The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I

Villon-sur-Sarthe

July 29, 1914

It is pouring in Villon.

The Sarthe swells against its banks, and the rain turns footpaths into muddy rivers. It spills over doorways, fills her ears with the steady white noise of rushing water, and when Addie closes her eyes, the years dissolve, and she is ten again, she is fifteen, she is twenty, her skirts wet and hair flying behind her as she races barefoot through a countryside washed clean.

But then she opens her eyes again, and it has been two hundred years, and she cannot deny that the little village of Villon has changed. She recognizes less and less, finds more and more strange. Here and there she can still make out the place that she once knew, but her memories are threadbare, those years before her deal left to weather and fade.

And yet, some things are constant.

The stretch of road that runs through the town.

The small church sitting in the center.

The low wall of the graveyard, immune to the slow procession of change.

Addie lingers in the chapel doorway, watching the storm. She had an umbrella when she started out, but a sharp gust of wind bent the frame, and she knows she should wait for the rain to ease, that she has only the one dress. But as she stands there, one hand held out to cup the falling water, she thinks of Estele, who used to stand beneath the storms, arms wide and welcoming.

Addie abandons her shelter and heads for the cemetery gate.

In moments, she is soaked, but the rain is warm, and she will hardly melt. She passes a few new headstones, and many old, sets a wild rose on each of her parents’ graves, and goes to find Estele.

She has missed the old woman these many years, missed her comfort, and her counsel, missed the strength of her grip, and her woody laugh, and the way she believed in Addie when she was Adeline, when she was still here, still human. And even though she holds on to what she can, Estele’s voice has all but vanished with the passing years. This is the only place she can still conjure it, her presence felt in the old stones, the weedy earth, the weathered tree over her head.

But the tree is not there.

The grave slumps, weary, in its plot, the stone moldering and cracked, but the beautiful tree, with its wide limbs and its deep roots, is gone.

Nothing but a jagged stump remains.

Addie lets out an audible gasp, sinking to her knees, runs her hands over the dead and splintered wood. No. No, not this. She has lost so much, and mourned it all before, but for the first time in years, she is struck with a loss so sharp it steals her breath, her strength, her will.

Grief, deep as a well, opens inside her.

What is the point in planting seeds?

Why tend them? Why help them grow?

Everything crumbles in the end.

Everything dies.

And she is all that’s left, a solitary ghost hosting a vigil for forgotten things. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to conjure Estele, tries to summon the old woman’s voice, so she can tell her it will be all right, that it’s just wood—but the voice is gone, lost beneath the raging storm.

Addie is still sitting there at dusk.

The rain has slowed to a drizzle, the occasional tap of water against stone. She is soaked through, but she cannot feel it anymore, cannot feel much of anything—until she feels the shifting air, and the arrival of the shadow at her back.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it is the first time she has ever heard those words in that silken voice, the only time they will ever sound honest.

“Did you do this?” she whispers without looking up.

And to her surprise, Luc kneels beside her on the sodden earth. His own clothes do not seem to dampen.

“You cannot blame me for every loss,” he says.

She doesn’t realize she is shivering until his arm folds around her shoulders, until she feels her limbs trembling against the steady weight of his.

“I know I can be cruel,” he says. “But nature can be crueler.”

It is obvious, now, the charred line along the center of the stump. The swift, hot shear of lightning. It doesn’t ease the loss.

She cannot stand to look upon the tree.

She cannot bear to linger here any longer.

“Come,” he says, drawing her to her feet, and she does not know where they are going, and she does not care, so long as it is somewhere else. Addie turns her back on the ruined stump, the tombstone worn to nothing. Even rocks, she thinks as she follows Luc away from the graveyard, and the village, and the past.

She will never go back.

Paris, of course, has changed far more than Villon.

Over the years, she has seen it polished to a shine, white stone buildings capped with charcoal roofs. Long windows and iron balconies and wide avenues lined with flower shops and cafés beneath red awnings.

They sit on a patio, her dress drying in the summer breeze, a bottle of port open between them. Addie drinks deeply, trying to wash away the image of the tree, knowing no amount of wine will cleanse her memories.

It doesn’t stop her from trying.

Somewhere along the Seine, a violin begins to play. Under the high notes, she hears the tremor of a car’s engine. The stubborn clop of a horse. The strange music of Paris.

Luc lifts his glass. “Happy anniversary, my Adeline.”

She looks at him, lips parting with their usual retort, but then stops short. If she is his—then by now he must be hers as well.

“Happy anniversary, my Luc,” she answers, just to see the face he’ll make.

She is rewarded with a raised brow, the crooked upturn of his mouth, the green of his eyes shifting in surprise.

Then Luc looks down, turns the glass of port between his fingers.

“You told me once that we were alike,” he says, almost to himself. “Both of us … lonely. I loathed you for saying it. But I suppose in some ways you were right. I suppose,” he goes on slowly, “there is something to the idea of company.”

It is the closest he has ever come to sounding human.

“Do you miss me,” she asks, “when you are not here?”

Those green eyes drift up, the emerald even in the dark. “I am here, with you, more often than you think.”

“Of course,” she says, “you come and go whenever you want. I have no choice but to wait.”

His eyes darken with pleasure. “Do you wait for me?”

And now it is Addie who looks away. “You said it yourself. We all crave company.”

“And if you could call on me, as I call on you?”

Her heart quickens a little.

She does not look up, and that is why she sees it, rolling toward her on the table. A slim band, carved of pale ash wood.

It is a ring.

It is her ring.

The gift she made to the dark that night.

The gift he scorned, and turned to smoke.

The image conjured in a seaside church.

But if it is an illusion now, it is an exceptional one. Here, the notch where her father’s chisel bit a fraction too deep. There, the curve rubbed smooth as stone by years of worrying.

It is real. It must be real. And yet—

“You destroyed it.”

“I took it,” says Luc, looking over his glass. “That is not the same thing.”

Anger flares in her. “You said it was nothing.”

“I said it was not enough. But I do not ruin beauty without reason. It was mine, for a time, but it was always yours.”

Addie marvels at the ring. “What must I do?”

“You know how to summon gods.”

Estele’s voice, faint as a breeze.

You must humble yourself before them.

“Put it on, and I will come.” Luc leans back in his chair, the night breeze blowing through those raven curls. “There,” he says. “Now we are even.”

“We will never be even,” she says as she turns the ring over between finger and thumb, and decides she will not use it.

It is a challenge. A game, parading as a gift. Not a war so much as a wager. A battle of wills. For her to don the ring, to call on Luc, would be to fold, to admit defeat.

To surrender.

She slips the token into the pocket of her skirts, forces her fingers to let go of the talisman.

Only then does she notice the tension in the air that night. It is an energy she’s felt before, but cannot place, until Luc says, “There is about to be a war.”

She had not heard. He tells her of the archduke’s assassination, his face a mask of grim displeasure.

“I hate war,” he says darkly.

“I would have thought you fond of conflict.”

“The aftermath breeds art,” he says. “But war makes believers out of cynics. Sycophants desperate for salvation, everyone suddenly clinging to their souls, clutching them close like a matron with her finest pearls.” Luc shakes his head. “Give me back the Belle Epoque.”

“Who knew gods were so nostalgic?”

Luc finishes his drink, and rises. “You should leave, before it starts.” Addie laughs. It sounds almost as if he cares. The ring sits, a sudden weight in her pocket. He holds out his hand. “I can take you.”

She should have accepted, should have said yes. Should have let him lead her through the horrible dark and out again, and saved herself an ocean, a miserable week stowing away in the belly of a ship at sea, the beauty of the water tarnished by the unending nature of it.

But she has learned too well to hold her ground.

Luc shakes his head. “You are still a stubborn fool.”

She toys with staying, but after he is gone, she cannot help but conjure the shadows in his gaze, the grim way he spoke of the coming strife. It is a sign, when even gods and devils dread a fight.

A week later, Addie caves, and boards a ship for New York.

By the time she docks, the world is already at war.

II

New York City

July 29, 2014

It is just another day.

That is what Addie tells herself.

It is just a day—like all the others—but of course, it is not.

It is three hundred years since she was meant to be married—a future given against her will.

Three hundred years since she knelt in the woods, and summoned the darkness, and lost everything but freedom.

Three hundred years.

There should be a storm, an eclipse. Some way to mark the monument of it.

But the day dawns perfect, and cloudless, and blue.

The bed is empty beside her, but she can hear the soft shuffle of Henry moving through the kitchen, and she must have been gripping the blankets, because her fingers ache, a knot of pain in the center of her left palm.

When she opens her hand, the wooden ring falls out.

She brushes it off the bed as if it were a spider, an ill omen, listens to it land, and bounce, and roll away across the hardwood floor. Addie draws up her knees, and lets her head fall forward on them, and breathes into the space between her ribs, and reminds herself it is just a ring, and it is just a day. But there is a rope inside her chest, a dull dread winding tighter, telling her to go, to put as much distance between her and Henry as possible, in case he comes.

He won’t, she tells herself.

It’s been so long, she tells herself.

But she doesn’t want to take the chance.

Henry’s knuckles rap on the open door, and she looks up to see him holding a plate with a donut, three candles stuck into the top.

And despite everything, she laughs. “What’s this?”

“Hey, it’s not every day that your girlfriend turns three hundred.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“I know, but I didn’t exactly know what to call it.”

And just like that, the voice rises like smoke inside her head.

Happy anniversary, my love.

“Make a wish,” says Henry.

Addie swallows, and blows the candles out.

He sinks onto the bed beside her. “I’ve got the whole day,” he says. “Bea’s covering at the store, and I thought we could take the train out to…” But he trails off when he sees her face. “What?”

Dread claws at her stomach, deeper than hunger. “I don’t think we should be together,” she says. “Not today.”

His face falls. “Oh.”

Addie cups his cheek, and lies. “It’s just a day, Henry.”

“You’re right,” he says. “It’s a day. But how many of them has he ruined? Don’t let him take it from you.” He kisses her. “From us.”

If Luc finds them together, he will take more than that.

“Come on,” insists Henry, “I’ll have you back long before you turn into a pumpkin. And then, if you want to spend the night apart, I understand. Worry about him in the dark, but it’s hours until then, and you deserve a good day. A good memory.”

And he’s right. She does.

The dread loosens a little in her chest.

“Okay,” she says, one little word, and Henry’s whole face lights with pleasure. “What do you have in mind?”

He disappears into the bathroom, reemerges in a pair of yellow swim trunks, a towel cast over one shoulder. He tosses her a blue-and-white bikini.

“Let’s go.”

Rockaway Beach is a sea of colored towels, and flags planted in the sand.

Laughter rolls in with the tide as kids make castle mounds and people lounge beneath the glaring sun. Henry stretches their towels out on a narrow patch of unclaimed sand, weights them down with shoes, and then Addie grabs his hand and they run down the beach, the soles of their feet stinging until they hit the damp line of the tide and plunge into the water.

Addie gasps at the welcome brush of the waves, cool even in the heat of summer, and wades out until the ocean wraps around her waist. Henry ducks his head beside her, and comes back up, water dripping from his glasses. He pulls her to him, kisses the salt from her fingers. She slicks the hair from his face. They linger there, tangled together in the surf.

“See,” he says, “isn’t this better?”

And it is.

It is.

They swim until their limbs ache, and their skin begins to prune, and then retreat to the towels waiting on the beach, and stretch out to dry beneath the sun. It’s too hot to stay there long, and soon the scent of food wafting from the boardwalk is enough to draw them up again.

Henry gathers his stuff and starts up the beach, and Addie rises to follow, shaking the sand from her towel.

And out falls the wooden ring.

It lies there, a fraction darker than the beach, like a drop of rain on a dry sidewalk. A reminder. Addie crouches down before it, and sweeps a handful of sand over the top, before jogging after Henry.

They head for the stretch of bars overlooking the beach, order tacos and a pitcher of frozen margaritas, savoring the tang and the sweet-salted chill. Henry wipes the water from his glasses, and Addie looks out at the ocean, and feels the past fold over the present, like the tides.

Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vecu.

“What is it?” asks Henry.

Addie glances toward him. “Hm?”

“You get this look on your face,” he says, “when you’re remembering.”

Addie looks back out at the Atlantic, the infinite hem of the beach, the memories spooling out along the horizon. And as they eat, she tells him of all the coasts she’s seen, of the time she ferried across the English Channel, the White Cliffs of Dover rising from the fog. Of the time she sailed the coast of Spain, a stowaway in the bowels of a stolen boat, and how, when she crossed to America, the whole ship fell ill, and she had to feign sickness so they wouldn’t think she was a witch.

