The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I

Paris, France

July 29, 1724

Freedom is a pair of trousers and a buttoned coat.

A man’s tunic and a tricorne hat.

If only she had known.

The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.

Addie saunters up the street, a stolen basket hooked over the elbow of her coat. Nearby, an old woman stands in a doorway, beating out a rug, and laborers lounge on café steps, and none of them so much as blink, because they do not see a woman, walking alone. They see a young man, barely more than a youth, dawdling in the dying light; they do not think how strange, how scandalous it is to see her strolling. They do not think anything at all.

To think, Addie might have saved her soul, and simply asked for these clothes.

It has been four years now without a visit from the dark.

Four years, and at the dawn of every one, she swears she will not waste the time she has in waiting. But it is a promise she cannot fully keep. For all her effort, Addie is like a clock wound tighter as the day draws near, a coiled spring that cannot loosen until dawn. And even then, it is a grim unwinding, less relief than resignation, the knowledge that it will start again.

Four years.

Four winters, four summers, four visitless nights.

The other ones, at least, are hers, to spend as she likes, but no matter how she tries to pass the time, this one belongs to Luc, even when he is not here.

And yet, she will not declare it forfeit, will not sacrifice the hours as if they are already lost, already his.

Addie passes a group of men and tips her hat in greeting, uses the gesture to pull the tricorne lower on her own brow. Day has not quite given way to night, and in the long summer light she is careful to keep her distance, knowing the illusion will falter under scrutiny. She could have waited an hour longer and been safe within the veil of night, but the truth is, she could not bear the stillness, the creeping seconds of the clock.

Not tonight.

Tonight, she has decided to celebrate her freedom.

To climb the steps of Sacré Coeur, sit at the top of the pale stone stairs, the city at her feet, and have a picnic.

The basket swings from her elbow, brimming with food. Her fingers have gotten light and quick with practice, and she has spent the last several days assembling her feast—a loaf of bread, a side of cured meat, a wedge of cheese, and even a palm-sized jar of honey.

Honey—an indulgence Addie hasn’t had since Villon, where Isabelle’s father kept a row of hives and skimmed the amber syrup out for markets, leaving them to suck on rinds of honeycomb until their fingers were stained with sweetness. Now she holds her bounty to the waning light, lets the setting sun turn the contents gold.

The man comes out of nowhere.

A shoulder knocks into her arm, and the precious jar slips from her hand and shatters on the cobbled street, and for an instant Addie thinks she is being attacked, or robbed, but the stranger is already stammering out his apologies.

“You fool,” she hisses, attention flicking from the golden syrup, now glittering with glass, to the man who caused her loss. He is young, and fair, and lovely, with high cheeks and hair the color of her ruined honey.

And he is not alone.

His companions hang back, whooping and cheering at his mistake—they have the happy air of those who began their evening revels back at midday—but the errant youth blushes fiercely, clearly embarrassed.

“My apologies, truly,” he begins, but then a transformation sweeps across his face. First surprise, and then amusement, and she realizes, too late, how close they are, how clearly the light has fallen on her face. Realizes, too late, that he has seen through her illusion, that his hand is still there, on her sleeve, and for a moment she is afraid he will expose her.

But when his companions call for him to hurry on, he tells them to go ahead, and now they are alone on the cobbled street, and Addie is ready to pull free, to run, but there is no shadow in the young man’s face, no menace, only a strange delight.

“Let go,” she says, lowering her voice a measure when she speaks, which only seems to please him more, even as he frees her arm with all the speed of someone grazing fire.

“Sorry,” he says again, “I forgot myself.” And then, a mischievous grin. “It seems you have, too.”

“Not at all,” she says, fingers drifting toward the short blade she’s kept inside her basket. “I have misplaced myself on purpose.”

The smile widens then, and he drops his gaze, and sees the ruined honey on the ground, and shakes his head.

“I must make that up to you,” he says. And she is about to tell him not to bother, about to say that it is fine, when he cranes his head down the road, and says, “Aha,” and loops his arm through hers, as if they are already friends.

“Come,” he says, leading her toward the café on the corner. She has never been inside one, never been brave enough to chance it, not alone, not with such a tenuous hold on her disguise. But he draws her on as if it’s nothing, and at the last moment he swings an arm around her shoulders, the weight so sudden and so intimate she is about to pull away before she catches the edge of a smile, and realizes that he has made a game of it, conscripted himself into the service of her secret.

Inside, the café is a place of energy and life, overlapping voices and the scent of something rich and smoky.

“Careful now,” he says, eyes dancing with mischief. “Stay close, and keep your head down, or we will be found out.”

She follows him to the counter, where he orders two shallow cups, the contents thin and black as ink. “Sit over there,” he says, “against the wall, where the light is not too strong.”

They fold themselves into a corner seat, and he sets the cups between them with a flourish, turning the handles just so, as he tells her it is coffee. She has heard of the stuff, of course, the current toast of Paris, but when she lifts the china to her lips and takes a sip, she is rather disappointed.

It is dark, and strong, and bitter, like the chocolate flakes she first tasted years ago, only without the edge of sweetness. But the boy stares at her, as eager as a pup, and so she swallows, and smiles, cradles the cup, and looks out from beneath the brim of her hat, studying the tables of men, some with their heads bowed close, while others laugh, and play at cards, or pass sheaves of paper back and forth. She watches these men and wonders anew at how open the world is to them, how easy the thresholds.

Her attention flicks back to her companion, who’s watching her with the same unbridled fascination.

“What were you thinking?” he asks. “Just now?”

There is no introduction, no formal exchange. He simply dives into the conversation, as if they have known each other for years instead of minutes.

“I was thinking,” she says, “that it must be so easy to be a man.”

“Is that why you put on this disguise?”

“That,” she says, “and a hatred of corsets.”

He laughs, the sound so open and easy Addie finds a smile rising to her lips.

“Do you have a name?” he asks, and she doesn’t know if he’s asking for her own, or that of her disguise, but she decides on “Thomas,” watches him turn the word over like a bite of fruit.

“Thomas,” he muses. “A pleasure to meet you. My name is Remy Laurent.”

“Remy,” she echoes, tasting the softness, the upturned vowel. It suits him, more than Adeline ever suited her. It is young and sweet, and it will haunt her, as all names do, bobbing like apples in the stream. No matter how many men she meets, Remy will always conjure him, this bright and cheerful boy—the kind she could have loved, perhaps, if given the chance.

She takes another sip, careful not to hold the cup too gingerly, to lean the weight on her elbow, and sit in the unselfconscious way men have when they do not expect anyone to study them.

“Amazing,” he marvels. “You have studied my sex well.”

“Have I?”

“You are a splendid mimic.”

Addie could tell him that she’s had the time to practice, that it has become a kind of game over the years, a way to amuse herself. That she has added a dozen different characters by now, knows the exact differences between a duchess and a marchioness, a docksman and a merchant.

But instead, she only says, “We all need ways to pass the time.”

He laughs again at that, lifts his cup, but then, between one sip and the next, Remy’s attention wanders across the room, and he lands on something that startles him. He chokes on his coffee, color rushing into his cheeks.

“What is it?” she asks. “Are you well?”

Remy coughs, nearly dropping the cup as he gestures to the doorway, where a man has just walked in.

“Do you know him?” she asks, and Remy sputters, “Don’t you? That man there is Monsieur Voltaire.”

She shakes her head a little. The name means nothing.

Remy draws a parcel from his coat. A booklet, thin, with something printed on the cover. She frowns at the cursive title, has only managed half the letters when Remy flips the booklet open to show a wall of words, printed in elegant black ink. It has been too long since her father tried to teach her, and those were simple letters; loose, handwritten script.

Remy sees her studying the page. “Can you read it?”

“I know the letters,” she admits, “but I haven’t the learning to make much sense of them. And by the time I manage a line, I fear I’ve lost its meaning.”

Remy shakes his head. “It is a crime,” he says, “that women are not taught the same as men. Why, a world without reading, I cannot fathom it. A whole long life without poems, or plays, or philosophers. Shakespeare, Socrates, to say nothing of Descartes!”

“Is that all?” she teases.

“And Voltaire,” he goes on. “Of course, Voltaire. And essays, and novels.”

She does not know the word.

“A single long story,” he explains, “something of pure invention. Filled with romance, or comedy, or adventure.”

She thinks of the fairy tales her father told her, growing up, the stories Estele spun of old gods. But this novel that Remy speaks of sounds like it encompasses so much more. She runs her fingers over the page of the proffered booklet, but her attention is on Remy, and his, for the moment, is on Voltaire. “Are you going to introduce yourself?”

Remy’s gaze snaps back, horrified. “No, no, not tonight. It is better this way; think of the story.” He sits back in his seat, glowing with joy. “See? This is what I love about Paris.”

“You are not from here, then.”

“Is anyone?” He has come back to her now. “No, I’m from Rennes. A printer’s family. But I am the youngest son, and my father made the grave mistake of sending me away to school, and the more I read, the more I thought, and the more I thought, the more I knew I had to be in Paris.”

“Your family didn’t mind?”

“Of course they did. But I had to come. This is where the thinkers are. This is where the dreamers live. This is the heart of the world, and the head, and it is changing.” His eyes dance with light. “Life is so brief, and every night in Rennes I’d go to bed, and lie awake, and think, there is another day behind me, and who knows how few ahead.”

It is the same fear that forced her into the woods that night, the same need that drove her to her fate.

“So here I am,” he says brightly. “I would not be anywhere else. Isn’t it marvelous?”

Addie thinks of the stained glass and the locked doors, the gardens, and the gates around them.

“It can be,” she says.

“Ah, you think me an idealist.”

Addie lifts the coffee to her lips. “I think it comes more easily to men.”

“It does,” he admits, before nodding at her attire. “And yet,” he says with an impish grin, “you strike me as someone not easily restrained. Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on.”

She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning.

To find a way, or make your own.

And she will smile, then, a ghost of the smile he has managed to win from her tonight.

He blushes. “I must be boring you.”

“Not at all,” she says. “Tell me, does it pay, to be a thinker?”

Laughter bubbles out of him. “No, not very well. But I am still my father’s son.” He holds out his hands, palms up, and she notices the echo of ink along the lines of his palms, staining the whorls of his fingers, the way charcoal used to stain her own. “It is good work,” he says.

But under his words, a softer sound, the rumble of his stomach.

Addie had almost forgotten the shattered jar, the ruined honey. But the rest of the feast sits waiting at her feet.

“Have you ever climbed the steps of Sacré Coeur?”

II

New York City

March 15, 2014

After so many years, Addie thought she’d come to terms with time.

She thought she’d made her peace with it—or that they’d found a way to coexist—not friends by any means, but at least no longer enemies.

And yet, the time between Thursday night and Saturday afternoon is merciless, every second doled out with the care of an old woman counting pennies to pay for bread. Not once does it seem to quicken, not once does she lose track of it. She can’t seem to spend it, or waste it, or even misplace it. The minutes inflate around her, an ocean of undrinkable time between now and then, between here and the store, between her and Henry.

She’s spent the last two nights at a place in Prospect Park, a cozy two-bedroom with a bay window belonging to Gerard, a children’s book writer she met one winter. A king-size bed, a pile of blankets, the soft hypnotic tick of the radiator, and still she could not sleep. Could not do anything but count and wait, and wish that she had said tomorrow, had only to bear one day instead of two.

Three hundred years she’s managed to suffer time, but now, now there is a present and a future, now there is something waiting ahead, now she cannot wait to see the look on Henry’s face, to hear her name on his lips.

Addie showers until the water goes cold, dries and styles her hair three different ways, sits on the kitchen island tossing kernels of cereal up into the air, trying to catch them on her tongue, as the clock on the wall inches forward from 10:13 A.M. to 10:14 A.M. Addie groans. She isn’t supposed to meet Henry until 5:00 P.M. and time is slowing a little more with every minute, and she thinks she might lose her mind.

It has been so long since she felt this kind of boredom, the stir-crazy inability to focus, and it takes her all morning to realize she isn’t bored at all.

She’s nervous.

Nervous, like tomorrow, a word for things that have not happened yet. A word for futures, when for so long all she’s had are presents.

Addie isn’t used to being nervous.

There’s no reason to be when you are always alone, when any awkward moment can be erased by a closed door, an instant apart, and every meeting is a fresh start. A clean slate.

The clock reaches 11:00 A.M., and she decides she cannot stay inside.

She sweeps up the few fallen pieces of leftover cereal, sets the apartment back the way she found it, and heads out into the late Brooklyn morning. Flits between boutiques, desperate for distraction, assembling a new outfit because for once the one she has won’t do. It is, after all, the same one she wore before.

Before—another word that’s lost its shape.

