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“Like all the work we’ve put into Merit over the last year?” Malik asked with a wink.
“Like that,” Mallory said, with an answering grin. “Pretty much anything organic—especially plants and people—have that quality. A lot of alchemy is about distilling things down to their essence—to the purity inside them. And if you can do that, if you can get, I don’t know, rosemary, down to its true, unadulterated essence, its resonance changes, and it develops these healing properties. You ingest those, and you get closer to your own real essence, spiritually and physically, to a change in your own resonance.”
“Alchemy is really weird,” I said.
“Completely bonkers,” Paige agreed.
“How does resonance—this test of it—relate to the symbols we’ve found?” Ethan asked.
“This is what we’re calling a ‘pattern test,’” Mallory said. “The actual equations are set up in phrases that, so far, don’t stand on their own. In order words, we haven’t been able to find one excerpt that we can run as an experiment. It would be like mixing one part of a recipe—let’s say baking soda and flour—and expecting to get cookies out of it. That one step is useless on its own.”
“We’re looking for confirmation we’re translating correctly,” Paige said. “Even if we can’t yet translate the entire thing, we’ll know we’ve translated correctly certain parts of it.”
Mallory nodded. “It will help me calibrate the machine. We want to find this alchemy. I need to be certain I’m looking for this alchemy. Otherwise we’re going to end up with a machine that tags, I don’t know, coffee drinkers in Chicago or something.”
“Which would be useless,” I said. “Especially in the Loop.”
“And Wicker Park!” Mallory said. “There’s a whole-bean, shade-grown, cage-free coffeehouse on every corner now.”
“I didn’t realize beans required cages,” Ethan said.
“Neither did I,” Mallory said. “Now hush and let me work.”
“I guess she’s giving you orders now,” I said to Ethan with a smile.
“I guess she is,” Ethan said as they turned to their work, putting material in the crucible, arranging components on the top of the patio.
Paige and Mallory looked happy and very compatible working together. Paige’s height and red hair matched interestingly with Mallory’s petite stature and blue locks. Mallory moved quickly, efficiently, as she prepared the work. Paige’s movements were more deliberate. For two sorcerers on the right side of the law, they hadn’t spent much time together. Maybe a friendship could blossom. If so, I’d take credit for that, too.
“How was the meeting?” Ethan asked.
In response, I growled.
“I guess that means we’ll discuss it later.”
“That would probably be best.”
“All right,” Mallory said as Paige handed her a box of matches. “Let’s do this.”
When Mallory snapped the match against the side of the box, Malik, Ethan, and I took a simultaneous step backward. As she dropped it into the crucible, Paige took a step backward, too. Mallory stayed exactly where she was, watching and waiting for something to happen.
The crucible rattled once. Then again. And then it began to vibrate as if someone had flipped a switch.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have alchemy.” Mallory put her hands on her hips, and her smile was as sly as a vampire’s. “That’s resonance.”
We clapped politely, and Malik leaned in. “Is anyone else disappointed there wasn’t a pretty blue or green explosion?”
It was as if he’d made a wish.
There was a whistle, like a teapot at the ready, and a small blue spark popped out of the crucible, burst like a tiny firework.
Malik nodded. “Nice.”
A second spark popped, and then a third, all in shades of blue, all shattering in the air like tiny crystals. But it took only a moment for those few pretty sparks to grow bigger, faster, and more explosive. Daubs of blue flame began to shower from the crucible, whistling like an Independence Day celebration.
Paige squeaked, darted away from the showering fire. Mallory just stood there, hands on her hips, and stared at it like a woman contemplating the cosmos.
After a moment, when the sparks had died down, she patted at a spark in her hair. “And that’s why we didn’t do it in Wicker Park.”
