Alex held out his right hand and Jessica took it. Her hands were smooth and warm as she expertly turned his hands this way and that. The movements reminded him of Iggy’s examination.
“Are you a doctor too?” he asked.
“No,” Jessica said. “But Andrea teaches me what I need to know.”
She let go of his hand and opened a nearby cabinet, taking out a small, wooden stick with red paint on the end.
“More poison?” he asked, and she laughed.
“Open your mouth.”
He hesitated, and she grinned at him.
“Don’t you trust me?” she asked, barely able to keep from laughing.
Alex opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out at her. She used the opportunity to jam the stick in his mouth and maneuver it under his tongue before pulling it back out again.
“What was that for?” he demanded as she compared the paint on the end to a chart on the wall. Alex could easily see that the color on the stick had changed.
“Dr. Bell’s formula isn’t quite right,” Jessica said, adding a drop of something from a sealed bottle to the stick and checking it again.
“Uh,” Alex said, not sure what to make of that. He would trust Iggy’s skill with his life, and had. “Are you sure Andrea shouldn’t look at that?”
Jessica raised an eyebrow at that, giving Alex a scathing look.
“If you had to make some basic runes, would you wait for Dr. Bell to do it for you?”
“No,” Alex admitted. “Sorry.”
“You should be,” Jessica said. “I know what I’m doing.”
She put on a white apron, then removed a glass bottle with a rubber stopper from a shelf. Taking it to a large tank with a spigot at its bottom, she filled it a little over halfway.
“What’s that?” Alex asked.
“Alchemical base,” Jessica said. “All elixirs use it as a foundation; now quit asking questions or I’ll never get done.”
She went to a shelf with large jars of various liquids and began adding carefully measured amounts to the base until the bottle glowed a faint yellow color.
“This will do the trick,” she said, setting it on the workbench beside Alex. “You need to take a swig of this when you get up in the morning, one at noon, and one around five. Don’t take any after that or it will keep you up all night.”
Alex picked up the bottle and looked at it.
“I’m supposed to carry this thing around with me?”
Jessica rolled her eyes.
“Men,” she said, going to a closet and rummaging around for a moment. When she emerged, she held a metal hip flask. “What would any of you do if you didn’t have a woman around to fix your problems?”
She took a small metal funnel from a rack of tools on the wall and filled the flask.
“There you go, cowboy,” she said, tucking the flask into the inside pocket of his coat. “Just like the old west.”
She looked up at him and winked, and Alex felt a sudden urge to simply lean down and kiss her.
Must be the fumes in here, he lied to himself.
“Thanks, doll,” he said, putting his hat back on as Jessica moved to one of the brewing tables. “I appreciate you’re doing this.”
“I’m sure you can show yourself out,” Jessica said, leaning against the table with her sardonic smile in place. “You need to come back tomorrow, though so I can check on you.”
Alex raised an eyebrow and Jessica smirked.
“To make sure the mix is right,” she explained with exaggerated patience.
“Sure,” Alex said, picking up the bottle with the rest of the yellow elixir. “I’ll probably be able to come by around noon.”
Jessica shook her head.
“You need to come after seven, so I can see you,” she said.
“Can’t wait to get me back?” Alex said.
She chuckled at that and shook her head.
“It needs to be at least twelve hours after you take the first dose tomorrow morning,” she said, picking up the clipboard for the elixir brewing on the table. “You can count to twelve,” she looked back over her shoulder at him. “Right?”
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow then.”
It was dark by the time Alex got home. Iggy chided him for missing the appointed, seven o’clock dinner hour, but had set aside a plate of poached salmon for him, under a cover to keep it warm. As he ate, Alex told Iggy about his meeting with Andrew Barton, his missing electric traction motor, and the third failure of a finding rune.
“Are you sure my magic isn’t getting weaker?” Alex asked over a mouthful of fish. He tried to sound nonchalant, but the thought still scared him. “Maybe whatever is happening is affecting my mind and that’s why the rune can’t make the link.”
He thought Iggy would rush to tell him he was off base, but his mentor just sat sipping his tea and thinking.
“No,” he said at last. “You haven’t been having any more problems you aren’t telling me about, though? Forgetting things or getting confused?”
“Not any more than usual,” Alex said.
“You sleeping all right?”
Alex picked up his dishes and moved to the sink.
“It’s been harder lately,” he admitted.
“Maybe you’re tired,” Iggy said.
“You ever have to work tired in the navy?”
Iggy chuckled at that.
“All the time,” he said. “Still, maybe you should turn in early tonight. A good night’s sleep wouldn’t go amiss in any case.”
Alex didn’t want to admit Iggy was right, but the moment the old man suggested bed, he felt bone weary. It was if the very idea made him tired.
“All right.” he agreed, filling the sink with soapy water. “I’ll go as soon as I’m done here.”
Iggy slapped him on the shoulder.
“Good lad.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but was interrupted by the door bell. Iggy went to answer the door, but he was back in a moment.
“Lieutenant Callahan is back,” he said. “I left him in the library.”
Alex dried his hands and found the big lieutenant standing in front of the bookcase to the left of the fireplace. He was scanning titles on the books and Alex watched as his eyes slid over a green leather-bound book and the thin red volume next to it. Both books had powerful runes on them that caused people to overlook them. The green book possessed them because Alex had hollowed it out to keep his emergency stash of money, and the red book because it was the most powerful and dangerous rune book ever written — the Archimedean Monograph.
“Is this a social call, Lieutenant?” Alex asked as he entered the room, “or has our ghost struck again?”
Callahan turned from the shelf and he didn’t look happy.
“That was some stunt you pulled at Central Office,” he said.
Alex smirked and shrugged his shoulders.
“I figure it was that or let Detweiler throw me in the cooler,” he said.
“I don’t give a damn if you spend the night in the tank,” Callahan growled. “Don’t you ever use my name to get yourself out of a jam, you hear me? I have to work with Detweiler and now his beef with you is splashin’ on me.”
Alex held up his hand in a gesture of peace. He knew when he pitted Detweiler against Callahan’s reputation earlier that the Lieutenant wouldn’t be happy about it. Still, from his perspective it was better than testing the limits of how long Detweiler could hold him without charging him with a crime.
“I read you, Lieutenant,” Alex said.
Callahan considered that for a moment, then nodded his acceptance.
“Is that why you came by?” Alex asked.
“No,” Callahan growled. “Thanks to your little stunt, Detweiler’s been beefing to Captain Rooney. Now you’re officially persona-non-grata at the Central Office. Rooney ordered me to come down here and tell you to stay the hell away from this case.”