But the wind is growing stronger, until she feels like she is wading through molasses with every step. And when she glances over her shoulder,she sees a terrifying nothingness approaching them, dark and impenetrable, ready to swallow them whole. She grits her teeth and pushes onward, just a little bit more, until at last they stumble through the double doors of the entrance.
And there in the lobby, Sam sees a woman surrounded by the crowd, perfectly coifed, her face blurry. Sam gravitates toward her as if she is the reason why they’d come to the theater. The woman reaches out to take her hand, and a rush of relief courses through Sam’s body. Everything is going to be okay now.
She is still thinking this when the woman takes out a knife and cuts a long line from Sam’s wrist to her elbow. Drops of blood bloom against her skin, bright as flower buds.
Sam shudders awake. She lies there for a while, sweating, breathing rapidly, the phantom feeling of the blade opening her flesh still tingling against her skin. Then she closes her eyes and tries to calm down.
In the darkness, she sees the woman’s face turned toward her, waiting silently.
And with her heart in her throat, Sam knows who the woman is in her dreams. She recalls the name she had once searched for so feverishly.
Diamond Taylor.
A patron of the arts. A lady with a heart. She can make anything happen.
Ever since the incident with Rabbit, Sam has tried to bury most of her thoughts about alchemy. But now the word returns from her archived memories in pristine form, along with her recollection of the men in the restaurant, their jewellike cuffs, the fork and the spoon, the conversation about Will and Diamond Taylor. Hadn’t a neighbor once said that their friend had gotten a six-figure salary at her corporation? Hadn’t another gotten their hospital bills waived?
Sam wants to ask them how they did it, who they talked to in order to reach Diamond Taylor—but both neighbors moved out years ago, and she never learned their names.
So instead, Sam stares at the Odyssey as she rides the Metro home. She has seen the theater almost every day of her life, but only ever as an outsider—going to a show is a luxury so extravagant that the thought hasnever crossed her mind. But the dream of its warm lights and beautiful crowds haunts her mind, and when the bus passes the Odyssey, she cranes her neck to read the marquee.
Firefly.Opening night.
Diamond might be there.
Sam isn’t exactly sure what she’s hoping to achieve by trying to find the woman. A loan? A job? What? She doesn’t even know if she’d even have the guts to open her mouth. The idea of simply finding Diamond Taylor and asking her for help borders on the irrational. But there’s no time to dwell on the fact that this is a long shot. Their eviction looms, the terrifying nothingness pursuing her in her nightmares. It is the end, and it is about to arrive in three days.
Because what happens, exactly, when you run out of money? Sam has seen tents under bridges, women with children holding up cardboard signs at intersections. She assumes most people ask their families and friends for help, just a temporary situation, they’ll pay it back as soon as they can. But she and her mother have only each other. If they are forced out of their little apartment, where will they go?
Changing something into something more desirable.
If there were ever a time they needed a transformation, it is now.
When Sam makes it home, she tells her mother, “I’m going to the bookstore later to work on a group project.”
“Go on, then,” her mother says in disinterest as she settles before her old laptop. She is filling out another résumé. The movement stretches the skin on her neck, and Sam observes the way the silver lattice of scars shifts under the light.
“Okay,” Sam says, waiting for her mother to look at her. When she doesn’t, Sam quietly turns away and goes back to the bedroom.
When evening falls, Sam heads to the bus stop. Cars pack the streets at this hour, glowing red taillights snaking into the distance as everyone fights their way onto the freeways. Tonight, the fog sits low enough to wash out downtown’s skyscrapers in a haze of reflected light. Korean signs illuminate the streets in neon, the night already loud with early revelers crowding into cafés for boba and barbeque. People line up in front of white-tented stands at the street corners, where cooks half-obscured bysmoke shave tender strips of carne asada from a spit into homemade flour tortillas. Skinny palm trees bend in unison against the wind. Now and then, she catches a glimpse between streets of the rest of the city glittering in a black sea. It is a hideous place in some ways, a maze of strip malls and parking structures and gas stations, cement and asphalt and freeways. A city with a face only a mother could love. But then you turn a corner and see it from a hill, and it’s a clear, luminous night. Then you hear the whisper of dark magic in its alleys. A heart is beating here, from forty different places all at once, each a different rhythm.
She gets off at the stop across the street from the Odyssey. The theater’s front entrance is fenced off with velvet rope, and large clusters of people are gathered along the sidewalk, all making their way slowly through the metal detectors into the lobby.
It is such a familiar sight, but tonight it makes Sam’s heart pull taut with unease. She crosses the street, feeling out of place in her humble black hoodie, her eyes turned down to the ground. Somehow, she blends in unnoticed with the swarming crowd, but she doesn’t have a ticket, and even her invisibility doesn’t extend as far as getting her inside the theater without one. Instead, she loiters at the edges of the crowd, at a loss, searching the sea of faces for anyone who resembles photos of Diamond Taylor.
Finally, as the crowds thin out, she wanders around to the side of the theater, unsure what to do next. Minutes drag on. She imagines what the show inside must be like. Why the hell did she come here, anyway? She has school the next day. She doesn’t even have a way inside. There are a dozen reasons why she shouldn’t be here, and yet Sam lingers anyway, her stomach gnawing with perpetual worry, wishing that for once things might go her way, hoping that life might throw her a bone.
And right as she thinks this, she sees a young attendant come out from a side entrance, lugging a giant black bag of trash behind him. He struggles to nudge a rubber doorstop into place, then tosses the garbage into the giant bins in the alleyway. Sam stares sidelong at him as he returns, swinging the side door open and kicking the doorstop aside without looking back.
The doorstop isn’t quite out of the way. As the swinging door wedges against it and leaves a slim opening, Sam suddenly finds herself moving forward, heart hammering, sliding her hand through the crack and slipping inside.
The lobby is empty now, save for a few attendants chatting with oneanother by the closed auditorium doors. No one bothers to look her way. Sam pretends to go to the bathroom, then comes out and heads up the stairs to the balcony.
In the shadows, Sam peeks through the doors’ slender gap at the stage.
It is a crimson set, the curtains illuminated with spotlights. Two actors are on the stage, one of them suspended in the air. A thunderous round of applause. Sam sucks in her breath, mesmerized by the spectacle, not knowing whether to stare at the performers or take in the theater’s gilded, art deco walls, the massive chandelier suspended from a golden ceiling.
As she gapes, the suspended actor sweeps a hand through the air—and creates an arc of fire. The crowd gasps. A wave of applause. So, this is a magic show. The second actor seems to catch the fire and turn it into an arc of water, which splashes across the stage. The first row of guests laughs in surprise, shrinking away from the wet spray. More clapping.
Her gaze goes to the crowd, and again, she finds herself scanning the audience, searching.
Then she stops. There, on the far left, in a seat near the front.
Sam recognizes her immediately, even though there is nothing noticeable about the woman at all—surprisingly plain in person, with no particularly attractive feature. She wears nothing garish—only a simple black outfit, her short gray hair swept neatly to one side. Her face is unremarkable and calm, her head tilted toward her seat partner as she speaks to him. But what makes her noticeable, what catches Sam’s attention, are those around her, for everyone in her radius has their body turned unconsciously in her direction, paying attention to her words as though she is more important than what’s happening on the stage. Sam looks on, unable to look away, heart in her throat, stunned to have found her.
Diamond Taylor.
