Морган Райс - The Obsidians

“I don’t, actually,” Oliver said hurriedly. “My parents gave me up for adoption. I know nothing about them.” His voice was racing now, as if trying to hurry through the conversation so he could get to the conclusion quicker. “Are they here? In Rome? Do you know where I can find them?”

Lucia Moretti’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I feel I’ve spoken out of turn.”

“Not at all,” Oliver replied quickly. “Please, tell me anything you know. I have nothing to go on. Just their names and that they studied at Harvard. Oh, and a notebook of my father’s.”

The headmistress’s eyebrows rose slowly up her forehead. “A notebook?” she asked. “May I see it?”

“Of course.” Oliver took the notebook from Hazel, who had been keeping it in her satchel, and quickly handed it to her. If she knew anything about his parents, he wanted to know.

Mistress Moretti leafed through the book. “Oliver, do you know what this is?”

He shook his head.

“It is a formula,” she told him. “A formula for the Elixir.”

Oliver gasped. “What?! You mean the cure was with me all along?”

“Wait. Relax,” she said. “Do not get ahead of yourself. What I mean to say is that this is an attempt to create the formula for the Elixir. Your parents were human, Oliver. You are aware of this, aren’t you? They didn’t have seer powers. Therefore, time travel was completely unavailable to them. But they moved in seer circles. They wanted to experience what seers could. Here is proof that your father was attempting to create his own Elixir. With it, he’d be able to travel in time, throughout timelines and alternative parallel worlds. But it is incomplete. He did not succeed.”

A whole host of emotions vied inside Oliver. He couldn’t absorb all the information he’d just been given. To think his mortal parents had been trying to unlock the secrets of time travel felt odd to him. What could they possibly want to be able to travel through time for? Seers time traveled to fulfill the destiny of the universe, to protect the timelines on her command, to undo the work of rogue seers who attempted to create havoc. But humans had no need to travel through time. It was dangerous enough for a seer, but for a human? Surely it was suicide.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved that his father’s formula was incomplete or not. If Teddy Blue had succeeded in creating the Elixir then he’d be able to save Esther life. But because he had not, perhaps that in itself had saved his father’s life?

Mistress Moretti snapped the book shut. “Oliver, you know nothing happens by coincidence. The portal brought you here for a reason, because somehow this is the place the Elixir will be discovered. I believe this notebook is the first step. The second step comes from me.”

Oliver frowned with curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“I am a mathematician, Oliver,” Mistress Moretti said. “The best mind the universe has ever known. I have a mind that’s rivaled only by Einstein’s.” She drummed her fingers against the desktop and her eyes flashed with excitement. “You need my instruction. You need my knowledge. If I train you, together we will be able to complete the formula.”

“But I don’t have time,” Oliver said. “I’m not trying to find the Elixir to unlock time travel, I’m doing it because Professor Amethyst told me it is the only thing to save my friend from time travel sickness! My friend is close to death.” His voice cracked as an image of Esther appeared in his mind’s eye. Instinctively, his hand tightened around the amulet. “I don’t have time to train here.”

The headmistress paused. She tipped her head to the side and regarded Oliver for a moment. “I see.”

She seemed disappointed that Oliver hadn’t taken her up on her offer to be trained here. He had not meant to insult her. In any other time and place, he’d have snapped up the chance to train at the Rome Seer School, to learn all the mathematical genius Mistress Moretti possessed. But he just didn’t have the time.

Hazel was busy worrying her hands in her lap. She looked at Oliver with an anxious expression. “Isn’t this our only chance, though?” she asked. “The Elixir has never been created. The portal led us here because this was where we could find all the pieces of the puzzle needed to create it. Mistress Moretti’s mind is surely part of that puzzle.”

“I can see what you’re saying,” Oliver told her. “But surely Esther will die before I get the chance to learn all I need to.”

“There’s a ritual,” Mistress Moretti blurted, interrupting their conversation.

“A ritual?” Oliver asked. He didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded ominous to him. Dangerous even.

Mistress Moretti nodded slowly. “It’s… how should I say it… a complicated procedure. One I have not done before. But it may be your only hope.”

Oliver’s nerves grew even more. Her words provided him with no comfort at all.

“What will it involve?” he asked, hearing the tremble in his voice.

“It will transfer all my knowledge and abilities to you,” she explained. “It will teach you everything I know. You’ll have access to my memories, even the subconscious ones that I’ve long forgotten. Then, I believe, you’ll be able to use that knowledge to finish the formula for the Elixir. What do you say?”

The whole thing terrified Oliver. But Esther needed him. So did the school. In addition, Mistress Moretti had told him he’d be able to see her memories. She knew his parents. Perhaps her memories might also bring him closer to finding them?

“Will it hurt me?” Oliver asked.

Mistress Moretti’s lips twisted to the side in consternation. “I don’t think it will be a pleasant experience,” she told him. “I imagine that it will be quite a shock to the system.”

Oliver glanced at his friends.

Walter gave him a reassuring nod. So did Hazel, although the look in her eyes betrayed her fear. Finally, Oliver looked at David. He trusted David implicitly.

“I believe this is a good idea,” David said.

Swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat, Oliver turned back to Mistress Moretti. He nodded decisively.

“Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll do the ritual.”

Chris didn’t know what was happening. One second he’d been in Mistress Obsidian’s office, listening to her warn him that failure in this next mission would result in him being sent to a horrible hell, and then the next second he was here… wherever here was.

All around Chris, all he could see was black. He felt very calm, a bit like he was sleeping.

Images started to flash in his mind. He saw water, murky and swirling. Then he smelled that awful stench of raw sewage.

Fear gripped Christopher as he suddenly realized where he was. The River Thames! No!

Had Mistress Obsidian sent him back to that awful place? Had this whole second mission just been some kind of elaborate ruse, a way to get his hopes up only to dash them again by sending him to his watery grave? Terror began to consume him.

Chris could feel the water against his skin and all the sticky residue from the toxins in the dirty river. The smell in his nostrils made his eyes water.

He was swirling around and around and around, as if in a whirlpool. Then suddenly he saw a flash of someone else. He was not alone.

“Oliver?” Chris cried in disbelief.

His puny little brother was here, too, swirling around in the churning waters. What was happening?

The waves crashed around them and forced them onto the banks. Christopher flopped into the mud, gasping for breath. Lights flashed like strobes around him.

Looking up, Chris saw where the lights were coming from. There were two portals standing on the riverbank in front of him, both rusted and decrepit looking, flashing their electric light displays.