And when she gets tired of talking, and they have both run out of drinks, they spend the next few hours bouncing between the shade of the concession stands and the cool kiss of the surf, lingering on the sand only long enough to dry.

The day goes by too fast, as good days do.

And when it’s time to go, they make their way to the subway, and sink onto the bench, sun-drunk and sleepy, as the train pulls away.

Henry takes out a book, but Addie’s eyes are stinging, and she leans against him, savoring his sun-and-paper scent, and the seat is plastic and the air is stale, and she has never been so comfortable. She feels herself sinking into Henry, head lolling on his shoulder.

And then he whispers three words into her hair.

“I love you,” he says, and Addie wonders if this is love, this gentle thing.

If it is meant to be this soft, this kind.

The difference between heat, and warmth.

Passion, and contentment.

“I love you too,” she says.

She wants it to be true.

III

Chicago, Illinois

July 29, 1928

There is an angel over the bar.

A stained-glass panel, lit from behind, with a single figure, chalice raised and hand outstretched, as if calling you to prayer.

But this is no church.

Speakeasies are like weeds these days, springing up between the stones of Prohibition. This one has no name, save the angel with its cup, the number XII over the door—twelve, the hour of midday, and of midnight—the velvet curtains and chaises that lounge like sleepers round the wooden floor, the masks given to the patrons at the door.

It is, like most of them, only a rumor, a secret passed from mouth to liquored mouth.

And Addie loves it.

There is a wild fervor to this place.

She dances—sometimes alone, and sometimes in the company of strangers. Loses herself in the jazz that rocks against the walls, rebounds, filling the crowded space with music. She dances, until the feathers of her mask cling to her cheeks, and Addie is breathless, and flushed, and only then does she retreat, falling into a leather chair.

It is almost midnight, and her fingers drift like the hands of a clock up to her throat, where the ring hangs on a silver cord, the wooden band warm against her skin.

It is always within reach.

Once, when the cord snapped, she thought it lost, only to find it safe within the pocket of her blouse. Another time, she left it on a windowsill, and found it hours later at her neck again.

The only thing she doesn’t lose.

She toys with it, a lazy habit now, like curling a lock of hair around one finger. She skims the edge of the band with her nail, twirls it, careful to never let the ring slide over her knuckle.

She has reached for it a hundred times: when she was lonely, when she was bored, when she saw a thing of beauty and thought of him. But she is too stubborn, and he is too proud, and she is determined to win this round.

Fourteen years she has resisted the urge to put it on.

And fourteen years he has not come.

So she was right—it is a game. Another kind of forfeit, a lesser version of surrender.

Fourteen years.

And she is lonely, and a little drunk, and she wonders if tonight will be the night she breaks. It would be a fall, but it is not so great a height. Perhaps—perhaps— To occupy her hands, she decides to get another drink.

She goes to the bar and orders a gin fizz, but the white-masked man sets instead a Champagne glass before her. A single candied rose petal floats among the bubbles, and when she asks, he nods at a shadow in a velvet booth. His mask is made to look like branches, the leaves a perfect frame for perfect eyes.

And Addie smiles at the sight of him.

She would be lying if she said it was nothing but relief. A weight set down. A breath set free.

“I win,” she says, sinking into his booth.

And even though he folded first, his eyes are bright with triumph. “How so?”

“I didn’t call, and yet you came.”

His chin lifts, a study in disdain. “You assume I’m here for you.”

“I forget,” she says, sliding into his smooth, low cadence. “There are so many maddening humans around to swindle out of their souls.”

A wry smile tugs at perfect lips. “I promise, Adeline, few are as maddening as you.”

“Few?” she teases. “I’ll have to try harder.”

He lifts a glass, and tips it toward the bar. “The fact remains, you have come to me. This place is mine.”

Addie looks around, and suddenly, it is obvious.

She sees the markings everywhere.

Realizes, for the first time, that the angel above the bar has no wings. That the curls rising around his face are black. That the band she took for a halo might as well be moonlight.

And she wonders what it was that drew her here the first time.

Wonders if they are like magnets, she and Luc.

If they have circled each other for so long that now they share an orbit.

It will become a hobby of his, these kinds of clubs. He will plant them in a dozen cities, tend them like gardens, and grow them wild.

As plentiful as churches, he will say, and twice as popular.

And long after the days of Prohibition, they will still flourish, catering to many tastes, and she will wonder if it is the energy that stokes him, or if they are a grooming ground for souls. A place to ply, and pry, and promise. And in a way, a place to pray, albeit a different kind of worship.

“So you see,” says Luc, “perhaps I win.”

Addie shakes her head. “It is only chance,” she says. “I did not call.”

He smiles, gaze falling to the ring against her skin. “I know your heart. I felt it falter.”

“But I didn’t.”

“No,” he says, the word nothing but a breath. “But I was tired of waiting.”

“So you missed me,” she says with a smile, and there is the briefest glimpse in those green eyes. A fracture of light.

“Life is long, and humans boring. You are better company.”

“You forget that I am human.”

“Adeline,” he says, a shade of pity in his voice. “You have not been human since the night we met. You will never be human again.”

Heat flushes through her at the words. No longer pleasant warmth, but anger.

“I am still human,” she says, voice tightening around the words as if they were her name.

“You move among them like a ghost,” he says, his forehead bowing against hers, “because you are not one of them. You cannot live like them. You cannot love like them. You cannot belong with them.”

His mouth hovers over her own, his voice dropping to nothing but a breeze.

“You belong to me.”

There is a sound like thunder in the back of his throat.

“With me.”

And when she looks up into his eyes, she sees a new shade of green, and knows exactly what it is. The color of a man off-balance. His chest rises and falls as if it were a human thing.

Here is a place to put the knife.

“I would rather be a ghost.”

And for the first time, the darkness flinches. Draws back like shadows in the face of light. His eyes go pale with anger, and there is the god she knows, the monster she has learned to face.

“Suit yourself,” mutters Luc, and she waits for him to bleed into the dark, braces for the sudden, reaching void, expects to be swallowed up and spit out on the other side of the world.

But Luc does not vanish, and neither does she.

He nods at the club. “Go on, then,” he says, “go back to them.”

And she would rather he had banished her. Instead, she rises, even though she’s lost her taste for drinks, for dancing, for any kind of company.

It is like stepping out of sunlight, the humid room gone cold against her skin, as he sits there in his velvet booth, and she goes through the motions of her night, and for the first time she feels the space between the humans and herself, and fears that he is right.

In the end, she is the one to leave.

And the next day, the speakeasy is boarded up, and Luc is gone. And just like that, new lines are drawn, the pieces set, the battle started.

She will not see him again until the war.

IV

New York City

July 29, 2014

The A train jostles Addie out of sleep.

She opens her eyes just as the lights overhead flicker and go out, plunging the car into darkness. Panic surges like a current through her chest, the world beyond the windows dark, but Henry’s hand squeezes hers.

“It’s just the line,” he says, as the lights come on again, and the train settles back into its easy motion, and she realizes when the voice comes on the intercom that they’re back in Brooklyn, the last stretch of subway underground again, and when they get off, the sun is still safely in the sky.

They walk back to Henry’s, heat-logged and drowsy, shower off the salt and sand, and collapse on top of the sheets, wet hair cooling on their skin. Book curls around her feet. Henry pulls her against him, and the bed is cool, and he is warm, and if it is not love, it is enough.

“Five minutes,” he mumbles in her hair.

“Five minutes,” she answers, the words half plea, half promise as she curls into him.

Outside, the sun hovers over the buildings.

They still have time.

Addie wakes in the dark.

When she closed her eyes, the sun was still high. Now, the room is full of shadows, the sky a deep indigo bruise beyond the window.

Henry is still asleep, but the room is too quiet, too still, and dread rolls through Addie as she sits up.

She doesn’t say his name, doesn’t even think it as she climbs to her feet, holding her breath as she steps out into the darkened hall. She scans the living room, braced to see him sitting on the sofa, long arms stretched along the cushioned back.

Adeline.

But he’s not there.

Of course he’s not there.

It has been almost forty years.

He is not coming. And Addie is so tired of waiting for him.

She returns to the bedroom, sees Henry on his feet, his hair a mess of loose black curls as he searches under the pillows for his glasses.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have set an alarm.” He unzips a bag, puts a change of clothes inside. “I can stay at Bea’s. I’ll—”

But Addie catches his hand. “Don’t go.”

Henry hesitates. “Are you sure?”

She isn’t sure of anything, but she has had such a good day, she doesn’t want to waste her night, doesn’t want to give it to him.

He has taken enough.

There’s no food in the apartment, so they get dressed and head over to the Merchant, and there’s a sleepy ease to all of it, the disorientation of waking after dark added to the effects of so long in the sun. It lends everything a dreamy air, the perfect end to a perfect day.

They tell the waitress they’re celebrating, and when she asks if it’s a birthday, or an engagement, Addie lifts her beer and says, “Anniversary.”

“Congrats,” says the waitress. “How many years?”

“Three hundred,” she says.

Henry chokes on his drink, and the waitress laughs, assuming it’s an inside joke. Addie simply smiles.

A song comes on, the kind that rises above the noise, and she drags him to his feet.

“Dance with me,” she says, and Henry tries to tell her that he doesn’t dance, even though she was there, at the Fourth Rail, when they flung themselves into the beat, and he says that is different, but she doesn’t believe him, because times change, but everyone dances, she has seen them do the waltz and the quadrille, the fox-trot and the jive, and a dozen others, and she is sure that he can manage at least one of them.

And so she draws him between the tables, and Henry didn’t even know that the Merchant had a dance floor, but there it is, and they are the only ones on it. Addie shows him how to lift his hand, to move with her in mirror motions. She shows him how to lead, how to twirl her, how to dip. She shows him where to put his hands, and how to feel the rhythm in her hips, and for a little while, everything is perfect, and easy, and right.

They stumble, laughing, up to the bar for another drink.

“Two beers,” says Henry, and the bartender nods, and steps away, comes back a minute later, and sets down their drinks.

But only one is a beer.

The other is Champagne, a candied rose petal floating in the center.

Addie feels the world tip, the darkness tunnel.

There is a note beneath the glass, written in elegant, sloping French.

For my Adeline.

“Hey,” Henry is saying, “we didn’t order this.”

The bartender points to the end of the bar. “Compliments of the gentleman over…” he starts, trailing off. “Huh,” he says. “He was just there.”

Addie’s heart tumbles in her chest. She grabs Henry’s hand. “You have to go.”

“What? Wait—”

But there is no time. She pulls him toward the door.

“Addie.”

Luc cannot see them together, he cannot know that they have found—

“Addie.” She finally looks back. And feels the world drop out beneath her.

The bar is perfectly still.

Not empty, no; it is still brimming with people.

But none of them are moving.

They have all stopped mid-stride, mid-speech, mid-sip. Not frozen, exactly, but forcibly stilled. Puppets, hovering on strings. The music is still playing; softly, now, but it is the only sound in the place besides Henry’s unsteady breath, and the pounding of her heart.

And a voice, rising from the dark.

“Adeline.”

The whole world holds its breath, reduces to the soft echo of footfalls on the wooden floor, the figure stepping out of the shadows.

Forty years, and there he is, unchanged in the ways she is unchanged, the same raven curls, the same emerald eyes, the same coy twist to his cupid’s bow mouth. He’s dressed in a black button-down, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows, a suit jacket flung over one shoulder, his other hand hooked loosely in the pocket of his slacks.

The picture of ease.

“My love,” he says, “you’re looking well.”

Something in her loosens at the sound of his voice, the way it always has. Something at the center of her unwinds, release without relief. Because she has waited, of course she has waited, held her breath in dread as much as hope. Now it rushes from her lungs.

“What are you doing here?”

Luc has the nerve to look affronted. “It’s our anniversary. Surely you haven’t forgotten.”

“It’s been forty years.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Yours, entirely.”

A smile tugs at the edge of his mouth. And then his green gaze slides toward Henry. “I suppose I should be flattered by the resemblance.”

Addie doesn’t rise to the bait. “He has nothing to do with this. Send him away. He’ll forget.”

Luc’s smile drops away. “Please. You embarrass us both.” He carves a slow circle around them, a tiger rounding on its prey. “As if I don’t keep track of all my deals. Henry Strauss, so desperate to be wanted. Sell your soul just to be loved. What a fine pair you two must make.”

“Then let us have it.”

A dark brow rises. “You think I mean to pull you apart? Not at all. Time will do that soon enough.” He looks to Henry. “Tick tock. Tell me, are you still counting your life in days, or have you begun to measure it in hours? Or does that only make it harder?”

