She sang the opening of the tempest aria, the illusion forming easily around her. She didn’t need the orchestra to hold the motif like she would on the stage. It stayed easily. The waves lapped at her feet. The tableau was a shade off the ghost’s eyes, near enough that the undulation of the waves was close to distraction. Selene focused on the next motif. The water’s soft spray turned harsher as the music picked up. Selene pricked her finger with a pin and let the blood fall. She used the same memory from this morning—her father by the sea. The memory was still there, although it felt like there was a veil over it, colors muted. Still, the air around them crackled with heat. A sprig of lightning danced weakly across the water. Selene stopped singing. The sea’s illusion stayed, the air thick with sung moisture.
The ghost stood in the midst of her half magic, enraptured by the sea. “I remember this.”
“It’s supposed to turn into a storm.”
He ran his fingers through one of the waves. There was a gentleness to his touch that filled Selene with an impossible sense of longing.
“What went wrong?”
She looked up at him, frustrated. “I don’t understand. I used this memory earlier and the magic worked.”
His brows knit together, like they had before. He was remembering. She watched his expression shift, his eyes still closed. She couldn’t have dreamed him more beautiful. The strength of his jaw and the height of his cheekbones and the little cut below his chin. He was a study in the way flaws made perfection, from his broken nose to the scar in his left brow to the shadow of a beard.
He opened his eyes—that shock of blue. “The pain slips away when you reach for it, like untangling a knot. Embracing it makes it hurt less.”
“What happens when I run out of terrible things?”
The ghost moved behind her, close enough that she could feel the whisper of his breath on her shoulder. “There is always more pain, Selene. Even without memory, I find pain to draw from. It lingers in the body, in the soul.”
Selene hesitated. “There is so much I don’t understand about this magic.”
“Magic is a well that we draw from and shape to our will.”
“No,” Selene said sharply, unease building. “That’s not …”
He regarded her carefully. “How does your music work?”
“Is this another one of your questions?”
“You’ll know when it is,” the ghost said.
Selene pulled up her father’s watch. He’d explained it this way to her once. “It’s like the mechanism of a clock. Each piece must fit together, just so, to make the magic work: the right notes, the right order, proper pitch, an openness to the magic, intent. Put them together and the magic flows through you.”
“Those are the mechanics. I need the soul of it.”
But … that was it. Music was rules and order and precision. It was calculations put to page and then made beautiful. And it moved her; music always did. She didn’t know how to give him what he asked.
“I’ve never been much of a teacher, not like my father.”
“So how did he teach you?”
“He filled a glass and held it up to the sun. Showed me the patterns that broke against the floor.” Selene closed her eyes, sinking into the memory. She could almost hear his voice. “He said: ‘The light is everywhere, like magic is everywhere. We are the glass; the music is the water. They exist separately, but together, together they can hold the magic and make it stronger.’ ”
She remembered the way her father had made the light dance on the table. She’d forgotten that, until now, as if the ghost had drawn out the memory with the right question. In all her years of studying, she’d been so focused on the clockwork of magic, she’d buried the light. She wished she could hear his voice, just one more time. She wished she could tell him she loved him, that she was sorry. That she was ready to follow in his path.
“He showed me how to hold the light.”
The ghost dropped his head down to his chest, his cold eyes burning up at her. “Who killed your father, Selene?”
She pulled away, as if he’d struck her. “You know who killed him.”
“You have to say it.”
Already the dark seemed to press in, hungry for her hesitation. Would it be like music, pouring through the center of her with magic like breath? Could she hold its power? Or would it spread like madness, consuming every part of her?
“I killed my father.”
“This I have asked and you have answered.” He brought his head up, looked at her with those cold, blue eyes. “Show me what you can do with music and pain.”
