Thom made a face, probably because he thought we weren’t ready to play this. But I egged him on with a smile. I knew he was very susceptible to dares. And I was sure we could pull this off. This stage, this whole room, was magical, and besides, I had an inkling that it would be now or never, and I wanted to work on the song before I went. It just so happened that we had an audience: so what?
It was a very simple tune, with very simple lyrics. There was this medieval theme that echoed what Tristan had been playing the other night.
You say it’s binding
And you think it’s magic
Your road keeps winding
But I know this trick
You say I’m your pet
In parts and in whole
You don’t see it yet
The mark on my soul
I nearly froze then, suddenly realizing how strange these lyrics sounded to me now. I’d scribbled them the day before in the down moments while we’d been playing, and I almost hadn’t remembered them. Until right now. Back then, I hadn’t even known about that freaking death mark. It was just too weird a coincidence. Had I known somehow? Could I maybe understand it now?
At the very last minute, on a mad impulse, just to see where it would lead me, I changed the chorus on the fly. It was clunky, and it didn’t rhyme, but who cared? The boys were doing great. It was quite an enthralling little song in its bare, stripped-down way. The audience had fallen completely quiet. Maybe they liked it. It didn’t matter much anymore.
I could find you anywhere
See, I’ve got your golden heart
Feeding on the death mark
Feed the death mark on my soul
The lyrics were still puzzling, but the very simple tune Thom was still fiddling with was revealing a sophistication of its own now, arabesques that nobody had known to put there but had been there all the same, just waiting to be summoned into existence. Thom and I exchanged glances, and I could see him mouthing holy shit at me. I grinned.
And suddenly, I thought I got it.
Heart and death mark, life and death, they did feed off each other.
This death mark on my soul? Not a death mark after all.
30
And then the song was over, and the crowd was completely silent.
Seriously. You could have heard a fly zooming through the room had it not still been very much the heart of winter.
I looked at my bandmates, one by one. Thom seemed to be almost praying, Sam had that look he got when something or somebody hit him hard on the head, physically or metaphorically, and I had to laugh, forgetting I was still on the mic.
My laugh shook the room and broke the spell. Shouts rose from the audience, and then, after a short lapse, a wave of thunderous applause. Linus was smiling his proud “Hey, Mama, I just took a bath” good boy look, which was about the most angelic he could get. I laughed again, but this time the racket in the room swallowed my voice. My legs were a little wobbly, and my heart was about to explode.
Tristan jumped up the stairs, and he wasn’t smiling. He made a beeline for me, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me full on the mouth. On the stage, in front of everybody—the audience, the realms, Hughes, Dora, everybody.
I kissed him back. Of course I did, all the while telling myself that it could mean nothing. I tried to hug him back, too, but he’d trapped me in his arms, and I had to fight him for it. Someone, Thom I thought, took the mic from my hand, freeing me to tug at Tristan’s ludicrous suit, grab cloth, claw my way to ice-cold skin and hard shivering muscle. I heard catcalls.
When we broke apart, he spoke to me, fast.
“Sorry about that, Vic. There was no way I was making that my wish.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed, even though I’d told myself not to raise my hopes too much. It still felt like a slap to the face.
“No, no,” he said, “you don’t understand.”
I really didn’t.
“I think I got it,” he said urgently. “Thanks to that last song. Mesmerizing, by the way. We haven’t got much time now, but I think I can see what Hughes is so afraid about.”
I nodded. “The death mark.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the spell I’ve been feeding upon.”
“My theory exactly.”
“I don’t know the first thing about how it works, but I think I’m using it as a magical generator. Every time they’ll try to kill me, I’ll become more powerful. Am I a genius or what?”
He smiled. “You are, pet.”
I scrunched up my nose. I wasn’t his pet. It was something I saw now that I could get entirely used to, and I didn’t want that.
“I am not your pet. And I’m warning you. If your wish is for me to become your pet, I will have to kill you.”
