That word. He’d uttered it as a genuine plea. And in that lone syllable, I again detected an all-too-familiar note of pain. The kind that, when it rings out, causes all similar surrounding chords to vibrate right along with it.

Not sure what I was doing, I reclaimed the seat on the bench.

“Stop,” he said before I’d played so much as the first two notes. “Andante. Slowly, but not too slowly.”

“I know what ‘andante’ means.” I shifted and started over.

“Softer,” he corrected.

Again, I stopped, and I might have gotten angry with him if he hadn’t swept his cloak back in order to take the seat next to me, the motion sending a waft of lavender my way.

“See here,” he said. “The opening notes. They are one entity, linked as they walk out of the dark together, born from the nothing, surprising and yet undeniable, like the first stirrings of love. Your fingers. They need only caress the keys. Let them fall as feathers. Like so.”

His right hand went to mine, his third and fourth fingers, cool and a little rough, overlaying my own. His words, combined with his touch, caused a thrill to rush through me and heat to rise in my cheeks. I held my breath as he pressed each of my fingers just the way he’d said, one after the other in the same pattern. He halted at once though when the music came out discordant, distorted, and wrong. The notes that themselves had, a moment ago, resonated with such beauty now clanged eerily, off-key and garbled.

Erik’s hand lifted instantly from mine. I kept my own where they were, unable to move, my skin still buzzing from our connection, my body humming from his nearness, my ears and mind shocked by the unnerving sound his influence had elicited from the instrument.

He drew his hand away from the keys, though his eyes remained fastened there, the momentary flash of brightness in him dimming.

“You see now what I mean,” he muttered.

And I did.

“It’s . . . part of the curse,” I guessed. “You can’t play anymore because you’re a ghost.”

“I am not a ghost,” he corrected darkly. “And neither, I must tell you, is he.”

“He,” I repeated. “You mean Zedok.”

He didn’t admonish me for saying the name this time. But he didn’t answer me, either.

“Who is he?” I pressed. “What is he?”

“Not what you think,” murmured Erik, “I can promise you that.”

Another unenlightening answer. But did that mean Lucas’s story was wrong? Erik had said it was. Perhaps Zedok was a demon.

“He’s what’s keeping you here,” I said, lifting my hands from the keys and slowly placing them in my lap. “He—it,” I corrected, adopting Lucas’s label for the monster. “It’s keeping you prisoner.”

To this, Erik said nothing, just observed the piano with a stricken expression that echoed the one from before. But maybe he couldn’t tell me. Could the same thing preventing him from playing music also somehow prevent him from revealing the truth about the curse?