“Failure is always new information, and those who are willing to suffer it repeatedly make it a stepping-stone to success.”
Looking up into his steady, dark gaze, I thought about how many times Jericho Barrons had pinned his hopes on some new way to end his son’s suffering, only to meet with failure. How many millennia had he worked with quiet fortitude toward his goal? I would do no less.
“I know why Dancer wants to re-create the music,” he continued. “Inspiration frequently strikes the second or third or tenth time around. The more minds we have working on this, the better. Others can deal with the black holes. We’ll figure it out, Mac.”
He kissed me then, hard and fast.
As he disappeared down the street, I sifted back to BB&B.
Barrons’s plan was for the group of us—Dani, Dancer, me, Cruce, Christian, and Ryodan—to sequester ourselves at BB&B until we had the answer. According to him, if I was so certain the music we had was the solution, we just had to figure out how to employ it, determine exactly what “wield” meant.
After Christian and Ryodan arrived, Dani and Dancer sped in a few moments later, looking strangely subdued.
When they joined us in the rear conversation area, Dancer sat on the sofa but Dani remained standing with a clear view of the room and summoned Cruce.
He appeared instantly: nude, erect, and obviously having sex. He clothed himself instantly in a short iridescent tunic and snarled, “For fuck’s sake, what?”
Before the tension could thicken further, I said hastily, “We tried to use the song from the music box and it didn’t work. We need to know why.”
“Why have you fixated upon that bloody thing?” Cruce demanded. “It is not what you seek. The king was never able to complete the song. Everyone knows that.”
“You haven’t even listened to it,” I pointed out. “How would you know?” He’d sifted out the other night before I played it to the others.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Dancer said. “Listen.” He withdrew the music box from his backpack and handed it to me. “Or, more accurately, don’t.”
I shot him a quizzical glance, took the box, sat it on the coffee table and opened it, bracing myself.
Nothing happened. Frowning, I picked up the box, closed it and opened it again. Still nothing. I closed it, shook it firmly, and opened it again.
Not a single note. Not even a whirring of damaged gears, not that I believed the otherworldly object of power had any gears. “What did you do, drop it or something?”
“As if. When I got back to the lab and opened it to begin converting the melody again, that’s what happened. The song is gone, Mac. Apparently something decided to remove every trace of it from our world.”
I shook my head in bewilderment. What the bloody hell was going on?
Dancer continued, “It would have been an exercise in futility anyway. I knew when I finished it earlier today that it wasn’t complete. It ended abruptly in the middle of an entirely new motif that wasn’t an interpretation of any other motif in the piece.”
“Then why did you bother texting me that it was ready?”
He shrugged. “Think outside your box. Who was I to presume that wasn’t the composer’s intention? Perhaps other worlds and races prefer their music to stop in what we consider the middle. Perhaps it excites them to leave it unfinished. I take nothing for granted. You can’t, if you want to drive your brain beyond established theory. But now it appears my initial impression was correct and that’s why it didn’t work. Because we only have part of it.” He muttered, “Had. Now we don’t even have that.”
I closed my eyes and sank inward, thinking hard. Thinking about how final and odd it was that every trace of the otherworldly melody had simply vanished the moment I’d played the song all the way through to the black hole. It hadn’t disappeared each time we’d listened to part of it. Nor had it puffed out of existence the moment Dancer had listened to all of it. I found it beyond the realm of probability that there might be an unknown evil entity out there, lurking in the ether, spying on us, and the moment we got close to success had seized every note of it, along with every memo we’d made about it.
Coupling that oddity with the complete erasure of the music box as well, I found it far more likely that the song had done whatever it was supposed to do, and been programmed to clean up after itself like a self-destructing mission message successfully played by an international, high-stakes spy.
But what was it supposed to do?
An epiphany slammed into my brain and my eyes flew open. Dani was staring at me with such a penetrating gaze I was surprised it wasn’t drilling holes in my face. Our gazes collided and I knew she’d been following an identical train of thought. Her mouth dropped open and, at the same moment I exclaimed, “I think I’ve got it!” she said. “I think Mac’s got it!” We beamed at each other.
