Page 28 of Alchemy of Secrets

The expression on Gabe’s face was nearly impossible to read. One small corner of his mouth moved in a way that could have just as easily been his form of extreme surprise or a satisfied I knew it.

Holland took a seat on the orange velvet couch, then she waited for Gabe to do the same before saying, “Today, a banker visited my house.”

Gabe narrowed his dark eyes. “A banker from where?”

“The First Bank of Centennial City.”

The color drained from Gabe’s face. “That’s the Bank.” He said the word with emphasis on the letter B . “What did they want?”

“The banker said that someone left me a safety deposit box fifteen years ago, and that I had to open it by tomorrow or the contents would be destroyed. At first, I thought it was a scam, but then I couldn’t help myself, and I called for an appointment.”

Gabe looked at her as if she’d just confessed to drinking a bottle of poison. “Don’t tell me you think this mystery safety deposit box contains the Alchemical Heart.”

That was exactly what Holland thought. She could tell Gabe thought she was being naive, but she wasn’t ready to tell him about the connection to her father just yet.

“What’s the harm in just looking at this box? If it doesn’t have the Alchemical Heart, then all we’ve done is waste fifteen minutes.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Gabe rubbed a hand along the dark stubble lining his jaw for a long, uncomfortable minute that made her regret choosing to sit on the sofa instead of the kitchen table. This close to him, she could feel tension and anger and some other unnameable but very uncomfortable emotion pouring off him.

Finally, he said, “This isn’t a regular bank. When the Sacred Order of the Parallel Dawn split up, it fractured into three separate groups. One faction felt that the magic created by the Alchemical Heart needed to be destroyed.”

Holland nodded.

“One of the other factions felt the opposite. They wanted to continue to use the Alchemical Heart to create magic—”

“Wait—” Holland interrupted. “I thought you said not to use the word magic ?”

“People have abilities,” he said, annoyed. “Objects have magic.”

“So… I can use the word magic ?”

“ Only when you talk about an object. But just… don’t.”

“Oh, my gosh—you’re a snob!”

Gabe immediately looked offended, but then his snobby expression returned, which only proved her point.

“You’re a magic snob! You’re a part of this magical world, and you don’t want me saying the word magic because you’re afraid it will make you seem less serious and scary.”

He scowled. “Do you want me to finish telling you about the Bank, or do you want to argue about magic?”

For the record, Gabe was the one who kept saying magic . But Holland thought it was probably not wise to point that out. “Please, continue,” she said sweetly.

Gabe’s mouth shifted into a crooked line, as if he wasn’t quite sure what expression to make.

Murders, car chases, and ransacked homes were all just part of his average day, but teasing had surprised him.

Holland watched his mouth twist uncertainly for a few more seconds before, finally, he said, “The third faction claimed that it didn’t think the Alchemical Heart should be destroyed, but they also didn’t think it should be used.

They said they wanted to protect the world and the Alchemical Heart by keeping it out of anyone’s hands.

This faction came to be known as the Bank. ”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Holland said.

“I’m not done. Back when the Bank first split from the Sacred Order, it began a campaign to erase all mentions of the Alchemical Heart and the Sacred Order of the Parallel Dawn from history.

But it didn’t stop there. The Bank is the reason no one who’s not a part of this world ever remembers hearing about the Alchemical Heart.

They erase memories, and they’re ruthless about it. ”

Holland also didn’t see how this was necessarily evil, but it seemed Gabe still wasn’t done.

“During World War II, the Bank conscripted a number of powerful objects from people. They claimed it was in service of the war, but the objects were never given back—and many of the families they stole from were in open opposition to the Bank’s practices.

They did the same with abilities. You’re not supposed to be able to steal an ability from another person, but the Bank has managed to take abilities from entire families, and now they loan those abilities out to those in their employ, as an incentive to get people to work for them.

” Gabe curled his mouth as if he found this distasteful, and Holland had to admit she did as well.

