There was a screech and the violence of wings. Gigi gasped and stumbled toward the door. It was a bird. A pair of birds, fighting for their space in the sky. They fought and thrashed and tore at one another, caring little that Selene was there. There was a familiarity to the violence, to the scraping and scratching and screeching. They used talons instead of music and glassed berries, but it was all the same. A want so deep that it could only end in blood. She sang for air, spinning it around herself and pushing the birds away. They startled and broke apart, into the bright blue. One following the other, claws outstretched.
Selene let her song end. Her heartbeat slowed to a more reasonable tempo. The dust settled around her. The dust, and a sleek black feather.
“Are you okay?” Gigi said breathlessly.
Selene picked up the feather. Held it up, catching the golden rays of the sun on its slick dark surface. There was something special about it. It hummed with energy, the ache of loss and being left behind. The bird that dropped it was long gone, a speck on the horizon. He’d left part of himself behind.
A piece of sky.
Chapter 14
The boat was still there, still whole, and still carried her across the underground lake. She drifted on the water, imagining how the ghost might look at her when she made her triumphant return. Stepping in front of the mirror was like stepping into a tangle of moonlight. Selene leaned into its glow, hoping she’d see the shape of him on the glass. She sang the opening lines to the melody they had shared. He didn’t come. Had she failed to answer what he had asked?
Be enough,she thought desperately.Please.
She took the pin from her pocket, her fingernails ringing against the crystal. Something struck her. Cradling the goblet, she caught its reflection, hoping against hope that this might work. She rapped her fingernails from glass to glass. The mirror’s pitch was the same. Excitement welled in her, quick as blood to the newest pinprick on her finger. With each passing moment, Selene could feel her heart beat accelerando, punctuated with doubt. The feather wouldn’t be enough. She traced thedeep circles beneath her eyes and the tangled curls of her hair. What was she doing here? There were no guarantees that she would make it back in. She was wasting time, chasing a ghost.
The mirror soaked up the blood, hungry for her offering, washing away her uncertainty. She pushed through the shimmering surface and into the dark.
The relief was cut by the dizzying effect of going from one world to the next. It was a thousand pirouettes while being tossed beneath the churning waves and the space between dreaming and waking all at once.
She gasped, desperate for purchase. It should have been easier to adjust, knowing what to expect. But it was a little worse. She breathed in the shadow. The light she’d placed the night before was gone. There was a flicker, just beyond her. A candle guttering in a storm. Selene moved toward it, but it seemed more distant with each step. The darkness roiled around her, coiling in like snakes, closer than before.
She sang the melody for light, letting the magic flood through her. The darkness rushed away. She changed the light into a chandelier, like the one that hung in the theater. It was too big for the space, twinkling and blinding and suffocating her. She shrank it down until she was no longer overwhelmed by its glow.
“Samuel?” If she found the right name he might remember. “Gaston? Theodore?”
“Names.” He came from nowhere, extinguishing the wish of light he held in his palm. “None of them mine.”
Selene felt a fleeting slice of terror. She wasn’t afraid of him, but how could she contend with the years of warnings against the ghost? His beauty grounded her, his dynamic presence pulling her closer and closer, treading a dangerous line between touch and not touch.
Selene put on a smile. “Here I am.”
“Have you brought me what I asked?”
Selene took the feather from her pocket and held it as an offering on her open palm. “A piece of sky.”
“That will do.” The ghost took the feather gingerly between his fingers, a smile playing on his lips. Not enough to reach his eyes. But enough to set her teeth on edge. “This I have asked and you have answered.”
He brushed the fringe of the feather against his skin. Eyes closed, like he was waiting to remember something. Or maybe he was imagining her fingers, too.
He dropped the feather and watched it spin down and down. A tendril of inky darkness crossed into the light. Then another. Then another. Until a wave of liquid black moved around the ghost. Violent and vicious, this was the predator she had grown up to fear. Not the man, but the blackness that contained him. The feather was consumed before it even hit the ground. Swallowed into the merciless dark.
The tendrils crept back, sated. The dark seemed to hum with pleasure, like a cat after a kill.
“My gods,” Selene said.
“Don’t let it see your fear.” The ghost rolled his shoulders back. “As long as you’re in the light and don’t let it in, the dark can’t hurt you.”
“Let it in?” Selene centered herself in the light.
“With fear, with doubt, with curiosity. The dark will find any crack.” He shrugged as if it was a mundane inconvenience like a spider or misplaced key. “What is it you want?”
“To win L’Opéra du Magician.”
“This I have asked and you have answered.”
“What would have happened to you if I didn’t come back?”
