Chapter 27 Ari
Ari
One afternoon, when Ari’s car picks him up, it doesn’t take him to the library.
Instead, the driver heads west, exiting the freeway into a part of the city with clean, wide streets and lush green lawns.
Ari cranes his neck, his chest tight. He’s never been taken west before.
He recently mastered a series of advanced transmutations in the lab, wove steel filaments into the structure of a fern, changed the fur of a dead squirrel into needles of silver.
For the past week, Isla didn’t call him into the lab at all.
Surely he hadn’t disappointed? Zan’s disappearance still lives in the back of Ari’s mind, and with dread, he wonders if he has also done something to upset Mr. Rudra, whether he is in trouble.
“Where are we going?” he asks the driver, but the driver, who has never spoken to him, just meets his gaze once through the rearview mirror and continues on.
At last, they arrive in the heart of Beverly Hills and pull up to a building resembling a chateau overgrown with ivy, where an attendee in a black suit greets him at the door and invites him inside.
Ari can tell immediately that the man has taken sand; his face is so beautiful that it looks almost inhuman, his skin so radiant that he nearly seems to glow.
Inside, Mr. Rudra is waiting for him on the second floor. This place does not look like a setup to punish Ari, and Ari tries not to look apprehensive, but when he speaks, his voice is tight.
“What am I doing here?” Ari asks.
Instead of answering his question, Mr. Rudra turns to address a tailor who has come over to inspect Ari. “Something tasteful,” he tells the man, who pinches Ari’s sides and stretches a measuring tape around his waist. “Reed’s not looking for a doll.”
At the name, Ari’s apprehension gives way for a small thrill. “Am I meeting Alexander Reed?” he asks when the tailor hurries away.
Mr. Rudra nods. “So I hope you’ll be making a good first impression.”
The tailor and his assistants wheel out hangers full of clothes—sharply trimmed suits and crisp collar shirts, designer trousers and polished loafers.
Mr. Rudra offers his thoughts in a relentless train.
Too tacky. Too muted. Good only for a funeral, is that what they want to convey to Mr. Reed?
Ari listens, nodding along as if he understands.
At last, he tries on a mint-green shirt woven so finely that the silk seems to float against his skin.
A suit the color of a forest at dusk, thin cream lines running vertically through the fabric that one only notices when looking closely.
Ari stares at himself in the mirror and feels like he has stepped out of his body and into something new, as if he himself has been transmuted.
Mr. Rudra regards him with a thoughtful frown.
In that expression, Ari sees an insecurity—a fear, wondering if this look is enough.
And suddenly he realizes that Mr. Rudra is afraid of Alexander Reed, that he has been picky all afternoon with these outfits because he is scared to disappoint the man.
It has never occurred to Ari that Mr. Rudra might be afraid of anything.
“It’ll do,” Mr. Rudra says at last, and the tailor lets out a sigh of relief. “Will you have it ready by the end of the week?”
The tailor nods. When he hurries away to prepare the invoice, Ari asks, “What am I meeting Mr. Reed for?”
Mr. Rudra folds his arms against his chest and regards Ari with a critical eye. “I think it’s time,” he says, “for us to evaluate you in a more official light.”
A tingle runs up Ari’s spine. He looks at the man in surprise. “Am I graduating?”
“You’ve exhausted all that you need to learn in a group setting.” Mr. Rudra regards him with a critical eye. “From here, your education turns into a true apprenticeship.”
On the night of Ari’s big debut, he showers and dresses in his nice new clothes.
When he emerges from his room, Mr. Rudra has a small entourage of people with him.
They descend on Ari—a makeup artist, adding a sheen of powder on his eyelids and a soothing lotion on his cheeks; a designer, checking his clothes to make sure they are tucked in and fitted to a tee; a hairstylist, perfecting his dark curls so that they shine in the light.
At the end of it all, Mr. Rudra bends down to him and takes something out of his pocket.
Ari stares down at a small, white pill, its surface shimmering under the light.
Sand. At last, he is allowed to take it.
“It damages an alchemist’s soul more than it does a typical user,” Mr. Rudra explains. “Keep your consumption of it modest.”