“The Bank claims their goal is to maintain order and keep people safe, but what they really want is to control, manipulate, and possess all the power in the world. That’s why they want the Alchemical Heart, and if you go in there tomorrow, I promise you that before you leave, they’ll take whatever is in that box, and then they’ll take your memories.

Not just of this conversation—they’ll erase everything you learned from your precious Professor, everything you learned about your sister tonight, they—” Gabe’s eyes were on hers, and for a second Holland imagined he was going to say they’d take every memory of him as well, but what he said next was far worse.

“Just to be safe , they might even take the last several years of your life. You’ll become one of those people who end up in Griffith Park with no memory of how they got there or who they are. ”

Goosebumps sprang up on Holland’s arms. The Professor had a class about this.

Every year, she told her students that there was anywhere from one to several dozen unexplainable cases of amnesia reported at the Old LA Zoo, and the Professor claimed that these were all people who had stumbled upon the myths and legends she taught in her class.

Then she warned her students this was why they could never repeat the stories she shared.

Holland had always been skeptical of this myth. It felt a little bit like manipulation. But Gabe didn’t sound as if he was trying to manipulate her, he sounded as if he was just telling her the cold hard facts. And Holland believed him.

It made Holland wonder if maybe this was what had happened to the Professor, if she had gotten too close to too many truths and the Bank had erased her memories. Maybe this was why she’d sent Holland her journal—so someone would remember.

Gabe started to shove up from the sofa, as if the conversation was over.

“Wait—” said Holland. “What if the box actually does hold the Alchemical Heart?”

“You just don’t give up, do you?”

“Not when my life depends on it.” Although Holland would have wanted to open her father’s box even if her life didn’t depend on it.

“Give me one good reason you think that box might hold the Alchemical Heart,” Gabe said.

Holland took a deep breath. She had always told herself that when she finally fell in love, she’d know because this would be the secret she would share.

It was the one thing she never told anyone.

And it was the one thing she desperately wanted to tell someone.

She just hadn’t expected that someone to be Gabe, a reluctant bodyguard who may or may not have kidnapped her earlier that night—she still went back and forth with how she felt about that one.

But she reminded herself that her sister trusted him, so she could as well.

She tried to keep her voice steady. “I wasn’t being entirely honest with you when I told you about that list of dates in the Professor’s journal. I noticed that the second-to-last date in there was fifteen years ago this month, which was when my father opened the safety deposit box at the Bank.”

“That doesn’t mean he put the Alchemical Heart in there.”

“What if I told you my father was also part of one of the Professor’s myths?”

This seemed to capture Gabe’s attention. His head cocked to the side as he asked, “Who is your father?”

Holland took another deep breath. “Benjamin Tierney.”

“As in the director who—” Gabe broke off.

But Holland knew what he’d been about to say. He’d been about to say something about Ben’s wife murdering him, which is what most people said when Ben Tierney and Isla Saint came up.

And suddenly Holland regretted telling him anything. She never should have said her father’s name. She—

“Hey, don’t—” Gabe gripped her shoulder, his hands steady in a way that made her realize just how unsteady she felt.

“You haven’t fallen apart yet tonight. Don’t do it now.

” He looked at her as if he wanted to say more, as if maybe he even wanted to say he was sorry, but Holland imagined that while Gabe was adept at abducting damsels in distress, he wasn’t used to comforting them.

“It’s all right,” Holland said. “I’m not going to fall apart. I’m very familiar with my parents’ story.”

She started to pull away, but Gabe held her there a second longer, before very quietly saying, “I didn’t know. Your sister never told me.”

“We don’t tell anyone,” Holland said. “I only told you because I didn’t think you’d let me go to the Bank otherwise.”

“I’m still not sure about letting you go.

” Gabe removed his hand from her shoulder.

“But as much as I hate to admit it—you might be on to something.” His expression suggested he might regret what he was about to say next.

