The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by V.E. Schwab

A memory, old fingers tight around her wrist. Never pray to the gods that answer after dark. Addie turns on him. “She would never have prayed to you.” A flickering smile. “No.” A sneer. “But think of how sad she’d be to know you did.”

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?

“I never understood why I should believe in something I could not feel, or hear, or see.”

“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.

I have found a way to leave a mark, she wants to say to him. You thought you could erase me from this world, but you cannot. I am still here. I will always be here.

“You said it yourself, Luc. Ideas are wilder than memories. And I can be wild. I can be stubborn as the weeds, and you will not root me out. And I think you are glad of it. I think that’s why you’ve come, because you are lonely, too.” Luc’s eyes flash a sickly, stormy green. “Don’t be absurd,” he sneers. “Gods are known to everyone.” “But remembered by so few,” she counters. “How many mortals have met you more than twice—once to make a deal and once to pay the price? How many have been a part of your life as long as I have?” Addie flashes a triumphant smile. “Perhaps that’s why you cursed me as you did. So you would have some company. So someone would remember you.”

“The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”

Bea collars Henry. “But next year, you’ll officially be an adult.” “I’m pretty sure that was eighteen,” he says. “Don’t be ridiculous. Eighteen is old enough to vote, twenty-one is old enough to drink, but thirty is old enough to make decisions.”

He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”

Grief, deep as a well, opens inside her. What is the point in planting seeds? Why tend them? Why help them grow? Everything crumbles in the end. Everything dies.

And then he whispers three words into her hair. “I love you,” he says, and Addie wonders if this is love, this gentle thing. If it is meant to be this soft, this kind. The difference between heat, and warmth. Passion, and contentment. “I love you too,” she says. She wants it to be true.

A dark brow rises. “You think I mean to pull you apart? Not at all. Time will do that soon enough.” He looks to Henry. “Tick tock. Tell me, are you still counting your life in days, or have you begun to measure it in hours? Or does that only make it harder?”

That is where the darkness makes an offer. Not for a lifetime—for a single year. It will be easy to look back and wonder how he could have done it, how he could have given away so much for so little. But in the moment, shoes already skimming night, the simple truth is that he would have sold his soul for less, would have traded an entire life of this for just a day—an hour, a minute, a moment—of peace. Just to numb the pain inside his chest. Just to quiet the storm inside his head. He is so tired of hurting, so tired of being hurt. And that is why, when the stranger holds out his hand, and offers to pull Henry back from the edge, there is no hesitation. He simply says yes.

“They always know,” says Luc. “They just don’t want to accept the cost. The soul is the easiest thing to trade. It’s the time no one considers.”

And Addie realizes that she is going to lose him, the way she has lost everyone. And she doesn’t know if she can do it, not again, not this time. Hasn’t she lost enough?

And Addie forces herself to ask, “How long do you have left?” Henry swallows. “A month.” The words land like a blow on tender skin. “A little more,” he says. “Thirty-six days.” “It’s after midnight,” Addie whispers. Henry exhales. “Then thirty-five.” Her grip tightens around his, and his tightens back, and they hold on until it hurts, as if any minute someone might try to pull them apart, as if the other might slip free, and disappear.

Crying ib the club rn

“How long have you been with him?” “Two months. It’s not so bad,” she says, sipping her drink. “He falls for me every day.” “And forgets you every night.” The words bite, but not as deeply as they used to. “At least he keeps me company.” Those emerald eyes trail over her skin. “So would I,” he says, “if you wanted it.”

“Even if everyone you met remembered,” Luc says, “I would still know you best.” She searches his face. “Do I know you?” He bows his head over hers. “You are the only one who does.”

All she knows is that she is tired, and he is the place she wants to rest. And that, somehow, she is happy. But it is not love.

Whenever Addie feels herself forgetting, she presses her ear to his bare chest and listens for the drum of life, the drawing of breath, and hears only the woods at night, the quiet hush of summer. A reminder that he is a lie, that his face and his flesh are simply a disguise. That he is not human, and this is not love.

“Tell me, Adeline,” he says. “Have you missed me?” Of course she has missed him. She can tell herself, as she has told him, that she only missed being seen, or missed the force of his attention, the intoxication of his presence—but it is more than that. She missed him the way someone might miss the sun in winter, though they still dread its heat. She missed the sound of his voice, the knowing in his touch, the flint-on-stone friction of their conversations, the way they fit together.

“How many times did you almost put it on?” he asks. “How often did you think of me?” And she assumes he is baiting her—until his voice softens to a whisper, the faintest roll of thunder in the air between them. “Because I thought of you. Always.”

me go by now.” Luc flicks his fingers. “What nonsense,” he says. “It is because I love you that I won’t. Love is hungry. Love is selfish.”

“I know you won’t spare me, Luc, and perhaps you are right, we do belong together. So if you love me, spare Henry Strauss. If you love me, let him go.”