“Okay.”
I sighed.
“I still don’t know what I’m going to do about these damned boxes.”
He nodded. “Listen to me carefully. I think Hughes is afraid of you. He must fear that you’ll become too strong if he doesn’t kill you off now, once and for all. I don’t know why, though. But I’m sure Hughes’s going to try and kill you in a clean way. He may not be the one who set your house on fire.”
“Dora?”
He grimaced. “Maybe. But Vic, the way he’s going to do it is messing with your mind. If you have a weakness, he will exploit it.”
My turn to make a face. “That’s bad. I’m positively made of weaknesses.”
“No, you’re not. What I mean is he’ll try and trick you into killing yourself. This has to be his preferred scenario. His plan B was to get his one percent of all my lands, Lord knows why. But his plan A consisted in killing you off. This means you’re important.”
Gee, at least someone thought I was. But I tried not to let my insecurities go to my head. Tristan was right. This was a mind game. And I had to tell him what I knew, now, before it was too late.
“Marianne thinks Hughes wants something that’s hidden in the woods near your place, on your lands. Old magic. She seemed to think I could do something to protect that treasure. And protect you.”
The reddish taint in his eyes as he stared at me now made them more unreadable than ever.
“Where are you going to be? When I open the boxes?” I asked.
“I’m staying with you.”
I tutted. “No. You can’t. Hughes wants to get to you. You’re his end target somehow. You need to leave.”
“But Vic, he is going to get to me. Through you. It doesn’t matter if I leave or not. His plan will be working anyway. I need to know what happens to you.”
It was comforting, except it wasn’t. I’d told his sister I was going to protect him, and it was starting to feel like a full-time job. Like two full-time jobs.
“Just promise me you’ll leave at the first sign of trouble. Remember my escape plan? You’re it. I need you to flee so that I can vanish and find you.”
That sounded like a last-minute resort that wouldn’t really solve anything, but still, it was nice to know we had a backup plan in case of dire necessity.
“Okay.”
The band had let us talk in private for a moment, but now they wanted to share the triumph. Thom slapped Tristan on the back, and they shared a manly hug before I could say anything more to him. Then Tristan moved on to Sam.
Linus had abandoned his drums and was coming over to me.
“V, I don’t think you’ve ever been so freaking good. You killed it.”
“We killed it,” I rectified. “It was great. I want to die now, or maybe do it again.”
Aaand I was glad I did not have any pending wish from anyone. I didn’t really want to die. I wanted a career doing exactly what we’d been doing here on this stage. All the time. I didn’t even care about fame or money. I wanted this. Them.
“We’re a family,” I declared, a hand on my heart.
“Same question as before. Are you drunk, honey? You can tell me. Or maybe love drunk?” He wi
nked at me, and I gave him a playful slap on the arm.
“No. I told you it’s not like that.”
Linus quirked an eyebrow but said nothing.
“Anyway,” I went on, “I want you all to know how proud I am of us.”
“Tell them yourself. Let’s go drink and celebrate, or do you have to work tonight?”
“I…have something I need to do with Tristan, yes. No, will you take your mind out of the gutter, please? A work-like thing. It might be tricky. If you don’t see me after tonight, don’t be too sad. You can take my songs and do with them what you like.”
Linus looked worried now. “What? What’s wrong? What has he dragged you into now?”
But I shook my head. “No, he didn’t do anything. It’s just something that I need to sort out for myself, and Tris is mixed up in it, through no fault of his own. But he’s helping, I swear. Don’t do anything, and don’t tell the others. I’m trusting you here, okay?”
He reluctantly accepted my confusing explanations just when I felt someone’s cold hand on my shoulder. I spun around, a smile on my face, expecting Tristan again.
But it was Hughes.
31
“Good show,” Tristan’s cousin said, a hint of sarcastic humor dancing on his cruel mouth. “Good kiss, too.”
