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I parted just slightly from her. Her eyes were shining – she hadn’t cried, but she almost was, and it was a heartbreaking sight. Her eyes met mine. They were soft in that way they weren’t usually, apart from when we were intimate. My chest glowed with warmth and I instinctively moved my lips to meet hers. She inhaled from me like I was the air she was breathing, and then pressed back with more urgency.
When we surfaced for air, I lay back on the bed with her and stroked her hair. She was less tense than she had been when we’d arrived and was even smiling softly into my chest as she curled up on me, her eyes closed.
I stared up at the ceiling. I needed to broach a difficult topic and wasn’t sure how she was going to take it. “Can we tell everyone? About the pregnancy? Winston needs to know anyway, since we’re intending to use his standby doctoring skills... and everyone else will find out at some point, I’m sure. We’re about to be living in close proximity for a while.”
To my relief, Luna did not mind. “Sure. Let me tell my dad first. I’ll tell him tonight.”
I kissed her forehead. “Thank you.”
She looked at me in slight wonder. “For what?”
“For not being currently, actively horrified at the idea you’re carrying my child.”
She grinned. “I’ve got plenty of time to be horrified, don’t you worry.”
The next daywe all gathered to discuss the situation we were in. As the uniting factor between everyone present, I felt compelled to address the group.
“So here we are, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some of us are rehearsing for a gig, some of us are hiding from my half-brother Apollo, some of us are just... along for the ride, I guess. There’s some overlap in those groups, of course.
“Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t plan to stay in the mountains forever. At the very least our concert is in a month, and I’d rather not have to fly all the way to New York and all the way back.
“We don’t need to come up with anything now, but I’m just throwing this out to the group... we do need some kind of plan for how to get out of this situation. As it stands, I’m next in line to be targeted by Apollo. He firstly sent his agents to watch my brother, Felix.”
Felix gave a shy little wave around at everyone.
“Felix and I have agreed to let everyone here in on the truth. The reason Felix had to go into hiding is because, although he is my brother, he’s also my twin. His biological father is Emory Brock. My mom managed to fudge the records so only one of us would get looped into Emory’s drama if he ever came back into her life, and she had very good foresight to do this.
“Then Apollo came for Luna. She pried a bit too much into his family history, including meeting his supposed mother, Priscilla Lamb. Now, we tested her DNA, and she’s not actually his biological mother. Neither is he our biological half-brother. Huh, I guess I should stop calling him half-brother. Non-brother? It doesn’t matter.
“I don’t know if you all know this, but Luna is pregnant...”
I paused here, for the various reactions of surprise, congratulation, and nonchalance (the last one was Winston, who was playing it cool).
“Hence, we need to get Apollo off our back. There’s a clause in Emory’s will that if one of his heirs was found to not be related to him, that Priscilla would inherit the business. It’s obviously too late to contest that now. But, while we know that he’s not Emory’s son, he doesn’tknowwe know. So I wonder if we could send him a warning, get him to back off. Like,we know you’re not really Emory’s son, so don’t come for us.”
Winston shook his head. “It’s not a bad idea, but that’s not how Apollo works. He’s not going to read a warning and be like, ‘oh, fair enough, they’ve got me there’. If you want him to listen to you, really listen, you need to send him a message.”
I frowned. “I was going to send him a message. I just said that.”
Winston slow-blinked at me like he couldn’t tell if I were joking or not. “No, I mean,send him a message.” Ah, I understood now. “Think about it. What does he like best? In my opinion, he loves drama. He loves to make a scene, to be theatrical. You need to drive that message home by speaking his language. I don’t know how, exactly. What have we got to work with? Forest’s good with technology, Jude is... strong...?”
I looked around the room. “Well, we do have access to an entire mountains-worth of musicians. Can we send him a message... in music?”
“The reunion gig.” Luna suddenly stood up. “The reunion gig. It’s receiving so much hype in the press. It could rival the popularity of Apollo’s memoirs. He likes things to be big and flashy.”
“What are we going to do? Write a song that says ‘Apollo we know your dad isn’t Emory Brock’, and sing it at the concert? Send him a video?”
Winston seemed to like the idea. “Deliver him some kind of invitation. Make it vague and ominous. If we match his style, he’s more likely to listen to us. We’ve gotta reel him in. It’s ridiculous, of course, but Apollo is ridiculous. And, Sylvester, sorry to say, but out of all of us you’re the closest to him in the ridiculous stakes. You’re the only one who could deliver a message to him in this way.”
“Err, thanks. Or no thanks. Is it a compliment?”
Luna patted my head. “I think you should take it as one, sweetheart.”
I knew she was patronizing me, but I liked having my head patted and being calledsweetheartin public. So I just smiled like a lazy cat that had got the cream.
The next day,Reed and I sat down to figure out the lyrics for the song. We needed to deliver a message to Apollo, but subtly enough that only he would be able to decode it – because we’d be pointing him in the right direction with our invitation.
After an hour or two of banding about lyrical ideas, with numerous notepapers spread out across the warehouse room we were inhabiting, Reed marched out of the room. I heard him calling for Felix, and a little conversation in the hallway.
