Page 3 of Alchemy of Secrets

The next morning arrived slowly, reluctant to perform a job it had grown tired of doing.

Holland woke up to thick silence. There were no chirping birds, no cars rushing down the street, no creaking floorboards as her house stretched awake. For a second, she swore her heart didn’t even beat.

Her head spun as she finally sat up in bed. She felt vaguely nauseated all of a sudden. It wasn’t a hangover, at least she didn’t think so.

She tried to remember what she had done last night. But for a moment she couldn’t even recall what day it was. She felt like a piece of paper that was slightly stuck to the page before.

Holland groggily leaned over to check her phone.

It was Thursday.

Yesterday had been Wednesday.

Her third date with Jake.

The details came back in a slow parade of grainy off-white pictures that made her think of old home videos. She remembered the alley… the milk glass… Jake’s arm around her shoulder… sheets of carbon paper… the simple magic of timeless things… the Watch Man…

Everything had felt so electric at the time.

But now the night felt strangely dull and far away as she replayed the events.

After leaving the alley, she and Jake had finally picked up peanut butter and bacon ice cream, and then he’d kissed her at her car.

They’d kissed for a while. But maybe he felt differently about all the kissing than she did because this was the first morning since she’d met him that she hadn’t woken up to a text from him.

It wasn’t that late. He could still text Good morning.

Her phone chimed, as if on cue.

But it wasn’t a message from Jake.

2:00 Meeting with Adam Bishop

Holland dropped her phone back on the bed.

Adam Bishop was a new faculty member who had recently come over from the UC Berkeley Folklore Program. Holland hadn’t met him in real life, but she’d heard other grad students chattering about him. Everyone seemed to love him.

The email he’d sent her on Monday was brief, requesting her presence this afternoon. When she’d followed up to ask why, Adam Bishop had cryptically responded that it would be easier to explain in person.

She wondered if maybe he was looking for a teaching assistant, and the Professor had given him Holland’s name.

Holland might have been behind on finishing her thesis, but she was an excellent assistant.

She’d been the Professor’s TA for two years—one year during undergrad and one year during grad school—and everyone knew it required a lot of patience, along with a number of skills that weren’t usually found on résumés.

She actually really missed that job. But she had another job now. A fantastic job.

Every Friday night, Holland showed classic films in the loft of the Santa Monica Coffee Lab, then followed them up with a discussion. It was like teaching without the grading, and everyone got to drink.

She loved it.

She loved the Coffee Lab. She loved the people who showed up each week. But most of all, she loved the old movies.

Holland had loved movies ever since she was four and her father had introduced her and her twin sister to The Wizard of Oz . When they’d finished the film, her sister had taken off with a broom and Holland had immediately asked for a pair of ruby slippers.

Her father had said, “I thought you might say that, Hollybells.” Then he’d told her the slippers were already waiting for her somewhere in the house; she just had to find them.

That had been her first treasure hunt.

Her father had always connected his hunts to movies.

Showing old films at the Coffee Lab made her feel close to him now.

She was currently doing a film noir series, and she loved the history behind the films. She loved how the movies had a way of making her believe there was a hidden black-and-white corner of the world, where private eyes lined the streets instead of fast food joints, and at least once a week a femme fatale with a peek-a-boo hairstyle would walk through the door and take someone’s life down a dark, twisty path.

If Adam Bishop was looking to hire her as his assistant, she didn’t think she’d be interested. But Holland was still curious. She was always curious.

After getting up, she went for a run and tried to imagine what else Adam Bishop could possibly want from her. But as the run turned into a walk and the morning disappeared into noon, her thoughts kept returning to Jake.

He still hadn’t texted.

Holland wanted to regret taking him down that alley. She wanted to think it would have all gone differently, and she would have woken up to a good morning text, if they’d just gone straight to ice cream and she hadn’t messed it up by chasing an urban myth about death.

