Ghost of a Chance

17 The Checkup

Alex wanted to go home and wait for Danny’s call, but he still had to go see Jessica. As much as he felt he was on to something, going home wouldn’t make Danny call any faster, and he definitely didn’t want his tremors coming back.

It was just after six when Alex walked up to the brick, two-story house with the alchemist sign in the yard. This time he didn’t bother with the front door, opening the gate to the back yard instead and following the paved path around to the back.

He peered in the long bank of windows next to the door and saw Jessica moving from table to table in the back of the dimly lit lab. She’d pick up a clipboard on one table, make adjustments to the equipment or add things to the various jars, then make notes and move on. The lab was mostly dark, with hanging lights over each table, and Jessica’s red hair would shine as she moved beneath them. Alex watched her for a few moments, then knocked on the glass. Jessica was so startled she nearly dropped the clipboard she was holding.

Alex took off his hat and waved at her as she made her way through the maze of tables to the mud room and the back door.

“You startled me,” she said, a little flushed.

“Sorry,” he said with a smile.

Jessica smiled back. She wore he work apron over a cream-colored dress, and she had her green scarf around her neck. Alex assumed she liked to accent the green of her eyes.

“Well, no harm done.” She held open the door so Alex could come in, then shut it behind him.

“I was disappointed that you didn’t come see me on Tuesday,” she said in a voice that implied that Alex should be sorry too.

“I got shot,” he said with his best, trust me smile.

She raised an eyebrow while running an appraising eye over him, looking for any signs that his statement was true.

“It was a busy day,” he said.

“I’ll bet,” Jessica said, leading the way back into the lab. “Since you’re early, you’ll have time to tell me all about it while I make my rounds.”

She walked over to the table where she’d been standing when Alex knocked on the window and picked up its clipboard.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked.

Jessica showed him the clipboard. It might as well have been written in Chinese for all the good that did. The paper on the board was covered in columns with each one headed by a time. To the right of that were some pre-written notes and some blank spaces.

As Alex watched, Jessica noted the time from a clock on the wall, then checked it against an alarm clock on the table. The clock on the wall was elaborate and ornate, with carvings of animals all around it and a large set of counterweights hanging from it. A brass pendulum hung from it as well, rocking gently back and forth while emitting tick-tock sounds. Alex had seen clocks like this before; they were prized for their accuracy and very expensive.

Finding that the clocks matched, Jessica wound the alarm clock and set it to go off at eight-thirty.

“What’s that for?”

“This is when I need to stir the solution,” she said, putting a check mark in an empty column next to the printed time of eight-thirty.

“So you set the clock to remind you,” Alex said, nodding with understanding. He looked around the lab at the almost two dozen tables and their glassware and burners. “Do you have to do that with all of them?”

Jessica laughed, or rather giggled. The sound was girlish and held none of her usual, sultry tone. She covered her mouth as if she were embarrassed, but Alex knew she was smiling behind her hand.

“Of course I do,” she said. “That’s what I do here, make sure the major potions are done right.”

She put down the clipboard and moved to the next table. This one didn’t have a light hanging above it, so she moved back into the light of the previous table with the new clipboard.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Alex asked. Most of the room’s lights had shades and hung directly over their tables. “Magelights are relatively cheap.”

“Some potions are sensitive to light,” she explained, putting the clipboard down and bringing a sealed can and a ring of measuring spoons from the dark table. She carefully measured out some brown powder from the can, then added it to a jar of liquid bubbling away in the dark.

“You’re stalling,” she said, moving on to the next table. “You’re supposed to be telling me about how you got shot, and why you think that’s a good excuse for missing our appointment.”

Alex signed and began relating the story of his looking into Andrew Barton’s stolen motor and how he’d been shot in an alley outside the Lightning Lord’s factory.

“Is he handsome?” Jessica asked with her half-smile in place.

“Who?” Alex asked, surprised by the question.

“Barton,” Jessica said, as if the answer were self-evident.

“I suppose he’s handsome enough,” he said. “He’s worth over a million, and most people find that more than attractive enough.”

Jessica smirked at that.

“Indeed most people would,” she said, setting another alarm clock. “So did you find the Lightning Lord’s motor?”