Addie picks out pale jeans and a pair of black silk flats, a top with a plunging neckline, shrugs the leather jacket over the top, even though it doesn’t match. It’s still the one piece she cannot bear to leave.

Unlike the ring, it won’t come back.

Addie lets an enthusiastic girl in a makeup store sit her down on a stool and spend an hour applying various highlighters, liners, shades. When it’s over, the face in the mirror is pretty, but wrong, the warm brown of her eyes cooled by the smoky shadow around them, her skin too smooth, the seven freckles hidden by a matte foundation.

Luc’s voice rises up like fog against the reflection.

I would rather see clouds blot out the stars.

Addie sends the girl off in search of coral lipstick, and the moment she’s alone, Addie wipes the clouds away.

Somehow, she manages to shave off hours until it is 4:00 P.M., but she is outside the bookstore now, buzzing with hope and fear. So she forces herself to circle the block, to count the paving stones, to memorize each and every shop front until it’s 4:45 P.M. and she cannot bear it anymore.

Four short steps. One open door.

And a single, leaden fear.

What if?

What if they spent too long apart?

What if the cracks have filled back in, the curse sealed around her once again?

What if it was just a fluke? A cruel joke?

What if what if what if—

Addie holds her breath, opens the door, and steps in.

But Henry isn’t there—instead there is someone else behind the counter.

It is the girl. The one from the other day, who sat folded in the leather chair, the one who called his name when Henry ran out to catch Addie on the curb. Now she leans against the till, paging through a large book full of glossy photos.

The girl is a work of art, strikingly pretty, dark skin draped in silver threads, a sweater slouching off one shoulder. She looks up at the sound of the bell.

“Can I help you?”

Addie falters, knocked off-balance by a vertigo of want and fear. “I hope so,” she says. “I’m looking for Henry.”

The girl stares at her, studying her—

Then a familiar voice comes from the back.

“Bea, do you think this looks…” Henry rounds the corner, smoothing his shirt, and trails off when he sees Addie. For an instant, a fraction of a fraction of a moment, she thinks it is over. That he has forgotten, and she is alone again, the thin spell made days before snipped like a stray thread.

But then Henry smiles, and says, “You’re early.”

And Addie is dizzy with air, with hope, with light.

“Sorry,” she says, a little breathless.

“Don’t be. I see you’ve met Beatrice. Bea, this is Addie.”

She loves the way Henry says her name.

Luc used to wield it like a weapon, a knife grazing her skin, but on Henry’s tongue, it’s a bell, something light, and bright, and lovely. It rings out between them.

Addie. Addie. Addie.

“Déjà vu,” says Bea, shaking her head. “You ever meet someone for the first time, but you’re sure you’ve seen them before?”

Addie almost laughs. “Yes.”

“I’ve already fed Book,” says Henry, talking to Bea as he shrugs on his coat. “Do not sprinkle any more catnip in the horror section.” She holds up her hands, bracelets jingling. Henry turns to Addie with a sheepish grin. “You ready to go?”

They’re halfway to the door when Bea snaps her fingers. “Baroque,” she says. “Or maybe Neoclassical.”

Addie stares back, confused. “The art periods?”

The other girl nods. “I have this theory that every face belongs to one. A time. A school.”

“Bea is a post-grad,” interjects Henry. “Art history, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“Henry here is obviously pure Romanticism. Our friend Robbie is Postmodern—the avant-garde, of course, not the minimalism. But you…” She taps a finger to her lips. “There’s something timeless about you.”

“Stop flirting with my date,” says Henry.

Date. The word thrills through her. A date is something made, something planned; not a chance of opportunity, but time set aside at one point for another, a moment in the future.

“Have fun!” calls Bea cheerfully. “Don’t stay out too late.”

Henry rolls his eyes. “Bye, Bea,” he says, holding the door.

“You owe me,” she adds.

“I’m granting you free access to the books.”

“Almost like a library!”

“Not a library!” he shouts back, and Addie smiles as she follows him up onto the street. It is obviously an inside joke, some shared, familiar thing, and she aches with longing, wonders what it would feel like to know someone that well, for the knowing to go both ways. Wonders if they could have a joke like that, she and Henry. If they can know each other long enough.

It is a cold evening, and they walk side by side, not intertwined but elbows brushing, each leaning a little into the other’s warmth. Addie marvels at it, this boy beside her, his nose burrowed down into the scarf around his throat. Marvels at the slight difference in his manner, the smallest shift in ease. Days ago, she was a stranger to him, and now, she is not, and he is learning her at the same rate she is learning him, and it is still the beginning, it is still so new, but they have moved one step along the road between unknown and familiar. A step she has never been allowed to take with anyone but Luc.

And yet.

Here she is, with this boy.

Who are you? she thinks as Henry’s glasses fog with steam. He catches her looking, and winks.

“Where are we going?” she asks when they reach the subway, and Henry looks at her and smiles, a shy, lopsided grin.

“It’s a surprise,” he answers as they descend the steps.

They take the G train to Greenpoint, backtrack half a block to a nondescript storefront, a WASH AND FOLD sign in the window. Henry holds the door, and Addie steps through. She looks around at the washing machines, the white-noise hum of the rinse cycle, the shudder of the spin.

“It’s a laundromat,” she says.

But Henry’s eyes go bright with mischief. “It’s a speakeasy.”

A memory lurches through her at the word, and she is in Chicago, nearly a century ago, jazz circling like smoke in the underground bar, the air heavy with the scent of gin and cigars, the rattle of glasses, the open secret of it all. They sit beneath a stained-glass window of an angel lifting his cup, and Champagne breaks across her tongue, and the darkness smiles against her skin, and draws her onto a floor to dance, and it is the beginning and the end of everything.

Addie shudders, drawing herself back. Henry is holding open the door at the back of the laundromat, and she braces herself for a darkened room, a forced retreat into the past, but she’s met instead by the neon lights and electronic chime of an arcade game. Pinball, to be precise. The machines line the walls, crammed side by side to make room for the tables and stools, the wooden bar.

Addie stares around, bemused. It is not a speakeasy at all, not in the strictest sense. It is simply one thing hidden behind another. A palimpsest in reverse.

“Well?” he asks with a sheepish grin. “What do you think?”

Addie feels herself smiling back, dizzy with relief. “I love it.”

“All right,” he says, producing a bag of quarters from one pocket. “Ready to lose?”

It’s early, but the place is far from empty.

Henry leads her to the corner, where he claims a pair of vintage machines, and balances a tower of quarters on each. She holds her breath as she inserts the first coin, braces for the inevitable clink of it rolling back into the dish at the bottom. But it goes in, and the game springs to life, emitting a cheerful cacophony of color and sound.

Addie exhales, a mixture of delight and relief.

Perhaps she is anonymous, the act as faceless as a theft. Perhaps, but in the moment, she doesn’t care.

She pulls back the lever, and plays.

III

“How are you so good at pinball?” Henry demands as she racks up points.

Addie isn’t sure. The truth is, she’s never played before, and it’s taken her a few times to get the hang of the game, but now she’s found her stride.

“I’m a fast learner,” she says, just before the ball slips between her paddles.

“HIGH SCORE!” announces the game in a mechanical drone.

“Well done,” calls Henry over the noise. “Better own your victory.”

The screen flashes, waiting for her to enter her name. Addie hesitates.

“Like this,” he says, showing her how to toggle the red box between the letters. He steps aside, but when she tries, the cursor doesn’t move. The light just flashes over the letter A, mocking.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, backing away, but Henry steps in.

“New machines, vintage problems.” He bumps it with his hip, and the square goes solid around the A. “There we go.”

He’s about to step aside, but Addie catches his arm. “Enter my name while I grab the next round.”

It’s easier now that the place is full. She swipes a couple of beers from the edge of the counter, weaves back through the crowd before the bartender even turns around. And when she returns, drinks in hand, the first things she sees are the letters, flashing in bright red on the screen.

ADI.

“I didn’t know how to spell your name,” he says.

And it’s wrong, but it doesn’t even matter; nothing matters but those three letters, glowing back at her, almost like a stamp, a signature.

“Swap,” says Henry, hands resting on her hips as he guides her over to his machine. “Let’s see if I can beat that score.”

She holds her breath and hopes that no one ever will.

They play until they run out of quarters and beer, until the place is too crowded for comfort, until they truly can’t hear each other over the ring and clash of the games and the shouts of the other people, and then they spill out of the dark arcade. They go back through the too-bright laundromat, and then out onto the street, still bubbling with energy.

It’s dark out now, the sky overhead a low canopy of dense gray clouds, promising rain, and Henry shoves his hands in his pockets, looks up and down the street. “What now?”

“You want me to choose?”

“This is an equal opportunity date,” he says, rocking from heel to toe. “I provided the first chapter. It’s your turn.”

Addie hums to herself, looking around, summoning a mental picture of the neighborhood.

“Good thing I found my wallet,” she says, patting her pocket. She didn’t, of course, but she did liberate a few twenties from the illustrator’s kitchen drawer before she left that morning. Judging by the recent profile of him in The Times, and the reported size of his latest book deal, Gerald won’t miss it.

“This way.” Addie takes off down the sidewalk.

“How far are we going?” he asks fifteen minutes later, when they’re still walking.

“I thought you were a New Yorker,” she teases.

But his strides are long enough to match her speed, and five minutes later they round the corner, and there it is. The Nitehawk lights up the darkening street, white bulbs tracing patterns on the brick façade, the word CINEMA picked out in red neon light across its front.

Addie has been to every movie theater in Brooklyn, the massive multiplexes with their stadium seats and the indie gems with worn-out sofas, has witnessed every mixture of new releases and nostalgia.

And the Nitehawk is one of her favorites.

She scans the board, buys two tickets to a showing of North by Northwest, since Henry says he’s never seen it, then takes his hand and leads them down the hall into the dark.

There are little tables between each seat with plastic menus and slips of paper to write your order on. She’s never been able to order anything, of course—the pencil marks dissolve, the waiter forgets about her as soon as he is out of sight—so she leans in to watch Henry fill out their card, thrilled by the simple potential of the act.

The previews ramble on as the seats fill up around them, and Henry takes her hand, their fingers lacing together like links in a chain. She glances over at him, painted in the low theater light. Black curls. High cheekbones. The cupid’s bow of his mouth. The flicker of resemblance.

It is hardly the first time she’s seen Luc echoed in a human face.

“You’re staring,” whispers Henry under the sound of the previews.

Addie blinks. “Sorry.” She shakes her head. “You look like someone I used to know.”

“Someone you liked, I hope.”

“Not really.” He shoots her a look of mock affront, and Addie almost laughs. “It was more complicated than that.”

“Love, then?”

She shakes her head. “No…” But her delivery is slower, less emphatic. “But he was very nice to look at.”

Henry laughs as the lights dim, and the movie starts.

A different waiter appears, crouching low as he delivers their food, and she plucks fries from the plate one by one, sinking into the comfort of the film. She glances over to see if Henry’s enjoying himself, but he’s not even looking at the screen. His face, all energy and light an hour before, is a rictus of tension. One knee bounces restlessly.

She leans in, whispers. “You don’t like it?”

Henry flashes a hollow smile. “It’s fine,” he says, shifting in his seat. “Just a little slow.”

It’s Hitchcock, she wants to say, but instead she whispers, “It’s worth it, I promise.”

Henry twists toward her, brow folding. “You’ve already seen it?”

Of course Addie has seen it.

First, in 1959, at a theater in Los Angeles, and then in the ’70s, a double feature with his last film, Family Plot, and then again, a few years back, right in Greenwich Village, during a retrospective. Hitchcock has a way of being resurrected, fed back into the cinema system at regular intervals.

“Yeah,” she whispers back. “But I don’t mind.”

Henry says nothing, but he clearly does mind. His knee goes back to bouncing, and a few minutes later he’s up and out of the seat, walking out into the lobby.

“Henry,” she calls, confused. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

She catches up with him as he throws open the theater door and steps out onto the curb. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Needed some air.”

But that’s obviously not it. He’s pacing.

“Talk to me.”

His steps slow. “I just wish you’d told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That you’d already seen it.”

“But you hadn’t,” she says. “And I didn’t mind seeing it again. I like seeing things again.”

“I don’t,” he snaps, and then deflates. “I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your problem.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I just—” He shakes his head, and turns to look at her, green eyes glassy in the dark. “Do you ever feel like you’re running out of time?”

Addie blinks and it is three hundred years ago and she is back on her knees on the forest floor, hands driving down into the mossy earth as the church bells ring behind her.

