Darkness did not fall over Blackmere House.
It arrived.
In an instant, Elena saw Lucien standing between her and the open window. The next, the room ceased to have edges.
The rain remained.
It struck the roof, the walls, the glass, filling the darkness with sound.
Then something outside laughed in Adelaide's voice.
Elena's hand found the bedpost.
"Lucien?"
"Here."
His answer came from less than an arm's length away.
Too close.
She could hear nothing from him that resembled breathing.
"Don't move," he said.
"You keep giving orders for a man who needed permission to cross my window."
There was the smallest pause.
"Fair. Please don't move."
Under any other circumstances, Elena might have smiled.
The thing outside struck the glass.
The cracked pane shuddered in its frame.
Elena flinched.
Lucien's hand closed around her wrist.
Cold.
Solid.
Real.
The contact sent a shock through her that had nothing to do with fear.
A room flashed behind her eyes.
Music.
Blue silk.
A man's hand enclosing hers.
Then darkness again.
Lucien released her immediately.
"Sorry."
"For touching me?"
"For what it does."
Elena stared toward the place his voice had come from, though she could not see him.
"What does it do?"
"You know."
"I know I saw something."
"That is enough for tonight."
"You don't get to decide that."
Outside, Adelaide's voice whispered through the rain.
"Nell."
Elena's stomach contracted.
Lucien moved.
She heard his coat brush the bed.
Then his voice came near her ear, low and controlled.
"That is not your grandmother."
"I know."
"Do you?"
Anger steadied her.
"Don't patronise me."
"I wasn't."
"You sounded remarkably close."
"Then I apologise remarkably sincerely."
The thing outside knocked again.
Three times.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The window began to open wider.
Elena heard the groan of the warped frame.
"I locked that."
"The house is not opening it," Lucien said.
"Very comforting."
"Elena."
Something in his tone made her stop.
"Only you can close it now."
"Why?"
"Because you invited me across it."
"That makes no sense."
"Very little about Blackmere is improved by sense."
The window jerked.
Rain blew toward them but still did not cross the sill.
Lucien said, "The latch is two steps to your left."
"I know where my window is."
"Good."
"Are you going to help?"
A silence.
"I can't touch it while she is holding the other side."
Elena hated the answer.
More than that, she hated that she believed him.
She moved left.
The floor beneath her bare feet was cold.
One step.
Two.
Her fingers found the curtain.
Wet hair brushed the back of her hand.
Elena recoiled.
The woman outside breathed against the opening.
"Nell."
Adelaide again.
Perfect.
Tender.
The voice Adelaide had used when Elena was small and feverish, when she had sat beside the bed with a cool cloth and whispered stories until morning.
For one brutal instant, grief overpowered reason.
Elena reached toward the sound.
Lucien caught her around the waist.
The force of it pulled her backwards against him.
Everything stopped.
His chest was cold beneath his coat.
His arm was firm across her middle.
His mouth was near her temple.
Elena could feel the shape of his hand through the thin cotton of her nightdress.
Her body reacted before her mind did.
Recognition moved through her like heat.
Not memory exactly.
Worse.
Instinct.
Her back knew the width of him.
Her ribs knew where his arm would settle.
Some hidden part of her expected his other hand to cover hers.
It did.
Elena gasped.
Lucien went still.
The hand over hers trembled.
For several seconds neither of them moved.
Then he said, very quietly, "Forgive me."
Elena's throat felt tight.
"For saving me?"
"For knowing how to hold you."
The answer struck more deeply than it should have.
She turned her face slightly.
She could not see him.
Only feel him.
"You mean Clara."
His arm loosened at once.
"Yes."
The honesty hurt.
Elena stepped away.
The thing outside laughed.
This time in Elena's own voice.
"He remembers her body better than yours."
Lucien's entire presence changed.
Even in darkness, Elena felt it.
A coldness that did not come from his skin.
"Do not speak to her," he said toward the window.
The woman answered in Clara's voice.
"You did."
Lucien said nothing.
"You promised."
Silence.
"You begged."
"Enough."
The word was not loud.
The room shook anyway.
Elena's breath caught.
The rain hammered harder.
Then Lucien said to her, "Close the window."
She moved.
The latch was icy beneath her palm.
Something on the other side pulled.
Elena pulled back.
For a moment the window did not move.
Then Lucien's hand came over hers again.
Not touching the frame.
Touching only her hand.
