Page 59 of The Alchemists

He looked bemused beneath his thick-framed glasses. “My office is here. I teach more than the one class, you know.”

If Lily got to choose her death come June, she thought she might choose drowning in Chant’s accent.

“Right.” She sounded idiotic.

He studied her. She studied back.

“No dance?”

“Not exactly in demand.”

He made a small sound that betrayed neither agreement nor dissent and stepped over the threshold. “Then what exactly are you working on this Saturday night?”

“Oh.” It hit her suddenly, her stupidity. Chant. They were working on a problem about alchemy, and instead of bringing it to him, they’d been faffing about like morons. “Actually, it’s alchemical. Could you—” She turned to him just as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Pursuing extracurricular learning? Be still my heart.” He leaned in as she nudged the paper with the symbols from the ring toward him. They’d decided to group the symbols by floor and had come up with something of an equation.

“I think this is Sol? But it’s got this extra bit that looks like cinnabar. And this is arsenic, I think, but⁠—”

“Ah.” Chant sighed in satisfaction. “You’ve nearly got it. You’ve got the elements, but these ‘extra bits’—radicals—are instructions, if you will. This star, the way it’s placed on top there, shows that the Sol and cinnabar have been sublimated, and this tells you that the arsenic is mixed with silver undergone calcination.”

“Silver?”

Chant nodded. Of course. Argent Lune. Sol and Luna. She looked at the ring. The two symbols represented the moon and the sun. It was so obvious, now that she had all the information.

She trembled with excitement. “So, if you mixed these, as they’re prepared here⁠—”

Chant grimaced. “You’d have an incredibly toxic compound.”

The thrill of progress faded as Lily considered the truth of it.

“But don’t forget to think about it symbolically.” Chant tapped the paper in a way that Lily wished she could imitate. “This is Sol, and cinnabar—which are…” He looked to her, as if she were in class.

She pondered for a moment. Cinnabar, equally deadly and famous for its vivid carmine hue. “Gold. And Red.”

“And this isn’t just arsenic, it’s⁠—”

“White arsenic!” She nearly fell out of her seat. Red and white were two of the alchemical phases, but more than that, the combination of those two colors was deeply symbolic of the Conjunctio. With the Chalice standing between them on the ring, she could barely breathe. Everything slid into focus.

When she pulled her eyes from the table, Chant was grinning at her. “Looks like I’ve made myself superfluous. I suppose that is the eventual aim of instruction.”

“Thank you so much.” Lily wanted to hug him, dance naked around the library, but she did neither. She stilled as the front door of the building clicked open, echoing down the hall.

Chant’s eyes narrowed.

“Hello, gentlemen,” he said stiffly as two sets of footfalls revealed Conrad Hawleyhurst and Tripp Braithwhite. They were dressed like fancy vampires, each of them in ruffled shirts with gaudy baubles hanging from their necks. “How can I help you this fine evening?”

Typical, Lily scoffed. It was something of a Windermere tradition to dress ironically as supernatural creatures for the Halloween dance. Pointy hats never went out of style in October.

Hawleyhurst and Braithwhite stopped and considered Chant. Braithwhite looked stricken. Hawleyhurst smiled.

“Professor Chant!” he beamed. “Didn’t expect to find you here.”

The room went momentarily silent as both Chant and Lily did the math on that.

“And what were you expecting to find here?” His voice could have iced the floor, no spell required.

Lily’s heart slammed against her ribs. They knew I was here.