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“You suggest that we three operate a heist and rob him blind?” I asked blandly.
“He sent you a dress, and paid for you to eat sushi. Maybe you could talk him into sponsoring a scholarship for Gabby!”
“Oh! And funding the music school!” Mirabel said brightly. “We need to have a stream of talented musicians that feeds into the guild, or it’s never going to be a competent music hall that can become self-sufficient.”
“I can ask, but I’m not going to sell my body, soul, or blood for it.”
Anna elbowed me. “But if you sold your body to him, wouldn’t that mean that you got his?” She wiggled her eyebrows and then giggled. If she was giggling, she’d had more than a few drinks. I’d have to walk her home.
“That’s not selling, that’s barter,” Mirabel said with a thoughtful frown as Rynne brought out the sushi. They brought a lot of sushi, and for a long time, I drowned my sorrows in food and companionable silence.
After we’d eaten and sang enough for Anna and Mirabel, they went off towards the healery, Mirabel linking arms with the other woman easily as they walked. I watched them go, frowning after them in thought. Mirabel hadn’t flinched away from Anna even once, not slightly. She’d jumped into the music and not seemed to notice anything else about her face. Mirabel was beautiful, but it was hard to notice when she was so busy badgering you. What kind of musician was so comfortable around scars? Maybe she’d worked as a music medic in one of the battle guilds. Either way, she was worth getting to know if she accepted Anna as she was, even if she was eerily right about her healing abilities.
I turned and started to cross the street towards my building, but then I looked up and saw my library, and I turned around instead. Pansy whined and tugged me towards home. Poor tired dog, but I couldn’t do it. I walked north, planning to come in around the service entrance through the block, when a beautiful Bentley pulled up beside me, and the back window rolled down.
“Miss Morell, may I offer you a ride?”
Never get into a car with a vampire at night.
I sighed heavily and opened the door. Pansy leapt inside, jumping up on the Scholar and kissing him all over his face before settling down on the cushy floor mat.
The Scholar froze, covered in brimstone scented saliva. I got in and closed the door. “You may offer, but I must warn you of the danger.”
“Danger?”
I scratched Pansy behind the ears, and his tongue lolled out, his eyes rolled back, and then he was snoring. I smiled at the Scholar. “I might accept.”
Chapter
Fourteen
The concert wasn’t a big deal, but for some reason, I was incredibly nervous. I’d been working in the lab for a week and rehearsing every night, but two weeks was not long enough to play an instrument. It didn’t help that my orchestra was the beginner’s orchestra made up out of all the people dragged into Mirabel’s madness on the first day, including the snarling teen and the walker-wacking old lady.
“It’s not ludicrous, it’s impossible,” Tiago said in a low voice so the other nervous beginners wouldn’t hear. “I advised against a concert so early in training, but the Music Master insisted, said that it would be good to experience humiliation as a unit so as to encourage future efforts.” He shook his head. “I don’t care how much you deny it, you’ve had some musical training, but most of these children have not. They’ll be crushed.”
“But the snacks are better. I bought a few trays that I’m hiding in the basement fridge. Don’t tell Mirabel, or she’ll eat them all.” I’d wanted to bring sushi, but my advance couldn’t afford it, and not everyone liked sushi, strangely enough. Anna had helped me choose sensible alternatives. She’d be here with Gabby unless she forgot. It would probably be best for everyone if she wasn’t here to witness the debacle of musical monstrosity. It was supposed to be Singsong City’s theme, but that was an incredibly complex piece, and we’d been playing our instruments for two weeks.
“That’s very generous of you to bring something to soften the blow.” He patted my shoulder, my sore shoulder that I probably hadn’t rested enough. I’d been spending longer and longer hours at the music hall and at the lab, both to avoid the inevitable pain when I saw the library, and to not be alone, where the pain would be worse. Pansy came with me to the music hall, but I wouldn’t dare bring her to the lab in case he lit a delicate document on fire. He hadn’t torched any of my books, but he’d gnawed half the leg off my chair.
“All right, everyone, places please. We’ve all tuned, yes?” Tiago looked around the room at the nervous kids, mostly ages twelve to fifteen, and nodded. The teen rolled his eyes, and the woman with the walker sniffed like we hadn’t been practicing for an entire week together, long enough to be experts in the tuning of our instruments. We were mostly strings with a drum to keep time. The drummer was the smallest ten-year-old girl I’d ever seen. She had a constant look of surprise when she made a sound.
It was fine. We’d play, eat crackers, vegetables, and dip, then go home.
Tiago opened the door and led us down the hall to the concert hall. We’d had one rehearsal on the stage, so it was still unfamiliar as seventeen of us filed behind Tiago. The curtains were down as we walked out onto the stage. There were more than forty chairs set up, but we took our places huddled around the conductor’s stand. They must be having another concert later, one that would use the huge golden harp set right behind our group.
The curtains opened, and I looked up, prepared to see the parents of the kids and maybe Anna and Gabby, but not the Scholar and all the employees I knew from his lab, as well as all the librarians and preservationists I’d worked with, including Felix who shook his fist at me in encouragement.
I froze. These were the people I’d tried so hard to be the perfect librarian for, and now they were going to see me in all my beginner awkwardness? I looked down at my instrument and couldn’t remember which string I was supposed to play first. Not that it would matter. This would go down as the most miserable concert any of them had ever gone to. For the rest of my life, when I bumped into one of them on the street, they’d say, ‘Are you still playing? Remember that concert we went to? You must be better than that now,’ and I’d have to laugh because I couldn’t kill them. Well, I could, but I’d feel bad about it later. Maybe. I could preemptively kill everyone right now, do a giant death curse to put them out of their misery before they had to suffer. That would be practically noble of me. I sighed heavily. No, it wouldn’t.
I looked up at Tiago, and he returned my look with one of sympathy before he raised his baton and we began. I forgot to come in at the right time, and then when I turned the page, I knocked my music off the stand, and then when I got it back up, it took me another few measures to figure out where we were. It was, in a word, terrible. Still, we made it through to the end eventually, and then Tiago cut us off, but kept his hands raised, so we didn’t put down our instruments, even as that last terrible note hung in the air. No one clapped, but no one booed or hissed either, so that was something. Maybe I could slip out the side door before anyone could tell me either how wonderful I’d done, lying baldly to my face as would be polite, or how terrible which would be the cruel truth.
Golden notes of a harp spilled through the air, bringing the world into sharper focus, brighter color, fuller sound. It was divine. There was Mirabel playing directly behind us, her long hair down, a dress of shimmering blue playing off the golden harp. She was stunning, and the music, pure magic, real, true, actual magic. When she finished her intro, the other musicians began, those who had filled in the seats while I’d been busy focusing on playing my piece badly, and they were all perfectly in tune, perfectly in time, and then Tiago lifted his baton, and I lifted my guitar, and then the golden light swallowed everything. I was pretty sure that Mirabel’s will took over the playing of everyone there, because I’d never done that before, and neither had old walker-wacker.
We went from dejected humiliation to exalted unison. My heart pounded in time to the music, Singsong City’s theme, a song of redemption and cooperation, and rising up against great odds with faith and perseverance to overcome. It was beautiful, and for a little while I was part of that.
The last notes hung in the air, suspended for a long golden moment, until they faded into a hush. I blinked tears out of my eyes to find Tiago beaming at us while his own watery eyes made my tear ducts overflow in companionship.
The applause rocked the room, rocked me. I hesitantly looked up to find the Scholar on his feet clapping while all my other associates cheered and yelled my name. Pansy took that moment to break through the back doors and tear down the aisle, coming right towards me.
