If she was honest with herself, Angela would have happily dropped the whole being-a-fire-breathing-demon thing in favor of just playing keyboards and singing backup in her normal face, maybe under smoke and black lights or something, you know, so no one could object or look at her like she was a freak.

But that, apparently, was out of the question.

“What?” Austin asked, venom dripping down his pointed chin. “You mean . . . What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she said, feeling sheepish now. She coughed nervously into her hand, forgot about the fire breathing, and burned most of the hair off the back of her knuckles. Fortunately, her skin in Aspect was mostly fireproof. It still hurt, though. “Ouch,” she said, quietly.

“God, Angela,” Josh said, scratching the wall of her garage with his tail. “You’re such a freak sometimes.”

“Could you not . . .?” she said, watching the tail leave another mark in the plaster. “Never mind.”

Josh poked the plaster harder, carving out a small hole, before lashing his tail forward to hit the cymbals with a crash. He was a really good drummer as a demon, even Angela had to admit it, the tail coming in useful for extra percussion, but he did like to scratch people. Even Angela’s demonskin couldn’t stand up to the bone spire at the tail’s end.

“That would be weird, though,” Austin said, scratching a thoughtful claw under his ear.

“It’s just that my tongue goes fireproof in Aspect,” she said, quietly. “Makes it a little harder to . . .” She trailed off because the boys were staring at her.

“Conrad doesn’t even have a mouth,” Josh said, pointing his tail at their bass player. “And he’s all right.”

This wasn’t quite accurate: Conrad had a mouth — it was just sewn shut. He tried to claim it as a learning disability, but the school made him unlace it during class anyway, despite the laces being right back in place every time he shifted in and out of Aspect. He pointed at them now and waved a friendly hand at Angela. She’d always liked Conrad. He was a good listener.

“Forget it,” Angela said, smiling bashfully. “It’s okay. I’ll make do.” She idly tapped out a few electronic parps on her keyboard.

Austin nodded at her. Then nodded at her again. He was so beautiful, it almost hurt her to look at him, especially when he was looking so directly back at her.

Parp, she played. Parp parp.

Then he said, “Let’s do ‘The Beauty of Reckoning,’ maybe?”

Josh and Conrad readied themselves, Angela did a quick programming change on the keyboard to Gothic Choir, and Austin raised his hand over his guitar, ready to strike.

“ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”

The Becoming weren’t the only band at school, but they were — as Josh liked to sneer — the only “proper rock band.” There was Glee Club, as ever, but it was having a seriously off year. There were two hip-hop groups — one not bad, one stomach-turningly embarrassing; and there was also Margaret “Megs” Stuart, who did amazing things with electronics and samples and who ended up deejaying all the school dances. Her Aspect had nine hands, which helped.

But The Becoming played loud, hard, fast guitar stuff with Angela’s keyboards and programming filling in all the extra space and tending to cover their musical weak spots, which were many. Aside from Josh on the drums, she was the only one who could really play an instrument, having taken piano lessons since she was tiny. Fortunately when her Aspect had come in at twelve, it had left her with the correct number of joints on the correct number of fingers. She’d been secretly worried because her elder sister Samantha was a full serpent in Aspect (the school had allowed her to take her tests verbally, and she was doing great stuff now as a prelaw undergrad at the University of Washington), but it had turned out okay. Angela had surprised everyone, including herself, with the fire breathing, but that had its uses, especially on camping trips.

She could, of course, still play just fine out of Aspect, but that so wasn’t cool.

She opened her locker, only to have it slammed shut again by a massive hand reaching in behind her. She turned with a sigh to the twelve feet of lizard-thing looming over her in the hallway.

“Please, Holly,” Angela said. “I’ve got to get to class.”

“I told you to stay away from Austin,” Holly hissed, her tongue lapping in and out like a party favor. “But somehow your face is still on this.”

Holly held out the flyer for the school dance on Friday night. Under a giant picture of Megs, her nine hands unfurled, was a smaller photo of “Opening Act: The Becoming” with the snarling faces of Austin, Conrad, Josh, and, yes, Angela. The Becoming’s first-ever gig. Angela couldn’t help but smile at it.

“I’m not quitting the band, Holly,” she said calmly. “I told you.”

Two thunderous fists drove into the lockers on either side of Angela, pinning her there. “And I told you,” Holly growled, her snout angling down from her giraffe-length neck, “to keep your ugly little claws off of Austin Diaz.”

“My claws aren’t ugly, and they’re not on —”

“He’s mine, acid-breath,” Holly sneered. “Not that he’d ever look twice at a flat-chested nothing like you. Even your Aspect looks like a crumpled piece of paper.”

