“Do you ever regret running away?” Vincent had asked William during his final day, for it was in this way they had escaped the curse; they had started new lives and never looked back. It was their last night together, but they didn’t know it. The lines on their hands were blurred, their futures unsure.
“I didn’t run away. I ran to you,” William told him.
It was the perfect answer, the one that broke Vincent’s heart. He should have been more patient, he shouldn’t have rushed through his life, for now he had arrived here, alone, in a city he didn’t know, in the early morning light, filled with an absurd desire for the past. If only he could close his eyes and be transported to Greenwich Village on his birthday when they first met, when their lives were ahead of them, when he had no patience and plunged into love.
Now he was a man who could wait when he had to. Less than forty minutes later, the librarian arrived. Now it begins, Vincent thought. And then he had the oddest thought. Here is the key.
* * *
David Ward noticed the man on the bench who was observing him. He recognized Vincent immediately, the same handsome profile that had been in magazines and newspapers after his sudden death. David had been a fan of Vincent’s back when he was young, and had listened rapt to “I Walk at Night” over and over again, wishing he’d had the courage to announce who he was, as Vincent had. This was in the days when people more often hid their sexual nature. It was easy to do, if you didn’t mind breaking your own heart. David had been married and he’d kept his most authentic self a secret even from those to whom he was closest. He’d forsaken his true self to be a family man. He’d thought there were no other choices.
He remembered the day he first heard Vincent’s song on the radio. He was still working at the British Museum back then, specializing in artifacts from Persia and Mesopotamia; he hadn’t yet been contacted by his current employers, a board of magic practitioners who understood that David Ward was good at keeping a secret. Too good, perhaps.
Before he became the keeper of the magic stored here, he’d been to the left side and had been in a state of spiritual agony ever since. Working here was a penance of sorts; he would now do good in the world where before he had been willing to do evil. His daughter, Eve, had come down with meningitis; it had occurred suddenly, on an ordinary day. Eve was ten, the light of his life, and the reason David had stayed married. He’d furtively begun a separate life on nights he was away from home, fearing that if he made an admission regarding his sexuality, his wife would be granted full custody. When Evie became ill he knew where to go for help, a practitioner of the Dark Art who often visited the museum. David went to a mansion in South Kensington knowing that in exchange for his daughter’s life, he would be required to complete a task. He knew the city was in the triangle of black magic, and that it could be found on streets and alleyways for those willing to look for such things.
David was to commit a murder on behalf of another of the magician’s clients. He didn’t even argue. That’s what desire mixed with desperation could do. He sat at a bar and poisoned a stranger’s drink. In the mayhem of waiters doing their best to help the young man having a heart attack at the bar, David had found his way out, continuing on to the hospital where his daughter had miraculously recovered. It was a misdiagnosis, the doctors said, but David knew the truth, he had traded one life for another. He had chosen the Crooked Path and he would pay for it for the rest of his life.
It was never the same with Evie. That was the price. When she’d found love letters he’d written to a man he was involved with, she called him a liar and a hypocrite and his wife told him to leave and he’d gotten into a taxi and fled in shame, without putting up a fight. He shouldered his guilt and there was no room for anything but self-recrimination. He accepted the job at the Invisible Library, and one day a black-edged note was slipped under the door and he knew that Evie was gone. She and her boyfriend had been in a motorcycle accident, skidding on wet pavement late at night. He knew it was his fault. His daughter’s original fate had caught up with her because he hadn’t been able to bring himself to slip the full dose of poison in his target’s drink. The stranger he was meant to do away with had a heart attack, but he had survived.