Page 18 of Weight of Shadows
I adjusted him with small, deliberate touches. A hand on his shoulder to angle him into the light, my fingers pressing through the fabric of his coat to feel the tension in his muscles. If I kept it technical, I didn't have to deal with the way my chest felt tight every time he looked at me.
Through the viewfinder, Oleander was devastating. His face in repose held a sadness that was so unguarded it felt like a confession. I clicked the shutter, the mechanical sound rhythmic and steady.
I moved around him, the camera an extension of my own body. He looked like a man who had spent a long time being owned and was only now realizing he was free.
I shot thirty frames in rapid succession, the light fading from gold to a deep, bloody orange. When the sun finally dippedbelow the treeline and the grey took over, I lowered the camera, my hands shaking just slightly.
"Can I see?" Oleander asked, his voice small. He stepped toward me, peering at the small digital screen on the back of the Leica as I toggled through the playback.
The first few were perfect. Beautiful. The corrupted frames were there again. Closer this time. I flicked past them before he could see. I found a clean one, a close-up of his face where he looked almost peaceful, and held it out.
"You're hard to capture," I said, my voice sounding more steady than I felt. "You keep disappearing behind your own face."
"I don't look like that," he said.
"You do from where I'm standing," I said.
I set the camera down on the sagging porch railing, the expensive equipment forgotten. I reached out and took his face in both of my hands. My palms were hot against his skin, and I could feel the way his breath hitched.
I kissed him. He tasted like the mint he'd been chewing and the cold afternoon air. For a second, he didn't move. Then his hands came up to grip my wrists, his fingers digging into my skin, and he kissed me back with a desperation that made my head swim.
I pulled back just an inch, my forehead resting against his. "Sorry," I breathed, my eyes still closed. "No, actually, I'm not. I've wanted to do that since the diner."
Oleander let out a startled laugh, his hands sliding down to rest on my chest.
"You're a very strange man, Theo," he said, his smile genuine for the first time. It was a fragile thing, but it was there. I looked past him, toward the dark wisteria, and felt something protective settle into my chest. Whatever was following him, I wanted to be the reason he kept looking forward.
"I'm a photographer," I said, pulling him closer. "We see things other people miss."
seventeen
JULIAN
The bar settled into itself after the last regular left. I sat on the piano bench, the weight of the night pressing against my shoulder blades, and stared at the keys. They looked like teeth in the dim amber light of the single lamp I'd left burning over the register.
The silence felt like a presence waiting for me to fill it. I traced the ivory of middle C, not pressing down, just feeling the cool, slightly porous texture of the old key. My hands were steady, which was a lie my body was telling my brain. Inside, everything was vibrating at a frequency I couldn't tune out.
The melody was there again. It had been circling the perimeter of my consciousness for weeks, a persistent, minor-key ghostthat didn't have a name but had a face. It had become an itch under my skin, a rhythmic pulse in my fingertips that made the act of not playing feel like holding my breath until my lungs burned.
I shouldn't have been here alone. Rowan had been watching me with that heavy, narrowed gaze all evening, the one that meant he was measuring the distance between my sanity and the town's appetite. He'd left an hour ago, thinking I was right behind him, but the piano had called to me with a gravity I couldn't resist.
I let my index finger sink into the key. A single lonely note rang out. Then another. I stopped fighting it. I let my left hand find the bass chords, those deep, mourning thrums that the melody always started with, the ones that felt like someone else's memory bleeding through the keys.
The music spilled out of me, a floodgate finally giving way. I hadn't practiced this. I hadn't studied the score. But my fingers knew the architecture of it better than I did. They danced over the keys, weaving a sound that felt like it was pulling the shadows out of the corners of the room.
As the melody hit the bridge, the part where the notes climbed and then shattered into a dissonant fall, the temperature in the bar plummeted. My breath hitched, a small puff of white mist blooming in front of my face, but I didn't stop playing. I couldn't. It felt like if I let go of the keys, I would disappear into the frost.
The shadows along the far wall moved. They stretched toward the piano, elongated fingers of darkness reaching for the sound. I kept my eyes fixed on my hands, watching them move with a precise autonomy I hadn't authorized. I was a passenger in my own body.
Then I felt it. The air behind me shifted, not with a draft, but with the displacement of something solid. A weight, a heavy, silent pressure that settled just inches from my back. I could feelheat radiating from it, a searing contrast to the freezing room, and the sensation of someone standing close enough to press their chest against my spine.
I didn't turn around. The scent hit me then. Sandalwood and bergamot, so thick it felt like I was swallowing it. Oleander's cologne, the one that wasn't his. The dead man's cologne, filling the empty bar like someone had uncapped a bottle right behind my ear.
My fingers finished the final, haunting refrain. The last note lingered, a low, vibrating hum that seemed to go on forever, refusing to die in the frozen air. I sat perfectly still, my hands resting in my lap, staring at the lid of the piano.
"I know you're there," I whispered.
I didn't say his name. To say it would be to give the shadow a mouth, and I wasn't ready to hear what it had to say.
