"Damn it, Erin! You can't do that kind of stuff. It's not professional, for one thing."
"Oh, since when have I ever been professional?" she snapped. "You think you're so smart, Kiyo, but you're ridiculously gullible, and blind—so blind! You're an idiot. A moron."
He leaned over, gripping the table in both hands, glaring at her in the mirror. "You're kidding me, right? You sabotaged an important contest, messed with my future and Harley's, and you think I'm the moron?"
"Oh, I know you are. You still can't see it." She reached up, seized a clump of dark hair, and pulled it over half her face, glaring at him fiercely. Her spine curved, shoulders hunching, and her voice took on an odd, familiar rasp.
It hit Kiyo like a lightning bolt.
"Oh, God," he breathed.
"That's right. Take your time. Get there."
He stared at her reflection. "Mel."
"Go ahead. Turn around."
He whirled, setting his back to the mirror.
She looked different than her reflection. Still pretty, but harder, with sharper edges and starker coloring. More defined cheekbones. Her hair didn't have the same glossy texture, and her skin wasn't quite as smooth or perfect. He glanced back at the mirror for a second, comparing the two.
"What is it, like an airbrush mirror?" he said.
She laughed. "Sort of."
He had to process this, to cope. He scrambled for coherent thoughts, and came up with one. "Why would you do this?"
"It's complicated," she said. "But this might help you begin to understand."
She stepped forward, tensing, and scraped the hair away from her face, pulling it behind her neck and over her left shoulder.
The right side of her face, from her forehead to her jaw, was a mass of melted, hardened tissue and webbed scars. Her right eyelid sagged at the corner, and though her nose was mostly intact, the outer edge of the nostril was twisted and lumpy. Half breathtaking beauty, and half a wretched, ragged ruin of a face. Like something out of a horror movie. Kiyo could hardly look at it.
"That look," she said, her mouth shaking. "That look on your face, right there, is why."
Desperately he tried to rearrange his features, from shock and horror to what he hoped was concern and sympathy. "What happened to you?"
"My mother's boyfriend."
Kiyo sucked in a breath. "This doesn't change who you are." He said the words as much to himself as to her.
"Doesn't it, though? I'm not the lovely, mysterious girl in the mirror, the one with a whole, perfect face. The one you could barely touch. I'm the ugly reality."
"You—I carried you upstairs that night. You almost killed me with a knife."
She folded her arms. "Catching up, are we?"
His heart sank further. "You take drugs?"
"No. That was a lie. I was—sick."
Good. Unless she was lying again, now.
Deep inside, Kiyo had been carrying the fear that the unearthly beauty in the mirror wasn't real, couldn't be real. And she wasn't. He felt an odd sense of loss, and he hated himself for it, for being so shallow.
His Erin, his maker and his muse, had split into jagged fragments.
I need to be okay with this, for her sake. I want to be okay with this.
But who was she, really? Not Mel, and not Erin. Someone else altogether.
And then he latched onto a memory that in the moment seemed incredibly important, although he wasn't sure why. "The spectacular paintings in the attic—those are yours."
"They are."
"And you play the keyboard like a manic angel," he mused. "And you can sing, can't you?"
Her eyes narrowed. "What makes you say that?"
He laughed then. "I heard you singing, didn't I? One night, right at the beginning of the competition. That was you, singing 'Lotus Flower.' "
"I don't sing. Not for you, not for anyone."
But the shards were coming together in his mind now, the pieces of her soul clicking into place. He hadn't yet connected all his separate encounters with Mel and with Erin, but he gripped the memory of her art, her music, and everything she had taught him, and it was enough.
She was passion and pain, fear and frenzy. She was music and beauty, darkness and softness and loneliness all at once. He wanted all of it. All of her.
When he walked toward her, she shrank back a step, tensing like a deer ready to flee. But she stayed.
He swept back her hair, laying his palms on either side of her face, forcing himself not to flinch at the texture of her mangled skin. He focused on her eyes as he moved in and kissed her.
