“You are out of wishes,” he says. But Addie meets his eyes, and holds them—it is easier, now that he has a name, to think of him as a man, and men can be challenged—and after a moment, the darkness sighs, and turns to the nearest servant, and tells them to open a bottle for themselves, and go.
And now they are alone, and the room seems smaller than it was before.
“There,” says Luc.
“When the marquis and his wife come home and find their servants drunk, they will suffer for it.”
“And who will be blamed, I wonder, for the missing chocolates in the lady’s room? Or the blue silk robe? Do you think no one suffers when you steal?”
Addie bristles, heat rising to her cheeks.
“You gave me no choice.”
“I gave you what you asked for, Adeline. Time, without constraint. Life without restriction.”
“You cursed me to be forgotten.”
“You asked for freedom. There is no greater freedom than that. You can move through the world unhindered. Untethered. Unbound.”
“Stop pretending you did me a kindness instead of a cruelty.”
“I did you a deal.”
His hand comes down hard on the table as he says it, annoyance flashing yellow in his eyes, brief as lightning. “You came to me. You pleaded. You begged. You chose the words. I chose the terms. There is no going back. But if you have already tired of going forward, you need only say the words.”
And there it is again, the hatred, so much easier to hold on to.
“It was a mistake to curse me.” Her tongue is coming loose, and she doesn’t know if it’s the Champagne, or simply the duration of his presence, the acclimation that comes with time, like a body adjusting to a too-hot bath. “If you had only given me what I asked for, I would have burned out in time, would have had my fill of living, and we would, both of us, have won. But now, no matter how tired I am, I will never give you this soul.”
He smiles. “You are a stubborn thing. But even rocks wear away to nothing.”
Addie sits forward. “You think yourself a cat, playing with its catch. But I am not a mouse, and I will not be a meal.”
“I do hope not.” He spreads his hands. “It’s been so long since I had a challenge.”
A game. To him, everything is a game.
“You underestimate me.”
“Do I?” One black brow lifts as he sips his drink. “I suppose we’ll see.”
“Yes,” says Addie, taking up her own. “We will.”
He has given her a gift tonight, though she doubts he knows it. Time has no face, no form, nothing to fight against. But in his mocking smile, his toying words, the darkness has given her the one thing she truly needs: an enemy.
It is here the battle lines are drawn.
The first shot may have been fired back in Villon, when he stole her life along with her soul, but this, this, is the beginning of the war.
XI
New York City
March 13, 2014
She follows Henry to a bar that’s too crowded, too loud.
All the bars in Brooklyn are like that, too little space for too many bodies, and the Merchant is apparently no exception, even on a Thursday. Addie and Henry are crammed into a narrow patio out back, bundled together under an awning, but she still has to lean in to hear his voice over the noise.
“Where are you from?” she starts.
“Upstate. Newburgh. You?”
“Villon-sur-Sarthe,” she says. The words ache a little in her throat.
“France? You don’t have an accent.”
“I moved around.”
They are sharing an order of fries and a pair of happy-hour beers because, he explains, a bookstore job doesn’t pay that well. Addie wishes she could go back in and fetch them some proper drinks, but she’s already told him the lie about the wallet, and she doesn’t want to pull any more tricks, not after The Odyssey.
Plus, she’s afraid.
Afraid to let him walk away.
Afraid to let him out of sight.
Whatever this is, a blip, a mistake, a beautiful dream, or a piece of impossible luck, she’s afraid to let it go. Let him go.
One wrong step, and she’ll wake up. One wrong step, and the thread will snap, the curse will shudder back into place, and it will be over, and Henry will be gone, and she will be alone again.
She forces herself back into the present. Enjoy it while it lasts. It cannot last. But right here, right now—
“Penny for your thoughts,” he calls over the crowd.
She smiles. “I can’t wait for summer.” It’s not a lie. It has been a long, damp spring, and she is tired of being cold. Summer means hot days, and nights where the light lingers. Summer means another year alive. Another year without—
“If you could have one thing,” cuts in Henry, “what would it be?”
He studies her, squinting at her as if she’s a book, not a person; something to be read. She stares back at him like he’s a ghost. A miracle. An impossible thing.
This, she thinks, but she lifts her empty glass and says, “Another beer.”
XII
Addie can account for every second of her life, but that night, with Henry, the moments seem to bleed together. Time slides by as they bounce from bar to bar, happy hour giving way to dinner and then to late-night drinks, and every time they hit the point where the evening splits, and one road leads their separate ways and the other carries on ahead, they choose the second road.
They stay together, each waiting for the other to say “It’s getting late” or “I should be going,” or “See you around.” There is some unspoken pact, an unwillingness to sever whatever this is, and she knows why she’s afraid to break the thread, but she wonders about Henry. Wonders at the loneliness she sees behind his eyes. Wonders at the way the waiters and the bartenders and the other patrons look at him, the warmth he doesn’t seem to notice.
And then it is almost midnight, and they are eating cheap pizza, walking side by side through the first warm night of spring, as the clouds stretch overhead, low and lit by the moon.
She looks up, and so does Henry, and for a moment, only a moment, he looks overwhelmingly, unbearably sad.
“I miss the stars,” he says.
“So do I,” she says, and his gaze drops back to her, and he smiles.
“Who are you?”
His eyes have gone glassy, and the way he says who almost sounds like how, less a question of how she’s doing and more a question of how she’s here, and she wants to ask him the same thing, but she has a good reason, and he’s just a little drunk.
And simply, perfectly, normal.
But he can’t be normal.
Because normal people don’t remember her.
They’ve reached the subway. Henry stops.
“This is me.”
His hand slips free of hers, and there it is, that old familiar fear, of endings, of something giving way to nothing, of moments unwritten and memories erased. She doesn’t want the night to end.
Doesn’t want the spell to break. Doesn’t—
“I want to see you again,” says Henry.
The hope fills her chest until it hurts. She’s heard those words a hundred times, but for the first time, they feel real. Possible. “I want you to see me again, too.”
Henry smiles, the kind of smile that takes over an entire face.
He pulls out his cell, and Addie’s heart sinks. She tells him that her phone is broken, when the truth is, she’s never needed one before. Even if she had someone to call, she could not call them. Her fingers would slip uselessly over the screen. She has no e-mail, either, no way to send a message of any kind, thanks to the whole thou-shalt-not-write part of her curse.