Spinning Into Gold

by Emma Savant

  Perhaps that was the point, that whatever it was would happen. Running away now was only pushing back the inevitable—and who knew how many other artists he might destroy in the meantime?

  But if I fought him tonight, who knew how he might destroy me?

  They were awful choices.

  Someone pounded on the door, and Clarence and I leapt back from one another just as it opened. The stage manager was there, looking vaguely unsettled; behind him, August loomed. He had all the dark, crackling energy of a storm cloud. When he saw Clarence, he narrowed his eyes slightly, looking at Clarence and then to me like he was trying to draw a connection.

  Clarence stiffened, but I saw him force a smile and hold out his hand. He wiggled the fingers of his other hand slightly. August’s tentative expression resolved into a charming smile as the tabula rasa lifted.

  “Your Highness,” he said. He took Clarence’s hand and shook it with far too much confidence.

  “Mr. Rumpel,” Clarence said. “I just took the opportunity to meet Miss Miller and wish her luck before her performance. I’ve been a great fan ever since her Orbs performance.”

  “As has the rest of the world, Your Highness,” August said.

  He was pleasant, friendly, flattering—everything I would want a manager to be in a situation like this. The illusion was flawless, and yet I could still feel the imprint of his fingers on my jaw, making my voice too tight to sing.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Clarence said. He turned to me, and even I could have almost believed we’d never met until this moment. “Miss Miller, break a leg. I admire your courage. I don’t think I could so much as sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in front of a crowd like that.”

  More double-speak. I wished I could take his hand.

  “Thank you, Your Highness.”

  Clarence slipped past August, quickly and without excusing himself, like he couldn’t be bothered to chat with the help any longer. My courage went with him.

  “You’re ready, Dior?” August said. The question in his voice was a formality, and I gave him the formality of nodding in return.

  Chapter 30

  The silence backstage crept into my bones and calmed the churning in my stomach. This quiet space behind curtains was so familiar I felt something that might have been the opposite of stage fright—that I was home, and I was safe, because I owned everything here. Out front, audience members crowded the enormous standing space in front of the stage. We were ready for each other.

  Then August put his hand on the small of my back.

  “Don’t screw this up,” he whispered.

  My hand tensed on the microphone.

  Blue lights started flickering in wavelike patterns back and forth across the velvet curtains that spanned the back of the stage and my entrance music began rising from an almost inaudible hum to the throbbing of strings and the low thundering roll of a drum.

  I jumped my cue by a fraction of a second, launching myself from August and out onto the stage. The roar of the crowd greeted me, and I threw out my arms as if to embrace them. My voice rose from me like a living thing, and I let it go. I knew this song, and I knew this music, and I knew the waves of passion and longing and recognition that flooded in from my audience and into me. They were here to feel something, and I was here to play their every emotional string.

  August was here to feed off of them.

  Right in this moment, though, that wasn’t my problem. I could only sing and throw glamours around myself in a tornado of glittering magic. The rest of the world would have to take care of itself for the next three and a half minutes.

  The music pulsed and rattled and throbbed, and then it ended on a bang.

  “Give it up, Portland!” I shouted, and the crowd screamed. August wasn’t poisoning them yet. This was all me, and it gave me life.

  I tossed my microphone from one hand to the other, then crouched down and waved to a young teenage girl standing near the edge of the stage. She screamed, her voice lost in the crowd, and started hitting her mom’s arm in excitement.

  “And happy birthday, Your Highness!” I called. I waved generally toward the back of the room, as if I didn’t know exactly where Clarence was standing. Perhaps it was my imagination, or perhaps my faerie senses were on high alert, but I could swear I could feel him, up on the first balcony, slightly to house left, resonating with my music at a slightly deeper frequency than all the rest.

  “How nice is this? When I first heard I was going to be playing for some of Prince Clarence’s closest friends, I thought I’d be, like, a wedding singer in the corner. This is amazing!”

  The crowd cheered, elated to be included.

  “Okay, let’s start this evening off right,” I said.

  I’d meant to do this part later, after they were invested in the show, but I had them now. I felt their emotions echoing mine, and I wanted to do this quickly, while we were all still real, when it would mean something.

  “It’s not a good birthday unless everyone gets to embarrass the birthday boy, so I’m going to need your help. I need you to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ with me as loudly as you can, and please try to stay on key ’cause I’m gonna sing harmony.”

  They laughed, good-natured, and I cued the drummer to give us a beat. I started singing, the rest of the band joined in, and, a moment later, the audience found their way to the melody. I conducted them dramatically with my wand, sending confetti and balloons out the tip as we sang, and launched my voice into a high, lilting harmony.

  When we finished, I shot off a stream of fireworks that exploded to the pitch of the traditional “And many more” echo. The audience spotlight found Clarence, who was laughing and blushing like a good sport, and the crowd started screaming again.

  Clarence met my eyes from across the room and shook his head, grinning. I blew him a kiss, leading to a few whistles from the audience, and then I waved my hand at the crowd to calm down so the concert could continue.

