Chapter 5: The Bargain Revealed

The rain let up just before she reached his building, as if the clouds themselves had decided to grant her an amnesty for trespassing further into the human world. The harbor’s stench was ripe in the alley, diesel and fish and the metallic tang of storm run-off sluicing through the gutters. Selene stood under the awning of the fishmonger’s, bracing herself against the smell, letting the chill work into her bones. Above her, a single window glowed, flickering with the blue-white pulse of digital light. She counted three sets of footprints in the mud up to the front stoop, two going in, one leaving. Good, no one else inside.

She let herself up the stairs, each creaking tread a threat and a confession, and pressed the buzzer marked VALE, E. The answering crackle was immediate, as if he’d been waiting at the intercom for hours. “Come up,” Elias said, voice rendered tinny by the ancient system. “Sorry about the smell. They dump the lobster tanks out back when it rains.” Selene smiled. She doubted she would ever stop being startled by the human talent for noticing the wrong thing.

His apartment was at the very top of the narrow flight, the door already ajar. She slipped inside. The air was warm, thick with the aromas of reheated coffee, burnt toast, and the musky sweetness of cheap incense. The walls were a siege of thumbtacks and masking tape, every flat surface colonized by a population of sheet music, some loose, some bound in battered folders, all scored with frantic blue ink. Guitars leaned like exhausted sentinels in the corners, their strings dusted but not forgotten. Against the window, a ragged couch sagged under the weight of books, empty tea mugs, and a throw pillow decorated with cartoon waves.

Elias was in the kitchen nook, sleeves rolled to the elbow, fingers nimbly extracting bones from a slab of cod on a plastic cutting board. His cardigan had been replaced by an ancient t-shirt, fraying at the collar, with faded block letters spelling out: THE SEA IS CALLING (AND I MUST GO). His hair was pulled back in a hasty bun, but enough curls escaped to frame his face in a halo of shadow.

“Welcome to my palace,” he said, not looking up. “Ignore the mess, unless you want to write a tragic song about it.” Selene looked around. “I’ve seen worse.” He snorted. “That’s a lie, but a flattering one.” He finally glanced up, and the laugh lines around his eyes deepened. “Hungry?” She considered this, uncertain if hunger meant the same thing for her now as it did before, or as it did for mortals. “A little.”

“Perfect. I’m making stew. Nothing fancy. Recipe from my grandma, who said ‘if you can’t taste the fish, don’t bother eating it.’ You know how to cook?” Selene shook her head. “Not like this.” He slid a second cutting board across the counter. “Then today’s lesson: how to chop onions without crying. Pro tip, you’ll cry anyway.” He handed her a chef’s knife, the blade worn to a crescent by years of resharpening.

She copied his grip and the arc of his movements, slicing the onion with clinical precision. The sharpness of the juice stung her eyes, but she blinked it away, not trusting herself to let the tears fall for free. Elias watched her, approving. “You’re a fast learner. You sure you haven’t done this before?” Selene shrugged. “I watch people. They’re easy to learn from.”

He grinned, but it slipped quickly into something more somber. “Sometimes I think that’s all I do. Watch people, try to reverse-engineer what it is they’re doing right.” She finished the onion, wiped her hands on a paper towel. “Do you ever wish you could go back?” Elias considered the question, pushing a pile of bones to the edge of the board. “To being a kid, you mean?” She nodded.

“Not really. I was sick all the time. In and out of clinics. My mom was the tough one. She made up these stories about pirates and mermaids and sea monsters to distract me from the needles.” He reached for a battered saucepan, rinsed it under the tap, and set it to boil. “I liked the monsters best.”

Selene smiled. “Why?” He shrugged. “They didn’t try to be anything else. No pretending.” He looked at her, as if suddenly aware that the words might land differently with this audience. “Sorry. That was… ”

“No,” she interrupted. “I like monsters, too.”

They worked in companionable silence, chopping, dicing, stirring. The kitchen was so small their elbows bumped more than once. The first time, she flinched. The second time, she didn’t. When she reached for the salt, their hands touched, and she felt a jolt that could have been static, or something older and deeper. She let her hand linger half a second before moving away.

Elias pretended not to notice, but the tip of his ear burned red. He dumped the onions into the pot, then turned to open a can of tomatoes. As he did, his hand began to shake so slightly she doubted anyone else would have seen it. He set down the can, bracing himself on the counter, and coughed. The sound was dry, but edged with something wet at the end.

“Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “Old habit.”

Selene watched him, studied the way he tried to play it off. When he turned again, she saw him palm a bottle from the counter, a pharmacy orange, the label faded but still legible in the weak light. He rattled out two small pills, dry-swallowed them, and tried to catch her eye with a grin. She let him have the lie. “My uncle had lungs like that. Lived to ninety-two,” she said.

Elias laughed, this time a real sound, hoarse but free. “I’ll be lucky if I make it to thirty. But thanks for the optimism.” She reached for the ladle, stirred the stew. “What happens if you don’t?” she asked, careful. He looked at her, face suddenly older. “Then I hope I’ve left enough behind. Songs, I mean. Or at least that they echo a little before fading out.” Selene thought of the ocean, how it devoured everything but memory. “I think echoes last longer than you think.”

He seemed to take comfort in that. “Maybe you’re right.” He leaned on the counter, arms folded, watching her. “What about you? Anyone waiting on the other side of the world for you to come back?” She considered how to answer, not wanting to lie, but knowing the truth would be a different kind of poison. “No family. Just me, for a while now.” She looked away, focused on the soup’s slow whirl. “I had a sister. We lost track of each other. It was… complicated.”

He nodded. “Aren’t all the best stories?” She wanted to tell him more, to crack open her chest and let the saltwater flood the room, but she said nothing. She remembered Mara’s warnings: the tide always turns.

The stew was finished. They ladled it into chipped bowls, sat cross-legged on the floor beside the old upright piano, using a stack of music books as their table. The taste of the stew was unfamiliar, but it warmed her all the way through, filling the hollows the ocean had left in her.

After dinner, Elias offered her a mug of herbal tea, then slouched onto the couch and cradled the guitar in his lap. He picked at the strings, absently at first, then with more intent, building a slow, minor melody. Selene closed her eyes, letting the sound work through her body. It was nothing like the music of her sisters, but it called to the same lost thing inside her. He played, then stopped. “It’s not finished,” he said, “but you make a good test subject.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Haunted.” He tried the phrase again, adjusting the fingerings, humming low beneath the chords. On the third repetition, the air in the room shifted. Selene felt a vibration deep in her throat, a faint but insistent pulse against the scars. The ache grew, warm and electric, until it became almost unbearable. The next note he played was a sustained, aching E, and at the exact moment, the water in the glass on the piano trembled, throwing ripples that glimmered in the weak lamp-light.

She sucked in a breath. The scars on her neck prickled and stung, and she pressed her palm to them, trying to dull the sensation. Elias looked up, concern flickering across his face. “Are you okay?” She nodded, forced a smile. “Just a headache. The tea helps.” He put down the guitar, expression skeptical. “I can play softer. Or not at all, if you’d rather.” “No,” she said, and meant it more than anything she had said all night. “Please. Play.” He smiled, shy and genuine. “Alright. But only if you promise not to die on me.” She laughed, which made the pain easier to bear. “No promises. But I’ll try.”

He played the melody again, slower this time, as if savoring each note. She listened, absorbing the shape and weight of it, the way it filled the room, the way it wanted to pull her apart and put her back together in a new configuration. The scars sang in sympathy, but she didn’t mind.

She wondered if this was what the Queen had meant, if this was how the curse was supposed to work, drawn to the music, drawn to the heart of the wound, unable to walk away even if it destroyed her. When Elias finished, he looked at her as if expecting a verdict. She swallowed, managed to speak through the strange, wonderful ache. “You were right,” she said. “It echoes.”

He flushed, pleased. “You can take the couch tonight, if you want,” he offered. “The bed’s too small for two, unless you want to risk my death rattle keeping you up.” She nodded, grateful for the easy out. “Thank you.”

He stood, gathering the mugs, stacking the bowls, moving with the weary, deliberate grace of someone used to closing out the night alone. She watched him, watched the way he lingered at the threshold, as if debating something. He spoke over his shoulder, voice so soft it barely reached her. “If you ever want to talk about your sister, or anything, I’m here.”

Selene nodded, touched and terrified in equal measure. “Maybe tomorrow,” she said, knowing tomorrow would hurt more than today. He left her there, on the couch, surrounded by the debris of his life. She listened to the sounds of him in the other room, the rustle of sheets, the soft groan of mattress springs. She sat for a long time, staring at the water glass, at the way the last ripple faded so slowly, as if reluctant to let go.

