Until he draws her back toward the bar and the tunnel, back the way they came, but the flow of traffic is a one-way street, the stairs and the steel door only lead in.

  Until she cocks her head the other way, to a dark arch set in the tunnel wall near the stage, leads him up the narrow stairs, the music fading a little more with every upward step, ears buzzing with the white noise left in its wake.

  Until they spill out into the cool March night, filling their lungs with fresh air.

  And the first clear sound Addie hears is his laughter.

  Henry turns toward her, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, intoxicated in a way that has less to do with the vodka than with the power of the Fourth Rail.

  He is still laughing when the storm starts.

  A crack of thunder, and seconds later, the rain comes down. Not a drizzle—not even the sparse warning drops that soon give way to a steady rain—but the sudden sheet fall of a downpour. The kind of rain that hits you like a wall, soaks you through in seconds.

  Addie gasps at the sudden shock of cold.

  They are ten feet from the nearest awning, but neither of them runs for cover.

  She smiles up into the rain, lets the water kiss her skin.

  Henry looks at her, and Addie looks back, and then he spreads his arms as if to welcome the storm, his chest heaving. Water clings to his black lashes, slides down his face, rinsing the club from his clothes, and Addie realizes suddenly that, despite the moments of resemblance, Luc never once looked like this.

  Young.

  Human.

  Alive.

  She pulls Henry toward her, relishes the press of his body, warm against the cold. She runs her hand through his hair and for the first time it stays back, exposing the sharp lines of his face, the hungry hollows of his jaw, his eyes, a brighter shade of green than she has seen them yet.

  “Addie,” he breathes, and the sound sends sparks across her skin, and when he kisses her, he tastes like salt, and summer. But it feels too much like a punctuation mark, and she isn’t ready for the night to end, so she kisses him back, deeper, turns the period into a question, into an answer.

  And then they are running, not for shelter, but the train.

  * * *

  They stumble into his apartment, wet clothes clinging to their skin.

  They are a tangle of limbs in the hallway, unable to get close enough. She pulls the glasses from his face, tosses them onto a nearby chair, shrugs out of her coat, the leather sticking to her skin. And then they are kissing again. Desperate, hungry, wild, as her fingers run over his ribs, hook in the front of his jeans.

  “Are you sure?” he asks, and in answer she pulls his mouth to hers, guides his hands to the buttons of her shirt as hers find his belt. He presses her back against the wall, and says her name, and it is lightning through her limbs, it is fire through her core, it is longing between her legs.

  And then they are on the bed, and for an instant, only an instant, she is somewhere else, somewhen else, the darkness folding itself around her. A name whispered against bare skin.

  But to him she was Adeline, only Adeline. His Adeline. My Adeline.

  Here, now, she is finally Addie.

  “Say it again,” she pleads.

  “Say what?” he murmurs.

  “My name.”

  Henry smiles.

  “Addie,” he whispers against her throat.

  “Addie.” The kisses trail over her collar.

  “Addie.” Her stomach.

  “Addie.” Her hips.

  His mouth finds the heat between her legs, and her fingers tangle in those black curls, her back arching up with pleasure. Time shudders, slides out of focus. He retraces his steps, kisses her again, and then she is on top of him, pressing him down into the bed.

  They do not fit together perfectly. He was not made for her the way Luc was—but this is better, because he is real, and kind, and human, and he remembers.

  When it is over, she collapses, breathless, into the sheets beside him, sweat and rain chilling on her skin. Henry folds around her, pulls her back into the circle of his warmth, and she can feel his heart slowing through his ribs, a metronome easing back into its measure.

  The room goes quiet, marked only by the steady rain beyond the windows, the drowsy aftermath of passion, and soon she can feel him drifting down toward sleep.

  Addie looks up at the ceiling.

  “Don’t forget,” she says softly, the words half prayer, half plea.

  Henry’s arms tighten, a body surfacing from sleep. “Forget what?” he murmurs, already sinking again.

  And Addie waits for his breath to steady before she whispers the word to the dark.

  “Me.”

  Paris, France

  July 29, 1724

  VI

  Addie surges out into the night, swiping tears from her cheeks.

  She pulls her jacket close despite the warmth of summer, and makes her way alone across the sleeping city. She is not heading toward the hovel she’s called home this season. She is simply moving forward, because she cannot bear the idea of standing still.

  So Addie walks.

  And at some point, she realizes she is no longer alone. There is a change in the air, a subtle breeze, carrying the leafy scent of country woods, and then he is there, falling in step beside her, stride for stride. An elegant shadow, dressed in the height of Paris fashion, collar and cuff trimmed in silk.

  Only his black curls billow around his face, feral and free.

  “Adeline, Adeline,” he says, his voice laced with pleasure, and she is back in the bed, Remy’s voice saying Anna, Anna into her hair.

  It has been four years without a visit.

  Four years of holding her breath, and though she will never admit it, the sight of him is like coming up for air. A terrible, chest-opening relief. As much as she hates this shadow, this god, this monster in his stolen flesh, he is still the only one who remembers her at all.

  It does not make her hate him any less.

