He shrugged. “Think outside your box. Who was I to presume that wasn’t the composer’s intention? Perhaps other worlds and races prefer their music to stop in what we consider the middle. Perhaps it excites them to leave it unfinished. I take nothing for granted. You can’t, if you want to drive your brain beyond established theory. But now it appears my initial impression was correct and that’s why it didn’t work. Because we only have part of it.” He muttered, “Had. Now we don’t even have that.”
I closed my eyes and sank inward, thinking hard. Thinking about how final and odd it was that every trace of the otherworldly melody had simply vanished the moment I’d played the song all the way through to the black hole. It hadn’t disappeared each time we’d listened to part of it. Nor had it puffed out of existence the moment Dancer had listened to all of it. I found it beyond the realm of probability that there might be an unknown evil entity out there, lurking in the ether, spying on us, and the moment we got close to success had seized every note of it, along with every memo we’d made about it.
Coupling that oddity with the complete erasure of the music box as well, I found it far more likely that the song had done whatever it was supposed to do, and been programmed to clean up after itself like a self-destructing mission message successfully played by an international, high-stakes spy.
But what was it supposed to do?
An epiphany slammed into my brain and my eyes flew open. Dani was staring at me with such a penetrating gaze I was surprised it wasn’t drilling holes in my face. Our gazes collided and I knew she’d been following an identical train of thought. Her mouth dropped open and, at the same moment I exclaimed, “I think I’ve got it!” she said. “I think Mac’s got it!” We beamed at each other.
After a few moments of inner reflection I was elated to discover I did indeed contain the song. I could feel it inside me, a complex melody, thrumming with power.
Talk about your checks and balances. Apparently, the queen was the preprogrammed home for it, and once I’d listened to what we had of it, all the way through—which I’d never done until we’d played it near the sphere—it had settled into me, wiping out all trace of its presence, ensuring no one else could ever get their hands on it.
I was just about to suggest we head for the nearest black hole and see if I could figure out how to turn myself into a portable iPod when the front doorbell tinkled.
The Dreamy-Eyed Guy walked in.
I know how the world works: there’s no such thing as coincidence. If you’re seeing coincidences, check your suppositions. Somebody’s dicking with you. And it’s probably not the universe.
Each time I’d encountered him flashed through my mind, from our first meeting at Trinity College to the night he’d appeared in the catacomb beneath the abbey and melded back into the Unseelie King.
Or had he? His skin was the only one that had never dropped to the floor. At the end, the Dreamy-Eyed Guy had merely changed, absorbing the shadows that passed from the falling skins of McCabe and Liz, the news vendor, the leprechaun-like reservations clerk, and my high school gym coach. He’d stretched and expanded until he towered over us, enormous and dark as the Sinsar Dubh’s amorphous beast form. Then he’d vanished with his concubine. What was he, if not one of the king’s skins? No single human body could hold the vastness that was the Unseelie King.
“Hey, beautiful girl.”
“Hey,” I said blankly.
“See you finally stopped talking so much.”
“Might have been a bit clearer,” I groused.
“Crystal. You muddied it.”
“Come to save our world?”
“Hand of God. No fun there.”
“What do you consider fun?” I said irritably.
“Free will. Not predictable. Bites you in the ass every time.” He laughed and I shivered, feeling it roll through every cell in my body, and abruptly I was seeing, superimposed around him, a gargantuan, ancient star-sprinkled darkness that was so far beyond my comprehension I felt as tiny as a dust mote, swirling on an air current, sparkling in the sunlight.
“Pretty much,” he murmured.
“And you’re the sun,” I murmured back.
“Bigger.”
I thought of the concubine. Of the empty chamber, void of their passion, the slamming door. “She left you,” I said sadly.
“Time.”
Changes everything, he didn’t say, but I heard it. “So?” I prodded. “How do I use the song?”
“Don’t have it.”
“Got part of it,” I insisted.
The Dreamy-Eyed Guy rippled into the bookstore in a stain of liquid darkness that licked up the bookcases, swirled on the walls, covered the ceiling then retreated back into him. His head swiveled but I saw two visions: the first of the DEG and the second of a great dark star swiveling in an abyss of dark matter. His gaze moved across our small group, coming to rest on Cruce. “And he has the other.”
I exploded. “What?” I shot Cruce a furious glare. “And you never told me?”
Cruce growled, “The fuck I do, old man.”
“You haven’t been hearing music?” the DEG said mildly.
“You iced me, you bastard!”
“Complaints. Boring. Music. Yes or no?”