She pressed her fingers to her throat. The pain had ebbed, but the memory of it lingered, a warning and a promise both. Selene lay back, curling into herself, and let the melody echo her to sleep.

~~**~~

The lighthouse sat like a broken tooth at the edge of the cape, bone-white and rotted at the base, its lantern forever dark. It marked the boundary where land conceded to the ocean, and served as the final page in the town’s story; past this, only the elements survived. Selene climbed the cracked stone path in darkness, the wind clawing at her coat and driving salt against her face. The air here tasted purer, less human; with each step, the wounds on her neck throbbed in strange anticipation.

She found Mara as expected, perched high atop the crumbling sea wall. From a distance, she looked like driftwood snagged by a storm, all long limbs and wild tangle of red hair. She wore her usual armor, layers of ripped sweaters and oilskin, patched with whatever the tide surrendered, and hunched with an energy that was more hunger than fatigue.

“Thought you’d never come,” Mara said as Selene approached, not bothering to look away from the moonlit horizon. “Was starting to think you’d gone soft for good.” Selene climbed up, settling on the wall beside her. The drop on the other side was a neat three stories, straight to jagged rock, but neither paid it any mind. “I needed to see you,” Selene said, voice soft but deliberate. Mara made a face, the wind flattening her hair to her cheek in a flame-red stripe. “That’s new. Last time you needed me, you left me alone with a bottle of gin and a dead gull for company.”

“I’m sorry,” Selene said, and meant it. Mara shrugged. “You always are.” They sat in silence, the waves crashing against the jetty below, the sky so dark it could have been underwater. Selene turned to watch Mara, trying to recall how they had met, both exiles, drawn to the same bleak places, finding solace in shared suffering. Mara had taken to her curse with a kind of ferocious pride, never once letting the world see her wounded, only ever showing the teeth.

“Something’s wrong with him,” Selene said at last. “The mortal. Elias.” Mara’s lip curled. “You mean the one you keep lurking around like a stray cat?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what mortals do,” Mara said. “They break down. They’re built for it.” She spat into the wind. “If you want one that lasts, pick a doctor. Or a cockroach.” Selene ignored the attempt at humor. “I think I’m making it worse,” she whispered.

Now Mara looked at her, eyes gone sharp as glass. “That’s the point, Selene. It’s always the point.” She twisted a loose thread from her sleeve, wrapping it tight around her finger until the tip blanched white. “The Queen doesn’t let you fall in love without a price. You’re not supposed to.”

Selene drew her knees to her chest, wind slicing through the gaps in her coat. “He’s getting sicker. Every time I see him, it’s like something’s been taken away.” Mara’s laugh was bitter, scraping. “That’s the price. You already know the terms.” She picked at the thread, winding and unwinding, never breaking eye contact. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you? We don’t get to be happy, Selene. We only get to choose how we’re punished.”

Selene looked out over the ocean, the endless black. “Tell me anyway. All of it.” Mara obliged, voice pitched low. “The Queen’s bargain is simple. She puts you among mortals, strips you of everything but the hunger. The only way to end it is for one of them to love you. Real love, no tricks, no cheating.” She nodded toward Selene’s neck. “But the curse is clever. The closer you get, the more you take from them. Their years, their memories, their spark. It’s like a slow siphon. You drain him dry, he dies, you get your voice back. Maybe.”

Selene closed her eyes, jaw clenched tight. “There’s no way out.” Mara replied, her tone almost gentle, “Not for us. Some have tried, over the centuries. Starved themselves, left the town, tried to forget. It never works. The Queen built the rules herself, and she doesn’t play games she can lose.” Selene shivered, but not from the cold. “He said he wanted to leave something behind. A song that echoes.”

Mara’s gaze softened, just a hair. “They always want to be remembered. Even the worst of them.” She flicked the thread into the wind, watched it disappear. “What are you going to do?” Selene didn’t answer. She felt the ache in her chest, the urge to go back to the apartment, to apologize, to hold him, even knowing it would only hasten the end. “You can always come back,” Mara offered. “Let him die alone, get your voice, start over. It’s not the worst fate.” Selene shook her head. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“That’s the cruelest part,” Mara said, teeth bared. “You want him to live, but to do that, you have to give him up.” They sat for a while longer, Mara humming tunelessly, Selene counting the seconds between each crash of the waves. The moon crept higher, silvering the foam, the only light in the endless dark.

