Chapter 6
Damon
Iwake with lavender in my nose. For several seconds, I lie still with my eyes closed, trying to decide whether the smell belongs to the dream or the room.
My bedroom smells like detergent, cold coffee, and the cedar candle my mother bought me last Christmas.
There’s no reason for lavender to be anywhere near me.
Still, I can smell it.
I can feel sunlight against my face, too, warm and soft, and rain taps steadily against the window.
A woman laughs somewhere close.
It’s not Ophelia’s voice. This laugh is brighter, untouched by centuries underground. I see the edge of a pale blue skirt moving through tall purple flowers, a hand reaching back toward me. Yet whoever’s memory this belongs to, isn’t standing where I am. I’m looking through someone else’s eyes.
The woman turns.
Before I can see her face, the field drops out from under me.
I come awake with my hand clenched in the sheets and my heart trying to punch its way through my ribs.
The room is dark and rain ticks against the glass. My fingernails are packed with dirt. I stare at them until the pressure in my chest settles enough to breathe.
“No,” I whisper.
I wipe my fingers against the sheet, but the dirt only smears instead of disappearing.
That’s real, then.
Fantastic.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit there for a moment, elbows braced on my thighs. The gold line beneath my wrist isn’t visible, but I can feel it now, if I pay attention. Similar to a faint pull, like knowing someone is standing behind you before they make a sound.
Ophelia.
The thought comes with a strange certainty.
She’s awake.
I don’t know how I know that. I don’t want to know how I know that. Maeve said the bond might make us aware of each other, which had sounded vague and cultish at the time. It still sounds vague and cultish. It also happens to be true.
I pull on a shirt, and follow the pull down the hall.
Ophelia stands at the living room window with one hand resting against the glass. She’s still wearing my shirt, the hem brushing her thighs, her bare feet planted on the hardwood. She doesn’t turn when I enter.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” I state.
“So are you.”
“Good. We’ve both failed.”
Her head tilts slightly. “You smell different.”
I stop behind the couch. “That’s not ominous at all.”
“Like flowers.”
My hand tightens around the back cushion.
“What kind?”
She draws a fingertip through the condensation on the glass, leaving a crooked line behind. “Lavender.”
I look at the back of her head, at her dark hair falling over my shirt, and the dream returns in pieces. Sunlight, blue fabric, and a hand reaching through flowers.
“Do you remember lavender?” I ask.
Her finger stills. “I remember liking it.”
“Anything else?”
She closes her eyes. The crease between her brows deepens, then smooths again. “A garden, with music from an open window, and someone telling me I’d planted too much.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer is quiet, but her hand leaves the glass. I move closer to the window, though not too close to her.
“I dreamed about it.”
Ophelia looks at me then. “Lavender?”
“About you. You were in a field.”
Her expression goes still. “Was I dead?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What did I look like?”
I hesitate.
“Damon.”
“I didn’t see your face.”
The line of her mouth tightens.
“There was a blue dress,” I add. “You were laughing.”
She looks back outside. “I don’t remember how to laugh.”
I almost tell her she did it in the truck. Barely, but it was a laugh. Instead, I lean one shoulder against the wall, and watch the rain slide down the glass beside her reflection.
“You’ll remember.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
Her pale eyes meet mine in the window.
I shrug. “Sounded better than saying you’re screwed.”
The corner of her mouth shifts and the pull beneath my wrist warms. I push away from the wall before that can mean anything.
“You hungry?”
“Yes.”
That gets my attention.
“For food?”
Her eyes narrow. “Yes, Damon. But I don’t know what food I can eat.”
“Neither do I. We’ll start with something difficult to weaponize.”
“What does that leave?”
“Mac and cheese.”
She follows me into the kitchen.
The stove startles her when the burner clicks and a blue flame blooms beneath the pot. She hides it well, only one shoulder jerking before she stills again. I pretend not to notice because she pretended not to be startled, and there’s something oddly polite about the arrangement.
“What is it doing?” she asks.
“It’s a small flame that will help boil the water.”
“Inside the house.”
“Yes, then we’ll add the noodles, and cheese powder, and turn off the flame.”
I fill the pot from the sink and set it over the burner, then pull a blue box from the pantry.
She lifts the box off the counter and holds it at arm’s length, reading the front like a legal document. “What is that? It says… macaroni.”
“Mac and cheese.”
She turns it over. Shakes it. Something slides inside. “There is no cheese.”
“There will be.”
“How?”
“I honestly couldn’t explain it if I tried.”
“You buy food in painted boxes.” She raises a brow.
“We do.”
“That seems wasteful.”
“It probably is,” I agree.
The water begins to rumble. Tiny bubbles gather at the bottom of the pot before racing upward. Ophelia takes a quick step back, and watches as I pour the noodles into the boiling water. They disappear beneath the surface with a splash.
She leans forward. “They’re drowning.”
“They’re cooking,” I inform her.
“Are you certain?”
“Pretty sure.”
She watches the pot like she’s expecting the noodles to fight back. While they cook, I pull butter and milk from the refrigerator.
Then, unexpectedly, the corner of her mouth lifts. It’s gone almost as soon as it appears. The noodles finish cooking. I drain them into the sink, stir in butter, milk, and the bright orange powder.
Ophelia watches the cheese dissolve.
“It wasn’t cheese before.”
“It still barely qualifies.”
She tilts her head. “You say that as though you’re proud of it.”
“I’ve had a rough twenty-four hours. Lower your expectations,” I say jokingly.
I scoop some into a bowl and hold it out to her. She accepts it with both hands, turning the bowl slightly.
“You don’t have to inspect it for poison.”
“I watched men poison women while smiling at them.”
