Chapter 28
She stood on the stone platform, wishing she’d worn a cloak to stave off the chill.
This dress was not made for lake rides and cold stone.
It was made for hot stage lights and rooftop rendezvous.
It was made for some other girl. She ran the lock of Victor’s hair between her fingers, still tucked in her pocket.
It was soft against her skin. It smelled like the sea and pitch and burst pomegranates.
“Please work.”
She needed this. Selene put her hand against the mirror. Blood ran from her index finger.
The mirror gave way.
Relief cleansed her more than the swallowing dark. She kept her eyes closed, waiting for her body to orient.
The ghost’s smile was a rose coming into bloom. She felt it beneath her skin, rippling through her like an exquisite bass line.
“You found something,” he said, the relief visible in the slope of his shoulders and the widening of his smile.
“I did.” Selene reached into her pocket and took out the lock of hair. She presented it like the strange and precious thing it was.
His pale eyes drew up in surprise. “What is that?”
“My past,” Selene said, like she meant it. If she said it enough times, it would be true.
The ghost shook his head. He looked her up and down, as if to assess what else she had to offer. There was a glimmer of fear in his eyes. “There’s no magic in that.”
“But I came through the mirror.” Selene didn’t like the way he looked at her, like searching for something terrible. She could sense the shift in him. The darkness sensed it as well. The tendrils of black spun closer, ready to take.
“Then you must have something,” the ghost said, desperation clinging to his voice. “A fragment of what was.”
“What happens if I don’t give you what you asked for?” Panic rose like bile in Selene’s throat. What did she have to give?
The ghost pressed his head into his hand, mussing his dark hair. “You’ll be consumed.”
The dark seemed to lean in, closer and closer, hungrier for her than they were for what she brought.
The ghost’s face was a mask of pain, enough to remake this whole world.
He reached out his hand to her. She couldn’t touch him; she mustn’t touch him.
But if this was the last thing she would ever do, would it be so bad to end it with her hand in his?
Forcing the thoughts from her head, she strengthened her resolve.
She wouldn’t let it end like this. She hadn’t come all this way to be swallowed by the living dark in the mirror.
She reached into her pockets, pulling out the pin, a pen, and her father’s pocket watch.
Hoping against hope, she held out the collection of offerings.
The ghost took a step toward her. His hand stopped reaching, hovering over her palm. She took that as a good sign. There was something here. She imagined the magic was heat, warming his hand like a candle flame. His eyes lit with recognition. “This one.”
“Wait—” Selene gripped the chain of her father’s watch tightly. “It’s all I have left of him.”
The ghost pulled his hand back. He looked at her like she was the moon and he’d do anything to keep her from waning. Determined and deeply sad, facing down an inevitability. “Go, then. I’ll do what I can to hold off the dark. Quickly, before you lose the choice.”
“What?” Selene hadn’t expected this.
“If it’s all you have, leave.” The ghost wasn’t being cruel, even though Selene felt the slice of guilt. He knew how much this mattered to her. He’d help her find a way out. At any cost.
Selene wrapped her fingers around the watch. Already the darkness roiled around them. “And what happens to you?”
The ghost’s smile was not a smile at all, but a sweet misery. “I’ll let the dark have me.”
Selene closed her eyes. She couldn’t let him pay that price. He deserved so much more than this endless prison. And she couldn’t take the thought of never seeing him again. “I can’t do that to you.”
She didn’t want to lose this last part of her father. But she didn’t know what else she had to give. She tucked her measly treasures back into her pockets. She ran her thumb over the silver nightingale one last time. Wound up the clock and listened to the metronome inside.
The oily darkness stirred. Rising to take what was not freely given. She held out the pocket watch to the ghost. He didn’t reach for it.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
And she was, she was, she was. She could give up this trinket, in exchange for what she really wanted: to follow in her father’s footsteps. To sing with the ghost. To keep him safe from any more harm.
He closed his fist around the watch. The darkness shivered and pressed in.
A shadow lashed out. The ghost dodged effortlessly.
The darkness struck again, whirling around him.
He moved with a grace she didn’t know he had, like a dancer.
She could watch him like this forever, if it weren’t for the shadows that sliced through the air, eager to take any part of him they could.
“What are you doing?” Selene cried.
He looked up at her, still for a moment. His dark hair fell into his eye, his lip curling into a half smile. She wanted to see that smile in the light. “If it wants this so badly, let it take it.”
Selene had seen what the darkness could do. “Not if it will hurt you!”
His expression shifted, softened. He opened his palm and the dark slithered out. It swallowed up the silvery bird and the sound of the clock.
“This I have asked, and you have answered.” He looked defeated, like it was his watch and his father he’d given up. “I’m sorry, Selene.”
