"Trying to get my attention?" she asked.
"Yeah, girl, what's up?" The man sauntered forward, leering. "You got a nice shape there."
A perfect shape, actually—long legs, a lean waist, and breasts that refused to be hidden no matter how many baggy shirts she bought. All part of being Lianhan Sídhe, a muse, a siren, a Fae mistress of men—or women, as the case might be.
"You think I'm pretty?" she simpered, edging closer to the man.
"Well, if you'd take that hood off, darlin', I could see for sure." Licking his lips, he reached out, tugging at her hood. She lifted her chin, tossing back the shock of hair hiding her face.
"How do you like me now?" She grinned, feeling the familiar tug of the scar tissue above the right corner of her mouth. For effect, she slipped the tiny switchblade from her pocket and snapped it out.
Both men recoiled. "Aw, hell. What the—"
Mel laughed, touching the point of the blade to her tongue. "Run along, boys."
They stumbled over each other in their hurry to get away, and she swung through the glass door into the store. She suffocated a twinge of sadness at their reaction, shifting her emotions to satisfaction, even glee. Scaring assholes was something she did well, and it was fun.
She made the key, leaving her face uncovered. A mother, leading her toddler from the bathroom toward the exit, nodded and smiled at her, but Mel recognized the tightness of horror and pity around her eyes. Her daughter was less diplomatic.
"Mommy, what happened to that girl's face?" the child said loudly.
The mother shushed her, but Mel said, "It's okay." She crouched. "You want to know what happened?"
Shrinking shyly, the little girl nodded.
"A man did this to me, because he was jealous. Men are wicked. Don't trust them."
"Okay, let's go," said the mother, ushering her wide-eyed daughter out of the store.
Mel grabbed the finished key and followed them out. As she swung astride her motorcycle, she caught the mother's eye again. The woman's smile was gone, and judgment shone hot from her eyes. Mel rammed on her helmet and roared out of the parking lot, cursing the woman under her breath. But a hundred curses couldn't stop the hot tears soaking into helmet's padding.
She thought about it every day. Every damn day.
Her mother and Shane shouting at each other. Her mother trying to calm Shane down, using her beauty, her kisses, her sinuous form, her voice—all the tricks the Lianhan Sídhe employed to keep men in thrall. None of it had worked, because he was too far gone. She had chosen the wrong mark, given him too much of her magic, and his passion for her had shattered into obsession.
"You don't love me as much as I love you," Shane had said, trembling, his cheeks wet with tears.
"I do. I promise I do." Her mother had clawed at his sleeves, pressing herself against him.
"No, you don't. You think because you're beautiful, you can leave me, and go to someone else. You think you can have anything you want." He'd drawn a deep, shuddering breath, his fingers finding the flask in his back pocket. "Well, that's going to change, babe. From now on, no one but me will ever want you. You'll have to stay with me."
His hand jerked out, and he doused her face in the liquid from the flask.
At first, ten-year-old Mel had thought it was alcohol. Crouched behind the sofa, watching over its edge, she shrank down when her mother started to scream. She covered her head with a pillow, trying to block out the sounds, until she realized that her mother wasn't shrieking anymore, and the screams she heard were her own. Mel stayed on the couch, shaking, screaming at herself to get up, to do something. But her legs had turned to quivering blobs, and she couldn't move.
And then rough hands had flipped her over, and Shane's red face hung above hers. "This is your fault, too," he said hoarsely. "Ever since she had you, I've had to share her love. You deserve the same punishment."
Mel had screamed and thrashed, but he held her down and dripped the dregs of the flask over the right side of her face. "Not enough!" he shrieked, throwing the flask aside. He let go of her and ran to the kitchen—she heard the rasp of a blade leaving the knife block.
But a neighbor had already called the police, and they arrived at that moment. Mel didn't remember much of the next few hours, just hazy flashes. A policeman's arms, scooping her up. A glimpse of a body with a scarlet, sizzling lump of flesh that used to be her mother's face. A gleaming gray and white hallway. A sharp pain in her arm, and then darkness.