She tasted like Erin—like mint and coffee and some other deep, sweet flavor that made him want to crush her bodily against him. He didn't. This kiss was about her needs, not his. He could feel her softening and melting, yielding.
He pulled back a little to say, with the truest words he could find, "I want you."
-24-
Broken and Beautiful
While he kissed her, Mel broke and healed and broke again. And when he said those three words, "I want you," she thought she might scream, or cry, or laugh, or shatter into a million shards because of how much she wanted him, too.
But she couldn't say it. The sarcastic, suspicious Mel was too much her nature now.
"For an eighteen-year-old boy, you're pretty accepting of all this," she said, drawing back.
He shrugged. "Maybe I'm different."
"Everyone is different." The air in the room felt suddenly stifling. It was too small, too full of Erin and of the mirror. She didn't want him looking at Erin now, only at her. "Let's go somewhere," she said. "We need to talk, but not here."
"Where should we go?"
"A special place I know. It's outside, so you'll need a coat."
"We'll stop by my room."
When they reached his room, Mel waited in the doorway while he went to the closet. "Got it," he said, pulling on a leather jacket. But at that instant the squeak of the stairway door reverberated through the hall, and Mel heard Harley's shrill tones.
"No, I won't calm down! Kiyo Darcy sabotaged me today, and he's going to pay. I know his room is along here somewhere."
Mel didn't recognize the voice of the person with Harley, but whoever it was, she wasn't succeeding in calming the diva down. Shoving the bedroom door almost closed, Mel darted across the room and pushed past Kiyo into the closet, feeling around.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Harley's coming." She found the switch and pressed, and the back of the closet swung outward, clumsily, since the narrow space was crammed with Kiyo's things.
"Come on!" She motioned for him to follow her. Wide-eyed, he did.
"There's a secret passage from my bedroom?" he whispered, as they stepped into the tight corridor.
"Yes. Hush." Mel swung the hidden entrance closed as Harley kicked open Kiyo's bedroom door.
"Kiyo Darcy!" she screeched. "What are you trying to do to me?"
"Um, I don't think he's here." The second girl sounded weary and annoyed.
"Maybe he's in his precious secret practice room, away from everyone else because he's so good and perfect he can't associate with us mortals." Harley punctuated her words with kicks and crashes, and Kiyo's fingers tightened on Mel's arm. He was probably worried about his guitar. No twanging of broken strings reached their ears, though. Hopefully it would be safe from Harley's wrath.
"Harley, you gotta stop," insisted the other girl. "You could get in real trouble for this."
"I don't care, as long as that bastard Kiyo feels some of the pain he has caused me!" An excessively loud crash followed, and the other girl yelped.
"I'm outta here," she squeaked. "You can do cray-cray all on your own."
"Some friend you are!" yelled Harley.
A minute passed, and then an unearthly keening sound set Mel's heart jumping. Sobs followed the wail—deep, gut-wrenching sobs. Kiyo shifted beside her in the dark, as if he were about to leave the closet and show
himself, but Mel gripped his arm, tugging him along the passage to the next doorway and out into the empty bedroom. Harley's sobs were still audible through the wall, so Mel laid a finger to her lips, and they slipped into the hallway and up the stairs.
"You can't fix everyone's problems, Kiyo," she told him as they climbed.
"I feel sorry for her."
"I know you do. You're a good guy, the kind of guy who does the right thing without meaning to. It's infuriating."
"Really?" Concern colored his tone.
"Yeah, didn't you know that girls like the bad boys?"
"I can be bad."
She laughed, unlocking the attic door. "Not likely. You're the perfect little son of a perfect little family, and now, thanks to me, you have a shot at a perfect little record deal."
"Thanks to you?"
She backpedaled quickly. "Well, thanks to whatever Supreme Power or happenstance gifted you with that amazing voice." Mel grabbed a thick coat and stuffed her arms into it. "And thanks to me for helping you use your gift. Now come here and help me with this. I usually have to stack a couple of stools and chairs to reach it, but you're so tall, you can probably get it with just a stool."
