The Musician and the Monster

by Jenya Keefe

  “Come on,” Marissa said, ruffling his hair. “Gather up your stuff.”

  “Yes. Okay.”

  He put his few belongings into yesterday’s shopping bags, pocketed his new phone, and checked out of the hotel. As though from a distance, he listened to the others make plans: with luck they’d hit Jacksonville by one, where they’d have a bite to eat and drop Victor off at home. They’d hit Miami that evening—right at rush hour, but that couldn’t be helped. Chandler was coming too. She needed to find a job, but she had some savings and didn’t have anywhere in particular to be. Ángel averted his eyes, sick with misery and envy, as Marissa and Chandler held hands on the way down to the parking garage.

  Ángel stood and watched as they all piled into Marissa’s little car: Marissa and Chandler in the back seat, where they could cuddle; Victor in the driver’s seat, because naturally Victor wanted to be in the driver’s seat. He looked happy, adjusting the seat and the mirrors, fiddling with the radio to find an NPR station. He leaned over and pushed the passenger-side door open. “Get in, retaco,” he called.

  Ángel didn’t get in.

  Oberon, where are you? He shoved his hands into his pockets, staring blindly at the car’s waiting passenger seat.

  If Ángel could just find out where he was, he would go to him. He would see him, see that he and the new envoy were happy. Maybe he would wish him well, and say goodbye. The thought of it hurt unbearably, but the thought of getting into that car and driving away without doing it was far worse.

  Marissa rolled down the back seat window. “Come on, Angela, what’s the holdup?”

  He wasn’t getting in that car.

  “I can’t leave,” he said. “Not without talking to him.”

  “Why?” demanded Chandler, leaning over Marissa.

  “I can’t. No. I promised him I’d stay. As long as he needed me.”

  “But he—”

  “I know, Chandler.” He ran his hands through his hair, desperately. “I know he doesn’t, anymore, but I still have to talk to him. Just once. To say goodbye, I guess. I have to get them to let me see him.”

  “Ángel,” said Marissa, with exasperation. “Why?”

  “Because I love him.” They were all staring at him. “I know you don’t get it. And maybe he doesn’t feel the same way. But he said he did, and I do. So I have to see him, that’s all.”

  They stood at an impasse. The only sound was the voice coming through the car’s radio, echoing in the quiet parking garage. “My real name is difficult for you to pronounce.”

  Ángel’s heart clenched. The voice was almost familiar. He stepped toward the car.

  “Turn it up,” he said to his father. Victor blinked at him, startled, and Ángel repeated, gesturing to the radio, “Papá. Turn it up.”

  It was a fae voice. A rich, expressive, beautiful voice, a voice created by a nonhuman larynx, a voice like a musical instrument. But it wasn’t Oberon’s resonant bass-baritone; it was higher, poised between tenor and alto, soft-toned. That voice made a tremble thrill through Ángel’s body. He braced himself on the car’s frame and leaned in.

  “They wanted to call me Caliban, after a famous Shakespeare fae. As they called Oberon after a famous Shakespeare fae. But actually, Patrick, neither Oberon nor I like the Shakespeare fae very much, because they are rather cruel.”

  It was an interview on Victor’s beloved NPR. The host asked, “So why did you decide on Mendel?”

  “Well, I asked for a famous gardener instead. Someone who liked plants,” said the second envoy from the Otherworld. “And they told me about the famous scientist Gregor Mendel.”

  “He founded the study of genetics,” said Patrick.

  “By growing peas,” said Mendel. His lovely voice expressed delight. “I have never seen a pea, but I looked it up, and they are the most beautiful plants. I would love to see a pea someday.”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged,” said Patrick, who sounded utterly charmed. “We have wonderful botanical gardens here in Atlanta.”

  “Are they here in Atlanta?” murmured Marissa.

  “I suppose they must be,” said Chandler.

  Weak-kneed, Ángel sank into the car’s passenger seat. Mendel told Patrick how he longed to study plants where they lived in the wild, not just in gardens. He wanted to go to tropical atolls and frozen tundras and to every seashore, to study how plants adapted to different Earth environments.

