“My migraine is gone.”
“I know.” His smile was polite, tired.
“How?”
The ghost lifted his shoulders. The cut above his heart had healed into a thin line. The blood that had soaked his clothes had been spun into shadow and away. “Magic.”
“Magic doesn’t work like that.”
“Of course it does.”
The ghost ran his finger over the pink scar on his chest. She longed to do the same. He was tall and strong and looked a hundred years younger than he was. Standing here with him was like standing out in a thunderstorm, the air damp and electric. Like that first sip of sweet wine. Like trying to hold on to a moment before it slipped into memory. Familiar and true. “Healing takes more. Blood, pain, and wanting. More of each is required.”
“Could magic like that heal those who’ve gone mad?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know your madness or its cause.”
“But I could try.”
If Selene could undo what was done to Benson, to all the mages trapped in the Asylum, what would the world be? What would magic be if there was no more threat of being lost to madness?
“Be careful.” His voice was low. “Whatever this madness is, it is something we could not have imagined a hundred years ago.”
Selene thought of her father’s feral eyes. The color of that day had left with the pain. Selene was unnerved by the sepia-toned memory. Was this the cost of the magic?
It wasn’t forgetting, not quite. It was something else. Something she’d have to worry about another day.
With her head clear and without the sharp stab, she remembered what she’d wanted to ask.
“Do you remember a time when you weren’t alone?”
“Pieces. A little before, and a little after. For a time, I could see out into the world. Instead of all this black, there were windows in all shapes and sizes. I can’t remember, exactly, but I think there was something more to them.”
“Mirrors.” Selene knew every ghost story, every hint of the unusual. There had been sightings of a ghost in the mirrors. That’s why they’d been banned. Because the ghost was real. “Do you remember someone else coming inside the mirror?”
The ghost stood very still. “Tell me what comes next for you and your tournament of mages.”
Selene took out the sheaf she’d tucked into her dress. She opened it up to the first page. It was a mess of phrases and half-finished thoughts. Each of them written with the same intent: capturing the devastation of grief and ambition and the terrible cost of it all. The ghost shook his head. Selene pulled out a blank page. Just the clef and the staves and requiem written in fine, black ink.
“Set it in D minor.” The ghost cut the tip of his finger and used the blood to mark the key on the page. “It is the most melancholy key.”
Selene hummed the first note, the beginning of an aria taking shape in her mind. She pricked her finger with the pin. She didn’t bother pressing it to the page. She merely wanted the blood to be there.
“This will not do.”
The ghost dragged the tip of his knife against his pale skin. The blood swirled into shadow and then took form. Solid wood and familiar keys, all of them black. It was an inkwell of a grand piano, cool beneath her fingers. A bench—long enough for them to sit beside one another without touching—spread between them.
The ghost took his seat. “What if you went up to A here.” She sang the note. He met her voice and carried it down in steps. “And brought down the bass?”
“Yes,” Selene said. Her heart beat pressando. The ghost seemed to know what the song needed just as she did. Their shared minds stitched together an aria. There was something intimissimo about sharing breath to sing the same note.
Each one was carved out of her soul. All the darkness, a little of the light. She needed both. It wasn’t enough for her to sing every dissonant and melancholy note. Even the minor scale was dappled with major chords. The ghost concentrated on the keys. His long fingers traced the black and the black with such tenderness.
When he sang with her in anticipation of a line, it was as if her very essence had been extended to another person. Their voices lifted, entangled. They were like two hands on the keys working in tandem to create something greater than themselves.
Selene could trace the history of him in the way he stacked the chords and the way he wrote the rhythms. She met him, note for note, and brought in a hundred years of growth and knowledge. He lit up as she showed him something new. What could he have done, if he had lived outside the mirror? What greatness could this man have achieved?
Perhaps if she unraveled his crime, she could free him. What had he done to deserve this? What had she done to deserve him and his magic? She was lucky to be here. In his prison. In his tomb. She took that feeling and wrote it down. There was a melody for all types of sorrow.
