street—the apartment hotel! I eat there sometimes. I was coming out of the restaurant and saw him in the lobby with another man. I started to greet him, but he looked scared and just mouthed ‘help’ at me. At least, I think it was ‘help?’”
“What else?”
“That’s all! I came straight here, because I assumed someone else would know what was going on, but Doris seemed convinced it couldn’t have been him because he was supposed to be on the other side of town with you.” Norman held up both hands. “I can’t tell you anything else.”
Why Johnston had taken Sam to an apartment hotel, Alistair couldn’t imagine. It didn’t matter; all that mattered was he was close, and they were getting him back.
“Clear out!” Alistair ordered. “We’re shutting down.”
Rose immediately downed his drink and stood up. A few other patrons looked at him uncertainly, so he raised his voice to be heard above the jazz band. “Everyone out! Now!”
Wanda took to the microphone on the small stage; the band fell silent as she did so. “Sorry, folks,” she said, “we’ve got a tip we’re going to be raided. So why don’t all you fine people remove yourself from the premises. We’ll be open again tomorrow, I’m sure of it.”
A potential raid was a perfect excuse, since it was the only thing guaranteed to get the crowd moving with no argument. Coats were retrieved, cigarettes put out, and drunken friends supported on shoulders. Within a few minutes, Doris locked the door behind the last customers.
Reinhold emerged from the kitchen, and Philip came out from behind the bar. “Let’s go get Sam back,” Philip said.
“Teresa, stay here,” Wanda ordered. “Take cougar form so Reinhold can remain in contact.”
Teresa looked unhappy about being left behind, but with her arm in a sling there was little choice. She kissed Reinhold on a cheek misshapen from a war wound, then said, “I’ll lie down in the back, so I don’t have to put any weight on my arm once I’m shifted.”
“Good idea.” Wanda looked over at Holly, who had taken a seat near the stage. “You should stay here, baby.”
Holly sniffed. “You’re forgetting which one of us carried messages to the front lines during the war. I’ll stay back if there’s any fighting, but I’m going with you.”
Wanda looked like she wanted to object, so Alistair broke in. “We’re wasting valuable time.”
“You’re right.” She made for the door. “Let’s go.”
Sam froze, horror clogging his throat. “You—you killed him?”
Vic sighed. He turned to face Sam, his expression almost pitying. “Do you recall the day I invited you to my private lab? I mentioned the pursuit of the elixir of life.”
It had slipped his mind, amidst so much other information. “I think so. Yes.”
“We have hexes for this, and hexes for that…but tell me, Sam—do you think the true purpose of magic is to make drinks fizz sparks, or animate gadgets in a store window, or make fireworks spell out inane messages?” Vic shook his head. “No. This gift was meant for no mean endeavors, and we degrade it and ourselves each time we turn it to such ends. The hexmakers of old understood it could be used for so much more. Its true purpose is to set us beyond the reach of death.”
Vic’s witches, dead in the mud of France. The mayoral assassination, ending the White City in darkness.
Jake long dead; Mom dying.
“What have you done?” he asked softly, not sure he wanted the answer.
“It’s what we’ve done.” Vic put his hands on Sam’s shoulders, as if to hold him in place. “The chain of hexes we’ve constructed isn’t meant to create a panacea. The formulae in the lab were the hidden recipe for creating the elixir of life itself.”
Sam licked dry lips. “And Bobby?”
Vic sighed and let his arms fall. “All things are contained in their opposites. To make life, one must begin with death.”
What had Vic written on the paper he’d found in the athanor? “True prima materia is human.” he said. At Vic’s expression of surprise, he said, “I found the page you hid in the athanor on the day of the raid.”
Rather than being angry, Vic beamed at him, as if at a prize student. “You’ve grasped it. The human body is the prima materia to make the elixir of life, from which all else flows.”
“You tried to poison Bobby—did poison Bobby—but he escaped.” Sam could almost feel the dying man’s weight in his arms again, pulling him to the ground.
“I miscalculated.” Vic grimaced. “He didn’t die as quickly as I’d anticipated. Instead, he knocked me down and ran. I went after him, only to see him disappear into The Pride. Obviously, I was worried he’d managed to tell someone what had happened. Still, I didn’t want to waste his sacrifice, so I stayed until the funeral home came to collect his body. From there, it was a simple matter of removing it from their hands and bringing it here. The kitchen came equipped with a modern refrigerator, so was the perfect place to store him.”
“Oh.” Sam’s body felt numb with horror. Bobby might have been spying for Fabiano, but he hadn’t deserved what happened to him.
“I removed his heart, allowed it to attain a state of putrefaction, then used the first hex of the process and burned it to black ash. We’ve been working with those ashes ever since.”
Nausea crawled up Sam’s throat. He’d been handling human ashes, thinking they were something else, wood perhaps… “Purification. Incorporation.”
“This is why we’re perfect for each other.” Vic put his hand on Sam’s back, and it was all Sam could do not to flinch away. “The soul ascends and is purified, and the body remaining on earth is also purified via the ashes. Now that all corruption has been removed, the soul is reunited with the body in time for the final step.”
He drew Sam further back, past the industrial stove to in front of the closed door of an enormous refrigerator.
On a preparation table in front of it lay a naked body, bound to the steel with ropes. It was Bobby’s long-missing corpse, the nails and lips blue, the eyes sunken. Black thread marked where an incision in his chest had been stitched closed.
As Sam watched, Bobby slowly turned his head and opened his eyes.