  “Oberon’s study of music allowed him to remain in a secure place,” Mendel was saying. “Although I know he would have preferred to go out and see musical performances, security concerns kept him indoors, away from people, and music was sent to him. But my study of plants will not permit that. I must go where the plants live in order to study them. That seems to be a problem for the DOR. But there is no point in my being here if I am not allowed to study.”

  “That makes sense. The DOR must be concerned about keeping you safe. We heard that Oberon was recently attacked. How is he doing?”

  “He isn’t very well, Patrick.”

  Patrick, clearly an experienced radio man, had a voice that was almost as expressive as a fae’s. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said sympathetically. “Will he be all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ángel glanced at Chandler, who shook her head. She obviously didn’t know about this. This was news. Victor reached over and pulled Ángel’s finger away from his mouth—he’d been chewing a cuticle.

  Mendel said, “My species—Oberon tells me that you are different from us, in this. If we suffer a very great emotional shock, a very great emotional pain, we can fall ill. On my world, when someone dies unexpectedly or violently, sometimes their family can comfort each other, but other times they cannot, and then they might die. The attack on Oberon, and the disappearance of Ángel Cruz, these have been a great shock to Oberon. He has grown ill.”

  “We heard that Ángel Cruz was unharmed,” said Patrick.

  “Yes. We heard that too. But we have not seen him or spoken to him.” Mendel’s soft voice had gone even softer. “I don’t know why. I suppose lovers sometimes quarrel.”

  Patrick’s hesitation was palpable. This seemed like a pretty classy show, but Mendel was handing him a celebrity gossip scoop that he could hardly ignore. He asked delicately, “Oberon and Ángel Cruz are lovers?”

  “Yes. Oh, was that not generally known?” asked Mendel. “Oh. Well. They were. But now they are parted, and Oberon . . . I cannot comfort him. I cannot help him. Oberon is dying.”

  “That’s terrible. Is there anything anyone can do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mendel again, sounding helpless. “I cannot help him.”

  Patrick wrapped up the interview by asking his listeners to send their thoughts and prayers to the bereft first envoy from the Otherworld, said farewell to Mendel, who was “calling in from somewhere here in Atlanta,” and then moved on to his next interview.

  Ángel turned off the radio. They all sat in silence for a moment, but Ángel couldn’t keep still; he leaped to his feet and began to pace. He heard the others get out of the car and turned to face them: sympathetic Marissa, worried Victor. Chandler, whose blue eyes were blazing with anger. Her response was the closest to his own, so he spoke to her. “They lied to me.”

  “Yes,” said Chandler.

  “They lied to him.”

  “It sounds like it.”

  Ángel and Chandler saw eye to eye on almost nothing, but there was one thing he knew about her: she hated lies. She was furious now; not, probably, because she cared about Ángel and Oberon’s relationship. But she’d worked for the DOR for years, given years of her life for them, risked her own life for the envoy’s out of loyalty to them. She was fundamentally honest, and they were liars.

  “Why isn’t Mendel helping him?” he demanded. “He told me another fae would prevent this from happening!”

  “I don’t know,” said Chandler.

  He rubbed his mouth with a trembling ha
nd. “What do I do?”

  “What do you want to do, Ángel?” Chandler asked. “Do you want to be free of all this? Or do you want to go to him?”

  “I have to go to him. Chandler, I have to.”

  She nodded sharply. “Then maybe you need to start by kicking Neil Jeremy’s ass.”

  Ángel told Marissa and the others to stay at the hotel, and walked to the DOR headquarters alone.

  It was about six blocks, and he needed the time to clear his mind and ready himself for the confrontation. Just as he needed to spend a little time alone before a live performance.

  Besides, while they were supportive, they didn’t really understand why he needed to do this.

  At first, lost in mentally rehearsing what he was going to say, he didn’t notice all the people on the streets. They were streaming from all directions toward the Olympic Park. He was headed that way too—the DOR headquarters was across from the park on Marietta Street—so he saw that the park was full of people, and more were arriving.