Addie looks between them, reading the triumphant green in Luc’s eyes, the color bleeding out of Henry’s face.

She does not understand.

“Oh, Adeline.”

The name draws her back.

“Humans live such short lives, don’t they? Some far shorter than others. Savor the time you have left. And know, it was his choice.”

With that, Luc turns on his heel and dissolves into the dark.

In his wake, the bar shudders back into motion. Noise surges through the space, and Addie stares at the shadows until she’s sure they are empty.

Humans live such short lives.

She turns toward Henry, who’s no longer standing behind her, but slumped in a chair.

Some far shorter than others.

His head is bowed, one hand clutching his wrist where the watch would be. Where it is, somehow, again. She is sure he didn’t put it on. Sure he wasn’t wearing it.

But there it is, shining like a cuff around his wrist.

It was his choice.

“Henry,” she says, kneeling before him.

“I wanted to tell you,” he murmurs.

She pulls the watch toward herself, and studies the face. Four months she’s been with Henry, and in that time, the hour hand has crept from half past six to half past ten. Four months, and four hours closer to midnight, and she always assumed it would go around again.

A lifetime, he said, and she knew it was a lie.

It had to be.

Luc would never give another human so much time—not after her.

She knew, she must have known. But she thought, perhaps he’d sold his soul for fifty, or thirty, or even ten—that would have been enough.

But there are only twelve hours on a watch, only twelve months in a year, and he wouldn’t, he couldn’t be so foolish.

“Henry,” she says, “how long did you ask for?”

“Addie,” he pleads, and for the first time, her name sounds wrong on his lips. It is cracked. It is breaking.

“How long?” she demands.

He is silent for a long time.

And then, at last, he tells her the truth.

V

New York City

September 4, 2013

A boy is sick of his broken heart.

Tired of his storm-filled brain.

So he drinks until he cannot feel the pieces scraping together in his chest, until he cannot hear the thunder rolling through his head. He drinks when his friends tell him it will be all right. He drinks when they tell him it will pass. He drinks until the bottle is empty and the world gets fuzzy at the edges. It is not enough to ease the pain, so he leaves, and they let him go.

And at some point, on the walk home, it begins to rain.

At some point, his phone goes off, and he doesn’t answer.

At some point, the bottle slips, and he cuts his hand.

At some point, he is outside his building, and he sinks onto the stoop, and presses his palms against his eyes, and tells himself it is just another storm.

But this time, it shows no signs of passing. This time, there is no break in the clouds, no light on the horizon, and the thunder in his head is so damn loud. So he takes a few of his sister’s pills, those little pink umbrellas, but they are still no match for the storm, and so he takes some of his own, as well.

He leans back on the rain-slicked stairs, and looks up at the place where the rooftop meets the sky, and wonders, not for the first time, how many steps from here to the edge.

He isn’t sure when he decides to jump.

Perhaps he never does.

Perhaps he decides to go inside, and then he decides to go upstairs, and when he reaches his door he decides to keep going, and when he gets to the last door he decides to step out onto the roof—and at some point, standing there in the pouring rain, he decides he doesn’t want to decide anymore.

Here is a straight path. A tarred stretch of empty asphalt, nothing but steps between him and the edge. The pills are catching up, dulling the pain and leaving behind a cotton quiet that’s somehow even worse. His eyes drift shut, his limbs are so heavy.

It is just a storm, he tells himself, but he is tired of looking for shelter.

It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake.

It is just a storm, just a storm—but tonight it is too much, and he is not enough, and so he crosses the roof, doesn’t slow until he can see over the side, doesn’t stop until the tips of his shoes graze empty air.

And that is where the stranger finds him.

That is where the darkness makes an offer.

Not for a lifetime—for a single year.

It will be easy to look back and wonder how he could have done it, how he could have given away so much for so little. But in the moment, shoes already skimming night, the simple truth is that he would have sold his soul for less, would have traded an entire life of this for just a day—an hour, a minute, a moment—of peace.

Just to numb the pain inside his chest.

Just to quiet the storm inside his head.

He is so tired of hurting, so tired of being hurt. And that is why, when the stranger holds out his hand, and offers to pull Henry back from the edge, there is no hesitation.

He simply says yes.

VI

New York City

July 29, 2014

Now it all makes sense.

He makes sense.

This boy, who could never sit still, never waste time, never put off a single thing. This boy, who writes down every word she says, so she’ll have something when he’s gone, who doesn’t want to lose even a single day, because he doesn’t have that many more.

This boy she’s falling in love with.

This boy, who will soon be gone.

“How?” she asks. “How could you give up so much for so little?”

Henry looks up at her, his face hollow.

“In that moment,” he says, “I would have given it for less.”

A year. It seemed like so long, once.

Now it is no time at all.

A year, and it is almost up, and all she can see is the curve of Luc’s smile, the triumphant color of his eyes. They were not clever, they were not lucky, they were not slipping past his notice. He knew, of course he knew, and he let it come to this.

He let her fall.

“Addie, please,” says Henry, but she is already up, already moving across the bar.

He tries to grab her hand, but he is too late.

She is already out of reach.

Already gone.

Three hundred years.

She has survived three hundred years, and in those centuries, there have been so many times when the ground gave way, moments when she could not catch her balance or her breath. When the world left her feeling lost, broken, hopeless.

Standing outside her parents’ house, that night after the deal.

On the docks in Paris, where she learned what a body was worth.

Remy, pressing the coins into her palm.

Soaked through, at the ruined stump of Estele’s oak tree.

But in this moment, Addie isn’t lost, or broken, or hopeless.

She is furious.

She shoves her hand into her pocket, and of course the ring is there. It is always there. Grains of sand flake from the smooth wooden surface as Addie slides the band over her knuckle.

It’s been forty years since she last wore it, but the ring slips effortlessly on.

She feels the wind, like a cool breath at her back, and turns, expecting to find Luc.

But the street is empty—empty, at least, of shadows and promises and gods.

She twists the ring around her finger.

Nothing.

“Show yourself!” she shouts down the block.

Heads turn, but Addie doesn’t care. They’ll forget her soon enough, and even if she weren’t a ghost, this is New York, a place immune to the actions of a stranger in the street.

“Dammit,” she swears. She wrenches the ring from her finger, and hurls it down the road, hears it bounce, and roll. And then the sound suddenly drops away. The nearest streetlight flickers out, and a voice comes from the dark.

“All these years, and you still have such a temper.”

Something brushes her neck, and then a silver thread, thin as dew shine, the same one snapped so long ago, shimmers on her collar.

Luc’s fingers trail along her skin. “Have you missed me?”

She turns to shove him away, but her hands pass straight through, and then he is behind her. When she tries a second time, he is as solid and unyielding as rock.

“Undo it,” she snaps, striking his chest, but her fist barely grazes the front of his shirt before he takes her wrist.

“Who are you to give me orders, Adeline?”

She tries to pull free, but his grip is stone.

“You know,” he says, almost casually, “there was a time when you groveled, pressed yourself against the damp forest soil and pleaded for my intercession.”

“You want me to beg? Then fine. I beg you. Please. Undo it.”

He steps forward, forcing her to step back. “Henry made his deal.”

“He didn’t know—”

“They always know,” says Luc. “They just don’t want to accept the cost. The soul is the easiest thing to trade. It’s the time no one considers.”

“Luc, please.”

His green eyes gleam, not with mischief, or triumph, but power. The shade of someone who knows they’re in control.

“Why should I?” he asks. “Why would I?”

Addie has a dozen answers, but she scrambles to find the right words, the ones that might appease the dark, but before she can find them, Luc reaches out, and lifts her chin, and she expects him to play out their old, tired lines, to mock her, or ask for her soul, but he does neither.

“Spend the night with me,” he says. “Tomorrow. Let us have a proper anniversary. Give me that, and I’ll consider freeing Mr. Strauss from his obligations.” His mouth twitches. “If, that is, you can persuade me.”

It is a lie, of course.

It is a trap, but Addie has no other choice.

“I accept,” she says, and the darkness smiles, and then dissolves around her.

She stands on the sidewalk, alone, until her heart steadies, and then walks back into the Merchant.

But Henry is gone.

She finds him at home, sitting in the dark.

He’s on the edge of the bed, the blankets still tangled from their afternoon nap. He stares ahead, into the distance, the way he did that summer night on the rooftop, after the fireworks.

And Addie realizes that she is going to lose him, the way she has lost everyone.

And she doesn’t know if she can do it, not again, not this time.

Hasn’t she lost enough?

“I’m sorry,” he whispers as she crosses to him.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, as she runs her fingers through his hair.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she pleads.

Henry is quiet for a moment, and then he says, “How do you walk to the end of the world?” He looks up at her. “I wanted to hold on to every step.”

A soft, shuddering sigh.

“My uncle had cancer, when I was still in college. It was terminal. The doctors gave him a few months, and he told everyone, and do you know what they did? They couldn’t handle it. They were so caught up in their grief, they mourned him before he was even dead. There’s no way to un-know the fact that someone is dying. It eats away all the normal, and leaves something wrong and rotten in its place. I’m sorry, Addie. I didn’t want you to look at me that way.”

She climbs into bed, and pulls him down beside her.

“I’m sorry,” he’s saying, soft and steady as a prayer.

They lie there, face-to-face, their fingers intertwined.

“I’m sorry.”

And Addie forces herself to ask, “How long do you have left?”

Henry swallows. “A month.”

The words land like a blow on tender skin.

“A little more,” he says. “Thirty-six days.”

“It’s after midnight,” Addie whispers.

Henry exhales. “Then thirty-five.”

Her grip tightens around his, and his tightens back, and they hold on until it hurts, as if any minute someone might try to pull them apart, as if the other might slip free, and disappear.

VII

Occupied France

November 23, 1944

Her back hits the rough stone wall.

The cell grinds shut, and German soldiers laugh beyond the bars as Addie slumps to the floor, coughing blood.

A handful of men huddle in one corner of the cell, slouched and murmuring. At least they don’t seem to care that she’s a woman. The Germans have noticed. Though they caught her dressed in nondescript trousers and coat, though she kept her hair pulled back, she knew by the way they scowled and leered that they could tell her sex. She told them in a dozen different tongues what she would do if they came near, and they laughed, and satisfied themselves with beating her senseless.

Get up, she wills her weary body.

Get up, she wills her tired bones.

Addie forces herself to her feet, stumbles to the front of the cell. She wraps her hands around the frozen steel, pulls at it until her muscles scream, until the bars groan, but they do not move. She pries at the bolts until her fingers bleed, and a soldier slams his hand against the bars and threatens to use her body as kindling.

She is such a fool.

She is a fool for thinking it would work. For thinking that forgettable was the same as invisible, that it would protect her here.

She should have stayed in Boston, where the worst she had to worry about was wartime rations and winter cold. She should never have come back. It was foolish honor, and stubborn pride. It was the last war, and the fact she ran away, fled across the Atlantic instead of facing the danger at home. Because somehow, despite it all, that’s what France will always be.

Home.

And somewhere along the way, she decided she could help. Not in an official sense, of course, but secrets have no owner. They could be touched, and traded, by anyone, even a ghost.

The only thing she had to do was not get caught.

Three years of ferrying secrets through Occupied France.

Three years, only to end up here.

In a prison outside Orleans.

And it does not matter that they will forget her face. It does not matter, because these soldiers do not care about remembering. Here, all the faces are strange, and foreign, and nameless, and if she doesn’t get out, she is going to disappear.

Addie sags back against the icy wall and pulls her ragged jacket close. She closes her eyes. She does not pray, not exactly, but she does think of him. She does, perhaps, even wish that it were summer—a July night when he might find her on his own.

The soldiers have searched her, roughly, taken anything she might use to hurt them, or escape. They have taken the ring, too, snapped the leather cord it hung on, cast the wooden band away.

And yet, when she rifles through her ragged clothing, it is still there, waiting like a coin in the crease of her pocket. She is grateful, then, that she cannot seem to lose it. Grateful, as she lifts it to her finger.

For a moment, she falters—twenty-nine years she has had the ring, with all its strings attached.

Twenty-nine years, and she hasn’t used it.

But right now, even Luc’s smug satisfaction would be better than the eternity in a prison cell, or worse.

If he comes.

Those words, a whisper in the back of her mind. A fear she cannot shake. Chicago rising like bile in her throat.

The anger in her chest. The venom in his eyes.

I would rather be a ghost.

She had been wrong.

She does not want to be this kind of ghost.

And so, for the first time in centuries, Addie prays.

She slides the wooden band over her finger, and holds her breath, expects to feel something, a stirring of magic, a rush of wind.

But there is nothing.

