“It’s all right,” the ghost said.
“I can get you out.” Selene would, she had to. She was relentless and she would find the door. “I’ll find a way to get you out of the mirror. You deserve your freedom.”
The ghost kept his eyes fixed on the piano keys. There was a certain set to his shoulders, to his jaw. “There are more ways to freedom.”
Selene didn’t like the timbre of his voice. “What do you mean?”
“Smash the mirror. Break it into a thousand tiny pieces. If mirrors are the answer, then this, too, might work.”
It felt like closing a door—something Selene could not abide.
“And risk that you’ll be trapped here forever?”
“What difference will it make?” The ghost played the opening chords of their piece. “Either I’ll forget you, or I’ll be free.”
“And what about me?” Selene said. She belonged to this place as much as he did. She belonged in this swallowing dark where the edges of music and magic warped. Where blood was the smallest price for the greatest thing. She couldn’t just let himdie.
“Go on with your life. Forget about me and this place of darkness. Find a way to be happy.”
I can’t,she thought. She should have been surprised, but she wasn’t.I don’t want a life without your music. I don’t want a life without you.
She should tell him. She had to tell him what he meant to her. She wet her lower lip and looked into his pale blue eyes.
“Who killed your father?” The ghost sounded as weary as she felt.
“It was me,” Selene said, her voice breaking.
The wrong answer. Again and again. She couldn’t get this one right.
“This I have asked and you have answered.” He sounded so disappointed.
A tear traced the curve of Selene’s cheek. “Please don’t ask me to wash myself in more blood.”
“Blood is all we have left.”
Selene pressed her hand against the black keys. Her heart was a stone sinking to the bottom of the river, tossed and tumbled and taken out to sea. She wanted to tell him how much he meant to her, why she couldn’t break the mirror. Maybe it was selfish of her. Maybe the ghost wasn’t a thing she could keep to herself, after years of pouring her soul into art and performance. Maybe he deserved respite in the wake of a hundred years of solitude. Still, if she could tell him how her heart ached to look at him and how he had changed her life with a song and a drop of blood, maybe it would be enough for him to stay. Her fingers brushed the edge of his sleeve.
He sprang back with unearthly speed. Shadows tore from his back. The feathers were the same glossy black as the one she’d brought him. A thousand of them stretching from black to black. His eyes had gone the reflective dark of an oil slick. Not the face of a man, but something so much worse. The shadows rippled and roiled, bubbling to the surface, hungry for Selene’s transgression. She must not touch him.
“Bring me the death of a dream.” The ghost’s voice was distorted. A twisted, awful thing. Where was the music, the man beneath? Blood ran down his cheeks. This was the monster in the story, the thing of which she was meant to be afraid.
Selene felt no fear. Only anguish at his distortion. She stood, wishing she could go to him and make this right. The ghost made an inhuman sound, somewhere between music and pain. His great wings beat.
Chapter 30
Selene gasped, knees against the stone and head against the glass. The pain was sharp but forgettable. Gigi’s dress was ruined; the fabric of the skirt shredded when Selene was cast out, like shadows had reached for her but not been quick enough. Selene tried to even her breathing, tried to look past her own reflection and see the ghost. She hadn’t meant for this to happen. She wanted to tell him this wasn’t his fault and she wasn’t afraid of him.
She pressed her hand against the mirror, hoping that he could sense her. She stood to go, pressing her hand to her stomach where she kept her leather sheaf.
It wasn’t there.
Her music. She’d left the music in the mirror.
She had two days before L’Opéra du Magician. She needed to practice. It was so much more complex than anything she’d sung before. She needed to be able to sing that song in her sleep.
She pricked her thumb and pressed it to the glass. The drop of blood rolled down, unaccepted. She summoned the image of her father’s broken body, but the memory was fuzzy and faded, all the color gone. Even now, her attempt to draw on it again thinned the memory like water against stone, until the death mask on her father’s face was just a blur.
No.