  The trees and grass were winter-brown, but the sun was bright, and at first Ángel thought there must be some festival or party happening. Food trucks were doing brisk business. Someone seemed to have set up art or craft projects: they were passing out big sheets of cardboard, drawing on them with markers.

  They were making signs. Ángel saw two women, talking and laughing, comparing signs: MONSTERS GO HOME read one. NO MORE ELFS said the other.

  They were getting ready to march, he realized. They’d heard the NPR interview too, and they were going to protest. Across the park, he could hear a guy with a megaphone talking about how they were going to assemble in front of the DOR headquarters.

  Ángel walked faster.

  It was utterly disorienting. He remembered the riot in front of the Tiepolo Ballroom, the flying glass and fire and screams, all because Oberon had been accepting an award for donating money to schools. How much more enraged was Atlanta, to discover that there were now two fae among them? What kind of murderous violence were they capable of?

  But they didn’t seem angry at all. They seemed like people waiting for a concert, excited and smiling.

  How dare they have fun. They had gathered to chant hate and wave signs of rejection, in an effort to wound the bravest and loneliest man Ángel had ever known, and they were treating it like a party.

  Furious, he jaywalked across Marietta and went into the high-rise that housed the DOR. The guard in the lobby clearly recognized Ángel. “Sir. Do you have an appointment?”

  “You see the crowds gathering in the park?” Ángel said. “They’re ready to rumble. Headed this way. Are your guys ready?”

  “Oh—” The guard looked out the window, glanced at his phone.

  Ángel walked right past him and pushed through the big glass doors into the DOR offices.

  It was one big room, a cubicle farm, full of people. They all stopped what they were doing and stared up at him.

  Last time he’d been here, he’d been exhausted and hurt, dirty and ashamed. Now he stood and glared at them, letting everyone look their fill. Ángel was not large, and he didn’t take up much psychic space. He avoided trouble, ignored people who were rude, smiled at everyone else. He knew how to use charm and pleasantness to slip under people’s radar, and as a result those who did notice him sometimes tended to see him as weak.

  But he had performed his heart out before thousands of people. He had presence, when he wanted it. He knew how to command attention, and as he walked slowly past cubicles and file cabinets toward Neil Jeremy’s office, he was on.

  He was so angry, he felt like he was seven feet tall.

  These people had evaded him, manipulated him, lied to him. Worse—much worse—they had manipulated and lied to Oberon. Ángel let his eyes roam over the employees of the DOR, feeling his heartbeat.

  Oberon was worthy of their respect, their admiration. He was worthy of love, and Ángel loved him. And he was done being pushed around by the DOR.

  People throughout the big room fell silent as he walked by. They stood up in their cubicles, eyes drawn by him. As he approached Neil Jeremy’s office, the agent’s secretary, Emma, stood up too. She backed away, not blocking his passage.

  The door to Neil Jeremy’s office opened when he reached it. The red-haired agent looked pale.

  “Ángel,” he said. “Hi! Come on in and sit down—”

  But Ángel wasn’t going to relinquish this audience.

  “Did you tell him I didn’t want to see him?” He pitched his voice, not loud, but ringing like a bell, so that every person in the room could hear it.

  Jeremy blanched further, but maintained his calm tone. “Let’s not do this out here.”

  “I think we should,” said Ángel. “I think you should explain to all of us why you told me Oberon didn’t want to see me, which was a lie, and why you told him that I didn’t want to see him, which was also a lie.”

  The room was so silent, he heard someone drop a pen.

  Jeremy said, “This is private business.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Ángel stalked closer. “But Mendel just announced my private business on NPR. My private business is probably going to be on the front page of the New York Times before morning, and I’d like an explanation.”

  “That—that should never have happened.” Jeremy seemed to abandon his effort to get Ángel into his office and came out into the main room, hands spread placatingly. “Mendel’s phone has been taken from him. Listen. None of this should have happened. Oberon asked us to find him someone who would be willing to go up there and be his friend. That’s all. We had no idea that he—that he expected—”

  “What are you even talking about right now?” demanded Ángel.

