Chapter 29 Sam
Sam
On the first day of finals at her regular school, a week after Will pulls her out of classes at the Observatory, Diamond summons Sam early to the Red City.
Sam arrives at the estate right as the air begins to cool.
She’s glad to have a reason to skip her afternoon exams. For the past few days, she has drifted through her regular classes in a fog, calculus and American history and biology blurring together.
It all seems so pointless. While studying for a quiz, she’ll remember the feeling of skin crisping into coal beneath her fingers.
She’ll startle out of discussions in English Lit because she’ll recall the horrible wail from the man in the Confession Room.
She’ll think of the revelation about her mother’s injuries, that the restaurant explosion, the beginning of their real suffering, started with Lumines.
Now, as she steps into the Observatory’s courtyard, she notices Will standing beside his mother, dressed to perfection, his hands tucked behind his back. Diamond is as poised as ever, her steely eyes already turned in Sam’s direction.
Sam catches a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the buildings’ windows.
She’s wearing a new suit, navy and white and tailored to a perfect fit; a silver chain connects the collar flaps of her shirt.
She no longer looks like a child setting foot into a world where she doesn’t belong.
She looks like she was born into this. She looks like a stranger.
Sam lingers momentarily on Will, but it is Diamond she’s terrified of approaching.
She hasn’t seen the woman in months. Diamond looks paler than she remembers, her face a little gaunter.
Or perhaps Sam is recalling her wrong. The waning light casts her in such a way that, for a moment, Sam isn’t sure if she’s real or not, as if she might be an apparition fading with the day.
Sam stops before them. Will hands something gold and gleaming to Diamond, and Diamond holds it up to the light. It is the winged lion, the beast’s eyes narrowed, its jaws open in a noble snarl.
Sam studies the pin and holds her breath.
She has seen it countless times on the lapels of everyone at Grand Central—she has noticed it in the city since she was a small child, had admired it engraved on the glass doors of the Winged Towers downtown.
She remembers a time when she thought the woman behind the crest was unreachable, an urban legend shared under the breath of the city.
“Why did you first come to me that night, Sam?” Diamond asks. Her voice sounds hoarser than she remembers too, although the cold authority in it remains unchanged.
Sam blinks, and for a moment, she is transported back to that little girl, crouched in the alley behind the Odyssey Theatre.
“We needed the money, ma’am,” she says.
“That’s your mother’s reason. You, Samantha. Why did you come to me?”
Sam swallows hard, and a familiar feeling rises in her chest. It is like when her mother asks her a question, knowing that there is only one answer she wants to hear from her daughter.
It is the desire to figure out the reply that she is supposed to give.
Wasn’t her reason the same as her mother’s?
Don’t her chances of survival rise and fall with her mother’s?
But she does have her own reasons now. And the familiar tide of anger in her chest rises, the same feeling that had filled her when Will had told her to punish the man in the Confession Room.
She’s here for her mother, for an equalizing of justice.
She’s here because Lumines had nearly killed them, and Grand Central is the one who can help her strike back.
But there is more than that, even.
Diamond smiles a little as she watches Sam struggle to put her feelings into words. “You don’t want your destiny relegated to some little apartment next to a strip mall. You’re looking for greater things.”
Greater things. Sam has felt it since she was small, this unquenchable thirst, this desperation to make something big of her life, to matter to someone. She nods.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” Diamond straightens. “Do you understand what loyalty to Grand Central means?”
Sam nods. “Yes.”
“It means we are family now. Something is asked of you, you do it without question. Something cuts you, we all bleed. When there is war, you fight alongside us and no one else. And one day, when we are the only syndicate worth mentioning, we will reap the rewards equally. Should you break this bond, know that there are consequences.”
Sam notes the way Diamond uses the word when. There will be war in the city, it is only a matter of time. The thought makes her shiver in anticipation.
“I understand,” she says quietly.
The woman pins the crest to the lapel of Sam’s suit, and Sam feels the new weight of it resting against her beating heart. There is no turning back now. She is Grand Central, through and through. She belongs to them, just as they belong to her.