A horn blared, and Mel swerved her motorcycle around the oncoming car, zipping into the back alley behind the Leroux School for the Performing Arts. As she pulled into a parking spot, she saw a cluster of figures moving across the courtyard, from the stage building to the dormitory. Crap. The contestants were heading to the dorm office for their room assignments. She was nearly too late.
She pelted across the lot, one foot skimming on black ice, but she simply followed the slide in a kind of dance move and kept her balance. She yanked open the side door and raced to the manager's office. Madame Boucher was there already, and she glanced up as Mel skidded in, breathless.
"Bravo, Melanie, you have done a job merveilleux with the room assignments," she said, studying the computer screen. "You may hand out the room keys to the contestants, d'accord?"
"Sure, I can do that." Mel gulped air, trying to steady her breathing. Suddenly she realized that her scars were still uncovered, and she raked her hair back over the side of her face and replaced the hood, casting a furtive look at Madame Boucher. The woman had looked right at her, right at the scars, and hadn't seemed to notice or care.
Mel pulled open the key drawer and dropped the dorm master key back into its place. Its new twin was still in her back pocket. She removed the entire tray of keys, grabbed the printout of the room assignments, and went to the plexiglass half-window of the office.
For the next half hour she checked them in, one after another—thirty in all. Ten of them would be cut after tomorrow's extended auditions, the first two-part televised episode.
A few of them had held her attention during the round of pre-auditions today. Jalana, thickset with gorgeous lips and an avalanche of tightly curled black hair, had sung a fierce, growly, much-abbreviated rendition of Jennifer Hudson's "And I Am Telling You." A skinny blonde boy named Winston, who looked as if a touch would crumple him, had given voice the best male soprano Mel ever heard, although she doubted his ability in the lower registers. An older man had belted a rockabilly version of Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Call Love." A couple of boy-band types were possible competition for Kiyo, and there was a mom with a voice like Adele, although her highest note had wavered.
Mel watched them all from the shadows of her hair and hood, mumbling room numbers and instructions in the low, hoarse voice she had adopted for her current persona. When Kiyo came up to the counter, her stomach erupted into quivering rainbow ripples.
"Hey, I know you," he said, smiling, laying his right hand on the ledge of the office window. She eyed the longish, rounded guitarist's nails, the slim arches of his fingers.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Mel."
"Well, hi again, Mel."
A girl leaned around from behind him, annoyance in every line of her smooth face. "Move it, would ya?"
Kiyo glanced at her and turn his hand palm up. Mel dropped the key into it and passed him his info sheet.
"Thanks," he said. "Have a good night."
The girl behind him shouldered up to the window, lips pursed and fake eyelashes drooping over violet-blue irises. Mel remembered her, too. A Bebe Rexha wanna-be in a tube top and skin-tight sparkly leggings, writhing and squealing her way through David Guetta's "Yesterday."
"My key?" The girl's perfectly waxed brows lifted, and she twirled caramel-colored hair through her fingers.
"Sure." Mel pushed the key and the info sheet across the ledge. "Some big words on this sheet. You want me to read it aloud for you?"
The girl sc
offed and flounced away.
Next came a boy with tan skin, shiny black hair to his shoulders, powerful cheekbones, and a broad forehead.
"You can already tell who the queen bitches are, yeah?" His dark eyes twinkled at her.
She reflected his smile in spite of herself. "I guess."
"I'm Diwali."
"Mel." She couldn't remember this guy. Maybe he had auditioned while she was on a bathroom break, or getting a drink.
The next second he had moved on. Half a dozen contestants left, and Mel's stomach was burning from the magic roiling inside her. Spikes of pain stabbed her behind the eyes every few seconds. She could barely stand still, could barely focus enough to match the names the contestants spoke to the written words on the assignment printout. Grinding her teeth, she managed to fight through the pressure until the last person left the window.
Without waiting for thanks or a goodbye from Madame Boucher, Mel fled. Running up the seven flights of stairs to her attic was a welcome distraction, but the physical activity didn't actually release any of her pent-up magical energy.