My grip tightens on the wooden spoon. She takes a careful bite, and steam curls past her face as she chews.
“Well?”
She swallows. “It’s warm.”
“That’s what the fire did.”
I reach for my own bowl.
“Well?”
“It’s delicious,” she says around a mouthful of noodles.
“I guess I’m stuck buying more mac and cheese.”
She continues eating with complete concentration, like every bite is teaching her body something it forgot centuries ago. Her green-gray skin hasn’t changed. The cracks across her knuckles are still there. Her nails are clean now, but the beds beneath them remain dark.
“I don’t feel more alive.”
I set my bowl down.
“No?”
She presses her fingertips to the ceramic. “I can feel heat through this. I couldn’t at the cemetery.”
“That seems like something.”
“Perhaps.”
A drop of coffee darkens the counter beside her hand. She wipes it with her thumb, studying the stain against her skin.
“Do you need to work?” she asks randomly.
The question catches me off guard. “Eventually.”
“What will you tell them?”
“That I’m sick.”
“You’re not.”
“I spent last night in a cemetery watching men I knew, die. I brought home a woman who’s been dead for four hundred years, and now I’m sharing her dreams.” I pick up my mug. “I’m taking a personal day.”
She considers that. “Will they believe you?”
“I own the bar, so they have to believe me.”
The rain lightens after sunrise, fading from a hard rush to a soft patter against the windows. Gray light settles over the kitchen, and I keep glancing at Ophelia without meaning to.
Maeve told me to keep her out of direct sunlight.
Apparently, cloudy morning light doesn’t count, because she doesn’t burst into flames or turn to dust. She only looks washed out, more corpse than woman beneath the weak daylight.
I hate that thought as soon as it comes.
She catches me looking.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I respond quickly.
“You keep doing that,” Ophelia says with irritation.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at my face, and then pretending you weren’t.”
My jaw shifts. “I’m getting used to it.”
“To what?”
I could lie. Instead, I gesture toward her. “You.”
Her gaze drops. “That was rude.”
“Yeah,” I admit.
“At least you know.”
A soft melody slips from Ophelia’s mouth while she looks out the kitchen window. I don’t think she realizes she’s humming until I stop moving. It’s simple. A few notes rising, then falling. Nothing I recognize.
“What is that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she answers.
“You were humming.”
She nods.
“Do it again,” I tell her.
Her eyes narrow. “You order me often.”
“Please.” The word makes both of us pause.
Ophelia turns toward the window again and hums the melody, quieter this time. I close my eyes.
The kitchen disappears. A room opens behind my eyelids.
Tall windows, late afternoon light, and a woman sits at a piano with her back to me, dark hair pinned loosely at her neck.
Children’s voices drift in from somewhere beyond the room.
The woman stumbles over the same measure and laughs under her breath.
Someone behind me says, “Again.”
The memory snaps, and my hip hits the counter. The bowl slips from my hand and shatters on the floor. Ophelia is beside me before I can speak, and her cold fingers close around my wrist.
The gold thread flares.
“What did you see?” she asks.
I look down at her hand around mine. Her grip isn’t tight. She could break a bone without trying, but she’s touching me like I’m the fragile one.
“A piano.”
Her breath leaves slowly.
“You were playing,” I tell her.
“Was I good?”
“No.”
She stares at me, then she laughs. It’s small and rough from disuse, but it’s real.
For a second, the damage along her cheek doesn’t matter. Neither does the strange color of her skin, or the dirt still trapped in the seams of the floorboards from last night.
She’s just a woman, laughing in my kitchen, because I told her she was bad at piano.
The bond pulls warm beneath my wrist.
I should step away.
I don’t.
Her laughter fades when she notices how close we are. Her hand remains around my wrist, thumb resting above my pulse.
“You’re warm,” she says.
“You’re freezing.”
“I know.”
Her eyes move to my mouth, then away, so quickly I might’ve missed it if I weren’t already watching her.
The air shifts. Not magic, exactly, something simpler.
I clear my throat. “There’s broken glass.”
She releases me.
“Of course.”
We crouch at the same time, and nearly knock heads.
Ophelia leans back. “You’re clumsy.”
I gather the larger pieces while she watches my hands.
“Don’t touch the glass,” I warn her.
“I can heal.”
“Can you?”
She looks at her cracked fingers.
“I think I can.”
“Let’s not test that theory.”
Her gaze lifts to mine. I don’t know why the instruction feels intimate after everything else I’ve said today. Maybe because it isn’t about keeping myself safe from her. It’s about keeping her safe from something as stupid as a broken bowl.
She sits back on her heels.
I finish cleaning up.
When I stand, she’s still on the floor, looking at her hand.
“What?” I ask.
She turns it over.
The tip of her index finger is different.
At first, I think it’s the light. Then I crouch again, and take her wrist before remembering I should ask, but she doesn’t pull away.
The green-gray color has receded from the fingertip, replaced by pale, living skin.
Not much. Barely the width of my thumbnail.
But when I press my thumb against it, warmth answers.
Ophelia inhales.
“Did that hurt?”
“No.” Her voice shakes on the word.
I turn her hand palm up, and beneath the thin skin, something moves.
One beat.
Then another.
Her eyes widen.
“Damon.”
“I feel it.”
Her fingertip has a pulse: tiny, impossible… alive.
She stares at it until moisture gathers along her lower lashes. One tear slips free and crosses the undamaged side of her face.
I don’t tell her not to cry. I don’t tell her it’s going to be okay. I don’t know that it will be, and I can’t lie to her.
I keep hold of her hand. Her fingers curl around mine, careful and cold, except for that one living point pressed against my palm. Neither of us moves for a long time.