Angela met her eye. “Are you finished?”

“You think you’re just a little bit better than everybody, don’t you?” Holly’s tongue flicked Angela’s face a few times. “Perfect little Angela Constable. Pretending like you never burp or fart. Always saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”

“Please stop doing that with your tongue —”

“Well, you’re just a demon like the rest of us, Angela.”

“Yes,” Angela said. “Yes, I am.”

She opened her mouth wide and unleashed a torrent of fire into Holly’s face, while at the same time sweeping up across Holly’s front with the same ugly little claws Holly had just been deriding. A huge hunk of flesh came out with them, and Holly howled in agony as the fire boiled her eyes and turned her tongue to ash.

She stepped out of Aspect, holding a startled hand to her cheek. “You bitch,” she said, astonished.

The hallway around them had frozen now, everyone staring at Holly in her jeans and T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a simple girl-jock ponytail. In reflexive sympathy, Angela dropped out of Aspect, too, and was surprised to be reminded that she was actually taller than normal Holly.

“Sorry,” Angela said, “but you can’t talk to me that way. And I’m not quitting the band. I told you, I’m not interested in Austin —”

“Liar,” Holly said, re-Aspecting, her wounds disappearing. She ducked her head down so it wouldn’t bump the ceiling and pointed a pus-covered talon in Angela’s face. “This isn’t over.” She stormed off down the hallway, her Godzilla tail knocking down some of the smaller bystanders.

Angela sighed and re-Aspected, too, then jumped at a touch on her shoulder, holding up a claw, ready to strike. Conrad held up his rotting hands in friendly surrender and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Yeah, I’m okay, thanks,” Angela said, returning to her locker and getting out books for math. “She thinks everyone will be scared by her size, so she’s got no moves beyond that.”

Conrad nodded.

“Still,” Angela said, slightly worried. “I hope I didn’t hurt her. I mean, I know they’re not permanent injuries, but sometimes a cruel word can . . .”

Conrad gave a dusty laugh through the laces and shook his head.

“I know,” Angela said. “Pathetic.”

Conrad looked around at the emptying hallway and quickly de-Aspected. He has such lovely red hair, Angela thought, and a nice little smile.

“Not pathetic,” he said. “Kind.”

“Is there a difference?” she replied.

There were several things Angela knew to be true.

The first was that her presence in The Becoming was down to Conrad hearing her accompany the seventh-grade choir — of which his little brother was a tone-deaf but enthusiastic member — and convincing Austin that she was the missing ingredient in their new band. And by “missing ingredient,” he meant someone who could read music. Plus, she could program the hell out of a keyboard and make it sound like a whole orchestra was backing them up, making it less important that Austin’s guitars and Conrad’s bass struggled to reach competent on a good day.

The second thing she knew to be true was that this had instantly elevated her from middlingly unnoticed in terms of popularity to what-the-hell-is-she-doing-in-a-band hostility, catching the hitherto negligible attention of people like Holly Spelman, who had a serious, serious thing for Austin Diaz.

The third was that most people had a serious, serious thing for Austin Diaz. Even in Aspect — especially in Aspect — he had as much charisma dripping off him as he did venom from his chin. His Aspect was horned and reddish green, but his eyes bore into you like you were the only person he would ever want to talk to. When he sang (at which he was perfectly adequate) and played guitar (at which he was a pretty good singer), you couldn’t stop looking at him. That was the important thing, more than talent, more than simple beauty. He became the song, one you were already wanting to hear again. With the right band behind him, he could easily go on to be some kind of megastar.

The fourth thing was that The Becoming was clearly not that band. Still, Angela had been surprised to find herself saying yes and even more surprised to find herself enjoying the practices so immensely. It had, in fact, been a bit of a revelation. She’d always played piano solo or as lone accompaniment to a choir or a singer in church, but in a band, when the music was loud and everyone was on and she was singing along, she could just lose herself in it all. In the volume, in the energy, in the sheer burning, boiling spirit of creation as the four of them made this spectacular sound. It felt like something was about to happen, that potential was boiling away, waiting to be reached, as if she’d left this weak earth and found a new place to live. In fact, she could disappear into it so much that she often fell out of Aspect without realizing it. Which tended to put a quick end to whatever song they were rehearsing as the boys looked at her uncomfortably.

The fifth thing she knew was that she had to be damned certain she didn’t fall out of Aspect during the gig on Friday.

The sixth was because she didn’t want to let the guys down, also a new feeling, having a group of friends counting this closely on you. She liked it.