He had no business being on the stage, and I wasn’t going to thank him for his backhanded compliments, so I just remained silent. Luckily, he didn’t seem the type to enjoy meaningless chats.
“Time to go open these boxes,” was all he said.
“Where’s Dora?”
He grinned. “Off to find Tristan, I suppose.”
I looked around. Tristan wasn’t on the stage anymore. Suddenly I was afraid for him, which wasn’t very rational. He was a grown man with teleportation abilities; surely he could take care of himself when faced with his maybe-probably-ex-future-fiancée.
I followed Hughes down the steps, back to ground level. I could see people wanted to talk to me, and it felt awful having to turn them away. I glanced back at Thom, who was now in full conversation with a tall guy in a vermillion suit. Elise was coming at me across the room, a huge smile on her round face, but Hughes turned to me.
“No chatting. My patience is at its end, and I have other things to tend to.”
“Oooh, I’ve been meaning to ask. What do you do in life? Are you in the entertainment industry, too?”
I smiled apologetically to Elise for not being able to talk right now. Hughes, meanwhile, looked perplexed and annoyed.
“What’s it to you, pet?”
“Still not your pet, Hughes. You wish.”
His eyes had narrowed to angry purple slits now.
“Maybe I should just crush you, gnat.”
I laughed, just to fight off the chill that was creeping down my dress again.
“You can’t crush me. Remember? You need the boxes to crush me. Whatever’s in them. By the way, what’s in the boxes?”
He just smiled and didn’t answer. I hadn’t really expected him to.
The stairs to the cellar were opposite the bar, behind a closed door. We hadn’t stocked anything down there, because the rooms between the bar and the backstage space had proved more than enough for everything. I picked up the key from a hook above the bar and signaled to Hughes to follow me. The two girls we’d hired to take care of customers were doing great. I gave the one nearest to me, Fabien’s older sister Adeline, a big thumbs up. She winked at me and blew me a kiss.
“Come on, Hughes, this way.”
It took us a moment to cross the crowded room. This far from the stage, at least, no one tried to stop us. Sure, they recognized me, but they were too shy or not interested enough to want to talk music.
The door to the cellar was still closed, and I’d seen no trace of Tristan. Where had Dora taken him? I used the key to unlock the cellar door and slid inside before turning on the light, just a bulb hanging down from the ceiling. Hughes followed me. This was going to look weird from the outside, but I didn’t much care. I locked the door so that no one walked in on something magical and dangerous. It would also dissuade Tristan from meeting us here.
To get into the main cellar, you needed to go down a short flight of crumbling concrete steps. To my credit, even with rubber legs, I managed not to stumble or get my heels stuck anywhere.
And then there was no escaping my fate: there, under a black tarp, were the five boxes I’d been trying so hard not to open.
In one swift gesture, Hughes pulled the tarp off the brown cardboard boxes, chuckling. “Which one do you want to open first?”
“I don’t know. How shall I proceed? It would help if you told me a little more about what’s in them.”
But he cackled and didn’t answer.
I was quite tired of this whole charade. I didn’t really care about the boxes anymore; I just wanted this over with. Thanks to Tristan’s theory, I knew that whatever aggression I needed to prepare myself for would likely be psychological.
What annoyed me was not understanding Hughes’s motivations better.
“Okay, I’ll just start with this one,” I said, grabbing the nearest box.
It was in pristine condition, as if it hadn’t sat in a storage room for years before suffering through two moves and a house fire. It was also moderately heavy. I shook it, but it made no rattling sound. I started pulling at the black tape that sealed it shut. This was it, then. The moment of reckoning had come, and I spared a thought for my lucky ukulele, of all things.
When I opened the box, it was empty, which made no sense, considering its weight. I looked up at Hughes, but he didn’t seem to think anything was out of the ordinary.
And nothing was happening.
“Do I need to open all five boxes to unleash your badass magic, Mr. Hughes?”
