The Accidental Alchemist Read Online Free PDF

order, connecting yoursel f to the processes.
    “The secret to immortality is personal,” I continued, “not something that can be granted to inanimate objects. Even if stories of the homunculus were true, it’s a transformation that doesn’t give a personality, a soul, or a mind of your own—meaning it can’t possibly be what happened to you. I’m glad you’re alive”—and I really was; the little creature was growing on me, especially after that meal—“but books can’t achieve that kind of transformation.”
    “Yet here I am before you,” Dorian said. “ Regardez. I am telling you, this is no normal book. I know about you. I know you can do this.”
    “What do you mean you know about me ?”
    “There is something strange about this book. A secret that you, of all people, would wish to know.”
    “Why me?”
    He sighed. It was a slow, sad, movement. “I saw what you were doing nearly eighty years ago, after you closed your shop, Elixir.”
    “How could you?” But as I spoke the words, I knew.
    “I was there,” Dorian said, “when you were nearly discovered. You, as the woman you claim to be your grandmother, were called in by un Commandant to help with a strange occurrence at a manor outside of the city.”
    I nodded slowly. I remembered it well. I was in bad shape, emotionally, at the time. It’s why I shut the shop for good and returned home to the U.S., buying a brand-new 1942 Chevy pickup truck, followed a few years later by an Airstream trailer. The truck and trailer allowed me to keep running.
    “You may recall,” he said, “that the estate had gargoyles. I had been brought to life some years before, and had come to know Paris and its surrounding areas well. I would often hide as stone, as I was that day.”
    “You were there,” I whispered. “Watching.”
    “I see it as clearly on your face now as I could see it then. You do not feel as if you belong. You never have.”
    It was so close to the truth that sadness overcame me. Dorian must have known that feeling, too. He was a gargoyle. In the shadows. Always watching, but never able to join in.
    “It was you who saved me from being discovered that day,” I said, staring at the little creature and seeing him in a new light. “You created the distraction by throwing pebbles off the roof, stopping me from telling the French police the truth about how I solved the puzzling crime, giving me time to think it through.” On that day eighty years before, I was recovering from an experience that had left me shaken and prone to acting without thinking. I would have been discovered had it not been for my anonymous savior who created a commotion on the roof.
    He shrugged. “We are alike, you and I. I have suffered the same fate. Of course I would do what I could once I realized what you were. I do not believe you understand more about why you are alive than I do. Alchemy is about one true thing, no? Yet it is not that simple. This book can help explain it. To both of us .”
    We stared at each other for several seconds before my phone chirped the soothing sound of a sandpiper.
    Dorian shook his head. “Americans,” he mumbled. “Never silencing their phones during meals.” He tossed his napkin on the table and began to clear the plates.
    I saw my contractor’s name on the phone’s screen and picked up. “Mr. Macraith.”
    “Eight in the morning work for you to get started? I like to get an early start on the day.” His voice was gravely, as I remembered, but even rougher than in our previous conversations. I hoped the jack-of-all-trades handyman was up for the large job I’d given him.
    “That works,” I said. “Thanks again for scheduling something on such short notice. I’m eager to get startedfixing up this place.”
    “Until then.” He clicked off.
    Dorian cleaned the dishes while I spread out on the dining table with his book and a cup of chamomile tea. Dorian wouldn’t tell me more about the strange tenets in the book.