She slammed into the long attic room, and Prince squalled furiously, startled from a nap. With shaking hands, she tried to open a can of food for him. No use. Instead she dumped dry food into the bowl, heedless of the kibbles that clattered over the floor. She sat down at the keyboard in the corner and began to play, violently, madly, strings upon strings of notes, layering them with the most complex chords she could manage. Faster and faster she played, eyes burning, lungs convulsing, until her fingers seemed to disappear from her body entirely, and there was only the wild music and her thundering heart.
Hours later, she came back into herself and slowed her pace, conscious enough to inspect the damage. The pads of her fingers were bruised, and one thumb had bled onto the keys. Snatching the roll of paper towels from a broken chair nearby, Mel ripped one off and wiped the blood away.
She could think again, and the stabbing pain behind her eyes had lessened to a grinding ache.
Two o'clock in the morning. The perfect time to sleep—or to pay her first nighttime visit to Kiyo Darcy.
She dressed carefully, all in black, with a full-face mask of smooth dark plastic, ornamented with red swirls around the eyeholes. If anyone saw her now, lurking in the gloomy hallways of the school, they would be more likely to run than to investigate.
But there was no one around when she reached the east wing of the third floor. She hadn't brought the master key, because creeping into Kiyo's room wasn't the plan—at least not yet. For now, she only needed to make him curious.
The room next to Kiyo's, the empty one at the very end of the hall, had a secret. At the rear of its cramped closet was a hidden door, disguised with shelving, and behind that, a narrow passage leading along the back of the next four bedrooms, the only windowless rooms on the third floor.
Mel had discovered all this while examining old blueprints of the school. She wasn't sure if the passage had something to do with the Civil War and underground slave routes, or with Prohibition, or with something much darker and more recent. Whatever it had once been used for, it was blank, airless, and empty now. Not even rats or spiders lived there.
It would be the perfect place to hide after tonight's performance for Kiyo. She didn't plan to reveal herself, but she needed to open his mind to mysterious things, to the unseen and the inexplicable, before she could move into his life in a different way—not as hoodie-clad Mel, but as someone much more alluring.
The room next to Kiyo's wasn't locked, and she edged inside quietly, easing the door shut behind her. She propped open the closet's entrance so it would be ready for her escape. And then, softly, she began to sing.
Singing to herself in a plainly furnished bedroom in the wee hours of the morning felt strange; but the magic soon pressed forward again, sensing an outlet, overcoming any awkwardness she felt, and she was carried away on its current.
-4-
Lotus Flower
A voice floated into Kiyo's sleep. Soft, persistent, prodding at his ears until his brain had to respond. His eyes flipped open and he lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling and listening. He recognized the song—Tearwave's "Lotus Flower," ethereal and beautiful even without the undercurrent of melancholic bass and persistent drums that usually carried it. This was one woman singing alone, and her voice was everything.
The melody floated and faded, surged and soared, slithered into his bones and curled around his soul. He realized his mouth was hanging open, and he shut it quickly, tossing off the covers and stepping to the center of the room.
"Where are you?" he murmured, tilting his head to the sound. He hurried to the wall and pressed his ear against it. Yes, the voice was definitely coming from the next room. One of the other contestants. Had to be.
He chewed his lip, listening to the voice, wanting to know who it was. But finding out would involve leaving his room, going to someone else's room, and introducing himself to that "someone else." He ran over possible intros in his mind:
Hey there, I heard you singing in the middle of the night. You okay?
Or maybe, Hi, I'm Kiyo. I don't usually stop by girls' rooms in the dead of night, but hey, you asked for it.
He groaned, splaying his hands over his face. "Crap, crap! Okay. Okay, I'm going."
He could hear his sister's voice in his head. "If you keep thinking about doing something, you'll never freaking do it, Kiyoji! Stop thinking, and act!"