He narrowed his eyes again and clenched his jaw, his fists. It was marvelous that I was able to rile him up like that, just by being an ordinary rebellious pet.
“You want to hurt me, don’t you?” I asked with more curiosity than fear. “I don’t think you’re allowed to, though. I tend to get stronger from adversity. Cause I’m a walking, singing metaphor that way.”
A deep growl had started in his throat, and he was almost shaking now.
“Come on, Hughes. You really let mere humans get at you like that? That’s not very good for your blood pressure. You should relax. You’re not that young anymore. What are you, thirty-five, forty?”
“Open that box,” he barked.
But I was already working on the third one, and nothing weird or magical had happened yet.
“Maybe it’s not working?” I mused.
I was feeling rather clever now. Playing with big bad Hughes’s nerves when there was nothing more he could do to me was heady. And it was confirming my theory: it really seemed as if he knew about the death mark.
Now I was down to the very last box, and he smiled, exhaling in relief. Oh, so I needed to open all five of them. All right. My mouth suddenly felt dry, and I sent a short prayer to the gods of rock ’n’ roll who were lounging in hell, waiting for me. Maybe the time had come for me to join them.
Last box. Last strand of black tape. I hooked my fingers under the cardboard straps and opened the box, finding only empty air, just like before.
“Oops,” I commented, with a goofy grin, “another dud.”
I raised my eyes to Hughes to taunt him, and that’s when it hit me. A wave, but not the musical kind. A pure, thick, rich and inescapable wave of fate and despair.
I had the time to open my mouth in a provocative yawn, though.
“Really, Hughes? Is that all you could come up with? You’re disappointing in every way.”
But the cellar brick walls were dissolving around me now. Or rather, they were turning into a forest. Except, instead of trees, this forest was made of giant metallic brambles, thick thorny stems that were rapidly sprouting out of the concrete ground and turning into a giant thicket, catching me in their tangle
before I could even think of escaping.
Hughes had stepped back and was looking at me with a smile. There was this wall of intertwined barbed wire between us now. I tried to move and only managed to tear a sleeve. Something pointy and razor-sharp sliced into my skin, and a hot tear of liquid—my blood—soon formed before sliding down my arm, to my elbow. I heard the drop hit the ground. The bramble was getting thicker still. Soon, it would shred me to pieces.
But no: it stopped just short of tearing me apart, and I found myself trapped in an awkward standing position that reminded me of rush hour in the Parisian underground, in that my feet were not exactly under my center of gravity. Exploring around with my left hand, I found a length of stem without too many thorns and grabbed on to it for balance. There was a gigantic thorn inches from my nose, aimed right at my face. The atmosphere reeked of steel.
Hughes laughed. “So, that’s the thing you’re afraid of? You must have read too many fairy tales in your childhood, pet. Or maybe there were black witches in your family? A spiked coffin comes to mind. You’re kinky, pet.”
I fought the tide of nausea, dread, and fury rising in me.
“Is that what you told Dora to put in these boxes, Hughes? My worst fear? Because I gotta tell you, honey, that’s not it.”
I really didn’t have a sick fear of brambles in me. Granted, I was afraid now—who wouldn’t be?—but not irrationally so. We were in the bar cellar. Sooner or later, someone would come. Tristan knew where I was, and people had seen us. I just had to wait a little, maybe shout to make myself heard.
People would come. I’d been trapped by steel before. I’d survived it just fine, and with broken bones to boot. I could wait. Maybe not long, but I had some time.
“We’re not done here,” Hughes said.
Although I couldn’t see his face because of the metallic thicket between us, I heard the cruel smile in his voice all the same. If I was going to live, and do my job, I needed answers. I needed them now. And if Hughes wasn’t too keen on answering direct questions, I’d have to worm information out of him by tricking him. I just didn’t know how.
Moonlight Binding Magic Page 17
