“I don’t know,” she says blandly. “I suppose you’ll have to ask me then.”

  The storm reaches the coast. The first drops begin to fall, and Addie presses the book to her chest, shielding the pages from the damp.

  Luc rises. “Walk with me,” he says, holding out his hand. It is not an invitation so much as a command, but the rain is quickly turning from a promise to a steady pour, and she has only the one dress. She rises without his help, brushing the sand from her skirts.

  “This way.”

  He leads her through town, toward the silhouette of a building, its vaulted steeple piercing the low clouds. It is, of all things, a church.

  “You’re joking.”

  “I am not the one getting wet,” he says. And indeed, he’s not. She is soaked through by the time they reach the shelter of the stone awning, but Luc is dry. The rain has not even touched him.

  He smiles, reaching for the door.

  It does not matter that the church is locked. Were it draped in chains, it would still open for him. Such boundaries, she has learned, mean nothing to the dark.

  Inside, the air is stuffy, the stone walls holding in the summer heat. It is too dark to see more than the outlines of the pews, the figure on its cross.

  Luc spreads his arms. “Behold, the house of God.”

  His voice echoes through the chamber, soft and sinister.

  Addie has always wondered if Luc could set foot on sacred ground, but the sound of his shoes on the church floor is answer to that question.

  She makes her way down the aisle, but she cannot shake the strangeness of this place. Without the bells, the organ, the bodies crowding in for services, the church feels abandoned. Less a house of worship and more a tomb.

  “Care to confess your sins?”

  Luc has moved with all the ease of shadows in the dark. He is no longer behind her, but sitting in the first row now, his arms spread along the back of the pew, his legs thrown out, ankles crossed in lazy repose.

  Addie was raised to kneel in the little stone chapel in the center of Villon, spent days folded into Paris pews. She has listened to the bells, and the organ, and the calls to prayer. And yet, despite it all, she has never understood the appeal. How does a ceiling bring you closer to heaven? If God is so large, why build walls to hold Him in?

  “My parents were believers,” she muses, her fingers trailing over the pews. “They always spoke of God. Of His strength, His mercy, His light. They said He was everywhere, in everything.” Addie stops before the altar. “They believed in everything so easily.”

  “And you?”

  Addie looks up at the panels of stained glass, the images little more than ghosts without the sun to light them. She wanted to believe. She listened, and waited to hear His voice, to feel His presence, the way she might feel sun on her shoulders, or wheat beneath her hands. The way she felt the presence of the old gods Estele so favored. But there, in the cold stone house, she never felt anything.

  She shakes her head, and says aloud, “I never understood why I should believe in something I could not feel, or hear, or see.”

  Luc raises a brow. “I think,” he says, “they call that faith.”

  “Says the devil in the house of God.” Addie glances his way as she says it, and catches a brief flash of yellow across the steady green.

  “A house is a house,” he says, annoyed. “This one belongs to all, or none. And you think me the devil, now? You weren’t so certain in the woods.”

  “Perhaps,” she says, “you have made me a believer.”

  Luc tips his head back, a wicked smile tugging at his mouth. “And you think if I am real, then so is he. The light to my shadow, the day to my dark? And you are convinced, if only you had prayed to him instead of me, he would have shown you such kindness and such mercy.”

  She has wondered as much a hundred times, though of course she does not say it.

  Luc’s hands slide off the pew as he leans forward.

  “And now,” he adds, “you will never know. But as for me,” he says, rising, “well—the devil is simply a new word for a very old idea. And as for God, well, if all it takes is a flair for drama and a bit of golden trim…”

  He flicks his fingers, and suddenly the buttons on his coat, the buckles on his shoes, the stitching on his waistcoat are no longer black, but gilded. Burnished stars against a moonless night.

  He smiles, then brushes the filigree away like dust.

  She watches it fall, looks up again to find him there, inches from her face.

  “But this is the difference between us, Adeline,” he whispers, fingers grazing her chin. “I will always answer.”

  She shivers, despite herself. At the too-familiar touch against her skin, at the lurid green of his eyes, at the wolfish, wild grin.

  “Besides,” he says, fingers falling from her face, “all gods have a price. I’m hardly the only one who trades in souls.” Luc holds his hand, open, to one side, and light blooms in the air just above his palm. “He lets souls wither on shelves. I water them.”

  The light warps and coils.

  “He makes promises. I pay up front.”

  It flares once, sudden and brilliant, and then draws close, taking on a solid shape.

  Addie has always wondered what a soul would look like.

  It is such a grand word, soul. Like god, like time, like space, and when she’s tried to picture it, she’s conjured images of lightning, or sunbeams through dust, of storms in the shapes of human forms, of vast and edgeless white.

  The truth is so much smaller.

  The light in Luc’s hand is a marble, glassy and glowing with a faint internal light.

  “Is that all?”

  And yet, Addie cannot tear her gaze from the fragile orb. She feels herself reaching for it, but he draws it back, out of her reach.

  “Do not be deceived by its appearance.” He turns the glowing bead between his fingers. “You look at me and see a man, though you know I am nothing of the sort. This shape is only an aspect, designed for the beholder.”