But what Holland really wanted was for Jake to like her in spite of—or maybe even because of—the myth. The irony was, the Watch Man wasn’t even one of Holland’s favorite myths. She didn’t really care to know when she would die, she just wanted to know that the myths were true.

It was now nearly time for her meeting. Holland checked her phone one last time.

Nothing.

She knew this didn’t mean it was over, but in that moment, it didn’t feel as if it was going anywhere. She considered texting Jake, but she’d been the last one to text, last night after she’d gotten home.

If only January was there.

Holland knew what her twin sister would say—something along the lines of Forget any guy who doesn’t want you. Only January would have used a different F word than forget .

The sisters might have been identical in appearance, but in most other ways they couldn’t have been more different. And yet, January was Holland’s best friend. The one person she told everything to.

Holland darted down her staircase to leave for her meeting. Like so many things Holland loved, her house was old, built in the 1940s, full of real wood, white walls, and lots of windows that let in the light. Halfway down the steps, she called her sister.

Normally Holland and January talked every day, but since the beginning of October, January’s job had been keeping her busier than usual. For the past three weeks, there had only been the occasional text or photo from Spain.

Right after college, January had gotten a job as a rare book collector.

People were willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to have something no one else did, and it was January’s job to track those somethings down.

It was truly the perfect job for her. She’d always wanted to travel the world, and like Holland, she’d been raised on their father’s treasure hunts.

But Holland missed her whenever she was gone.

January’s phone rang once before it went to voicemail. “Hello. You’ve reached January St. James. I’m traveling internationally at the moment—”

The recording was interrupted by January answering the phone. “Hey—” she sounded out of breath but wide awake.

“Is this a bad time?” Holland asked.

“No, but I only have a second.” Traffic rumbled in the background, making it sound closer to midday than midnight.

“What are you doing?” Holland asked.

“Boring work stuff. I just finished meeting with a client who really liked hearing the sound of his own voice.” January always tried to make her job sound far less interesting than it was, probably to keep Holland from feeling jealous.

But tonight, January actually sounded a little worn out. “I miss you, kid.”

January never said I miss you .

“I miss you, too,” Holland said. “My house has been far too clean, since you haven’t visited. When is your trip over?”

“Not soon enough…” The phone went quiet for a second. Holland briefly thought she might have dropped the call, then January said, “I wish I was there with you…” Her voice was so soft, it didn’t even really sound like her.

“Is everything okay?” Holland asked. “You almost sound sappy.” Usually, Holland was the sappy one.

“I’m just tired,” January said, and she really must have been because she didn’t even scoff at being called sappy . “It’s late here and I wish I could talk longer, but I need to dash. I—”

Holland’s doorbell rang, muffling January’s last words.

Then her sister was gone.

Holland glanced out the windows flanking her door. No one ever rang the doorbell, except for the occasional person selling pest control or solar panels. But this gentleman didn’t look like he was selling anything.

There were wisps of silver hair peeking out from his hat and wrinkles on his light-brown cheeks. His shirt was white, and his pants were khaki, held up by a pair of brilliant red-and-white checkered suspenders that made everything else on Holland’s quiet street appear dull.

Holland didn’t have any minutes to waste if she wanted to make her meeting on time. But as she looked through the window, she was struck by a bolt of déjà vu. I’ve met him before , she thought. Only she couldn’t place how.

It might have just been that the suspenders reminded her of an old picture of her grandfather, who had died before she was born.

Whatever it was, it was enough to make her open the door.

“Hello, Holland.” The gentleman smiled, an easy grin that made her think of hard candies in shiny wrappers and exaggerated bedtime stories.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“No, I’m afraid you don’t.” His smile remained, but his brown eyes lost some of their twinkle as he held out a package wrapped in brown paper and string.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I found it on your doorstep.”

Holland took a second look at the parcel. There was no return address, only a blocky orange Happy Halloween stamp in the corner and her full name, Holland St. James, typed across the middle in smudgy, old-fashioned letters.

It must have been from the Professor. She loved sending packages and, of course, she never put her name on the return address because she liked them to be mysterious.