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The door shut behind me, and we were almost in darkness.
“Luna Black.” Her voice came, sultry and purring. “I’ve had my eye on you.”
I cleared my throat. “I’ve seen.”
“Do you know who I am, Luna Black?”
I couldn’t decide whether to admit it. I suppose knowing that she was a famous recording artist was slightly less suspicious than trying to figure out if she was Apollo’s mother, so I went for it. “You’re... Priscilla Lamb. Right?”
A laugh of delight erupted from Priscilla’s vocal chords. “Why yes, dear! I can tell I’m in the presence of a real music buff. You know, no one has recognized me as long as I’ve been in this building?”
Did that mean... she had been in this office building for overthirty years? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Out loud, I decided to go with flattery. “You’re iconic. I knew who you were straight away.”
“I’ve done some digging into you, too, Luna Black. It seems you’re quite the musician yourself. Though it seems your ambitions were crushed rather early, getting dropped from your boyfriend’s tour and then dropped by your record label, hmm?”
It stung to hear it told to me by a stranger. That conversation normally only happened inside my own head. “Yes.”
Somewhere in the room, a light switch was flipped. One by one, dim lights lit up all across the room. It was vast, vaster than Apollo’s own office. As the lights came on over a mixing desk and a glass-paneled box in the far end of the room, I realized this was a recording studio.
I couldn’t hold in my amazement. It was genuine. “Woah.”
Priscilla, lit up dramatically from the side, nodded in appreciation, that silky smile still across her lips. “It’s a shame about your career. So much promise...”
I looked away. Stupid tears had stung to my eyes, and I wasn’t interested in letting anyone see them.
“You know what would reinvigorate anyone’s music career, however dead?” She paused, but didn’t wait for me to respond before continuing. “A duet with an icon of rock and pop who hasn’t been seen for over three decades. That’d certainly get people talking.”
I looked at her and laughed. It was a bitter laugh, and in reality I was choking back sudden tears, but it really was a ludicrous thing for her to say. “Is that what you want from me? A duet?”
“Maybe. It gets boring in here with just my own voice, my own instruments. I’m not sayinglet’s release a singlejust yet. But maybe you’d like to have a little... sing-song with me before you go. Unless you have somewhere to be?”
I didn’t really have anywhere to be. And as much as I was repelled by this whole Apollo-Priscilla situation, a musician doesn’t pass up a chance to sing with an icon of the seventies and eighties. Especially one who vanished mysteriously many years ago and hasn’t been sighted until now.
And so, I nodded. “Yeah, okay. I’m not as good as you, though.”
“I’m sure you’re better than Apollo.” Priscilla winked, and walked over to the mixing desk, gesturing for me to enter the recording booth.
I did as she said. I almost expected the doors to seal around me and the glass box to start filling with water and sharks or something. Every instinct of mine was screaming at me to get out, with the exception of my curiosity, which had forced me to stay.
But there was no water, no sharks. Just Priscilla Lamb, a predator in her own right, I supposed, with her shark claws and twinkling eyes. She joined me in the booth with her guitar. “I’ll play. You sing harmonies. Okay?”
I nodded, not quite sure that this was really happening and not some really bizarre dream.
“One of mine, first. Do you know it?” She played the opening bars ofString Man, one of her hits from the early seventies.
“Yeah, I do.” I think I knew the words to all her songs by now, so often had I been playing them over and over again while searching rabidly for intel on her online.
She looked delighted. “Excellent. Let’s go.”
She played, and we sung. It took me a verse to get the harmony right, but I’d always enjoyed singing harmonies, and when I got there, our voices sounded positivelygoodtogether. Her rich, deep tones, with my airy light harmony.
When the song finished, Priscilla clapped with so much genuine joy and delight in her face that I warmed to her, and clapped along.
“That was marvelous.” She clutched her chest, looking off into the middle distance like she was reminiscing about a past live performance. How long had it been just her in this recording studio? Not three decades, surely? “Now. One of yours?”
I stammered a bit. I hadn’t been expecting that. “You... you know one of mine?”