  The next song was “Fight Me,” and by the end of the first line, everyone had lost their minds. It had been one of my more popular songs before the Orbs show, but now everyone knew it, and it wasn’t long before they were chanting the chorus back at me. My backup dancers filtered onto the stage near the beginning of the song, and I moved with them. It felt as though all the anxiety of the last few months was shaking itself out through my limbs, and every shake and pop and spin threw some of it off and away from me. I wished I could stay there forever, exhausting myself and trading feelings with the hundreds of people who shared this space.

  Halfway through the song, their emotions shifted. The chanting began to take on a sharper edge, and their cheers took on an almost hysterical tone. My muscles tightened, making my next dance moves tighter. A slight sense of emptiness began to hover at the edges of my consciousness, a sense that the completion I felt onstage was being siphoned away.

  The next time the choreography let me, I turned my head to the side.

  August stood just inside the wings, staring at me with intensity blazing in his eyes. I felt like prey. But he was already eating—feeding off the energy that came from the crowd and then shot from me like a laser.

  He would consume me until there was nothing left. And then he would find a new star to focus the energies of a new audience, and he would consume her, too.

  My stomach lurched and the room spun around me. I focused back out on the audience, trying to find one spot of stability in the crowd.

  There were four.

  Clarence, up on the balcony, stood like a pillar. Near the back of the room, Serena’s cool energy was hard as ice. In the middle of the crowd, Sadie was tranquil and immovable, and Briana was ahead of her, rooted and steady in the storm. They both held enchanted cameras, recording every moment of the concert.

  I reached out to them and remembered my own anklet, hidden with a glamour but closer to me than August had ever been. It was a shield.

  “You wanna fight me?” I sang. “Come on, then, bite me.”


  I faced the crowd, but I sang the words to August.

  I was going to fight him until he bled. He had sucked up and spit out a lot of people before me. I would be the last.

  “Hey, I can take you,” I called, punching the air to the beat. “Let’s go outside.”

  August was going to spend the rest of his life regretting crossing Dior Miller.

  The music shifted to a slow ballad. I walked to the edge of the stage and crouched down to sing directly to the front row, then stood and let my voice sweep through to the very back of the theater. Blue and purple lights shimmered behind me, and I used my wand to throw cascades of stars out into the audience. They glittered and sparkled as they fell through the air, and people lifted up their hands to catch the stars and wave them in time to the music. The audience listened, spellbound, held by the music and August’s magic.

  When the last lines faded out, so did the stars, and then the drums picked up and I launched into “Wild.” The crowd burst into screams and cheers, and then I could see them dancing, the whole audience moving together in disarray like ants on an anthill. The strong beats of the chorus brought them all together, and we pumped our fists in the air and shouted the words as one.

  I wished this energy was all coming from me and from them. Instead, August’s magic clung to us, tainting what should have been perfect.

  The audience’s cheers rose until the screams felt like they might burst my eardrums. They were shrill, and I had to fight the urge to shield myself from the waves of mindless, feverish excitement that flooded over me from the edge of the stage.

  This was my moment. It was the best chance I’d have.

  I clutched the neckline of my outfit as though trying to mime something about my heart. The little silver vial was hard and warm under the fabric. I slipped it out, still singing at the top of my lungs. The sound from the microphone and the enchantments mixed with the roar of the crowd until it was one long echoing frequency of elation.

  “Can’t domesticate me,” I said, walking to the edge of the stage. I let my body handle the music while I focused my mind on the charm that would set the dust free, and on the enchantment that would help it spread to every corner of the room. “Don’t even try to tame me, I’m unrestrained, undisciplined; I’ve fought and cried and prayed and sinned.”

  I held the bottle tightly in my fist. I would have one instant to throw the dust and grab my wand to cast the spell with all the power I could muster.

  My eyes flickered to August, standing there in the wings, barely hidden behind the curtains. He had a look of rapture on his face, the expression of a starving animal who’d been set loose upon a feast.

  My hand clenched around the glass. His eyes met mine. They focused. He tensed.

  “Can’t cage me, I’m wild!”

  I threw the bottle out into the audience and slammed my microphone away. A loud screech of feedback filled the space.

  “Break,” I whispered.

  The bottle shattered into a million pieces in the air, raining glass and silver dust down onto the frenzied audience. In one swift movement so precise it would have made any choreographer proud, I pulled my wand from its pocket and pointed it at the cloud.

  “Illuminate!”

  The house lit up with a blinding flash. The dust was everywhere, reflecting off every person in the audience, coating them with the thick metallic poison of his magic. Clouds of silver turning slowly to gold swirled through the air, lighting up his influence as they breathed it in and let it settle on their eyes.

  I swung to face August, wand outstretched. He snarled, hatred contorting his face. He backed away, then turned to run.

  Someone was there in the wings, someone he didn’t want to run into. I caught a glimpse of outstretched wands and the dark cashmere sheen of suits. A woman with a severe bun, sleek suit, and a gray tint to her skin stepped toward August and the light of the stage fell on her face. I didn’t recognize her, but her expression was hard, and something about it struck me as being not quite fey. A spell shot from her wand, and August deflected it before turning and running.

