Chapter 19
Selene flew down the stairs, crossing the lake with urgency.
The water seemed to know, churning and bubbling to the same cadence as her stretto heart.
She stood in front of the mirror and took the seed from her pocket.
The outside was ridged. She brought it to her mouth, feeling each of the contours against the softness of her lips, like a kiss.
It had to be enough. She needed this one thing to feel like a victory. Just one good thing.
She couldn’t save Benson and she couldn’t heal Gigi and she couldn’t steal back the time she’d spent believing Madame Giroux was on her side.
But she could watch the blood well; she could press her thumb against the glass of the mirror.
The red soaked in. Selene quieted her heartbeat until it was barely more than a whisper, slowed her breathing adagissimo.
With her heart nothing more than the echo of an echo, the mirror gave way. She pushed through the cold, silvery film into the dark.
The light shocked her. There were great wings of golden feathers stretching above her. Like angels had descended to scare away the dark. Each of the feathers was perfectly articulated, the rachis bright white and the veins a softer light.
The ghost stood at their center, bathed in golden light.
He’d rolled up his sleeves so they tightened around his thick, corded biceps.
She wished she was a different kind of artist and could render this image permanent in paint on canvas, capture this unearthly beauty and show the whole world its wonders. His cold blue eyes met hers.
“Welcome back, Selene.” He banished the wings, replacing them with spinning orbs.
“Joseph? Ambrose?”
“No,” he said.
“Martin.”
“What have you brought me?”
Selene reached into her pocket. The darkness seemed to lean in, eager for her spoils. She dropped the seed into his open palm. “A seed is a heart that does not bleed. It is the center. It is the whole.”
The ghost’s eyes lit up with surprise. He held the seed up, examining all its edges. He brought it to his lips, just as she had. Then he tossed it into the air. The darkness shot out, struck like a serpent. The heart was there, and then gone.
“This I have asked and you have answered.”
Selene’s eyes filled with tears. This seed, the smallest thing, had worked. She wished all her troubles were so easily answered. She wished a seed was all she needed for those, too.
The ghost’s brow furrowed in confusion. She wanted him to ask her what was wrong. She wanted to say it, and then have him tell her everything would be okay. That Benson wasn’t her fault. That there were good things left in this world. But she knew what his next words would be.
“What is it you want?”
Selene breathed out slowly. There were so many things she wanted. But only one she knew she could fight for. “To win.”
“This I have asked and you have answered.” He took a moment, worrying the scars on his bicep with the tips of his fingers. “Are you all right?”
Selene was not. She might never be again. And yet she couldn’t stop, she couldn’t take the time to grieve. “Is that one of your questions?”
“You matter to me, Selene. Every time you leave, I hope for your sake you don’t come back.” His eyes were endless pools of woe, like all his promises were meant for breaking.
“I want to be here.”
“That’s the trouble.”
“My friend.” Her tongue stuck on the word.
She wasn’t talking about Victor. She wasn’t thinking about him.
He wasn’t her friend. He didn’t even remember her.
This was about Benson. “Today, he—” Selene tried to fit the right words together.
He wasn’t dead. He was here, but not. Hollowed out.
Gone. “He was too ambitious and paid the price.”
The ghost tilted his head, like he was trying to remember what that might mean. Something settled in his eyes and he exhaled slowly. Selene could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin, even at this distance. It rippled over her and made her shiver.
“Use the pain.”
Selene closed her eyes. She was running out of time. She sang for water, like Benson had. Let it slide into mist, tableaux of what had happened projected all around them, bought with blood instead of madness.
When she couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, she sang it all into ice. The images shattered against the ground.
The ghost picked up the end of her melody and matched her, grief for grief.
He knew the depth of her mourning. She wished she could share his burden, like he shared hers.
But he was all scars. His voice was warm and deep, musical to its core.
He could have sung off the face of the moon if he wanted to, like her father.
She joined him, their voices twining. The music was stronger when they were together.
They sang flames without heat, casting light into all the dark spaces.
Everything was bright and burning and blood and song.
She wished she could bottle this feeling and take it with her everywhere. She wished she knew how to get him out of the mirror and take him, too. He would take the world by storm with the power of his voice and the cold fire of his eyes.
“What happens now?” He bled a tiny horse that pranced around her. “Did you give them your storm?”
“No.” Selene reached for the horse. It yielded to her touch, the illusion bending around her. “The decisions have been made for L’Opéra du Magician.”
The ghost’s cold eyes glistened. “Is it you?”
“I find out tonight.” Selene should be upstairs putting on her dress and laughing away the nerves and sharing this moment with Gigi. But she wasn’t sure there was any laughter left between them. “In a few hours.”
“Then you should go.”
“What if I can’t come back?”
“I’ll know you’ve stepped into your dream.”
“I had to see you, to see if there was something more I could do.” Selene worried her lower lip. “I don’t know how to save you. I need more time.”
“Isn’t time a fickle thing? I’ve had a hundred years and all you need is one more day.” The ghost’s voice was rich with understanding. “I will not hold you to your promises.”
There was something about the way he said it, as if this had all happened before.
As if hapless girls had wandered into his prison for a blink and were then gone as quickly as they’d come.
A shiver of jealousy surged through her.
She didn’t want to be one of many. She wanted to be the one.
She shook her head, hard enough that she lost purchase for a second and had to breathe in slowly.
