Custo! Get me out of here!
She’d been shouting at him in her head since his big revelation at the loft. Why they were in the jazz club, she had no idea. Something about a room for the night. If they couldn’t go back to Segue, she’d much rather sacrifice her credit card for the predictable double queens and bath in a hotel room. Something, anything, normal.
I’m tired. I want to leave.
Nothing. Just the wail of a note as he pushed a string high on a fret to tug at the melody. The guitar was a voice calling out into the club for attention, the last note crying, Please!
She didn’t have to listen. She looked away, clenching her teeth so hard her jaw ached.
The song followed her, breaking away from the melody into a solo. The notes stayed low, quarrelsome, building to an angry, violent accusation, but laced with pain.
And then she knew Custo was speaking to his father.
All the things he couldn’t say were translated into a medium where, like her dance, communication was visceral, pure. The music formed a foreign language, but like a gift of tongues, she understood.
With each pick of the strings Custo’s story tumbled out, the specifics rounded by notes, but the layers of feeling pronounced in sheets of sound. Aggression predominated, but the intensity was strung together by hurt. The refrain passed away, and the song broke into a doubled melody, two lines of music in conversation with each other. One was regular, masculine, predictable, Adam. The other, its brother, was all improvisation, running headlong into a catastrophic explosion of notes, death.
If Custo’s life hadn’t been co-opted by the wraith war, she knew what he would have become. The raw honesty of his music, coupled with obvious mastery over an instrument, revealed him. He couldn’t keep his secrets while he played. This was his truth.
Annabella’s heart was in her throat as she tried to keep the darkness of the club from shifting to Shadow while she resonated soul to soul with the weave of the song. Magic flickered at the edges of her vision, but she kept her attention fixed on Custo’s bowed head. She stayed grounded in the club, breathing its smoke in lieu of the intoxicating air of Faerie.
Custo’s playing reduced, and with a tilt of his head, he threw the song to the others for solos. The old man played as if he knew Custo’s story, dribbling on the bass like a rapid heartbeat. The drums came up after with a snap and burr of a flight from danger.
When Custo rejoined them, his notes were higher, lilting, slightly eerie, and…threaded with the dominant melody of Giselle. Annabella flushed with the realization that he was playing her into his story. His improvisation wove the two songs together into one composition: soaring, mournful, full of impossible hopes. A love song.
She’d known him only two days of hell on Earth. And he was an angel, utterly beyond her.
But with his soul filling the smoky club, what could she do but love him back?
Chapter Seventeen
GRIPPING the guitar by the neck, Custo stood to a smattering of applause. Not that he needed it. God, it had just felt so good to play. To channel his maddening restlessness into a medium that satisfied like a back-alley fight, but without the broken nose or bloody knuckles.
His hands had been itching for murder since the attack at Abigail’s. The trip down memory lane hadn’t helped either. Fucked-up life, fucked-up world. Now that the sensation had receded, he could think. He could be. That dark, angry part of him had finally gone quiet. Like absolution.
The darkness of the club had remained undisturbed while he played. Nothing had moved out of place. No wolf. Just peace. There had been so many opportunities for the wolf to attack, yet none were taken. The wait at Segue, his “outpatient” surgery, the party, the loft, now Jack’s place. To what they owed this reprieve, he had no idea.
Maybe it wasn’t a reprieve at all.
Custo had kept an eye on Annabella in his peripheral vision while he played. Ready to drop Jack’s $20,000 guitar should she twitch in fear. Now he dared to look directly at her.
Annabella sat like a queen in her deep blue gown, always straight, never slumped and easy. She didn’t look so angry anymore. Her eyes were shimmery with tears, which was never a good sign in a woman. But she didn’t seem sad or scared either. He didn’t like it.
He was glad he had already decided not to read her mind. At the moment, he was nervous about what he’d find there. He had wanted her to hear him play, but now he felt exposed. Uncomfortable in his own skin.
He discarded the feeling. It wouldn’t take much to tick her off again. It was what he did best.
The bass player and drummer gave Custo a nod of recognition and Custo thanked them for backing him on the spur of the moment. He got a couple of sincere anytimes.