  The light twists, and shifts, the orb flattening into a disk. And then a ring. Her ring. The ash wood glows, and her heart aches to see it, to hold it, to feel the worn surface against her skin. But she clenches her hands into fists to keep from reaching out again.

  “What does it really look like?”

  “I can show you,” he purrs, letting the light settle in his palm. “Say the word, and I will lay your own soul bare before you. Surrender, and I promise, the last thing you see will be the truth.”

  There it is again.

  One time salt, and the next honey, and each designed to cover poison.

  Addie looks at the ring, lets herself linger on it one last time, and then forces her gaze up past the light to meet the dark.

  “You know,” she says, “I think I’d rather live and wonder.”

  Luc’s mouth twitches, and she cannot tell if it is anger or amusement.

  “Suit yourself, my dear,” he says, dousing the light between his fingers.

  New York City

  March 23, 2014

  IV

  Addie sits folded in a leather chair in the corner of The Last Word, the soft purr of the cat emanating from the shelves somewhere behind her head, as she watches customers lean toward Henry like flowers toward the sun.

  Once you know about a thing, you start to see it everywhere.

  Someone says the words purple elephant, and all of a sudden, you catch sight of them in shop windows and on T-shirts, stuffed animals and billboards, and you wonder how you never noticed.

  It is the same with Henry, and the deal he made.

  A man, laughing at everything he says.

  A woman beams, radiant with joy.

  A teenage girl steals chances to touch his shoulder, his arm, blushing with blatant attraction.

  Despite it all, Addie is not jealous.

  She has lived too long and lost too much, and what little she’s had has been borrowed or stolen, never kept to herself. She has learned to share—and yet, every time Henry steals a glance her way, she feels a pleasant flush of warmth, as welcome as the sudden appearance of sunlight between clouds.

  Addie draws her legs up into the chair, a book of poems open in her lap.

  She’s swapped the paint-spattered clothes for a new pair of black jeans, and an oversized sweater, lifted from a thrift store while Henry was working. But she kept the boots, the little flecks of yellow and blue a reminder of the night before, the closest thing she has to a photo, a material memory. “Ready?”

  She looks up, sees the shop sign already turned outwardly to CLOSED, and Henry standing near the door, his jacket slung over his arm. He holds out his hand, helps her from the leather chair, which, he explains, has a way of eating people.

  They step outside, climb the four steps back to the street.

  “Where to?” asks Addie.

  It is early, and Henry’s buzzing with a restless energy. It seems to worsen around dusk, sunset a steady marker of one day gone, time passing with the loss of light.

  “Have you been to the Ice Cream Factory?”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  His face falls. “You’ve already been.”

  “I don’t mind going again.”

  But Henry shakes his head, and says, “I want to show you something new. Is there anywhere you haven’t been?” he asks, and after a long moment, Addie shrugs.

  “I’m sure there is,” she says. “But I haven’t found it yet.”

  She meant it to be funny, light, but Henry frowns, deep in thought, and looks around.

  “Okay,” he says, grabbing her hand. “Come with me.”

  An hour later, they are standing in Grand Central.

  “I hate to break it to you,” she says, looking around at the bustling station, “but I’ve been here before. Most people have.”

  But Henry shoots her a grin that’s pure mischief. “This way.”

  She follows him down the escalator to the station’s lower level. They weave, hand in hand, through a steady sea of evening travelers, toward the bustling food hall, but Henry stops short, beneath an intersection of tile arches, corridors branching every direction. He draws her into one of the pillared corners, where the arches split, curving overhead and across, turns her toward the tiled wall.

  “Stay here,” he says, and starts to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” she asks, already turning to follow.

  But Henry returns, squaring her shoulders to the arch. “Stay here, like this,” he says. “And listen.”

  Addie turns her ear to the tile wall, but she can’t hear anything over the shuffle of foot traffic, the clatter and rattle of the evening crowd. She glances over her shoulder.

  “Henry, I don’t—”

  But Henry isn’t there. He’s jogging across the hall to the opposite side of the arch, maybe thirty feet away. He looks back at her, and then turns away and buries his face in the corner, looking for all the world like a kid playing hide-and-seek, counting to ten.

  Addie feels ridiculous, but she leans in close to the tiled wall, and waits, and listens.

  And then, impossibly, she hears his voice.

  “Addie.”

  She startles. The word is soft but clear, as if he’s standing right beside her.

  “How are you doing this?” she asks the arch. And she can hear the smile in his voice when he answers.

  “The sound follows the curve of the arch. A phenomenon that happens when spaces bend just right. It’s called a whispering gallery.”

  Addie marvels. Three hundred years, and there are still new things to learn.

  “Talk to me,” comes the voice against the tile.

  “What should I say?” she whispers to the wall.

  “Well,” says Henry, softly, in her ear. “Why don’t you tell me a story?”

  Paris, France

  July 29, 1789

  V

  Paris is burning.

  Outside, the air reeks of gunpowder and smoke, and while the city has never been truly quiet, for the last fortnight the noise has been ceaseless. It is musket rounds, and cannon fire, it is soldiers shouting orders, and the retort carried from mouth to mouth.

