Up close, he smells of oak, and leaf, and rain-soaked field.

“Aren’t you tired?” he whispers.

And she flinches at the words.

She braced for his attack, his verbal barbs, but she was not braced for that question, not braced for the almost gentle way he asks.

It has been a hundred and forty years. A century and a half, living as an echo, as a ghost. Of course she is tired.

“Wouldn’t you like to rest, my dear?”

The words drag like gossamer against her skin.

“I could bury you here, beside Estele. Plant a tree, make it grow over your bones.”

Addie closes her eyes.

Yes, she is tired.

She may not feel the years weakening her bones, her body going brittle with age, but the weariness is a physical thing, like rot, inside her soul. There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying.

But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world.

And she does not want to miss it—any of it.

Addie turns in the circle of Luc’s arms, and looks up into his face.

She doesn’t know if it’s the creeping night, or the nature of the woods themselves, but he looks different. These last few years, she has seen him bound in velvet and lace, done up in the latest fashion. And she has seen him as the void, unbridled and violent. But here, he is neither.

Here, he is the darkness she met that night. Feral magic in a lover’s form.

His edges blur into shadow, his skin the color of moonlight, his eyes the exact shade of the moss behind him. He is wild.

But so is she.

“Tired?” she says, summoning a smile. “I am just waking up.”

She braces for his displeasure, the feral shadow, the flash of teeth.

But there is no trace of yellow in his eyes.

In fact, they are a new and lurid shade of green.

It will take years for her to learn the meaning of that color, to understand it as amusement.

Tonight, there is only that brief glimpse, and then the brush of his lips against her cheek.

“Even rocks,” he murmurs, and then he’s gone.

New York City

June 13, 2014

XII

A boy and a girl walk arm in arm.

They’re heading to the Knitting Factory, and like most things in Williamsburg, it isn’t what it sounds like, not a craft store or a place for yarn, but a concert venue on the northern edge of Brooklyn.

It is Henry’s birthday.

Earlier, when he asked her when her birthday was, and when she told him it was back in March, a shadow crossed his face.

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“That’s the great thing about birthdays,” she said, leaning against him. “They happen every year.”

She’d laughed a little then, and so had he, but there was something hollow in his voice, a sadness she mistook for mere distraction.

Henry’s friends have already staked out a table near the stage, small boxes stacked on the table between them.

“Henry!” shouts Robbie, a pair of bottles already empty in front of him.

Bea ruffles his hair. “Our literal sweet summer child.”

Their attention slides past him, and lands on her.

“Hi guys,” he says, “this is Addie.”

“Finally!” says Bea. “We’ve been dying to meet you.”

Of course, they already have.

They’ve been asking for weeks to meet the new girl in Henry’s life. They keep accusing him of hiding her, but Addie has met them over beers at the Merchant, been for movie nights at Bea’s, crossed paths with them at galleries and parks. And every time, Bea talks of déjà vu, and then again of artistic movements, and every time Robbie sulks, despite Addie’s best efforts to placate him.

It seems to bother Henry more than it does her. He must think she has made peace with it, but the truth is, there is none to be found. The endless cycle of hello, who is this, nice to meet you, hello wears at her like water against stone—the damage slow, but inevitable. She has simply learned to live with it.

“You know,” says Bea, studying her, “you look so familiar.”

Robbie rises from the table to get a round of drinks, and Addie’s chest tightens at the thought of him resetting, of having to start it all again, but Henry steps in, touches Robbie’s arm. “I’ve got it,” he says.

“Birthday doesn’t pay!” protests Bea, but Henry waves her off and wades away through the growing crowd.

And Addie is left alone with his friends. “It’s really great to meet you both,” she says. “Henry talks about you all the time.”

Robbie’s eyes narrow in suspicion.

She can feel the wall rising up between them, again, but she’s no stranger to Robbie’s moods, not anymore, and so she presses on. “You’re an actor, right? I’d love to come to one of your performances. Henry says you’re amazing.”

He picks at the label on his beer. “Yeah, sure…” he mumbles, but she catches the edge of a smile when he says it.

And then Bea cuts in. “Henry seems happy. Really happy.”

“I am,” says Henry, setting down a round of beers.

“To twenty-nine,” says Bea, raising her glass.

They proceed to debate the merits of the age, and agree it is a fairly useless year, as far as birthdays go, falling just shy of the monumental thirty.

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.”

“Closer to a midlife crisis than a quarter-life one,” teases Robbie.

The microphone flares, whining slightly as a man takes the stage and announces a special opening act.

“He’s a rising star, I’m sure you’ve heard his name, but if you haven’t you will soon. Give it up for Toby Marsh!”

Addie’s heart lurches.

The crowd whoops and cheers, and Robbie whistles, and Toby steps onto the stage, that same beautiful, blushing boy, but as he waves to the crowd, his chin lifts, his smile is steady, proud. The difference between the first questing lines of a sketch and the finished drawing.

He sits down at the piano and begins to play, and the first notes hit her like longing. And then he begins to sing.

“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.”

She never gave him the words, but he found them anyway.

His voice is clearer, stronger, his tone more confident. He just needed the right song. Something to make the crowd lean in and listen.