“I saw you,” she said. “There’s a painting in the opera house, the day they broke ground. You were there.”
The ghost’s face cracked into a smile. “Prince Renard had that ridiculous golden shovel. It bent as he pushed it into the earth.”
“You remember!”
“I remember a little more, every time I see you.”
Selene’s heart beat vivace. Could this be enough to get him out? “What were you doing there? Were you part of his retinue?”
“No. I was there, but I was not. Something in between.” He smiled. “A ghost then and a ghost now. I’ve always had a talent for slipping between the cracks.”
Selene was close to something. She was asking the wrong questions.
“How do I unravel the magic that binds you?”
Something rippled in his eyes—not quite a memory. He opened his mouth.
“You must—”
Shadows shot like arrows from the churning dark and wrapped around his mouth.
He fought against them, but something terrible happened with each brush of them against his skin.
His pupils dilated all the way dark and then moved back to that pale blue.
They were taking parts of him. Stripping away his hard-earned memories. Taking everything he had left.
Selene sang the light. She brought it all around him, her voice near enough to a scream that she felt that burn of pain. The shadows shuddered and faded into the beam.
The ghost fell to one knee, his chest heaving.
“I’m sorry.” She fell beside him, leaving more space between them than she wanted. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked up at her with vacant, searching eyes, his remarkable beauty matched with a hollowness.
He could have been carved from stone in that moment, a monument to some long ago with no remnant of today.
Beauty for the sake of beauty, but nothing else.
Selene was gutted. He’d forgotten her, after all.
He’d lost her to the dark. A tear cut like a knife down her cheek; she didn’t bother to wipe it away.
This was her fault. She couldn’t lose him, too.
“Selene?” Recognition lit in his eyes.
Her heart lost its tempo, erratic and unsure and far too hopeful.
She moved as close to him as she could allow. “I didn’t mean—”
He pressed his hands into his forehead. “It isn’t your fault.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Pain is inevitable.”
“What did it take from you?” Selene was afraid of the answer.
“Everything.” His voice was quiet. “Except you.”
I could never forget you, Selene.
He pushed himself to standing. Selene was still on the ground looking up at him.
A statue, indeed. His chest rose and fell raggedly.
Selene wished she could hold him, wanted to brush the dark strand of hair that fell onto his brow, damp with sweat and something darker.
Wanted to trace memories into his skin with her fingertips.
She wanted to protect him from the shadows that kept him prisoner in an impossible, living cage.
“You can’t save everyone.” The ghost seemed to sense the weight on her shoulders, the guilt and grief all bound up in her body.
He summoned a violin out of shadow and held up the instrument. He coaxed sound from the strings, even though they were merely wisps of smoke. “When a violin is played too hard and it breaks, is it the fault of the bow, the bout, or the hand that played?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Who killed your father?”
Oh, that question. That knife between her ribs. She’d hoped it would get easier to answer. But it was the same pain every time. Worse, even, with time to fester.
“I did,” Selene said.
“This I have asked and you have answered.”
The ghost looked apologetic. She took a deep breath, searching for something she could ask him that wouldn’t drive the dark to him.
“What happened when a mage lost themselves to magic before?”
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes, as if trying to pull the memory from the darkness.
“You don’t remember?”
His eyes opened, bright as a winter sky. “It never happened.”
“How can you be sure?”
“There’s no gap there. With some things, I just know.
Like the sky is blue and there’s salt in the sea.
I’ve seen a magician spent of their power.
I remember a bone-deep exhaustion and days of sleep and ravenous hunger.
But I don’t remember why I did the magic, or for whom.
It’s like knowing the names of things but not the faces. ”
It made sense why he wouldn’t remember the Asylum. It had been built after he’d been locked away. And perhaps L’Opéra du Magician and time had pushed mages to their edges. Tried to make them better. Opened them further to the magic.
It was an easy explanation.
Too easy.
Like the books in the library. None of them were older than she was.
There were new editions each year to be studied when it came to music and magic.
Selene had always assumed that was a mark of innovation.
But what if it was more sinister? What if the very nature of magic was being wrought from them?
In all her years of studying magic, Selene was sure of how magic happened.
It was music, and nothing else. She had never questioned if there might be anything more.
But there was.
She had been lied to.
What had Madame meant about bringing lambs to the slaughter?
Selene didn’t have time to worry about any of that. She could feel the press of the darkness, knew that the ghost’s request was coming. He could feel it, too, she was sure.
“What happens if it’s not me?”
His smile was half in shadow. “I thought you were relentless, Selene. Making doors out of nothing and finding your way into mirrors.”
The words held weight and resonance.
“Were there libraries, a hundred years ago?”
He laughed. “We had the greatest library in the world, just north of the city.”
“There’s nothing there now, save the Asylum.”
“That’s—” His eyes went dark—just for a moment. He focused on her, the intensity in his gaze growing. “Find me a song that sings itself.”
Selene pressed the pin into her skin, not ready to leave but too afraid of the consequences to stay. “Wish me luck?”
“You won’t need it,” he said.
She lost gravity, slipping out of his stasis and into the cold dark below the opera house. She thought she heard the echo of his voice from the glass. A word, a whisper.
Luck.
Real or not, Selene would wear it like armor. She’d let the sound of his voice bring the strength to face what came next.