"May I?"
Even now.
Even here.
He asked.
"Yes."
His fingers closed around hers.
Warmth flickered through him.
His heart beat once against her shoulder.
Hard.
The window slammed shut.
The scream outside was not human.
Glass rattled.
Black water spread across the pane from the outside, covering it entirely.
At the same instant, every candle in the bedroom relit.
Elena turned.
Lucien stood behind her.
His hand still covered hers on the latch.
Candlelight altered him.
Photographs had made him severe.
Night made him stranger.
But here, inside Blackmere, with blood dried at the corner of his mouth and his composure visibly damaged, he looked less like a legend than a man who had been forced to survive one.
His dark hair had fallen across his forehead.
His eyes were not black, as Elena had first thought.
Grey.
Very dark grey.
The colour of the lake before rain.
He looked down at their joined hands.
Elena did too.
Lucien released her.
The warmth left his fingers almost immediately.
Elena noticed.
So did he.
"Your heart," she said.
His expression became guarded.
"What about it?"
"It beat."
"Occasionally it remembers how."
"That's not medically reassuring."
"I am not medically reassuring."
Despite everything, Elena laughed.
Lucien stared at her.
Again that expression.
That dangerous mixture of wonder and grief.
She stopped laughing.
"Don't."
"I'm sorry."
"You keep looking at me like that."
"I know."
"Like what?"
He looked away.
"Like someone thirsty too long."
The answer hung between them.
Elena's skin warmed.
Outside, the drowned woman struck the glass.
Once.
Lucien turned toward it.
The tenderness disappeared from his face.
"Can it come in?" Elena asked.
"Not unless you invite it."
"So it follows the same rule as you."
"No."
"It literally just asked me to let it in."
"The resemblance ends there."
"What is it?"
His jaw tightened.
"Something the lake kept."
"That is not an answer."
"It is more than I should have told you."
"According to whom?"
Lucien looked toward the ceiling.
For a strange moment Elena thought he was listening.
"According to the rules that keep you alive."
"Whose rules?"
"Not mine."
"The house?"
"Partly."
"The lake?"
He did not answer.
"Lucien."
His gaze returned to hers.
"Some truths can be told to you. Some must be remembered."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"You have had one hundred and sixty-four years and still don't know?"
"I have had one hundred and sixty-four years to become increasingly certain of how little I understand."
"That is almost wise."
"Don't sound so disappointed."
The thing outside dragged one hand down the glass.
A dark streak followed.
Elena turned.
The drowned face had returned.
Not Adelaide now.
Not Clara.
A woman Elena did not recognise.
Perhaps thirty.
Brown hair plastered to her cheeks.
A narrow face.
Terrified eyes.
She pressed both palms to the window.
Lucien made a sound.
Barely audible.
A breath taken too sharply.
Elena looked at him.
He had gone completely still.
"You know her."
"Yes."
"Who is she?"
"Not tonight."
"Who is she?"
His eyes closed.
"Eleanor."
"Eleanor who?"
"Vale."
A cold sensation moved through Elena.
"One of the women Judith mentioned."
He looked at her sharply.
"You spoke to Judith Morrow."
"Don't change the subject."
"Was Eleanor like Clara?"
"In some ways."
"Did she look like me?"
Lucien looked toward the window.
"Yes."
"Did you love her?"
The question escaped before Elena understood why she had asked it.
Lucien looked at her.
"No."
Relief came too quickly.
Elena hated herself for feeling it.
"Did she love you?"
"She thought she did."
"That's cruel."
"It is accurate."
"According to you."
"According to her, eventually."
"What happened to her?"
"She survived me."
"That is a very carefully chosen sentence."
"Yes."
"Did she survive the lake?"
Lucien's silence answered badly.
"You knew these women."
"Some."
"Women who looked like Clara."
"Yes."
"Did you approach all of them?"
His face hardened in shame.
"At first."
"How many?"
"Elena."
"How many?"
"Three."
"Before me?"
"Yes."
"And each time you thought she was Clara."
"Yes."
Something inside Elena recoiled.
Not because he had loved other women.
Because he had apparently spent more than a century trying to fit living women into the shape of one dead one.
"And now?" Elena asked.
Lucien's gaze did not leave hers.
"Now I know better."
"Do you?"
He accepted the blow without flinching.
"Not enough."
"What happened to the three?"
"One died young. One married and left Saint Orison. Eleanor..."
