The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,145

what he means to do.

It has been forty years since he last dragged her through the dark, but she hasn’t forgotten the feeling, the primal fear and the wild hope and the reckless freedom of doors thrown open onto night.

It is infinite—

And then it is over, and she is on her hands and knees on a wooden floor, limbs trembling from the strangeness of the journey.

A bed lies, disheveled and empty, the curtains have been flung wide, and the floor is covered in sheets of music, and there is a stale air of sickness to the space.

“What a waste,” murmurs Luc.

Addie rises unsteadily to her feet. “Where are we?”

“You mistake me for some lonesome mortal,” he says. “Some heartsick human in search of company. I am neither.”

Movement, across the room, and she realizes they are not alone. A ghost of a man, white-haired and wild-eyed, sits on a piano bench, his back to the keys.

He is pleading in German.

“Not yet,” he says, clutching a handful of music to his chest. “Not yet. I need more time.”

His voice is strange, too loud, as if he cannot hear. But Luc’s, when he answers, is a smooth hard tone, a low bell, a sound felt as much as heard.

“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.”

“Please,” begs the man, sinking to his hands and knees before the darkness, and Addie flinches for him, knows his pleas won’t work.

“Let me make another deal!”

Luc forces the man to his feet. “The time for deals is done, Herr Beethoven. Now, you must say the words.”

The man shakes his head. “No.”

And Addie cannot see Luc’s eyes, but she can feel his temper changing. The air ripples in the room around them, a wind, and something stronger.

“Surrender your soul,” says Luc. “Or I will take it by force.”

“No!” shouts the man, hysterical now. “Begone, Devil. Begone, and—”

It is the last thing he says, before Luc unfolds.

That is the only way to think of it.

The black hair rises from his face, climbing through the air like weeds, and his skin ripples and splits, and what spills out is not a man. It is a monster. It is a god. It is the night itself, and something else, something she has never seen, something she cannot bear to look at. Something older than the dark.

“Surrender.”

And now the voice is not a voice at all, but a medley of snapping branches and summer wind, a wolf’s low growl, and the sudden shifting of rocks underfoot.

The man burbles and pleads. “Help!” he cries out, but it is no use. If there is anyone beyond the door, they will not hear.

“Help!” he cries again, uselessly.

And then the monster plunges its hand into his chest.

The man staggers, pale and gray, as the darkness plucks his soul like a piece of fruit. It comes loose with a tearing sound, and the composer stumbles, and falls to the floor. But Addie’s eyes are locked on the bloom of light in the shadow’s hand, jagged and unsteady. And before she can study the ribbons of color curling on its surface, before she can wonder at the images coiling inside, the darkness closes its fingers around the soul, and it crackles through him like lightning, and plunges out of sight.

The composer sits slumped against his piano bench, head back, and eyes empty.

Luc’s hand, she will learn, is always subtle. They will see his work and call it sickness, call it heart failure, call it madness, suicide, overdose, accident.

But tonight, she only knows that the man on the floor is dead.

The darkness turns on Addie, then, and there is no vestige of Luc in the roiling smoke. There are no green eyes. No playful smirk. Nothing but a menacing void, a shadow filled with teeth.

It has been a long time since Addie felt true fear. Sadness, she knows; loneliness and grief. But fear belongs to those with more to lose.

And yet.

Staring into that dark, Addie is afraid.

She wills her legs to stay, wills herself to hold her ground, and she does, as it takes its first step, and its second, but by the third, she finds herself retreating. Away from the writhing dark, the monstrous night, until her back comes to rest against the wall.

But the darkness keeps coming.

With every forward step it draws itself together, the edges firming until it is less a storm than smoke bottled into glass.