The Alchemy of Forever

sky. They are so common in summer, flashes unaccompanied by thunder. I see waves crashing on the beach of a lonely planet, deep in space. Small silvery chimes, the voices of stars singing a hymn. My mother’s face appears in my mind, but she looks different from what I remember. Her skin is smooth, glassy and glittery, celestial dots of light making up her irises. Her dark hair, a mirror image of my own, is made up of the void of space, comets trailing through its ebony tresses. Her mouth opens, but there is no sound when she speaks. It doesn’t matter; I can read her starry lips. Not yet, Seraphina, she’s saying. Not yet.
    Purple, then white, the little lights move at ever more dizzying speeds, and I realize with a jolt that I have badly miscalculated. I have never inhabited a body this broken and close to death, and fiery agony shoots up and down my broken limbs, even as I feel them being slowly repaired by my immortal essence. I roll over on the asphalt and see my old body has already turned to dust and is quickly dissipating in the breeze.
    The far-off wail of sirens penetrates my consciousness. I need to get out of here before the police show up. And I need to get my bag—it’s got my ID inside, the one with the name Cyrus gave me, as well as the book that can never fall into human hands.
    Knees buckling, I push myself to standing and take a wobbly step forward. Just a few more feet. But the smell of blood and gasoline makes me sick, and I fall to my knees, and that’s when I realize that Taryn is there, watching.
    I’m dizzy and frantic—just how much has she seen?—and try to call out to her. But the flickering lights from a police car round the corner and she takes off down the alley. I will myself to move, to get to the crane and retrieve my bag, but again the pain takes over, pulling me down. My eyes flutter closed and I sink into blackness.

nine
     
    Through the faint pink of my eyelids, I see fluorescent lights overhead. The air is sharp with antiseptics. The feeling of terror, of something being off, seeps in from the edges of my mind, but I can’t remember why I’m scared. Tentatively, I open my eyes. The windows reveal a hazy afternoon, the sun pushing its way through the approaching fog and shining on the palm trees. Muffled voices blend with a clattering of wheeled carts and heels clacking down a tiled hallway.
    Reaching up to my temples, I feel a bandage and circular sensors connected to wires. I touch my hair, which falls just above my shoulders in loose curls. What the—? I shake my head, trying to clear it of the dizzying panic that is beginning to take hold. A white plastic bracelet stands out on my tanned arm: Kailey Morgan, F, age 16 .
    In an instant, the events of the previous night come flooding back: the crash, the blood, the moment when I ceased being Jennifer Combs or Seraphina Ames or whoever I truly was and instead became Kailey Morgan. Bile rises in my throat as I sit up in the hospital bed and scan the room. The monitor to my right beeps rapidly, echoing my thudding heart.
    A nurse enters through the propped-open door. “You’re awake!” I regard her with wide eyes, too alarmed to speak. “I’ll go get your parents.” The woman exits as quickly as she came, leaving me in stunned, frantic silence.
    An experimental wiggle reveals that my broken arm and leg have already healed. I only hope that happened before the ambulance came for me. I wonder how close the doctors came to figuring out that I’m not quite like any other human patient—that I’m something more: a body snatcher, an immortal, a killer.
    With horror I remember my bag with Cyrus’s book in it. Is it still on the crane? What had I been thinking, leaving it behind? I have to get back to the docks and find the book.
    I swing my legs over the side of the hospital bed and stand. I will have to run—What choice do I have? Kailey’s parents will realize immediately that there is something horribly different about their daughter. As I rip the sensors off my temples and wrists, I hear voices coming closer.
    “. . . concussion . . . needs rest . . . might be a little confused . . .”
    I look down at the hospital gown—white with a pale-blue daisy print—and realize how ridiculous I will look running past the nurses’ station, out the door, and down the street. Grimacing, I slip back into bed and rearrange the sensors on my skin.
    Moments later a woman rushes through the door. She is pretty, though the