  If anything, she hates him more.

  “Where have you been?” she snaps.

  Smug pleasure shines like starlight in his eyes. “Why? Have you missed me?” Addie doesn’t trust herself to speak. “Come now,” Luc presses, “you did not think I would make it easy.”

  “It’s been four years,” she says, wincing at the anger in her voice, too close to need.

  “Four years is nothing. A breath. A blink.”

  “And yet, you come tonight.”

  “I know your heart, my dear. I feel when it falters.”

  Remy’s fingers folding hers over the coins, the sudden weight of sadness, and the darkness, drawn to pain like a wolf to blood.

  Luc looks down at her trousers, pinned below the knee, the man’s tunic, open at the throat. “I must say,” he says, “I preferred you in red.”

  Her heart catches at the mention of that night four years before, the first time he did not come. He savors the sight of her surprise.

  “You saw,” she says.

  “I am the night itself. I see everything.” He steps closer, carrying the scent of summer storms, the kiss of forest leaves. “But that was a lovely dress you wore on my behalf.”

  Shame slides like a flush beneath her skin, followed by the heat of anger, at the knowledge that he was watching. Had watched her hope gutter with the candles on the sill, watched as she shattered, alone in the dark.

  She loathes him, wears that loathing like a coat, wraps it tight around her as she smiles.

  “You thought I would wither without your attention. But I have not.”

  The darkness hums. “It has only been four years,” he muses. “Perhaps next time I will wait longer. Or perhaps…” His hand grazes her chin, tipping her face to meet his. “I will abandon these visits, and leave you to wander the earth until it ends.”

  It is a chilling thought, though she does not let him see it.

  “If you did that,” she says evenly, “you would never have my soul.”

  He shrugs. “I have a thousand others waiting to be reaped, and you are only one.” He is closer now, too close, his thumb tracing up her jaw, fingers sliding along the back of her neck. “It would be so easy to forget you. Everyone else already has.” She tries to pull away, but his hand is stone, holding her fast. “I will be kind. It will be quick. Say yes now,” he urges, “before I change my mind.”

  For a terrible moment, she doesn’t trust herself to answer. The weight of the coins in her palm is still too fresh, the pain of the night torn away, and victory dances like light in Luc’s eyes. It is enough to force her to her senses.

  “No,” she says, the word a snarl.

  And there it is, like a gift, a flash of anger on that perfect face.

  His hand falls away, the weight of him vanishing like smoke, and Addie is left alone once more in the dark.

  * * *

  There is a point when the night breaks.

  When the darkness finally begins to weaken, and lose its hold over the sky. It’s slow, so slow she doesn’t notice until the light is already creeping in, until the moon and stars have vanished, and the weight of Luc’s attention lifts from her shoulders.

  Addie climbs the steps of the Sacré Coeur, sits at the top, with the church at her back and Paris sprawling at her feet, and watches the 29th of July become the 30th, watches the sun rise over the city.

  She has almost forgotten the book she took from Remy’s floor.

  She has clutched it so tight, her fingers ache. Now, in the watery morning light, she puzzles over the title, silently sounding out the words. La Place Royale. It is a novel, that new word, though she doesn’t yet know it. Addie peels back the cover, and tries to read the first page, manages only a line before the words crumble into letters, and the letters blur, and she has to resist the urge to cast the cursed book away, to fling it down the steps.

  Instead, she closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and thinks of Remy, not his words, but the soft pleasure in his voice when he spoke of reading, the delight in his eyes, the joy, the hope.

  It will be a grueling journey, full of starts and stops and myriad frustrations.

  To decipher this first novel will take her almost a year—a year spent laboring over every line, trying to make sense of a sentence, then a page, then a chapter. And still, it will be a decade more before the act comes naturally, before the task itself dissolves, and she finds the hidden pleasure of the story.

  It will take time, but time is the one thing Addie has plenty of.

  So she opens her eyes, and starts again.

  New York City

  March 16, 2014

  VII

  Addie wakes to the smell of toast browning, the sizzle of butter hitting a hot skillet. The bed is empty beside her, the door almost closed, but she can hear Henry moving in the kitchen beneath the soft burble of talk radio. The room is cool, and the bed is warm, and she holds her breath and tries to hold the moment with it, the way she has a thousand times, clutching the past to the present, and warding off the future, the fall.

  But today is different.

  Because someone remembers.

  She throws off the blankets, scavenges the bedroom floor, looking for her clothes, but there’s no sign of the rain-soaked jeans or shirt, just the familiar leather jacket draped over a chair. Addie finds a robe beneath and wraps it around her, buries her nose in the collar. It is worn and soft, smells like clean cotton and fabric softener and the faint hint of coconut shampoo, a smell she will come to know as his.

  She pads barefoot into the kitchen as Henry pours coffee from a French press.

  He looks up, and smiles. “Good morning.”

  Two small words that move the world.

  Not I’m sorry. Not I don’t remember. Not I must have been drunk.

  Just good morning.

  “I put your clothes in the dryer,” he says. “They should be done soon. Grab yourself a mug.”

