Page 36 of Alchemy of Secrets

Holland had thought that she would never read more words written by her dad.

Everyone said this screenplay didn’t even exist, and people had spent years searching for it. Why had her dad hidden it here?

Holland looked at her watch.

Six minutes left.

It looked as if there were only a handful of pages, and yet there wasn’t enough time to read them all.

But she couldn’t leave the vault without at least looking at a few pages. This might be her last day alive, and in that moment, there was nothing she wanted to do more than read her father’s final words.

EXT. A GRAVEYARD. SUNSET

A hand (the hand of Red Westcott) sets a bouquet of flowers in front of a grave covered in spring-green grass. The tombstone reads:

Sophia Westcott

Beloved Wife. Beautiful Soul.

This is only temporary.

There is a moment of perfect silence, except for the sound of a breeze rustling leaves on a sycamore tree. Then…

Red plunges his fist into his wife’s grave and pulls out a handful of dirt.

He fills a jar with the dirt. A blue Ball jar. But instead of the word Ball , it reads:

Alchemy

Of

Secrets

Red continues filling the jar with angry fistful after fistful of dirt, until the jar is full…

Match cut to

INT. A BOWLING ALLEY. EVENING.

Red slams the jar full of dirt down on a table. The jar now says the word Ball instead of the title of the film.

In the background, balls are rolling, pins are falling.

When someone gets a gutter ball, a neon sign inside of a heart lights up with the words Not Your Lucky Day .

Think Cassius Marcellus Coolidge meets Spanish colonial revival.

The neon sign is on as Red walks in. He approaches a vinyl table with a group of stylish older women in matching bowling shirts.

The word Hollybells is monogrammed on the backs of their pink-and-green shirts.

Five of the women are sipping sodas from vintage glass bottles with striped straws.

The sixth is stitching a yellow house on a needlepoint pillowcase.

RED WESTCOTT

How do I bring her back?

ALMA HERNANDEZ

I told you not to come back here, boy.

RED WESTCOTT

Tell me how to bring her back and I’ll never darken your door again.

Alma sips her cola and eyes him like a bowling pin she’d like to strike down. The lights in the bowling alley go dark, switching to black light as the neon sign flickers between Lucky Day and Not Your Lucky Day.

ALMA HERNANDEZ

You need to see the Watch Man.

In the background Frank Sinatra begins to play.

RED WESTCOTT

I’m already familiar with my time of death.

ALMA HERNANDEZ

The Watch Man can tell you more than just when you’ll die. If you want to bring my daughter back from the dead, you’ll need the Source , and to get the Source , you’ll need the Watch Man to tell you where to look.

RED WESTCOTT

How do I find the Watch Man?

ALMA HERNANDEZ

That’s for you to figure out. I’m telling you how to bring my daughter back.

But I don’t think it’s a good idea. The dead are meant to stay dead.

When they come back, there are always consequences.

Haven’t enough people already died because of your undying love?

Do the right thing. Leave what’s better left untouched in the past, think about the future, and move on.

Holland could picture every word in brilliant, saturated colors, filling a wide movie screen as she read. Benjamin J. Tierney’s stories might have been grim subject-wise, but visually his films were always lush and vivid and full of light.

In one of Holland’s favorite interviews, he’d said, “When you tell a dark story, it’s important to make sure the people watching never lose hope.

You need to give them something bright to hold on to, even if it’s just a color on a screen, reminding them that there is still light in the world.

The dark night might get its time every day, but the sun will always rise and put it out. ”

As Holland read about the sunset and the grave, she wondered if her father knew he was going to die in a handful of months. Then, when she read the scene in the bowling alley, she knew almost instantly why her father had hidden these pages.

He approaches a vinyl table with a group of stylish older women in matching bowling shirts. The word Hollybells is monogrammed on the backs of their pink-and-green shirts.

These pages were a clue for her. Another treasure hunt. And she wondered if it ended with finding the Alchemical Heart. Why else would her father have gone to such great lengths to hide these pages?

