Page 35 of Alchemy of Secrets
The elevator was quiet as Holland stepped inside. No Halloween music poured from the speakers. No banker stood beside her, clicking the heels of her cowboy boots.
And Holland was grateful. She was also nervous.
Holland clutched the charm around her neck as she watched the second hand move around her watch.
She only had twelve minutes left. It didn’t feel like even close to enough time to get the Alchemical Heart and get out of the Bank, especially without Gabe to help her.
Holland felt a sick twist in her stomach at the thought of Gabe.
She thought she’d feel better after turning Gabe in to the Professor.
But all she felt was a pit in her stomach.
She hated that she had kissed him and she had trusted him—she’d told him about her parents.
It made her feel foolish. She also felt sad, which made her angry because she was supposed to feel terrified.
But the problem with feelings is sometimes you don’t get to choose them.
Sometimes the best you can do is fight them.
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened.
Mercury glass sconces lit a small rectangular room that was decidedly older than the rest of the Bank.
The floor was covered in diamond tiles of pink-and-green marble, scuffed and worn from years of use.
Across from her was a small velvet sofa, green as the squares on the floor, and in front of it, on top of a round brass table, was a metal box.
Her father’s box.
It was larger than she’d expected. In the movies, safety deposit boxes were always small narrow things, but this was the size of several of those put together.
This was it. The last thing her father had left her. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest.
Her watch ticked. But she couldn’t bring herself to open the box quite yet.
Holland had been only ten when her father had died. The memories of him and her mother were starting to feel old and worn, like photos in albums she’d looked at too many times. They seemed more like snapshots of moments than actual memories.
Her dad sitting at Christmas breakfast with a Santa hat on.
Her mom reading by her bed and using her most dramatic voices.
Family movie nights in the backyard beneath the stars, with little bags of popcorn and films projected on great white sheets.
Hanging lollipops on every branch of a tree in the backyard for a birthday.
Her parents might have been there for only a brief period of her life, but they had tried to fill it with wonder. And Holland had been trying to hold on to that wonder.
When researching her thesis, Holland had come across a quote. Right after James Dean died, Humphrey Bogart had said, “He’d never have been able to live up to his publicity.” Holland thought about that a lot. Benjamin Tierney did so much in his life, but it was all overshadowed by how he died.
Holland liked to believe that had her father lived, he would have become so much more than all the tragic publicity. Over the years, Holland had watched every interview she could find of him, and her father was smart and magnetic and kind, and she hated that he had been taken from her.
Finally, she lifted the lid of the box.
Inside was a slim leather satchel, the kind you might slip a laptop into.
Holland’s hands turned clammy as she pressed her palm to the leather and tried to feel for magic the way Gabe had taught her.
Nothing sparked or tingled. She didn’t feel a prickling of her skin or a change in the air.
It was just an ordinary leather satchel.
She told herself that didn’t matter. The Alchemical Heart could still be inside.
Nervously, she opened the satchel and pulled out a plain manila folder. Once again, Holland didn’t feel anything magical when she touched it. It was just paper.
Her heart started to sink.
She’d been so convinced the Alchemical Heart was going to be in the box, she hadn’t even thought about what she would do if it wasn’t.
Dejectedly, she opened the manila folder, and everything immediately changed. Her heart started racing at the sight of her father’s familiar handwriting, scrawled across the front above three neatly typed lines:
ALCHEMY OF SECRETS
A Price of Magic film
Written by Benjamin J. Tierney
It was her father’s missing screenplay.