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What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided—a memory, a photograph, a name.
After all, the darkness only looked the way he did because of her. She’d given him that shape, chosen what to make of him, what to see. Don’t you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke? Darling, he’d said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.
When Adeline told the girl about her trip, Isabelle had only shrugged, and said, “I like it here.” As if you couldn’t like one place and want to see another.
The darkness has granted her freedom from death, perhaps, but not from this. Not from suffering.
What a luxury, to tell one’s story. To be read, remembered.
He tips his head back, the rain rinsing gold and glitter from his skin, flattening the perfect wave of curls against his skull, erasing all traces of magic, turning him from a languid, arrogant prince into a boy; mortal, vulnerable, alone.
Everywhere he looks, he finds a friendly face, a warm smile, and sometimes, more.
Everyone seems to love him
Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
but she knows there is no future in it. Only an infinite number of presents, and she has lived as many of those with Sam as she can bear.
I remember you.
You stole this used copy of The Odyssey, which I gave back to you, because who steals a used copy of The Odyssey in Greek anyways, and then you have the nerve to come back in here and try to trade it out for something else? When you didn’t even buy the first one…”
The sailor has come home
The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”
Haunt—it is the right word, for someone living like a ghost.
He seems, if anything, to relish her attention.
Less a man than a collection of features, drawn by a careful hand. In time, that will change. He will inflate, expand to fill the gaps between the lines of her drawing, wrest the image from her grip until she cannot fathom that it was ever hers. But for now, the only aspect that is his—entirely his—are those eyes.
“You think yourself a cat, playing with its catch. But I am not a mouse, and I will not be a meal.” “I do hope not.” He spreads his hands. “It’s been so long since I had a challenge.”
He has given her a gift tonight, though she doubts he knows it. Time has no face, no form, nothing to fight against. But in his mocking smile, his toying words, the darkness has given her the one thing she truly needs: an enemy.
Addie, who looked at him and saw a boy with dark hair, kind eyes, an open face. Nothing more. And nothing else. A cold gust blows, and he pulls his coat close, and looks up at the starless sky. And smiles.
What is he? The darkness?
“you strike me as someone not easily restrained. Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on.” She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning. To find a way, or make your own. And she will smile, then, a ghost of the smile he has managed to win from her tonight.
“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
“Do you think a life has any value if one doesn’t leave some mark upon the world?”
Addie no longer dreams. She hasn’t, in truth, since that night in the woods. Or if she has, it is the one thing she never remembers. Perhaps there is no space inside her head, full as it is of memories. Perhaps it is yet another facet of her curse, to live only as she does. Or perhaps it is in some strange sense a mercy, for how many would be nightmares.
And Addie thinks that Luc would love her, wonders for an instant if he’s been down here since she’d found it.
Her enemy and only friend…brings to mind I wouldn’t love you if we were the last two people on Earth.
Addie realizes suddenly that, despite the moments of resemblance, Luc never once looked like this. Young. Human. Alive.
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.
By the bed, an old-fashioned watch sits on the side table. It has no minute hand, and the hour points just past six, even though the clock on the wall reads 9:32.
The food trucks form a colorful stripe along Flatbush, crowds of people queuing for lobster rolls and grilled cheese, banh mi and kebabs.
So weird when a book is based where i live
she can feel the weight of what she left behind, and she wishes she could have stayed, wishes that when Henry had said Wait, she had said, Come with me, but she knows it is not fair to make him choose. He is full of roots, while she has only branches.
Robbie sees Henry, and Henry sees her, and they are in a triangle of one-way streets. A comedy of memory and absence and terrible luck
Three portraits, all of them renditions of a young woman, though they clearly come from different times and different schools. “What am I looking at?” he asks. “I call her the ghost in the frame.”
I Took the Stars to Bed.
And even though he’s safe, both feet firmly on the ground, Henry feels himself begin to fall.
And Henry, the ghost
You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don’t exist.
and for the first time, Addie is grateful for the cleansing nature of her curse, for having made the deal at all—not for her own sake, but for her mother’s. That Marthe LaRue had only to grieve one loss, instead of two.
There is no place for her, of course. But this string of graves, like a timeline, charting from the past into the future, this is what drove her to the woods that night, the fear of a life like this, leading to the same small patch of grass.
“Why would I be fond of war?” It is the first time, she thinks, he has asked an honest question, one not meant to goad, demand, coerce. “Are you not a god of chaos?”
“Perhaps that’s why you cursed me as you did. So you would have some company. So someone would remember you.”
And even though there is no answer, save the rustle of leaves, she knows what the old woman would say. Everything changes, foolish girl. It is the nature of the world. Nothing stays the same. Except for me, she thinks, but Estele answers, dry as kindling. Not even you.
“I’m in love with a girl I’ve never met.” Time slips, and she is in his living room, perched on the piano bench, tea steaming on the windowsill as her absent fingers pick out the notes. “But I see her every night, it seems…” She is in his bed, his broad hands playing out the melody on skin. Her face flares hot at the memory as he sings. “And I’m so afraid, afraid that I’ll forget her, even though I’ve only met her in my dreams.”
an elegant man leaning in the doorway, black curls drawn like ink against his temples.
He conjures cups of wine from nothing, and they sit before the fire like friends, or at least, like foes at rest, and he tells her of Paris at the close of a decade—the turn of the century.
“You told me once that we were alike,” he says, almost to himself. “Both of us … lonely. I loathed you for saying it. But I suppose in some ways you were right. I suppose,” he goes on slowly, “there is something to the idea of company.”
Addie marvels at the ring. “What must I do?” “You know how to summon gods.” Estele’s voice, faint as a breeze. You must humble yourself before them. “Put it on, and I will come.” Luc leans back in his chair, the night breeze blowing through those raven curls. “There,” he says. “Now we are even.”
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.
She has reached for it a hundred times: when she was lonely, when she was bored, when she saw a thing of beauty and thought of him. But she is too stubborn, and he is too proud, and she is determined to win this round.
“How do you walk to the end of the world?” He looks up at her. “I wanted to hold on to every step.”
And as she steps into the hall, he looks to Henry. And winks. Addie should have stopped right there. She should have turned around, let Henry pull her back inside. They should have shut the door, and bolted it against the dark. But they didn’t. They don’t.
“I want you.” And then, again, “I have always wanted you.” Luc looks down at her, those green eyes dark with pleasure, and Addie fights to hold her ground. “You want me as a prize,” she says. “You want me as a meal, or a glass of wine. Just another thing to be consumed.” He dips his head, presses his lips to her collarbone. “Is that so wrong?” She fights back a shiver as he kisses her throat. “Is it such a bad thing…” His mouth trails along her jaw. “… to be savored?” His breath brushes her ear. “To be relished?”
It is only sex. And then it is not. “Dine with me,” Luc says as winter gives way to spring. “Dance with me,” he says as a new year begins. “Be with me,” he says, at last, as one decade slips into the next.
Damn they were together together
