“Go.” I tried to keep my voice level, hoping Stef, Lidea, and the others would hear me. “While they’re distracted.”
Orrin and Armande motioned for Lidea and the baby to go first, toward the path off the beach. Pine boughs rustled, but the sylph didn’t turn. They watched me, slipping closer as I bent and placed the SED on the ground. I backed away, and they writhed toward the device, seeming to stare down at it.
Their cries were like wind over canyons: hollow, melancholy, eerie. Heat rolled off them in waves, reeking of ash and death. Any sane creature made of flesh and bone knew to stay away from sylph.
That was my plan as well. Soon my friends would be on the path to the city, and then Sam and I would follow. I’d have to leave the SED to keep the sylph distracted, but surely the Council would replace it. But how would I explain this? Call it an accident? Stef and everyone else had seen me pull out my SED with a purpose.
While my friends escaped, sylph swirled around the device as though dancing. Their moans carried across the graying beach, and then one of their cries hit a high note at the same time as the nocturne. The cacophony snapped, a sensation like walking into a crowded room—and suddenly understanding individual voices and words. One mournful wail became the melody, while another sang countermelody. They all chose parts, like they were members of one of Sam’s orchestras.
Near the path, Stef—the last to escape—turned around, her mouth hanging open. I motioned for her to hurry, and she turned back to the path.
The nocturne swirled around the beach, above the swish of waves and alongside the rustling of pine boughs. It was beautiful, all of them singing. Part of me wanted to lose myself in the haunting sound, but I knew better.
The nocturne ended.
Sylph fluttered around the SED, waiting. A tendril of shadow hovered over the small device, but nothing happened.
I glanced over my shoulder. Stef and the others were still visible between trees, and if anyone from the guard station was coming, I couldn’t hear them.
Sam and I weren’t nearly close enough to the path off the beach. Not that reaching the path would magically make us safe. Sylph could fly between trees and catch us in no time.
I shot Sam a pleading look, silently urging him to stay put while I started toward the sylph and my SED again. He nodded once, watching me with an intense protectiveness. But he’d let me do what I needed to do. He always did. And all I had to do was program the SED to play enough music to give us time to get back to Heart.
Sylph whistled and moaned, watching my approach like I might attack them. My heartbeat thundered in my ears as the sun dipped behind mountain peaks. Golden shafts of light spilled across the beach and the dusk-gray water, and the sylph grew darker. Taller. They hummed at the crunch of my boots on sand.
“Back away,” I whispered, and put my hands palm-out as though I could push them. “Back away.”
A line of inky shadows shuddered away from the SED, keeping an even distance from me. Sam gasped.
Shivering in spite of the heat billowing off the creatures, I bent and retrieved the SED. “Stay back,” I murmured, tapping the SED’s face and selecting all of Sam’s music. Typically, selling recorded music was part of how he earned enough credit to feed himself, but as his student—and other things—I was able to access all his music. I’d been grateful before. Now his music would save lives.
The opening chords of Sam’s Phoenix Symphony flowed from the speakers. I put the device back on the sand. The sylph stuttered forward in unison, and stopped when I held up my hands.
A weak, panicked laugh escaped me. I was holding up my hands? The same hands a sylph had burned less than a year ago? Sometimes my idiocy astounded even me.
As before, the sylph began to dance, writhing like dark flames. They flowed in and out of one another, moving closer to the SED as I took measured steps away.
Soon, one picked up the melody, sang the notes just behind the piano, violins, and flutes. Close. So close.
Sam reached for me when I glanced backward. I moved as quickly as I dared. My heart raced and my hands shook, but I didn’t want to give the sylph any more indication of my fear.
I was halfway back to Sam when one of the sylph trilled and turned its eyeless gaze on me. The weight of its attention made me stagger as dusk deepened across the beach.
“What?” My words came as a whisper.
The sylph trilled again, twisting closer to me as it took up its part in the music once more.
It wanted me to sing? I stayed where I was, boots planted in the sand, conscious of Sam behind me. But when the sylph trilled again, I hummed the next few measures of the melody.
As though electricity surged through the sylph, they all shivered straighter, taller, and closer to me. They seemed eager and—welcoming?
That sounded ridiculous, even in my head, but the last thing I wanted to do was anger them. I held up my hands as though pushing, stepped forward, and kept humming.