She pointed up, to a spot where a foot-length of thick, knotted rope dangled from the attic ceiling. Kiyo stepped onto the stool and stretched to his full height, snagging the rope with his fingertips. His shirt rode up as he did it, and Mel eyed the strip of taut, tapered stomach and jutting hipbones that showed between the hem of his Henley and the low waist of his jeans.
When he pulled on the rope, a set of worn steps unfolded, revealing a trap door in the ceiling.
Kiyo pushed the steps down till they locked in place. "We're going up there? You still trying to scare me to death?"
"Oh, that's right." She couldn't believe she'd forgotten so quickly. "You're scared of heights."
"And you're not."
"No. I'm basically a wire-walker and an acrobat. I guess I should have joined the circus. I'd fit right in, with this face."
"Nobody goes to the circus for freak shows anymore," Kiyo said gently. "Our society has evolved."
"Doubtful. We've just gotten better at hiding our fascination with the disgusting, the horrifying, and the macabre. We don't go looking for it in person. We watch it on TV now."
"Like that show 'American Horror Story.' And 'Black Mirror.' "
"Exactly. Now come on—you'll be perfectly safe. There's a railing." She climbed the steps, shoving her shoulder against the door in the roof.
"How old is the railing?" Kiyo muttered.
She flashed him a wicked grin. "Don't push on it too hard."
She clambered out of the opening onto the roof, her eyes smarting for a second in the golden glare of the setting sun. She stood in a rectangular space, about ten feet long and eight feet wide, with a wrought-iron railing along all four sides. Snow had piled in the center of the rectangle. Where the sun's rays shone, it gleamed salmon and gold; and where the shadows lay, the drifts were smoky blue. She scooped up a soft clump of the snow, holding it until the chill pained her fingers.
Kiyo climbed out of the trap door and closed it gingerly. He stood, slightly bent at the waist, as if he were afraid straightening might make him fall off the roof.
"Damn, we're high up!" he said.
Mel chuckled and slipped her left arm around his waist, so he would see her good side. "Better?"
"Yeah."
"Now take a deep breath, and look around."
Beyond the iron railing, beyond the slope of the dormitory roof, lay the town. First the auditorium building, with its dramatic stone facade and wannabe gargoyles planted along the eaves, their faces worn nearly to nothing by the passage of time and weather. Then the shops and churches and houses, their roofs sharply slanted to shed snow. Under the sunset, the town changed from drab gray and white to delicate shades of pastel blue, pale pink, lavender, and amber. Past the rooftops the trees rose, dark tufted evergreens and bare birches, maples and oaks spider-webbed against the sky.
Mel sucked in the frigid air, relishing the shock to her lungs. Neither of them would be singing tonight, so they could drink in as much of that clean, cold oxygen as they wanted.
"It's beautiful," murmured Kiyo; and for a minute Mel feared he might turn to her and tell her that she was beautiful, too. She dreaded the cliché, and ached for it.
He didn't say it, but after a moment he wrapped his arm around her and clutched her closer.
It would have to be enough. Why should she care if he thought she was beautiful or not? They were bonded. He had kissed her again, and she had refilled him with magic. She didn't need everything from him—just his mouth, and his talent. And his heart, and his body, and—hell yes, she wanted everything, and his love too.
His voice startled her. "Were the kids cruel to you? In school?"
A random question, but thoughtful. "Sometimes. I studied at home for a couple years—got ahead by a whole grade level that way. But then I transferred to this huge public high school, and that's where I perfected the art of being invisible. Most of the kids there didn't care enough to bother me, and the ones who did regretted it. My teachers didn't care for my whole prickly Goth vibe, but they knew about my face, so they let me do my thing."
A few of the teachers had tried to be kind, to help, in a clumsy professional way. She had frightened them off, one at a time, until they left her alone. It was a habit. She had nearly done it to Kiyo, too.
"Do you forgive me?" she said.
"What for?"
"The clowns, the centipedes, the chainsaws—"
"Oh, that." He rubbed a hand over his face. "Can I come to you for comfort if I have a nightmare?"
"I'm a living nightmare, Kiyo. I'm not sure I could be much help."
