Page 53 of Alchemy of Secrets

There was a crack in the coffin. Everything else was dark and Adam.

It felt as if he was being careful with his hands, but she was so aware of him.

She could feel his fingers wrapped around her rib cage, his chest pressed to her back, his lips at the corner of her ear.

Yet her thoughts kept going to the man just on the other side of the coffin.

“I love this show so much,” said Gabe. His voice made Holland’s stomach churn with terror.

Adam held her tighter, his lips still pressed to the side of her ear. They didn’t move. He didn’t say a word and yet she swore she heard him whisper, I won’t let him touch you .

“How can I be an extra?” Gabe asked. His voice was saccharine. The same insincerely enthusiastic voice he had used with Chance last night.

“I could probably pull some strings,” said a chirpy female voice.

Holland peeked through the crack in the coffin. The tour guide with Gabe was short and slender, or it might have just been that she looked small next to Gabe, who seemed to become taller and more menacing with every step.

He was dressed more casually than when he’d abducted Holland. Dark jeans, black shirt, black boots, backpack on his shoulders. It was almost the exact same way he had looked in her vision.

“What’s this?” Gabe asked, stepping closer to the chained book while Holland could do nothing but watch.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” said the tour guide, “but I think it’s for the season seven finale.”

Gabe touched the book and the chains glowed red.

“Um, what are you doing?” said the tour guide.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Gabe said, but his voice was back to normal. Unkind. Unfriendly. Unenthusiastic.

Then the lights all over the stage started flickering.

The tour guide took a wobbly step back. And Holland watched in fear as Gabe pulled out a key.

Adam tensed behind her. Holland told herself it was going to be fine. Her key hadn’t worked. This key wouldn’t work, either, but the lock didn’t spark as Gabe slid it inside. How did he get a key?

A ring sounded from Holland’s purse.

Gabe’s head snapped toward the tour guide. “Is that your phone?”

“I don’t think so,” trilled the guide.

Holland panicked and scrambled to silence her phone. Who was even calling her? Gabe was the only one with the number and he was occupied.

The good news: He’d already stopped looking for the ringing phone.

The bad news: The chains had fallen from the book.

Holland’s heart raced furiously as Gabe reached for the book’s cover and pulled it open.

Adam held her tight. “It’s too late,” he murmured quietly.

“No,” Holland breathed. They could still stop him. Gabe was now just standing there. Staring. Not moving.

Wait—why wasn’t Gabe moving?

“Huh,” he finally said.

The petite tour guide now looked bewildered.

Holland’s heart had been racing, but now it felt as if it was sinking because neither Gabe nor the tour guide was looking as if the book contained the most powerful object in the world.

The tour guide laughed nervously and said something, but Holland couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear anything. All she could do was watch through the crack in the coffin as Gabe walked away, hands in his pockets.

“He didn’t take anything,” Holland whispered, and then she was stumbling out of the coffin. Adam shadowed her, and for a moment the two of them stood there, much like Gabe and the tour guide had.

They stared at the open book.

It was fake. The pages inside were blank. A hole had been cut in the center, leaving a slender rectangle that hid one very ordinary object.