The Treasure Keeper

shade, nothing like the fiery, firm colors of her.

He concentrated on her nails, neat little crescents, pushed harder, sensing tension like the clear skin atop water—and then sudden freedom: When his fingers met hers, they stabbed straight through.

Zoe yanked back with a muffled yelp. The curtains slapped closed once more. Ghost.

'I don't understand.' It was barely a whisper. 'God help me, Zee, I swear I don't understand what's happening to me. Have I gone mad?'

'It surely seems one of us must have,' she muttered from the other side. Very slowly, the velvet parted. She stood a little farther back than before and looked up at him through strands of tumbled hair, pressing the hand he'd touched to her chest as if it hurt. 'You don't remember?'

Rhys shook his head, unable now to stop staring at the thing that should have been his own hand, lifted between them. The peculiar dark shape of his spread fingers. For an instant they seemed malformed, too long and bent—and then they shifted back to normal.

'You were—captured. By the sanf inimicus, back in Darkfrith. No one else was there. We never knew really what happened.'

'The sanf . what?'

'Inimicus. The Soft Enemy. Human hunters, Rhys, they came to the shire—all we found was your blood in a field. Truly, you don't remember?'

'No, I .' he started to say, but the room beyond her took on a slow, dizzying tilt, everything sweeping to the left, cherry Zoe and the bed and walls, he couldn't stop it, the colors merging and swirling into dots, into darkness—

—he'd been out walking, hot and angry about something. It was the soft ashen glow just before daybreak and he'd been pacing through a meadow. A wet meadow. Dew. There were bracken and wildflowers and he had been blind with his thoughts, careless, and they had surrounded him so quickly—in the shire! in the bloody goddamned shire!—and there had been a Voice telling him not to fight them, not to Turn, although he was trying like hell to anyway, sharp pain and the taste of grass in his mouth and then—music. All that music, the symphony that had never ceased until—

He felt ill. He felt himself fading and this time let it happen, surrendering to the smooth dull gray until it was all that was left.

* * *

Zoe sat cross-legged on the floor, the mirror on one side, the window on the other. She was stiff and sore and her feet were still a mess, but she'd managed to dress and get out long enough to find food, a bottle of dry white wine, and a basin of clean water for washing.

By the flame of her single candle she ate fried hamsteak and a wedge of sharp Cantal, bread smeared with butter gone hard with the chill of the night and still delicious enough to melt on her tongue.

The candle in its holder dripped gobs of honeyed wax, puddling fat along the pewter rim. It was beeswax, not tallow. Tallow smoked too much.

She didn't quite dare to crack the curtains to see the windowpanes—it was crisply cold out there, and even by this weak light she glittered with jewels—but she supposed if he did return, she'd hear him.

She flexed her toes in her stiff buckled shoes, wincing at the ache. Outside the window the wind began an eerie moan; it was echoed by the sound of birds very far off. Owls, she thought, though she'd only heard owls a few times before in her life. They groaned to match the weather, a pair of them somewhere out there in the stone forest of the city.

She lifted a bite of cheese to her mouth and cut her eyes away from the tiny fierce sparks of the diamonds on her wrist.

'Zee.'

She didn't rise or startle. 'I'm here.' 'I can't find you.'

'The curtains have to be closed. I can't risk the light.'

'Oh.'

The wind caught a loose pane in the window, a hard rattle of glass against its metal seam.

'Zee, I think I ... might be dead.'

'Yes,' she agreed, quiet. 'I think you might be.'

She heard his sigh. 'I don't remember it. Dying. I don't remember that at all.'

'But the sanf? Do you remember them?'

'Aye. Them. The fight. The woods. How long ago was that?'

'A few months.'

'That's all?' He gave a laugh, short and bitter. 'It seems like forever ago. Seems like forever I've been in this damned dark place.'

She pressed a thumb into a pool of cooling wax; it smarted, but she didn't move her hand. After a moment, he spoke again.

'Why can you hear me? And see me? Why only you?'

He sounded so real, just like he had in life. There was no unearthly echo to his words, no spectral sensation at all beyond that steady wind moan rising and falling beyond him. He sounded bewildered, and hurt, and beneath that, angry. All those things, and by just the pitch of his voice she could envision the expression on his face. She didn't need to see it, green eyes troubled, chiseled lips drawn to a line. That single sly curl of chestnut hair that always seemed to flop down to his eyes no matter how often he shoved it aside.

'It's a curse,' she said, and lifted her thumb free of the wax.

'What? Really?'

'Yes.'

'No.' He was stronger suddenly, excited. 'It's a Gift, isn't it? You've got a Gift.'

She shrugged, realized he couldn't see it, and said, 'Have it your way.'

'By God, Zee—that's ... that's ...'

She rolled a piece of wax between her index finger and thumb, waiting.

'. lucky for me,' he finished, more sober than before. 'I suppose. Lucky for me, eh?'

The wax was tacky, turning gray against her skin. She flicked it across the chamber.

'Is it just me? Or can you talk to anyone dead? Are there others like me?'

'Yes. And no, not quite like you. They're here, they're around me. I can nearly hear their voices at times, a whole chorus of them . and then in glass, in mirrors especially, I see them, small lights. You're much clearer than the rest. With the others, it's more like . I feel them. I can feel them reaching for me. But they're slight and thin and distant, as if they're on the far side of a lake, perhaps.' She traced the oval imprint of her thumb in the wax. 'You're the only one who speaks audibly.'

'Tell me about my family. What happened to them? Was anyone else hurt in the attack?'

'No one else, only you. The Princess Maricara was briefly taken, but she made it back safely. There was a girl, a young girl from the village, she was taken too .'

'Honor Carlisle,' he said, sounding surprised. 'Yes. I remember. I was there for that. I was part of the hunt for her.'

'She's still missing. I don't suppose ... Are you certain you're alone?'

The wind rattled the pane, shifting directions, whistling a note so low and keen it almost hurt.

'I'm not alone,' Rhys said. 'I have you.'

Zoe leaned forward and snuffed out the candle. She climbed to her feet and pulled apart the curtains, just enough illumination from beyond to discern his outline: darkness against dark, smoke and stars and charcoal clouds pushed across the sky, a pale lemon moon shining behind them. The pane of glass that held his heart shivered; it was the loose one, the one the wind took.

She could nearly see him. Standing so close, even without the candle, she thought she could nearly see his face. An acrid trail of fumes from the pinched wick rose up in loops to sting her eyes.

'I want you to know,' she said, 'that I will do everything in my power to avenge your death. I swear it.'

Shadow Rhys shook his head. 'Don't say that. What could you do?'

She gazed back at him, silent.

'Ah,' he said, very soft. 'Aha. Here you are, in Paris. Unaccompanied. Gifted. Did you run away?' He