Page 17 of Alchemy of Secrets

The stranger drove fast and sharp, as if car crashes only happened to mortals, and he wasn’t one of them. Holland hadn’t even finished shutting the door before he sped away. Engine revving. Tires taking corners too fast.

“Are you trying to kill me?” she wheezed, fumbling to buckle her seatbelt.

The vehicle was cold, pouring out aggressive California air conditioning.

Yet her palms were clammy and her skin was burning, and she wasn’t entirely sure if it was because she’d just gotten into a car with a complete stranger or because of everything else that had just happened.

Maybe it was both.

Her heart was racing faster than the car. She felt as if it would never slow. It raced as if she needed to move, as if she needed to outrun everything. She needed to outrun Jake’s death and the sirens and the words of the Watch Man.

You will die tomorrow, Halloween, at 11:59 p.m.… The only way to live past tomorrow is to find the Alchemical Heart.

That’s what she needed to focus on—finding the Alchemical Heart.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Somewhere safe,” the stranger replied.

“No,” Holland argued. “We need to go to the Professor’s house.” She rattled off the name of her street, along with the exit he needed to take.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” He careened onto the 405, accelerating to an ungodly speed that made Holland grip the armrests so tightly she worried her fingernails would break.

“Listen, I’m not sure why my sister sent you. But…” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence because for a second she couldn’t help wondering if her sister actually had sent him.

Yes, they had the same tattoo, which felt significant. And Holland could absolutely picture her sister sending a bodyguard—even though they were twins, January had always taken on the older, more responsible sister role. But that didn’t help explain why she had sent him .

Holland carefully pulled out her phone.

The stranger grabbed it from her hands, rolled down the window, and threw it onto the freeway.

Holland let out an involuntary shriek. “Why would you do that?”

He shook his head, as if she was the one who’d just done something wrong. “January told me to keep you safe.”

“January is who I was trying to call.” Holland glared at him. “I wanted to make sure you’re not a sociopath.”

“Here.” He tossed something onto Holland’s lap. It looked like one of those pay-as-you-go phones, with actual buttons instead of a touch screen. “Go ahead, call your sister. She’s in my contacts under J . Ask her whatever you want about me.”

“It might help if I knew your name.”

“It’s Gabe.”

“Do you have a last name, Gabe?”

“January knows who I am.”

Holland didn’t doubt it. Gabe was the sort of guy you didn’t forget.

In the car’s dim light, Holland couldn’t tell if he had scars, but he seemed like the sort who would—she imagined one on his right cheek, just below his eye.

His jaw was square and hard, as if he exercised it by munching on rocks.

His brows were thick and she imagined his eyes were lined in thick, dark lashes as well.

But she still said, “Gabe is actually a pretty common name, and my sister knows a lot of people.”

A muscle ticked in Gabe’s jaw. And she felt a small amount of triumph that, for a second, she wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable. “It’s Cabral,” he muttered.

Gabe Cabral.

Holland had a sudden feeling she’d heard the name before, but she couldn’t remember how. Could January have mentioned him after all?

She opened Gabe’s contacts. There were only five of them. All were either letters or numbers, as if he wasn’t mysterious enough. “Do you have something against names?”

“No, just against women who snoop through my phone.”

Ignoring the barb, Holland pressed the letter J . For the third time that day, she reached her sister’s voicemail. At least Gabe actually knew her sister. “Hey JJ, it’s me, Holland. I need to talk to you. I’m calling from the phone of your friend Gabe Cabral. Call me back as soon as you can at—”

Gabe rattled off a number, which she repeated.

As soon as she finished, he took the phone back. “Better?” he asked.

Holland laughed. “You think that letting me make one call after you destroyed my phone and killed my car is going to make me feel better?”

Gabe twisted his mouth. He looked as if he wanted to say yes. As if for him, acting like an actual human was a colossally good deed.

“You basically kidnapped me.” Holland opened the glove box.

“Hey, stop snooping,” he ordered.

“As an abductee, it’s my job to look for any clues I can.” Sadly, the glove box was immaculate, aside from an insurance slip that belonged to Rita Meeker. She held it out for him. “Thought you said your name was Gabe Cabral.”

He glared. “Would it make you feel better if I said I’ll give her back the car when I’m done?”

“Only if I believed you.” Holland still had a number of questions as to why her sister had sent him. “Only half of this even makes sense. How did my sister know I was in trouble?”

Traffic came to a halt. Gabe scowled as he checked all the mirrors. “This is what your sister left for me.” He handed Holland a slip of paper. She immediately recognized January’s handwriting.

KEEP MY SISTER SAFE.

If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll come for her next.

It looked as if there might have been more words below, but the bottom was ripped off.

“What else did it say?” Holland asked. “Why was this page torn? And who is he ? When did she leave this?”

Gabe briefly looked as if he regretted handing over the paper. “What has January told you about her boyfriend?”

“January doesn’t have a boyfriend.” After a man whom Holland had promised never to mention again, January had sworn off dating.

I don’t do boyfriends. I only sleep with ugly men , she liked to say.

But she didn’t even do that. January had her job.

She traveled the world. Holland didn’t think her sister was happy, but this was how she kept her head above water.