  He sped by me in a blur of black as backup dancers darted and stumbled out of his way. I shot my wand out toward him in blind panic, and his wand clattered to the ground. Unable to stop, he launched himself off the stage. He fell and rolled as people jumped back to get out of his way, then scrambled to his feet and began shoving through the crowd.

  “Get him!” I shouted.

  There was no response. Their eyes were glazed. One man reached out toward August, and then his hands fell limply at his sides.

  They couldn’t hurt him.

  My mind raced so hard I could almost hear it clicking inside my head.

  He couldn’t escape. I couldn’t let him get away.

  My audience was still coated in visible evidence of his influence.

  My audience.

  I had only one weapon. I shot a spell behind me at the drums and shouted, “Keith, ‘Bewitchin!’” The drumsticks rose into the air and began banging haphazardly, and the drummer caught them and immediately launched into the next song. I ran to pick up my microphone.

  The rest of the band caught on, and the melody of “Bewitchin’ Be Dancin’” emerged from the chaos. It was the most upbeat song I’d ever written, and we were going to dance like our shoes were cursed with it.

  “That’s right, let’s move!” I shouted. “When I point my wand at you, I want you to go crazy!”

  I started singing and dancing. Starling hadn’t choreographed anything for this number; we hadn’t planned on performing it tonight. But the band was right there with me, and I didn’t need anyone to tell me how to move.

  August’s black suit stood out against the sea of gold. I pointed my wand toward him.

  “Dance!” I shouted between stanzas. “Don’t be strangers!”

  I spun around toward the backup dancers, who’d never rehearsed this song. “Dance,” I ordered, and after a moment of confusion, they started moving.

  The audience obeyed me. They danced like their lives depended on it, and in moving, they stood closer together. Friends danced with each other. Strangers threw their arms out and blocked August’s path. He looked at me as though he’d kill me if he could, but his gleaming gold wand lay harmless on the stage.

  He darted off to the side and ducked between people. I pointed my wand at a new part of the audience as I kicked off the chorus. Instantly, they banded together and began moving in a way he couldn’t possibly get through.

  August held up his hands, and a stream of gold smoke poured from him. The crowd slowed and parted, seeming as dazed as bees in the smoke, but he was too preoccupied to manage all of them at once.

  I pointed my wand. The next group danced into position.

  Through the crowd, other dark suits stood out against the black, making their way to him. My heart threw itself over and over against my rib cage until I had to fight for the breath I needed to sing, but I didn’t let up. I sang and I commanded my audience and we all moved together. Music pounded so loudly my sternum rattled, and the lights on the stage pulsed in time to the beat.

  “You be bewitchin,’” I sang, “when you be dancin’. Yeah, babe, you’ve charmed me. Take me flying through the stars tonight.”

  The dark suits reached August. A tall man with the same grayish skin held out his wand, and the woman I’d seen before moved in. August turned and threw back his arm. I thought his fist was going to connect with her face, but she darted out of the way at the last moment. Silver ribbons shot out the end of her wand and wrapped around his wrists and ankles. He lurched, then fell, and thrashed against the floor.

  Around him, the audience didn’t seem to notice. Their eyes were on me; their energy still flowed my way, and there was no one on the other end to drink it all in.

  The scream that had been building inside me for months burst out as music and magic. I pointed my wand up at the ceiling and a sky’s worth of whirling constellations exploded from it
s tip.

  “Take me flying through the stars tonight!” The last note shimmered in the air like a long brass note, carrying all my rage and terror with it, and I held it until I felt like I could pass out from lack of air and Keith was smashing the drums and cymbals behind me until it was all a mess of sound and anger.

  I threw my wand up again and sent out a last shower of stars, and then the stage lights went out and plunged us all into darkness.

  Chapter 31

  A few final cheers cut through the darkness. They subsided, and an air of anticipation settled in.

  The audience still hadn’t noticed anything wrong. They were still lost in the golden haze of August’s influence, as obsessed with me as he’d forced them to be, waiting for the next song.

  The lights weren’t going to come back on. The energy and commotion surrounding so many Glims must have thrown off the enchantments that mingled with the wiring. I’d seen it happen once before at a small concert featuring a rising Glim band, who couldn’t afford a great technical team yet but had the kind of fans who would fill buildings and then spill out the door.

  I couldn’t let this audience leave, not until we’d made sure August was under control and everyone here could be freed from his spell.

  A few lone cheers and calls cut through the quiet. I strained my ears toward where I had seen the guard take August down, and picked up the faint sound of scuffling and muffled speech. They’d bound his mouth somehow; I could only hope that would do something to rein in his magic.

  “Okay, then,” I said, keeping my voice upbeat, but the sound died out in the large space. The microphone was dead, too. My aura felt totally depleted of magic. I couldn’t even summon up a basic amplification spell. I edged quietly back toward the band.

  “Keith,” I whispered. “Sheryl.”

  “Working on it,” Keith said. “I can’t find my wand in the dark.”