Nothing, and she wonders if, after all this time, it was just another trick, a way to lift her hopes, only to drop them, in the chance they might shatter.

She has a curse ready on her tongue, when she feels the breeze—not biting, but warm, cutting through the prison cell, carrying the far-off scent of summer.

The men across the cell stop talking.

They slouch in their corner, awake but inert, staring off into space, as if caught in the throes of some idea. Beyond the cell, the soldiers’ boots stop sounding on the stones, and the German voices drop away like a pebble down a well.

The world goes strangely, impossibly quiet.

Until the only sound is the soft, almost rhythmic tap of fingers trailing along bars.

She has not seen him since Chicago.

“Oh Adeline,” he says, hand drifting down the icy bars. “What a state you’re in.”

She manages a small, pained laugh. “Immortality breeds a high tolerance for risk.”

“There are things worse than death,” he says, as if she does not already know.

He looks around at the prison, brow furrowed in disdain.

“Wars,” he mutters.

“Tell me you are not helping them.”

Luc almost looks offended. “Even I have limits.”

“You bragged to me once about the successes of Napoleon.”

He shrugs. “There is ambition, and there is evil. And as much as I’d like to create a roster of my past exploits, your life is the important one right now.” He leans his elbows on the bars. “How do you plan to get out of this?”

She knows what he wants her to do. He wants her to beg. As if donning the ring were not enough. As if he has not already won this hand, this game. Her stomach knots, and her bruised ribs ache, and she is so thirsty she could cry just to have something to drink. But Addie cannot bring herself to fold.

“You know me,” she says, with a tired smile. “I always find a way.”

Luc sighs. “Suit yourself,” he says, turning his back, and it is too much; she cannot bear the thought of him leaving her here, alone.

“Wait,” she calls desperately, pushing into the bars—only to find the lock undone, the cell door swinging open beneath her weight.

Luc looks back over his shoulder, and he almost smiles, turning toward her just enough to offer up his hand.

She stumbles forward, out of the cell and into freedom, into him. And for a moment, the embrace is only that, and he is solid, and warm, folded around her in the dark, and it would be easy to believe that he is real, that he is human, that he is home.

But then the world cracks wide, and the shadows swallow them whole.

The prison gives way to nothingness, to blackness, to the wild dark. And when it parts, she is back in Boston, the sun just beginning to set, and she could kiss the ground in sheer relief. Addie pulls the jacket close around her, and sinks onto the curb, legs shaking, the wooden band still wrapped around her finger. She called, and he came. She asked, and he answered. And she knows he will hold it over her, and but right now, she does not care.

She does not want to be alone.

But by the time Addie looks up to thank him, he is gone.

VIII

New York City

July 30, 2014

Henry trails her through the apartment as she gets ready.

“Why would you agree to this?” he asks.

Because she knows the darkness better than anyone, knows his mind if not his heart.

“Because I don’t want to lose you,” says Addie, pulling up her hair.

Henry looks tired, hollowed out. “It’s too late,” he says.

But it’s not too late.

Not yet.

Addie reaches into her pocket and feels the ring where it always is, waiting, the wood warm from being pressed against her body. She draws it out, but Henry catches her hand.

“Don’t do this,” he pleads.

“Do you want to die?” she asks, the words cutting through the room.

He pulls back a little at the words. “No. But I made a choice, Addie.”

“You made a mistake.”

“I made a deal,” he says. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t ask for more time. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth sooner. But it is what it is.”

Addie shakes her head. “You may have made peace with this, Henry, but I haven’t.”

“This won’t work,” he warns. “You can’t reason with him.”

Addie tugs free of his grip. “I’m willing to try,” she says, slipping the ring over her finger.

There is no flood of darkness.

Only a stillness, a vacant quiet, and then—

A knock.

And she is grateful that at least he didn’t invite himself in. But Henry stands between her and the door, his hands braced across the narrow hall. He doesn’t move, his eyes pleading. Addie reaches up and cups his face.

“I need you to trust me,” she says.

Something cracks in him. One hand drops from the frame.

She kisses him, and then she slides by, and opens the door for the dark.

“Adeline.”

Luc should look out of place in the building’s hall, but he never does.

The lights on the walls have dimmed a little, softened to a yellow haze that haloes the black curls around his face, and catches slivers of gold in his green eyes.

He is dressed in all black, tailored slacks and a button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows, an emerald pin driven through the silk tie at his throat.

It is far too hot for such an outfit, but Luc doesn’t seem to mind. The heat, like the rain, like the world itself, seems to have no hold on him.

He does not tell her she looks beautiful.

He does not tell her anything.

He simply turns, expecting her to follow.

And as she steps into the hall, he looks to Henry. And winks.

Addie should have stopped right there.

She should have turned around, let Henry pull her back inside. They should have shut the door, and bolted it against the dark.

But they didn’t.

They don’t.

Addie glances back over her shoulder at Henry, who lingers in the doorway, a cloud shadowing his face. She wills him to close the door, but he doesn’t, and she has no choice but to step away, and follow Luc as Henry watches.

Downstairs, he holds open the building’s door, but Addie stops. Looks down at the threshold. Darkness coils in the frame, shimmers between them and the steps down to the street.

She doesn’t trust the shadows, she can’t see where they lead, and the last thing she needs is for Luc to strand her in some far-off land if and when the night goes bad.

“There are rules tonight,” she says.

“Oh?”

“I won’t leave the city,” she says, nodding at the door. “And I won’t go that way.”

“Through a door?”

“Through the dark.”

Luc’s brows draw up. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I never have,” she says. “There’s no use starting now.”

Luc laughs, soft and soundless, and steps outside to hail a car. Seconds later, a sleek black sedan pulls up to the curb. He holds out his hand to help her in. She doesn’t take it.

He does not give the driver an address.

The driver does not ask for one.

And when Addie asks where they are going, Luc does not answer.

Soon they are on the Manhattan Bridge.

The silence between them should be awkward. The halting conversation of exes too long apart, and still not long enough to have forgiven anything.

What is forty years against three hundred?

But this is a silence born of strategy.

This is the silence of a chess game being played.

And this time, Addie has to win.

IX

Los Angeles, California

April 7, 1952

“God, you’re beautiful,” says Max, lifting his glass.

Addie blushes, eyes dropping to her martini.

They met on the street outside the Wilshire that morning, the creases from his bedsheets still pressed into her skin. She was lingering on the curb in his favorite wine-colored dress, and when he came out for his morning stroll, he stopped and asked if he could be so bold as to walk with her, wherever she was going, and when they got there, to a pretty building picked at random, he kissed her hand, and said good-bye, but he didn’t leave, and neither did she. They spent the whole day together, strolling from a tea shop to a park to the art museum, finding excuses to continue in each other’s company.

And when she told him that it was the best birthday she’d had in years, he blinked at her in horror, shocked at the idea a girl like her would find herself alone, and here they are, drinking martinis at the Roosevelt.

(It is not her birthday, of course, and she’s not sure why she told him it was. Perhaps to see what he would do. Perhaps because even she is getting bored of living the same night over again.)

“Have you ever met someone,” he says, “and felt like you’ve known them for ages?”

Addie smiles.

He always says the same things, but he means them every time. She toys with the silver thread at her throat, the wooden ring tucked into the neckline of her dress. A habit she cannot seem to break.

A server appears at her elbow with a bottle of Champagne.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“For the birthday girl on this special evening,” says Max brightly. “And the lucky gentleman who gets to spend it with her.”

She admires the tiny bubbles rising through the flute, knows even before she takes a sip that it’s the real thing; old, expensive. Knows, too, that Max can easily afford the luxury.

He is a sculptor—Addie has always had a weakness for the fine arts—and talented, yes, but far from starving. Unlike so many of the artists Addie has been with, he comes from money, the family funds sturdy enough to weather the wars, and the lean years between them.

He raises his glass, just as a shadow falls across the table.

She assumes it’s their server, but then Max looks up, and frowns a little. “Can I help you?”

And Addie hears a voice like silk and smoke. “I do believe you can.”

There is Luc, dressed in an elegant black suit. He is beautiful. He is always beautiful. “Hello, my dear.”

Max’s frown deepens. “Do you two know each other?”

“No,” she says at the same time Luc says, “Yes,” and it’s not fair, the way his voice carries and hers does not.

“He’s an old friend,” she says, a biting edge in her tone. “But—”

Again, he cuts her off. “But we haven’t seen each other in a while, so if you’d be so kind…”

Max bristles. “That’s quite impertinent—”

“Go.”

It is just one word, but the air ripples with the force of it, the syllable wrapping like gauze around her date. The fight drops out of Max’s face. The annoyance smooths, and his eyes go glassy as he rises from the table, and walks away. He never even looks back.

“Dammit,” she swears, sinking in her seat. “Why must you be such an ass?”

Luc lowers himself into the vacant chair, and lifts the bottle of Champagne, refilling their glasses. “Your birthday is in March.”

“When you get to be my age,” she says, “you celebrate as often as you like.”

“How long have you been with him?”

“Two months. It’s not so bad,” she says, sipping her drink. “He falls for me every day.”

“And forgets you every night.”

The words bite, but not as deeply as they used to.

“At least he keeps me company.”

Those emerald eyes trail over her skin. “So would I,” he says, “if you wanted it.”

A flush of warmth sweeps across her cheeks.

He cannot know that she has missed him. Thought of him, the way she used to think of her stranger, alone in bed at night. Thought of him every time she toyed with the ring at her throat, and every time she didn’t.

“Well,” she says, finishing her drink. “You’ve stripped me of my date. The least you can do is try and fill the space.”

And just like that, the green in Luc’s eyes is back, brighter.

“Come,” he says, drawing her up from her chair. “The night is young, and we can do far better.”

The Cicada Club buzzes with life.

Art deco chandeliers hang low, shining up against a burnished ceiling. It is crushed red carpet and stairs sweeping up to balcony seats. It is linen-covered tables and a polished dance floor set before a low stage.

They arrive as a brass band finishes its set, trumpets and sax spilling through the club. The place is packed, and yet, when Luc draws her through the crowd, there is a table sitting empty at the front. The best in the house.

They take their seats, and moments later a waiter appears, two martinis balanced on his tray. She thinks of that first dinner they shared in the marquis’s house, centuries ago, the meal ready before she even agreed to have it, and wonders if Luc planned this in advance, or if the world simply bends to meet his wish.

The crowd erupts in cheers as a new performer takes the stage.

A narrow man with a wan face, narrow brows arching beneath a gray fedora.

Luc stares at him with the sharp pride of something owned.

“What’s his name?” she asks.

“Sinatra,” he answers as the band lifts, and the man begins to sing. A crooner’s melody, smooth and sweet, spills into the room. Addie listens, mesmerized, and then men and women begin to rise from their chairs and step out onto the dance floor.

Addie stands, holding out her hand. “Dance with me,” she says.

Luc looks up at her, but doesn’t rise.

“Max would have danced with me,” she says.

She expects him to refuse her, but Luc rises to his feet, and takes her hand, leading her onto the floor.

She expects him to be stiff, unyielding, but Luc moves with the fluid grace of wind rushing through fields of wheat, of storms rolling through the summer skies.

She tries to remember a time they were this close, and can’t.

They have always kept their distance.

Now, the space collapses.

His body wraps around hers like a blanket, like a breeze, like the night itself. But tonight, he does not feel like a thing of shadow and smoke. Tonight, his arms are solid against her skin. His voice slides through her hair.

“Even if everyone you met remembered,” Luc says, “I would still know you best.”

She searches his face. “Do I know you?”

He bows his head over hers. “You are the only one who does.”

Their bodies press together, one shaped to fit the other perfectly.

His shoulder, molded to her cheek.

His hands, molded to her waist.

His voice, molded to the hollow places in her as he says, “I want you.” And then, again, “I have always wanted you.”

Luc looks down at her, those green eyes dark with pleasure, and Addie fights to hold her ground.

“You want me as a prize,” she says. “You want me as a meal, or a glass of wine. Just another thing to be consumed.”

He dips his head, presses his lips to her collarbone. “Is that so wrong?”

She fights back a shiver as he kisses her throat. “Is it such a bad thing…” His mouth trails along her jaw. “… to be savored?” His breath brushes her ear. “To be relished?”

His mouth hovers over hers, and his lips, too, are molded to her own.

She will never be quite sure which happened first—if she kissed him, or he kissed her, who began the gesture, and who rose to meet it. She will only know that there was space between them, and it has vanished. She has thought of kissing Luc before, of course, when he was just a figment of her mind, and then, when he was more. But in all her conjurings, he’d taken her mouth as if it is a prize. After all, that is how he kissed her the night they met, when he sealed the deal with the blood on her lips. That is how she assumed he would always kiss.

