“Leave them alone, Magda,” Sage said.
Magda? This was Magda?
“But Sage, you came to me!” she said.
“You’re Magda … Alessandri?” I asked, piecing together the impossible. “You’re Shakespeare’s Dark Lady?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “What—you can’t see me as a raven-haired vixen? I was beautiful five hundred years ago. Your fiancé thought I was. He couldn’t keep his hands off me.”
I felt nauseous. I wasn’t jealous, even though Magda clearly wanted me to be. I just kept thinking of Sage touching this woman as she was now. The image made me sick.
“F-five h-hundred years ago?” Ben stammered. “But I thought the Elixir—” He stopped cold as Magda fixed him with a glare.
“Kept one young,” she finished icily. “Obviously, I didn’t drink the Elixir of Life. My longevity comes from an enchantment made by my mother, a powerful mystic, the day I was born. She died in childbirth, just after sealing my life force in the glass charm I wear around my neck. As long as it remains intact, I survive.”
I looked down at her sunken chest. Sure enough, a delicate glass ball dangled there from a thin chain.
Magda gave a phlegmy bark. “Had my mother survived, I’d have asked her to change the spell. Eternal life is useless without eternal youth. I can’t even show my face in public anymore. I hide away here with all my belongings.”
“In … the mall?” I asked.
“Why not? I have everything I need. A caretaker brings me anything else. And I can hear the roar of life just beyond my walls. When I close my eyes, I can almost pretend I’m still a part of it.”
“But after the attack … I saw you dead,” Sage objected.
“You saw me playing dead,“ Magda clarified. “I was stabbed seven times, you know. One dagger went clean through my stomach and out my back, pinning me to the floor. I had to lie there like a writhing, stuck bug—”
“You don’t have to describe it,” Sage said tightly.
“No, I do,” Magda said, her eyes strong and piercing, “because it was all your fault. You knew the rules. You ignored them. And all of us paid the price.”
Her words seemed to slice into Sage, and it was a moment before he could speak. “I know,” he said. “Your faces have haunted me every single night. But you’re not the only one who paid for it. If you’ve stayed alive to make sure I’ve suffered, I assure you, I have.”
“ I have stayed alive to see you suffer,” Magda said. “I was able to do it. As head of the Society, I was closest to the Elixir. It tied you and I together. I’ve seen everything.”
“Then you know,” Sage said through gritted teeth, “I’ve spent centuries in a more bitter hell than anyone who died that day. I would gladly trade places with any of them.”
“It’s not enough. While the rest of the Society lost their lives and I turned into this withered shell, you’ve had happiness beyond anything we can know.” She glared at me, and her papery lips managed to curl into a sneer. “You’re having it still. I want more from you, but I had to wait until you came to me to get it.”
Sage flinched, his eyes darting to Ben and me before he looked back at Magda. “I’m ready. We should speak alone.”
“What?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“I think you and Ben should go,” Sage said.
“No! I’m not going anywhere. Are you insane? After we came all the way here, you really think we’re going to leave? We still don’t know anything!”
“The girl is right,” Magda agreed. “She doesn’t know anything. And I think it’s time she knew everything.” Her eyes lolled toward Ben. “I think it’s time you both did.”
“Magda … ,” Sage warned.
She ignored him. “Pull up chairs. You’ll want to be comfortable for this.”
“No,” Sage demanded, then fixed his eyes on Ben and me. “You don’t have to listen to her.”
“They do if they want to know about the girl’s father,” Magda countered. “And you won’t get what you need unless you do what I say.”
Sage’s nostrils flared, and he pursed his lips. Then he grabbed three cushioned stools and thrust them down in front of Magda, who smiled. We sat, and she held out her hands. “Circle of hands,” she said.
My stool sat between Ben’s and Magda’s. I couldn’t believe I had to touch her, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing how much it bothered me. Her hand felt like crepe paper wrapped over toothpicks. I was sure the least bit of pressure would crush it to dust.
My other hand squeezed Ben’s, and he and Sage completed the circle back to Magda. Magda leaned back, and her eyes closed. Suddenly her whole body convulsed. My own eyelids slammed closed like shutters. I tried to open them, but it was impossible. I was sealed inside with whatever Magda wanted to show us.
I saw Sage. He was dressed the way he was in my dreams about Olivia. He jingled gold coins in a money pouch as he walked. It was surreal. I didn’t actually hear his thoughts, but I understood them. I could feel the pride he took in both his impeccable dress and his staggering family wealth. He was twenty-one years old and felt like the entire world was his for the taking.
As he climbed a set of stairs and knocked on an ornately decorated door, he sighed, and I understood that this was where he visited the Society, the group he’d complained to me about in my dream. The one he attended only to please his father.
Suddenly that image disappeared, replaced by Sage standing hand in hand with nine other men and women. They stood in a circle, and everything about their surroundings—their clothing, the furnishings in the room—pointed to incredible wealth and luxury. In the middle of the circle stood a small bejeweled curio cabinet.
I recognized Magda in the group—or rather, I knew it was her somehow, as she looked nothing like the emaciated skeleton she was now. She was the picture of vibrant youth and beauty. She gave Sage a suggestive wink, and I actually did feel a tinge of jealousy run through me. Magda’s voice rang out loud and clear as she began a ceremony with the Society’s vow of secrecy, then continued, “We come together to praise and protect the Elixir of Life.…”
But as she spoke, the scene faded away, replaced by Sage and a friend in a tavern, laughing over drinks.
I gasped out loud.
The friend was Ben.
He wasn’t Ben, of course. He was Giovanni, whom I knew from my dreams, but suddenly, seeing him in Magda’s vision, I didn’t have a single doubt that this was him.
And from the way Ben’s hand suddenly went clammy as it gripped mine tightly, I was sure he knew it too.
Again, I automatically understood things I had no way of knowing. Giovanni was a shopkeeper’s son, from a much lower class than Sage, though the two had known each other since childhood. Giovanni’s class and financial status didn’t matter to Sage at all. Giovanni was his best friend, simple as that. He loved Sage just as much, but he was acutely aware of the social gulf between them. It ate him up inside. In his worst moments, he believed their friendship was nothing more than an act of charity on Sage’s part—something Sage could brag about with his rich “real” friends so he felt like a bigger man.
Sage never suspected Giovanni’s darker thoughts and insecurities, so Sage had no idea what he was doing when he scoffed and laughed about the Society.
“Honestly, Gi, it’s absurd. The money is dripping off the walls of this place, but none of it is anything compared to the cabinet for the great ‘Elixir of Life’! Solid gold, encrusted with rubies, diamonds, emeralds … any gem you can imagine, it’s on this cabinet. But inside the cabinet … oh, that’s even better.”
“What is it?” Giovanni asked, secretly salivating over the idea of the bejeweled cabinet. He imagined prying off just one or two of its perfect gems. He could feed and clothe his three little sisters for weeks. Or better, he could buy himself something fancy—a nice outfit like the kind Sage wore. Something that would make him look like a real nobleman.
“Inside the cabinet,” Sage went on, “are three vials, each as tall as the length of my forearm, and each of which puts the cabinet to shame. More jewels, more gold, crystal stoppers … and all for what?”
“The Elixir of Life,” Giovanni marveled. “Does it really give eternal life?”
“Come on, Gi, of course not! It can’t! There’s no such thing! It’s just an excuse for these people to make themselves feel special—the ‘Keepers of the Elixir.’ It kills me that I have to spend time with those puffed-up fools.”
Sage leaned back in his seat and called for the bartender to bring them another round. He had vented about the Society and was finished with it, but I could see that Giovanni’s mind still chewed over everything he’d just heard.