“We’re in this together.” Tyler pushed the sketchbook closer to Emily. “No matter how hard you try to push me away.”

They watched each other as she ate. Bite after bite, neither of them saying a word. When she was done, he took out his headphones and slid them across to her.

“There’s more inside your head than whatever idea she told you about.” Then he sat back, folded his arms over his chest and waited.

That’s what I’m afraid of.

Emily looked at the crumpled piece of paper containing a memory she hadn’t wanted to find, then placed the headphones over her ears, switched on the music, and tried to drown out the world.

If she opened the floodgates, anything and everything could come tumbling out.

18

RAVEN

Corvus corax

Someone was singing. There was a church, from which a wedding party was spilling onto the street, a cloud of confetti covering the bride and groom. Emily bent down to pick some up. She saw they were rose petals, pink and soft but already beginning to wilt. Her hand began to shake as she watched the happy couple kiss, bodies pressed tight together, the wide smiles of all who had gathered to witness their union.

She thought of Tyler and Phoebe, of their offer to come with her. How she had turned them down, said she was fine. Now she wasn’t so sure, because she couldn’t shake the feeling that had followed her all the way since Rome. It had been there when they arrived at their hotel, late last night. Emily had collapsed into bed, too exhausted to fight sleep, the after-effects of Valium, whiskey, and a belly full of Italian food finally catching up with her. But the feeling was still there when she woke. It whispered in her ear as she attempted to swallow her morning coffee, tapped her on the shoulder as she asked for a map from the hotel reception, circled the address she needed to get to.

It had persisted, like a whining child, as she walked the streets, breathing in a new city, all the people that blurred into one. A place full of strangers going about their everyday lives, who knew nothing of her, of why she was there. She had been drawn toward the quiet, to the streets where not so many tourists were ambling about. That’s when she had seen him. A raven. Perched on black railings imprinted with centuries of other people’s fingerprints.

A graveyard in the middle of a city, protected by birds who always made Emily think of the Tower back in London, where six ravens lived, wings clipped so they couldn’t leave, for fear of the curse proving to be true. She felt like one of those birds, feared that because she was here, something dark and dangerous was about to be released.

Turning her back on the raven, Emily followed the sound of song, stopping just inside the church doorway. There was a monument built into the wall, of a coffin and a death mask, the sight of which made her step deeper into the gloom. A woman was singing near the altar, the vibrato in her voice reaching all the way up to the cavernous ceiling. It made Emily think of her mother and the arias she would sing while dancing through the house, trailing a mist of Guerlain behind.