Sam
Ari
No one else in the hotel seems to notice her.
This is how Ari knows. Even now, as he looks up the dark street across from the hotel and sees her guiding Will, groups of people ignore her just as they did when she was a child.
Moreso. She must be on sand, because even when she bumps shoulders with a passerby, the person barely blinks, just continues on without acknowledging her presence at all. As if she isn’t even there.
Diamond has a ghost.
It can’t be her, except of course it is.
A ghost, someone Diamond uses to gain information without drawing attention, who can enter a place and leave without a trace.
Her slight figure has grown taller, her wide eyes more discerning, her black hair now a silver curtain hanging straight down her back.
The image of her expands until it fills every corner of his mind.
Sam, whose invisibility has now become her weapon.
He feels dizzy. How long has it been since he’s thought of Sam?
She had slipped away from his memory over the years.
He had let her slip away; he never contacted her again after that day at the secret beach.
She would text, and he would let the messages sit unread for weeks, staring soberly at them, heart aching, knowing an answer would only hurt them both.
He had been told to move on, to end his ties with his regular world, and so he did, just as he forced himself to let go of his family, and filled his time instead with business trips to Europe and assignments in Gotham, dinner parties for Lumines in the Hamptons and negotiations aboard yachts in the Florida Keys.
On it went, months extending into years, until she stopped trying and he knew instinctively that he would never hear her name again.
Until now.
The sight of Will leaning against her, of her arm wrapped securely around his waist, sends a flood of hot anguish through him.
It’s been five years since he has seen her.
Surely he doesn’t love her the way he once did, when he would stay up late writing letters that he would never give her.
He tells himself it’s because he’s trying to understand Sam’s relationship with Will.
How often does he rely on her? Does Sam’s own invisibility protect Will, to some extent? Ari isn’t sure.
He tears his eyes away from her as Rudra and two more Lumines crewmen burst out into the street behind him. The air is cold and damp tonight, and their breaths emerge as clouds of white.
“It should have been a lethal shot,” says Zhukov, the one who had fired at Will in the room.
“Not lethal enough, it seems,” Rudra snaps.
“He shouldn’t have been able to move as fast as he did,” Maclan mutters.
“Never underestimate Constantine.” Rudra gives them all an irritated nod. “Go finish the job.”
Ari clenches his teeth as they head across the street.
How? How can this be happening? How could Sam be a Grand Central alchemist, working for Diamond Taylor?
Ari searches feverishly through his memories, looking for clues of when she might have started, what he must have missed in between the words of her letters.
How long has Sam been with them? Was she as young as him when they recruited her?
Was she already studying with Grand Central when they first met?
How could they have kept such a thing from each other?
As they reach the other side, Ari gestures silently for Zhukov and Maclan to continue to the end of the street.
They obey him without question. Then Ari turns left to catch Will and Sam on the other side.
His stomach churns. He runs a hand along the wall, forcing himself to focus on the composition of the brick in order to steady his chaotic thoughts.
The tilt of her head, the wary light in her eyes. The hurt in her voice. You said you’d keep in touch.
What will happen to Sam, if she stands in the way between them and Will? What if she holds her ground?
I’m not going to hurt you tonight.
Another empty promise from his lips. Ari imagines Maclan and Zhukov catching up to her, her trying to fend them off, Will losing the fight. And what is Ari going to be able to do about it, even if he catches up? He’s pledged to Lumines—he is sworn to do his duty against Grand Central.
As Ari rounds the corner, he sees Sam and Will near their car.
They don’t bother with car keys—but Sam, not Will, is the one who transmutes the door’s locks open.
Will must be more wounded than he’s letting on.
As he gets into the car, Sam turns back toward where Maclan and Zhukov’s voices are rounding the bend behind them.
She and Will go through their steps in a symphony of motion, each knowing what the other is going to do without having to say a word.
Jealousy, hot and inexplicable, rushes through Ari as Sam glances over her shoulder.
Her eyes lock on him.
Then she whirls at the sound of Maclan and Zhukov approaching.
The two have reached the scaffolding now. Sam steps into the shadows of the building, and as they appear, she approaches them, passing them on the path so closely that Maclan collides with her shoulder.
He glances at her in mild surprise, as if noticing her here for the first time. As he meets her eyes, his expression takes on a peculiar sheen—it seems to glaze over in disinterest, as if she is the most unremarkable person in the world. Ari watches in stunned fascination.
Maclan mutters an “Excuse me” under his breath, his gaze already swiveling away from her and back toward the street. As if even noticing her is a waste of his time.
Ari takes a step forward and starts to call out to Maclan in warning.
But Sam is already pressing her hand against the building’s wall. A knife emerges from the stone, changing into metal in her grip.