Eventually, Selene stood, boots scraping moss from the stone. “Thank you,” she said, and meant it. Mara pulled her knees up, hugged them tight. “Go to him,” she said. “You’ve earned at least that much.”

Selene walked back down the path, each step heavier than the last. She thought of the ocean, of the countless men who had drowned with her song in their ears, and understood for the first time what it was to be haunted.

She reached the edge of the town just as the first rays of morning bled into the sky, painting the water in strips of bruised purple and blue. The world felt different now, smaller, more precious, as if already slipping away. Selene stopped and watched the tide roll in, wondering if she would have the strength to do what must be done when the time came.

Above her, the lighthouse remained dark, but in the new light, it looked almost beautiful.

~~**~~

The club was nothing like The Anchor’s Edge. It was smaller, first of all, and smelled less of brine and more of burned coffee, with an undertow of old cigarettes that never quite left the walls. The stage was a platform raised barely a foot above the sticky linoleum, hemmed in by a fence of dented speakers and duct-taped monitors. On a good night, the crowd here could break fifty, but this evening it was lucky to count twenty, all scattered like mismatched chess pieces across tables and barstools.

Selene chose the darkest seat at the back, directly beneath a vent that coughed stale air down her neck. The room’s lighting was a patchwork, some bulbs burnt out, some stuttering in their sockets, the rest filtered through clouds of dust and the purple haze of an old neon sign that buzzed “LIVE” in letters so faded they could have been a warning or a dare.

She watched as Elias set up on stage, hands moving with the practiced detachment of someone who’d learned not to trust his own body. He wore a clean shirt, still wrinkled from the dryer, sleeves rolled high to hide the tremor in his hands. He tested the mic, then tuned the battered guitar with an ear so precise even Selene could sense the tension in his shoulders when a string resisted.

From the side of the stage, Theo watched, phone in hand, tapping messages with the relentless efficiency of a shark in a feeding frenzy. Occasionally he looked up, eyes narrow, scanning the crowd for threats or opportunities. When he caught Selene’s gaze, his mouth tightened, not quite a smile. Elias’s set began just after the hour, no preamble, no introduction. He stepped to the mic, exhaled, and played.

The first song was one she recognized, she’d heard him practice it a dozen times in the apartment, always stopping at the chorus, never satisfied with the way the chords resolved. Tonight, the opening chords were smoother, but the chorus broke on a ragged edge, his voice catching and failing before he wrestled it back into tune. The audience stilled, not out of reverence but uncertainty, as if trying to decide whether to clap or simply pretend they hadn’t noticed.

He powered through, chin set, refusing to yield an inch to his own failing body. The second song built slow, the tempo deliberate, each note picked out with surgical precision. This time, the voice held. But the fingers did not: halfway through a delicate run, he missed the fret and the note clanged out, wrong and brittle. He winced, but didn’t stop. Instead, he doubled back, played the run again, slower, daring anyone to call him on it. Selene watched the beads of sweat gathering at his temple, the way his hand clutched the neck of the guitar like a lifeline. She felt the tension in her own limbs, the echo of Mara’s words: the closer you get, the more you take from them.

But it was more than just a weakness. There was something else riding in the music tonight, a depth, a resonance, that wasn’t there before. The notes seemed to hang in the air a fraction too long, vibrating in the wood and bone of the room itself. At the climax of the third song, the ceiling lights flickered, then surged, the filaments burning white-hot for an instant before settling again. A chill ran through the room. Selene glanced at the window by the stage and saw condensation beading on the glass, small rivulets tracing the letters of the bar’s logo despite the warmth of the evening.

The set wound on, each song a little stranger, a little more urgent. The crowd, small as it was, leaned in, conversations dying out, drinks forgotten. By the time he reached the last song, a new one, she realized, the melody haunting and unfamiliar, the entire bar was silent, breath held.

Elias played the opening chords, then stopped. He blinked, as if unsure of his own hands, then started again, this time singing low, the words a thread of longing woven through the dim air. Selene felt it building, the harmonic overtone that was not quite human, a vibration in her chest that rose and rose until she thought her scars might burst open under the pressure.

When he finished, the silence was absolute. Then, as if released from a spell, the room erupted in applause, real applause, not the polite kind, but wild and surprised, like a survivor laughing at his own close call.