And for a fleeting moment, the ambition in Sam flares.
She imagines what it might be like to stand in Diamond’s place, the leader of a secret world, capable of giving others a new life.
She thinks of the beauty she could create with that kind of power—to make people’s lives better, to make people better, to make sure they are seen, to make it possible for them to achieve their wildest dreams. And then she reaches for the stars, dares to think the impossible.
That she could do a better job than Diamond.
“Mozart,” the woman says, christening her with an official attribution, and Sam savors her new name. “My little prodigy. Now your life begins.”
Later that week, on the last day of school before graduation, Ari finds her in the hall.
“Are you skipping today?” he asks.
She nods. “Why? What’d you have in mind?”
He smiles at her, and she feels that familiar pang in her heart. “Do you remember when I told you about that secret beach?”
She does, and looks at him in surprise. “Really? Can we go there?”
He nods at the school’s entrance. “My car’s across the street. Traffic shouldn’t be bad.”
The Peninsula is a curious outcropping of land at the southern point of Angel City, a spot far from everything and little known even to locals.
It is a stunning and isolated place—rows and rows of Spanish homes line the rolling hills and overlook a vista of the ocean so beautiful that it should belong in a national park.
Ari drives them past town centers filled with tiny grocery stores and sandwich shops, past library parking lots filled with children racing back to their cars, mothers hauling tote bags full of books.
To Sam, it looks like a scene in a movie, a place that can’t possibly be part of the same city she grew up in, grime and graffiti and buses and concrete.
But then, hasn’t she been inducted now into this kind of world, of lavishness and refinement?
Why did you first come to me that night, Sam?
The memory fades as Ari reaches a winding section of road where nothing but beach after beach lies glittering under the afternoon sun, and Sam closes her eyes for a moment so that all she sees under her lids is a haze of glowing red.
Everything is going to be different now; she belongs to Grand Central, and she has a new name in addition to her own.
Mozart. The memory of Diamond’s words gives her strength, makes her feel reborn. Like she belongs to something.
Ari’s presence beside her is solid and warm. She knows she isn’t supposed to talk about alchemy, but he deserves to know something this significant about her. How long will she keep such a big part of herself away from her only friend?
And then she opens her eyes. They’ve been close for so long, and now they’re graduating. They’re adults, surely capable of handling each other’s secrets.
Suddenly, she feels ready to be vulnerable, and it leaves her feeling giddy.
What if she just tells him everything today?
At last, Ari parks next to a long-broken gate hidden behind bushes of overgrown sage. Sam looks skeptically at the path as they climb out of the car.
“Come on,” Ari says, taking her hand, and she follows him, tingling with anticipation, as they step gingerly around the gate and through the foliage.
Here, she can see the faintest remnants of a trail that must once have existed, a curving, heavily overgrown path winding down to the ocean below.
At first glance, it looks impossible to get through.
But Ari walks ahead of her, and somehow they carve their way through the long grasses and massive bunches of coyote brush growing against the cliffside.
As they go, the plants seem to make way for them, bush turning into patches of wild roses, of orange poppies and baby-blue lupines.
At last, she finds herself standing with Ari along a narrow stretch of sand hidden beneath protruding bluffs, shaded from sun and wind, the strip lined with giant black stones and a series of stone archways hollowed out against the stone walls, their legs disappearing into the tide.
It’s not a good place to picnic or tan; it doesn’t get enough sun, and it’s clear the land disappears when the tide comes in.
But Ari leads her to a soft stretch of sand right before the archways carved hollow by the sea, where he sits down on a flat, black rock.
Sam follows suit, taking off her shoes and sinks her toes into the cool sand.
She closes her eyes and listens to the waves, then opens them again and notices the patches of sea daisies growing nearby, cheerful little heads bobbing in the breeze.
She lets out a breath. “Oh, Ari,” she murmurs, admiring the white crests of the waves. “It’s perfect.”
When she turns to him, she realizes that he’s looking at her. A flutter in her heart makes her feel light. Somehow, she gets the sense that he wants to tell her something important too. She thinks about how far they’ve both come. How much he means to her.