But now, he kisses her like someone tasting poison.

Cautious, questing, almost afraid.

And only when she answers, returns the kiss in kind, does he deepen his advance, his teeth skating along her bottom lip, the weight and heat of his body pressing against hers.

He tastes like the air at night, heady with the weight of summer storms. He tastes like the faint traces of far-off woodsmoke, a fire dying in the dark. He tastes like the forest, and somehow, impossibly, like home.

And then darkness reaches up around her, around them, and the Cicada Club vanishes; the low music and the crooner’s melody swallowed up by the pressing void, by rushing wind, and racing hearts, and Addie is falling, forever and a single backward step—and then her feet find the smooth marble floor of a hotel room, and Luc is there, pressing her forward, and she is there, drawing him back against the nearest wall.

His arms lift around her, forming a loose and open cage.

She could break it, if she tried.

She doesn’t try.

He kisses her again, and this time, he is not tasting poison. This time, there is no caution, no pulling back; the kiss is sudden, sharp, and deep, stealing air and thought and leaving only hunger, and for a moment, Addie can feel the yawning dark, feel it opening around her, even though the ground is still there.

She has kissed a lot of people. But none of them will ever kiss like him. The difference doesn’t lie in the technicalities. His mouth is no better shaped to the task. It is just in the way he uses it.

It is the difference between tasting a peach out of season, and that first bite into sun-ripened fruit.

The difference between seeing only in black-and-white, and a life in full-color film.

That first time, it is a kind of fight, neither letting down their guard, each watching for the telltale glint of some hidden blade seeking flesh.

When they finally collide, it is with all the force of bodies kept too long apart.

It is a battle waged on bedsheets.

And in the morning, the whole room shows the signs of their war.

“It’s been so long,” he says, “since I haven’t wanted to leave.”

She looks at the window, the first thin edge of light. “Then don’t.”

“I must,” he says. “I am a thing of darkness.”

She props her head up on one hand. “Will you vanish with the sun?”

“I will simply go where it is dark again.”

Addie rises, goes to the window, and draws the curtains closed, plunging the room back into lightless black.

“There,” she says, feeling her way back to him. “Now it is dark again.”

Luc laughs, a soft, beautiful sound, and pulls her down into the bed.

X

Everywhere, Nowhere

1952–1968

It is only sex.

At least, it starts that way.

He is a thing to be gotten out of her system.

She is a novelty to be enjoyed.

Addie half expects them to burn out in a single night, to waste whatever energy they’ve gathered in their years of spinning.

But two months later, he comes to find her again, steps out of nothing and back into her life, and she thinks about how strange it is, to see him against the reds and golds of autumn, the changing leaves, a charcoal scarf looped loose around his throat.

It is weeks until his next visit.

And then, only days.

So many years of solitary nights, hours of waiting, and hating, and hoping. Now he is there.

Still, Addie makes herself small promises in the space between his visits.

She will not linger in his arms.

She will not fall asleep beside him.

She will not feel anything but his lips on her skin, his hands tangled in hers, the weight of him against her.

Small promises, but ones she does not keep.

It is only sex.

And then it is not.

“Dine with me,” Luc says as winter gives way to spring.

“Dance with me,” he says as a new year begins.

“Be with me,” he says, at last, as one decade slips into the next.

And one night Addie wakes in the dark to the soft pressure of his fingertips drawing patterns on her skin, and she is struck by the look in his eyes. No, not the look. The knowing.

It is the first time that she has woken up in bed with someone who hasn’t already forgotten her. The first time she’s heard her name again after the pause of sleep. The first time she hasn’t felt alone.

And something in her splinters.

Addie does not hate him anymore. Has not for a long time.

She does not know when the shift started, if it was a specific point in time, or, as Luc once warned her, the slow erosion of a coast.

All she knows is that she is tired, and he is the place she wants to rest.

And that, somehow, she is happy.

But it is not love.

Whenever Addie feels herself forgetting, she presses her ear to his bare chest and listens for the drum of life, the drawing of breath, and hears only the woods at night, the quiet hush of summer. A reminder that he is a lie, that his face and his flesh are simply a disguise.

That he is not human, and this is not love.

XI

New York City

July 30, 2014

The city slides past beyond the window, but Addie doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t admire the skyline of Manhattan, the buildings soaring to every side. Instead, she studies Luc, reflected in the darkened glass, the line of his jaw, the arc of his brow, angles drawn by her hand so many, many years ago. She is watching him, the way one watches a wolf at the edge of the woods, waiting to see what it will do.

He is the first to break the silence.

The first to move a piece.

“Do you remember the opera in Munich?”

“I remember everything, Luc.”

“The way you looked at the players on that stage, as if you’d never seen theater before.”

“I’d never seen theater like that.”

“The wonder in your eyes, at the sight of something new. I knew then I’d never win.”

She wants to savor the words like a sip of good wine, but the grapes turn sour in her mouth. She does not trust them.

The car pulls to a stop outside Le Coucou, a beautiful French restaurant on the lower side of SoHo, ivy climbing the outer walls. She has been there before, two of the best meals she’s had in New York, and she wonders if Luc knows how much she likes it, or if he simply shares her taste.

Again, he offers his hand.

Again, she does not take it.

Addie watches a couple as they approach the doors of the restaurant, only to find them locked, watches them walk away, murmuring something about reservations. But when Luc takes the handle, the door swings open easily.

Inside, massive chandeliers hang from the high ceilings, and the large glass windows shine black. The place feels cavernous, large enough to seat a hundred, but tonight it is empty, save for two chefs visible in the open kitchen, a pair of servers, and the maître d’, who drops into a low bow as Luc approaches.

“Monsieur Dubois,” he says in a dreamy voice. “Mademoiselle.”

He leads them to their table, a red rose set before each place. The maître d’ pulls back her chair, and Luc waits for her to take her seat before taking his own. The man opens a bottle of merlot, and pours, and Luc lifts his glass to her and says, “To you, Adeline.”

There is no menu. No order to be taken. The plates simply arrive.

Foie gras with cherries, and rabbit terrine. Halibut in beurre blanc, and fresh-baked bread, and half a dozen kinds of cheese.

The food is, of course, exquisite.

But as they eat, the host and servers stand against the walls, eyes open, empty, a bland expression on their faces. She has always hated this aspect of his power, and the careless way he wields it.

She tips her glass in the direction of the puppets.

“Send them away,” she says, and he does. A silent gesture, and the servers disappear, and they are alone in the empty restaurant.

“Would you do that to me?” she asks when they are gone.

Luc shakes his head. “I could not,” he says, and she thinks he means because he cared for her too much, but then he says, “I have no power over promised souls. Their will is their own.”

It is cold comfort, she thinks, but it is something.

Luc looks down into his wine. He turns the stem between his fingers, and there in the darkened glass, she sees the two of them, tangled in silk sheets, sees her fingers in his hair, his hands playing songs against her skin.

“Tell me, Adeline,” he says. “Have you missed me?”

Of course she has missed him.

She can tell herself, as she has told him, that she only missed being seen, or missed the force of his attention, the intoxication of his presence—but it is more than that. She missed him the way someone might miss the sun in winter, though they still dread its heat. She missed the sound of his voice, the knowing in his touch, the flint-on-stone friction of their conversations, the way they fit together.

He is gravity.

He is three hundred years of history.

He is the only constant in her life, the only one who will always, always remember.

Luc is the man she dreamed of when she was young, and then the one she hated most, and the one she loved, and Addie missed him every night that he was gone from her, and he deserved none of her pain because it was his fault, it was his fault no one else remembered, it was his fault that she lost and lost and lost, and she does not say any of that because it will change nothing, and because there is still one thing she hasn’t lost. One piece of her story that she can save.

Henry.

So Addie makes her gambit.

She reaches across the table and takes Luc’s hand, tells him the truth.

“I missed you.”

His green eyes shimmer and shift at the words. He brushes the ring on her finger, traces the whorls in the wood.

“How many times did you almost put it on?” he asks. “How often did you think of me?” And she assumes he is baiting her—until his voice softens to a whisper, the faintest roll of thunder in the air between them. “Because I thought of you. Always.”

“You didn’t come.”

“You didn’t call.”

She looks down at their tangled hands. “Tell me, Luc,” she says. “Was any of it real?”

“What is real to you, Adeline? Since my love counts for nothing?”

“You are not capable of love.”

He scowls, his eyes flashing emerald. “Because I am not human? Because I do not wither and die?”

“No,” she says, drawing back her hand. “You are not capable of love because you cannot understand what it is to care for someone else more than yourself. If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”

Luc flicks his fingers. “What nonsense,” he says. “It is because I love you that I won’t. Love is hungry. Love is selfish.”

“You are thinking of possession.”

He shrugs. “Are they so different? I have seen what humans do to things they love.”

“People are not things,” she says. “And you will never understand them.”

“I understand you, Adeline. I know you, better than anyone in this world.”

“Because you let me have no one else.” She takes a steadying breath. “I know you won’t spare me, Luc, and perhaps you are right, we do belong together. So if you love me, spare Henry Strauss. If you love me, let him go.”

His temper flashes through his face. “This is our night, Adeline. Do not ruin it with talk of someone else.”

“But you said—”

“Come,” he says, pushing back from the table. “This place no longer suits my taste.”

The server has just set a pear tart on the table, but it turns to ash as Luc speaks, and Addie marvels, the way she always has, at the moodiness of gods.

“Luc,” she starts, but he is already on his feet, casting the napkin off onto the ruined food.

XII

New Orleans, Louisiana

July 29, 1970

“I love you.”

They are in New Orleans when he says it, dining in a hidden bar in the French Quarter, one of his many installations.

Addie shakes her head, amazed the words do not turn to ash in his mouth. “Do not pretend that this is love.”

Annoyance flashes across Luc’s face. “What is love, then? Tell me. Tell me your heart doesn’t flutter when you hear my voice. That it doesn’t ache when you hear your name on my lips.”

“It’s my own name I ache for, not your lips.”

The edge of his mouth curls up, his eyes now emerald. A brightness born of pleasure. “Once, perhaps,” he says. “But now it’s more.”

She is afraid that he is right.

And then, he sets a box before her.

It is simple, and black, and if Addie were to reach for it, it would be small enough to fit within her palm.

But she doesn’t, not at first.

“What is it?” she asks.

“A gift.”

Still she does not take it.

“Honestly, Adeline,” he says, sweeping the box from the table. “It will not bite.”

He opens it, and sets it back before her.

Inside, there is a simple brass key, and when she asks him where it leads, he says, “Home.”

Addie stiffens.

She has not had a home, not since Villon. Has never, in fact, had a place of her own, and she is almost grateful, before she remembers, of course, that he is the reason why.

“Do not mock me, Luc.”

“I am not mocking you,” he says.

He takes her hand and leads her through the Quarter, to a place at the end of Bourbon Street, a yellow house with a balcony, and windows as tall as doors. She slides the key into the lock, and listens to the heavy sound of the turn, and realizes, if it belonged to Luc instead of her, the door would simply open. And suddenly, the brass key feels real and solid in her hand, a treasured thing.

The door swings open onto a house with high ceilings, and wooden floors, with furniture, and closets, and spaces to be filled. She steps out onto the balcony, the layered sounds of the Quarter rising to meet her on the humid air. Jazz spills through the streets, crashing, overlapping, a chaotic melody, changing and alive.

“It is yours,” says Luc, “a home,” and the old warning sounds, deep in the marrow of her bones.

But these days, it is a shrinking beacon, a lighthouse viewed too far from port.

He pulls her back against him, and Addie notices again the perfect way they fit together.

As if he was made for her.

Which, of course, he was. This body, this face, these features, made to make her feel at ease.

“Let’s go out,” he says.

Addie wants to stay in, to christen the house, but he says there will be time, there will always be time. And for once, she doesn’t dread the idea of forever. For once, the days and nights don’t drag, but race ahead.

She knows that, whatever this is, it will not last.

It cannot last.

Nothing ever does.

But in the moment, she is happy.

They make their way through the Quarter, arm in arm, and Luc lights a cigarette, and when she tells him it’s bad for his health, he lets out a breathy, noiseless laugh, smoke pouring between his lips.

Her steps slow before a shop window.

The store is closed, of course, but even through the darkened glass, she can see the leather jacket, black with silver buckles, draped over a mannequin.

Luc’s reflection shimmers behind her as he follows her gaze.

“It is summer,” he says.

“It won’t always be.”

Luc smooths his hands over her shoulders and she feels the soft leather settling against her skin, the mannequin in the window now bare, and tries not to think of all the years she went without, forced to suffer through the cold, of all the times she had to hide, and fight, and steal. She tries not to think of them, but she does.