“So, she didn’t tell you about him?” Gabe asked.

“My sister doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Holland repeated.

Gabe’s frown deepened. “She met him on her latest job. He told her he was a tourist, and the last time I saw her, she told me they were in love.”

“That doesn’t sound like January.”

“I know,” Gabe agreed. There was a note of something in his voice Holland couldn’t quite place.

“Why was she telling you this?” Holland asked. “Did you two used to date?”

“No,” Gabe said immediately, as if the idea offended him.

“I work freelance. I’m good at acquiring difficult-to-find things.

Sometimes, when she’s working a challenging job, your sister calls me.

Recently, I needed a favor, so I called her, and when I saw her, I knew right away that something was off.

Then I saw the engagement ring on her finger. ”

“My sister isn’t engaged. She doesn’t even have a boyfriend,” Holland repeated yet again. “She would have told me.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw,” said Gabe.

“But I agree. The whole conversation made me think that whoever this guy was, he was doing some sort of mind job on her. When January talked about him, she sounded like a sappy greeting card.” Gabe scowled, as if both sap and greeting cards left a bad taste in his mouth.

Holland had a bad taste in her mouth as well. Her sister was never sappy, but earlier that day she’d sounded just that way on the phone.

January was a force. She was smart and clever and ruthless in a way that Holland had never been capable of. But there was a reason she didn’t date.

In college, January had fallen for the wrong guy.

It was the first time she’d ever been in love, and when it had ended, January had disappeared for a month.

Holland didn’t know all the details, only that her sister had nearly failed out of school.

Then she’d come back, but she hadn’t been the same.

January had never been as sensitive as Holland, but anything soft about her had been carved away and replaced by something hard that hadn’t cracked since. At least until now.

“The next day, January called me,” Gabe continued. “This time she sounded shaky, nervous. She asked me to meet her again, but all I found was that note.”

Holland looked at the torn page again, and another set of questions rushed through her head. Why would January send Gabe? Why wouldn’t she just tell Holland this message directly? They had talked earlier that day, and January hadn’t said a thing.

Although… Holland once again thought about how January hadn’t sounded like herself, with the I miss you and the I wish I was there . “What does this guy want from us?” Holland asked.

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Gabe said. “Has your sister sent you anything? Or told you anything strange or unexpected?”

“No,” Holland replied. January hadn’t told her anything significant recently. But—

Holland reached into her messenger bag and pulled out the gold-and-black folder she’d taken from Jake’s apartment.

“I found this tonight. The guy I had been dating, the one who died—he had been hired to become a part of my life and look into my family. It makes me wonder if maybe the person January was dating was doing the same thing.”

“That folder—does it say what the guy was after?”

“No.” But it seemed to Holland that it was very likely Jake had died because of it, which made her think it had to be something valuable.

“You have any idea what he would want?” Gabe prodded.

She started to say no, but then she thought about Mr. Vargas and the safety deposit box left to her. She had no idea what could be in it, but maybe that’s what he’d been after? She thought about telling Gabe, but Mr. Vargas had made a point of telling her not to mention the box to anyone.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

“Considering I don’t trust you—a lot of things.”

Gabe stepped harder on the gas, pushing the car to go faster. “I’m just trying to keep you alive, sweetheart.”

She might have told him to stop calling her sweetheart, but as soon as he said the word alive , her ears filled with crackling static and the Watch Man’s words— The only way to live past tomorrow is to find the Alchemical Heart . “Have you ever heard of the Alchemical Heart?” she asked.

Gabe’s gaze immediately shot her way, as if she’d just become a lot more interesting. “Is that what you think they’re after?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I don’t even know what the Alchemical Heart is.”

His expression turned skeptical. “Then why did you ask about it?”

Holland really didn’t want to answer that question, but he had just said he’d been sent to help keep her alive, and he clearly knew what this heart was. “I need to find it.”

Gabe laughed. It was a slightly disturbing sound.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because, sweetheart”—his laughter died, but his expression remained an unnerving sort of amused—“everyone would love to find the Alchemical Heart.”

“Why do you say it that way? What is it?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not something you’re ever going to find,” he said with an air of finality that made her feel as if he’d just torn the last few pages from her favorite notebook so she couldn’t write any more words.

His eyes were back on the road, and Holland knew that if she didn’t change his mind quickly, she’d never find the Professor, she’d never figure out what the Alchemical Heart was, and she would never live past tomorrow.

“Listen, Mr. Killing Cars and Kidnapping Women Is My Hobby.”

“Don’t ever call me that again.”

“I’m just trying to get you to listen to me,” she said impatiently. “Earlier tonight, right before you showed up, I was told that I have a little over twenty-four hours to find the Alchemical Heart. If I don’t, I’m going to die.”

“Who told you that?” he asked.

Holland considered telling him about the Watch Man, but the last person she’d told the story to was dead. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “I believe him.”

Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Did this person threaten to kill you, or did he tell you the time you’re going to die?” He put extra emphasis on the word time , and Holland wondered then if maybe somehow Gabe already knew the legend of the Watch Man.

“The time,” Holland said. “One minute before midnight on Halloween—unless I find the Alchemical Heart.”

“Fuck,” Gabe muttered. “You’re screwed.”