“You see only flaws and faults, weaknesses to be exploited. But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much. And maybe—maybe I am no longer one of them.”

“Don’t you dare say my name.” She is on her feet now, singing with rage. “I knew you were a monster, Luc. I saw it often enough. And yet, I still thought—somehow I thought—after all this time—but of course, it wasn’t love, was it? It wasn’t even kindness. It was just another game.”

But one thing has changed. There is no triumph in his eyes. The color has gone out of them, so pale they’re almost gray. And though she’s never seen the shade before, she guesses it is sadness. “I will give you what you want,” he says. “If you will do one thing.” “What?” she asks. Luc holds out his hand. “Dance with me,” he says. There is longing in his voice, and loss, and she thinks, perhaps, it is the end, of this, of them. A game finally played out. A war with no winners.

A tear slides down her cheek. “All you had to do was set me free.” Luc sighs, and lifts her chin. “I could not.” “Because of the deal.” “Because you are mine.”

“I was never yours, Luc,” she says, turning away. “Not in the woods that night. And not when you took me to bed. You were the one who said it was just a game.” “I lied.” The words, a knife. “You loved me,” he says. “And I loved you.” “And yet,” she says, “you didn’t come to find me until I’d found someone else.”

“Oh, Adeline,” he says. “You think you found each other?” The words are a missed step. A sudden drop. “Do you truly think that I would let that happen?” The ground tilts beneath her feet. “That for all the deals I do, such a thing would ever pass beneath my notice?”

“You must have thought yourselves so clever,” he is saying now. “Star-crossed lovers, brought together by chance. What are the odds that you would meet, that you would both be bound to me, both have sold your souls for something only the other could provide? When the truth is so much easier than that—I put Henry in your path. I gave him to you, wrapped and ribboned like a gift.” “Why?” she asks, throat closing around the word. “Why would you do that?” “Because it’s what you wanted. You were so set upon your need for love, you could not see beyond it. I gave you this, I gave you him, so you could see that love was not worth the space you held for it. The space you kept from me.”

“This is cruel, Luc. Even for you.” “No,” he snarls. “Cruelty would be ten years instead of one. Cruelty would be to let you have a lifetime with him, and have to suffer more for losing.” “I would choose it anyway!” She shakes her head. “You never intended to let him live, did you?” Luc inclines his head. “A deal is a deal, Adeline. And deals are binding.” “That you would do all this to torment me—” “No,” he snaps. “I did it to show you. To make you understand. You put them on such a pedestal, but humans are brief and pale and so is their love. It is shallow, it does not last. You long for human love, but you are not human, Adeline. You haven’t been for centuries. You have no place with them. You belong with me.”

“What a hard lesson it must be for you,” she says. “That you can’t have everything you want.” “Want?” he sneers. “Want is for children. If this were want, I would be rid of you by now. I would have forgotten you centuries ago,” he says, a bitter loathing in his voice. “This is need. And need is painful but patient. Do you hear me, Adeline? I need you. As you need me. I love you, as you love me.”

“Does he mean so much to you?” he asks, voice flat and hard as river stones. “Then go. Spend time with your human love. Bury him, and mourn him, and plant a tree over his grave.” His edges begin to blur into the dark. “I will still be here,” he says. “And so will you.”

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”

And this, he decides, is what a good-bye should be. Not a period, but an ellipsis, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up. It is a door left open. It is drifting off to sleep.

That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.

He feels so far from the Henry who climbed up there a year ago—or perhaps he’s not that far at all. It is only a matter of steps, after all, from the street to the edge. But what he would give to go back down. God, what he would give for just another day.

They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time—angry, lonely, content—but he’s never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid. But he is not alone.

“You promised you would listen,” she says, “you promised you would write it down.” He doesn’t understand. The journals are on the shelf. He has written her story—every part. “I did,” he says. “I did.” But Addie is shaking her head. “Henry,” she says. “I haven’t told you how it ends.”

“You were right,” she says. “I am not one of them. Not anymore. And I am tired of losing. Tired of mourning everything I ever try to love.” She reaches out to touch Luc’s cheek. “But I won’t lose you. And you won’t lose me. So yes.” She looks straight into his eyes. “Do this, and I will be yours, as long as you want me by your side.”

“Listen to me.” Her voice is urgent now. “Life can feel very long sometimes, but in the end, it goes so fast.” Her eyes are glassy with tears, but she is smiling. “You better live a good life, Henry Strauss.”

“You’ve given me so much, Henry. But I need you to do one more thing.” Her forehead presses against his. “I need you to remember.”

Belief is a bit like gravity. Enough people believe a thing, and it becomes as solid and real as the ground beneath your feet. But when you’re the only one holding on to an idea, a memory, a girl, it’s hard to keep it from floating away.

She peels back the cover, turns past the title to the dedication. Three small words rest in the center of the page. I remember you.