The Masquerading Magician Read Online Free PDF Page A

a lot of people with bigger egos than yours. People who want the attention. And don’t you remember how he said he needed a volunteer of legal age ‘in these modern times,’ like he’d known previous times?”
    I frowned. The magic show that night was straight out of the 1800s, it had sparked an uncomfortable sense of familiarity, and Prometheus clearly enjoyed the spotlight. Was it possible Brixton was right this time? I shook my head. “Living out of the spotlight isn’t a matter of personal preference,” I said. “It’s about survival.”
    â€œImmortals are always famous in the movies—”
    â€œExactly. In the movies. Not in real life. There are only a handful of alchemists out there who’ve succeeded in extending their lives. They stay so well-hidden that I haven’t managed to find a single one since I started looking earlier this year.”
    â€œWhich is totally why it’s awesome that an alchemist is here in town. You should invite him over to the teashop.”
    Brixton was right that I needed help, but if he was also right about this man being a figure from history, that meant this alchemist was a dangerous wild card. Before approaching him, I needed to know more. Not only whether Prometheus could be an alchemist, but if he could be trusted.
    I tried to think about how best to explain my concerns, but Brixton was no longer paying attention to me. “That’s weird,” he said, staring at the screen of his phone.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNothing. Just a website that got hacked.” He tucked the phone into the pocket of his jeans.
    â€œDon’t go anywhere,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
    I climbed two flights of stairs to reach my attic office. A three-foot section of the roof was missing, but had been patched with a quick fix—like everything else in my life these days. The attic flooring below the rooftop hole had collapsed too. The gaping hole, located directly above my bedroom closet, was now covered with a sturdy wooden plank and a Qalicheh Persian rug.
    A combination of plastic, plywood, and decorative coverings kept the rain out until I could reverse Dorian’s deterioration and resume work on the fixer-upper house. Saving Dorian’s life was a bigger priority than saving the house from dry rot. Besides, this hole in the roof provided an easier way for Dorian to come and go from the house without being seen. Unlike the rooftop opening he used to squeeze through, this one was large enough that he could maneuver through it and replace the tarp even with a stiff leg.
    With the storm damage, my attic office rivaled the basement alchemy lab as a work-in-progress. The top of the Craftsman house contained my public persona; the lower regions hid my private one: Zoe Faust, the twenty-eight-year-old proprietor of the online secondhand shop Elixir, a descendant of the woman who’d started an apothecary shop named Elixir in Paris in 1872; and Zoe Faust, the 340-year-old alchemist who’d accidentally discovered the Elixir of Life 312 years ago, and who ran an online business because she was no good at transmuting lead into gold.
    Stepping past a collection of antique books on herbal remedies, a row of Japanese puzzle boxes, and the articulated skeleton of a pelican, I grabbed my laptop computer. When I entered the kitchen a minute later, the fridge door stood open but Brixton was nowhere to be seen.
    Then the crown of his head popped into view from where he stood behind the fridge door, and he kicked the door shut with his foot. In each hand he was balancing a stainless-steel storage container with a platter of treats on top.
    â€œThe desserts wouldn’t have run away in the few moments you took to come back for them,” I commented.
    â€œYeah, that coconut cookie made me wicked hungry and I couldn’t decide what I wanted. It’s cool, right? Dorian said there was more than you two could