  Most people have a shelf of cups. Henry has a wall. They hang from hooks on a mounted rack, five across and seven down. Some of them are patterned and some of them are plain and no two are the same.

  “I’m not sure you have enough mugs.”

  Henry casts her a sidelong look. He has a way of almost smiling. It’s like light behind a curtain, the edge of the sun behind clouds, more a promise than an actual thing, but the warmth shines through.

  “It was a thing, in my family,” he says. “No matter who came over for coffee, they could choose the one that spoke to them that day.”

  His own cup sits on the counter, charcoal gray, the inside coated in something that looks like liquid silver. A storm cloud and its lining. Addie studies the wall, trying to make her choice. She reaches for a large porcelain cup with small blue leaves, weighs it in her palm before she notices another. She’s about to put it back when Henry stops her.

  “I’m afraid all selections are final,” he says, scraping butter over toast. “You’ll have to try again tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. The word swells a little in her chest.

  Henry pours, and Addie leans her elbows on the counter, wraps her hands around the steaming cup, inhales the bittersweet scent. For a second, only a second, she is in Paris, hat pulled down in the corner of the café as Remy pushed the cup toward her and said, Drink. That is how memories are for her, past rising into present, a palimpsest held up to the light.

  “Oh, hey,” says Henry, calling her back. “I found this on the floor. Is it yours?”

  She looks up and sees the wooden ring.

  “Don’t touch that.” Addie snatches it out of his hand, too fast. The inside of the ring brushes the tip of her finger, rolls around the nail like a coin about to settle, all the ease of a compass finding north.

  “Shit.” Addie shudders and drops the band. It clatters to the floor, rolling several feet before fetching up against the edge of a rug. She grips her fingers as if burned, heart pounding.

  She didn’t put it on.

  And even if she did—her gaze cuts to the window, but it is morning, sunlight streaming through the curtains. The darkness cannot find her here.

  “What happened?” asks Henry, clearly confused.

  “Nothing,” she says, shaking out her hand. “Just a splinter. Stupid thing.” She kneels slowly to retrieve it, careful to touch only the outside of the band.

  “Sorry,” she says, straightening. She sets the ring on the counter between them, splaying her hands on either side. In the artificial light, the pale wood looks almost gray. Addie glares down at the band.

  “Have you ever had something you love, and hate, but can’t bear to get rid of? Something you almost wish you’d lose, because then it wouldn’t be there, and it wouldn’t be your fault…” She tries to make the words light, almost casual.

  “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.” He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out something small, and gold. A Star of David. A pendant, missing its chain.

  “You’re Jewish?”

  “I was.” Two words, and all he means to say. His attention drifts back to her ring. “It looks old.”

  “It is.” Exactly as old as she is.

  They both should have worn to nothing long ago.

  She presses her hand down over the ring, feels the smooth wooden rim dig into her palm. “It belonged to my father,” she says, and it isn’t a lie, though it’s only the beginning of the truth. She closes her hand around the ring, and pockets it. The ring is weightless, but she can feel it. She can always feel it.

  “Anyway,” she says, with a too-bright smile. “What’s for breakfast?”

  * * *

  How many times has Addie dreamed of this?

  Of hot coffee and buttered toast, of sunlight streaming through the windows, of new days that aren’t fresh starts, none of the awkward silence of strangers, of a boy or a girl, elbows on the counter across from her, the simple comfort of a night remembered.

  “You must really love breakfast,” says Henry, and she realizes she is beaming down at her food.

  “It’s my favorite meal,” she answers, spearing a bite of eggs.

  But as she eats, the hope begins to thin.

  Addie is not a fool. Whatever this is, she knows it will not last. She has lived too long to think it chance, been cursed too long to think it fate.

  She has begun to wonder if it is a trap.

  Some new way to torment her. To break the stalemate, force her hand back into play. But even after all these years, Luc’s voice wraps around her, soft and low and gloating.

  I am all you have. All you will ever have. The only one who will remember.

  It was the one card he always held, the weapon of his own attention, and she does not think he’d give it away. But if it is not a trap, then what? An accident? A stroke of luck? Perhaps she has gone mad. It would not be the first time. Perhaps she has frozen up on Sam’s roof, and is trapped in a dream.

  Perhaps none of it is real.

  And yet, there is his hand on hers, there is the soft scent of him on the robe, there is the sound of her name, drawing her back.

  “Where did you go?” he asks, and she spears another bite of food and holds it up between them.

  “If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life,” she says, “what would it be?”

  “Chocolate,” Henry answers without missing a beat. “The kind so dark it’s almost bitter. You?”

  Addie ponders. A life is a very long time. “Cheese,” she answers soberly, and Henry nods, and silence settles over them, less awkward than shy. Nervous laughter in between stolen glances, two strangers who are no longer strangers but know so little of each other.

  “If you could live somewhere with only one season,” asks Henry, “what would it be?”

  “Spring,” she says, “when everything is new.”

  “Fall,” he says, “when everything is fading.”

  They have both chosen seams, those ragged lines where things are neither here nor there, but balanced on the brink. And Addie wonders, half to herself, “Would you rather feel nothing or everything?”