“Not yet,” Alex said.

He started explaining the kidnapping of Leroy Cunningham and how the man that shot him was involved. She listened attentively, asking the occasional question as she worked her way along the tables to the far back of the room.

“Done?” Alex asked as she hung up the clipboard on the final table.

“Not quite,” she said, nodding to a heavy door set in the wall. It had a large, new-looking brass lock above the handle.

Alex hadn’t seen inside this room, but it was next to Jessica’s room, so it was likely to be the same general size.

“What’s this?” he asked as she pulled out a small key ring.

For a brief moment a frown crossed her lips, but she replaced it almost instantly with her sardonic smile.

“This is the reason I’m here,” she said, inserting a key in the lock. She turned it and pushed the door open. “Don’t touch the handle,” she said, reaching inside to switch on a magelight. “It’s got a needle coated in a nasty contact poison hidden inside it.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at her, but she just shrugged.

“What?” she said. “Don’t you have security measures around your valuables?”

Alex thought about his vault. The contents of it were probably worth several Gs but it wasn’t like anyone could break in and steal it. Still, storing his gear in an extra-dimensional room was pretty extreme as security measures went.

“I suppose I do,” he said, being careful not to get near the door as he entered.

Inside the room was another table and what looked like an alcohol distillery. A complex series of burners, beakers, tubes, evaporators, and valves filled the table, and Alex could see several different colored solutions at the various stages. A rack of various jars, cans, and stoppered bottles was mounted on one wall along with a clipboard and a thick notebook. There was another alarm clock on the table, and Jessica carried it outside to check it against the big clock on the wall.

“You still haven’t said what this is,” Alex said when she returned.

“My best friend is named Linda Kellin,” Jessica said.

“Any relation to the Doc?”

Jessica nodded.

“Her daughter.” She took a deep breath as if steadying herself. “Linda has polio,” she said.

Alex felt a knot in his stomach. Not everyone died from polio, but it could leave people crippled or worse.

“So you’re trying to develop a cure,” Alex guessed.

“Yes,” Jessica said. “It’s why I came to work with Dr. Kellin.”

“So, how is it going?”

“Linda… she’s in an iron lung upstate,” Jessica said, fighting to control her emotions. “We think we’re making progress, but it’s really just trial and error at this point.”

She turned her head away and wiped her eyes furiously with the back of her hand. Alex wanted to reach out and hold her, tell her it was going to be all right, but he had no idea if that was true. At best it would have been a comforting lie.

“Is that why Dr. Kellin took you on as her protégé?” he asked, desperate to fill up the sudden-yet-terrible silence. “I thought alchemists usually only passed on their knowledge to family.”

“I could ask you the same thing about Dr. Bell,” she said. “But yes, Linda is Dr. Kellin’s only family, so she had no one to pass her recipe book on to. When I told her I’d do anything to help Linda, she started training me.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Six years now,” Jessica said.

Alex was stunned at that.

“You’ve been living this way, sleeping during the day and brewing potions all night, every night for six years?” hee wondered. “When do you have time to go to dinner or catch a picture?”

“Why, Mr. Lockerby,” Jessica said, her smirk returning and mischief in her eyes. “Are you asking me out?”

Alex hadn’t meant that, not at all, but he was a trained observer and a man of action.

“Of course I am,” he lied. “Unfortunately, you don’t seem to have the time.”

She broke into her girlish giggle again.

“It’s true I have to mind the lab,” she said. “But there are long stretches when I don’t have anything to do. Usually, I read, but I can make… exceptions.” She stepped close to him so they were almost touching, and looked up into his eyes. “As luck would have it, there’s a three-hour window opening on Saturday night at seven. You can take me to dinner, someplace nice, since as you pointed out, I don’t get out much. Pick me up here?”

“I will,” Alex said, without bothering to wonder if he even had the time. For a woman like Jessica, he’d make the time.

“Now give me a minute,” she said. “And then I’ll check your nerve tonic.”

She turned to the experiment and began taking measurements and adjusting mixtures. At every step, she noted down what she had done in the book from the shelf, then checked off some things on the clipboard.