“I don’t mean in that normal, time flies way,” Henry’s saying. “I mean feeling like its surging by so fast, and you try to reach out and grab it, you try to hold on, but it just keeps rushing away. And every second, there’s a little less time, and a little less air, and sometimes when I’m sitting still, I start to think about it, and when I think about it, I can’t breathe. I have to get up. I have to move.”

He has his arms wrapped around himself, fingers digging into his ribs.

It’s been a long time since Addie felt that kind of urgency, but she remembers it well, remembers the fear, so heavy she thought it might crush her.

Blink and half your life is gone.

I do not want to die as I’ve lived.

Born and buried in the same ten-meter plot.

Addie reaches out and grabs his arm. “Come on,” she says, pulling him down the street. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” he asks, and her hand drops to his, and holds on tight.

“To find you something new.”

IV

Paris, France

July 29, 1724

Remy Laurent is laughter bottled into skin. It spills out of him at every turn.

As they walk together through Montmartre, he tips the brow of Addie’s hat, plucks at her collar, slings his arm around her shoulders, and inclines his head, as if to whisper some salacious secret. Remy delights in being part of her charade, and she delights in having someone to share it with.

“Thomas, you fool,” he jeers loudly when they pass a huddle of men.

“Thomas, you scoundrel,” he calls out as they pass a pair of women—girls really, though wrapped in rouge and tattered lace—at the mouth of an alley. They, too, take up the call.

“Thomas,” they echo, teasing and sweet, “come be our scoundrel, Thomas. Thomas, come have some fun.”

They climb the vaulting steps of the Sacré Coeur, are nearly to the top when Remy stops and spreads his coat on the steps, gesturing for her to sit.

They divide the food between them, and as they eat, she studies her strange companion.

Remy is Luc’s opposite, in every way. His hair is a crown of burnished gold, his eyes a summer blue, but more than that, it’s in his manner: his easy smile, his open laugh, the vibrant energy of youth. If one is the thrilling darkness, the other is midday radiance, and if the boy is not quite as handsome, well, that is only because he is human.

He is real.

Remy sees her staring, and laughs. “Are you making a study of me, for your art? I must say, you have mastered the posture and the manners of a Paris youth.”

She looks down, realizes she is sitting with one knee drawn up, her arm hooked lazily around her leg.

“But,” adds Remy, “I fear you are far too pretty, even in the dark.”

He has moved closer, his hand finding hers.

“What is your real name?” he asks, and how she wishes she could tell him. She tries, she tries—thinking maybe just this once, the sounds will make it over her tongue. But her voice catches after the A, so instead she changes course, and says, “Anna.”

“Anna,” Remy echoes, tucking a stray lock behind her ear. “It suits you.”

She will use a hundred names over the years, and countless times, she will hear those words, until she begins to wonder at the importance of a name at all. The very idea will begin to lose its meaning, the way a word does when said too many times, breaking down into useless sounds and syllables. She will use the tired phrase as proof that a name does not really matter—even as she longs to say and hear her own.

“Tell me, Anna,” says Remy, now. “Who are you?”

And so she tells him. Or at least, she tries—spills out the whole strange and winding journey, and then, when it does not even reach his ears, she starts again, and tells him another version of the truth, one that skirts the edges of her story, smoothing the rough corners into something more human.

Anna’s story is a pale shadow of Adeline’s.

A girl running away from a woman’s life. She leaves behind everything she has ever known, and escapes to the city, disowned, alone, but free.

“Unbelievable,” he says. “You simply left?”

“I had to,” she says, and it is not a lie. “Admit it, you think me mad.”

“Indeed,” says Remy with a playful grin. “The maddest. And the most incredible. What courage!”

“It did not feel like courage,” Addie says, plucking at the rind of bread. “It felt as if I had no choice. As if…” The words lodge in her throat, but she isn’t sure if it’s the curse, or simply the memory. “It felt as if I’d die there.”

Remy nods thoughtfully. “Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”

Addie’s throat tightens.

“Do you think a life has any value if one doesn’t leave some mark upon the world?”

Remy’s expression sobers, and he must read the sadness in her voice, because he says, “I think there are many ways to matter.” He plucks the book from his pocket. “These are the words of a man—Voltaire. But they are also the hands that set the type. The ink that made it readable, the tree that made the paper. All of them matter, though credit goes only to the name on the cover.”

He has misread her, of course, assumed the question stemmed from a different, more common fear. Still, his words hold weight—though it will be years before Addie discovers just how much.

They fall to silence, then, the quiet weighted with their thoughts. The summer heat has broken, given way to a breezy comfort with the thickest part of night. The hour settles on them like a sheet.

“It is late,” he says. “Let me walk you home.”

She shakes her head. “You do not have to.”

“But I do,” he protests. “You may disguise yourself as a man, but I know the truth, and so honor will not let me leave you. The darkness is no place to be alone.”

He does not know how right he is. Her chest aches at the idea of losing the thread of this night, and the ease beginning to take shape between them, an ease born of hours instead of days or months, but it is something, fragile and lovely.

“Very well,” she says, and his smile, when it answers, is pure joy.

“Lead the way.”

She has nowhere to take him, but she sets off, in the vague direction of a place she stayed several months before. Her chest tightens a little with every step, because every step brings her closer to the end of this, of them. And when they turn onto the street where she has placed her made-up home, and stopped before her imagined door, Remy leans in and kisses her once, on the cheek. Even in the dark she can see him blushing.

“I would see you again,” he says, “in daylight, or in darkness. As a woman, or a man. Please, let me see you again.”

And her heart breaks, because of course, there is no tomorrow, only tonight, and Addie is not ready for the thread to snap, the night to end, and so she answers, “Let me walk you home,” and when he opens his mouth to protest, she presses on, “The darkness is no place to be alone.”

He meets her gaze, and perhaps he knows her meaning, or perhaps he is as loath as she to leave this night behind, because he quickly offers his arm and says, “How chivalrous,” and they set off together again, laughing as they realize they are retracing their steps, returning the way they came. And if the walk to her imagined home was leisurely, the walk to his is urgent, threaded with anticipation.

When they reach his lodging house, they do not pretend to say good-bye. He leads her up the stairs, fingers tangled now, steps tripping and breathless, and when they reach his rented room, they do not linger on the threshold.

There is a faint catch in her chest at the idea of what comes next.

Sex has only ever been a burden, a necessity of circumstance, some required currency, and she has, up until now, been willing to pay the price. Even now, she is prepared for him to push her down, to shove her skirts out of the way. Prepared for the longing to break, forced away by the unsubtle act.

But he doesn’t thrust himself upon her. There is an urgency, yes, but Remy holds it taut as rope between them. He reaches out a single, steady hand, and lifts the hat from her head, sets it gently on the bureau. His fingers slide up the nape of her neck, and through her hair as his mouth finds hers, the kisses shy, and searching.

For the first time, she feels no reluctance, no dread, only a kind of nervous thrill, and the tension in the air is laced with breathless hunger.

Her fingers fumble for the laces of his trousers, but his own hands move slower, undoing the laces of her tunic, sliding the cloth over her head, unwrapping the muslin bound around her breasts.

“So much easier than corsets,” he murmurs, kissing the skin of her collar, and for the first time since those nights in her childhood bed back in Villon, Addie feels the heat rising in her cheeks, across her skin, between her legs.

He guides her back onto the pallet, kisses trailing down her throat, the curve of her breasts, before he frees himself, and climbs onto the bed, and onto her. She parts around him, breath hitching at the first thrust, and Remy pulls back, just enough to catch her eye, to make sure she’s okay, and when she nods, he drops his head to kiss her, and only then does he press on, press in, press deep.

Her back arches as that pressure gives way to pleasure, a deep and rolling heat. Their bodies press and move together, and she wishes she could erase those other men, those other nights, their stale breath and awkward bulk, the dull thrusts that ended in a sudden, abrupt spasm, before they pulled out, pulled away. To them, wet was wet, and warm was warm, and she was nothing but a vessel for their pleasure.

She cannot erase the memory of those other nights—so she decides to become a palimpsest, to let Remy write over the other lines.

This is how it should have been.

The name Remy whispers in her hair is not hers, but it doesn’t matter. In this moment, she can be Anna. She can be anyone.

Remy’s breath quickens as his tempo rises, as he presses deeper, and Addie feels herself quicken, too, her body tightening around him, driven toward the edge by the rocking of his hips and the blond curls tumbling into her face. She coils tighter and tighter, and then she comes undone, and a few moments later, so does he.

Remy collapses down beside her. But he doesn’t roll away. He reaches out, and sweeps a lock of hair from her cheek, and kisses her temple, and laughs, little more than a smile given sound, but it warms her all the way through.

He falls back against the pillow, and sleep comes over them, his leaden in the aftermath of pleasure, and hers light, dozing, but dreamless.

Addie no longer dreams.

She hasn’t, in truth, since that night in the woods. Or if she has, it is the one thing she never remembers. Perhaps there is no space inside her head, full as it is of memories. Perhaps it is yet another facet of her curse, to live only as she does. Or perhaps it is in some strange sense a mercy, for how many would be nightmares.

But she stays, happy and warm beside him, and for a few hours she almost forgets.

Remy has rolled away from her in sleep, exposing the lean breadth of his back, and she rests her hand between his shoulder blades, and feels him breathing, traces her fingers down the slope of his spine, studying his edges the way he’d studied hers in the midst of passion. Her touch is feather-light, but after a moment, he stirs, and shifts, and rolls to face her.

For a brief moment, his face is wide and open and warm; the face that leaned toward hers in the street and smiled through shared secrets in the café and laughed as he walked her first to her home and then to his.

But in the time it takes for him to fully wake, that face slides away, and all the knowing with it. A shadow sweeps across those warm blue eyes, that welcome mouth. He jerks a little, rises on one elbow, flustered by the sight of this stranger in his bed.

Because, of course, she is a stranger now.

For the first time since they met the night before, he frowns, stammers a greeting, the words too formal, stiff with embarrassment, and Addie’s heart breaks a little. He is trying to be kind, but she cannot bear it, so she gets up and dresses as fast as she can, a gross reversal of the time he took to strip the clothes away. She does not bother with the laces or the buckles. Does not turn toward him again, not until she feels the warmth of his hand on her shoulder, the touch almost gentle, and thinks, desperately, wildly, that maybe—maybe—there is a way to salvage this. She turns, hoping to meet his eyes, only to find him looking down, away, as he presses three coins into her hand.

And everything goes cold.

Payment.

It will be many years before she can read Greek, many more before she hears the myth of Sisyphus, but when she does, she will nod in understanding, palms aching from the weight of pushing stones uphill, heart heavy from the weight of watching them roll down again.

In this moment, there is no myth for company.

Only this beautiful boy with his back to her.

Only Remy, who makes no move to follow when she hurries to the door.

Something catches her eye, a bundle of paper askew on the floor. The booklet from the café. The latest of Voltaire. Addie doesn’t know what drives her to take it—perhaps she simply wants a token of their night, something more than the dreaded copper in her palm—but one moment the book is on the ground, cast-off among the clothes, and the next it is pressed to her front with the rest of her things.

Her hands have gotten light, after all, and even if the theft was clumsy, Remy would not have noticed, sitting there on the bed, his attention fixed anywhere but her.

V

New York City

March 15, 2014

Addie leads Henry down the street and around the corner to a nondescript steel door plastered with old posters. A man loiters next to it, chain-smoking and scrolling through pictures on his phone.

“Jupiter,” she says, unprompted, and the man straightens, and pushes open the door, exposing a narrow platform, and a set of stairs that drops down out of sight.

“Welcome to the Fourth Rail.”

Henry shoots her a wary look, but Addie grabs his hand and pulls him through. He twists, looking back as the door swings shut. “There is no fourth rail,” he says, and Addie flashes him a grin.

“Exactly.”

This is what she loves about a city like New York. It is so full of hidden chambers, infinite doors leading into infinite rooms, and if you have the time, you can find so many of them. Some she’s found by accident, others in the course of this or that adventure. She keeps them tucked away, like slips of paper between the pages of her book.

One stairwell leads to another, the second wider, made of stone. The ceiling arches overhead, plaster giving way to rock, and then tile, the tunnel lit only by a series of electric lanterns, but they’re spaced far enough apart that they do little to actually break the dark. A breadcrumb trail, just enough to see by, which is why Addie has the pleasure of seeing Henry’s expression when he realizes where they are.

The New York City Subway has nearly five hundred active stations, but the number of abandoned tunnels remains a matter of contention. Some of them are open to the public, both monuments to the past and nods to the unfinished future. Some are little more than closed tracks tucked between functioning lines.

And then some are secrets.

“Addie…” murmurs Henry, but she holds up a finger, tilts her head. Listening.

The music starts as an echo, a distant thrum, as much a feeling as a sound. It rises with every downward step, seems to fill the air around them, first a hum, and then a pulse, and then, at last, a beat.