Holland wanted to cry, or call her sister, or cry and call her sister. It was too much emotion for her to think clearly, on a day that was already emotional.

Holland had told herself she’d only read a couple of pages, but she couldn’t stop.

She was a child on a treasure hunt, a little girl who hadn’t lost her dad, a young woman who felt hope returning.

This was her father’s final gift to her, and it felt like the most beautiful and bittersweet thing she’d ever held.

There was a curious handwritten note penciled onto the screenplay. But what really drew Holland’s attention was Alma’s mention of the Watch Man.

Holland had seen the Price of Magic movies at least fifty times. The Watch Man was never mentioned. This was clearly a clue.

What if her father was telling her to find—

The vault was suddenly plunged into darkness.

No lights. No power.

Gabe.

Holland wondered if the Bank was coming for him—or if they had him—and he was using his ability to turn off all the power.

Holland tried not to feel guilty, but for a second all she could picture was Gabe at her house, bleeding on her steps in the middle of the night, then patiently guiding her to stitch him up. And she definitely felt guilty. But she told herself that someone like Gabe probably didn’t feel anything.

Steeling herself, Holland held tight to her father’s screenplay pages and then carefully reached out to grab the satchel that the pages had been concealed in. When she’d come in from the elevator, she hadn’t seen another door, but there had to be an emergency exit down here.

Blindly, she shoved the pages in her father’s satchel and slung the strap across her body.

She moved carefully but quickly, arms stretched out, until she hit a wall. She could feel the wallpaper under her fingers. Then—a hairline crack. She traced the crack. It went all the way to the ground. This had to be the door.

Holland pushed as hard as she could, nearly stumbling when it gave easily.

There must have been a window somewhere above, because she could see the gently gilded outline of a staircase.

She wasn’t far from the exit. She had no idea what she’d do when she got out, but for now she just had to focus on escaping.

As she neared the top of the steps, she heard the chaotic voices of bankers on the other side of the walls.

Holland stood near the exit door, listening until the voices quieted.

She listened for another handful of seconds. If no one else walked by, this could be her chance. She had one shot at escape, or this treasure hunt would be over before it began.

Her pulse spiked as she turned the doorknob.

The door opened next to a pair of very leafy potted plants in an alcove of the lobby. They were enough to conceal her for a minute, but not for long. With so many windows in the lobby, she couldn’t really tell the lights were out. All it would take was one cowboy to look her way.

Holland could see the front doors, about twenty feet away. She debated whether she should just run for it. She had ninety seconds left.

Then she saw it. Discarded just a few feet away was a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. Holland grabbed it, threw it on, and bolted for the door.

She might have moved a little too fast, but she didn’t look around, she didn’t check behind her. She could see the street and the sun. And then she was there, she’d made it out with one minute to spare.

Holland kept running down the street, in the opposite direction from where Gabe had parked. At least she hoped it was the opposite direction.

“Holland!” A cherry-red car that looked straight out of the 1940s pulled up beside her. “Get in now—”

The door opened, and Holland saw Eileen in the leather driver’s seat. She was dressed like Calamity Jane in fringe and leather, with two fake pistols tucked into a belt with a large brass buckle.

“Am I the only person in my life who doesn’t have a secret identity?” Holland asked, gaping at her friend.

“I’d say I’d explain everything, but there’s no time.” Eileen quickly motioned her toward the passenger seat. “Get in. Now.”

Holland cut a glance to the clock on Eileen’s dashboard. 10:01. Holland’s appointment was officially over. The protection of the Bank was gone. “How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.

“Because if I did what I’d been asked, I wouldn’t have left my cowgirl hat by the emergency exit and… I’m your friend.” Eileen threw down the word friend the way a gambler might place all her chips in the center of the table.

“I want to believe you,” Holland said. When she looked at Eileen, she saw her friend. But apparently Eileen was a part of this world, where it seemed everyone was deceiving her.