“So,” she said, pulling the door shut once she was done and re-locking it. “You shook off four bullets the other day?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be poisoned?” Alex asked, pointing at the doorknob.

“If you turn it, a needle will pop out and stick your palm,” Jessica said, her voice easy as if what she’d said were the most normal thing in the world. “I’m careful, but I forget every now and again. It stings like the dickens, but, as you might remember, since I told you last time you were here, I’m immune.”

Alex had forgotten about Jessica and the poison paint job on her nails. He glanced down and found them the same off-red color they had been before. Maybe the color was a result of the toxin.

“Now,” Jessica said, leading him over to the workbench by the windows at the front of the room. “Take off your jacket and roll up your sleeve. I need some blood.”

Alex’s face soured at that and she laughed at him.

“What’s the matter, tough guy,” she said, actually leaning against his chest. “You aren’t afraid of a little needle, are you?”

Alex had to take a breath before answering. Her presence that close was about as intoxicating as David Watson’s single-malt.

“In my experience, it’s never a little needle,” he said, only half-joking.

She smiled and patted his face.

“Don’t worry,” she said, her lips drawn up in an adorable pout. “If you’re a good boy, I’ll get you a lollipop.”

Alex took off his jacket and laid it on the table before rolling up his shirt sleeve. Jessica motioned him onto a wooden stool, then put down a syringe with a needle that looked about the diameter of a swizzle stick. He knew his mind must be exaggerating it, but he decided he didn’t want to find out. As she tied a rubber hose around his arm, he resolved to look the other way until she was done.

“Okay,” she said, a few pain-filled moments later. “All done. Hold this on your arm.”

She gave him a cotton ball and he pressed it over the puncture wound in the crook of his arm. Jessica moved to the next workbench down and squirted some blood from the syringe into a glass dish. She added some chemicals from various bottles, then heated the dish over a burner for a few seconds.

“I think I like Dr. Kellin’s method better,” Alex said, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped.

“She cheats,” Jessica said. “This would be a lot easier with a Lens of Seeing, though.”

“Can’t you just make your own?”

Jessica snorted at that.

“Dr. Kellin says I’m not ready yet.” She swirled a toothpick into the blood mixture in the dish. “So, I do things the old-fashioned way.”

Jessica pulled the toothpick out and Alex noticed that the end had turned a lime green color. She held it up to a chart with various colors on it and nodded.

“I see the problem,” she said at last. “You’ve got the wrong kind of blood.”

Alex had no idea what to make of that.

“Well, it’s the blood I came with,” he said, a little defensively.

Jessica flashed him her sardonic grin.

“I mean the wrong kind for the tonic,” she explained. “You have O-negative blood. That’s fairly rare.”

“Is that bad?”

Jessica shook her head, sending her red hair flying.

“Usually it’s a very good thing. Your blood can be used on someone with any blood type. It means you’re a universal donor. The problem is that while this tonic is fine for most people, it has a strange reaction with you O-negative types.”

Alex reached inside his folded jacket and pulled out the little flask Jessica had given him days earlier.

“So is this going to work now that Dr. Kellin adjusted it?”

“Yes,” Jessica said, moving back to him and examining the needle mark on his arm. The bleeding had indeed stopped so she pulled a Band Aid from the pocket of her apron and stuck it over the wound. When she was done, she leaned down and kissed it.

Alex could feel the silky touch of her lips even after she’d raised her head back up.

“There you go,” she said, looking into his eyes. “All better.”

That urge to kiss her was back and Alex wondered if he should bother to fight it. It turned out not to matter since his second of hesitation was enough for Jessica to step back and move away toward another workbench.

Alex rolled his sleeve back down and buttoned it, then slipped on his jacket. He had just resolved to go kiss her anyway, despite the moment having passed, when one of the alarm clocks on a workbench in the back began ringing. The sound echoed off the stone floor, filing the space with its cacophony.

He looked at Jessica and for the briefest moment; she looked annoyed. Her sardonic mask came back a moment later and she turned to him.

“You’d better go,” she said. “This will take a while.”

Alex really hated that alarm clock.

“Saturday then?” he verified.

“Seven sharp,” she said, sauntering toward the back of the lab, her hips swaying. “Don’t be late.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Alex said, picking up his hat.