“It’s just a watch,” Selene said, even though it wasn’t. “It isn’t him.”
“You still carry your father, Selene. You swore on him. We swear by what matters most.”
“What matters most,” she repeated.
If she’d still had the pocket watch, she’d be able to measure the time that ticked between them. She counted the breaths, tasted the crisp and colorless air around them. She named the scars that moved up his arms like constellations and wondered what magic he had wrought from that pain.
“Well?”
“I’m waiting for you to guess my name.” The shadow of a smile crossed his lips.
“Anthony.” Selene relaxed into the familiar pattern. She ticked each of the names off on her fingers. “Vincent. Harrison.”
“None of those.” The ghost cocked an eyebrow. “I hope you’re writing these down.”
“Ten names,” Selene said. “A thousand more to go.”
A thousand more. Selene relished what that implied. That she’d have more time, endless time. He looked at her with a hopeful sorrow that made her heart ache.
“What is it you want?” His voice was low.
Selene didn’t quite know how to answer that. Something had shifted inside of her.
It wasn’t Victor. She wouldn’t let it be Victor. Her whole life could not be knocked off course by a boy who couldn’t button a jacket. Maybe it was the room filled with smoke, her music almost lost. Maybe it was how close she’d come to losing the ghost.
She turned away from him and worked her sheaf out of her bodice. It was damp with sweat, but the music inside was safe.
“I want to write music with you and use that song to win L’Opéra du Magician.”
“This I have asked, and you have answered.”
“It is my turn for a question.” She tried not to think of the game she played with Victor. “Do you remember a girl? She saw you in the mirror and jumped from the roof of the opera house.”
The ghost shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“She—the girl who jumped—is my teacher. I think she knows of the magie du sang.”
“That’s not possible.” His brow furrowed as the pieces of something came together in his mind. “The magie du sang is mine, a magic I created. She can’t know unless—”
“Unless you taught her.” Selene tried to grasp what it would be like to create magic, instead of following someone else’s rules. Wasn’t that what she tried to do, when she attempted a third motif ? Wasn’t that what she was doing now, by blending the magics?
“I would remember.” He articulated each word like he was invoking something; like if he said them right then, the memories would flood in. “What was her name?”
“Brigitte Giroux.”
Something lit in his eyes. The name was enough, a light in the dark. “I remember Brigitte. She was relentless, like you. She wanted to win at any cost—at first. But she didn’t like the cost of the magic. She wanted to keep her pain. She was afraid.”
“So afraid she jumped from the roof.” Selene looked for part of him that should make her afraid. She had seen him as a monster, and yet that wasn’t enough to scare her. She knew his very soul. “She’s known you were trapped here, all this time … and she left you.”
The ghost turned from her. “Perhaps she knows something you and I don’t.”
“You don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”
“I have found ways to occupy myself.”
Selene blew out a breath, trying to focus on something she could do. “How did you know you could do magic without music?”
“Magic doesn’t need music. Music is just another tool, a form of focus, like pain. There were so many ways magic could be channeled.”
“Where did it all go? That’s what I don’t understand. How did it all get lost in a hundred years?”
The ghost shrugged, but there was a tightness in the uptick of his shoulders. “A lot can happen in the winding of a clock.”
“The effort it would take to erase that much history … ”
“Improbable, impossible, and yet here we are.”
He was so casual about it all, as if it was inevitable that whatever magic existed in his world could be lost in hers. Selene needed to grasp it, needed to make sense of how much the world could change in three generations.
“How did you create the magie du sang?”
He closed his eyes. “From an excess of pain. The memory is there. I just can’t quite grasp it.”
Selene thought of his endless scars. “Who did this to you?”
The ghost opened his mouth to speak. The darkness vibrated, pressing in around them. She had seen the dark take from him before. She couldn’t witness it again.
“Don’t speak. Please.”
The ghost squeezed his eyes shut. “You are asking the right questions. They are merely questions I cannot answer.”
Selene’s skin crawled. “I’m sorry.”
“You are relentless, Selene. Never be sorry for that.”
The ghost pricked the inside of his forearm with his knife.
The shadows writhed, forming a mass between them.
The darkness seemed to fight against him for a moment.
Twisting and churning and roiling like a storm-tossed sea.
Had Victor been caught in storms like that, carrying the precious box with the rose he’d made for her?
He’d swept back into her life like he’d never been gone. Like he belonged there.
No, Selene thought. She had to focus. She could worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
The ghost sat down in front of the grand piano he’d crafted out of shadows and blood. It was elegant and slick, like something out of a half-remembered dream. His fingers stretched over the black keys. He played the first chord.
“Let us begin.”