  Vive la France. Vive la France. Vive la France.

  Two weeks since the taking of the Bastille, and the city seems determined to tear itself in two. And yet, it must go on, it must survive, and all those in it, left to find a way through the daily storm.

  Addie has chosen to move at night instead.

  She weaves through the dark, a saber jostling at her hip and a tricorne low over her brow. The clothes she peeled from a man who had been shot in the street, the torn cloth and dark stain on the stomach hidden beneath a vest that she salvaged from another corpse. Beggars can’t be choosers, and it is too dangerous to travel as a woman alone. Worse still these days to play the part of noble—better to blend in in other ways.

  A current has swept through the city, at once triumphant and intoxicating, and in time, Addie will learn to taste the changes in the air, to sense the line between vigor and violence. But tonight, the rebellion is still new, the energy strange and unreadable.

  As for the city itself, the avenues of Paris have all become a maze, the sudden erection of barriers and barricades turning any path into a series of dead ends. It is no surprise then when she rounds another corner and finds a pile of crates and debris burning up ahead.

  Addie swears under her breath, is about to double back, when boots sound on the road behind her and a gun goes off, cracking against the barricade above her head.

  She turns to find half a dozen men barring her retreat, dressed in the mottled garb of the rebellion. Their muskets and sabers glint dully in the evening light. She is grateful, then, that her clothes belonged once to a commoner.

  Addie clears her throat, careful to force her voice deep, gruff as she calls out, “Vive la France!”

  The men return the cheer, but to her dismay, they don’t retreat. Instead, they continue toward her, hands resting on their weapons. In the light of the blaze, their eyes are glassy with wine, and the nameless energy of the night.

  “What are you doing here?” demands one.

  “Could be a spy,” says another. “Plenty of soldiers parading about in common dress. Robbing the bodies of the valiant dead.”

  “I want no trouble,” she calls out. “I am simply lost. Let me pass, and I will be gone.”

  “And return with a dozen more,” mutters the second.

  “I am not a spy, nor a soldier, nor a corpse,” she calls back. “I was only looking—”

  “—to sabotage,” cuts in a third.

  “Or raid our stores,” suggests another.

  They are no longer shouting. There is no need. They have drawn close enough to speak in level tones, pressing her back against the burning barricade. If she can only get past them, get away, out of sight and out of mind—but there is nowhere to run. The side streets have all been barred. The crates burn hot behind her.

  “If you are a friend, then prove it.”

  “Lay down your sword.”

  “Take off your hat. Let us see your face.”

  Addie swallows, and casts the hat aside, hoping the dark will be enough to hide the softness of her features. But just then, the barricade crackles behind her, some beam giving way to flame, and for an instant, the fire brightens, and she knows the light is strong enough to see by. Knows it by the way their faces change.

  “Let me pass,” she says again, hand going to the sword at her hip. She knows how to wield it, knows too that there are five of them and only one of her, and if she draws steel, there will be no way out of this but through. The promise of survival is small comfort against the prospect of what might happen first.

  They close in, and Addie draws the sword.

  “Stay back,” she growls.

  And to her surprise, the men stop walking. Their steps drag to a halt, and a shadow falls across their faces, the expressions going slack. Hands slip from weapons, and heads loll on shoulders, and the night goes still, save for the crackle of the burning crates and the breezy arrival of a voice at her back.

  “Humans are so ill-equipped for peace.”

  She turns, her sword still raised, and finds Luc, his edges black against the blaze. He doesn’t retreat from the sword, simply reaches up and runs his hand along the steel with all the grace of a lover touching skin, a musician fondling an instrument. She half expects the blade to sing beneath his fingers.

  “My Adeline,” says the darkness, “you do have a way of finding trouble.” That vivid green gaze drifts to the motionless men. “How lucky I was here.”

  “You are the night itself,” she parrots. “Shouldn’t you be everywhere?”

  A smile flickers across his face. “What a good memory you have.” His fingers curl around her blade, and it begins to rust. “How tiresome that must be.”

  “Not at all,” she says dryly. “It is a gift. Think of all there is to learn. And I, with all the time to learn i—”

  She is interrupted by a volley of gunfire in the distance, the answer of a cannon, heavy as thunder. Luc frowns in distaste, and it amuses her to see him unsettled. The cannon sounds again, and he takes her by the wrist.

  “Come,” he says, “I cannot hear myself think.”

  He turns swiftly on his heel, and draws her in his wake. But instead of stepping forward, he steps sideways, into the deep shadow of the nearest wall. Addie flinches back, expecting to strike stone, but the wall opens, and the world gives way, and before she can draw breath, draw back, Paris is gone, and so is Luc.

  As she is plunged into absolute darkness.

  It is not as still as death, not as empty, or calm. There is a violence to this blind black void. It is birds’ wings beating against her skin. It is the rush of the wind in her hair. It is a thousand whispering voices. It is fear, and falling, and it is a feral, wild feeling, and by the time she thinks to scream, the darkness has peeled away again, the night has re-formed, and Luc is once again beside her.

  Addie sways, braces herself against a doorway, feeling ill, and empty, and confused.