“Why’d you step out? What’s going on?”
“Came out specifically to see you.” He narrows his eyes at her. “What about you? Tagging along with Constantine?”
It’s surreal, this clash of her past and present. Sam tries to reconcile the sound of Will’s attribution coming out of Ari’s mouth. How her childhood friend understands the hierarchy of Grand Central and works for their enemy.
She tilts her head. “Just enjoying the party,” she says, repeating his words back at him.
He seems to consider her words; his eyes go to the knife she’s holding. Then, to her surprise, he lowers his own weapon, tucking the blade into the side of his belt.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he says.
Now he looks a little like himself again, the boy she recognizes, facing her knife with his hands tucked into his pockets. She can’t stop the memories resurfacing. She thinks of him holding out his palm to her, how she pressed her hand into his. She recalls the way he traced a circle against her hand, then a dot in its center.
What does it mean?she asked him then.
He smiled down at the ground, too shy to look at her.It means perfection. It means, I like you the way you are, Sam.
Now she knows that he traced the alchemical symbol for gold on her palm.
The tide of emotions that had been bottled up inside her all these years wells up, filling every crevice of her heart. She hates him for making her feel this way, that there is some shred of their friendship that still tethers them, that she somehow can’t throw the last of him away. For a moment, she stands there, still armed and angry.
He stares steadily at her. “Sam. Please.”
“Pleasewhat?” she says, annoyed, her heart breaking.
His eyes are somber. “I’m not going to hurt you tonight.”
The anger seeps out of her, as quickly as it had come, followed by a wave of exhaustion. She lowers her arm too, then presses her blade against the wall and transmutes the weapon back into the plaster.
“You already did,” she says hoarsely, and this time, she sees a flash of pain in his gaze.
Ari opens his mouth to answer, but before he can, the door down the hall behind her swings open with a bang.
Both Sam and Ari’s eyes dart away from each other as Will emerges alone from the meeting room.
At first, he appears unbothered. He has his coat draped over his shoulders and his back turned to them as he walks toward the side door at the end of the hall that leads out of the hotel. His walk is almost pristine enough to look natural.
But something is wrong. Sam notices the way his arm is positioned underneath the coat’s fabric and realizes that one of his hands is pressed hard against his side instead of tucked in his trouser pocket. She has walked beside him often enough to know that his gait too is slower than his comfortable speed.
He presses his free hand against the wall. A concrete barrier shoots up behind him, sealing the hall off from anyone in pursuit. It happens in a flash, but Sam can tell how uneven his transmutation is, can see the cracks in the stone.
Will is injured, badly. All of his soul’s strength is going into keeping him alive, leaving little for him to use on alchemy.
Sam’s gaze jumps back to Ari, whose expression is still and dark.
This wasn’t a meeting. It was an ambush.
She should attack Ari, but there’s no time—she needs to help Will. She whirls away from Ari and darts down the length of the lobby until she reaches another, smaller hall. There, she turns and sprints down to the side door here that leads to the end of the hotel’s front driveway. Part of her braces for the sound of Ari’s footsteps as he gives chase—but when she glances over her shoulder, she doesn’t see him.
She bursts through the side door and exits the hotel right before a waiting doorman. He barely glances at her before looking away in disinterest, her presence already slipping from his mind.
Sam rushes down the street to the side of the hotel. There, she sees Will making his way down toward her, his figure cutting into and out through the light of the streetlamps.
At this angle, there is no mistaking his injury. Now, under his draped coat, she can see his hand pressed tightly against his side—and underneath it, a dark stain spreading against the fabric of his shirt, glossy in the light.
She speeds up in her walk until she reaches the intersection right as he does. As he turns the corner to meet her, she turns with him and they fall into step beside each other. He doesn’t react to her presence at all, doesn’t even look at her, but his body leans unconsciously toward her in acknowledgment. When she glances down, she notices that the hand clutching his side is covered with blood.
Shit.He’s going to bleed out at this rate. Everything in her screams to help him, but polemists aren’t trained extensively in the complex art of healing—inflicting injuries is a fast and vicious form of alchemy that doesn’t require as much laborious precision as undoing harm. She could just as easily kill him by accident as she could close his wound. They need an alchiatrist, and fast.
“Where to?” she says.
“I’m going to need you to drive,” Will answers.
Distant shouts in the night come from the hotel. Sam doesn’t need to turn around to recognize their voices.
Lumines is on the hunt.
It seems that sand does not necessarily make one invincible to others who might see through the enhancement. It acts in a similar capacity as makeup does on a face—foundation to smooth the skin, concealer to hide the flaws, contouring to enhance natural features, to make cheekbones look higher and noses more defined, liner and shadow to draw attention to the allure of the eyes. And as with makeup, sand can transform a person, if temporarily, into someone nearly unrecognizable.
Studies on the Properties of Sandby Cyrus, 1988