After a few moments of inner reflection I was elated to discover I did indeed contain the song. I could feel it inside me, a complex melody, thrumming with power.
Talk about your checks and balances. Apparently, the queen was the preprogrammed home for it, and once I’d listened to what we had of it, all the way through—which I’d never done until we’d played it near the sphere—it had settled into me, wiping out all trace of its presence, ensuring no one else could ever get their hands on it.
I was just about to suggest we head for the nearest black hole and see if I could figure out how to turn myself into a portable iPod when the front doorbell tinkled.
The Dreamy-Eyed Guy walked in.
I know how the world works: there’s no such thing as coincidence. If you’re seeing coincidences, check your suppositions. Somebody’s dicking with you. And it’s probably not the universe.
Each time I’d encountered him flashed through my mind, from our first meeting at Trinity College to the night he’d appeared in the catacomb beneath the abbey and melded back into the Unseelie King.
Or had he? His skin was the only one that had never dropped to the floor. At the end, the Dreamy-Eyed Guy had merely changed, absorbing the shadows that passed from the falling skins of McCabe and Liz, the news vendor, the leprechaun-like reservations clerk, and my high school gym coach. He’d stretched and expanded until he towered over us, enormous and dark as the Sinsar Dubh’s amorphous beast form. Then he’d vanished with his concubine. What was he, if not one of the king’s skins? No single human body could hold the vastness that was the Unseelie King.
“Hey, beautiful girl.”
“Hey,” I said blankly.
“See you finally stopped talking so much.”
“Might have been a bit clearer,” I groused.
“Crystal. You muddied it.”
“Come to save our world?”
“Hand of God. No fun there.”
“What do you consider fun?” I said irritably.
“Free will. Not predictable. Bites you in the ass every time.” He laughed and I shivered, feeling it roll through every cell in my body, and abruptly I was seeing, superimposed around him, a gargantuan, ancient star-sprinkled darkness that was so far beyond my comprehension I felt as tiny as a dust mote, swirling on an air current, sparkling in the sunlight.
“Pretty much,” he murmured.
“And you’re the sun,” I murmured back.
“Bigger.”
I thought of the concubine. Of the empty chamber, void of their passion, the slamming door. “She left you,” I said sadly.
“Time.”
Changes everything, he didn’t say, but I heard it. “So?” I prodded. “How do I use the song?”
“Don’t have it.”
“Got part of it,” I insisted.
The Dreamy-Eyed Guy rippled into the bookstore in a stain of liquid darkness that licked up the bookcases, swirled on the walls, covered the ceiling then retreated back into him. His head swiveled but I saw two visions: the first of the DEG and the second of a great dark star swiveling in an abyss of dark matter. His gaze moved
across our small group, coming to rest on Cruce. “And he has the other.”
I exploded. “What?” I shot Cruce a furious glare. “And you never told me?”
Cruce growled, “The fuck I do, old man.”
“You haven’t been hearing music?” the DEG said mildly.
“You iced me, you bastard!”
“Complaints. Boring. Music. Yes or no?”
“You never finished it,” Cruce growled. “Or you would have turned your precious concubine into one of us, a thing she was never meant to be. You abandoned us for hundreds of thousands of years, created and discarded us, obsessed with your quest. You betrayed us again and again.”
“Grudges. Glories. You name them. They become it.” The Dreamy-Eyed Guy’s eyes shifted, expanded exponentially, becoming voracious whirlpools of swirling darkness, sucking us down, stretching us as thin as threads, yanking us away, and abruptly I stood with Cruce and the Dreamy-Eyed Guy on a familiar grassy knoll beneath an enormous moon, with a pine-board fence unfurling high on a ridge, jutting planks into the sky like dark fingers reaching for the cool white orb.