"Eleanor what?"
"Eleanor remembered too quickly."
"What does that mean?"
Lucien turned away.
"It means you should sleep in another room after tonight."
"I am not asking about interior design."
"I know."
"What happened when she remembered?"
He looked at Elena again.
"She stopped knowing which life was hers."
The words silenced her.
Her own flashes returned.
Blue silk.
Hands.
Black water.
Grief without context.
Desire without permission.
"Did she die?"
"Eventually."
"Because of the memories?"
"Because everyone around her insisted the memories meant something they did not."
"Including you?"
Lucien's eyes lowered.
"Especially me."
For the first time since entering, he looked tired.
Older than his face.
Ancient in a way photographs had not shown.
"You loved Clara."
"Yes."
"And when women appeared with her face, you wanted them to be her."
"Yes."
"Even when they weren't."
"Yes."
"That is monstrous."
"At times, yes."
Elena had expected denial.
Its absence left nowhere comfortable to place her anger.
"Why tell me that?"
"Because Adelaide was right about one thing."
"Only one?"
A shadow of humour.
"She would object to the phrasing."
"What was she right about?"
"You should know the kind of man I have been before deciding what kind of man I am now."
Something in her chest tightened.
Respect was more dangerous.
Outside, Eleanor's face disappeared.
The black water remained across the window.
Lucien watched it.
"She is gone?"
"No."
"Where?"
"Waiting."
"For what?"
"For you to make a mistake."
"Which one?"
"There are several available."
Elena almost laughed again.
"You are surprisingly irritating for a supernatural tragedy."
"I've had practice."
The lights remained out.
Only candles illuminated the bedroom.
Elena became aware of the cold.
Her hands were trembling now that immediate danger had eased.
Lucien noticed.
"You're freezing."
"I am in a nightdress beside a storm."
"I noticed the nightdress."
His voice changed on the final word.
Barely.
Elena looked at him.
Lucien's gaze remained fixed resolutely on her face.
That was somehow worse.
"Did you?"
"I am not blind."
"Just one hundred and sixty-four."
"Cruel."
She smiled before she could stop herself.
His mouth curved too.
For one moment they were simply a man and woman standing too close in a candlelit bedroom.
Then the house groaned.
A door opened somewhere down the corridor.
"We should leave this room."
"Why?"
"Because the house is offering us somewhere else."
"You say that as if rooms can offer themselves."
"You have met Blackmere."
"Fair."
She reached for her dressing gown.
Lucien turned his back.
"You have seen women in dressing gowns before."
"Yes."
"Possibly even ankles."
"Once. Scandalous year."
Elena tied the belt.
"You can turn around."
He did.
She noticed the blood at his mouth.
"You're hurt."
"It will pass."
"Sit down."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Was that an order?"
"Yes. Unlike yours, mine is sensible."
"Debatable."
"Sit."
Lucien sat on the edge of the bed.
The sight was unexpectedly intimate.
Elena returned from the bathroom with a clean cloth and a basin of water.
"You don't need to do that."
"I know."
She stood between his knees.
The position registered in both of them at once.
Lucien became very still.
Elena did too.
She could step away.
She did not.
"May I?"
Something softened in his face.
"Yes."
She touched the cloth to his lower lip.
Lucien inhaled.
This time she saw it clearly.
His chest rose.
"You breathe too."
"Near you."
Her hand stopped.
"That's a terrible line."
"Unfortunately, it is also true."
She resumed wiping the blood.
His skin was cold beneath her fingers.
Then warmer.
Gradually.
As if her touch persuaded his body to remember what it had once been.
"What happens to you when I touch you?"
"Things I would prefer not to discuss while you are standing there."
Heat rose beneath her skin.
"Physiologically."
"Cruelly phrased."
"Lucien."
"I become warmer. My heart sometimes beats. I breathe more often."
"The rain keeps me between states. You pull me toward one of them."
"Life."
"Something resembling it."
"And Clara did this too?"
"Yes."
Elena's hand dropped.
Every path returned to a dead woman.
Lucien saw her withdraw.
"But not like this."
"What does that mean?"
"It means Clara never asked why."
"That sounds like an insult."
"It isn't. She trusted feeling more than explanation. You do the opposite."
"Do you dislike it?"
"Your questions?"
"Yes."
"Constantly."
She laughed.
Then his expression became serious.
"I also depend on them."
