“Vadim said what happened next he did not feel; he emphasized that—nothing at all. After some time she slowly raised her hands off his stomach. Beneath them, as if it were a fish being pulled out of him on an invisible line, was something alive. It looked like a big black cockroach, or some other kind of giant black insect. Horrified, Vadim tried to sit up but Heather put her hand on his chest and yelled at him to stay where he was and wait till she was finished.”
“Mills, is this true? You’re not making it up?”
“Not a word of it. Everything is true. This is exactly as Vadim told me.”
“My God. Go on.”
“When the thing had fully emerged out of his stomach, it started crawling up his chest toward his neck. Very casually Heather picked it up off his body. The moment she actually touched it, two things happened—the bug stopped moving and then it turned into gold.”
Before Beatrice could protest, Mills put a hand in his pocket and brought out something shiny about fifteen centimeters long. He held it up and she lurched backward because it was a large gold bug, so perfectly detailed and real looking that she expected to see its small legs twiddle in the air.
“Remember we were talking the other day about that TV report describing how dogs can smell different kinds of cancer?”
She nodded but kept her eyes on the gold bug.
“Watch this. Cornbread! Corn, come here.”
The dog was off to the side, head down in a bush. As soon as he heard Mills call, he came right over to them. The man put his hand down and let the dog see the gold object. Cornbread eagerly sniffed it, then whined and shook his head hard. He even stepped away from his master, then shook his big head again.
“That’s OK, boy, that’s OK.” Mills put the bug back in his pocket. “He smells the cancer.”
“But why do you have it now?”
Instead of answering Beatrice’s question, the lawyer went on. “That night Heather explained everything to him: the alchemy and how she’d always been able to do it, how she hid the talent all her life despite a fascination with it… everything.
“Vadim asked her to do something else, turn something else into gold, but she said no, he must accept that if they were to stay together. She had only prepared an azoth now to save his life. But he must never ask her to do alchemy again.”
“What’s an azoth?”
“Today we’d call it a panacea. It’s a universal medicine that cures anything.”
“Anything? AIDS? Cancer?”
“Anything. Authentic alchemists have known how to make it for centuries. But it’s almost impossible to find a true master capable of mixing one for you.
“Heather and Vadim argued about it a long time. He said they could be rich; he could do all sorts of amazing things with both the money and her power. But she was unmoved. When he became insistent and the discussion got ugly between them, she said if he insisted, it would be the end of their marriage.
“Vadim was a crook but not a stupid man, at least not that stupid yet. He knew when to back off. He agreed to do what she asked. Just knowing that she had cured him of terminal stomach cancer was enough for then. He was very grateful—for a while.”
“Heather had never used the power, never once before the time she cured him?”
Mills picked up a stick and threw it for the dog “Very rarely. Not since she was an adult. Sometimes when she was young and her mother was desperate for money to pay unexpected bills, but only then. She said they got to know certain jewelers who would pay cash for their gold and not ask questions about where it came from.”
“Amazing.” Beatrice couldn’t help admiring Heather Cooke, if what Mills told her was true. Imagine having that extraordinary ability but never using it.
The lawyer interrupted her musing. “The thing most people don’t know about alchemy is there are many different kinds, one more obscure than the other. There’s the classic ‘dross into gold’ variety that you mentioned. But another that’s way more interesting is something called introvert or internal alchemy that deals with the mystical and contemplative aspects of the science. It deals with transformation.”
Beatrice frowned “You think alchemy is a science, Mills? Do you really? I always thought it was sort of—”
He answered firmly, “It is definitely a science, and a very old one. In various forms it dates back to the beginning of mankind, believe me. Remember Prometheus stealing fire from the gods? Think of him as the first alchemist. Many of the tenets of modern chemistry are based on experiments and discoveries that alchemists made centuries ago.”
They walked along in silence, Beatrice thinking it all over, Mills waiting for a sign from her to continue. Cornbread brought the stick back, eager for it to be thrown again. Two bicycle riders rode slowly past, sharing a laugh.
Beatrice stopped and pointed at her friend. “You’re going to tell me that Vadim screwed up. Because he was a crook, I assume it was because of that.”
Mills grinned. “Go on.”
Beatrice looked at her feet and thought about it some more. “He pulled off a big deal, or tried to pull one off with the Russian gangsters he’d contacted on their trip across the States.”
“Keep going—you’re close.”
“But everything went wrong and he ended up having to beg her to make some more gold so they wouldn’t kill him.”
The lawyer pretended to clap. “Pretty good, as far as I know. The truth is Heather would never tell me the details of exactly what happened because she thought knowing them might endanger me.”
“Why you, Mills?”
“Because the guys Vadim was involved with were frightening and ruthless, according to her. I assumed they were responsible for his death although nothing could be proved. Whatever Heather did for them I guess was enough, though, because nothing happened to Vadim… then. By the time he was killed later, she was long gone from his life.
“When he came to her for help that time, she said she’d do it but wanted a divorce after it was over. Vadim thought she was just bluffing but she wasn’t.
“She did her alchemy again and made whatever it was he needed. But when the crisis passed, Vadim wouldn’t divorce her. He obviously had other plans for her and her ability.” Mills took the stick out of the dog’s drooly mouth and threw it as far as he could. “But by the time I met the guy, she must have done something pretty damned scary to convince him otherwise because Vadim was terrified of her. He would have divorced her in two seconds if that were possible. Neither of them told me what it was she had done, but it sure worked. That first time we met, Vadim hadn’t been in my office five minutes before he started pleading, ‘You’re her friend. She loves you. Please tell her not to turn me into gold. Please don’t let her do that.’ I didn’t know if he meant it literally or she’d done something equally terrifying to convince him. But the divorce went very quickly. When it was over he gave me this hat and thanked me for intervening. I didn’t say a thing to her about that, but he didn’t need to know.”
“And what happened to Heather after that?”
Mills shook his head. “I don’t know. She disappeared and I never heard from her again.”
“You never saw her after the divorce?”
Mills shook his head again.
Beatrice smiled, reached over, and touched his cheek. “Liar. Thank you for being such a good liar. I bet you tell that story to all your female clients.”
Mills’s mouth dropped and then slowly curved into a wide, happy smile. “It’s you? It’s really you?”