Ahead the tunnel is bricked up, marked only by the white slash of an arrow to the left. Around the corner, the music grows. One more dead end, one more turn and—

Sound crashes over them.

The whole tunnel vibrates with the force of the bass, the reverb of chords against stone. Spotlights pulse blue-white, a strobe reducing the hidden club to still frames; a writhing crowd, bodies bouncing to the beat; a pair of musicians wielding matching electric guitars on a concrete stage; a row of bartenders caught mid-pour.

The tunnel walls are tiled gray and white, wide bands that wrap in arches overhead, bend down again like ribs, as if they are in the belly of some great, forgotten beast, the rhythm pulsing through its heart.

The Fourth Rail is primal, heady. The kind of place Luc would love.

But this? This is hers. Addie found the tunnel on her own. She showed it to the musician-turned-manager looking for a venue. Later that night, she even suggested the name, their heads bent over a cocktail napkin. His pen marks. Her idea. She’s sure he woke up the next day with a hangover and the first stirrings of the Fourth Rail. Six months later, she saw the guy standing outside the steel doors. Saw the logo they’d designed, a more polished version, tucked beneath the peeling posters, and felt the now-familiar thrill of whispering something into the world and watching it become real.

Addie pulls Henry toward the makeshift bar.

It’s simple, the tunnel wall divided into three behind a wide slab of pale stone that serves as a pouring surface. The options are vodka, bourbon, or tequila, and a bartender stands, waiting, before each.

Addie orders for them. Two vodkas.

The transaction happens in silence—there is no point trying to shout over the wall of sound. A series of fingers held up, a ten laid on the bar. The bartender—a slender black guy with silver dusting his eyes—pours two shots, and spreads his hands like a dealer laying down cards.

Henry lifts his glass and Addie raises hers too and their mouths move together (she thinks he’s saying cheers while she answers salut), but the sounds are swallowed up, the clink of their shots nothing but a small vibration through her fingers.

The vodka hits her stomach like a match, heat blossoming behind her ribs.

They set the empty glasses back on the bar, and Addie’s already pulling Henry toward the crush of bodies by the stage when the guy behind the bar reaches out and catches Henry’s wrist.

The bartender smiles, produces a third shot glass, and pours again. He presses his hands to his chest in the universal gesture for it’s on me.

They drink, and there is the heat again, spreading from her chest to her limbs, and there is Henry’s hand in hers, moving into the crowd. Addie looks back, sees the bartender staring after them, and there is a strange feeling, rising like the last dregs of a dream, and she wants to say something, but the music is a wall, and the vodka smooths the edges of her thoughts until it slips away, and then they are folding into the crowd.

Up above it may be early spring, but down here it is late summer, humid and heavy. The music is liquid, the air thick as syrup as they plunge into the tangled limbs. The tunnel is bricked up behind the stage, making a world of reverb, a place where sound bends back, redoubles, every note carried, thinning, without trailing off entirely. The guitarists play a complicated riff in perfect unison, adding to the echo chamber effect, churning the waters of the crowd.

And then the girl steps into the spotlight.

A teenage sprite—a fae thing, Luc would say—in a black baby doll dress and combat boots. Her white-blond hair is piled on her head, done up in twin buns, the ends spiking like a crown. The only color is the slash of her red lips, and the rainbow drawn like a mask across her eyes. The guitarists quicken, fingers flying over strings. The air shakes, the beat thumps through skin and muscle and bone.

And the girl begins to sing.

Her voice is a wail, a banshee’s call if a banshee screamed in tune. The syllables bleed together, the consonants blur, and Addie finds herself leaning in, eager to hear the words. But they draw back, slip under the beat, fold into the feral energy of the Fourth Rail.

The guitars play their hypnotic chorus.

The girl singer seems almost like a puppet, pulled along by the strings.

And Addie thinks that Luc would love her, wonders for an instant if he’s been down here since she’d found it. She breathes in as if she’d be able to smell the darkness, like smoke, on the air. But Addie wills herself to stop, empties her head of him, makes space instead for the boy beside her, bouncing in time with the beat.

Henry, with his head tipped back, his glasses fogged gray, and sweat sliding down his cheeks like tears. For an instant he looks impossibly, immeasurably sad, and she remembers the pain in his voice when he spoke of losing time.

But then he looks at her and smiles, and it’s gone, a trick of the lights, and she wonders who and how and where he came from, knows it is all too good to be true, but in this moment, she is simply glad he’s there.

She closes her eyes, lets herself fall into the rhythm of the beat, and she is in Berlin, Mexico City, Madrid, and she is right here, right now, with him.

They dance until their limbs ache.

Until sweat paints their skin, and the air becomes too thick to breathe.

Until there’s a lull in the beat, and another silent conversation passed between them like a spark.

Until he draws her back toward the bar and the tunnel, back the way they came, but the flow of traffic is a one-way street, the stairs and the steel door only lead in.

Until she cocks her head the other way, to a dark arch set in the tunnel wall near the stage, leads him up the narrow stairs, the music fading a little more with every upward step, ears buzzing with the white noise left in its wake.

Until they spill out into the cool March night, filling their lungs with fresh air.

And the first clear sound Addie hears is his laughter.

Henry turns toward her, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, intoxicated in a way that has less to do with the vodka than with the power of the Fourth Rail.

He is still laughing when the storm starts.

A crack of thunder, and seconds later, the rain comes down. Not a drizzle—not even the sparse warning drops that soon give way to a steady rain—but the sudden sheet fall of a downpour. The kind of rain that hits you like a wall, soaks you through in seconds.

Addie gasps at the sudden shock of cold.

They are ten feet from the nearest awning, but neither of them runs for cover.

She smiles up into the rain, lets the water kiss her skin.

Henry looks at her, and Addie looks back, and then he spreads his arms as if to welcome the storm, his chest heaving. Water clings to his black lashes, slides down his face, rinsing the club from his clothes, and Addie realizes suddenly that, despite the moments of resemblance, Luc never once looked like this.

Young.

Human.

Alive.

She pulls Henry toward her, relishes the press of his body, warm against the cold. She runs her hand through his hair and for the first time it stays back, exposing the sharp lines of his face, the hungry hollows of his jaw, his eyes, a brighter shade of green than she has seen them yet.

“Addie,” he breathes, and the sound sends sparks across her skin, and when he kisses her, he tastes like salt, and summer. But it feels too much like a punctuation mark, and she isn’t ready for the night to end, so she kisses him back, deeper, turns the period into a question, into an answer.

And then they are running, not for shelter, but the train.

They stumble into his apartment, wet clothes clinging to their skin.

They are a tangle of limbs in the hallway, unable to get close enough. She pulls the glasses from his face, tosses them onto a nearby chair, shrugs out of her coat, the leather sticking to her skin. And then they are kissing again. Desperate, hungry, wild, as her fingers run over his ribs, hook in the front of his jeans.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and in answer she pulls his mouth to hers, guides his hands to the buttons of her shirt as hers find his belt. He presses her back against the wall, and says her name, and it is lightning through her limbs, it is fire through her core, it is longing between her legs.

And then they are on the bed, and for an instant, only an instant, she is somewhere else, somewhen else, the darkness folding itself around her. A name whispered against bare skin.

But to him she was Adeline, only Adeline. His Adeline. My Adeline.

Here, now, she is finally Addie.

“Say it again,” she pleads.

“Say what?” he murmurs.

“My name.”

Henry smiles.

“Addie,” he whispers against her throat.

“Addie.” The kisses trail over her collar.

“Addie.” Her stomach.

“Addie.” Her hips.

His mouth finds the heat between her legs, and her fingers tangle in those black curls, her back arching up with pleasure. Time shudders, slides out of focus. He retraces his steps, kisses her again, and then she is on top of him, pressing him down into the bed.

They do not fit together perfectly. He was not made for her the way Luc was—but this is better, because he is real, and kind, and human, and he remembers.

When it is over, she collapses, breathless, into the sheets beside him, sweat and rain chilling on her skin. Henry folds around her, pulls her back into the circle of his warmth, and she can feel his heart slowing through his ribs, a metronome easing back into its measure.

The room goes quiet, marked only by the steady rain beyond the windows, the drowsy aftermath of passion, and soon she can feel him drifting down toward sleep.

Addie looks up at the ceiling.

“Don’t forget,” she says softly, the words half prayer, half plea.

Henry’s arms tighten, a body surfacing from sleep. “Forget what?” he murmurs, already sinking again.

And Addie waits for his breath to steady before she whispers the word to the dark.

“Me.”

VI

Paris, France

July 29, 1724

Addie surges out into the night, swiping tears from her cheeks.

She pulls her jacket close despite the warmth of summer, and makes her way alone across the sleeping city. She is not heading toward the hovel she’s called home this season. She is simply moving forward, because she cannot bear the idea of standing still.

So Addie walks.

And at some point, she realizes she is no longer alone. There is a change in the air, a subtle breeze, carrying the leafy scent of country woods, and then he is there, falling in step beside her, stride for stride. An elegant shadow, dressed in the height of Paris fashion, collar and cuff trimmed in silk.

Only his black curls billow around his face, feral and free.

“Adeline, Adeline,” he says, his voice laced with pleasure, and she is back in the bed, Remy’s voice saying Anna, Anna into her hair.

It has been four years without a visit.

Four years of holding her breath, and though she will never admit it, the sight of him is like coming up for air. A terrible, chest-opening relief. As much as she hates this shadow, this god, this monster in his stolen flesh, he is still the only one who remembers her at all.

It does not make her hate him any less.

If anything, she hates him more.

“Where have you been?” she snaps.

Smug pleasure shines like starlight in his eyes. “Why? Have you missed me?” Addie doesn’t trust herself to speak. “Come now,” Luc presses, “you did not think I would make it easy.”

“It’s been four years,” she says, wincing at the anger in her voice, too close to need.

“Four years is nothing. A breath. A blink.”

“And yet, you come tonight.”

“I know your heart, my dear. I feel when it falters.”

Remy’s fingers folding hers over the coins, the sudden weight of sadness, and the darkness, drawn to pain like a wolf to blood.

Luc looks down at her trousers, pinned below the knee, the man’s tunic, open at the throat. “I must say,” he says, “I preferred you in red.”

Her heart catches at the mention of that night four years before, the first time he did not come. He savors the sight of her surprise.

“You saw,” she says.

“I am the night itself. I see everything.” He steps closer, carrying the scent of summer storms, the kiss of forest leaves. “But that was a lovely dress you wore on my behalf.”

Shame slides like a flush beneath her skin, followed by the heat of anger, at the knowledge that he was watching. Had watched her hope gutter with the candles on the sill, watched as she shattered, alone in the dark.

She loathes him, wears that loathing like a coat, wraps it tight around her as she smiles.

“You thought I would wither without your attention. But I have not.”

The darkness hums. “It has only been four years,” he muses. “Perhaps next time I will wait longer. Or perhaps…” His hand grazes her chin, tipping her face to meet his. “I will abandon these visits, and leave you to wander the earth until it ends.”

It is a chilling thought, though she does not let him see it.

“If you did that,” she says evenly, “you would never have my soul.”

He shrugs. “I have a thousand others waiting to be reaped, and you are only one.” He is closer now, too close, his thumb tracing up her jaw, fingers sliding along the back of her neck. “It would be so easy to forget you. Everyone else already has.” She tries to pull away, but his hand is stone, holding her fast. “I will be kind. It will be quick. Say yes now,” he urges, “before I change my mind.”

For a terrible moment, she doesn’t trust herself to answer. The weight of the coins in her palm is still too fresh, the pain of the night torn away, and victory dances like light in Luc’s eyes. It is enough to force her to her senses.

“No,” she says, the word a snarl.

And there it is, like a gift, a flash of anger on that perfect face.

His hand falls away, the weight of him vanishing like smoke, and Addie is left alone once more in the dark.

There is a point when the night breaks.

When the darkness finally begins to weaken, and lose its hold over the sky. It’s slow, so slow she doesn’t notice until the light is already creeping in, until the moon and stars have vanished, and the weight of Luc’s attention lifts from her shoulders.

Addie climbs the steps of the Sacré Coeur, sits at the top, with the church at her back and Paris sprawling at her feet, and watches the 29th of July become the 30th, watches the sun rise over the city.

She has almost forgotten the book she took from Remy’s floor.

She has clutched it so tight, her fingers ache. Now, in the watery morning light, she puzzles over the title, silently sounding out the words. La Place Royale. It is a novel, that new word, though she doesn’t yet know it. Addie peels back the cover, and tries to read the first page, manages only a line before the words crumble into letters, and the letters blur, and she has to resist the urge to cast the cursed book away, to fling it down the steps.