Elias bowed, more out of habit than pride, and left the stage on unsteady feet. Theo was there in an instant, hand at his back, steering him toward the door that led backstage. Selene waited, letting the crowd thin, letting her own heart settle. Only then did she follow, slipping through the knot of people at the exit, down the corridor that smelled of bleach and spilled beer.

She found him in the green room, which was really a storage closet with a bench and a cracked mirror. Elias sat slumped, head in hands, breathing shallow and fast. Theo hovered nearby, phone forgotten for once, tension radiating from him in waves. Selene slipped in, closing the door behind her. Theo shot her a look, then retreated, leaving her alone with Elias.

He didn’t look up right away. When he did, the lines in his face were starker, his skin gray at the edges, but his eyes were alive, brighter than she had ever seen them. “Hey,” he managed, voice shredded by the set. She sat beside him, careful not to touch. “You were… incredible,” she said, and it was true, in a way that had nothing to do with the music.

He laughed, then coughed, the sound wrenching his whole frame. “Didn’t feel incredible. Felt like drowning.” She reached for his hand, stopped herself, let it hover in the space between them. “You’re pushing too hard,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “No. That’s not it.” He wiped sweat from his brow, left a smear of moisture on the back of his hand. “It’s weird, Selene. When I’m on stage, when I play, I can feel something else. Like there’s another current under everything. I get lost in it. But when I come up for air… ” He gestured to his chest, the place where the pain lived. “It’s like I left a piece of myself behind, every time.”

Selene stared at his hands, the veins blue against the skin, the fingertips raw from the strings. She wanted to tell him it was her fault, that the song was a siphon and she was the parasite, but the words caught in her ruined throat. Instead, she said, “What do you mean, a current?”

He looked at her, searching. “Like the sea. Have you ever swam past where your feet can touch? There’s this pull, this… undertow. I can feel it in the music. Like I’m almost a part of something big. And when the song ends, it’s gone, and I’m just me again. Less of me, actually.” He smiled, lopsided, as if apologizing for the truth. “It scares me. But it’s also the only time I feel right.” She nodded, understanding in ways he could never know. “Do you dream of it?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. All the time lately. I’m down there, in the dark. There’s singing, but it’s not in any language I know. Sometimes it sounds like you.” She looked away, out the narrow window that let in only the faintest thread of night. “Maybe it is,” she said. He laughed again, a rasp, but his fingers found hers on the bench, squeezing just once. “If you want to bail, I’ll understand. Tonight was a mess. I think Theo’s about ready to put me in a home.” Selene shook her head. “No. I want to stay.”

They sat in silence, hands loosely linked, until his breath evened out and the tremor in his shoulders eased. She helped him stand, arm around his waist, and together they made their way through the emptying bar to the street. The air outside was thick with mist, the night so still it might have been suspended in glass.

Elias unlocked his car, a battered hatchback held together by hope and duct tape, and slid into the driver’s seat. Selene climbed in beside him, the upholstery damp with the memory of rain. He started the engine, but didn’t move, just sat with his head pressed to the steering wheel.

She watched him, watched the rise and fall of his breath, the struggle and the stubbornness. He spoke without lifting his head. “You know what scares me most?” he asked. She shook her head. “That music's the only thing keeping me here. And I know it’s eating me alive, but I can’t let it go.”

She reached out, fingers tracing the line of his wrist, the pulse weak but present. “Then don’t,” she said, softer than a secret. “I’ll stay, as long as you want.” He turned his face to hers, eyes searching for something to believe in. “You promise?” he said, voice of a ghost.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned in, let her forehead rest against his, felt the heat of him, the life that flickered so bright and brief. “I promise,” she whispered, knowing it was both a comfort and a curse.

They drove in silence, the headlights carving a path through the fog. At his apartment, Selene helped him up the stairs, steadied him as he fumbled with the keys, guided him to the couch where she had slept the night before. He collapsed into it, limbs heavy, and within moments he was asleep, breaths shallow and uneven.

She sat beside him, watching. In the weak light, his face looked peaceful, almost young, the lines smoothed by exhaustion. She reached out, traced the air above his skin, not quite touching, not daring to steal even another heartbeat. She thought of the Queen, of Mara, of the bargain that hung over them both. She thought of the ocean, and of all the men she had ever drowned, and how none of them had ever felt like this.

Selene leaned back, eyes burning, and watched the tide of his chest rise and fall. She could not save him. But she could remember him, every note and every breath, until there was nothing left to take. And in the quiet dark, she let herself fall in love.