All Our Pretty Songs

get angry with you. You don’t want to see that.”

I open my mouth again to protest, and then there’s a noise like dead leaves rustling and Minos is standing behind the bouncer. Dressed in black, like always. Like me, I think suddenly. His flat eyes watch me. I have nothing to lose but the people I love most.

“You know why I’m here,” I say to him. “Let me in.” He lifts one shoulder, drops it. The same shrug he gave me in Aurora’s bedroom. He points two fingers at me, curls them toward himself.

“Looks like Kansas grew up fast,” the bouncer says. I shoulder past him and follow Minos into the huge warehouse. The inside of the building seems bigger than the outside. I can’t see the ceiling, or any of the far walls. The air is so hot and thick with cigarette smoke and the stink of bodies I nearly gag.

“Where are they?” I shout after him, but he doesn’t turn or answer. He doesn’t look like he’s moving any faster than a tall man walking, but I have to run to keep up with him and he still draws ahead of me. Minos vanishes into the swirl of grey, his black coat flapping behind him. Who wears coats like that in California? Goddammit, Aurora, I think. You have the worst taste. I trip over my own feet, stumble into a woman dressed like a storybook witch: long black dress and straggly black hair, wrinkled face, terrible eyes. She puts out one red-streaked hand and pushes me away. Her fingers leave wet red prints on my skin. A man with goat horns peeking out of his dark curls leers at me and sidles closer, running a hot hand down my leg. Disgusted, I push into the crowd to get away from him, men and women turning to look at me as I jostle through. The heat is overwhelming. Get out of here get out of here get the hell out of here. But I can’t go until I’ve found them. A light flares to life on a makeshift stage across the room and a harsh, ugly cheer rises up from the crowd. I fight my way to the front, kicking at women in silk and fur. Disapproving snarls snake past me. The mass of bodies presses me up against the edge of the stage.

Jack stumbles onto the stage, and the crowd goes mad. I cling to the stage and hold on for dear life. If I lose my place it seems entirely possible I’ll be torn to pieces. Behind me an awful howl rises and bodies surge forward. I stare up at Jack, willing him to look down at me, but he gazes out unseeing over the seething mass of people. He looks terrible, his face gaunt, his back bent under the weight of the guitar slung around his neck like an anvil. “Jack,” shouts the crowd behind me, “Jack, Jack, Jack,” one name rising from hundreds of throats, pounding into the hot dark like the beat of a drum. He opens his mouth but makes no sound, and all the Jacks run together into a blur of noise. I cover my ears with my hands and cower. He strikes a chord, and the frenzy behind me grows even wilder.

This time when he plays it’s the song of someone who’s dying. I weep as I watch him, his body jerking as though his limbs are being pulled by invisible strings, his mouth open and working, his eyes with that empty, terrible stare. The air around him fills with hundreds of huge-winged dark moths that flutter out into the darkness. I throw my hands up to protect my face from heavy, soft wings that leave thick traces of something powdery and terrible smelling across my arms. There is no joy in what he plays, only an immense, terrible pain. I can see a dry wasteland stretching out under a starless sky. Behind me someone screams above the rest of the noise, and the air fills with the metallic scent of blood. I kick back behind me again, fighting to keep from being crushed against the stage. When I punch into the knot of bodies my hand comes back slick with gore. Still Jack plays, a single chord that grates and wails into the hot dark. Something knocks me into the stage and I hit my leg hard, Cass’s quartz grinding into the soft part of my thigh; but instead of pain, a soft coolness spreads from where the stone struck me. I shove one hand into my pocket and close my fingers around the crystal. The noise around me dims and I can breathe more easily. I close my eyes and imagine Cass, standing over the stove, stirring tofu with a wooden spoon. The ordinariness of the image eases my terror.

At last the song ends. I open my eyes. Jack’s sunk to his knees. I am almost close enough to him to touch him. “Jack! Jack!” He doesn’t hear me. He bows his head, but not before I catch a glimpse of his expression. Desperate, hunted. He looks terrified. The roar behind me is so immense it has mass, like a vast flock of some nightmarish bird rising into the dark. With a visible effort, Jack stands, listing as if he’s drunk, staring at nothing. There’s a movement in the darkness, and then Minos is striding onto the stage, moving toward Jack, catching him even as he slumps back toward the ground. Holding him up with bony fingers, the bony face triumphant, the hollow eyes full of fire. Behind me the crowd gets even louder, the massive shriek battering at me hard as a fist.

Minos tugs Jack closer, bends his head down in an awful kiss. I can’t bear to watch. I turn my head away, bury my face in my own sweat-soaked shoulder. The crowd turns on itself, frenzied and gleeful. Some of the screams seem more particular, more gruesome. Hands grab at me, tear at my hair. When I look up again Jack and Minos are gone. All the rage I have ever felt in my short angry life flares up in me now, a white pulse that strips all the fear from me. I am going to find them and then I am going to get out of here. There’s a door to the left of the stage, and maybe this is hell but I bet it still works the way a club works. I fight my way through, kicking and biting, pulling hair, punching, until I’m standing in front of the doorway. “Minos!” I shout into the dark. “Goddammit!” I scream his name over and over again, but I’m still surprised when the darkness yields him up and he’s standing in front of me.

“I want to see him,” I say. “You have to let me see him.” I push past him. I’m in a hallway, like I thought. Not so much worse than some of the clubs I’ve been in. I stumble down the hall, past closed doors, a reeking horror that is maybe a bathroom, and then I see it: a door that’s open a crack. I walk through it without knocking. Jack is there, his back to me. His shoulders are slumped, but he’s standing.

“Jack.” He whirls around. His face when he sees me is equal parts horror and, I am delighted to see, joy.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, but I’m already running at him, flinging myself into his arms. He grunts, startled, but holds me tight. “You crazy thing,” he says. “You crazy, crazy thing. You should never have come here.”

“I missed you,” I say, “so much. I missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too,” he says, and then he kisses me. Out of all the kisses, ever, it is the best one. A kiss that is sorry and I love you, get me out of here and forgive me. A kiss that is the two of us driving west, getting free of here, going all the way to where the ocean meets the sky. A kiss that is all the time before any of this happened, that brief window of joy when we were just two people holding hands in a starlit park. A kiss like Jack’s music. Finally we break apart, gasping. I can hardly breathe.

“Come home with me,” I manage. “I came for you.”

“Sweet thing.” His eyes are so sad.

“I mean it.”

“I know you mean it. I can’t.”

“I was wrong. What I said to you when you left. I didn’t get it.”

“I know.”

“But I get it now. And you did what you wanted. And now you can come home.”

“Look at me,” he says gently, and I look at him. That face. So beautiful, so tired. He looks years older than he did the last time I saw him. “I can’t go home. That’s not how it works. I came here to do this. I have to see it through.”

“He’ll kill you.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”

“Jack.”

“This is all I’ve ever wanted,” he says. “Not being famous. I don’t care about being famous. That’s where Aurora’s dad and I are different. That’s what killed him. He thought he wanted it, and then he got it, and he didn’t realize until it was too late that no one wants that, not really. But me—do you have any idea what it’s like to play for them?”

“I saw you. I saw your face on that stage.”

“I didn’t say it was easy.”

“But I came to get you.”

“You didn’t come for me,” he says. “Look me in the face and tell me you came for me.”

“I did—” I begin, and then I stop. He’s right. He’s been right, this whole time.

“This is what I want,” he says. “Let me go. Find her. She needs you.”

“I love you,” I say, and this time I say it loud, so he can hear. So he knows. All the best artists