The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, page 15
The darkness shifts like a curtain at her back.
“How long will you carry on?” he muses. “What is the point of dragging yourself through another day, when there is no reprieve?”
Questions she has asked herself in the dead of night, moments of weakness when winter sank its teeth into her skin, or hunger clawed against her bones, when a space was taken, a day’s work undone, a night’s peace lost, and she could not bear the thought of rising to do it all again. And yet, hearing the words parroted back like this, in his voice instead of hers, they lose a measure of their venom.
“Don’t you see?” he says, green eyes sharp as broken glass. “There is no end besides the one I offer. All you have to do is yiel—”
“I saw an elephant,” says Addie, and the words are like cold water on coals. The darkness stills beside her, and she continues, gaze fixed on the ramshackle house, and the broken roof, and the open sky above. “Two, in fact. They were in the palace grounds, as part of some display. I didn’t know animals could be so large. And there was a fiddler in the square the other day,” she presses on, her voice steady, “and his music made me cry. It was the prettiest song I’d ever heard. I had Champagne, drank it straight from the bottle, and watched the sun set over the Seine while the bells rang out from Notre-Dame, and none of it would have happened back in Villon.” She turns to look at him. “It has only been two years,” she says. “Think of all the time I have, and all the things I’ll see.”
Addie grins at the shadow then, a small, feral smile, all teeth, feasting on the way the humor falls from his face.
It is a small victory, and yet so sweet, to see him falter, even for an instant.
And then, suddenly, he is too close, the air between them snuffed like a candle. He smells of summer nights, of earth, and moss, and tall grass waving beneath stars. And of something darker. Of blood on rocks, and wolves loose in the woods.
He leans in until his cheek brushes against hers, and when he speaks again, the words are little more than whispers over skin.
“You think it will get easier,” he says. “It will not. You are as good as gone, and every year you live will feel a lifetime, and in every lifetime, you will be forgotten. Your pain is meaningless. Your life is meaningless. The years will be like weights around your ankles. They will crush you, bit by bit, and when you cannot stand it, you will beg me to put you from your misery.”
Addie pulls back to face the darkness, but he is already gone.
She stands alone on the narrow road. Inhales a low, unsteady breath, forces it out again, and then straightens, and smooths her skirts, and makes her way into the broken house that, tonight at least, is home.
New York City
March 13, 2014
VIII
The bookshop is busier today.
A kid plays hide-and-seek with his imaginary friend while his father turns through a military history. A college student crouches, scanning the different editions of Blake, and the boy she met yesterday stands behind the counter.
She studies him, the habit like thumbing through a book.
His black hair tumbles forward into his eyes, unruly, untamable. He pushes it back, but in seconds it has fallen forward again, making him look younger than he is.
He has the kind of face, she thinks, that can’t keep secrets well.
There is a short queue, so Addie hangs back between POETRY and MEMOIR. She raps her nails along a shelf, and a few moments later an orange head pokes itself out from the dark above the spines. She pets Book absently, and waits for the queue to thin from three, to two, to one.
The boy—Henry—notices her, lingering nearby, and something crosses his face, too fast for even her to read, before his attention flicks back to the woman at the counter.
“Yes, Ms. Kline,” he’s saying. “No, that’s fine. And if it’s not what he wants, just bring it back.”
The woman toddles off, clutching her store bag, and Addie steps up. “Hi there,” she says brightly.
“Hello,” Henry says, an edge of caution in his voice. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” she says, all practiced charm. She sets The Odyssey on the counter between them. “My friend bought me this book, but I already have it. I was hoping I could exchange it for something else.”
He studies her. A dark brow lifts behind his glasses. “Are you serious?”
“I know,” she says with a laugh, “hard to believe I already own this one in Greek but—”
He rocks back on his heels. “You are serious.”
Addie falters, thrown off by the edge in his voice. “I just thought it was worth asking…”
“This isn’t a library,” he chides. “You can’t just trade one book for another.”
Addie straightens. “Obviously,” she says, a little indignant. “But like I said, I didn’t buy it. My friend did, and I just heard you tell Ms. Kline that—”
His face hardens, the flat regard of a door slammed shut. “Word of advice. Next time you try to return a book, don’t return it to the same person you stole it from the first time.”
A rock drops inside her chest. “What?”
He shakes his head. “You were just in here yesterday.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I remember you.”
Three words, large enough to tip the world.
I remember you.
Addie lurches as if struck, about to fall. She tries to right herself. “No you don’t,” she says firmly.
His green eyes narrow. “Yes. I do. You came in here yesterday, green sweater, black jeans. You stole this used copy of The Odyssey, which I gave back to you, because who steals a used copy of The Odyssey in Greek anyways, and then you have the nerve to come back in here and try to trade it out for something else? When you didn’t even buy the first one…”
Addie closes her eyes, vision swimming.