Tiny, between towering black megaliths, I stood with Cruce on my left, the Dreamy-Eyed Guy on my right. The wind tangled hair around my face while, above me, Hunters gusted a fragrant breeze, gonging deep in their chests to the moon as the moon chimed back. Power pulsed and surged in the soil and rocks beneath my feet, and I could feel it so much more intensely now that I had the True Magic. This power was ancient, enormous, far more vast and potent than anything the Earth had ever possessed. I might sink into it, become one with it, become a world myself or perhaps a star, instead of a mere human or queen.
“This is the First World,” I breathed, understanding.
The DEG nodded but looked past me, at Cruce, “Your king never betrayed you.”
“That was all you did. At every opportunity,” Cruce snarled.
“And now we will see if you are as great a king as he.”
I narrowed my eyes, gripped by a sudden inexplicable apprehension. Danger! the marrow in my bones screamed. Wherever this conversation was going, I wasn’t going to like it. What did he mean, the king had never betrayed Cruce?
“Answer me,” the DEG said softly, but there was such immense compulsion in his words that I instantly began to puke every word I knew in an incoherent babble of random associations. “Not you,” the DEG said absently, and I shut up.
Cruce gritted, “Yes, you manipulative fuck. I have been hearing music.”
I glared at Cruce. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me when you knew we were hunting for a bloody song?”
He shrugged. “I assumed it was miscellaneous detritus from the Book. It sounded like the Unseelie castes so I believed it part of their True Names and didn’t give it a second thought.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to decide if he was telling the truth. I was getting a mixed read from him. I turned back to the DEG and scowled. “That means you finished it. And you didn’t bother to tell us that?”
“Long before Zara was gone.”
I protested, “But you didn’t turn the concubine.” That was the fact that convinced me the king had failed, that he’d not even been an avenue worth pursuing. Now he was telling me he’d succeeded? Then why hadn’t he used it? And according to what I understood of the time line, given how long ago the king had gifted the concubine the music box, he’d had a small eternity to reconsider his decision.
“No, the king did not,” he said, and such exquisite pain lanced through me that I doubled over, holding my sides. “There’s a price to sing that song.”
“But you couldn’t have sung it. You’re not the queen,” I protested.
He turned his star-filled, apocalyptic gaze to Cruce and smiled faintly. “Rules. Malleable. He could have. He chose not to.” His expression changed to one of paternal pride. “Your turn to choose.”
“Why are you looking at Cruce? I thought I was supposed to sing the song.”
His head swiveled back to me and I got tangled in his enormous regard, stuck like a fly on sticky tape, unable to move. “You will owe me three boons,” he intoned.
I nodded instantly. Refusal was not an option.
“At the time I come to you next. You will obey without question.”
I nodded again.
“The music box contained half. The other half was concealed within the Sinsar Dubh.”
“It was not,” Cruce growled. “You never finished it. Admit it, you fuck. It was beyond you. I would have known.”
I said to the DEG, “You mean, I could merge with the part I left behind—”
“It was not in the part that split off and entered you.”
“So, who’s supposed to sing it, me or Cruce? Our world is ending!”
“Worlds do.”
“What the fuck is your game, old man?” Cruce demanded.
“Will you gift MacKayla your half?” the DEG said.
“To save my race? Yes. I have always been willing to lead them. As a true king should.”
“But it won’t,” the DEG said. “Save your race. It will doom it. The price of perfect song”—his dark, starry gaze encompassed both of us, and suddenly Cruce and I were standing shoulder-to-shoulder; he’d moved us together with a mere gaze—“is the death of all sprung into existence from imperfect song.”
I processed his words. “Oh, God, you mean…” I trailed off, looking up at Cruce with horror. Then I whirled on the Dreamy-Eyed Guy. “Shut up,” I snarled. “Stop speaking right now!”
But he didn’t. He continued driving his point home with utter clarity and finality, ringing the death knell for my world. “The moment the song is sung, the Unseelie race will cease to exist, from the humblest to the most magnificent of his creations. He never betrayed you, Cruce. He betrayed none of his children. He gave up what he held most dear for them.” The DEG smiled with faint bitterness. “And in the end, she left him anyway.”
