Ballad

and me, buddy,'

I said under my breath. 'One of a kind.'

I let myself in. I had entered a long, thin room, populated by old folding chairs all pointed attentively toward a low stage at the other end of the building. It smelled like mold and the old wood of the floor and the ivy pressed up by the frosted glass windows. On the stage, recessed lights illuminated a grand piano that was as old and ugly as the building itself. The whole thing was a crash course in all that was best forgotten about

1950s architecture.

Sullivan sat at the piano, knobby figures toying with the keys.

Nothing mind-blowing, but he knew his way around the keyboard. And the piano, for what it was worth, didn't sound nearly as bad as it looked. I walked up through the folding chair audience, grabbing one of the front- row chairs and bringing it onto the stage with me.

'Salutations, sensei,' I told him, and dropped my backpack onto the chair beside the piano. 'What a lovely creation that piano is.'

'Isn't it though? I don't think anybody remembers that this building is here.' Sullivan played 'Shave and a Haircut' before getting up from the bench. 'Strange to think this used to be their auditorium. Ugly little place, isn't it?'

I noted the detachment. Not 'our auditorium.' Sullivan was frowning at me. 'Feeling all right?'

'I didn't sleep much.' A understatement of cosmic proportions.

I wanted nothing more than the day to be done so that I could fall into my bed.

'You mean, other than what you did in my class,' Sullivan said.

'Some would argue that recumbent listening is the most effective.'

He shook his head. 'Right. I'll be looking for evidence of its efficacy on your next exam.' He gestured to the bench. 'Your throne.'

I sat at the piano; the bench creaked and shifted precariously.

The piano was so old that the name of the maker was mostly worn away from above the keyboard. And it smelled. Like ground-up old ladies. Sullivan had put some sheet music up on the stand; something by Bach that I'm sure was meant to look simple but had way too many lines for pipe music.

Sullivan turned the folding chair around and sat on it backwards. His face was intent. 'So you've never played piano before.'

The memory of Nuala's fingers overlaying mine was somehow colored by the memory of last night; I tightened my fingers into a fist and released them to avoid shivering. 'I tinkered with it once after we talked. Otherwise'--I ran my fingers over the keys and this time, struck by the memory of Nuala, I did shiver, just a tiny jerk--'we're virtually strangers.'

'So you can't play that music up there on the stand.'

I looked at it again. It was in a foreign language--like hell could I play it. I shrugged. 'Greek to me.'

Sullivan's voice changed; it was hard now. 'How about the music you brought with you?'

'I don't follow.'

Sullivan jerked his chin toward my arms, covered by the long sleeves of my black ROFLMAO T-shirt. 'Am I wrong?'

I wanted to ask him how he knew. He could've guessed. The writing on my hands, equal parts words and music, disappeared beneath both sleeves. I might've had them pushed up earlier, in his class. I couldn't remember. 'I can't play written music on the piano.'

Sullivan stood up, gesturing me off the bench and taking my place. 'But I can. Roll up your sleeves.'

I stood in the yellow-orange stage lights and pushed them up.

Both of my arms were dark with my tiny printing, jagged strokes of musical notes on hurriedly drawn staffs. The notes went all the way around my arms, uglier and harder to read on my right arm where I'd had to use my left hand to write. I didn't say anything. Sullivan was looking at my arms with something like anger, or horror, or despair.

But the only thing he said was, 'Where is the beginning?'

I had to search for a moment to find it, inside my left elbow, and I turned it toward him, my hand outstretched like I was asking him for something.

He began to play it. It was a lot older-sounding than I remembered it being when I'd sung and hummed it with Nuala.

All modal, dancing right between major and minor key. It kicked ass a lot more than I remembered too. It was secretive, beautiful, longing, dark, bright, low, high. An overture. A collection of all the themes that were to be worked into our play.

Sullivan got to the end of the music on my left arm and stopped. He pointed to his flat leather music case leaning against the piano leg. 'Give me that.'

I handed it to him and watched as he reached inside and pulled out the same tape recorder he'd brought to the hill that day. He set it on top of the piano and looked at it as if it contained the secrets of the world. Then he pressed play.

I heard my voice, small and tinny: 'You weren't recording before now?'

Sullivan's voice, sounding very young and fierce when not attached to his body: 'Didn't know if I'd have to.'

A long silence, hissing tape, birds singing distantly.

Then, Nuala's voice: 'Don't say anything.' I didn't immediately realize what it meant, that I was hearing Nuala's voice coming out of the recorder. She continued. 'You're the only one who can see me right now, so if you talk to me, you're going to look like you were retained in the birth canal without oxygen or something.'

Sullivan reached up and hit stop.

'Tell me you didn't make the deal, James.'

His voice was so grave and taut that I just said the truth. 'I didn't.'

'Are you just saying that? Tell me you didn't give her a single year of your life.'

'I didn't give her anything.' But I didn't know if that was true. It didn't feel true.

'I'd love to believe that,' Sullivan said, and now his voice was furious. He grabbed my hand and wrenched it so that I was staring at my own skin, inches from my face. 'But I have to tell you, they don't give you that for nothing. You're my student, and I want to know what or who you promised to get this, because it's my responsibility to keep stupid, brilliant kids like yourself from getting killed, and I'm going to have to clean things up now.'

I should've had something to say. If not witty, than just something.

Sullivan released my hand. 'Were you not good enough on your own? Best damn piper in the state and you had to strike a deal for more? I should've known it wouldn't be enough. Maybe you thought it would only affect you? It never affects just you.'

I jerked down my sleeves. 'You don't know what you're talking about. I didn't make a deal. You don't know.'

But maybe he did know. I didn't know what the hell he knew.

Sullivan looked at the partially rubbed-off letters above the keyboard and clenched and unclenched his hand. 'James, I know you think I'm just an idiot. A musician who sold out his teen dreams to become a junior-faculty foot-wipe at a posh high school. That's what you think I am, right?'

Nuala, who actually read my mind, would've been able to word it better, but he was still pretty close for a non-supernatural entity. I shrugged, figuring a non-verbal answer was really the best way to go.

He grimaced at the piano keys, running his fingers over them. 'I know that because I was you, ten years ago. I was going to be somebody. Nobody was going to stand in my way, and I had a bunch of people at Juilliard who agreed with me. It was my life.'

'I'm not a fan of morality tales,' I told him.

'Oh, this one has a twist ending,' Sullivan said, voice bitter.

'They ruined my life. I didn't even know They existed. I didn't even stand a chance. But you do. I'm telling you right now, they use people like us to get ahead. Because we want what They have to offer and we don't like the world the way it is. But what you have to understand, James, is just because we want what

They have and They want what we have, doesn't mean we end up with something we like. We don't.'