Sam
Sam breaks out in a cold sweat. Her hands shake. Her stomach turns violently.
She knows she will forever remember every last detail about this video, will close her eyes at night and forever see the image of her mother falling to the ground, the familiar figure that commits the murder. No matter what she does, she will never, ever be able to erase it.
Will.Will.She had slept with him, had idolized him, had loved him.
And he had been the one to do it.
Had Diamond given Will the order? Sam imagines Diamond summoning her son to her living room, then Will sitting on the couch, listening quietly to her command.
Sam sits and squeezes her fists tight until her knuckles turn white. She can’t think straight.
“Miss Lang?” On the phone, Edward’s voice is quiet and almost hesitant.
“I’m still here,” she whispers.
“Miss Lang, let me be up-front with you. I’ve been working on a series of cases for the past year that I can’t seem to wrap my head around. Your mother’s case has now become yet another one, so I was hoping you might be able to help me shed some light on them.” There’s a pause. “Is there anything you can tell me about why Mr. Taylor would want to hurt your mother?”
For a moment, her mind is such a tangle of emotions that she doesn’t know. Whywouldhe? Grand Central is supposed to be her second family; they are always meant to look out for one another. Her mother had never done anything to trigger their wrath, so why would they go out of their way now to hurt her—to hurtSam—like this? Why would Will do it?
“I can’t say,” she mutters, squeezing her eyes shut.
“You can’t say because you don’t know?” Edward asks. “Or because you are unable to say it safely right now?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says harshly. Maybe Edward is aware of certain officers within the force who are in Grand Central’s pockets, must know that it’s dangerous to be too public with what he’s giving her. What she could give him. Her heart pulls away from him, wary.
In the silence that follows, Edward clears his throat politely. “If you tell me to leave you alone, I will,” he says. “I understand I’m asking a lot of you right now, and at a very difficult time. But I have a feeling that, as a Grand Central employee, you might be exactly the person I need. You could do a lot of good, Miss Lang. Take your time. If you ever feel ready to talk again, call me on this line.”
He gives her the number. She feels dizzy. “Okay.”
They hang up. In the silence, Sam sits rigidly on the couch and stares at the shadows stretching across her floor.
Her mother had wanted to meet her. To do what? She can’t be sure, but suddenly she feels sick. Her mother sounded so urgent on their last call, was so meek and desperate.
I need to see you.
She thinks back to that night, of standing on the balcony in her nightshirt, her heart breaking as she agreed to meet her mother. And what was Will doing? Her memory doesn’t fail her now. She recalls every detail of the moment—the color of the light slanting against the blankets, the cool smoothness of the wooden floor against her bare feet, the shape of Will’s body in the darkness.
Had he been awake, listening to them the whole time?
Was there something her mother had said that he didn’t like?
Sam’s heart is beating so fast that it hurts. What if her motherhadbeen about to do something that would upset Grand Central? But Sam doesn’t know what that could be—how could her mother cross them when she didn’t even know anything about alchemy?
Unless she did.
Sam had assumed from their last fight that her mother was ignorant of everything. But what if she’d been wrong? What if her mother had known something all along, maybe not much, maybe not enough to get the full picture, but what if it had beenjust enoughfor her to work out what Sam was doing?
Enough for her to try to interfere?
And with a dawning horror, Sam realizes that this is the only reasonGrand Central would have gotten involved. If she knew what Sam did for work. If she’d wanted to save Sam from it.
Will. Once, she fantasized about Will, would shiver at his touch and yearn for his approval. She ached for him when he told her about his childhood, felt for him and all he had suffered. Once, she thought that perhaps she was in love with him, that earning his affection was a step on her path to happiness, that somehow being with him could have a good ending. She thought that maybe, even with the dangerous glint in his eyes and the knife’s edge of violence he always seems to walk on, she was different to him. She mattered to him.
But she can still feel the pain in her leg. She is sure now that he won’t hesitate to hurt her when necessary, in the worst ways a person can be hurt.
The world outside feels like it’s spinning, spinning, spinning, it’s never going to stop. The moonlight weakens around her as dawn approaches.