She doesn’t understand.
She can’t—
“Now look,” he says, “I think you better go.”
She opens her eyes, and sees him pointing to the door. Her feet won’t move. They refuse to carry her away from those three words.
I remember you.
Three hundred years.
Three hundred years, and no one has said those words, no one has ever, ever remembered. She wants to grab him by the sleeve, wants to pull him forward, wants to know why, how, what is so special about a boy in a bookstore—but the man with the military history is waiting to pay, the kid clinging to his leg, and the boy with the glasses is glaring at her, and this is all wrong. She grips the counter, feels like she might faint. His eyes soften, just a fraction.
“Please,” he says under his breath. “Just go.”
She tries.
She can’t.
Addie gets as far as the open door, the four short steps from the shop to the street, before something in her gives.
She slumps onto the lip at the top of the stairs, puts her head in her hands, feels like she might cry, or laugh, but instead, she stares back through the beveled glass insert of the shop door. She watches the boy every time he comes into the frame. She cannot tear her eyes away.
I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember—
“What are you doing?”
She blinks, and sees him standing in the open doorway, arms crossed. The sun has shifted lower in the sky, the light going thin.
“Waiting for you,” she says, cringing as soon as she says it. “I wanted to apologize,” she continues. “For the whole book thing.”
“It’s fine,” he says curtly.
“No, it’s not,” she says, rising to her feet. “Let me buy you a coffee.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I insist. As an apology.”
“I’m working.”
“Please.”
And it must be something in the way she says it, the sheer mix of hope and need, the obvious fact it means more than a book, more than a sorry, that makes the boy look her in the eyes, makes her realize that he hadn’t really, not until now. There’s something strange, searching in his gaze, but whatever he sees when he looks at her, it changes his mind.
“One coffee,” he says. “And you’re still banned from the shop.”
Addie feels the air rush back into her lungs. “Deal.”
New York City
March 13, 2014
IX
Addie lingers on the bookstore steps for an hour until it closes.
Henry locks up, and turns to see her sitting there, and Addie braces again for the blankness in his gaze, the confirmation that their earlier encounter was only some strange glitch, a slipped stitch in the centuries of her curse.
But when he looks at her, he knows her. She is certain he knows her.
His brows go up beneath his tangled curls, as if he’s surprised that she’s still there. But his annoyance has given way to something else—something that confuses her even more. It’s less hostile than suspicion, more guarded than relief, and it is still wonderful, because of the knowing in it. Not a first meeting, but a second—or rather, a third—and for once she is not the only one who knows.
“Well?” he says, holding out his hand, not for her to take, but for her to lead the way, and she does. They walk a few blocks in awkward silence, Addie stealing glances that tell her nothing but the line of his nose, the angle of his jaw.
He has a starved look, wolfish and lean, and even though he’s not unnaturally tall, he hunches his shoulders as if to make himself shorter, smaller, less obtrusive. Perhaps, in the right clothes, perhaps, with the right air, perhaps, perhaps; but the longer she looks at him, the weaker the resemblance to that other stranger.
And yet.
There is something about him that keeps catching her attention, snagging it the way a nail snags a sweater.
Twice he catches her looking at him, and frowns.
Once she catches him stealing his own glance, and smiles.
At the coffee shop, she tells him to grab a table while she buys the drinks, and he hesitates, as if torn between the urge to pay and the fear of being poisoned, before retreating to a corner booth. She orders him a latte.
“Three eighty,” says the girl behind the counter.
Addie cringes at the cost. She pulls a few bills from her pocket, the last of what she took from James St. Clair. She doesn’t have the cash for two drinks, and she can’t just walk out with them, because there’s a boy waiting. And he remembers.
Addie glances toward the table, where he sits, arms folded, staring out the window.
“Eve!” calls the barista.
“Eve!”
Addie startles, realizing that means her.
“So,” says the boy when she sits down. “Eve?”
No, she thinks. “Yeah,” she says. “And you’re…”
Henry, she thinks just before he says it.
“Henry.” It fits him, like a coat. Henry: soft, poetic. Henry: quiet, strong. The black curls, the pale eyes behind their heavy frames. She has known a dozen Henrys, in London, Paris, Boston, and L.A., but he is not like any of them.
His gaze drops to the table, his cup, her empty hands. “You didn’t get anything.”
She waves it away. “I’m not really thirsty,” she lies.
“It feels weird.”
“Why?” She shrugs. “I said I’d buy you a coffee. Besides,” she hesitates, “I lost my wallet. I didn’t have enough for two.”
Henry frowns. “Is that why you stole the book?”
“I didn’t steal it. I wanted to trade. And I said sorry.”
“Did you?”
“With the coffee.”
“Speaking of,” he says, standing. “How do you take it?”
“What?”
“The coffee. I can’t sit here and drink alone, it makes me feel like an asshole.”
