The city outside the hospital was quieter than it should have been.
Lila stepped into the streets of 1927 like someone slipping into water that was just a few degrees too cold....startling, unfamiliar, yet holding a terrible allure. Horses clattered past automobiles. Newsboys hollered headlines she half-recognized. Smoke curled from lampposts. The world felt dipped in sepia, the colors dulled as if preserving a memory.
The streets remembered more than she did.
Her reflection followed her in every pane of glass......shop windows, passing cars, even the puddle she stepped over. In each one, she caught glimpses of her modern self, mouthing warnings she couldn't hear. Her hands were wrapped in gloves now, stolen from the hospital coat room, but even they couldn't fully conceal the ink lines spiraling across her wrists like veins turning black.
She asked a street vendor if he knew Theo Blackwood.
The name made the man raise a brow. "The piano man? Sure. He's at the Hollow Note tonight. Plays every Friday. Crowd gets real quiet when he starts....like he's cursing them and they're liking it."
The Hollow Note was a speakeasy disguised as a bakery..."Addison's Breads & Teas" by day, a velvet-draped haven by night. Lila bribed the doorman with the gold locket from her hospital drawer and stepped into a world soaked in bourbon and candlelight.
The air was heavy with perfume and smoke. Laughter clung to the chandeliers. Women in beaded gowns whispered behind gloved hands; men with cufflinks like daggers circled the room with empty smiles.
And there he was.
Theo.
At the baby grand piano, tucked in shadow, his back to the crowd. He was thinner than she remembered....his posture more rigid, his jaw tighter. He wore a midnight blue waistcoat that shimmered like oil slick, his hair slicked back with sharp precision.
He struck the keys not with grace, but force. The music was technically perfect, but cold....lacking the warmth that once bled through his every note. Each phrase ended abruptly, as if he were trying to finish before the feeling could catch him.
Lila pressed closer, her breath catching.
This wasn't the Theo who had whispered her name like a secret he wanted to keep safe. This wasn't the boy who played "Our Song" under the glow of ruined chandeliers, with fingers trembling from love, not fear.
This man's soul was missing from the music.
When the set ended, polite applause rose, brittle and brief. Theo nodded without smiling and left the stage, moving toward the bar.
She followed.
"Theo?" she said.
He turned. His eyes locked onto hers...and for a brief, painful second, something flickered there. Recognition. Horror. And then it was gone, buried beneath ice.
"Do I know you, miss?"
She felt like the floor tilted. "You do. I mean… I think you do. You're Theo Blackwood, right?"
He eyed her, face unreadable. "That depends. Who's asking?"
"Eleanor Hart," she replied instinctively, and the name landed in her mouth like ashes. "But it used to be Lila."
His lips twitched, a half-smirk, half-snarl. "That's quite a trick, miss Hart."
"You signed a contract," she said, low and urgent. "With something that wasn't human."
His glass clinked against the bar as he set it down.
"Who told you that?" he asked. His voice, flat. Controlled. He gripped her wrist....not cruelly, but with force enough to remind her he was real, and strong. "How do you know about the contract?"
She trembl ed."Because I saw it. In another life. And you...."
"Enough." He released her. The cold in his gaze deepened. "You're not well."
"Theo, I'm telling you the truth. Your music...something's wrong with it. It's fading."
A beat of silence passed. Then:
"You think I don't know that?"
His voice cracked, just slightly. He glanced over his shoulder, then grabbed her arm and dragged her into a side corridor lined with velvet curtains and golden sconces. They stopped in a narrow alcove behind the stage, the music from the club muffled by walls and secrets.
Theo turned to her, voice hoarse. "You think I don't feel it? I sit at the keys and the notes come out like ghosts. Hollow. They don't love me anymore, Lila......if that's really your name."
She stared at him, breath catching. "It is. It was. I think I died. I think time broke. And you… you're dying too, piece by piece."
He laughed bitterly. "You don't know what it's like to be adored one moment and abandoned the next. They cheered me once. Now they clap like they're at a funeral."
"The Collector...he's still here, isn't he?"
Theo went still.
She took a step closer. "He made you a promise, didn't he? Fame. Greatness. In exchange for...."
"I gave him my past," Theo whispered, "to secure my future. At first, it was small things. A childhood memory. My mother's lullaby. But then he started taking… more. I can't remember the first piece I ever composed. I can't even recall the taste of spring rain. Everything is fading."
Lila reached for him, but he pulled back.
"You were supposed to be dead," he murmured. "That's what he told me. That you never survived the fire. That I had to forget you."
Tears stung her eyes. "I tried to undo it. I burned the contract. I reversed the melody. And now I'm here.....but I don't belong in this time. Something's wrong. Something's broken."
He didn't respond right away. His eyes drifted to her gloved hands.
"Why are you hiding your hands?" he asked.
She hesitated, then peeled the gloves off.
The ink was worse now. The lines crawled past her wrists, forming detailed sketches down her arms....of pianos in flames, of violins with weeping eyes. The final image near her elbow was of Theo, mouth open in a scream, his body disintegrating into ink blotches.
Theo paled.
"She's marked you," he said quietly. "Or maybe you marked yourself."
"I think I brought the future with me," she whispered. "And I don't think I can stop it."
He looked down, then back at her, and for a moment.....the briefest instant....the old Theo surfaced. The one who'd stayed up all night composing a lullaby just to see her smile. The one who loved too deeply.
"We're cursed," he said. "All of us. Me, you… even Vincent."
"Vincent's here?" she asked.
Theo nodded once. "Sober. Angry. Trying to fix things. But some things…"
He stopped, eyes clouding.
"Some things aren't meant to be unbroken."
Before she could answer, the walls trembled faintly.
Not from footsteps. From a vibration.....deep and discordant, like a piano string plucked by something with claws.
Theo went rigid. "He's close."
"The Collector?"
He nodded. "He wears a new face now. Charming. Generous. But his eyes still burn when no one's watching."
"I saw him. At the hospital."
Theo's voice dropped to a whisper. "Then it's already started again."
He took her hand, suddenly fierce.
"Promise me something."
"What?"
"If you remember who you really are… don't come looking for me."
She didn't answer.
Because she already had