The Fake Heart (Time Alchemist Series) (32 page)

Jack clicked his finger and, like a dog, Marjorie was right by his side. “Hold the girl.”

The girl.
I was just “the girl” to him now. I wanted to spit on his perfect face. Marjorie grimaced, but obliged, holding my bad arm with a vise like grip. Her hand was like a large block of ice; the cold seeping into my skin and through my very bones.

I watched Jack circle the grave, his blonde hair almost white in the moonlight, making him look almost angelic.
Almost.
Finally, he paused right in front of it, kneeling down on the ground. He placed a large hand on the ground, his nails digging into the dirt as he breathed. There was a low rumbling all around us; my bones even felt like they were shaking. Then just as soon as it came, it was gone.

Jack’s eyes snapped open, and a Cheshire-like grin a
ppeared on his face, “This is it. This is the moment. I’ve finally found it.
”

My heart dropped to my toes.

With a blinding white light that burned my eyes, the ground beneath us shook and split apart in front of Kathleen’s grave. Then a huge, gaping hole was left, revealing a black coffin.

We were really about to dig up her grave. Panic flitted through me. Jack (for some reason, I just couldn’t seem to bring myself to call him Ivan) was going to take
the Elixir. He was going to win.

Jack knelt down again, the earth below her site sprung up, lifting the heavy coffin to the top. It was covered in scratches and dust, and a heavy stank of something wet and decaying filled my nostrils until I nearly vomited on Marjorie’s fluffy coat sleeve.

He had the eyes of a mad man as he used his alchemy to shoot the top off, leaving the black cover dented and out of the way, lying on the ground like broken trash.

I nearly cried at the sight before me. There was Kathleen Hearst’s decaying body, her skin already gray and ashy, revealing white bones beneath. The clothes she was buried
in
, it looked as if it were a white silk gown, covered her like an oversized blanket.

And on the hollow of her neck was the locket, shaped like a delicate oval—just like in her obituary picture.
And inside it held the stone.

“Retrieve it,” Jack said to me, “At once.”

I almost laughed. Even the great Ivan Novak was scared of touching a dead body, but when Marjorie shoved me, hard, towards his direction I almost ran. The smell of death
mixed with overturn earth
was too much as I fell to my knees, dry heaving on the ground.

“Get up!” he barked, kicking my side. I
yelped,
tears and snot dripping down my face before I crawled towards the grave, trying to ignore Marjorie’s giggles of delight at my pathetic state. Kathleen’s hollow eye sockets seemed to plead
Let me rest, child,
let me rest
until I squeezed my e
yes so tightly I thought my eye
lids would tear. Quickly, but with shaking hands, I reached over and felt the ice cold necklace touch my fingers, and then with a quick snap I yanked it from her poor neck.

The space between her collarbones looked empty as I held the jewelry in my p
alms. A wave of nausea hit me
full force. I stumbled to my feet as Jack reached for the necklace, but I held it out of his reach.

“Fix her coffin and put her back in her grave so she can rest in peace!” I yelled feeling hot with fury and nearly on the verge of passing out, “Or so help me I will break this stupid Elixir so you’ll never have it!”

I raised it above a neighboring grave in a threatening manner. I knew I couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t just leave and have poor Kathleen’s body just left out like that. It was way too cruel and disrespectful. Marjorie stepped forward, raising her hand towards me. The air instantly plummeted, until Jack let out an ill
-
tempered sigh.

“Very well,” and with a quick flash of light,
Kathleen’s
dead body was back in its site, the earth around it smooth as a blanket. It was like it had never been touched, although
I’m pretty sure that whoever digs
it up in years to come (if something like that ever occurred), I wonder how many would question a dented coffin
lid
?

No matter. Kathleen Hearst was back in her grave, although my heart felt like black tar at holding her precious heirloom—the same, precious jewelry she had as a little girl that gave her hope and saved her life. I was a horrible, horrible person.

I didn’t even notice
Jack appear in front of me as he yanked my hand away, and snatched the necklace up, clutching it in his greedy hands. I reached out to grab it again, but he sent me flying
, pushing me away with his arm
, and I landed in the ground with a shriek. D
irt and grass got in my mouth, and
I coughed them up. My mouth tasted like vo
mit and my throat was unbearably
dry, like dust. My body hurt all over.

Jack and Marjorie seemed to have forgotten
about
me as they gathered near each other. Marjorie cheered, her beautiful brown hair flowing in the air as she looked longingly at Jack, cheeks flushed like a little girl waiting to open her Christmas present.

But then Jack’s eyes, wide with glee and triumph, began to turn into surprise. And then they hardened completely.

“NO!” his voice seemed to reverberate all throughout the cemetery,
scaring a few sleeping bats from
their homes in the thick trees. “
Goddamnit
,
Goddamnit
!”

“M-Master Ivan!”
Marjorie falter
ed
, trying to reach him, until the ground beneath our feet started to shake violently, and she fell to the ground. I stayed in my spot, holding the ends of somebody’s grave to try and hold still as I witnessed what was going on.

“Damn you Guinevere!
God damn you
!
” he howled, the ground shaking even faster as rocks jutted up and down from the cold earth, like in those arcade games of whack-a-mole. Even the nearby graves were starting to crack from the pressure of his alchemy going out of control.

