Ghosts

Seraphina made it to the lobby before her hands started shaking.

She crossed the marble floor, pushed through the revolving doors, and hit the sidewalk like she was coming up from underwater. The air was cold. The traffic was loud. She kept walking until she turned the corner and was out of sight of the tower, then she stopped and pressed her palm flat against a brick wall and closed her eyes.

Breathe.

In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight. The technique her therapist in London had taught her, back when she could not walk past a rain puddle without shaking.

She opened her hand.

The silver hair clip sat in her palm. Her initial. Her vine. Aria's clip. The one she had left on her nightstand the night everything ended.

He had it.

He had kept it.

For three years.

She felt something hot and useless try to climb her throat. She swallowed it down. Put the clip in her jacket pocket. Kept walking.

A black car pulled up beside her. Lucas leaned out the window.

"Get in."

She got in. He did not say anything as she buckled her seat belt and stared out the window and tried to stop the shaking in her hands. He just drove.

"Lucas."

"Yes?"

"He still has my things."

"Which things?"

She told him. About the clip. About the way Damien had held it out. About the way he had watched her face.

Lucas let out a long breath.

"He is testing you."

"I know."

"He suspects."

"I know."

"What are you going to do?"

She looked at him. The streetlights slid across his face in pulses of gold.

"I am going to keep him suspecting. Right up until the moment I want him to know."

Lucas was quiet for a moment.

"Seraphina."

"Do not."

"I am just asking."

"I said do not."

"Are you falling for him again?"

She did not answer.

The car pulled up to The Plaza. The doorman opened her door. She got out without looking at Lucas. Walked into the lobby. Crossed to the elevator. Pressed the button for the penthouse suite.

The doors opened.

A woman was already inside.

Mid sixties. Gray hair pinned into a twist. Emerald earrings. A face Seraphina had seen in magazines and wedding albums and once, across a dining table, looking at her like she was a stain.

Elena Cross.

"Going up?" Elena asked.

The elevator doors closed before Seraphina could answer.

Elena pressed the button for the penthouse.

The same floor.

"What a coincidence," Seraphina said. Her voice was steady. She had spent three years training her voice to be steady.

"Yes," Elena said. "What a coincidence."

The elevator climbed in silence. Seraphina stared at the numbers. Elena stared at her reflection in the polished brass doors.

"I knew a woman once," Elena said quietly. "Who wore her hair swept to one side. Just like that. She had a scar on her left wrist. Thin. White. From a clasp on a bracelet that broke at her wedding."

Seraphina did not move. Her left wrist was covered by her sleeve.

"The woman I knew had a laugh," Elena continued. "That was so loud it embarrassed her. She used to put her hand over her mouth when she laughed. I used to tell her it was a foolish thing to do. A laugh like that is a gift, I said. Do not hide a gift."

The elevator was still climbing.

"I was cruel to her," Elena said. "In small ways. I let my son become cruel to her in large ones. I thought she was not good enough for him." She paused. "She was. He was not good enough for her."

Seraphina could not breathe.

"She disappeared three years ago," Elena said. "On a night when it rained so hard the streets flooded. I have looked for her, quietly, for years. I hired three different investigators. I made discreet inquiries in every city where I have friends. I never found her." The elevator dinged for the penthouse. "Not until tonight."

The doors opened.

Neither of them moved.

Elena turned to face her. Her eyes were wet.

"If you are her," she said quietly. "I will not tell my son. Not until you want me to. But I will help you. However you need. Whatever you want to do to that girl who wears my son's name now, I will help you do it."

"I do not know what you are talking about."

"I know."

"I am Seraphina Kane."

"I know that too." Elena stepped out of the elevator. Turned back. "But if I am wrong, Ms. Kane, if you truly are a stranger, then forgive an old woman for grasping at ghosts. I have carried guilt for three years about a girl I helped destroy. Sometimes I see her in my dreams."

She reached out. Touched Seraphina's hand. Just for a second.

Seraphina's left sleeve shifted. Just an inch. Just enough.

Elena saw the scar on her wrist.

Something broke in her face. Not loudly. Quietly. Like a cup settling to the bottom of a sink.

"Oh," Elena whispered. "Oh, my girl."

Seraphina pulled her hand back. Walked past her. Walked to her suite. Shut the door. Leaned against it. Slid to the floor.

And for the first time in three years, she cried.

Not pretty tears. Not the polite kind that slip out at funerals. Ugly, gasping sobs that came from a place she had locked up and thrown away the key to. Her shoulders shook. Her face pressed into her own knees. She bit down on her fist to keep the sound from carrying into the hallway because she refused, absolutely refused, to have hotel staff find her broken on a marble floor.

She cried for Aria. The girl who had believed. The girl who had loved without holding back. The girl who had put her hand on her stomach in the rain and whispered to her unborn daughter that she was sorry, so sorry, that she had not been smart enough to see it coming.

She cried for Elena. For the old woman in the elevator who had carried guilt for three years and said it out loud tonight, without asking for anything in return.

She cried because Damien was keeping her hair clip in a locked drawer.

She cried because some part of her, some small broken part she had spent three years trying to amputate, had wanted him to.

When the tears finally stopped, she stood. Washed her face. Looked at herself in the mirror until she recognized the woman in the glass. Not Aria. Not even Seraphina. Someone in between. Someone she was still learning to be.

She picked up her phone. Opened a new message. Typed the number Elena had slipped into her hand in the elevator.

"Meet me. Tomorrow. 10 a.m. My suite."

She hit send before she could change her mind.

The reply came back in under a minute.

"I will be there."

Seraphina set the phone down.

For three years, she had fought this war alone. Tomorrow, she would have her first soldier.