Instead, she closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and thinks of Remy, not his words, but the soft pleasure in his voice when he spoke of reading, the delight in his eyes, the joy, the hope.

It will be a grueling journey, full of starts and stops and myriad frustrations.

To decipher this first novel will take her almost a year—a year spent laboring over every line, trying to make sense of a sentence, then a page, then a chapter. And still, it will be a decade more before the act comes naturally, before the task itself dissolves, and she finds the hidden pleasure of the story.

It will take time, but time is the one thing Addie has plenty of.

So she opens her eyes, and starts again.

VII

New York City

March 16, 2014

Addie wakes to the smell of toast browning, the sizzle of butter hitting a hot skillet. The bed is empty beside her, the door almost closed, but she can hear Henry moving in the kitchen beneath the soft burble of talk radio. The room is cool, and the bed is warm, and she holds her breath and tries to hold the moment with it, the way she has a thousand times, clutching the past to the present, and warding off the future, the fall.

But today is different.

Because someone remembers.

She throws off the blankets, scavenges the bedroom floor, looking for her clothes, but there’s no sign of the rain-soaked jeans or shirt, just the familiar leather jacket draped over a chair. Addie finds a robe beneath and wraps it around her, buries her nose in the collar. It is worn and soft, smells like clean cotton and fabric softener and the faint hint of coconut shampoo, a smell she will come to know as his.

She pads barefoot into the kitchen as Henry pours coffee from a French press.

He looks up, and smiles. “Good morning.”

Two small words that move the world.

Not I’m sorry. Not I don’t remember. Not I must have been drunk.

Just good morning.

“I put your clothes in the dryer,” he says. “They should be done soon. Grab yourself a mug.”

Most people have a shelf of cups. Henry has a wall. They hang from hooks on a mounted rack, five across and seven down. Some of them are patterned and some of them are plain and no two are the same.

“I’m not sure you have enough mugs.”

Henry casts her a sidelong look. He has a way of almost smiling. It’s like light behind a curtain, the edge of the sun behind clouds, more a promise than an actual thing, but the warmth shines through.

“It was a thing, in my family,” he says. “No matter who came over for coffee, they could choose the one that spoke to them that day.”

His own cup sits on the counter, charcoal gray, the inside coated in something that looks like liquid silver. A storm cloud and its lining. Addie studies the wall, trying to make her choice. She reaches for a large porcelain cup with small blue leaves, weighs it in her palm before she notices another. She’s about to put it back when Henry stops her.

“I’m afraid all selections are final,” he says, scraping butter over toast. “You’ll have to try again tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. The word swells a little in her chest.

Henry pours, and Addie leans her elbows on the counter, wraps her hands around the steaming cup, inhales the bittersweet scent. For a second, only a second, she is in Paris, hat pulled down in the corner of the café as Remy pushed the cup toward her and said, Drink. That is how memories are for her, past rising into present, a palimpsest held up to the light.

“Oh, hey,” says Henry, calling her back. “I found this on the floor. Is it yours?”

She looks up and sees the wooden ring.

“Don’t touch that.” Addie snatches it out of his hand, too fast. The inside of the ring brushes the tip of her finger, rolls around the nail like a coin about to settle, all the ease of a compass finding north.

“Shit.” Addie shudders and drops the band. It clatters to the floor, rolling several feet before fetching up against the edge of a rug. She grips her fingers as if burned, heart pounding.

She didn’t put it on.

And even if she did—her gaze cuts to the window, but it is morning, sunlight streaming through the curtains. The darkness cannot find her here.

“What happened?” asks Henry, clearly confused.

“Nothing,” she says, shaking out her hand. “Just a splinter. Stupid thing.” She kneels slowly to retrieve it, careful to touch only the outside of the band.

“Sorry,” she says, straightening. She sets the ring on the counter between them, splaying her hands on either side. In the artificial light, the pale wood looks almost gray. Addie glares down at the band.

“Have you ever had something you love, and hate, but can’t bear to get rid of? Something you almost wish you’d lose, because then it wouldn’t be there, and it wouldn’t be your fault…” She tries to make the words light, almost casual.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.” He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out something small, and gold. A Star of David. A pendant, missing its chain.

“You’re Jewish?”

“I was.” Two words, and all he means to say. His attention drifts back to her ring. “It looks old.”

“It is.” Exactly as old as she is.

They both should have worn to nothing long ago.

She presses her hand down over the ring, feels the smooth wooden rim dig into her palm. “It belonged to my father,” she says, and it isn’t a lie, though it’s only the beginning of the truth. She closes her hand around the ring, and pockets it. The ring is weightless, but she can feel it. She can always feel it.

“Anyway,” she says, with a too-bright smile. “What’s for breakfast?”

How many times has Addie dreamed of this?

Of hot coffee and buttered toast, of sunlight streaming through the windows, of new days that aren’t fresh starts, none of the awkward silence of strangers, of a boy or a girl, elbows on the counter across from her, the simple comfort of a night remembered.

“You must really love breakfast,” says Henry, and she realizes she is beaming down at her food.

“It’s my favorite meal,” she answers, spearing a bite of eggs.

But as she eats, the hope begins to thin.

Addie is not a fool. Whatever this is, she knows it will not last. She has lived too long to think it chance, been cursed too long to think it fate.

She has begun to wonder if it is a trap.

Some new way to torment her. To break the stalemate, force her hand back into play. But even after all these years, Luc’s voice wraps around her, soft and low and gloating.

I am all you have. All you will ever have. The only one who will remember.

It was the one card he always held, the weapon of his own attention, and she does not think he’d give it away. But if it is not a trap, then what? An accident? A stroke of luck? Perhaps she has gone mad. It would not be the first time. Perhaps she has frozen up on Sam’s roof, and is trapped in a dream.

Perhaps none of it is real.

And yet, there is his hand on hers, there is the soft scent of him on the robe, there is the sound of her name, drawing her back.

“Where did you go?” he asks, and she spears another bite of food and holds it up between them.

“If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life,” she says, “what would it be?”

“Chocolate,” Henry answers without missing a beat. “The kind so dark it’s almost bitter. You?”

Addie ponders. A life is a very long time. “Cheese,” she answers soberly, and Henry nods, and silence settles over them, less awkward than shy. Nervous laughter in between stolen glances, two strangers who are no longer strangers but know so little of each other.

“If you could live somewhere with only one season,” asks Henry, “what would it be?”

“Spring,” she says, “when everything is new.”

“Fall,” he says, “when everything is fading.”

They have both chosen seams, those ragged lines where things are neither here nor there, but balanced on the brink. And Addie wonders, half to herself, “Would you rather feel nothing or everything?”

A shadow crosses Henry’s face, and he falters, looks down at his unfinished food and then to the clock on the wall.

“Shit. I’ve got to get to the store.” He straightens, dropping his plate in the sink. The last question goes unanswered.

“I should go home,” says Addie, rising too. “Get changed. Do some work.”

There is no home, of course, no clothes, no job. But she is playing the part of a normal girl, a girl who gets to have a normal life, sleep with a boy and wake up to good mornings instead of who are yous.

Henry finishes his coffee in a single gulp. “How do you go about finding talent?” he asks, and Addie remembers she told him that she was a scout.

“You keep your eyes open,” she says, rounding the counter.

But he catches her hand.

“I want to see you again.”

“I want you to see me again,” she echoes.

“Still no phone?”

She shakes her head, and he raps his fingers for a moment, thinking. “There’s a food truck rally in Prospect Park. Meet you there at six?”

Addie smiles. “It’s a date.” She pulls the robe close. “Mind if I take a shower before I go?”

Henry kisses her. “Of course. Just let yourself out.”

She smiles. “I will.”

Henry leaves, the front door swinging shut behind him, but for once, the sound doesn’t make her stomach drop. It’s just a door. Not a period. An ellipsis. A to-be-continued.

She takes a long, hot shower, wraps her hair in a towel, and wanders through the apartment, noticing all the things she didn’t see last night.

Henry’s apartment is just this side of messy, cluttered in the way so many New York places are, too little space to live and breathe. It’s also littered with the remains of abandoned hobbies. A cabinet of oil paints, the brushes gone stale and stiff in a stained cup. Notebooks and journals, most of them empty. A few blocks of wood and a whittling knife—somewhere, in the faded space before her flawless memory, she hears her father humming, and moves on, moves away, slowing only when she reaches the cameras.

A row of them stare down at her from a shelf, their lenses large and wide and black.

Vintage, she thinks, though the word has never held much weight.

She was there when cameras were hulking tripod beasts, the photographer hidden beneath a heavy drape. She was there for the invention of black-and-white film, and then color, there when still frames became videos, when analog became digital, and whole stories could be stored in the palm of a hand.

She runs her fingers across the camera bodies, like carapace shells, feels dust beneath her touch. But there are photographs everywhere.

On the walls, propped on side tables, and sitting in the corner, waiting to be hung. There is one of Beatrice in an art gallery, a silhouette against the brightly lit space. One of Beatrice and Henry, tangled together, her gaze up, and his head down, each caught in the beginning of a laugh. One of a boy that Addie guesses must be Robbie. Bea was right; he looks like he walked out of a party in Andy Warhol’s loft. The crowd behind him is a blur of bodies, but Robbie is in focus, mid-laugh, purple glitter tracing his cheekbones, plumes of green along his nose, gold at his temples.

Another photo, in the hall. Here, the three of them sit on a sofa, Bea in the middle, Robbie’s legs stretched across her lap, and Henry on the other side, chin resting lazily on his hand.

And across the hall, its opposite. A posed family portrait, stiff against the candids. Again Henry sits on the edge of the sofa, but more upright, and this time placed beside two people who are clearly his brother and sister. The girl, a whirlwind of curls, eyes dancing behind a pair of cat-eye frames, the model of the mother resting a hand on her shoulder. The boy, older, sterner, an echo of the father behind the sofa. And the younger son, lean, wary, smiling the kind of smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Henry stares back at Addie, from the photos he’s in, and the ones he clearly took. She can feel him, the artist in the frame. She could stay there, studying these pictures, trying to find the truth of him in them, the secret, the answer to the question going around and around in her head.

But all she sees is someone sad, lost, searching.

She turns her attention to the books.

Henry’s own collection is eclectic, spilling across surfaces in every room. A shelf in the living room, a narrower one in the hall, a stack beside his bed, another on the coffee table. Comics stacked over a pile of textbooks with titles like Reviewing the Covenant and Jewish Theology for the Postmodern Age. There are novels, biographies, paperbacks and hardcovers mixed together, some old and fraying, others brand new. Bookmarks jut up from the pages, marking a dozen unfinished reads.

Her fingers drift down the spines, hover on a squat gold book. A History of the World in 100 Objects. She wonders if you can distill a person’s life, let alone human civilization, to a list of things, wonders if that’s a valid way to measure worth at all, not by the lives touched, but the things left behind. She tries to build her own list. A History of Addie LaRue.

Her father’s bird, lost among the bodies in Paris.

The Place Royale, stolen from Remy’s room.

The wooden ring.

But those things have their mark on her. What of Addie’s legacy? Her face, ghosted in a hundred works of art. Her melodies at the heart of a hundred songs. Ideas taking root, growing wild, the seeds unseen.

Addie continues through the apartment, idle curiosity giving way to a more purposeful search. She is looking for clues, searching for something, anything, to explain Henry Strauss.

A laptop sits on the coffee table. It boots without a password prompt, but when Addie brushes her thumb across the trackpad, the cursor doesn’t move. She taps the keys absently, but nothing happens.

The technology changes.

The curse stays the same.

Except it doesn’t.

It hasn’t—not entirely.

So she goes from room to room, searching for clues to the question she cannot seem to answer.

Who are you, Henry Strauss?

In the medicine cabinet, a handful of prescriptions line the shelf, their names clogged with consonants. Beside them, a vial of pink pills marked with only a Post-it—a tiny, hand-drawn umbrella.

In the bedroom, another bookshelf, a stack of notebooks in various shapes and sizes.

She turns through, but all of them are blank.

On the windowsill, another, older photo—of Henry and Robbie. In this one, they are tangled, Robbie’s face pressed against Henry’s, his forehead resting on Henry’s temple. There’s something intimate about the pose, the way Robbie’s eyes are almost closed, the way Henry’s hand cradles the back of his head, as if holding him up, or holding him close. The serene curve on Robbie’s mouth. Happy. Home.

By the bed, an old-fashioned watch sits on the side table. It has no minute hand, and the hour points just past six, even though the clock on the wall reads 9:32. She holds it to her ear, but the battery must be dead.

