I shook my head. “I’ve heard of it but can’t quite recall—”
“The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra has instructions on how to turnlead into gold.”
When my father used to tell my mother stories about magic, it would always leave her breathless. With the gradual disappearance of magic-touched objects in Buenos Aires, it was easy to forget that it was once commonplace. That spells and the use of them were woven into the fabric of everyday life. Whenever I came across something that still held the heartbeat of a long-ago cast spell, it would hit me all over again, how we let something so extraordinary become endangered.
And one day in the near future, magic would cease to exist altogether, fading to the background and becoming a footnote in history.
I understood why anyone would hunt and kill for the Chrysopoeia.
“Whoever finds the sheet could sell it for an exorbitant sum,” I said.
Whit shook his head. “Think bigger. Imagine if the person understood alchemy and could create the stone. For centuries, people have been searching for this document. Like the Holy Grail,” he said. “Noah’s ark. The final resting place of Alexander the Great.”
“Or Cleopatra’s tomb.”
Whit nodded. “Exactly.”
A memory niggled at the back of my mind. I fought to hold on to the feeling, and a second later, I recalled a moment with my mother. We were inside my makeshift tent on Philae, and she asked me if I had encountered a single sheet of parchment.
“You’re right,” I said. “My mother asked me about a sheet of parchment—sheissearching for the Chrysopoeia.” I tapped my finger against the page of the journal. “We have the proof written in ink that she knew of its existence over a decade ago.”
“Well, she wasn’t successful in finding it.” He twisted his lips. “I wish it made me feel slightly better.”
“My mother won’t give up,” I said. “She’s crossed too many lines. Now we all know her for who she is, and what she’s done. There’s no coming back from that. So where would she look for the sheet next?”
“I have multiple locations in mind,” he said. “She could be anywhere in Egypt that was of some importance to Cleopatra the alchemist—or her descendant, who was also rumored to be adept at magic.”
“She was,” I said, remembering the potent visions I’d stumbled across—the last pharaoh of Egypt hunched over a long table, herbs and elixirs at her elbow as she mixed and measured. “A potion maker, maybe even a Spellcaster herself.”
Whit lowered his chin. “How do you know?”
“The magic from the golden ring,” I said. “It linked me to some of Cleopatra’s memories. I saw her at work, muddling ingredients, recalibrating tools.”
“Well, that narrows down the places where your mother might be to a dozen temples, give or take.”
I groaned, burying my head in my hands. My voice came out muffled. “One too many.” A thought occurred to me, and I looked up. “Wait… Weren’t you searching for the same thing?”
Whit shifted, the corners of his lips turning downward. “Yes, and I made the mistake of telling your mother. Our conversation might have rekindled her interest. She might have remembered stumbling across this book she references in the journal entry.”
“And how did you discover it?”
He hesitated. “I learned about Cleopatra the alchemist from one of my books on chemistry.”
“Alchemy and chemistry are related subjects? Isn’t one predominately magical, the other scientific?”
“In some schools of thought, those two are one and the same. Alchemy was the precursor to chemistry. Invented right here in Egypt.”
“I had no idea.” My shoulders slumped. “I feel as if I’m still catching up, still falling behind my mother and what she knows. How can I find her when there are too many gaps in my education?”
Whit tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Don’t fret, Inez. We made progress, even if it was a tiny step.”
I smiled small. “Are you ready to talk about Isadora, yet?”
Whit groaned. “Absolutely not.”
“She asked for my help and I can’t turn her away.”
“There’s something off about her,” he said, playing with the ruffles on my skirt. “Isadora and her father were inseparable back in Philae. Have you forgotten?”