“There were rumors about Ben Tierney being in possession of the Alchemical Heart.”

“So you think I’m right?” Holland asked cautiously.

“I didn’t say that.” Gabe rubbed his knuckles across his jaw. “It was just a rumor. That’s why I told you the Alchemical Heart was a myth, because all the recent stories aren’t even real stories. They’re just whispers, bits of gossip that people like to repeat.”

“Just because it’s gossip doesn’t mean it’s not true. My father opened the box fifteen years ago. So the timing matches the date in the journal.”

“That could just be a coincidence,” Gabe argued.

“One thing can be a coincidence, but when you have multiple things that all add up, it’s a story,” Holland said.

“And you think this story ends with your father putting the most valuable object in the world inside a safety deposit box?”

Holland wanted to say yes. Her gut kept telling her the answer was yes. But she didn’t feel as if her gut was enough to win an argument with Gabe.

Holland pulled out the Professor’s journal.

“What are you looking for?” Gabe asked.

“The Professor taught a class on the Bank,” Holland said. It was the one class she could never seem to remember, but she felt as if it presented a different picture of the Bank than Gabe did, and she imagined the Professor had written things about it in her journal.

“The Bank is good at propaganda,” Gabe muttered.

Ignoring his glare, Holland continued to flip pages.

“Here it is. The Professor wrote that the Bank’s vaults are the safest and most secure in the world—no one has ever stolen anything from the Bank, including the Bank.

The Bank enforces all the laws of their world.

One of the reasons they are able to keep this power is because they abide by all the rules.

The Bank’s branches hold the greatest number of magical objects in the entire world, and one of the reasons people are willing to store their most valuable magic objects there is because they know they won’t be touched.

As long as they have an appointment.” She paused. “Is this true?”

Gabe worked his jaw unhappily, which made her feel as if the answer was yes. “What else does she say?”

“One of the Bank’s most well-known rules is that they offer protection to anyone with an appointment. If you have an appointment, no one, not even the Bank, can touch you during that window of time.”

Holland looked up at Gabe hopefully. If this was true, then it made even more sense that her father would have put the Alchemical Heart in one of the Bank’s boxes.

Gabe paced the tiny room. He looked as if he was debating sending her into an evil bank to retrieve a mythical treasure that might not actually be there or…

There actually wasn’t another option available, which he seemed to realize.

“You’re not going to have a problem getting into the Bank,” he finally gritted out.

“If you have an appointment, then they want you in—they want you to open your father’s box.

The tricky part is going to be getting you out.

As soon as your appointment is over and you’re off the property, they’ll try to detain you. ”

“So you’re going to let me go?”

“I don’t think I can stop you,” he said, which sounded like about as nice of a compliment as Gabe could give.

Holland tried to say as much, but suddenly she was having a difficult time breathing.

The light had faded and the room had gone fuzzy.

Her head was spinning a little, and when she was able to speak again, words came out that she didn’t mean to say.

“What if my father’s box doesn’t have the Alchemical Heart and the Bank detains me? ”

“I won’t let that happen. You get in, I’ll make sure you get out,” Gabe said. But suddenly he no longer looked like Gabe. He looked just like Adam Bishop. Golden hair, golden skin, devil-may-care expression on his beautiful face.

Holland blinked, but when she opened her eyes, she was still looking at Adam.

Adam was in the beach house, right in front of her, real enough to touch, wearing the same ripped jeans and plaid shirt as before, only now the shirt was open and she could see a bandage wrapping around his shoulder.

“Trust me, Bright Eyes,” he said, and he sounded like Adam, too. “I’m not going to let anyone hold on to you but me.” His mouth slowly tipped into a smirk as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

Holland tried to pull free, but she felt helpless as he tugged her closer. All she could do was shut her eyes again. Tighter this time.

“Holland—” This time the voice sounded like Gabe. He took hold of her shoulder, just as she felt something wet drip from her nose.