“Backup. Diamond will be dangerous when betrayed.”
“I’ll have a team with me.”
She laughs a little, the sound bitter and almost pitying. “I don’t mean two extra squad cars. Think of the cases you’ve been following. Think of how impossible they seem. Come prepared for the impossible.”
He feels cold now. What does she mean? “I can’t promise the chief will agree to any of this,” he starts to say. “I don’t even know who I can trust inside the department.”
“Trust me. Your chief will go after her.”
He frowns. “How can you be so sure?”
“You want my help?” she snaps, impatient with him. “Then you need to believe me. You are about to head into the darkness, and you have absolutely no idea how to face it. So make sure you have enough support with you when you’re ready to make your move against her. As much as you can get.”
His hands grip the armrests of his seat until he can see the white of his knuckles in the darkness. “And what about you?” he says.
“Small steps, Mr. Sinclair. Both of us are playing a dangerous game now. We’re going to need to trust each other.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
He waits for her to answer. But this time, she doesn’t. After a while, he realizes that he hadn’t even heard the sigh of her seat folding up. And when he dares to look behind him, he sees that her seat is empty. How did she leave so quietly?
His eyes fall on the seat she must have been in, and the chair’s cushion has long adjusted back to its regular shape. If he lets himself believe it, he could think that no one had been here, that her voice had just been a figment of his imagination.
He lets out a shaky breath and stares down at the folder of evidence in his lap. Enough to secure an arrest warrant on Diamond Taylor and her son, enough to engulf the mayor in scandal. And yet he can’t shake the feelingthat there is so much more to this, that something unnatural and wrong is happening here, can’t help but imagine how much deeper everything goes, can’t guess how much more he doesn’t know. He senses that things are about to get much, much stranger for him, that he isn’t ready for where he’s about to venture.
You are about to head into the darkness.
What is it? What is he missing? What secret festers in the murky depths of this world?
He puts the folder into his satchel and straightens. When the credits begin for the movie, he rises and heads out of the theater.
Once he gets into his car, he calls the department.
“Eddie?” says the receptionist.
“Les, can you get the chief for me?”
She sounds startled. “The chief? When?”
“Right now.”
Here’s what they don’t tell you. Love is alchemy. It is the belief that your time spent with this person is better than your time spent without them. Like alchemy at its worst, loving the wrong person can destroy you, piece by piece, until you are nothing but ash. And like alchemy at its finest, finding your soulmate can remake you, elevate you to your most perfect state. Often, you will spend your entire life searching in vain. And sometimes, you simply find out too late.
Epilogue ofChemical Pathways in Bioalchemyby Artemis, 1982
