“No, Thea,” said my father. “It is too dangerous for you. You’ve only just begun to heal. We don’t know what causes it—the smoke alone—” He stared at the fire, realization dawning. “You shouldn’t be here!”
Vellacott reached for my arm. I jerked away, nearly losing my balance. Valentin pushed my father back with one hand.
“Karl,” said Valentin to the German by the door. “Nimm ihn raus.” Take him out.
Vellacott’s eyes widened in alarm as Karl advanced on him. “No. No. This is too dangerous!” Karl seized my father’s arm and dragged him easily to the door. “Thea, this boy is not worth—”
Karl slammed the door shut, mercifully cutting short my father’s pleas. It came as no surprise to me that my father was also on the list of those who did not feel Will was worth my sacrifice. I turned to meet his eyes and found him looking uneasily at the woman in the corner.
Rahel had resumed her seat. Her hands were folded neatly on her lap. She had fixed Will with a cold glare that put me in mind of a cobra mesmerizing its prey. The muscles of Valentin’s arm tensed against mine. Somehow the subtraction of my father and his protests had left the room more full, thick with unspoken but nonetheless obvious hatred. I thought of the reasons Rahel had to wish Will harm. Something she had said at dinner that first night came back to me with an ominous clarity.
Some debts cannot be paid by anyone but the debtor.
I took a step forward, pulling Valentin with me.
“Why are you here?” I asked Rahel in German.
“Why am I here?” She turned her head toward me. Her expression did not change. “Why am I here, in my own father’s house?”
I met her cold gaze. “Yes.”
“My dear,” she said in English, mimicking my father’s false tone. “I am only here to witness the making of history. The fulfillment of every alchemist’s hopes.”
“You care nothing for alchemy,” I said.
“That was when I thought it was charlatanry.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Now it seems it might be real.”
I searched her eyes, wishing I could believe that was all she had in mind and wondering what I could do if it was something else. Rahel saw my hesitation and sighed.
“You have made a bargain for something dear to me,” she said. “I am here to be certain you have delivered nothing less than was promised.”
“Something dear to you,” I repeated. “Do you mean—”
We both looked at Will.
“You mean his life?” I finished.
“Say rather, his death,” Rahel said. “Valentin says I must give up his death.”
She gazed at Will, her cobra look growing more pronounced.
“For the Philosopher’s Stone itself? It may be a fair trade. But believe me, my dear Miss Hope, I will accept nothing less.”
She leaned back slightly in her chair and folded her hands on her knees. “You had better get to work.”
Will stayed at my side, helping when he could. He held me steady when I shook. He put his hands on my face and called me back when I started to slip. Rahel watched us, coiled in the corner. Valentin stayed closer to hand, standing just far enough that he could still reach me in two or three quick steps. Will and I ground the stibnite. We knelt by the fire, and I carefully opened the glass egg. I brought the hot poker to its side and heated it through. Yellow smoke filled my mind, but I blinked it away again and again. Gently, so gently, I sprinkled the stibnite into the warmed ovum. I slumped back into Will’s arms and watched in an agony of expectation while the tiny grains sank into the now again white substance.
Nothing happened. I closed my eyes, buried my head in Will’s chest. Darkness clawed at me. I had held it off as long as I could. His heart stuttering in my ear would be the last thing my sane mind comprehended. And then.
It is time.
“Bee.” Will’s voice was low, then sharp and loud. “Bee, look!”
I came back. I opened my eyes to see the red sparks in the mustard smoke of the fire. The substance in the ovum had ignited. It burned through, the gold of fire, and then a dark, pure ruby red. Just as it had done when my mother attacked me.
“Hold me,” I whispered. “Don’t let me hurt it.”
But to my relief, I didn’t want to hurt it. I had an urge to seize it, to hold it close, but not to harm it. I loved it. I thought, with horror, of how my mother had thrown her own against the wall, shattering it. Murdering it. I would as soon murder my own child.
But after all, she had tried to do that as well.
The color deepened, and yet at the same time grew more luminous. I gazed at it, longing to touch it, but somehow certain that I had to wait.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.
A light flashed out of it, so bright it blinded. Will cried out, and so did Rahel and Valentin, as though in pain. But I felt no pain, only warmth, and something else. Something wonderful that wanted to come into me.
“Is it finished?”
Will rose, pulling me with him. I didn’t want to. I rose but kept my eyes on my Stone.
“Is it finished?” Rahel demanded.
It wasn’t. It should have been, but I could feel its incompletion in my body and on my breath. It was pulling me toward it, as the madness had done, but with a relentless light instead of darkness. It wanted me, to give me something, and to take something in return. And it knew, as certainly as I knew all this, that I must not tell Rahel. This was private, something between the Stone, and myself, and no one else.
“Yes,” I lied. A sweat had broken out on my brow. I wanted to kneel
