There was a pause then--just a tiny second too long-- before
James said, 'You'll cue it.' The pause told me he wasn't sure.
He didn't know if tonight was going to work. I didn't either.
The fact was, I didn't know if I was built for happy endings.
'Right,' I said, after a space big enough to drop a semi-truck into. 'Yeah, of course.' I was tired again. It was a heavy sort of tired, like if I went to sleep this time, I wouldn't wake up. James was looking out the window at the late afternoon sun, his eyes narrowed and far away. I knew he was feeling the press of
Halloween as strongly as I was. 'Would you play my song?' I asked.
'Will you heckle me if I do it wrong?' But he sat down at the piano bench without waiting for my answer. Not like a proper pianist, but with his shoulders slouched over and his wrists resting on the keys of the piano. 'I'm afraid I just can't do it without you here.'
'Liar,' I said. But I joined him, ducking under his arms like I had that first day at the piano. His arms made a circle around me as
I sat on the edge of the bench, pressing my body into the same shape as his. Like before, my arms matched the line of his arms as my hands rested on his hands. And my spine curved into the same curve of his hunched- over chest. But this time, there weren't any goose bumps on his skin. And this time, he pressed the side of his face into my hair and inhaled sharply, a gesture that so agonizingly spelled desire that I didn't have to read his mind.
And this time, he pulled his hands from beneath mine and rested them on top of my fingers instead. The piano keys were warm from his touch, like they were living things.
'James,' I said.
He took one of my hands in one of his inked-up ones and pressed one of my fingers on a key.
I wanted it to make a sound so badly that it hurt.
The key whispered as it depressed, and then hissed again as it came back up again under my finger. No music.
'Soon,' James said. 'Soon you'll be able to play this as badly as
I can.'
I stared at his fingers on my fingers on the keys for a long time, leaning back against him, and then I closed my eyes.
'They're going to do something to Dee tonight,' I said, finally.
'That's why Eleanor told you how to save my memories. She wants you at my bonfire instead of finding Dee.'
James didn't reply. I wondered if I'd even said it out loud.
'James, did you hear me?'
His voice was flat. 'Why did you tell me?'
Of all the things I thought he'd say, this wasn't one of them.
'What?'
He said each word distinctly, as if they were painful. 'Why--did-you--tell--me?'
'Because you love her,' I said miserably.
He dropped his forehead onto my shoulder. 'Nuala,' he said.
But he didn't say anything else.
We sat there so long that the bar of sun slanting in from the high windows shifted across the piano, moving from the highest notes to where our hands still rested on the keys.
'What does your name mean?' James asked, finally, his forehead still resting on my shoulder.
I jerked at the sound of his voice. 'Gray song of desire.'
James turned his face and kissed my neck. It scared me, the way he kissed me, because it was so sad. I don't know why I thought it was, but I could feel it. He sat up straight and let me lean back on his chest. Closing my heavy eyes, I let him cradle me against him and breathed in time to the thud of his heart.
'Don't go to sleep, Izzy,' James said, and I opened my eyes. 'I don't think you should go to sleep.'
'I wasn't sleeping,' I protested, but my eyes had a sticky feeling, and I couldn't remember how long they'd been closed.
James' hands were clasped over my breastbone, holding me to him. 'Your heart's going a million miles an hour. Like a rabbit.'
Animals with fast hearts always lived shorter lives. Rabbits and mice and birds. Their hearts racing as fast as they could toward the end. Maybe we all just got a finite number of heartbeats, and if your heart beat twice as fast, you used them up in half the time as a normal person.
'Let's go,' I said.
'Are you ready?'
'Let's go,' I repeated. I just wanted to get it over with.
'Whoa. Night of the living dead,' I said as we walked W across the overgrown yard in front of Brigid Hall. 'Or rather, night of the living geek. I had no idea music geeks danced.'
The campus was transformed. From the yard outside Brigid, it looked like a happening party. There were tons of black-clad bodies, gyrating to some sort of pounding bass, which I could just barely make out from where we were. As we got closer, however, I realized that the thumping bass was some trendy pop band. You'd think a music school could at least have scraped up a couple of live musicians, even if it had to be topforty crappola, but there was a DJ up there between the speakers. And what had looked like sexy, coordinated dancing from far away was really a sidewalk full of writhing teens with dubious coordination. Some were wearing masks and others had actually bothered to work up real costumes. But mostly, it was just a bunch of music geeks wiggling to bad music. Sort of what I would've expected from Halloween at Thornking-Ash.
'It's at moments like this'--Nuala paused and watched a chubby guy walk by wearing a fake set of boobs--'that I question whether or not I really want to be human.'
I guided her away from a girl in what was supposed to be a sexy cat costume. 'Me too. How are you feeling?'
'If you ask me that again, I'll kill you, is how I'm feeling,' Nuala said mildly.
'Roger that.' I stood on my tiptoes and looked for anyone useful. Or at least anyone I recognized. It seemed like the school population had multiplied by at least five or ten while I'd had my back turned. I tried to keep my voice light. 'Sullivan wanted us to meet him by the perv satyr. We should find him first, right?'
'I have no freaking clue. Why would I know?'
'Because you've done this before?' I suggested. She gave me a dark look. 'Fine. Let's find Sullivan.'
'Or Paul,' Nuala said quickly.
I wondered what Cernunnos had told Paul. 'Or Paul.'
We shouldered through the crowd, a solid black mass in the dull orange light from the bonfires. I still stank like whatever
Cernunnos' perfume was, but despite that, I could smell a weird scent hanging over the students. Herb-ish. Sort of bitter/sweet/earthy. It reminded me of this summer and it made me wonder if some of the faces behind these masks weren't human.
Nuala voiced what I was thinking, 'Whose party is this, anyway?'
I'd figured that the faeries would be out on Halloween, but for some reason I'd thought they'd stay on their hills. 'Sullivan!'
barked Nuala behind me. And there he was, looking grimly efficient. He made a beeline straight toward us. 'Where the hell have you been?' he asked pleasantly.
'We were just looking for you. Have you found Dee yet?' I replied.
'No.'
Nuala gestured around at the dancers. 'Is something funny going on here?'
'Yes,' Sullivan said. 'All you need to know is that the school is very much an occupied territory at the
