Chapter 29 #2
“It’s enough for you to be here, Selene.” He slowed his reverie, ending on a final dissonant chord. “I cannot express how much it means to me.”
All at once, she wished he could. She thought of Victor, and the way he’d reached for her.
“I want to see you in the light.” Selene stretched out her fingers. Not touching, but close.
The ghost sang for her the smallest star. He cupped it in the palm of his hand and held it up to his face. He was so terribly beautiful. From his broken nose to the nick in his brow to the lips she could not kiss. “I’ll make my own light, then.”
She put her hands above his, shielding the light and casting shadows on his face. “Tell me how to get you out.”
“I would if I knew.”
“Before,” Selene said, putting together pieces that had been scattered around her like breadcrumbs, “when you were the ghost. You said the mirrors were all around you like windows. What if I brought mirrors back into the opera house?”
“We could try,” the ghost said. “But how will you do it?”
“It will be done,” Selene said. “In a few days.”
“Will you be in the opera house?”
Selene held very still. If Selene won L’Opéra du Magician, she’d be whisked away to the palace.
When Offra won, she’d ridden away in a golden carriage, only returning to the opera house for the annual masquerade.
Then her life was something else. Selene wouldn’t have time to say goodbye.
And if she lost? She’d have to pack up her things and find another home.
People did stay in the opera house once the competition was over.
Some of them were even picked up for roles during the opera seasons.
Maybe Selene could resign herself to that life if it meant more time to get the ghost out.
But what would happen when it came time for her to tour?
Madame Giroux might allow her to stay a week or so, but it wouldn’t be enough. She would simply be gone.
“It’s all right,” the ghost said.
“I can get you out.” Selene would, she had to. She was relentless and she would find the door. “I’ll find a way to get you out of the mirror. You deserve your freedom.”
The ghost kept his eyes fixed on the piano keys. There was a certain set to his shoulders, to his jaw. “There are more ways to freedom.”
Selene didn’t like the timbre of his voice. “What do you mean?”
“Smash the mirror. Break it into a thousand tiny pieces. If mirrors are the answer, then this, too, might work.”
It felt like closing a door—something Selene could not abide.
“And risk that you’ll be trapped here forever?”
“What difference will it make?” The ghost played the opening chords of their piece. “Either I’ll forget you, or I’ll be free.”
“And what about me?” Selene said. She belonged to this place as much as he did. She belonged in this swallowing dark where the edges of music and magic warped. Where blood was the smallest price for the greatest thing. She couldn’t just let him die.
“Go on with your life. Forget about me and this place of darkness. Find a way to be happy.”
I can’t, she thought. She should have been surprised, but she wasn’t. I don’t want a life without your music. I don’t want a life without you.
She should tell him. She had to tell him what he meant to her. She wet her lower lip and looked into his pale blue eyes.
“Who killed your father?” The ghost sounded as weary as she felt.
“It was me,” Selene said, her voice breaking.
The wrong answer. Again and again. She couldn’t get this one right.
“This I have asked and you have answered.” He sounded so disappointed.
A tear traced the curve of Selene’s cheek. “Please don’t ask me to wash myself in more blood.”
“Blood is all we have left.”
Selene pressed her hand against the black keys.
Her heart was a stone sinking to the bottom of the river, tossed and tumbled and taken out to sea.
She wanted to tell him how much he meant to her, why she couldn’t break the mirror.
Maybe it was selfish of her. Maybe the ghost wasn’t a thing she could keep to herself, after years of pouring her soul into art and performance.
Maybe he deserved respite in the wake of a hundred years of solitude.
Still, if she could tell him how her heart ached to look at him and how he had changed her life with a song and a drop of blood, maybe it would be enough for him to stay.
Her fingers brushed the edge of his sleeve.
He sprang back with unearthly speed. Shadows tore from his back.
The feathers were the same glossy black as the one she’d brought him.
A thousand of them stretching from black to black.
His eyes had gone the reflective dark of an oil slick.
Not the face of a man, but something so much worse.
The shadows rippled and roiled, bubbling to the surface, hungry for Selene’s transgression. She must not touch him.
“Bring me the death of a dream.” The ghost’s voice was distorted. A twisted, awful thing. Where was the music, the man beneath? Blood ran down his cheeks. This was the monster in the story, the thing of which she was meant to be afraid.
Selene felt no fear. Only anguish at his distortion. She stood, wishing she could go to him and make this right. The ghost made an inhuman sound, somewhere between music and pain. His great wings beat.