Page 29 of Girl, Unseen

‘This is insane,’ she muttered as she swung back to her laptop and switched to her fifteenth tab. An obscure PDF from Prague's Charles University caught her eye - something about proto-alchemical symbolism in pre-medieval manuscripts. Most of it was in Czech, but at least the diagrams were readable.

‘What is?’ Luca glanced up from his own research black hole. He'd been trying to track down an address for Felix Blackwood since they’d got back from the reservoir, but he wasn’t in the system. No priors, no driving license, no tax returns. So they were at the mercy of Katherine Harper pulling his address from the NYU records. So far, she hadn’t contacted them.

Ella rotated her laptop. ‘Standard alchemic symbols are easy enough to find. Triangle pointing up meant fire. Triangle pointing down meant water. Modern stuff, clean and simple. But the ones our killer’s using predates all of that.’

‘Yes,’ Luca said, ‘because the one thing ancient alchemy does is… change.’

‘I’m serious. I must have speed-read a hundred pages on this.’

She'd started with basic historical texts, then university databases, then increasingly obscure academic journals. Now, she was picking through scanned manuscripts that hadn't seen daylight since the printing press was invented. The Latin made her head hurt. The medieval French was worse.

‘So, what did theyusedto be?’

'I don't know. By the Renaissance, they'd standardized everything into basic geometric shapes. But before that, it was chaos. Every Alchemist had their own system. Some used animals, some used planets. The really old texts...' She pulled up a scanned image of an old textbook she'd found. 'Look at this. Eleventh century manuscript. See how the symbols are all layered? Multiple shapes combined into single forms?'

Luca squinted at the screen. ‘Like the ones from the crime scenes?’

‘Similar. But not exact.’ That was the frustrating part. She'd found plenty of symbols that looked close, but nothing that matched perfectly. ‘It's like our killer took ancient formulas and modified them somehow. Added their own twist.’

She clicked through more tabs. Her browser history read like a fever dream:Ancient elemental symbols. Pre-Renaissance alchemy. Geometric mysticism. Transformation rituals. Medieval chemistry.

‘This is the weird part,’ she continued. ‘Most alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold, right? Basic transformation of matter. But some of them had bigger ideas. They thought you could transform anything if you understood its elemental nature. Plants, animals...’

‘People?’

‘Yeah. There were theories about using the elements to achieve physical transformation. Not just changing one substance into another, but actually transcending physical form.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘The ultimate goal wasn't gold - it was achieving a higher state of being.’

‘Through murder?’

‘Through sacrifice. Which isn't the same thing, at least not to true believers. And look.’ She highlighted text from a scanned thesis. ‘Scholars can't even agree what these older symbols meant. Some say they're elemental markers, others say they're dimensional maps, others think they're just decorative.’

Luca squinted at the screen. ‘So which is it?’

‘No idea. But someone thinks they know.’ She switched to the quarry crime scene photos. ‘These aren't modern occult symbols copied off some website. They're specific. Obscure. Our killer had to dig deep to find these.’

She started another search, this time targeting academic repositories. Most universities digitized their dissertations now, but anything pre-1990 was hit or miss. Plus you needed passwords, credentials, specialized access.

Just like the books in NYU's restricted collection.

Ella thought it through. Guy gets obsessed with ancient symbols, realizes most of the real scholarship is still in paper form, tries gaining access through proper channels but gets denied, so resorts to breaking in.

Luca must have read her mind, because he said, ‘No need to fill your head with this crap, Ell, because once we’ve got Felix Blackwood’s address we’ll never have to think about alchemy ever again.’

For some reason, maybe it was the cynical part of her speaking, Ella doubted it would be that easy. ‘Hasn’t the dean emailed Felix’s address over yet?’

'No. I tried calling her five minutes ago, but she didn't answer.'

Back to research. The symbols seemed to writhe on her screen, refusing to resolve into clear meaning. She found references to similar designs in Pythagorean geometry, in Vedic mandalas, in Celtic stone carvings. Everywhere and nowhere, like echoes of some original pattern that no one quite remembered.

Ross appeared in the doorway, looking like death warmed over. He planted a few files on Ella's desk. 'Coroner's ready. There's her details.'

‘Still nothing from the dean?’

‘Not on my end. Want me to chase her?’

‘Please. Or grab Felix’s address off your local system, if he’s on there. We’ve got nothing on the federal ones.’ Ella grabbed her jacket. Maybe the coroner could tell them something they didn’t already know. Something that might help them confirm Felix Blackwood’s guilt if they ever found the guy’s damn address.

All that she knew was whoever this killer was, he wasn’t done. Three more elements meant at least three more victims.

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