“I didn’t know you could exist these days without one.”
“Old-fashioned,” she says.
He offers to come by her place the next day. Where does she live? And it feels as if the universe is mocking her now.
“I’m staying at a friend’s while they’re out of town,” she says. “Why don’t I meet you at the store?”
Henry nods. “The store, then,” he says, backing away.
“Saturday?”
“Saturday.”
“Don’t go disappearing.”
Addie laughs, a small, brittle thing. And then he’s walking away, he’s got a foot down the first step, and the panic grips her.
“Wait,” she says, calling him back. “I need to tell you something.”
“Oh god,” Henry groans. “You’re with someone.”
The ring burns in her pocket. “No.”
“You’re in the CIA and you leave for a top-secret mission tomorrow.”
Addie laughs. “No.”
“You’re—”
“My real name isn’t Eve.”
He pulls back, confused. “… okay.”
She doesn’t know if she can say it, if the curse will let her, but she has to try. “I didn’t tell you my real name because, well—it’s complicated. But I like you, and I want you to know—to hear it from me.”
Henry straightens, sobering. “Well then, what is it?”
“It’s A—” The sound lodges, for just a second, the stiffness of a muscle long since fallen to disuse. A rusty cog. And then—it scrapes free.
“Addie.” She swallows, hard. “My name’s Addie.”
It hangs in the air between them.
And then Henry smiles. “Well, okay,” he says. “Goodnight, Addie.”
As simple as that.
Two syllables falling from a tongue.
And it’s the best sound she’s ever heard. She wants to throw her arms around him, wants to hear it again, and again, the impossible word filling her like air, making her feel solid.
Real.
“Goodnight, Henry,” Addie says, willing him to turn and go, because she doesn’t think she can bring herself to turn away from him.
She stands there, rooted to the spot at the top of the subway steps until he’s out of sight, holds her breath and waits to feel the thread snap, the world shudder back into shape, waits for the fear and the loss and the knowledge that it was just a fluke, a cosmic error, a mistake, that it is over now, that it will never happen again.
But she doesn’t feel any of those things.
All she feels is joy, and hope.
Her boot heels tap out a rhythm on the street, and even after all these years, she half expects a second pair of shoes to fall in step beside her own. To hear the rolling fog of his voice, soft, and sweet, and mocking. But there is no shadow at her side, not tonight.
The evening is quiet, and she is alone, but for once it is not the same as being lonely.
Goodnight, Addie, Henry said, and Addie cannot help but wonder if he has somehow broken the spell.
She smiles, and whispers to herself. “Goodnight, Ad—”
But the curse closes around her throat, the name lodging there, as it always has.
And yet.
And yet.
Goodnight, Addie.
Three hundred years she’s tested the confines of her deal, found the places where it gives, the subtle bend and flex around the bars, but never a way out.
And yet.
Somehow, impossibly, Henry has found a way in.
Somehow, he remembers her.
How? How? The question thuds with the drum of her heart, but in this moment, Addie does not care.
In this moment, she is holding to the sound of her name, her real name, on someone else’s tongue, and it is enough, it is enough, it is enough.
XIII
Paris, France
July 29, 1720
The stage is set, the places ready.
Addie smooths the linen on the table, arranges the porcelain plates, the cups—not crystal, but still glass—and draws the dinner from its hamper. It is no five-course meal, served by glamoured hands, but it is fresh and hearty fare. A loaf of bread, still warm. A wedge of cheese. A pork terrine. A bottle of red wine. She is proud of her collection, prouder still of the fact she had no magic, save the curse, by which to gather it, could not simply cut her gaze, say a word, and will it so.
It is not only the table.
It is the room. No stolen chamber. No beggar’s hovel. A place, for now at least, to call her own. It took two months to find, a fortnight to fix up, but it was worth it. From the outside it is nothing: cracked glass and warping wood. And it’s true, the lower floors have fallen into disrepair, home now only to rodents and the occasional stray cats—and, in winter, crowded with bodies seeking any form of shelter—but it is the height of summer now, and the city’s poor have taken to the streets, and Addie has claimed the top floor for herself. Boarded up the stairs and carved a way in and out through an upper window, like a child in a wooden fort. It is an unconventional entrance, but it is worth it for the room beyond, where she has made herself a home.
A bed, piled high with blankets. A chest, filled with stolen clothes. The windowsill brims with trinkets, glass and porcelain and bone, gathered and assembled like a line of makeshift birds.
In the middle of the narrow room, a pair of chairs set before a table covered in pale linen. And in its center, a bundle of flowers, picked in the night from a royal garden and smuggled out in the folds of her skirt. And Addie knows none of it will last, it never does—a breeze will somehow steal away the totems on her mantel; there will be a fire, or a flood; the floor will give way or the secret home will be found and claimed by someone else.
But she has guarded the pieces this past month, gathered and arranged them one by one to make a semblance of a life, and if she’s being honest, it is not only for herself.
It is for the darkness.
It is for Luc.
Or rather, it is to spite him, to prove that she is living, she is free. That Addie will give him no hold, no way to mock her with his charity.
The first round was his, but the second will be hers.
And so she has made her home, and readied it for company, fastened up her hair and dressed herself in russet silk, the color of fall leaves, even cinched herself into a corset despite her loathing of bone stays.
She has had a year to plan, to design the posture she will strike, and as she straightens up the room she turns barbs over in her mind, sharpening the weapons of their discourse. She imagines his thrusts, and her parries, the way his eyes will lighten or darken as the conversation turns.
You have grown teeth, he said, and Addie will show him how sharp they have become.
The sun has gone down now, and all that’s left to do is wait. An hour passes, and her stomach growls with want as the bread goes cold in its cloth, but she doesn’t allow herself to eat. Instead, she leans out the window and watches the city, the shifting lights of lanterns being lit.
And he doesn’t come.
She pours herself a glass of wine, and paces, as the stolen candles drip, and wax pools on the table linen, and the night grows heavy, the hours first late, and then early.
And still he doesn’t come.
The candles gutter and snuff themselves out, and Addie sits in the dark as the knowledge settles over her.