  “There’s going to be an outcry about this.” Sweat shone on Jeremy’s forehead. “People are going to want to know why the DOR procured—”

  “‘Procured’?” repeated Ángel. “Do you mean pimped?”

  The word rang through the room, and all around him he heard people gasp.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” said Ángel, deliberately keeping his voice slow and low, and his audience leaned in a little to hear him. “The DOR did not pimp me, because I am not a sex worker. I am not some boy the DOR picked up off the street. I have sex with who I want, when I choose, and my decision to have sex with the cultural envoy from the Otherworld was mine, and it had fuck-all to do with the DOR or with you. But you made a decision to lie to me, to lie to Oberon, in a misguided attempt to protect the DOR’s public image, and that decision made Oberon sick.”

  “No!” cried Jeremy, lifting his hands in a warding gesture.

  “No what? You didn’t lie? You didn’t cause Oberon’s illness?”

  “No, I— We—we weren’t trying to protect the DOR’s public image. We were trying to protect you.”

  Fucking spare me.

  He didn’t say it, but his exasperation rang in his voice anyway. “Great. Thanks for that extremely patronizing explanation.”

  “Anyway, now he has another elf to be with, so you don’t have to be with him,” said Jeremy.

  The guy was not listening. He was so committed to his idea of Ángel as a victim that he couldn’t see him any other way. Ángel let that go and said, “Except it’s not working. Mendel said himself that he can’t heal Oberon.”

  “They just need time—”

  “No,” said Ángel. “Now. I need to see Oberon. You are going to get me a car to wherever he is. Right now.”

  Jeremy didn’t say anything. His eyes were bright and hectic, his mouth firmly closed.

  Emma appeared at Ángel’s elbow. “Here.” She handed him a plastic card.

  It was blank. He turned it over to see the magnetic strip on the back. “What’s this?”

  “You need it to access the top floor. Just tap it to the pad in the elevator, and it’ll take you to the fourteenth floor.”

  He stared at the card. “He’s here?” he said. “In this building? He’s been rig
ht here all along?”

  She nodded.

  Ángel directed one last livid glare over her shoulder at Neil Jeremy. “I don’t care about your good intentions,” he said. “I promise you, if Oberon dies, it will be me on the front page of the New York Times, telling the world how you killed him.”

  He turned, and walked out toward the elevator bay.

  The elevator opened up on a silent indigo-painted hallway. There was one door, and when Ángel touched it, it swung inward. Not just unlocked, but ajar.

  He stepped in and was slapped in the face with wrongness.

  The air, the feel of the air, was somehow dissonant and terrible. His heart pounded, and the hair on his arms and scalp prickled. It was like someone was screaming, though he couldn’t hear a sound.

  He was in a large, glossily modern penthouse apartment, dimly lit and dark in spite of the bright afternoon sunshine outside. He barely noticed the clean modern furnishings as he made his way through the large, dim apartment. The feeling of horror increased as he crossed the foyer, past the kitchen and dining room, down a hallway to a bedroom. There he found two fae: an unfamiliar one, sitting on a chair with his long legs drawn up, feet tucked under his body, and Oberon, who was naked on the bed, face to the wall, loosely covered by a sheet. Ángel’s lover was curled in on himself, the knobs of his spine visible on the back of his neck, the wings of his scapulae bladelike and vulnerable beneath his eerily blue-gray skin.

  The strident horror was radiating from Oberon.

  “Ángel Cruz,” said Mendel quietly. “You’re here.”

  Ángel tore his gaze away from Oberon. “The door was open,” he said, stepping hesitantly into the room.

  “I leave it open in case anyone wants to come in,” said Mendel.

  Your security team must love you.

  Mendel seemed, at first glance, very much like Oberon: tall, white, with a haunting, expressionless face and wide dark green-gold eyes. His hair was a long silky hank of platinum streaked with mint, tied at his nape in a purple ribbon, but he’d acquiesced to a no-doubt DOR-mandated uniform of charcoal pants and a white cotton button-down shirt. Where the angles and planes of Oberon’s face made him look sinister and mocking, something about Mendel’s slanted brow ridges and curved cheekbones gave him an air of harmless innocence.