The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, page 17
“I wish you would send them away.”
“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.
New York City
March 13, 2014
XI
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.
“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.
Paris, France
July 29, 1720
XIII
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.
The night has passed, the first threads of daylight creeping into the sky, and it is tomorrow now, and their anniversary is over, and five years have become six without his presence, without his face, without his asking if she’s had enough, and the world slips, because it is unfair, it is cheating, it is wrong.
He was supposed to come, that was the nature of their dance. She did not want him there, has never wanted it, but she expected it, he has made her expect it. Has given her a single threshold on which to balance, a narrow precipice of hope, because he is a hated thing, but a hated thing is still something. The only thing she has.
And that is the point, of course.
That is the reason for the empty glass, the barren plate, the unused chair.
She gazes out the window, and remembers the look in his eyes when they toasted, the curve of his lips when they declared war, and realizes what a fool she is, how easily baited.
And suddenly, the whole tableau seems gruesome and pathetic, and Addie can’t bear to look at it, can’t breathe in her red silk. She tears at the laces of the corset, pulls the pins from her hair, frees herself from the confines of the dress, sweeps the settings from the table, and dashes the now empty bottle against the wall.
Glass bites into her hand, and the pain is sharp, and real, the sudden scald of a burn without the lasting scar, and she does not care. In moments, her cuts have already closed. The glasses and bottle lie whole. Once she thought it was a blessing, this inability to break, but now, the impotence is maddening.
She ruins everything, only to watch it shudder, mocking, back together, return like a set to the beginning of the show.
And Addie screams.
Anger flares inside her, hot and bright, anger at Luc, and at herself, but it is giving way to fear, and grief, and terror, because she must face another year alone, a year without hearing her name, without seeing herself reflected in anyone’s eyes, without a night’s respite from this curse, a year, or five, or ten, and she realizes then how much she’s leaned on it, the promise of his presence, because without it, she is falling.
She sinks to the floor among the ruins of her night.
It will be years before she sees the sea, the waves crashing against the jagged white cliffs, and then she will remember Luc’s goading words.
Even rocks wear away to nothing.
Addie falls asleep just after dawn, but it is fitful, and brief, and full of nightmares, and when she wakes to see the sun high over Paris, she cannot bring herself to rise. She sleeps all the day and half the night, and when she wakes the shattered thing in her has set again, like a badly broken bone, some softness hardened.
“Enough,” she tells herself, rising to her feet.
“Enough,” she repeats, feasting on the bread, now stale, the cheese, wilted from the heat.
Enough.
There will be other dark nights, of course, other wretched dawns, and her resolve will always weaken a little as the days grow long, and the anniversary draws near, and treacherous hope slips in like a draft. But the sorrow has faded, replaced by stubborn rage, and she resolves to kindle it, to shield and nurture the flame until it takes far more than a single breath to blow it out.
