The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,136
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.