And then, in the top drawer, a handkerchief, dotted with blood. When she picks it up, a ring tumbles out. A small diamond set in a platinum band. Addie stares down at the engagement ring, and wonders who it was for, wonders who Henry was before he met her, what happened to put him in her path.

“Who are you?” she whispers to the empty room.

She wraps the ring in the stained kerchief and returns it to its spot, sliding the drawer shut.

VIII

“I take it back,” she says. “If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be these fries.”

Henry laughs and steals a few from the cone in her hand as they wait in line for gyros. The food trucks form a colorful stripe along Flatbush, crowds of people queuing for lobster rolls and grilled cheese, banh mi and kebabs. There’s even a line for ice-cream sandwiches, even though the warmth has dropped out of the March air, promising a crisp, cold night. Addie’s glad she picked up a hat and scarf, traded her ballet flats for calf-high boots, even as she leans into the warmth of Henry’s arms, until there’s a break in the falafel queue, and he ducks away to get in line.

Addie watches him step up to the counter window and order, watches the middle-aged woman working the truck as she leans forward, elbows on the sill, watches them talk, Henry nodding solemnly. The line is growing behind him, but the woman doesn’t seem to notice. She’s not smiling exactly; if anything, she looks on the verge of tears as she reaches out and takes his hand, squeezes it.

“Next!”

Addie blinks, gets to the front of her own line, spends the last of her stolen cash on a lamb gyro and a blueberry soda, finds herself wishing for the first time in a while that she had a credit card, or more to her name than the clothes on her back and the change in her pocket. Wishes that things didn’t seem to slip through her fingers like sand, that she could have a thing without stealing it first.

“You’re looking at that sandwich like it broke your heart.”

Addie looks up at Henry, cracks a smile. “It looks so good,” she says. “I’m just thinking of how sad I’ll be when it’s gone.”

He sighs in mock lament. “The worst part of every meal is when it ends.”

They take their spoils and stake out a slope of grass just inside the park, a pool of quickly thinning light. Henry adds the falafel and an order of dumplings to her gyro and fries, and they share, trading bites like cards in a game of gin.

Henry reaches for the falafel, and Addie remembers the woman in the window.

“What was that?” she asks. “Back there at the truck, the woman working, she looked like she was about to cry. Do you know her?”

Henry shakes his head. “She said I reminded her of her son.”

Addie stares at him. It isn’t a lie, she doesn’t think, but it’s not entirely the truth, either. There’s something he isn’t saying, but she doesn’t know how to ask. She spears a dumpling and pops it in her mouth.

Food is one of the best things about being alive.

Not just food. Good food. There is a chasm between sustenance and satisfaction, and while she spent the better part of three hundred years eating to stave off the pangs of hunger, she has spent the last fifty delighting in the discovery of flavor. So much of life becomes routine, but food is like music, like art, replete with the promise of something new.

She wipes the grease from her fingers and lies back in the grass beside Henry, feeling wonderfully full. She knows it will not last. That fullness is like everything else in her life. It always wears away too soon. But here, and now, she feels … perfect.

She closes her eyes, and smiles, and thinks she could stay here all night, despite the growing cold, let the dusk give way to dark, burrow against Henry and hope for stars.

A bright chime sounds in his coat pocket.

Henry answers. “Hey, Bea,” he starts, and then abruptly sits up. Addie can only hear half the call, but she can guess at the rest.

“No, of course I didn’t forget. I know, I’m late, I’m sorry. I’m on my way. Yeah, I remember.”

Henry hangs up, puts his head in his hands.

“Bea’s having a dinner party. And I was meant to bring dessert.”

He looks back at the food trucks, as if one of them might hold the answer, looks at the sky, which has gone from dusk to dim, runs his hands through his hair, lets out a soft and muttered stream of cursing. But there’s no time to wallow now, not when he is late.

“Come on,” says Addie, pulling him to his feet. “I know a place.”

The best French bakery in Brooklyn has no sign.

Marked by only a butter yellow awning, a narrow glass window between two broad brick storefronts, it belongs to a man named Michel. Every morning before dawn, he arrives, and begins the slow assembly of his art. Apple tarts, the fruit sliced thin as paper, and operas, the tops dusted with cocoa, and petit fours coated in marzipan and small, piped roses.

The shop is closed now, but she can see the shadow of its owner as he moves through the kitchen at its back, and Addie raps her knuckles on the glass door, and waits.

“Are you sure about this?” asks Henry as the shape shuffles forward, cracks the door.

“We are closed,” he says, in a heavy accent, and Addie slips from English into French as she explains she is a friend of Delphine’s, and the man softens at the mention of his daughter’s name, softens more at the sound of his native tongue, and she understands. She can speak German, Italian, Spanish, Swiss, but French is different, French is bread baking in her mother’s oven, French is her father’s hands carving wood, French is Estele murmuring to her garden.

French is coming home.

“For Delphine,” he answers, opening the door, “anything.”

Inside the small shop, New York falls away, and it is pure Paris, the taste of sugar and butter still on the air. The cases are mostly empty now, only a handful of the beautiful creations lingering on the shelves, bright and sparse as wildflowers in a barren field.

She does know Delphine, though the young woman does not, of course, know her. She knows Michel as well, visits this shop the way someone else might visit a photograph, linger on a memory.

Henry hovers a few steps behind as Addie and Michel make small talk, each contented by the brief respite of the other’s language, and the patissier places each of the remaining pastries in a pink box, and hands them to her. And when she offers to pay, wondering if she can afford the cost, Michel shakes his head, and thanks her for the taste of home, and she wishes him good night, and back on the curb, Henry stares at her as if she’s performed a magic act, some strange and wondrous feat.

He pulls her into the circle of his arms.

“You are amazing,” he says, and she blushes, having never had an audience.

“Here,” she says, pressing the pastry box into his hands. “Enjoy the party.”

Henry’s smile falls. His forehead rucks up like a carpet. “Why don’t you come with me?”

And she doesn’t know how to say I can’t when there is no explaining why, when she was ready to spend all night with him. So she says, “I shouldn’t,” and he says, “Please,” and she knows it is such a terrible idea, that she cannot hold the secret of her curse aloft over so many heads, knows she cannot keep him to herself, that this is all a game of borrowed time.

But this is how you walk to the end of the world.

This is how you live forever.

Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.

So she says yes.

They walk, arm in arm, as the evening goes from cool to cold.

“Is there anything I should know?” she says. “About your friends?”

Henry frowns, thinking. “Well, Robbie’s a performer. He’s really good, but he can be a little … difficult?” He exhales a hard breath. “We were together, back in college. He was the first guy I ever fell for.”

“But it didn’t work out?”

Henry laughs, but the breath is shallow. “No. He dumped me. But look, it was ages ago. We’re friends now, nothing more.” He shakes his head, as if clearing it. “Then there’s Bea, you met her. She’s great. She’s getting her PhD, and she lives with a guy named Josh.”

“Are they dating?”

Henry snorts. “No. Bea’s gay. And so is he … I think. I don’t actually know, it’s been the topic of speculation. But Bea will probably invite Mel, or Elise, whichever she’s dating now—it’s kind of a pendulum swing. Oh, and don’t ask about the Professor.” Addie looks at him, wondering, and he explains. “Bea had a thing, a few years ago, with a Columbia professor. Bea was in love, but she was married, and it all fell apart.”

Addie repeats the names to herself, and Henry smiles.

“It’s not a test,” he says. “You can’t fail.”

Addie wishes he were right.

Henry winds a little tighter at her side. He hesitates, exhales. “There’s something else you should know,” he says at last, “about me.”

Her heart stutters in her chest as she braces for a confession, a reluctant truth, some explanation for this, for them. But Henry only looks up at the starless night and says, “There was a girl.”

A girl. It does not answer anything.

“Her name was Tabitha,” he says, and she can feel the pain in every syllable. She thinks of the ring in his drawer, the bloody kerchief knotted around it.

“What happened?”

“I proposed, and she said no.”

It is true, she thinks, some version of it. But Addie is beginning to realize how good Henry is at skirting lies while leaving truths half-told.

“We all have battle scars,” she says. “People in our past.”

“You too?” he asks, and for a moment, she is in New Orleans, the room in disarray, those green eyes black with rage as the building begins to burn.

“Yeah,” she says softly. And then, gently probing, “And we all have secrets, too.”

He looks at her, and she can see it swimming in his eyes, the thing he will not say, but he is not Luc, and the green gives nothing away.

Tell me, she thinks. Whatever it is.

But he doesn’t.

They reach Bea’s building in silence, and she buzzes them in, and as they climb the stairs she turns her thoughts to the party, and thinks, perhaps, it will be okay.

Perhaps, they will remember her, at the end of this evening.

Perhaps, if he is with her—

Perhaps—

But then the door opens, and Bea stands there, oven mitts on hips, voices spilling through the apartment behind her as she says, “Henry Strauss, you are so late, that better be dessert.” And Henry holds out the pastry box as if it were a shield, but as Bea plucks the box from his hands, she looks past him. “And who’s this?”

“This is Addie,” he says. “You met in the shop.”

Bea rolls her eyes. “Henry, you really don’t have enough friends to be getting us mixed up. Besides,” she says, flashing Addie a crooked smile, “I wouldn’t forget a face like yours. There’s something … timeless about it.”

Henry’s frown deepens. “You have met, and that’s exactly what you said.” He looks to Addie. “You remember this, don’t you?”

She hesitates, caught between the impossible truth and the easier lie, begins to shake her head. “I’m sorry, I—”

But Addie’s saved by the arrival of a girl in a yellow sundress, a bold defiance of the chill beyond the windows, and Henry whispers in her ear that this is Elise. The girl kisses Bea and plucks the box from her hands, and says she cannot find the wine opener, and Josh appears to take their coats, and usher them through.

The apartment is a converted loft, one of those open floor plans where the hall runs into the living room and the living room runs into the kitchen, and it is all mercifully free of walls and doors.

The buzzer rings again, and moments later a boy arrives like a comet crashing through the atmosphere, a bottle of wine in one hand and a scarf in the other. And even though Addie has only seen him in photos on Henry’s wall, she knows instantly that this is Robbie.

He sweeps through the front hallway, kissing Bea on the cheek, waves at Josh and hugs Elise, and turns toward Henry, only to notice her.

“Who are you?” he says.

“Don’t be rude,” answers Henry. “This is Addie.”

“Henry’s date,” adds Bea, and Addie wishes she hadn’t, because the words are like cold water over Robbie’s mood. Henry must see it too, because he takes her hand and says, “Addie’s a talent scout.”

“Oh?” asks Robbie, rekindling a little. “What kind?”

“Art. Music. All sorts.”

He frowns. “Don’t scouts usually specialize in something?”

Bea elbows him. “Be nice,” she says, reaching for the wine.

“Didn’t know I was supposed to bring a date,” he says, following her into the kitchen.

She pats his shoulder. “You can borrow Josh.”

The dining table sits between the sofa and the kitchen counter, and Bea sets an extra place as Henry opens the first two bottles of wine, and Robbie pours, and Josh carries a salad to the table and Elise checks the lasagna in the oven and Addie stays out of the way.

She is used to having all of the attention, or none of it. To being the brief but sunlit center of a stranger’s world, or a shadow at its edges. This is different. This is new.

“Hope you’re all hungry,” says Bea, setting lasagna and garlic bread in the center of the table.

Henry grimaces a little at the sight of the pasta, and Addie almost laughs, remembering their food truck feast. She is always hungry, the last meal nothing but a memory now, and she gratefully accepts a plate.

IX

Paris, France

July 29, 1751

A woman alone is a scandalous sight.

And yet, Addie has come to revel in the whispers. She sits in the Tuileries, skirts spread around her on the bench, and thumbs the pages of her book, and knows that she is being watched. Or rather, being stared at. But what is the point of worrying? A woman sitting alone in the sun is not a crime, and it’s not as though the rumors will spread beyond the park. Passersby will, perhaps, be startled, and make note of the strangeness, but they will all forget before they have the chance to gossip.

She turns the page, lets her eyes travel across the printed words. These days, Addie steals books as eagerly as food, a vital piece of daily nourishment. And while she prefers novels to philosophers—adventures and escapes—this particular one is a prop, a key, designed to gain her entry to a specific door.

She has timed her presence in the park, seated herself at the garden’s edge along the route she knows Madame Geoffrin tends to favor. And when the woman comes ambling down the path, she knows just what to do.

She turns the page, pretending to be engrossed.

Out of the corner of her eye, Addie can see the woman coming, her handmaid a step behind, her arms full of flowers, and she rises to her feet, eyes still cast upon her book, turns, and makes two strides before the inevitable collision, careful not to knock the woman down, but simply startle her, while the book falls onto the path between them.