"I can think of a few ways you could help." His voice, low and suggestive, sent a flutter along her nerves, and she pulled away to look at him. He grinned. "Hey, you wanted the bad boy."
"So you do forgive me?"
"That depends. Do you have any more secrets?"
The lie sprang to her lips easily. "No."
He watched her soberly, looked into her eyes until Mel was sure he would see the magic welling deep inside her, read the words Lianhan Sídhe as clearly as if they were written on her heart.
"Good," he said. "Then I forgive you."
-25-
Nobody Knows
Eddie Carver wandered the backstage hallways, avoiding his dressing room, where the aura of the auditorium poltergeist was ever-present. He craved coffee—hot, rich, and creamy—but this wasn't a performance day, so there was none in the judges' lounge or in the Green Room. If only that girl Mel were around. He could send her out to get some real coffee.
In this section of the building, former dressing rooms and rehearsal spaces had been turned into areas for the editing team, the film crew, and other show staff. Folding tables and antique desks held laptops and desktop computers, and fleets of cables snaked across the threadbare carpets to the sparse power outlets.
As he strolled the hallway, angry voices caught his ear. He hesitated, distinguishing Catherine's sharp tones. Usually he tried to avoid drama, but a name caught his ear, and he paused, leaning nonchalantly against the wall and pretending to check his email on his phone.
He could hear Catherine clearly now.
"We have to show equal coverage of all the contestants," she said. "Not just equal in quantity, but in quality. You have video of Kiyo eating, Kiyo walking, Kiyo dancing, Kiyo taking notes in class. We have no footage of Kiyo rehearsing with his voice coach. No rehearsal footage of the most popular contestant on the show! Why is that?"
A subdued voice—probably one of the guys from the video team—answered, "I don't think he rehearses in the basement studios with the others."
"Where does he go then?"
"No one knows exactly."
"And his voice coach, why doesn't he or she insist on being filmed?" snapped Catherine. "Most of them are so eager
to be on TV they'll do anything to get attention."
"No one has seen his voice coach, ma'am. I certainly never have."
"But he must have one. Who is it?"
"You would know, ma'am. You're the producer's executive assistant."
"I know my own job title, thank you," Catherine snapped. "Give me a minute."
Silence followed, and Eddie guessed she was looking up the list of contestants and coaches.
"His coach is Erin Crawford. Erin Crawford, you hear? I'll text her myself and sort this out, since apparently your team can't handle a simple assignment!"
Eddie whirled and walked the other way, a moment before Catherine stormed from the editing room.
"Oh! Good morning, Eddie," she said, smoothing her hair. "And how are you today?"
"I was looking for Mel. Going to send her out for coffee."
"She works the breakfast shift, and then again in the afternoon. She's not here right now."
"Ah. Well, then I guess I'll have to heat some up."
"I didn't know you came in on non-performance days," Catherine said, falling into step with him.
"Today is the exception. I had a short interview segment to shoot at nine, and then I stopped by my dressing room for a while. I have a meeting with Archambeau at eleven-thirty."
Catherine glanced at her phone. "It's ten-thirty now. I could drive you to the coffee shop down the street if you like."
"Oh, no, you're busy."
"It's no trouble," she said, so quickly that Eddie looked at her—really looked, past the bold red hair and the green eye-shadow, to the hazel eyes that shone with a hint of hope and invitation.
"Well, if it's no trouble," he said.
"Good. I'll drop these by my office and text Erin Crawford, and then we can go."
"Who's Erin Crawford?" he said.
"Kiyo Darcy's voice coach."
"Never heard of her." He frowned. "Is she local?"
"I think so. I got the list of recommendations from the College of Music near here."
"Strange that I haven't heard the name," he mused.
"Well, she has certainly done wonders with that boy. I'm surprised it's so hard to get footage of her. You'd think she'd want to show off her coaching talents, get more clients, that sort of thing. But she's apparently very cagey, very private. I've been urging the video team to get some clips of her instructing Kiyo, for the next episode. We've featured all the other coaches, and people are starting to wonder about his."
The Monsters of Music Page 17