Page 60 of City of Liars

“I suppose it’s poss—” Theo began, and then his jaw snapped shut, so hard I was afraid he’d bitten his tongue. I was about to ask him what the matter was, but then I heard for myself: Grandma Ella’s piano, playing that now-familiar melody.

I stiffened, and Theo straightened, every muscle in his body going taut, like a dog on point. “Please tell me,” he said slowly, “you hear that too.”

“I hear it,” I said, an icy tingle creeping over every inch of my skin.

His shoulders sagged. “I thought I was losing my mind.” There was a dark edge to his voice, a painful admission that shattered my heart.

“No,” I said, my voice hushed. “I definitely hear it. But Theo, what the hell does this mean? Because I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t either. But something in there is playing your grandmother’s piano, and I’m not going to hide in here like a fucking coward while we try to figure out what it is.” Squaring his shoulders, he strode from the room.

“Great,” I muttered, following him down the hallway. “You’re charging right at it instead, like a virgin in a horror movie.”

Despite everything, he laughed. “People have accused me of a lot of things, Liv, but being called a virgin is a new one.”

We were both just trying to distract ourselves. Because the alternative was that the ghost of May Dressler was sitting at the piano, and the two of us were about to catch her in the act.

“What is that song?” I said, the words hushed, as if I was afraid she’d overhear. “Do you know?”

“It’s Bye Bye, Blackbird. The same song I heard before. And my grandmother…earlier tonight, she told me it was a song May always used to play.”

Before I could ask him anything else, we made it to the bottom of the stairs and Theo headed straight for the living room. He froze in the doorway.

The piano had stopped playing. Adrenaline coursing through me, I shoved at his shoulder, trying to get a glimpse. “What do you see?”

“Absolutely nothing. Here, take a look for yourself.”

He stepped aside so I could slip past him. Taking comfort from the line of his body behind mine, I looked.

The piano was still; no one sat at the bench, and the keys didn’t move. Still, I had the unmistakable, eerie sense that we weren’t alone...and I knew what I’d heard.

Maybe it was a crazy idea. But I was suddenly sure it was the right one. “Theo…why don’t you play for her?”

One of Theo’s finely etched eyebrows rose. “You want me to go over there and have a duet with a dead woman?”

The air in the room stirred, and I shivered. “I don’t think,” I told him, “that it’s about what I want.”

He rolled his shoulders, as if readying himself for a fight. “Of course. Well, then, why the hell not? Though if I get possessed or something, you’re gonna have to call the exorcist.”

“Not funny.” I rubbed my arms, trying to rid myself of goosebumps.

“Not joking.” Theo crossed to the piano, giving the space around him a suspicious once-over before settling on the bench. He stared at the piano, as if waiting for it to play itself, but the instrument remained silent.

“I really have lost my damn mind,” he said, putting his fingers to the keys. The familiar melody filled the room, flooding the spaces between us, picking up where the song had left off. And then, taking me completely by surprise, Theo began to sing.

“‘Pack up all my care and woe. Here I go, singing low. Bye-bye, blackbird…’”

His voice was still low and sexy. But now it was sad, too, filled with the haunting words of a woman who was desperate to communicate from beyond the grave.

I sank onto the couch as his hands came down on the keys, echoing May Dressler’s ghostly melody. His voice rose, filling the room. “‘No one here can love and understand me. Oh, what hard-luck stories they all hand me. Make my bed, light the light, I’ll arrive late tonight. Blackbird...’”

Theo’s voice was thick with emotion, and it occurred to me he could well be singing about himself: his loneliness; the self-imposed isolation in which he lived; the darkness he believed followed him wherever he went.

I knew Theo didn’t do love or dating. He’d made that clear enough. And God knew I wasn’t interested in getting my heart hung out to dry, not after Gray. But listening to him sing, his heart in his voice and his inky hair tumbling into his eyes, I let myself admit the truth.

I was falling hard for Theo Dressler.

His voice trailed off, the notes lingering in the room, and a breath of air swept past me. Easily dismissed; just as easily acknowledged. Except I had the undeniable sense that it was saying goodbye.