They are halfway back to the yellow house when Luc peels away.

“I have work to do,” he says. “Go on home.”

Home—the word rattles through her chest as he walks away.

But she does not go.

She watches Luc round the corner, and cross the street, and then she lingers in the shadow as he approaches a shop with a luminescent palm painted on the door.

An older woman stands on the sidewalk, closing up, her frame bent over a ring of keys, a large bag drooping from one elbow.

She must hear him coming, because she murmurs something to the dark, something about closing, something about another day. And then she turns, and sees him.

In the glass of the shop window, Addie sees Luc, too, not as he is to her, but as he must appear to the woman in the doorway. He has kept those dark curls, but his face is leaner, sharper in a wolfish way, his eyes deep-set, his limbs too thin to be human.

“A deal is a deal,” he says, the words bending on the air. “And it is done.”

Addie watches, expecting the woman to beg, to run.

But she sets her bag down on the ground, and lifts her chin.

“A deal is a deal,” she says. “And I am tired.”

And somehow, this is worse.

Because Addie understands.

Because she is tired, too.

And as she watches, the darkness comes undone again.

It has been more than a hundred years since Addie last saw the truth of him, the roiling night, with all its teeth. Only this time, there is no rending, no tearing, no horror.

The darkness simply folds around the old woman like a storm, blotting out the light.

Addie turns away.

She goes back to the yellow house on Bourbon Street, and pours herself a glass of wine, crisp and cold and white. It is blisteringly hot; the balcony doors are flung open to ease the summer night. She is leaning on the iron rail when she hears him arrive, not on the street below, as a courting lover might, but in the room behind her.

And when his arms drift around her shoulders, Addie remembers the way he held the woman in the doorway, the way he folded around her, swallowing her whole.

XIII

New York City

July 30, 2014

Luc’s mood lifts a little as they walk.

The night is warm, the moon barely a crescent overhead. His head falls back, and he inhales, breathing in the air as if it were not ripe with summer heat, too many people in too little space.

“How long have you been here?” she asks.

“I come and go,” he says, but she has learned to read the space between his words, and guesses he has been in New York almost as long as she has, lurking like a shadow at her back.

She doesn’t know where they are going, and for the first time, she wonders if Luc does either, or if he is simply walking, trying to put space between them and the end of their meal.

But as they make their way uptown, she feels time folding around them, and she does not know if it’s his magic or her memory, but with each passing block, she is storming from him down the Seine. He is leading her away from the sea. She is following him in Florence. They are side by side in Boston, and arm in arm on Bourbon Street.

They are here, together, in New York. And she wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t said the word. If he hadn’t tipped his hand. If he hadn’t ruined everything.

“The night is ours,” he says, turning toward her, and his eyes are bright again. “Where shall we go?”

Home, she thinks, though she cannot say it.

She looks up at the skyscrapers, surging to either side.

“Which one,” she wonders, “has the best view?”

After a moment, Luc smiles, flashing teeth, and says, “Follow me.”

Over the years, Addie has learned many of the city’s secrets.

But here is one she did not know.

It resides not underground, but on a roof.

Eighty-four stories up, reached by a pair of elevators, the first one nondescript and rising only to the eighty-first floor. The second, a direct replica of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, with its writhing bodies, clawing to escape, takes you the rest of the way.

If you have a key.

Luc draws the black card from his shirt pocket and slides it into a yawning mouth along the elevator’s frame.

“Is this one of yours?” she asks as the doors slide open.

“Nothing is really mine,” he says by way of answer as they step inside.

It is a short ascent, three brief floors, and when it stops, the doors open onto an uninterrupted view of the city.

The bar’s name winds in black letters at her feet.

THE LOW ROAD.

Addie rolls her eyes. “Was Perdition taken?”

“Perdition,” he says, eyes sparkling with mischief, “is a different kind of club.”

The floors are bronze, the railings glass, and the ceiling open to the sky, and people mill on velvet sofas and dip their feet in shallow pools, and linger along the balconies that ring the roof, admiring the city.

“Mr. Green,” says the hostess. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Renee,” he says smoothly. “This is Adeline. Give her anything she wants.”

The hostess looks to her, but there is no compulsion in her eyes, no sense that she has been enchanted, only the cooperation of an employee, one very good at her job. Addie asks for the most expensive drink, and Renee grins at Luc. “You’ve found yourself a match.”

“I have,” he says, resting his hand on the small of Addie’s back as he guides her forward. She quickens her step until it falls away, and weaves through the milling crowd to the glass rail, looking out over Manhattan. There are no stars visible, of course, but New York rolls away to every side, its own galaxy of light.

Up here, at least, she can breathe.

It is the easy laughter of the crowd. The ambient noise of people enjoying themselves, so much nicer than the stifled quiet of the empty restaurant, the cloistered silence of the car. It is the sky opening above her. The beauty of the city to every side, and the fact they are not alone.

Renee returns with a bottle of Champagne, a visible film of dust coating the glass.

“Dom Perignon, 1959,” she explains, holding the bottle out for inspection. “From your private case, Mr. Green.”

Luc waves his hand, and she opens the bottle, pouring two flutes, the bubbles so small they look like flecks of diamond in the glass.

Addie sips, savors the way it sparkles on her tongue.

She scans the crowd, filled with the kinds of faces you would recognize, even though you’re not sure where you’ve seen them. Luc points them out to her, those senators, and actors, authors and critics, and she wonders if any of them have sold their soul. If any of them are about to.

Addie looks down into her glass, the bubbles still rising smoothly to the surface, and when she speaks, the words are barely more than a whisper, the sound stolen by the chattering crowd. But she knows he is listening, knows he can hear her.

“Let him go, Luc.”

His mouth tightens a fraction. “Adeline,” he warns.

“You told me you would listen.”

“Fine.” He leans back against the rail and spreads his arms. “Tell me. What do you see in him, this latest human lover?”

Henry Strauss is thoughtful, and kind, she wants to say. He is clever, and bright, gentle, and warm.

He is everything you’re not,

But Addie knows she must tread lightly.

“What do I see in him?” she says. “I see myself. Not who I am now, perhaps, but who I was, the night you came to rescue me.”

Luc scowls. “Henry Strauss wanted to die. You wanted to live. You are nothing alike.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?”

Addie shakes her head. “You see only flaws and faults, weaknesses to be exploited. But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much. And maybe—maybe I am no longer one of them.”

The words tear through her as she says them, because she knows this much is true. For better or worse.

“But I remember,” she presses on. “I remember what it’s like, and Henry is—”

“Lost.”

“He is searching,” she counters. “And he will find his way, if you let him.”

“If I let him,” says Luc, “he would have leapt off a roof.”

“You don’t know that,” she says. “You never will, because you intervened.”

“I am in the business of souls, Adeline, not second chances.”

“And I am begging you to let him go. You will not give me mine, so give me his, instead.”

Luc exhales, and sweeps his hand across the roof. “Choose someone,” he says.

“What?”

He turns her to face the crowd. “Choose a soul to take his place. Pick a stranger. Damn one of them instead.” His voice is low and smooth and certain. “There is always a cost,” he says gently. “A price must be paid. Henry Strauss bartered his own soul. Would you sell someone else’s to have it back?”

Addie stares out at the crowded roof, the faces she recognizes and the ones she doesn’t. Young and old, together and alone.

Are any innocent?

Are any cruel?

Addie does not know if she can do it—until her hand drifts up. Until she points to a man in the crowd, heart plunging through her stomach as she waits for Luc to let go of her, to step forward, and claim his price.

But Luc doesn’t move.

He only laughs.

“My Adeline,” he says, kissing her hair. “You have changed more than you think.”

She feels dizzy and ill as she twists to face him.

“No more games,” she says.

“All right,” he says, just before he pulls her into the dark.

The roof drops away, and the void surges up around her, swallowing everything but a starless sky, an infinite, violent black. And when it withdraws again an instant later, the world is silent, and the city is gone, and she is alone in the woods.

XIV

New Orleans, Louisiana

May 1, 1984

This is how it ends.

With candles burning on the sill, unsteady light casting long shadows across the bed. With the blackest part of night stretching beyond the open window, and the first blush of summer on the air, and Addie in Luc’s arms, the darkness draped around her like a sheet.

And this, she thinks, is home.

This, perhaps, is love.

And that is the worst part. She has finally forgotten something. Only it is the wrong thing. It is the one thing she was supposed to remember. That the man in the bed is not a man. That the life is not a life. That there are games, and battles, but in the end, it is all a kind of war.

A touch like teeth along her jaw.

The darkness whispering against her skin. “My Adeline.”

“I am not yours,” she says, but his mouth only smiles against her throat.

“And yet,” he says, “we are together. We belong together.”

You belong to me.

“Do you love me?” she asks.

His fingers trail along her hips. “You know I do.”

“Then let me go.”

“I am not holding you here.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” she says, rising on one arm. “Set me free.”

He draws back, just enough to meet her gaze. “I cannot break the deal.” His head falls, black curls brushing her cheek. “But perhaps,” he whispers against her collar, “I could bend it.”

Addie’s heart thuds inside her chest.

“Perhaps I could change the terms.”

She holds her breath as Luc’s words play along her skin.

“I can make it better,” he murmurs. “All you have to do is surrender.”

The word is a cold shock.

A curtain falling on a play: the lovely sets, the stagings, the trained actors all vanish behind the darkened cloth.

Surrender.

An order whispered in the dark.

A warning given to a broken man.

A demand made over and over and over for years—until it stopped. How long ago did he stop asking? But of course, she knows—it was when his method changed, when his temper toward her softened.

And she is a fool. She is a fool for thinking it meant peace instead of war.

Surrender.

“What is it?” he asks, feigning confusion, until she throws the word back in his face.

“Surrender?” she snarls.

“It is just a word,” he says. But he taught her the power of a word. A word is everything, and his word is a serpent, a coiled trick, a curse.

“It is the nature of things,” he says.

“In order to change the deal,” he says.

But Addie pulls back, pulls away, pulls free. “And I am meant to trust you? To give in, and believe that you will give me back?”

So many years, so many different ways of asking the same thing.

Do you yield?

“You must think me an idiot, Luc.” Her face burns with anger. “I’m amazed you had the patience. But then, you’ve always been fond of the chase.”

His green eyes narrow in the dark. “Adeline.”

“Don’t you dare say my name.” She is on her feet now, singing with rage. “I knew you were a monster, Luc. I saw it often enough. And yet, I still thought—somehow I thought—after all this time—but of course, it wasn’t love, was it? It wasn’t even kindness. It was just another game.”

There is an instant when she thinks she might be wrong.

A fraction of a moment when Luc looks wounded and confused, and she wonders if he meant only what he said, if, if—

But then, it is over.

The hurt falls from his face and it passes into shadow, the effect as smooth as a cloud across the sun. A grim smile plays across his lips.

“And what a tiresome game it’s been.”

She knows she drew it out, but the truth still crashes through her.

If she was cracked before, now she is breaking.

“You cannot fault me for trying a different hand.”

“I fault you for everything.”

Luc rises, the darkness drawing into silk around him. “I have given you everything.”

“None of it was real!”

She will not cry.

She will not give him the satisfaction of seeing her suffer.

She will not give him anything, ever again.

This is how the fight begins.

Or rather, this is how it ends.

Most fights, after all, are not the work of an instant. They build over days, or weeks, each side gathering their kindling, stoking their flames.

But this is a fight forged over centuries.

As old and inevitable as the turning of the world, the passing of an era, the collision of a girl and the dark.

She should have known it would happen.

Perhaps she did.

But to this day, Addie doesn’t know how the fire started. If it was the candles she swept from the table, or the lamp she tore from the wall, if it was the lights Luc shattered, or if it was simply a last act of spite.

She knows she doesn’t have the strength to ruin anything, and yet she did. They did. Perhaps he let her start the fire. Perhaps he simply let it burn.

It does not matter, in the end.

Addie stands on Bourbon Street and watches the house go up in flames, and by the time the firefighters come, there is nothing left to save. It is only ashes.

Another life gone up in smoke.

Addie has nothing, not even the key in her pocket. It was there, but when she reaches for it, it is gone. Her hand goes to the wooden ring still at her throat.

She tears it free, hurls the band into the smoking ruins of her home, and walks away.

XV

New York City

July 30, 2014

Addie is surrounded by trees.

The mossy scent of summer in the woods.

Fear winds through her, the sudden, horrible certainty that Luc has broken both rules instead of one, that he has dragged her through the dark, stolen her away from New York, abandoned her somewhere far, far from home.