Marjorie, looking as pale as milk, crawled towards him and wrapped her arms around one of his legs. “I beg for your forgiveness Master Ivan!” she cried over the thunderous cracks of the earth, “As long as we are together, nothing can stop us from achiev
ing your immortality! Nothing—”

Ivan, his eyes completely black, like death, shot her a withering look. She shrank even further. And all of a sudden, the shaking and cracking stopped.

It was a deathly quiet, until Ivan finally s
poke, his words clear as a bell.
“
That was your final chance, Marjorie.
I have no use for a failure like you anymore.”

A large jagged point of the earth shot up, snapping Marjorie’s body in half like a doll.
Her eyes wide with shock and hurt.
Her mouth was open in a large O, but her cries were stuck.
She had no time to let them out. Blood spurted out of her open mouth. The two halves of her body lay motionless on the ground; deep pools of dark blood circling around the ends.

Then any light or hope she had in her eyes faded in seconds.

Jack threw Kathleen’s necklace in my direction as he screamed in fury towards the night sky. It bounded towards me and I snat
ched it up, the locket
already wide open.

But no
Elixir inside.

CHAPTER 28

“Everything I’ve
worked for! Everything is ruined!
Ruined!”
Jack screeched, slamming his fists into the nearby graves so hard that his hands began spurting blood. The graves themselves cracked underneat
h the pressure, splitting like
cracked
, bloodied teeth
. “Curse you Guinevere! Curse you to hell!”

The earth around us shook so violently
that
I stumbled forward. My chin and hands scraped against the ground as I watch
ed in horror as Jack’s temper got
the best of him.

I have to calm him down,
I thought,
What
do I do? What do I do?!

I need him to think I’m on his side before I end up like Marjorie. I held back the bile burning in my throat when my eyes caught sight of her empty ones, her face frozen in time. She had been so loyal to him, willing to kill for him, and he had killed her in a horrible, uncontrollable rage.

I saw the look of pain in her eyes—she was in love with Ivan. And he had tossed her aside like a useless
, broken glass doll
.

And I would be next if I didn’t do something!

“Jack!” I screamed over the rumbling, “Jack!
Listen to me!”

His own screaming had stopped, but the shaking still continued, “Jack! Jack! I know how we can fix this! Listen to me!”

I screamed so hard my throat felt raw, but still I kept screaming, until minutes later, the small earthquake he was causing finally dwindled down to an almost gentle thrumming. He was hunched over, breathing heavily. But his inky black orbs found mine. I couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran up my spine.

He let out a throaty laugh.
“What makes you think you can do anything, you stupid girl?”

I bit my split lip, a fresh bit of blood leaking out. The taste of copper and cotton was stuck in my mouth. I really wished I was some cool water alchemist so I could get something to drink.

You need to play this right, Em
ery
. You can do this.

“I want to help you Jack,” I pleaded, getting up on my knees. The tattered and bloody ends of my dress sticking to my legs like glue. “Please, I just want to help you.”

He let out a bark of laughter, shoulders shaking, “You?
You
want to help me? How pathetic can you get? Women with their fragile little hearts are so easily swayed, ready to jump at my every command. Every generation is the same. It’s beyond help.”

I glanced over at the pieces of Marjorie’s dead body. Her eyes wide, as if she was pleading for he
r love to spare her. I grimaced.
“Marjorie loved you.”

“She was a fool,” he said, “Nothing
but my pawn to get what I want
.”

Here it was, the opportunity. I snatched it. “What did you want, Jack?” my voice dry. I dug my nails into the dirt floor, praying this would work. “Why did you search so hard for the Elixir?”

“Isn’t it obvious?
” he sneered, staggering to a standing position, “I wanted what was rightfully mine!
Immortality!”
He smashed his boot against the stone and I let out a screech as the floor beneath it cracked in half, swallowing the round headstone in its crevice. “It was mine! It should have been mine!
Why didn’t that old fool see that?!”

“You mean
Flamel
,” I swallowed, backing against the stone that was still intact so I wouldn’t be his next target, “
Flamel
gave the Elixir to Guinevere—not you.”

“That’s right,” he gave a strange sad laugh, “Everything had gone according to plan—we would have both obtained immortality and spend our lives together, but
he
made the one mistake of giving Guinevere the Elixir instead of me!
He betrayed me! And she as well!

“
It was always just the two of us—beautiful, graceful Guinevere, for my eyes only. She loved me as much as I loved her. We
planned
to run away together—away from her pathetic excuse of a husband who complained and my pitiful wife who cried endlessly about my work, away from the judgmental eyes of our people—and become the most feared alchemists of the world!

“But when I read of
Fla
mel’s
will—how s
he
would get the Elixir all to herself, instead of
me
.
I became furious! How dare he treat me like that, after I had served him all my life! So I planned. I would take what was rightfully mine—both the Elixir and Guinevere away from his greedy hands.
But I was too late! That bastard disappeared, and Guinevere—my dear, sweet, beloved Guinevere—had turned on me!”

“It was rightfully yours,” I lied, trying to stand up, “You were his best pupil. He should have trusted you more.”