“You didn’t have to tell him that,” I said furiously. “At least not until after he gave me the song! You could have lied.”
“No fun there,” the DEG murmured.
Cruce stood motionless for a small eon. My heart grew heavier the longer his silence stretched. Finally he said, bitterly, “You did this on purpose, you twisted fuck. You found a way to box me in. If I refuse to give my half to MacKayla, I die. If I give it to MacKayla, I die. I die either way.”
“But the Seelie live,” the Dreamy-Eyed Guy said mildly. “You’re the one that wanted to be king.”
“Fuck the Seelie, I have always despised them! Dead is not king!”
The DEG shrugged. “Never said it was easy.”
Abruptly the DEG was gone and we were back in the bookstore.
Everyone was talking at once, demanding to know what had happened, but my mind was whirling and I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew Cruce didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body and he despised the Seelie and his entire motivation for his entire existence had been to free his Dark Court.
Not kill it.
And himself in the process.
My gaze whipped to Cruce and I stared at him imploringly while time spun out.
I found my answer in the implacable depths of his sociopathic, self-serving gaze. It was beyond him to suicide. He simply wasn’t put together that way. He was a walking fundamental lack, made from imperfect song.
The Unseelie were driven by endless, consuming hunger to steal that which they lacked in a blind, voracious quest to complete themselves. The Seelie were merely hollowed out by immortality, driven by hunger to experience emotion I was beginning to suspect they’d once known.
The Seelie could evolve. The Unseelie never could, trapped in a flawed, limited, self-serving existence.
Cruce, give me his half of the song?
Never. Going. To. Happen.
He knew I’d found my answer in his gaze and flashed me a glacial smile. “Fuck you and your world, MacKayla. If I am doomed,”
he said, his eyes narrowing to slits of iridescent ice—and suddenly I was staring straight into the eyes of the psychopathic Sinsar Dubh—“so are you. Along with every Seelie in existence. I’ll never permit those bastards to outlive my race.”
He vanished.
“Summon him back!” I cried to Jada. I whirled on Barrons. “And seize him when he gets here!”
“I can’t, Mac. My cuff. It’s gone!”
“So the king said he actually succeeded in re-creating the song but didn’t use it?” Jada said after I filled them in on what had transpired when the DEG whisked us off to the First World.
I sank down on the couch, sighing. “Yes. I mean no, not the king. The Dreamy-Eyed Guy kept talking about him in third person, as if he wasn’t actually the king.”
“Then who is he?” Christian demanded.
“I don’t know. Perhaps some part of the king. Whoever he is, he has a great deal of power.” He’d felt like the king to me. He’d taken me to the same planet the king once did.
“And he put half the song in the music box and the other half in the Sinsar Dubh?” Jada pressed.
I nodded.
“But not in the version of the Sinsar Dubh that possessed you?”
I shook my head. “The DEG said it couldn’t be replicated. Cruce got it. I didn’t.”
“And now Cruce is gone,” she said, scowling. “The cuff vanished from my wrist the instant he sifted out. Now I know why he kept changing the terms of every agreement I tried to make with him. He was never bound to me. He played us, pretending the cuff controlled him so he could stay close and keep an eye on everything we did.”
“Typical Cruce/V’lane move,” I agreed. “They don’t call him the Great Deceiver for nothing.”
“Does that mean the Compact the two of you negotiated wouldn’t have held up either?” Dancer said.
I frowned. “Actually, I think it would have. But I can’t honor it. He won’t survive for me to keep my end of the bargain and that voids the agreement.”
“Tell me again exactly what he said about the price of the song,” Barrons said grimly.
“He said the price of perfect song was the destruction of everything made from imperfect song.” Now I understood why my files insinuated that if the race using it hadn’t done anything wrong, the price wouldn’t be high. I glanced at Barrons, who was exchanging a long look with Ryodan. “What?” I demanded. “You’re thinking something I haven’t considered.”
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