“Foolish thing,” snaps Madame Geoffrin.

“I’m so sorry,” says Addie at the same time. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” says the woman, dropping her gaze from her attacker to the book. “And what has you so distracted?”

The handmaid scoops up the fallen book and passes it to her mistress.

Geoffrin considers the title.

“Diderot,” she observes. “And who taught you to read such lofty things as this?”

“My father taught me.”

“Himself? You fortunate girl.”

“It was a start,” answers Addie, “but a woman must take responsibility for her own education, for no man truly will.”

“How true,” says Geoffrin.

They are playing out a script, though the other woman does not know it. Most people have only one chance to make a first impression, but luckily, Addie has by now had several.

The older woman frowns. “But out in the park with no maidservant? No chaperone? Don’t you worry that people will talk?”

A defiant smile flashes across Addie’s lips. “I suppose I prefer my freedom to my reputation.”

Madame Geoffrin laughs, a short sound, more surprise than amusement. “My dear, there are ways to buck the system, and ways to play it. What is your name?”

“Marie Christine,” answers Addie, “La Trémoille,” she adds, savoring the way the woman’s eyes widen in response. She has spent a month learning the names of noble families, and their proximity to Paris, pruning the ones that might invite too many questions, finding a tree with broad enough limbs that a cousin might go unnoticed. And thankfully, while the salonnière prides herself on knowing everyone, she cannot know all of them equally.

“La Trémoille. Mais non!” says Madame Geoffrin, but there is no disbelief in the words, only surprise. “I shall have to chastise Charles for keeping you a secret.”

“You must,” says Addie with a sheepish grin, knowing it will never come to that. “Well, madame,” she continues, holding her hand out for the book. “I should go. I would not want to hurt your reputation, too.”

“Nonsense,” says Geoffrin, eyes glittering with pleasure. “I am quite immune to scandal.” She hands Addie back her book, but the gesture is not one of parting. “You must come to my salon. Your Diderot will be there.”

Addie hesitates, the barest fraction of a second. She made a mistake, the last time they crossed paths, when she settled on an air of false humility. But she has since learned that the salonnière prefers women who stand their ground, and so this time she smiles in delight. “I would like that very much.”

“Superb,” says Madame Geoffrin. “Come around in an hour.”

And here, her weaving must become precise. One slipped stitch, and it will fall apart.

Addie looks down at herself. “Oh,” she says, letting disappointment sweep across her face. “I fear I don’t have time to go home and change, but surely this won’t be appropriate.”

She holds her breath, waiting for the other woman to answer, and when she does, it is to extend her arm. “Don’t bother,” she says. “I’m sure my ladies will find something that suits you.”

They walk together through the park, the maidservant trailing behind.

“Why have we never crossed paths before? We know everyone of note.”

“I’m not of note,” demurs Addie. “And then I’m only visiting for the summer.”

“Your accent is pure Paris.”

“Time and practice,” she answers, and it is, of course, true.

“And yet, you are unmarried?”

Another turn, another test. Times before Addie has been widowed, has been wed, but today, she decides, she is unmarriable.

“No,” she says, “I confess, I do not want a master, and I’ve yet to find an equal.”

That earns a smile from her hostess.

The questioning continues all the way past the park and up to rue Saint-Honoré, when the woman finally peels away to ready for her salon.

Addie watches the salonnière go with some regret.

From here, she is on her own.

The maidservant leads her upstairs, and lays a dress from the nearest wardrobe out on the bed. It is a brocaded silk, a patterned shift, a layer of lace around the collar. Nothing she would choose herself, but it is very fine. Addie has seen a piece of meat trussed up with herbs and readied for the oven, and it reminds her of the current French fashion.

Addie sits before a mirror and adjusts her hair, listening to the doors open and close downstairs, the house stirring with the motions of arriving guests. She must wait for the salon to be in bloom, the rooms crowded enough that she will blend in among them.

Addie adjusts her hair a final time, and smooths her skirts, and when the sound below becomes a steady enough thing, the voices tangling with the clink of glassware, she goes down the stairs to the main room.

The first time Addie ended up in the salon, it was by luck, not staging. She was amazed to find a place where a woman was allowed to speak, or at least to listen, where she could move alone without judgment or condescension. She enjoyed the food, the drink, the conversation, and the company. Could pretend to be among friends instead of strangers.

Until she rounded a corner and saw Remy Laurent.

There he was, perched on a footstool between Voltaire and Rousseau, waving his hands as he spoke, fingers still stained gray with ink.

Seeing him was like missing a step, like fabric snagging on a nail.

A moment thrown off-balance.

Her lover had grown stiff with age, the difference between twenty-three and fifty-one marked in the lines of his face. A brow furrowed from hours reading, a pair of spectacles now balanced on his nose. But then some topic would spark the light in his eyes, and she would see the boy he’d been, the passionate youth who came to Paris to find this, great minds with great ideas.

There is no sign of him today.

Addie lifts a glass of wine from a low table, and moves from room to room like a shadow cast against the wall, unnoticed, but at ease. She listens, and makes pleasant conversation, and feels herself among the folds of history. She meets a naturalist with a fondness for marine life, and when she confesses she has never been to the sea, he spends the next half hour regaling her with tales of crustacean life, and it is a very pleasant way to pass the afternoon, and indeed the night—this night, more than most, in need of such distraction.

It has been six years—but she doesn’t want to think of it, of him.

As the sun goes down, and wine is swapped for port, she is having a lovely time, enjoying the company of the scientists, the men of letters.

She should have known then, that he would ruin it.

Luc steps into the room like a gust of cool wind, dressed in shades of gray and black, from his boots to his cravat. Those green eyes, the only drop of color on him.

Six years, and relief is the wrong word for what Addie feels at the sight of him, and yet, it is the closest one. The sensation of a weight set down, a breath expelled, a body sighing in relief. There is no pleasure in it, beyond the simple, physical release—the relief of trading the unknown for the certain.

She was waiting, and now she is not.

No, now she is braced for trouble, for grief.

“Monsieur Lebois,” says Madame Geoffrin, greeting her guest, and Addie wonders, for a moment, if their crossing paths is only a coincidence, if her shadow favors the salon, the minds fostering within—but the men who flock here worship progress instead of gods. And already, Luc’s attention has fixed squarely on her, his face suffused with a coy and menacing light.

“Madame,” he says in a voice loud enough to carry, “I fear you have opened your doors too wide.”

Addie’s stomach drops, and Madame Geoffrin draws back a little, as the conversation in the room seems to peter, still. “What do you mean?”

She tries to back away, but the salon is crowded, the path muddled by legs and chairs.

“That woman, there.” Heads begin to turn in Addie’s direction. “Do you know her?” Madame Geoffrin does not, of course, not anymore, but she’s too well-bred to acknowledge such a misstep.

“My salon is open to many, monsieur.”

“This time you have been too generous,” says Luc. “That woman is a swindler and a thief. A truly wretched creature. Look,” he gestures, “she even wears one of your own gowns. Better check the pockets, and make sure that she hasn’t stolen more than the cloth from your back.”

And just like that, he has turned her game into his own.

Addie starts toward the door, but there are men around her, on their feet.

“Stop her,” announces Geoffrin, and she has no choice but to abandon it all, to rush for the door, to push past them, out of the salon and into the night.

No one comes after her, of course.

Except for Luc.

The darkness follows on her heels, chuckling softly.

She rounds on him. “I thought you had better things to do than plague me.”

“And yet I find the task so entertaining.”

She shakes her head. “This is nothing. You have marred one moment, ruined one night, but because of my gift, I have a million more; infinite chances to reinvent myself. I could walk back in right now, and your slights would be as forgotten as my face.”

Mischief glints in those green eyes. “I think you’ll find my word won’t fade as fast as yours.” He shrugs. “They will not remember you, of course. But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root.”

It will be fifty years before she realizes that he is right.

Ideas are wilder than memories.

And she can plant them, too.

X

New York City

March 16, 2014

There is a magic to this evening.

A defiant pleasure in a simple act.

Addie spends the first hour holding her breath, bracing for catastrophe, but somewhere between the salad and the main course, between the first glass and the second, she exhales. Sitting there, between Henry and Elise, between warmth and laughter, she can almost believe that it is real, that she belongs, a normal girl beside a normal boy at a normal dinner party. She and Bea talk about art, and she and Josh talk about Paris, and she and Elise talk about wine, and Henry’s hand finds her knee beneath the table, and it is all so wonderfully simple and warm. She wants to hold the night like a chocolate on her tongue, savor every second before it melts.

Only Robbie seems unhappy, even though Josh has been trying to flirt with him all night. He shifts in his seat, a performer in search of a spotlight. He drinks too much, too fast, unable to sit still for more than a few minutes. It is the same restless energy Addie saw in Henry, but tonight, he seems perfectly at ease.

Once, Elise goes to the bathroom, and Addie thinks that’s it, the domino that tips the rest. And sure enough, when she returns to the table, Addie can see the confusion on the girl’s face, but it is the kind of embarrassment you cover instead of show, and she says nothing, only shakes her head as if to clear a thought, and smiles, and Addie imagines her wondering if she’s had too much to drink, imagines her pulling Beatrice aside before dessert and whispering that she cannot remember her name.

Robbie and their hostess, meanwhile, are deep in conversation.

“Bea,” he whines. “Can’t we just—”

“My party, my rules. When it was your birthday, we went to a sex club in Bushwick.”

Robbie rolls his eyes. “It was an exhibitionist-themed music venue.”

“It was a sex club,” Henry and Bea say at the same time.

“Wait.” Addie leans forward in her seat. “Is it your birthday?”

“No,” says Bea emphatically.

“Beatrice hates birthdays,” explains Henry. “She won’t tell us when hers is. The closest we’ve gotten is that it’s in April. Or March. Or May. So any dinner party in the spring could conceivably be the one nearest to her birthday.”

Bea sips her wine and shrugs. “I don’t see the point. It’s just a day. Why put all this pressure on it?”

“So you can get presents, obviously,” says Robbie.

“I understand,” says Addie. “The nicest days are always the ones we don’t plan.”

Robbie glowers. “What did you say your name was? Andy?”

And she goes to correct him, only to feel the letters lodge in her throat. The curse coils tight, strangling the word.

“It’s Addie,” says Henry. “And you’re being an ass.”

A nervous current runs across the table, and Elise, clearly looking to smooth the energy, cuts into a petit four and says, “This dessert is amazing, Henry.”

And he says, “It was all Addie’s doing.”

And that is enough to tip Robbie like a glass, and send him spilling over. He shoves up from the table with a rush of breath.

“I need a smoke.”

“Not in here,” says Bea. “Take it to the roof.”

And Addie knows that is the end of this beautiful night, the door slamming shut, because she cannot stop them, and once she’s out of sight—

Josh rises. “I could use one, too.”

“You just want to get out of doing dishes,” says Bea, but the two of them are already heading for the door, out of sight and out of mind, and this, she thinks, is midnight, this is how the magic ends, this is how you turn back into a pumpkin.

“I should go,” she says.

Bea tries to convince her to stay, says to not let Robbie get to her, and Addie says that it’s not his fault, that it’s been a long day, says thank you for the lovely meal, thank you for the company; and really, she was lucky to get this far, lucky to have this time, this night, this tiny glimpse of normal.

“Addie, wait,” says Henry, but she kisses him, quick, and slips away, out of the apartment, and down the steps and into the dark.

She sighs, and slows, her lungs aching in the sudden cold. And despite the doors and walls between them, she can feel the weight of what she left behind, and she wishes she could have stayed, wishes that when Henry had said Wait, she had said, Come with me, but she knows it is not fair to make him choose. He is full of roots, while she has only branches.

And then she hears the steps behind her, and slows, shivers, even now, after all this time, expecting Luc.

Luc, who always knew when she brittle.

But it is not the darkness, only a boy with fogging glasses and an open coat.

“You left so fast,” says Henry.

“You caught up,” says Addie.

And perhaps she should feel guilty, but she is only grateful.

She has gotten good at losing things.

But Henry is still here.

“Friends are messy sometimes, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” she says, even though she has no idea.

“I’m sorry,” he says, nodding back at the building. “I don’t know what got into him.”

But Addie does.

Live long enough, and people open up like books. Robbie is a romance novel. A tale of broken hearts. He is so clearly lovesick.

“You said you were just friends.”

“We are,” he insists. “I love him like family, I always will. But I don’t—I never…”

She thinks of the photo, Robbie’s head bowed against Henry’s cheek, thinks of the look on his face when Bea said she was his date, and wonders how he doesn’t see it.

“He’s still in love with you.”

Henry deflates. “I know,” he says. “But I can’t love him back.”