But then her eyes adjust, and she turns, and sees the skyline rising above the trees, and realizes she must be in Central Park.

Relief sweeps through her.

And then Luc’s voice drifts through the dark.

“Adeline, Adeline…” he says, and she cannot tell what is an echo, and what is simply him, unbound by flesh and bone and mortal shapes.

“You promised,” she calls.

“Did I?”

Luc steps out of the dark, the way he did that night, drawing together from smoke and shadow. A storm, bottled into skin.

Am I the devil or the darkness? he asked her once. Am I a monster or a god?

He is no longer dressed in the sleek black suit, but as he was when she first summoned him, a stranger in trousers, a pale tunic open at his throat, his black hair curling against his temples.

The dream conjured so many years ago.

But one thing has changed. There is no triumph in his eyes. The color has gone out of them, so pale they’re almost gray. And though she’s never seen the shade before, she guesses it is sadness.

“I will give you what you want,” he says. “If you will do one thing.”

“What?” she asks.

Luc holds out his hand.

“Dance with me,” he says.

There is longing in his voice, and loss, and she thinks, perhaps, it is the end, of this, of them. A game finally played out. A war with no winners.

And so she agrees to dance.

There is no music, but it does not matter.

When she takes his hand, she hears the melody, soft and soothing in her head. Not a song, exactly, but the sound of the woods in summer, the steady hush of the wind through the fields. And as he pulls her close, she hears a violin, low and mournful, along the Seine. His hand slides through hers, and there is the steady murmur of the seaside. The symphony soaring through Munich. Addie leans her head against his shoulder, and hears the rain falling in Villon, the brass band ringing in an L.A. lounge, and the ripple of a saxophone through the open windows on Bourbon.

The dancing stops.

The music fades.

A tear slides down her cheek. “All you had to do was set me free.”

Luc sighs, and lifts her chin. “I could not.”

“Because of the deal.”

“Because you are mine.”

Addie twists free. “I was never yours, Luc,” she says, turning away. “Not in the woods that night. And not when you took me to bed. You were the one who said it was just a game.”

“I lied.” The words, a knife. “You loved me,” he says. “And I loved you.”

“And yet,” she says, “you didn’t come to find me until I’d found someone else.”

She turns back toward him, expecting to see those eyes yellowing with envy. But instead, they have gone a weedy, arrogant green, mirrored by the expression on his face, the faint lift of a single brow, the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, Adeline,” he says. “You think you found each other?”

The words are a missed step.

A sudden drop.

“Do you truly think that I would let that happen?”

The ground tilts beneath her feet.

“That for all the deals I do, such a thing would ever pass beneath my notice?”

Addie squeezes her eyes shut, and she is lying beside Henry, their fingers laced together in the grass. She is looking up at the night sky. She is laughing at the idea that Luc finally made a mistake.

“You must have thought yourselves so clever,” he is saying now. “Star-crossed lovers, brought together by chance. What are the odds that you would meet, that you would both be bound to me, both have sold your souls for something only the other could provide? When the truth is so much easier than that—I put Henry in your path. I gave him to you, wrapped and ribboned like a gift.”

“Why?” she asks, throat closing around the word. “Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s what you wanted. You were so set upon your need for love, you could not see beyond it. I gave you this, I gave you him, so you could see that love was not worth the space you held for it. The space you kept from me.”

“But it was worth it. It is.”

He reaches out to brush her cheek. “It won’t be, when he’s gone.”

Addie pulls away. From his words, his touch. “This is cruel, Luc. Even for you.”

“No,” he snarls. “Cruelty would be ten years instead of one. Cruelty would be to let you have a lifetime with him, and have to suffer more for losing.”

“I would choose it anyway!” She shakes her head. “You never intended to let him live, did you?”

Luc inclines his head. “A deal is a deal, Adeline. And deals are binding.”

“That you would do all this to torment me—”

“No,” he snaps. “I did it to show you. To make you understand. You put them on such a pedestal, but humans are brief and pale and so is their love. It is shallow, it does not last. You long for human love, but you are not human, Adeline. You haven’t been for centuries. You have no place with them. You belong with me.”

Addie recoils, anger hardening to ice inside her.

“What a hard lesson it must be for you,” she says. “That you can’t have everything you want.”

“Want?” he sneers. “Want is for children. If this were want, I would be rid of you by now. I would have forgotten you centuries ago,” he says, a bitter loathing in his voice. “This is need. And need is painful but patient. Do you hear me, Adeline? I need you. As you need me. I love you, as you love me.”

She hears the pain in his voice.

Perhaps that is why she wants to hurt him worse.

He taught her well, to find the weakness in the armor.

“But that’s the thing, Luc,” she says, “I don’t love you at all.”

The words are soft, steady, and yet they rumble through the dark. The trees rustle, and the shadows thicken, and Luc’s eyes burn a shade she’s never seen before. A venomous color. And for the first time in centuries, she is afraid.

“Does he mean so much to you?” he asks, voice flat and hard as river stones. “Then go. Spend time with your human love. Bury him, and mourn him, and plant a tree over his grave.” His edges begin to blur into the dark. “I will still be here,” he says. “And so will you.”

Luc turns away, and is gone.

Addie sinks to her knees in the grass.

She stays there until the first threads of light seep into the sky, and then, at last, she forces herself up again, walks to the subway in a fog, Luc’s words looping through her head.

You are not human, Adeline.

You thought you found each other?

You must have thought yourselves so clever.

Spend time with your love.

I will still be here.

And so will you.

The sun is rising by the time she gets to Brooklyn.

She stops to pick up breakfast, a concession, an apology, for staying away all night. And that is when she sees the paper stacked against the newsstand. That is when she sees the date stamped in the upper corner.

August 6, 2014.

She left the apartment on the 30th of July.

Spend time with your love, he said.

But Luc has taken it. He didn’t just steal a night. He took an entire week. Seven precious days, erased from her life … and Henry’s.

Addie runs.

She stumbles through the door, and up the stairs, turns out her purse, but the key is gone, and she pounds on the door, terror surging through her that the world has changed, that Luc has somehow rewritten more than time, somehow taken more, taken everything.

But then the lock slides, and the door falls open, and there is Henry, exhausted, disheveled, and she knows, by the look in his eyes, that he did not expect her to come back. That at some point, between the first morning and the next, and the next, and the next, he thought she was gone.

Addie throws her arms around him now.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and it is not just for the stolen week.

It is for the deal, the curse, the fact it is her fault.

“I’m sorry,” she says, over and over, and Henry doesn’t shout, doesn’t rage, doesn’t even say I told you so. He simply holds her tight, and says, “Enough,” says, “Promise me,” says, “Stay.”

And none of them are questions, but she knows he is asking, pleading with her to let it go, to stop fighting, stop trying to change their fates, and just be with him until the end.

And Addie cannot bear the thought of giving up, of giving in, of going down without a fight.

But Henry is breaking, and it is her fault, and so, in the end, she agrees.

XVI

New York City

August 2014

These are the happiest days of Henry’s life.

It is an odd thing to say, he knows.

But there is a strange freedom to it, a peculiar comfort in the knowing. The end is rushing up to meet him, and yet, he does not feel like he is falling toward it.

He knows he should be scared.

Every day he braces for the restless terror, waits for the storm clouds to roll in, expects the inevitable panic to climb inside his chest, pry him apart.

But for the first time in months, in years, in as long as he can remember, he is not afraid. He is worried about his friends, of course, about the bookstore, and the cat. But beyond the low hum of concern is only a strange calm, a steadiness, and the incredible relief that he found Addie, that he got to know her, to love her, to have her here beside him.

He is happy.

He is ready.

He is not afraid.

That is what he tells himself.

He is not afraid.

They decide to go upstate.

To get out of the city, away from the stagnant summer heat.

To see the stars.

He rents a car, and they drive north, and he realizes, halfway up the Hudson, that Addie has never met his family, and then he realizes, with a sudden, sinking weight, that he is not supposed to go home until Rosh Hashanah, and that he will be gone by then. That if he does not take this exit, he will never get a chance to say good-bye.

And then, the clouds begin to roll in, and fear tries to climb inside his chest, because he doesn’t know what he would say, he doesn’t know what good it would do.

And then he is past the exit, then it is too late, and he can breathe again, and Addie is pointing to a sign for fresh fruit, and they pull off the freeway and buy peaches from the stand, and sandwiches from the market, and drive an hour north to a state park, where the sun is hot but the shade beneath the trees is cool, and they spend the day wandering the woodland paths, and when night falls they make a picnic on the roof of the rented car, and stretch out between the wild, weedy grass and the stars.

So many, the night doesn’t seem that dark.

And he is still happy.

And he can still breathe.

They have no tent, but it is too hot for covers anyway.

They lie on a blanket in the grass, and look up at the ghost of the Milky Way, and he thinks of the Artifact on the High Line, the exhibit of the sky, how close the stars felt then, and now, how far away.

“If you could do it again,” he says, “would you still make the deal?”

And Addie says yes.

It has been a hard and lonely life, she says, and a wonderful one, too. She has lived through wars, and fought in them, witnessed revolution and rebirth. She has left her mark on a thousand works of art, like a thumbprint in the bottom of a drying bowl. She has seen marvels, and gone mad, has danced in snowbanks and frozen to death along the Seine. She fell in love with the darkness many times, fell in love with a human once.

And she is tired. Unspeakably tired.

But there is no question she has lived.

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”

And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it.

Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow?

Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain?

And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”

They fall asleep beneath the stars, and when they wake up in the morning, the heat has leaked away, the air is cool, the first whispers of another season, the first one he won’t see, waiting in the distance.

And still, he tells himself, he is not afraid.

And then the weeks turn into days.

There are some good-byes he has to make.

He meets Bea and Robbie at the Merchant one night. Addie sits across the bar, sipping a soda and giving him space. He wants her there, he needs her there, a silent anchor in the storm. But they both know that if she were at the table with him, Bea and Robbie might forget, and he needs them to remember.

And for a little while, everything is wonderfully, painfully normal.

Bea talks about her latest thesis proposal, and apparently ninth time’s the charm, because it’s been approved, and Robbie talks about the show’s premiere next week, and Henry does not tell him that he snuck into a dress rehearsal yesterday, that he and Addie lurked in the last row of seats, slouched low so he could watch Robbie on the stage, brilliant, and beautiful, and in his element, lounging on his throne with Bowie’s flare, and a devil’s grin, and a magic all his own.

And at last, Henry lies, and tells them he is going out of town.

Upstate, to see his parents. No, it is not time, he says, but he has cousins visiting, his mother asked. Just for the weekend, he says.

He asks Bea if she can work the store.

Asks Robbie if he will feed the cat.

And they say yes, as simple as that, because they do not know it is good-bye. Henry pays the tab, and Robbie jokes, and Bea complains about her undergrads, and Henry tells them he’ll call when he gets back.

And when he gets up to go, Bea kisses his cheek, and he pulls Robbie in for a hug, and Robbie says he better not miss his show, and Henry promises he won’t, and then they are going, they are gone.

And this, he decides, is what a good-bye should be.

Not a period, but an ellipsis, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up.

It is a door left open.

It is drifting off to sleep.

And he tells himself he is not afraid.

Tells himself it is okay, he is okay.

And just when he begins to doubt, Addie’s hand is there, soft and steady on his arm, leading him back home. And they climb into bed, and curl into each other against the storm.

And sometime in the middle of the night, he feels her get up, hears her padding down the hall.

But it is late, and he thinks nothing of it.

He rolls over, and goes back to sleep, and when he wakes again it is still dark, and she is back beside him in the bed.

And the watch on the table twitches one step closer to midnight.

XVII

New York City

September 4, 2014

It is such an ordinary day.

They stay in bed, curled together in the nest of sheets, head to head and hands trailing over arms, along cheeks, fingers memorizing skin. He whispers her name, over and over, as if she can save the sound, bottle it up to use when he is gone.

Addie, Addie, Addie.

And despite it all, Henry is happy.

Or at least, he tells himself he is happy, tells himself he is ready, tells himself he isn’t afraid. And he tells himself that if they just stay here, in the bed, the day will last. If he holds his breath, he can keep the seconds from moving forward, pin the minutes between their tangled fingers.

It is an unspoken plea but Addie seems to sense it, because she makes no motion to get up. Instead, she stays with him in bed, and tells him stories.

Not of anniversaries—they have run out of July 29ths—but of Septembers and Mays, of quiet days, the kind no one else would remember. She tells him of fairy pools on the Isle of Skye, and the Northern Lights in Iceland, of swimming in a lake so clear she could see the bottom ten meters down, in Portugal—or was it Spain?

