“You’ve got to. You see my friend over there?” I gesture to Daphne, who stands very tentatively a few feet behind me. She probably thinks I’ve gone insane. “It was her dream to be part of this competition, but something came up that threw off her plan, something that was kind of my fault, and now I’m trying to make it up to her. And I need you to help me.” I smile at her in a way that, hopefully, doesn’t make her think of me as a “sonny” and slide the paper closer to her so she can see the amount of money she can redeem it for. “Just let her sing, please?”
“All right, honey,” she whispers. “Can’t say no to a boy with a smile like that. And this ain’t too bad, too.” She picks up the slip of paper and tucks it into the front of her shirt. “I’d think about telling you my room number, sugar, but it’s obvious you’ve got a thing for your friend over there.”
I whisper a few more things to her, and then when the latest contestant finishes and the crowd applauds, the MC heads up to the stage.
“What did you just do?” Daphne asks, quite accusingly.
I smile at her.
“What. Did. You. Do?”
“Seems we’ve got one more number for you all,” the MC says. “Daphne Raines, come on up here, hon!”
“What?” She balks at me. “I can’t. I don’t … I don’t even have a guitar!”
“Then ask that guy,” I say, pointing at one of the contestants. “Smile at him and he’ll give it to you.”
“I don’t know what to sing.”
“It’ll come to you.”
“There are hundreds of people here.”
“So?”
“This is crazy,” she says.
“This was your plan.”
She groans, but I know she wants to sing.
“Go,” I say. “Before the judges put a stop to it.”
Daphne hugs me. She pulls away too quickly and heads for the stage, stopping only to beg a guitar off a guy who all too willingly hands it over.
She stands on the stage, adjusting the guitar over her shoulder. I can’t help thinking she looks as bright and intangible as a ray of sunshine, standing in the spotlight. She leans into the microphone. “This is a song that I wrote with my dad. You may have heard it before.” She looks in the direction of where she left me standing. “For you, Haden.”
She strums the first few notes on the guitar and then starts singing. “Shadow of a star …”
Her voice echoes out from the speakers, filling the club. The entire room comes to a standstill. All other sounds, voices, movements stop. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m the one who stops, everything else disappearing. Nothing else exists. I can’t even breathe, for fear of missing a single note of her song. Watching her is like staring into the sun, but I can’t look away.
When she finishes, the room remains frozen for a full three seconds, then explodes into cheers and applause. The judges hold up their cards. I can’t see what they say from here, but they make Daphne happy. She throws her hands up in the air and curtseys at the same time. I’ve never seen anyone look so alive.
And that’s when it strikes me. How can I take Daphne away from this world? How can I take sunshine and life into a place of shadow and death?
For the first time, I hope more than anything that the Oracle will tell me I am wrong. If my god were still alive, if I could pray, I’d send down a prayer. I’d beg him to tell the Oracle another way. I’d cry to him for another choice.
Because Hades help me, I’m falling for this girl.
Daphne runs toward me from the stage, the biggest smile on her face. I want nothing more than for her to throw her arms around me. If she doesn’t do it, then I will.
“Are you Joe Vince’s daughter?” a large man asks, stepping between us.
Daphne stops short. “Yes.”
“Ah. I thought so. Do you mind if I get a picture of you for our ‘before they were stars’ wall? We’ve got a picture of your dad up there,” he says, pointing to a wall of framed photographs. “You’re going places, kiddo. I’ll be kicking myself if I don’t get a picture now.”
“Um, yes,” she says, but her gaze flits to me.
She smiles at the man as he takes a picture with his camera. “Someday, we’ll hang this right next to the picture of Joe!”
When the man leaves, Daphne goes to the wall of photos. I follow her. There, right in the center of the wall, in a big black frame, is a picture of a much younger-looking Joe Vince. He poses for the photo with his arm around a girl who looks very much like Daphne.
“Is that …?”
“My mom,” she says. “Wow. This must have been taken the night they met. They were only together for a few days, you know.”
“I didn’t know.… Who’s that with your mom?” I point to a second woman in the photo, standing off to the side a bit. She and Daphne’s mom wear matching silver bracelets that look oddly familiar to me. Like the one Brim wears as her collar.
“Oh,” Daphne says. “That must have been Kayla.”
That name strikes me so hard, I feel like the wind has been knocked out of my chest.