Can’t. Not won’t. Not shouldn’t.

Addie looks at Henry, meets him eye to eye.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

She doesn’t know what she expects him to say, what truth could possibly explain his enduring presence, but for a second, when he looks back at her, there is a brief and blinding sadness.

But then he pulls her close and groans, and says, in a soft and vanquished voice, “I am so full.”

And Addie laughs despite herself.

It is too cold to stand, and so they walk together through the dark, and she doesn’t even notice they have reached his place until she sees the blue door. She is so tired, and he is so warm; she does not want to go, and he does not ask her to.

XI

New York City

March 17, 2014

Addie has woken up a hundred ways.

To frost forming on her skin, and a sun so hot it should have burned. To empty places, and ones that should have been. To wars raging overhead, and the ocean rocking against the hull. To sirens, and city noise, and silence, and once, a snake coiled by her head.

But Henry Strauss wakes her with kisses.

He plants them one by one, like flower bulbs, lets them blossom on her skin. Addie smiles, and rolls against him, pulls his arms around her like a cloak.

The darkness whispers in her head, Without me, you will always be alone.

But instead, she listens to the sound of Henry’s heart, to the soft murmur of his voice in her hair as he asks if she is hungry.

It is late, and he should be at work, but he tells her The Last Word is closed on Mondays. He can’t possibly know that she remembers the little wooden sign, the hours next to every day. The shop is only closed on Thursdays.

She doesn’t correct him.

They pull on clothes, and amble down to the corner shop, where Henry buys egg and cheese rolls from the counter and Addie wanders to the case in search of juice.

And that is when she hears the bell.

That is when she sees a tawny head, and a familiar face, as Robbie stumbles in. That is when her heart drops, the way it does when you miss a step, the sudden lurch of a body off-balance.

Addie has gotten good at losing—

But she isn’t ready.

And she wants to stop time, to hide, to disappear.

But for once, she can’t. Robbie sees Henry, and Henry sees her, and they are in a triangle of one-way streets. A comedy of memory and absence and terrible luck as Henry wraps an arm around her waist, and Robbie looks at Addie with ice in his eyes and says, “Who’s this?”

“That’s not funny,” says Henry. “Are you still drunk?”

Robbie draws back, indignant. “I’m—what? No. I’ve never seen this girl. You never said you met someone.”

It is a car crash in slow motion, and Addie knew it was bound to happen, the inevitable collision of people and place, time and circumstance.

Henry is an impossible thing, her strange and beautiful oasis. But he is also human, and humans have friends, have families, have a thousand strands tying them to other people. Unlike her, he has never been untethered, never existed in a void.

So it was inevitable.

But she still isn’t ready.

“Fuck’s sake, Rob, you just met her.”

“Pretty sure I’d remember.” Robbie’s eyes darken. “But then again, these days, it’s kind of hard to keep them straight.”

The space between them collapses as Henry steps in. Addie gets there first, catches his hand as it lifts, pulls him back. “Henry, stop.”

It was such a lovely jar she had kept them in. But the glass is cracking now. The water leaking through.

Robbie looks at Henry, stunned, betrayed. And she understands. It is not fair. It is never fair.

“Come on,” she says, squeezing his hand.

Henry’s attention finally drags toward her. “Please,” she says. “Come with me.”

They spill out into the street, the morning’s peace forgotten, left behind with the OJ and the sandwiches.

Henry is shaking with anger. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Robbie can be an ass but that was—”

Addie closes her eyes, sinks back against the wall. “It’s not his fault.” She could salvage this, hold the breaking jar, keep her fingers over the cracks. But how long? How long can she keep Henry to herself? How long can she keep him from noticing the curse?

“I don’t think he remembered me.”

Henry squints, clearly confused. “How could he not?”

Addie hesitates.

It is easy to be honest when there are no wrong words, because the words don’t stick. When whatever you say belongs to only you.

But Henry is different, he hears her, he remembers, and suddenly every word is full of weight, honesty such a heavy thing.

She only has one chance.

She can lie to him, like she would anyone else, but if she starts, she’ll never be able to stop, and even more than that—she doesn’t want to lie to him. She’s waited too long to be heard, seen.

So Addie throws herself into the truth.

“You know how some people have face blindness? They look at friends, family, people they’ve known their whole lives, and they don’t recognize them?”

Henry frowns. “In theory, sure…”

“Well, I have the opposite.”

“You remember everyone?”

“No,” says Addie. “I mean yes, I do, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s that—people forget me. Even if we’ve met a hundred times. They forget.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.

“I know,” she says, “but it’s the truth. If we went back in that store right now, Robbie wouldn’t remember. You could introduce me, but the moment I walked away, the moment I was out of sight, he’d forget again.”

Henry shakes his head. “How? Why?”

The smallest questions. The biggest answer.

Because I was a fool.

Because I was afraid.

Because I wasn’t careful.

“Because,” she says, slumping back against the concrete wall. “I’m cursed.”

Henry stares at her, brow furrowed behind his glasses. “I don’t understand.”

Addie takes a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. And then, because she has decided to tell the truth, that’s what she does.

“My name is Addie LaRue. I was born in Villon in the year 1691, my parents were Jean and Marthe, and we lived in a stone house just beyond an old yew tree…”

XII

Villon-sur-Sarthe, France

July 29, 1764

The cart rattles to a stop beside the river.

“I can take you further,” says the driver, gripping the reins. “We’re still a mile out.”

“That’s all right,” she says. “I know the way.”

An unknown cart and driver might draw attention, and Addie would rather return the way she left, the way she learned every inch of this place: on foot.

She pays the man and steps down, the edge of her gray cloak skimming the dirt. She hasn’t bothered with luggage, has learned to travel light; or rather, to let go of things as easily as she comes into them. It is simpler that way. Things are too hard to hold on to.

“You’re from here, then?” he asks, and Addie squints into the sun.

“I am,” she says. “But I’ve been gone a long time.”

The driver looks her up and down. “Not too long.”

“You’d be surprised,” she says, and then he cracks the whip, and the cart trundles off, and she is alone again in a land she knows, down to her bones. A place she has not been in fifty years.

Strange—twice as long away as she was here, and still it feels like home.

She doesn’t know when she made the decision to come back, or even how, only that it had been building in her like a storm, from the time spring began to feel like summer, the heaviness rolling in like the promise of rain, until she could see the dark clouds on the horizon, hear the thunder in her head, urging her to go.

Perhaps it is a ritual of sorts, this return. A way to cleanse herself, to set Villon firmly in the past. Perhaps she is trying to let go. Or perhaps she is trying to hold on.

She will not stay, that much she knows.

Sunlight glints on the surface of the Sarthe, and for an instant, she thinks of praying, sinking her hands into the shallow stream, but she has nothing to offer the river gods now, and nothing to say to them. They did not answer when it mattered.

Around the bend, and beyond a copse of trees, Villon rises amid the shallow hills, gray stone houses nestled in the basin of the valley. It has grown, a little, widened like a man in middle age, inching outward, but it is still Villon. There is the church, and the town square, and there, beyond the center of the town, the dark green line of the woods.

She does not go through town, instead bends around it to the south.

Toward home.

The old yew tree still stands sentinel at the end of the lane. Fifty years have added a few knotted angles to its limbs, a measure of width around its base, but otherwise, it is the same. And for an instant, when all she can see is the edge of the house, time stutters, and slips, and she is twenty-three again, walking home from the town, or the river, or Isabelle’s, washing on her hip, or the drawing pad under her arm, and any moment she will see her mother in the open doorway, flour powdering her wrists, will hear the steady chop of her father’s ax, the soft hush of their mare, Maxime, swishing her tail and munching grass.

But then she nears the house, and the illusion crumbles back into memory. The horse is gone, of course, and in the yard, her father’s workshop now leans tiredly to one side, while across the weedy grass, her parents’ cottage sits, dark and still.

What did she expect?

Fifty years. Addie knew they would no longer be there, but the sight of this place, decaying, abandoned, still unnerves her. Her feet move of their own accord, carrying her down the dirt lane, through the yard to the sloping ruins of her father’s shop.

She eases the door open—the wood is rotted, crumbling—and steps into the shed.

Sunlight streams through the broken boards, striping the dark, and the air smells of decay instead of fresh-scraped wood, earthy and sweet; every surface is covered in mold, and damp, and dust. Tools her father sharpened every day now lie abandoned, rusted brown and red. The shelves are mostly empty; the wooden birds are gone, but a large bowl sits, half-finished, beneath a curtain of cobwebs and grime.

She runs her hand through the dust, watches it gather again in her wake.

How long has he been gone?

She forces herself back out into the yard, and stops.

The house has come to life, or at least, begun to stir. A thin ribbon of smoke rises from the chimney. A window sits open, thin curtains rippling softly in the draft.

Someone is still here.

She should go, she knows she should, this place isn’t hers, not anymore, but she is already crossing the yard, already reaching out to knock. Her fingers slow, remembering that night, the last one of another life.

She hovers there, on the step, willing her hand to choose—but she has already announced herself. The curtain flutters, a shadow crossing the window, and Addie can only retreat two steps, three, before the door opens a crack. Just enough to reveal a sliver of wrinkled cheek, a scowling blue eye.

“Who’s there?”

The woman’s voice is brittle, thin, but it still lands like a stone in Addie’s chest, knocks the air away, and she is sure that even if she were mortal, her mind softened by time, she would still remember this—the sound of her mother’s voice.

The door groans open, and there she is, withered like a plant in winter, gnarled fingers clutching a threadbare shawl. She is old, anciently so, but alive.

“Do I know you?” asks her mother, but there is no hint of recognition in her voice, only the doubt of the old and the unsure.

Addie shakes her head.

Afterward, she will wonder if she should have answered yes, if her mother’s mind, emptied of memory, could have made room for that one truth. If she might have invited her daughter in, to sit beside the hearth, and share a simple meal, so that when Addie left, she would have something to hold on to besides the version of her mother shutting her out.

But she doesn’t.

She tries to tell herself that this woman stopped being her mother when she stopped being her daughter, but of course, it doesn’t work that way. And yet, it must. She has already grieved, and though the shock of the woman’s face is sharp, the pain is shallow.

“What do you want?” demands Marthe LaRue.

And that is another question she can’t answer, because she doesn’t know. She looks past the old woman, into the dim hall that used to be her home, and only then does a strange hope rise inside her chest. If her mother is alive, then maybe, maybe—but she knows. Knows by the cobwebs in the workshop door, the dust on the half-finished bowl. Knows by the weary look in her mother’s face, and the dark, disheveled state of the cottage behind her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, backing away.

And the woman does not ask what for, only stares, unblinking as she goes.

The door groans shut, and Addie knows, as she walks away, that she will never see her mother again.

XIII

New York City

March 17, 2014

It is easy enough to say the words.

After all, the story has never been the hard part.

It is a secret she has tried to share so many times, with Isabelle, and Remy, with friends and strangers and anyone who might listen, and every time, she has watched their expressions flatten, their faces go blank, watched the words hang in the air before her like smoke before being blown away.

But Henry looks at her, and listens.

He listens as she tells him of the wedding, and the prayers that went unanswered, the offerings made at dawn, and dusk. Of the darkness in the woods, parading as a man, of her wish, and his refusal, and her mistake.

You can have my soul when I don’t want it anymore.

Listens as she tells him of living forever, and being forgotten, and giving up. When she finishes, she holds her breath, expecting Henry to blink away the fog, to ask what she was about to say. Instead, his eyes narrow with such peculiar focus, and she realizes, heart racing, that he has heard every word.

“You made a deal?” he says. There is a detachment in his voice, an unnerving calm.

And of course, it sounds like madness.

Of course, he does not believe her.

This is how she loses him. Not to memory, but to disbelief.

And then, out of nowhere, Henry laughs.

He sags against a bike rack, head in his hand, and laughs, and she thinks he’s gone mad, thinks she’s broken something in him, thinks, even, that he is mocking her.

But it is not the kind of laughter that follows a joke.

It is too manic, too breathless.

“You made a deal,” he says again.

She swallows. “Look, I know how it sounds but—”

“I believe you.”

She blinks, suddenly confused. “What?”

“I believe you,” he says again.

Three small words, as rare as I remember you, and it should be enough—but it’s not. Nothing makes sense, not Henry, not this; it hasn’t since the start and she’s been too afraid to ask, to know, as if knowing would bring the whole dream crashing down, but she can see the cracks in his shoulders, can feel them in her chest.

Who are you? she wants to ask. Why are you different? How do you remember when no one else can? Why do you believe I made a deal?

In the end, she says only one thing.

“Why?”

And Henry’s hands fall away from his face and he looks up at her, his green eyes fever bright, and says—

“Because I made one, too.”