Page 29 of Alchemy of Secrets

Holland opened her eyes.

Adam was gone.

Gabe was back, and the beach house was suddenly too bright, as if someone had turned all the lights on at once. The wall of fake greenery looked lurid, the couch was a brasher shade of orange than before, and there was a lot of bright red blood on her hand.

Was this how she died? Was something happening with her brain that only the Alchemical Heart could fix?

Gabe carefully dabbed at her nose with a small yellow towel. She hadn’t seen him go and grab it, but she also hadn’t seen him during the minute she’d been imagining Adam.

“You all right?” Gabe asked.

Nope. Definitely not all right. Not even close.

The microwave clock read 2:17. Suddenly she was exhausted to her bones.

All she wanted was to sleep, and to hear someone say it was all going to be all right by the time the credits rolled, and maybe she wanted a hug.

She actually really wanted a hug. If she’d been with anyone else, she might have asked for one, but Gabe seemed as if he might be allergic to hugs. “I think I’m just tired.”

Gabe looked at her skeptically. “Do you always bleed when you’re tired?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been this tired,” she said.

And she decided to believe that rather than confess that this was the third time in twenty-four hours her nose had bled and she’d seen things that weren’t there.

Maybe it wasn’t the best decision she’d ever made.

But as Aunt Beth always liked to say, Only mistakes happen after two o’clock in the morning. “I’m going to go… clean up.”

The bathroom Holland went into was covered in wallpaper printed with giant lemons.

The floor was tiled in black-and-white checkers, and right in the middle of it was a large bath mat shaped like two red cherries.

The bright little carpet looked clean and soft, and Holland immediately plopped down on it.

First, she took off January’s backpack. Then she finally removed her shoe and tipped it over. The sole immediately dislodged, and a key attached to a red plastic key chain with the words Motor Hotel fell out into her hand.

There was a quick bolt of static electricity, but other than that the key was unremarkable. It looked like something from a ’60s motel. This was not what Holland had expected. She might have thought it was a useless tchotchke, but then why had January hidden it in her shoe?

Holland remembered then that the Professor had mentioned a hotel in her journal. She quickly pulled the notebook from her backpack and flipped until she found the right page.

The Regal

Perhaps the greatest myth of all, or at least the grandest. The Regal is the embodiment of why people spend their lives searching for magic.

Must be a registered key holder, or on the official guest list of a registered key holder.

Guests of registered key holders may stay up to 24 Regal hours.

Key holders may stay as long as they wish, and some of them do just that.

It’s rumored that a number of mysterious disappearances are actually people who checked into the Regal and never checked out.

Behavioral and dress codes are strictly enforced.

No naked animals (not sure if this is a joke).

It’s said to exist outside of time. One hour in the Regal is one minute in the real world, making it the perfect place for those who never want to grow old, or those who wish to hide.

Holland wondered if this was a key to the Regal.

But grand hotels didn’t have plastic key chains.

When her father used to create treasure hunts for her as a child, he would always let her know when she’d found all the clues.

He’d gently tell her, You already have everything you need.

You just have to see it. Then she would know that she didn’t need to keep searching for clues, she just needed to piece together what she had.

But she didn’t have her father to tell her that now.

That was what she really wanted—for her father, or her sister, or someone else who loved her to tell her she had everything she needed, that she was going to be okay, that she wasn’t all alone.

Continuing to search for more answers might have quelled some of her curiosity, but it wasn’t going to give her what she really wanted.

A shower started in another bathroom. Holland could hear the pipes vibrating through the thin walls.

Gabe must have been taking a shower, and suddenly she was desperate for one, too.

The water was cold by the time she stepped in, but it still felt good to clean off all the grime. Once she was dry, she changed into a clean tank top and a thin pair of shorts from the backpack.

After dressing, Holland opened the door and stepped into the attached bedroom. The light in the room was soft and low, pouring out from a chandelier made of wooden beads. There were no neon signs, just plastic vines of flowers on the wall behind the bed, and Gabe standing there without a shirt on.

His dark hair was damp, his bandaged chest was a bronzed shade of brown, and all he wore were black boxers that sat dangerously low on his hips. Holland told herself not to stare, but he was so close, standing right in front of her, with barely any clothes on, and barely any space between them.

He needed to move if she was going to walk past him to the door. And she was going to walk past him.

Holland didn’t want to sleep with Gabe. Not that way or the other way. Except she sort of did. She just knew if she did, it would be another one of those after-two-in-the-morning mistakes.

Holland needed to leave the room and sleep in a bed alone . Even if this was her last night alive, which it wasn’t. She couldn’t think like that.

Water dripped down her back, soaking through her white tank top, as she took a step toward the door.

Gabe reached out. His hand landed on the dip in her waist. Butterflies fluttered inside her.

She hadn’t expected him to touch her there.

The hint of surprise on his face made her think he hadn’t expected it, either.

That he had been reaching for something else, but his fingers had landed on her waist instead.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I need to go to bed,” she said.

“There’s a bed in here.” His hand slid around her back, pressing against her damp shirt.

“Oh, no—” Holland wriggled free, bare feet nearly slipping on the wood as she took a step back. “You’re also in here and—”

“I don’t know why you’re arguing.” He took another step until she was once again too close to him and his bare chest. “We both know I’m sleeping in whatever bed you’re sleeping in.”

Her stomach dipped. And then he was pulling her onto the bed.

One second she was standing, and the next they were lying in bed. Together. His arms around her. “I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he murmured.

Holland should have told him he didn’t need to hold her this close to see her.

She didn’t need to be wrapped up in his arms, which were so much stronger than she’d expected.

But the truth was that the weight of Gabe’s arms felt nice.

Maybe a little more than nice, maybe it made her feel as if she wasn’t so alone.

As Gabe drifted to sleep, one of his hands slipped under her shirt just enough that his warm fingers were pressed to her bare stomach, and instead of pulling away, Holland leaned deeper in.