He had repeated that mantra to himself non-stop when he signed up for the contest, and again right before his audition. He should be at home, in his own room, surrounded by Galneryus posters and stacks of CDs and records—not sleeping in this creepy centuries-old building where women sang ghostly songs at night.
Maybe it was an actual, for-real ghost.
No. Just no.
"Ghosts don't exist, you idiot!" he whispered harshly to himself, and before he could think about anything else, he strode to the door, threw it open, and rapped on the door of the neighboring room.
The singing stopped.
He looked down the hall, in both directions. No one else had come out of their rooms to investigate the source of the singing. Maybe no one else was close enough to hear it. Most of the other contestants' rooms were on the second floor.
Maybe the third floor was haunted.
Shaking his head, he knocked again. And then he touched the handle.
The door opened.
The room beyond was dark, but the light switch was in the same spot as it was in his room, and he flipped it immediately, illuminating a space furnished much like his own. A crisply made double bed. A plain dresser, a desk, and a chair. A closet—with the door open.
He went to the closet, but the only thing inside was a set of empty shelves. Nothing under the bed, nothing anywhere. No one.
Fear crawled, serpentine, up his spine, and the hairs at the back of his neck tingled and rose.
"Hello?" he said softly.
And then he heard it—an echo of the same song, faint and far away, unbearably lovely and sweet.
Kiyo swore and backed out into the hallway. He staggered back to his own room and locked himself in, pressing a hand over his pounding heart.
He couldn't settle down again. Instead, he paced the narrow room in the orange glow of the bedside lamp, banging his shin twice on the bed's footboard during his circuit. He had always been clumsy—his sister Masayo had teased him about it all the time as a kid. His mother smiled and made proud excuses—"His legs are so long!" or "He is growing so fast he doesn't know where he ends and the world begins!"
But Kiyo knew it was just his own clumsiness. Even if he hadn't passed the preliminary audition, he would have considered it a win as long as he didn't trip onstage, squeak the wrong note, or let the guitar slip from his sweaty hands.
They were sweating again now, his hands. He wiped them on his boxers and threw himself onto the bed, shoving his head under the pillow. His hand snaked out, fumbling f
or the phone on the nightstand, and he pulled it under the pillow with him. The bluish glow revealed two new texts—from Masayo.
He jerked upright.
"Hey lil bro. Did you rock the house? Tell me all about it when you can."
He tapped out a reply. "I got through preliminary auditions." He had to retype "preliminary" a few times before autocorrect figured out what he meant. Spelling wasn't a strength of his, either. He didn't fit into anything, or excel at anything, except music. When notes were flowing through his throat or his fingers—then, and only then, he fit smoothly inside himself. Sometimes, when he sang, he felt truly transcendent, as if he might detach from his body and fly. He chased those moments, and the accompanying high—but he rarely achieved them.
Masayo's new text came in, and he grinned. Separated in such drastically different time zones, it was rare they got to talk in real time like this.
"I knew you could do it," she said. "Bravo! Wish I could have heard you. Which song did you do?"
"Budapest."
"Good choice. You sing it beautifully. But I'm surprised they put you through on that one. Judges usually like peppy or showy songs."
"I've got one of the those for tomorrow. The real first round. It'll be on TV."
"Have Mom and Dad record it."
Kiyo smiled and typed, "Trust me, they're on it."
A pause, and then her reply flashed up. "You nervous?"
"Always. You know me." Kiyo's throat tightened. He didn't usually sing for anyone but his family, though Masayo had always pushed him to perform. She was deployed now, and some superstitious part of him thought that as long as he was doing this for her, she would be safe. She would be careful. And if a terrorist blew her to hell, at least he would have given her something she wanted before the worst happened.
Another text. "Trust your voice, K. You've got this. Gotta go now. Love you!"
"Love you too." He winced, lifting his eyes to the ceiling to stop tears from welling out. Setting the phone on the nightstand, he threw himself back on the bed. When he closed his eyes, the tears glided from under his lashes, trailing down his cheeks. But it was all right, because no one was there to see.
The Monsters of Music Page 3