She smiles. “Hot chocolate. Dark.”
Those brows quirk up again. He walks away to order, says something that makes the barista laugh and lean forward, like a flower to the sun. He returns with a second cup and a croissant, and sets them both in front of her before taking his seat, and now they are uneven again. Balance tipped, restored, and tipped again, and it is the kind of game she’s played a hundred times, a sparring match made of small gestures, the stranger smiling across the table.
But this is not her stranger, and he is not smiling.
“So,” says Henry, “what was all that today, with the book?”
“Honestly?” Addie wraps her hands around the coffee cup. “I didn’t think you’d remember.”
The question rattles like loose change in her chest, like pebbles in a porcelain bowl; it shakes inside her, threatening to spill out.
How did you remember? How? How?
“The Last Word doesn’t get that many customers,” Henry says. “And even fewer try to leave without paying. I guess you made an impression.”
An impression.
An impression is like a mark.
Addie runs her fingers through the foam on her hot chocolate, watches the milk smooth again in her wake. Henry doesn’t notice, but he noticed her, he remembered.
What is happening?
“So,” he says, but the sentence goes nowhere.
“So,” she echoes, because she cannot say what she wants. “Tell me about yourself.”
Who are you? Why are you? What is happening?
Henry bites his lip and says, “Not much to tell.”
“Did you always want to work in a bookshop?”
Henry’s face turns wistful. “I’m not sure it’s the job that people dream of, but I like it.” He’s lifting the latte to his mouth when someone shuffles past, knocking against his chair. Henry rights the cup in time, but the man begins to apologize. And doesn’t stop.
“Hey, I’m so sorry.” His face twists with guilt.
“It’s fine.”
“Did I make you spill?” asks the man with genuine concern.
“Nope,” says Henry. “You’re good.”
If he registers the man’s intensity, he gives no sign. His focus stays firmly on Addie, as if he can will the man away.
“That was weird,” she says, when he’s finally gone.
Henry only shrugs. “Accidents happen.”
That isn’t what she meant. But the thoughts are passing trains, and she can’t afford to be derailed.
“So,” she says, “the bookshop. Is it yours?”
Henry shakes his head. “No. I mean, it might as well be, I’m the only employee, but it belongs to a woman named Meredith, who spends most of her time on cruises. I just work there. What about you? What do you do when you’re not stealing books?”
Addie weighs the question, the many possible answers, all of them lies, and settles for something closer to the truth.
“I’m a talent scout,” she says. “Music, mostly, but also art.”
Henry’s face hardens. “You should meet my sister.”
“Oh?” asks Addie, wishing she’d lied. “Is she an artist?”
“I think she’d say she fosters art, that it’s a type of artist, maybe. She likes to”—he makes a flourish—“nurture the raw potential, shape the narrative of the creative future.”
Addie thinks she would like to meet his sister, but she doesn’t say it.
“Do you have siblings?” he asks.
She shakes her head, tearing a corner off the croissant because he hasn’t touched it, and her stomach’s growling.
“Lucky,” he says.
“Lonely,” she counters.
“Well, you’re welcome to mine. There’s David, who’s a doctor, a scholar, and a pretentious asshole, and Muriel who’s, well—Muriel.”
He looks at her, and there it is again, that strange intensity, and maybe it’s just that so few people make eye contact in the city, but she can’t shake the feeling he’s looking for something in her face.
“What is it?” she asks, and he starts to say one thing, but changes course.
“Your freckles look like stars.”
Addie smiles. “I’ve heard. My own little constellation. It’s the first thing everyone sees.”
Henry shifts in his seat. “What do you see,” he says, “when you look at me?”
His voice is light enough, but there is something in the question, a weight, like a stone buried in a snowball. He’s been waiting to ask. The answer matters.
“I see a boy with dark hair and kind eyes and an open face.”
He frowns a little. “Is that all?”
“Of course not,” she says. “But I don’t know you yet.”
“Yet,” he echoes, and there’s something like a smile in his voice.
She purses her lips, considers him again.
For a moment, they are the only silent spot in the bustling café.
Live long enough, and you learn how to read a person. To ease them open like a book, some passages underlined and others hidden between the lines.
Addie scans his face, the slight furrow where his brows go in and up, the set of his lips, the way he rubs one palm as if working out an ache, even as he leans forward, and in, his attention wholly on her.
“I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”
Henry stares at her, all the humor gone out of his face, and she knows she’s gotten too close to the truth.
Addie laughs nervously, and the sound rushes back in around them. “Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “Too deep. I probably should have just said you were good-looking.”
Henry’s mouth quirks, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “At least you think I’m good-looking.”
“What about me?” she asks, trying to break the sudden tension.
But for the first time, Henry won’t look her in the eyes. “I’ve never been good at reading people.” He nudges the cup away, and stands, and Addie thinks she’s ruined it. He’s leaving.