"Why?"
"Because they remind me you are not her."
The room went quiet.
"You really are trying," Elena said.
"Yes."
"Why now?"
"Because the last time I failed to understand the difference, someone paid for it."
"Eleanor?"
He did not answer.
The wound at his lip had disappeared.
Only blood remained on the cloth.
Lucien stood.
Again too close.
Elena could smell rain on his coat, even though he had been dry outside.
Not wet cloth.
The scent before rain.
Cold stone.
Night air.
Something faintly like cedar smoke.
Her body recognised that too.
A pulse of remembered desire moved through her.
Elena stepped back.
Lucien's hand lifted instinctively.
He stopped himself.
"What did you see?"
"Nothing. I felt something."
"What?"
"You."
The single word changed the air.
Lucien looked away first.
"We should go downstairs."
"Coward."
"Absolutely."
---
The house had opened the ballroom.
Candlelight glowed inside.
"I did not light those," Elena said.
"Neither did I."
"Is that reassuring?"
"No."
The floor shone where dust had covered it yesterday.
Tall mirrors reflected warm gold.
The piano stood open.
"This room was filthy yesterday."
"Blackmere has strong opinions about presentation."
"You joke about the house a great deal for someone who seems afraid of it."
"Fear and familiarity are not mutually exclusive."
A note sounded from the piano.
Then another.
A melody began.
Elena knew the next phrase before it played.
Three notes rising.
Two falling.
A pause.
The piano obeyed.
Lucien watched her.
"You remember."
"No. I know the melody. That isn't the same."
"No. It isn't."
"Did Clara and you dance here?"
"Often."
"You don't dance?"
"I dislike being observed."
"Why?"
"Dignity."
The piano shifted into a waltz.
Lucien closed his eyes.
"Blackmere has never possessed subtlety."
"Is the house suggesting we dance?"
"Aggressively."
"Does it always interfere in people's romantic decisions?"
"Only the catastrophic ones."
Elena looked away.
"We're not romantic."
"No."
Something in her was absurdly disappointed.
Then he added:
"Not yet."
"That was presumptuous."
"Yes."
"You should apologise."
"I probably should."
"Will you?"
"No."
She laughed.
Lucien held out his hand.
"One dance."
"Why?"
He lowered his hand.
"You're right."
"I didn't say no. I asked why."
He looked at her.
"Because I want to dance with you."
"Me."
"Yes."
"Not Clara."
"Elena."
Her name sounded present in his mouth.
She placed her hand in his.
"One dance."
Warmth moved through him immediately.
His other hand hovered near her waist.
He waited.
Elena nodded.
He touched her.
Her body knew where to stand.
How close.
How to turn.
Which way he would move before he moved.
Lucien felt her breath catch.
"Stop?"
"Slower."
He obeyed.
They moved through the ballroom.
"You danced closer in 1897," Elena said.
"You remember that?"
"No."
She looked at the space between them.
"My body apparently does."
"That frightens you."
"Yes."
"It should."
They turned.
In the mirror, Elena saw another couple.
Clara in blue.
Lucien in black.
Closer.
His mouth near Clara's ear.
Then Elena saw herself again.
Thirty-two.
Barefoot.
A woman who hated being told what her feelings meant.
She stopped.
Lucien stopped immediately.
"I saw her."
"Clara?"
"In the mirror."
He looked.
Only their reflections remained.
"Good."
"Why?"
"Because the house is trying to collapse the distance between you."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
The piano stopped.
"What time is it?" Lucien asked.
"Two thirteen."
"I need to leave before sunrise."
"What happens if you don't?"
"Nothing good."
"To you or me?"
He hesitated.
"Me."
"Potentially."
"How?"
"I can't tell you yet."
"Then stop asking me to trust you."
Lucien went still.
"I haven't."
She realised he was right.
"Why not?"
"Because I have not earned it."
No performance.
No seduction.
"You are very inconvenient."
"So I have been told."
"By Clara?"
"Constantly."
"What was she actually like?"
"Not like you."
"Good answer."
"She believed in signs. You interrogate them. She forgave too quickly. You make people work for it. She hated coffee."
"She hated coffee?"
"Violently."
"Then she had poor judgment."
"I told her the same."
"Did she like pears?"
"No."
Elena smiled.
"I do."
Something shifted in his face.
Small.
Important.
He nodded.
"Then I will remember that."