“Even if you don’t believe me,” Eileen said, “at the very least be prac tical. We both know those heels are adorable, but you’re not going to get very far in them.”

The fringe on Eileen’s cowboy jacket shook as she drove.

Holland had always thought of Eileen as her most straitlaced friend, but she was a bit of a maniac now, treating stop signs like suggestions.

It made Holland think of someone else who’d been hiding a big secret.

Although she really didn’t want to keep thinking about him.

And, if Holland was being truthful, Eileen having a secret identity wasn’t entirely surprising.

Eileen had always been the friend Holland had said she’d call if she ever needed to hide a dead body, and she supposed this explained why.

“You know,” Holland said, “you just missed an excellent opportunity to say, Come with me if you want to live. ”

Eileen rolled her eyes. “I’m not a deadly robot.”

“But you do work for the Bank?”

Eileen pursed her lips before saying, tightly, “An NDA prevents me from answering that.”

Holland tried another tactic. “Do you work for the Professor?”

Eileen worked her mouth again as if fighting to answer. There must have been some magic in whatever NDA she signed.

The car sped faster the more frustrated she became. “I was offered a job right out of college. The—” She broke off, screwed her mouth into a pained expression, and, after what looked like a significant effort, said, “It was an offer that was really difficult to say no to.”

“The Professor offered you an ability,” Holland supplied.

Eileen nodded.

“Can you tell me what it is?”

Eileen shook her head then she gave Holland a look that made her think her friend had been swindled. “It’s not as impressive as you might think.”

Holland thought back to what the Professor had said in her office. “Do you have the ability to always find a really good parking spot?”

Eileen’s eyes widened. “How did you guess that?” she asked, then she looked down at Holland’s wrist. Her eyes lingered for a second and she frowned, as if she hadn’t found what she’d been looking for.

All of a sudden, Holland understood what the tattoos represented. “Were you looking for an ancient eye with the symbol for sulfur and the symbol for tin?”

Eileen frowned, as if she wasn’t supposed to answer that question. Then she turned her wrist, which was normally covered in a watch or a sleeve, to reveal a tattoo exactly like January’s, Gabe’s, and Adam’s, except Eileen’s was an inky shade of green.

Holland must have been right. The tattoos meant that a person had an ability. “Why—”

Holland’s phone beeped with a text. For a second, she wondered if it was January, and if she’d made a terrible mistake about Gabe. But the text was not from her sister.

What have you done?

Suddenly, Holland did feel scared. There were just four words, but the fact that Gabe had sent them meant the Bank hadn’t apprehended him. And that he knew she had turned him in.

Holland anxiously looked out the window to see if Gabe was following them. There was nothing, just road and trees and…

A billboard appeared on the side of the road. One moment it wasn’t there, and then it just was.

The billboard pictured a couple riding in a convertible with the top down. He looked like Cary Grant. She looked like Grace Kelly, large sunglasses covering her eyes, Tiffany-blue scarf blowing in the wind as they rode toward a mansion.

During warmer months of the year, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery projected classic films on the side of one of their mausoleums after sunset. Holland wondered if maybe this billboard was an old ad for that, if perhaps this summer they’d shown To Catch a Thief .

But the writing on the billboard read:

THE REGAL HOTEL

Next Turn

.5 miles

“Oh. My. God.” Eileen’s voice jumped to a fevered pitch that Holland had never heard before. “You have a key.”

Eileen’s gaze volleyed excitedly from Holland to Cary and Grace and then back to Holland.

“What are you talking about?” Holland asked.

“That’s a billboard for the Regal. You can’t see it unless you have a key.”

Holland was about to say she didn’t, but then she hesitated.

She opened her purse and pulled out her sister’s plastic Motor Hotel key chain.

Her fingers sparked once again as she touched it.

Then, right before her eyes, the key transformed into a gleaming gold skeleton key attached to a shimmering gold oval with two words etched into it: The Regal.