Everyone was silent in the aftermath.
“A little out of tune, but what a beauty.” Savy handed the guitar back. “I play a Gibson SG myself.”
Clay sensed that they wanted him to play now, to unleash some musical flourish to prove himself worthy of the high-end Rick. Clay only laid it aside.
“You going to turn this place into a museum or something?” Mo asked.
“My old man wants to use it as a gym. I’m lobbying to make it a rehearsal space.” Clay looked to Savy, hoping to gauge her interest in coming back. Except she was already heading toward the loft steps.
“Okay to go up?”
“Sure.” Clay waited a minute, then followed.
He found her standing in the sun thrown down from the skylight, biting at the nail of her middle finger. Feeling him creeping up, she drew a breath and composed herself. Clay wondered if her visit to the place where her idol had fallen—where her hero had turned coward—wasn’t getting to her. Or maybe it was more complicated than that; emotions almost always were. “I think you know this, but—you’re standing right where Boyle recorded vocals for The Disharmonic.”
Savy nodded. “By himself up here. In the dark. Singing to us, through time and space.”
“He had it all here, didn’t he?”
“He was drug-free. He had an amazing band and a hot girlfriend that loved him. He had creative freedom and a bottomless bank account. He could’ve traveled anywhere he wanted, played any venue, done anything, and…”
“…and in the end it wasn’t enough for him,” Clay finished.
Her brothers joined them briefly in the loft; then, sensing the conversation had taken a sentimental turn, they reversed course and hurried back down. “I’d give anything for a taste of the life he had,” Savy admitted, when she and Clay were alone again.
It was hot up here, the central air switched off, and Clay was standing close enough to smell Savy’s soapy-clean scent. “I saw Throne when they headlined Coachella,” she went on. “I was only 14, but Mo knew someone who knew someone who got us backstage. I had my acoustic with me and when the band was walking past after their set, I started playing ‘Hallelujah’. Was just hoping for a little wave, but Rocco and Deidre both came over. They gave me these huge hugs and Rocco told me, ‘Never stop playing.’ Which I sort of took to heart.” Savy shook her head and chewed at her nail. “Two months later they were dead. And that’s what’s so hard to accept. Rocco was living his dream. He was living my dream.”
“Why the hell would he kill himself?” Clay had asked that question once or twice himself. But addiction had a way of sapping your hope—was it his latest relapse that had forced Boyle to face the inevitable? Had Deidre’s overdose pushed him over the edge? Was there anything to one of the thousand conspiracies about that night? All of these questions met the same inconclusive conclusion: No concrete answer. “It’s probably why some fans prefer to think he was murdered. Easier to wrap our minds around that.”
No sooner did he say it did Clay wonder if Savy was a conspiracy theorist herself. She gave him a look, measuring him, before she said, “I started coming here after his funeral. Trying to deal with it, you know? I’d sit out front of the gate or walk around the fence like you caught us doing the other night. I hiked the trails behind the property. There’s this bluff up there, if you’re brave enough.” She pointed to the mountains looming in the skylight, toward a cluster of yellow boulders above the tree line. “It’s a distance away, but you can see down into your yard. You can see this very skylight, in fact. And there was a full moon that night and… oh, fuck, never mind.”
“No. What?”
“I saw someone standing here. Right where we’re standing now. The Ganeks were living here by then, but their cars weren’t in the driveway, so I thought it was strange anyone would be on the property. The figure was moving around, lifting his hands and tensing his shoulders. Like he was… singing…. and—alright, you promise not to call the psychiatric swat team?”
“Tell me.”
“I saw it was him, Clay. Rocco. Even from way up on that cliff, there was no mistaking him. He was standing right here, three years after his death.”
Clay opened his mouth and tried very hard to control his voice. “You serious?”
Her eyes rose to his own. She was putting herself on the line here, dragging a would-be skeleton from her closet. She wanted him to understand—maybe needed him to. “I don’t know your beliefs. If you’re like my brothers, and my band, even me sometimes, you think I’m cray-cray. But I know what I saw. Rocco’s spirit is still here in some way. So respect his memory. Don’t let just anyone in. Even if you already lowered yourself with us.”
Clay was quiet a moment. Before last night, the ghost story that Savy was telling him might have been a red flag. Now? Living in a paranormal investigator’s wet dream, Clay was finding his mind a bit more open. So he told her, “I don’t think you’re crazy. Anymore than I am.”
Savy regarded him cynically.
For a second, half a second,he thought of telling her about the night he saw the devil in a