She slashes Maclan across the throat. The blade glints in the night and, like magic, a red line blooms on his neck, not enough to kill, just deep enough to scare him.
Maclan suddenly stops talking—Zhukov curses in shock.
A polemist, Ari thinks fervently as he rushes toward them. They’ve trained her in combat.
Maclan falls to his knees. Zhukov pursues her—but she has darted behind the scaffolding again, and Ari sees him halt, looking bewildered.
Then terrified. It’s clear that Zhukov knows he saw someone go this way, but he doesn’t seem capable now of remembering which way she went.
She emerges from the other side at a normal walk, her coat pulled up, and when she comes back into view, Zhukov looks like he’s having trouble deciding whether she’s the one who attacked Maclan or whether she is simply another partygoer heading away from the hotel.
Ari breaks into a sprint. He reaches Sam right as she finishes rounding the corner—and spots him rushing toward her. Instantly, she ducks back against the wall.
She swipes against the wall and pulls a gun out of the brick—
—but Ari ducks to the ground before she can point it in his direction, then presses his hand firmly against the pavement.
The ground cracks in a jagged line before bursting up into a wall of glass right in front of her. She flinches away from the barrier to go around it, but then Ari’s reached her. He shoves her against the wall, his hand tight around her wrist.
She narrows her eyes at him and brings up her other hand. Ari pulls a steel cable out of the wall and wraps it around her second wrist, then makes it drag her arm back until it’s pinned against the building.
But she is quicker than him—she’s already shrinking the cable around her wrist, thinning it by stretching one finger down to run along its edge.
The cable turns into paper and tears apart.
Her hand free, she lunges at Ari. Suddenly he’s the one pinned to the wall as Sam weaves metal around his arm.
Ari grits his teeth and yanks his arm out from the closing cables right before they can ensnare him.
He seizes her other wrist and pushes her against the wall.
This time, he manages to weave iron across her wrists like cuffs.
Then he reaches out to sense the organic chemistry in her body—weaves calm into her anger, doubt into her conviction to attack him.
She shudders and looks away from him. He could do more, something truly harmful, but instead he pulls back his bioalchemy and focuses on tightening her bonds. She exhales.
The two glare at each other, their faces only inches apart. It’s clear to Ari that Sam isn’t used to combat where her opponent can focus well on her. Around the corner, he hears Zhukov calling for him, shouting for help for Maclan, who is still able to talk, albeit hoarsely.
Ari hesitates for a split second. If he keeps her trapped here, Rudra will want her taken back to Lumines for interrogation and as a valuable hostage. Or, they might just kill her right here and deal Grand Central a blow. Constantine and Mozart, both in one night.
But Ari looks at her and can’t do it. Her hair glints dark silver in the night. He thinks of sea daisies pinned into those locks, drifting down into his lap as she leaned her head against his shoulder. The ache for her ripples through his body.
He straightens. The metal cuffs around her wrists pull back into the wall, releasing her.
“Go,” he tells her harshly. “Quickly. Before Rudra gets here.”
Sam’s glare wavers. She blinks at him, as if trying to gauge whether this is a trick, and for this small moment, she looks like the Sam he once knew.
“Why?” she demands.
He can’t bear the look on her face. When his lips part again, the words spill out angry and hoarse. “The secret beach. Full moon. Now go.”
She breaks into motion. One second she’s before him—the next, she’s gone, melting into the night, sprinting around the bend and heading toward the car Will is in.
On the sidewalk, Zhukov looks over from where he’s crouched beside Maclan as the engine roars to life.
Sam reverses the car in a single move, backing out onto the side road before hurtling through a yellow light and down the street.
Ari watches them disappear, his last words to her ringing in his ears.
The secret beach, full moon. It had burst out of him as instinctively as breathing, and now he feels a simultaneous pang of anticipation and guilt.
Had he said it because he wants desperately to see her again?
Or had he said it because she is his target, because he knows they will need information on her? How deep is his loyalty to Lumines?
Why had he helped her? Why did he let her go?
“The hell was that!” Zhukov exclaims as Ari joins him and inspects Maclan’s wound. Rudra arrives behind them, melting out of the shadows with his smooth stride and dark expression.
“A ghost,” Ari replies.
“Grand Central’s ghost?” Zhukov mutters incredulously.
Ari doesn’t want to say more than that, but Rudra’s eyes are already fixed on him, seeing right through his reluctance.
“You recognized her,” the man says.
It’s no use to lie. Ari stares down the street in the direction their car had gone, knowing in the pit of his stomach that he is now destined to hurt her again and again.
“Yes,” he finally forces himself to answer. “Her name is Samantha Lang.”