The sentence affected her more than anything he had said about past lives.
Because it belonged to now.
Elena Vale liked pears.
Clara did not.
Lucien would remember.
They returned upstairs.
The drowned woman was gone.
The black water slid from the window.
"She won't return tonight," Lucien said.
"Eleanor?"
"It was wearing Eleanor."
"So it uses dead women."
"Memories of them."
"Whose memories?"
Lucien looked toward the lake.
"That is the question you should keep asking."
Something metallic struck the floor.
A silver bracelet lay near the bed.
Child-sized.
Tarnished.
Engraved with four letters.
**NELL.**
Elena's breath stopped.
"That's mine."
Lucien said nothing.
A memory stirred.
Adelaide fastening silver around the wrist of an eight-year-old girl.
*Don't lose this one, Nell.*
Then black water.
The bracelet slipping away.
"I lost it when I drowned."
"You didn't drown."
"Nearly."
"Yes."
"You had it."
"Yes."
"All these years?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Lucien looked almost ashamed.
"Because it was the only thing you left behind that belonged to you rather than to Clara."
Elena went completely still.
Not Clara.
Her.
Eight-year-old Elena.
Her bracelet.
Her life.
Her name.
"Why is it here now?"
"I didn't bring it."
"Where did you keep it?"
"Somewhere the house cannot reach."
"Apparently you were wrong."
The bracelet moved.
Half an inch.
Then began dragging itself toward the eastern window.
A floorboard clicked.
A narrow seam appeared.
"There wasn't a hatch there."
"No."
The board lifted by itself.
Beneath it lay a bundle wrapped in oilcloth.
Elena knelt.
Lucien caught her shoulder.
"Wait."
"You said the house was showing us something."
"That does not mean it is being kind."
"Do you ever assume benign intent?"
"I knew this house before indoor plumbing. No."
Elena unwrapped the oilcloth.
Inside was a photograph.
Colour.
Recent.
Florence.
Five years earlier.
Elena stood on scaffolding at the restoration site, laughing at something outside the frame.
The picture had been taken from across the street.
"You said you watched me once."
"I did."
"You took this."
"No."
The denial was immediate.
Then Elena noticed the reflection in the window behind her.
A man stood inside the building.
Dark coat.
Lucien.
But Lucien had told her he remained across the street.
Elena turned the photograph over.
A woman's handwriting covered the back.
He was not the only one who found you.
Lucien went utterly still.
"Who else knew where I was?"
He did not answer.
For the first time since entering Blackmere House, Lucien looked frightened of something.
The rain began to stop.
A pale line touched the horizon.
"Lucien?"
He looked at the photograph.
Then at Elena.
"Lock the study."
"Why?"
"Do not let Mercer remove anything."
"Mercer?"
"And do not tell Judith about the photograph."
"Why?"
"Because whoever took it knew I was there."
He crossed toward the window.
"Will you come back?"
The question escaped before pride could stop it.
Lucien looked at her.
"If the rain does."
"And if I don't open the window?"
The old grief returned for a moment.
Then he gave her the smallest smile.
"Then I wait."
He opened the window.
Cold air entered.
"There is a staircase," Elena said.
"The house would object."
"To you using doors?"
"It has always been traditional."
"Lucien."
He paused.
"The next time you come, I want answers."
"I know."
"Real ones."
"I will give you what I can."
"That is not a promise."
"No."
Something almost sad touched his mouth.
"I have learned to be careful with promises."
Then he stepped into the rain.
For one instant it passed around him without touching.
The next, he was gone.
Elena stood at the window until the final drops stopped.
The room felt wrong without him.
Too large.
Too ordinary.
She hated that most of all.
Then she remembered the photograph.
Lucien's reflection remained in the Florence window.
There was something else behind him.
A woman.
Only half her face visible.
Older.
Silver hair.
Watching Elena from inside the restoration site.
Elena knew that face.
Her grandmother.
Adelaide Vale.
But Adelaide had sworn she had never visited Florence.
And the year the photograph was taken, she had been in England recovering from surgery.
Elena turned the photograph over again.
Beneath the first sentence, new ink began appearing.
One letter at a time.
**A D E L A I D E L I E D A B O U T W H O S H E W A S P R O T E C T I N G Y O U F R O M.**
Elena watched the final period appear.
Then, from somewhere deep beneath Blackmere House, a woman began to knock.
Three times.
From below the floor.