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My panic faded as he started up the opening bars of one of my slower, gentler songs. And then he started singing, a gentler croon compared to how he normally sang, and my stomach fluttered. My body has having some sort of reaction: I had flushed with heat, and was glad to be hidden in the crowd, because I’m sure under normal lighting conditions my response would have been all too obvious. I felt dizzy, like I might melt into the floor.
The song ended. My breath caught in my throat.
The crowd cheered, and then the rest of the band were back on stage. I exhaled. I had to get it together, because that meant they were about to play the song containing the hidden message.
I scouted around in the crowd, looking for any familiar faces that I might recognize from Apollo’s headquarters. Nothing for a while, until:there. A bunch of awkward-looking hench men and women wearing all black in a way that they’d tried to disguise as rock attire but that was clearly security attire. And, to prove my suspicions right, Abigail was in the middle of them. The only one I knew by name – but there were other faces I could recognize after I’d seen her, too.
The song started up. I’d heard it in rehearsal – now was the time to really see if it had any power. The song was about the ‘Sun God Son’ – an obviously metaphorical reference to Apollo, which anyone familiar with the Brock family drama could obviously pick up. What they wouldn’t pick up unless they were specifically looking for it, was the hidden message threaded into the song:We know you aren’t his son.
I looked over at Apollo’s cronies. A few of them were whispering to each other. Then a bunch more of them started exchanging looks. There seemed to be some general consensus between them – and then they turned around and headed for the door.
I wanted to watch the concert, but I needed to follow Apollo’s team and see what was going on here. If they were just leaving to report back to him, that would be okay. But they hadn’t stayed for the whole song – they’d all left. If Apollo wasn’t here, surely someone would have stayed to record it. Which meant either he’d found some other way to watch the concert remotely, or they’d been ordered to leave for some reason, or... Apollo was here.
I needed to find out. I turned around and followed the stream of undercover security in their all-black outfits, blending in just a little with my own all-black attire too, though a flowing skirt was hardly bodyguard attire.
Apollo’s guards left through the main doors, but rather than exiting the venue entirely they turned left and started climbing the stairs that led to the upper level. There were only three things on the upper level – the sound and lighting booths, entrances to the two private boxes, and additional toilets. Was it too much to hope that they’d eaten something dodgy as a group before coming out and had all sprung with a sudden need to use the toilet?
I followed. There was plausible deniability if they caught me and didn’t recognize me, or even if they did, possibly. At the top of the stairs, they turned left. Not the toilets, then.
Then, the one in front, possibly in charge, rapped on a door to private box number one. This was not good. The door swung open, revealing a furious Apollo Brock.
I ducked my head to avoid being seen. I was stunned. He was here in person. I’d never seen him out of the confines of his headquarters. I wasn’t even sure he’d ever left – it was like his evil lair.
His cronies were ushered into the box. I followed at the back, blending in decently due to our matching all-black outfits, keeping my head ducked and hoping no one would notice I wasn’t six foot tall and built for boxing like Apollo’s team were.
Apollo was snarling and ranting, addressing the entire group of us with chaotic fury written across his face. “...I don’t know what you’ve all come up here tomefor. Of course I got the message, do you think I’m a simpleton? Now get back out there and be ready to do your jobs, I’m about to shut this concert down.”
Someone piped up. “Where do you want us, boss?”
“Stay at the back of the room, I’m going to storm the stage. You can help me get through the crowd.”
The guards started to filter out, mumbling. I found myself frozen at the back of the room. What was the point in shutting down the concert? Was he really that upset by the message in the song?
My gut instinct made the decision for me: I stayed at the back of the room. When everyone else but me and Apollo had left, he glanced up at me, and fury shot through his eyes like a flash of lightning. “You.”
I held up my hands. “Before you go, will you just hear me out?”
He scoffed a single, bitter laugh. “Why would I ever want to hear you out, Luna Black? You and I could have continued our fine literary partnership, but you started dabbling in things you had no business with. I could forgive you working with my half-brother. But fraternizing with my mother, digging into my private business? That’s unforgivable.”
“But she isn’t...” I tailed off, quickly realizing that what I was about to say had no chance of a productive conclusion in this discussion.
“I know she’s not my mother, you silly girl.” He hissed it through gritted teeth, flecks of spit catching light in the air. “You don’t think I have access to simple DNA tests like the rest of the population? I’ve known – for years – that I am not the product of relations between Priscilla Lamb and Emory Brock. Nor one of them with any other human on earth.”
“Does she know you know?”
“No.” He smirked for just a second, then dashed it off his face with a blaze of contained rage. “I confess, I don’t understand her motivations. She was in love with Emory Brock, that’s for sure. Undoubtedly obsessed with him. I don’t know if she’s deluded, and I’m simply part of her fantasy...”
“Or she’s lied to you your whole life?” I said it carefully, quietly.
There was something here that Apollo clearly needed to unpick. His parentage and family had always been a touchy subject in our sessions. Once, me and him had been friends. Maybe I could unravel that snagged thread, get him to see there was no point being angry at his half-brothers. If Priscilla had been manipulating him his whole life, it would be harder for him to see that clearly... but potentially explosive if he could.
I realized Apollo had gone quiet. He was staring, not out of the window of the box at the still-happening concert out there, but at the dark shadows of the far wall. When he turned around to look at me, his face was the most bare I’d seen it: stripped of all his theatrical pretenses. He was, suddenly, just a man. Some guy, like Sylvester, who had been dragged into a world he didn’t truly belong in, and had never asked to be in.
“Do you know, Luna Black, what it is like to know that you don’t really exist? That you aren’t a person whose parents loved each other and decided to create a family. That you were instead plucked from god-knows-where, lied to, and filled full of expectations you could never hope to uphold? Knowing – for decades – that you’re being manipulated, knowing you’re being lied to... but knowing thatthat was all you had? That, if you took that away, there was nothing left of you?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think I do.”
He was still going on. “Being an entire fabrication created in the mind of an obsessive woman and a long-dead multibillionaire entrepreneur... Then again, what exactly is reality, anyway? I live in the mind of Priscilla Lamb, my supposed mother. I do what she says. That’s all I know.”