Ari feels a thread of fear, but as his eyes turn back down to the pill, the fear is replaced with curiosity. In his hand he holds the philosopher’s stone, the most important triumph in all of alchemy, one that has the potential to transform him into the best version of himself.
Who will that be?
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he sees a vague memory of his father’s face, brows furrowed in bitter disappointment. His mother’s frown, her hands against his cheeks. What he is about to do is a violation to his spiritual well-being, and a rejection of their teachings.
But they sent him here. And it’s been years since he has offered up his prayers.
He pops the pill into his mouth. It’s small and smooth enough that he can swallow it in one go, without any water.
Mr. Rudra smiles. “Now you’re ready.”
And right as Ari steps out the door, the tips of his fingers start to tingle.
By the time they arrive at the top of a hill overlooking Angel City and stop before the front gates of the Getty, the most well-endowed museum in the world, Ari’s senses are heightened and the world around him seems clearer than he’s ever known it.
Everything makes more sense; he is feeling more himself than he has ever felt before.
He stares at his hands, turning them over and over, as if searching for physical evidence of the change.
When he looks at himself in the rearview mirror, he still recognizes himself—the makeup artist and the hairstylist and the designer have done their jobs well—but there is something else, an intangible factor that he can’t quite put his finger on, a new gleam in his gaze that makes him feel like he is someone else.
Someone better.
The Getty is not usually open this late, but tonight there is a charity art auction, and massive installations of flowers greet guests at the front steps. Ari follows Mr. Rudra as the man guides them through the crowd. People stop when they recognize him, smile and exchange niceties.
Then they see Ari.
Eyes have followed Ari his entire life—but tonight, they pinpoint him with a degree of fascination and attention that he has never experienced before.
As they head up the steps, he can feel the stares follow him in a wave.
He can hear whispers as he passes. He can sense the shift of bodies in his direction, drawn to him in a way that makes him feel like he is walking through a dream.
Anxiety builds in his chest, his shyness sharper tonight than usual.
But at his expression, Mr. Rudra gives him a knowing smile. “Tonight will feel strange,” he says. “But I promise you, it will also feel like the kind of night that you were always meant to have.”
And Ari, strangely, understands exactly what the man means.
He feels himself return Mr. Rudra’s smile with a genuine one of his own, then turn that smile to the next person they greet.
The shyness in his heart still roils, but words come easily to him regardless, phrases perfectly formed.
Something he says has just the right amount of wit and charm, and the person they’re speaking to laughs loudly.
A woman in the next cluster of guests asks Ari endless questions about where he comes from, how he is enjoying the evening.
Ari responds without effort. Another woman smiles at him, her eyes dilating at the sight of him, touches his arm, her fingers lingering.
She comments on his eyes, and he thanks her politely.
He has never performed this well in a crowd.
His skin tingles pleasantly. His mind is warm, his thoughts quick.
He is somehow both anxious and enjoying the attention.
What was it that Mr. Rudra had once told him?
Everyone is drawn to a strong soul. It pulls, and people look. Some like to call it charisma.
Charisma, enhanced by sand into something nearly magical.
Eventually, they head out through glass doors into the Getty’s sprawling central courtyard.
The wind streams Ari’s coat behind him. Tonight, the trees lining the central fountain are all wrapped in shimmering lights, and chandeliers hang suspended on wires overhead, casting kaleidoscopes of light and shadow against the ground.
Beyond, Angel City lies in a twinkling cityscape along the horizon.
From here, the place looks serene, the land breathing silently around the concrete.
At last, they reach the end of the courtyard, where the landscape slopes down into a circular garden. A crowd is mingling there around a man with a neat black beard.
Eight years of education in the dark—immersed in academics, in the basics of alchemy—before Ari has been allowed into Alexander Reed’s presence, to understand the bigger picture of why he is here.
And yet, in this moment, he feels like he is underprepared.
His hand brushes against the chain at his collar, sweat turning his palms clammy, and he inspects the rest of the crowd.
He spots Isla, resplendent tonight in a sleek sapphire dress that shows off her legs.
The sight of her familiar face gives him some courage.
“You’re ready,” Mr. Rudra tells him. “Or you’ll never be ready.”