The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,155

more Labyrinth. Think Mephistopheles but by way of the Goblin King.” He gestures at himself when he says it. “It’s a really cool spin. The costumes are amazing. Anyway, it doesn’t open until September.”

“It sounds wonderful,” she says. “I can’t wait to see.”

At that, Robbie almost smiles. “I think it will be pretty cool.”

“To Faust,” she says, lifting her ice pop.

“And the devil,” answers Robbie.

Her hands have gone sticky, and she dunks them in the kiddie pool and goes in search of Henry. She finally finds him alone in a corner of the roof, a stretch where the lights don’t reach. He’s staring out—not up, but down over the edge.

“I think I finally cracked Robbie,” she says, wiping her hands on her shorts.

“Hm?” he says, not really listening. A bead of sweat runs down his cheek, and he closes his eyes into the faint summer breeze and sways a little on his feet.

Addie pulls him away from the edge. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes are dark, and for a moment, he looks haunted, lost.

“Nothing,” he says softly. “Just thinking.”

Addie has lived long enough to recognize a lie. Lying is its own language, like the language of seasons, or gestures, or the shade of Luc’s eyes.

So she knows that Henry is lying to her now.

Or at least, he’s not telling her the truth.

And maybe it is just one of his storms, she thinks. Maybe it is the summer heat.

It is not, of course, and later, she will know the truth, and she will wish she’d asked, wish she’d pressed, wish she’d known.

Later—but tonight, he pulls her close. Tonight, he kisses her, deeply, hungrily, as if he can make her forget what she saw.

And Addie lets him try.

* * *

That night, when they get home, it is too hot to think, to sleep, so they fill the bathtub with cold water, turn off the lights, and climb inside, shivering at the sudden, merciful relief.

They lie there in the dark, bare legs intertwined beneath the water. Henry’s fingers play a melody across her knee.

“When we first met,” he muses, “why didn’t you tell me your real name?”

Addie looks up at the darkened ceiling tiles, and sees Isabelle as she was, that last day, sitting at the table, her eyes gone empty. She sees Remy in the café, staring dreamily past her words, unable to hear them.

“Because I didn’t think I could,” she says, running her fingers through the water. “When I try to tell people the truth, their faces just go blank. When I try to say my name, it always gets stuck in my throat.” She smiles. “Except with you.”

“But why?” he asks. “If you’re going to be forgotten, what does it matter if you tell the truth?”

Addie closes her eyes. It’s a good question, one she’s asked herself a hundred times. “I think he wanted to erase me. To make sure I felt unseen, unheard, unreal. You don’t really realize the power of a name until it’s gone. Before you, he was the only one who could say it.”

The voice curls like smoke inside her head.

Oh Adeline.

Adeline, Adeline.

My Adeline.

“What an asshole,” says Henry, and she chuckles, remembering the nights she screamed up at the sky, called the darkness so much worse.

And then he asks, “When’s the last time you saw him?” and Addie falters.

For an instant, she is in a bed, black silk sheets twisted around her limbs, the New Orleans heat oppressive even in the dark. But Luc is a cool weight, wrapped around her limbs, his teeth skating along her shoulder as he whispers the word against her skin.

Surrender.

Addie swallows, pushes the memory down like bile in her throat.

“Almost thirty years ago,” she says, as if she doesn’t count the days. As if the anniversary isn’t rushing up to meet them.

She glances sideways at the clothes piled on the bathroom floor, the indent of the wooden ring in the pocket of her shorts. “We had a falling-out,” she says, and it is the barest version of the truth.

Henry looks at her, clearly curious, but he doesn’t ask what happened, and for that, she is grateful.

There is an order to the story.

She will tell him when she gets there.

For now Addie reaches up, and turns the shower on, and it falls down on them like rain, soothing and steady. And this is the perfect kind of silence. Easy, and empty. They sit across from each other beneath the icy stream, and Addie closes her eyes and tips her head back against the