But she’s not biddable. She faces me, a shadow crossing her brow. Though a glow surrounds her, I make out freckles and a silver scar through her eyebrow. Pursing her lips, she says nothing, then says everything. “What’s your name?”
I haven’t forgotten. A hundred years isn’t that long. I can’t remember my mother’s face or what it was like to walk in the sunlight. There are songs that I know the tunes to but not the words. But a hundred years isn’t so long to forget who I once was, no matter who I’ve become. I close like a clam around my name; that’s mine.
“Don’t you know?” I ask her. “I’m the Grey Man.”
She takes a step closer. “So if I wanted to write you a letter, I’d start it with ‘Dear Grey Man’?”
I haven’t had a letter in so long. It hurts to want one, so suddenly, so completely. She has no idea what she’s doing to me. What she means to me already. So I force myself to smile. “I suppose that’s a bit formal. ‘Dear Grey’ would do.”
“Huh.”
When she turns back to my collection, I resist the urge to plunge my hands into the autumn glow that must be her hair. My cold and numb flecks away, ice slipping from frosted walls. She’s warm, and I want to be warm too.
This is what Susannah felt, when I was flesh and she was fog. No wonder she let me kiss her. No wonder she swore she loved me too. I will say anything right now to get this girl to turn around and touch me again. Should I be a beast or a prince? It’s so hard to decide.
Finally, I say, “You have mine now. Tell me yours.”
“Is that how it works?”
I nod, because it’s easier than choosing a part to play.
She trails a finger on the shelf, then stops in front of a heartwood box. I laid gold threads into the lid, loops upon loops that catch the light at certain angles. I can’t remember what it plays, and she doesn’t wind the key. It seems like she wants to touch it, but she restrains herself. Concentration marks her; she doesn’t look at me, but she does, finally, part her lips.
“You should know. It was on the boat.”
Was it? I’m still not sure what has changed, but I’ll have plenty of time to puzzle it out. She’s here now. She wants an answer; she wants something from me, and I have to give it to her. Reaching past her, I take the box and lift its lid. A few notes linger in the drum. “She Moved Through the Fair,” of course. How could I forget?
“I want to hear you say it,” I tell her, and offer the box again.
Wary, she doesn’t reach for it. Much wiser than Persephone; she knows not to take gifts from the Underworld. But my curse isn’t contained in gifts or pomegranate seeds. She gives me what I need anyway, the first turn of the key. Something personal. Her name.
I will make her love me.
TEN
Willa
I didn’t believe in the Grey Man, and I did. Something, somebody, stood in front of me. With my own eyes, I saw him come up out of the fog.
He brushed past me, and I tried to get a better look. Up close, his skin was skin, his hair was hair. It cascaded down his back like a wedding veil. Its silky wash finished in haze. Curls of mist trailed on all his edges. His fingers. His collar. His lips, when they moved.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Can I get you some tea? It’s been so long since I’ve had a caller.”
“I don’t really drink tea.”
He turned back to me. “Coffee? Cocoa?”
“I don’t—”
“Then come sit by the fire with me.”
When he waved his hand, I saw a doorway I hadn’t seen before. A vibration ran through the music boxes. Ghostly notes murmured, running all the way around the room before stopping. Grey walked away, and the weight melted off me. I didn’t want to be alone in this place.
The lighthouse was like the Tardis: bigger on the inside. It didn’t make sense to have a foyer filled up with music boxes and then a doorway out of nowhere to another round room, but there it was. Warmth poured from it, and it smelled good. Fresh bread and cinnamon. Vanilla.
Neat stacks of dishes glinted from uneven shelves. Brass pots dangled from a rack overhead. On one wall, an old-fashioned stove, black and potbellied, took up the space.
Grey pulled it open with a hook, then threw a couple of sticks of wood inside. He moved like liquid, flowing through the kitchen. His fingers swirled around a dark brown tin. They pooled around a spoon handle.
He was pearly white—not pale pink, not even goth pale. And as weird as that was, what distracted me was his posture. When he stood, he held his shoulders back and his jaw straight. Nobody I knew stood like that. We were all bent over from hauling gear and pulling bloodworms. But even in magazines and movies, nobody stood like that, not that I’d ever seen.
“Two cups or one?” he asked.
“You’re seriously making cocoa?”
From a box along the wall, he lifted a pitcher. Condensation clung to the porcelain. It streamed down the sides when he touched it. Pouring milk into a saucepan, he glanced up at me.
“Am I very serious? I could cheerfully make it, if you like.”
It took me a second to realize he wasn’t joking. Smoothing my hand across the table, I sank into a chair. “How long have you been out here?”
“One hundred years,” he said. He put the pitcher aside and reached for a wooden spoon. “Since 1913.”
It was too precise, that answer. If somebody asked me how long I’d lived in Broken Tooth, I’d have said all my life. Or about seventeen years. Or a while. And he was supposed to be a thing. A creature or something. Maybe a revenant. Fanning my fingers on the table, I said, “Can’t be. My granddad told me about the Grey Lady, and he heard about her from his dad.”
Stirring the milk, Grey raised his eyes to meet mine. They were crazy dark; not brown, no pupils. Almost smudges that went on forever, staring past me, or worse, through me.
“That was my predecessor.” He gestured at his clothes: vest, jacket, tie. “As you can see, I’m hardly a lady.”
My throat tightened. He had rules. Logic. It peeled the soft, curious numbness from me. It hurt, almost, like a skinned knee. I felt too full, trying to make sense out of something that should have been impossible.
Back when the world was flat, sailors fell in love with mermaids. They threw themselves into the water and drowned trying to get to them. But those mermaids were just manatees, fat and fleshy. They looked like finned women at a distance, if you’d been out to sea too long, if you couldn’t remember what a real girl looked like.
Isn’t that what they saw? Manatees? Fantasies? I wasn’t sure anymore.
Grey slid a mug in front of me. Chocolate dust puffed over the rim when he poured the hot milk in. “Stir it quickly, unless you like lumps.”
A little bit of hysterical laughter caught in my throat. This was crazy, sitting down having some hot cocoa with the Grey Man, chatting about his past. Suddenly, my heart raced, running so fast I felt lightheaded. Pushing the chair back, I got to my feet and backed toward the door.
“I musta hit my head.”
Grey put the saucepan aside. “Then rest.”
My body recoiled. All my muscles went tight. My spine felt like glass, and my stomach rebelled at the idea of lying down here. Staying here. The music boxes hummed as I hurried past them. “Thanks, but I’m thinking I should go home.”
Suddenly, Grey was in front of me. But instead of stopping me, he opened the door. Pressing his body against it, he stood there, waiting for me to step outside. When I passed him, I shivered. I felt him; he was solid. But he was cool and soft, too . . . like walking into fog.