These are the only stories he will never write down.

It is his own failing; he cannot bring himself to unfold, to let go of Addie’s hands and climb out of the bed, and grab the latest notebook from the shelf—there are six of them now, the last only half-filled, and he realizes it will stay that way, those last blank pages, his cramped cursive like a wall, a false end to an ongoing story, and his heart skips a little, a tiny stutter of panic, but he can’t let it start, knows it will tear through him, the way a shiver turns a momentary chill into teeth-chattering cold, and he cannot lose his hold, not yet, not yet.

Not yet.

So Addie talks, and he listens, letting the stories slide like fingers through his hair. And every time the panic tries to fight its way to the surface, he fights it back, holds his breath and tells himself he is fine, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t get up. He cannot, because if he does, it will break the spell, and time will race forward and it will be over too fast.

It is a silly thing, he knows, a strange surge of superstition, but the fear is there now, real now, and the bed is safe, and Addie is steady, and he is so glad she is here, so glad for every minute since they met.

Sometime in the afternoon, he is suddenly hungry. Famished.

He shouldn’t be. It feels frivolous, and wrong, inconsequential now, but the hunger is swift and deep, and with its arrival, the clock begins to tick.

He can’t hold time at bay.

It is racing forward now, rushing away.

And Addie looks at him as if she can read his mind, see the storm building in his head. But she is sunshine. She is clear skies.

She draws him out of bed, and into the kitchen, and Henry sits on a stool and listens as she makes an omelet and tells him about the first time she flew a plane, heard a song on the radio, saw a moving picture.

This is the last gift she can give him, these moments he will never have.

And this is the last gift he can give her, the listening.

And he wishes they could climb back into bed with Book, but they both know there’s no going back. And now that he’s up, he cannot bear the stillness. He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be.

That time always ends a second before you’re ready.

That life is the minutes you want minus one.

And so they get dressed, and they go out, and walk, wearing circles into the block as the panic begins to win. It is a hand pressing against weakened glass, a steady pressure on spreading cracks, but Addie is there, her fingers laced through his.

“Do you know how you live three hundred years?” she says.

And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.”

And eventually his legs are tired, and the restlessness recedes, doesn’t vanish but dulls to a manageable degree, and they go to the Merchant, and order food they do not eat, and order beers they do not drink because he cannot bear to dull these last few hours, as frightening as it is to face them sober.

And he makes some comment about his last meal, laughs at the morbid thought of it, and Addie’s smile falters, for just a second, and then he is apologizing, he is sorry, and she is folding herself around him, and the panic has its claws in him.

The storm is brewing in his head, churning the sky on the horizon, but he doesn’t fight it.

He lets it come.

Only when it starts raining does he realize the storm is real.

He tips his head back, and feels the drip of rain on his cheeks, and thinks of the night they went to the Fourth Rail, the downpour that caught them breathless when they reached the street. He thinks of that before he thinks of the rooftop, and that is something.

He feels so far from the Henry who climbed up there a year ago—or perhaps he’s not that far at all. It is only a matter of steps, after all, from the street to the edge.

But what he would give to go back down.

God, what he would give for just another day.

The sun is gone now, the light going thin, and he will never see it again, and the fear crashes into him, sudden and traitorous. It is a gust of wind, cutting through a too-still scene. He fights it back, not yet, not yet, not yet, and Addie squeezes his hand, so he won’t blow away.

“Stay with me,” she says, and he answers, “I’m here.”

His fingers tighten on hers.

He doesn’t have to ask, she doesn’t have to answer.

There is an unspoken agreement that she will be there, with him, until the very end.

That this time, he won’t be alone.

And he is okay.

It is okay.

It will be okay.

XVIII

It is almost time, and they are on the roof.

The same roof he nearly stepped off a year before, the same one where he stood with the devil and made his deal. It is a full-circle moment, and he doesn’t know if it has to be here, if he has to be here, but it feels right.

Addie’s hand is linked in his, and that feels right, too.

A grounding force against a rising storm.

There is still a little time, the hand on the watch a fraction of a fraction of a fraction from midnight, and he can hear Bea’s voice in his head.

Only you would arrive early to your own death.

And Henry smiles, despite himself, and wishes he had said more to Bea, and Robbie, but the simple fact is he didn’t trust himself. He has made his good-byes, though they will not know it until he’s gone, and he is sorry for that, for them, for whatever pain he might cause. He is glad they have each other.

Addie’s hand tightens in his.

It is almost time, and he wonders what it will feel like, to lose a soul.

If it will be like a heart attack, sudden and violent, or as easy as falling asleep. Death takes so many forms. Perhaps this does, too. Will the darkness appear and reach a hand into his chest, and pull his soul out between his ribs like a magic trick? Or will some force compel him to finish what he started? To walk to the edge of the roof, and step off? Will he be found on the street below, as if he’d jumped?

Or will they find him up here, on the roof?

He does not know.

He does not need to know.

He is ready.

He is not ready.

He wasn’t ready last year on the roof, when the stranger held out his hand. He wasn’t ready then, and he isn’t ready now, and he is beginning to suspect no one is ever ready, not when the moment comes, not when the darkness reaches out to claim its prize.

Music streams, thin and tinny, through a neighbor’s open window, and Henry pulls his thoughts back from death, and the edge of the roof, to the girl with her hand in his, the one telling him to dance with her.

He pulls her close, and she smells of summer, she smells of time, she smells of home.

“I’m here,” she says.

Addie has promised to stay with him until the end.

The end. The end. The end.

It echoes through his head like the striking of a clock, but it’s not time, he still has time, though it is vanishing so fast.

They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time—angry, lonely, content—but he’s never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid.

But he is not alone.

It is beginning to rain again, the air gone damp with the metallic scent of storms in the city, and Henry doesn’t care, thinks there is something to be said for symmetry.

They turn in a slow circle on the roof.

He has not slept well in days, and it has made his legs heavy, his mind too slow, the minutes speeding up around him, and he wishes the music were louder, wishes the sky were lighter, wishes he had just a little more time.

No one is ever ready to die.

Even when they think they want to.

No one is ready.

He isn’t ready.

But it is time.

It is time.

Addie is saying something, but the watch has stopped moving, it hangs weightless on him now, and it is time, and he can feel himself slipping, can feel the edges of his mind going soft, the night heavy, and any moment the stranger will step out of the dark.

Addie is guiding his face to hers, she is saying something, and he doesn’t want to listen, he’s afraid it’s a good-bye, he just wants to hold on to this moment, to make it last, to will it still, turn the film into a freeze frame, let that be the end, not darkness, not nothing, just a permanent moment. A memory, trapped in amber, in glass, in time.

But she is still speaking.

“You promised you would listen,” she says, “you promised you would write it down.”

He doesn’t understand. The journals are on the shelf. He has written her story—every part.

“I did,” he says. “I did.”

But Addie is shaking her head.

“Henry,” she says. “I haven’t told you how it ends.”

XIX

New York City

September 1, 2014

(3 nights until the end)

Some decisions happen all at once.

And others build up over time.

A girl makes a deal with the darkness, after years of dreaming.

A girl falls in love with a boy in a moment, and resolves to set him free.

Addie doesn’t know exactly when she decided.

Perhaps she has known since the night Luc walked back into their lives.

Or perhaps she has known since the night he wrote her name.

Or perhaps she has known since he said those words:

I remember you.

She isn’t sure.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that, three nights before the end, Addie slips out of bed. Henry rolls over in his sleep, wakes enough to hear her padding down the hall, but not enough to hear her put on her shoes, or slip out into the dark.

It is almost two—that time between very late, and very early—and even Brooklyn has quieted to a murmur as she walks the two blocks to the Merchant bar. It is an hour until closing, the crowd thinned to a few determined drinkers.

Addie takes a stool at the bar, and orders a shot of tequila. She’s never been one for hard liquor, but she downs the drink in one, feels the warmth settle in her chest as she reaches into her pocket and finds the ring.

Her fingers curl around the wooden band.

She draws it out, balances the ring upright on the counter.

She spins it like a coin, but there are no heads or tails, no yes or no, no choice beyond the one she’s already made. She decides that when it settles, she will put it on. When it falls—but as it begins to wobble and tip, a hand comes down on top of it, pressing it flat against the bar.

The hand is smooth and strong, the fingers long, the details just as she once drew them. “Shouldn’t you be with your love?”

There is no humor in Luc’s eyes. They are flat, and dark.

“He’s sleeping,” she says, “and I cannot.” Luc’s hand has withdrawn, and Addie looks at the pale circle of the ring still on the counter.

“Adeline,” he says, stroking her hair. “It will hurt. And it will pass. All things do.”

“Except for us,” she murmurs. And then she adds, as if to herself, “I am glad it was only a year.”

Luc sinks onto the stool beside her. “And how was it, your human love? Was it everything you dreamed of?”

“No,” she says, and it is the truth.

It was messy. It was hard. It was wonderful, and strange, and frightening, and fragile—so fragile it hurt—and it was worth every single moment. She does not tell him any of that. Instead, she lets the “no” hang in the air between them, heavy with the weight of Luc’s assumption. His eyes, such a smug shade of green.

“But Henry doesn’t deserve to die to prove your point.”

The arrogance flickers, cut through with anger.

“A deal is a deal,” he says. “It cannot be broken.”

“And yet, you told me once that a deal could be bent, the terms rewritten. Did you mean it? Or was it just part of the ploy to get me to surrender?”

Luc’s expression darkens. “There was no ploy, Adeline. But if you think I’ll change the terms of his—”

Addie shakes her head. “I’m not talking about Henry’s deal,” she says. “I’m talking about mine.” She has practiced the words, but they still tumble awkwardly off her tongue. “I’m not asking for your mercy, and I know you have no charity. So I’m offering a trade. Let Henry go. Let him live. Let him remember me, and—”

“You would surrender your soul?” There is a shadow in his gaze when he says it, a hesitation in the words, less want than worry, and she knows then, she has him.

“No,” she says. “But only because you do not want it.” And before he can protest, she continues, “You want me.”

Luc says nothing, but his eyes brighten, his interest piqued.

“You were right,” she says. “I am not one of them. Not anymore. And I am tired of losing. Tired of mourning everything I ever try to love.” She reaches out to touch Luc’s cheek. “But I won’t lose you. And you won’t lose me. So yes.” She looks straight into his eyes. “Do this, and I will be yours, as long as you want me by your side.”

He seems to hold his breath, but she’s the one who cannot breathe. The world tips, falters, threatening to fall.

And then, at last, Luc smiles, his green eyes emerald with victory.

“I accept.”

She lets herself fold, bows her head against his chest in relief. And then his fingers come up beneath her chin, tipping her face to his, and he kisses her the way he did the night they met, swift, and deep, and hungry, and Addie feels his teeth skate across her bottom lip, the taste of copper blossom on her tongue.

And she knows that it is done.

XX

New York City

September 4, 2014

“No,” says Henry, the word half-swallowed by the storm.

The rain falls hard and fast on the roof. On them.

The clock has stopped, the hand thrown up in surrender. But he is still there.

“You can’t do this,” he says, head spinning. “I won’t let you.”

Addie flashes him a pitying look, because of course, he cannot stop her.

No one has ever been able to.

Estele used to say she was stubborn as a stone.

But even stones wear away to nothing.

And she has not.

“You can’t do this,” he says again, and she says, “It is already done,” and Henry feels dizzy, feels sick, feels the ground sway beneath him.

“Why?” he pleads. “Why would you do it?”

“Think of it as a thank-you,” she says, “for seeing me. For showing me what it’s like to be seen. To be loved. Now you get a second chance. But you have to let them see you as you are. You have to find people who see you.”

It is wrong.

It is all wrong.

“You don’t love him.”

A sad smile crosses her face.

“I’ve had my share of love,” she says, and it is time, it must be time, because his vision is blurring, the edges going black.

“Listen to me.” Her voice is urgent now. “Life can feel very long sometimes, but in the end, it goes so fast.” Her eyes are glassy with tears, but she is smiling. “You better live a good life, Henry Strauss.”

She begins to pull away, but his grip tightens. “No.”

She sighs, fingers threading through his hair. “You’ve given me so much, Henry. But I need you to do one more thing.” Her forehead presses against his. “I need you to remember.”

And he can feel his hold slipping as darkness washes across his vision, blotting out the skyline and the roof and the girl folding herself against him.

“Promise me,” she says, and her face is beginning to smudge, the swipe of her lips, brown curls in a heart-shaped face, two wide eyes, seven freckles like stars.

“Promise,” she whispers, and he is just lifting his hands, to hold her against him, to promise, but by the time his arms close around her, she is gone.

And he is falling.