Free The Masquerading Magician by Gigi Pandian

not related. This guy Thorne didn’t have any family.”
    Franklin Thorne . Why did that name sound familiar?
    â€œThe Lake Loot!” I cried.
    â€œYeah. Duh.”
    The missing train heist loot had recently been discovered. That’s what must have brought Peter Silverman to town.
    I made Brixton wait while I looked it up myself. As far as I could tell, Brixton was right that the two men weren’t related. And neither had any connection to alchemy.
    â€œA publicity hoax!” I said. “Maybe he cultivated the look. It would be great publicity for a guy who goes by the stage name Prometheus to pretend to be immortal.”
    â€œHe couldn’t have altered this library book,” Brixton said. “The pages are all faded.”
    â€œNo, and he probably wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble,” I whispered. I knew it was technically possible to create an illusion with so many layers of complexity, but a hidden library book didn’t make any sense. Why go to the effort? “Wait, you said at first you remembered this man from a history book, and then realized you originally saw this photo on a website?”
    â€œYeah, that Murderous Portland site I follow.”
    After being trapped by a real murderer earlier in the year, Brixton had given up on daring activities, such as the B&E that had caused him to meet me and Dorian. In place of this risky hobby, he’d taken to the more macabre, but safer, activity of learning about Portland’s murderous history. He was enamored with a website set up by a graduate student at Portland State that was devoted to Portland’s seedy past, from its founding in the 1840s through the end of the twentieth century. Brixton had seemed most interested in the earlier Wild West era, but apparently he’d read about more recent crimes as well.
    â€œBut the site was hacked and it’s still down,” Brixton continued. “What’s the matter?”
    â€œThat’s an awfully big coincidence for the site to be down as soon as Peter Silverman arrived in town. I don’t like it. If this was a publicity stunt, Prometheus would want to get the photograph out all over the Internet. But instead, the biggest site that makes his photo available is down. It’s as if he doesn’t want to be found.”
    â€œThat’s what I said,” Brixton grumbled. “It’s like you’re not even listening to me.”
    Brixton had cried wolf twice in as many months, but that’s not what made me skeptical. It was the fact that alchemists were so few in number. Even when I’d been studying alchemy, before I ran from it, I knew very few people who’d discovered its secrets. Granted, I knew fewer alchemists than my male counterparts did. Aside from Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel, most were skeptical of female alchemists. I’d apprenticed to Nicolas at the start of the eighteenth century, two hundred years after he and his wife had faked their own deaths in Paris. Because he was a cautious man who valued his privacy, even Nicolas didn’t know many true alchemists. And I’d lost track of the Flamels in 1704. I didn’t even know if they were still alive.
    There had once been a larger number of practicing alchemists. However, even in periods of time where there had been a flurry of alchemical interest and activity, few people unlocked the secrets of alchemy. Most alchemists died either accidentally poisoning themselves in their laboratories or naturally of old age. Very few of us had found the Elixir of Life. There were more plausible explanations as to why Peter Silverman resembled Franklin Thorne.
    Still, there was no way the complexity of a publicity stunt included altering obscure library books. There was more going on here than I understood.
    â€œShouldn’t you be getting over to the teashop to help your mom?”
    Brixton rolled his eyes, but he stood up and slung the guitar over his back. He