Shadow Fall

He’d had only a few months of living hand to mouth when Adam called him, desperate for help. Jacob, Adam’s older brother, had gone insane, turned into a wraith, and had murdered Adam’s perfect family. The rest was Segue history.

“I am exhausted, Custo,” Annabella said.

He was sure she was, but she would live. And if the wolf decided to…engage them, then here was just as good a place as any to make it clear that Custo was not giving up Annabella.

They took a table near the front. The back ones were mostly filled with musicians ogling Annabella’s dress, or depending on the view, lack thereof. Near the makeshift stage there was more light anyway, which should make Annabella less jittery. She settled herself into a seat. A glass of wine was set before her, another gift from Jack.

Custo popped the frogs on the guitar case while the guy on sax finished up his song. Opening the lid, a waft of sweet wood cut the stale air of the club. Nestled inside was a beauty of an arch-top jazz guitar, a Benedetto. Inlayed with abalone along the neck and constructed of a mix of exotic woods, walnut and curly maple most likely, it gleamed as he lifted it to his knees. Had to be a recent acquisition by Jack, at a pretty penny. It was an honor to try his hand at it.

Jack took the stage as the guy on sax accepted his smattering of applause. “We have a slight change in our lineup. When you hear him play, you won’t mind the wait. Custo? When you’re ready.”

Custo took the stage, forcing himself not to look at Annabella, though he could feel her—he always felt her —simmering on his skin. She burned hotter just now.

The bass player, an old guy, held the neck of his upright, the knuckles of his hands enlarged. The drummer was college-young, with black bolts in his earlobes. A guitar cord snaked from the amplifier to the center and got tangled around the leg of a stool. Custo lifted the seat and planted it front and center of the stage. He switched the amp to “stand-by” to avoid a screech, then flipped it back to “on” after he was plugged in and ready to go.

He settled himself on the stool, glanced out over the group, and came to rest on his livid Annabella. “For you,” he said.

Annabella gripped the seat of her chair as Custo put pick to guitar. Her insides ached, straining to control and compartmentalize the emotions that churned and surged within her. The toxic air of this hole-in-the-wall of a jazz club was making her nauseated, too. She wanted to get out of there, but had no choice but to stay put.

They were tempting fate, dangling her like bait into the shadows. The wolf could, would, come any moment now. Why didn’t he attack again? She was vulnerable.

A sip of wine burned her throat. She’d had enough of Custo Santovari. Enough. She couldn’t think straight, feel straight, with him around. Angel? Demon? She barely even knew herself anymore.

Of course the song he chose would be depressing. The melody was one of those bluesy dirges in a minor key. She never really cared for free-form jazz anyway. Must be an acquired taste. The drum’s soft rap counted the final grains of time at the end of a life. The bass’s doo-dow-dow-doo was like a heart about to beat its last. And Custo had dedicated it to her. Well, thank you very much.

She clenched her hands on the wood under her thighs to stop her shakes.

Not that he could help the whole wolf thing. But still…Forcing her to go to that stupid reception, then bailing. Hypocrite. And she didn’t need anyone tooling around in her head, picking apart her private thoughts. It wasn’t like she could stop thinking to shut him out. Oh God, what awful things he must have learned about her. She was no angel.

And then to take her to that miserable loft.

What possible purpose could it serve to show her the holes made by the very bullets that ripped through his body? And how was it that those scars of violence still had the power to penetrate and wound? Because she was frickin’ bleeding inside, and any second it was going to come pouring out her eyes in tears. Tears for someone already dead.

For someone she couldn’t have.

He played the guitar in weeping notes, a lament of heartache for which she had no defenses.

How dare he mess her up like this? She bored her gaze into him. How dare you do this to me?

No response. Not even a flicker of his eyes as he picked the strings with one hand, while the other worked the frets.

Custo! Get me out of here!

She’d been shouting at him in her head since his big revelation at the loft. Why they were in the jazz club, she had no idea. Something about a room for the night. If they couldn’t go back to Segue, she’d much rather sacrifice her credit card for the predictable double queens and bath in a hotel room. Something, anything, normal.

I’m tired. I want to leave.

Nothing. Just the wail of a note as he pushed a string high on a fret to tug at the melody. The guitar was a voice calling out into the club for attention, the last note crying, Please!

She didn’t have to listen. She looked away, clenching her teeth so hard her jaw ached.

The song followed her, breaking away from the melody into a solo. The notes stayed low, quarrelsome, building to an angry, violent accusation, but laced with pain.

And then she knew Custo was speaking to his father.

All the things he couldn’t say were translated into a medium where, like her dance, communication was visceral, pure. The music formed a foreign language, but like a gift of tongues, she understood.

With each pick of the strings Custo’s story tumbled out, the specifics rounded by notes, but the layers of feeling pronounced in sheets of sound. Aggression predominated, but the intensity was strung together by hurt. The refrain passed away, and the song broke into a doubled melody, two lines of music in conversation with each other. One was regular, masculine, predictable, Adam. The other, its brother, was all improvisation, running headlong into a catastrophic explosion of notes, death.

If Custo’s life hadn’t been co-opted by the wraith war, she knew what he would have become. The raw honesty of his music, coupled with obvious mastery over an instrument, revealed him. He couldn’t keep his secrets while he played. This was his truth.

Annabella’s heart was in her throat as she tried to keep the darkness of the club from shifting to Shadow while she resonated soul to soul with the weave of the song. Magic flickered at the edges of her vision, but she kept her attention fixed on Custo’s bowed head. She stayed grounded in the club, breathing its smoke in lieu of the intoxicating air of Faerie.

Custo’s playing reduced, and with a tilt of his head, he threw the song to the others for solos. The old man played as if he knew Custo’s story, dribbling on the bass like a rapid heartbeat. The drums came up after with a snap and burr of a flight from danger.

When Custo rejoined them, his notes were higher, lilting, slightly eerie, and…threaded with the dominant melody of Giselle. Annabella flushed with the realization that he was playing her into his story. His improvisation wove the two songs together into one composition: soaring, mournful, full of impossible hopes. A love song.

She’d known him only two days of hell on Earth. And he was an angel, utterly beyond her.

But with his soul filling the smoky club, what could she do but love him back?

Chapter Seventeen

GRIPPING the guitar by the neck, Custo stood to a smattering of applause. Not that he needed it. God, it had just felt so good to play. To channel his maddening restlessness into a medium that satisfied like a back-alley fight, but without the broken nose or bloody knuckles.

His hands had been itching for murder since the attack at Abigail’s. The trip down memory lane hadn’t helped either. Fucked-up life, fucked-up world. Now that the sensation had receded, he could think. He could be.