The seventh was that she especially didn’t want to let Austin down. Which perhaps was less comfortable.

The eighth was that it was uncomfortable because she knew Holly was completely deluded about both Angela “getting her claws” on Austin and also that Holly was somehow destined to get him instead.

Because the ninth thing she knew was that Austin was far more likely to ask out Conrad than he ever was Holly, and, in fact, the tenth thing was that she’d already overheard him doing so after the last rehearsal.

The eleventh was that Conrad had said yes.

And the twelfth was that none of that had stopped her liking Austin in that way anyway. Which she hoped to get over, but getting over it wasn’t something she knew would happen just yet, so her list had no thirteen.

“We should open with ‘The Victor and the Vanquished,’” Austin whispered behind her in math class.

“Too long,” Josh said, shaking his head in the next desk over. “You can’t open with an eleven-minute dirge. It should go second.”

Conrad slipped a note on her desk from where he was sitting beside Austin. “Open with ‘Blood Tears,’” it read. “Get everyone dancing.”

Angela nodded. “It’s a dance, after all.” She handed the note back to Austin and saw Holly Spelman three rows ahead, her long neck twisting back, her tongue flickering angrily as she watched the exchange.

Angela smiled peacefully at her, but there was probably no point.

“Less chatter back there,” Miss Jenkins said, and her second and third heads nodded in agreement. “Laces out, Conrad. And turn around, Holly.”

“I’m totally lost,” Austin whispered, referring to what Miss Jenkins was now going through at the board.

“Think of it as a ratio,” Angela whispered back. “If B is the angle, then sine is just —”

“Oh, God,” Austin said, collapsing his head down onto his desk, accidentally poking Angela in the back with his horns.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“So are we opening with ‘Blood Tears’ or not?” the newly unlaced Conrad said, and there was a groan among the others at his breath, which in Aspect was nearly criminal.

“My God,” Conrad said. “Has anyone ever said you have the bedroom an eighty-year-old woman?”

“Yes, actually,” Angela said, setting her books down on her bed.

Conrad looked around warily at all the lace and light blues and Rufus the teddy bear, who Angela was a little too slow to hide. “No, don’t,” Conrad said, meaning Rufus. “It’s nice.”

She checked to see if he was making fun, but his non-Aspect face had nothing but truth on it. “It’s stupid,” she said, holding Rufus half protectively, half as if he might have been covered in vomit.

“Remember those stuffed dogs you could get that came with Aspect add-ons to make him a dragon?” Conrad said. “Called mine Thomas. Still have him. Is that a beanbag chair? Retro.”

He flopped down on it, and Angela sat on the floor, her back against her bed. They were waiting for Austin and Josh to show up for band practice. They only had two rehearsals to go before Friday’s gig at the school. Angela felt nervous but pleasantly so, like how you do before opening a birthday present you’re pretty sure will be exactly what you wanted.

She caught Conrad looking at her, his eyes appraising — not meanly, just out of curiosity — her short blond hair, her dark green eyes, her slightly too long nose, which was the least favorite of her non-Aspect features.

“You don’t really like Aspect, do you?” he asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said, blushing. “What kind of freak doesn’t like Aspect?”

“Your kind of freak. It’s not that big a deal. Some people are just different.”

She took a long breath as if to start contradicting him but then didn’t. “I just don’t like how it makes everyone so angry all the time. Like the monstrous face is the only one we have. The only one we’re allowed to show people.”

“You’re showing me your other face. I’m showing you mine.”

“And I like it,” she said, meaning his other face and then blushed even more. “You know what I mean.”

He grinned. “I really don’t see why you couldn’t sing out of Aspect, honestly.”

“No, they’re right. Everyone would stare. It’d be like I was naked up there. No one would listen to the music.”

“If you make the music good enough,” Conrad said seriously, “nothing else will matter.”

Angela sighed. “I wish that were true.”

He levered himself off the beanbag and sat down beside her. “The only reason I’m more comfortable in Aspect,” he said, “is because no one expects me to say much.”

“You’re talking now.”

“You’re easy to talk to.”

“Ah, yeah, because that’s the kind of girl every boy wants to date.”

There was a knock on the door as it was opening. Angela’s mother poked her head through, the single horn on her forehead entering a few seconds before she did. “Everything all right in here, sweetheart? You guys want any cookies and pop?”

“No, thanks,” Angela said, instantly back in Aspect, but then Conrad shoved her so hard with his rotting elbow she accidentally spit out a little fire. “Or, well, okay, sure. Cookies and pop.”

“Coming right up.” Her mother smiled. “Hi, Conrad.”

He waved back. Angela’s mother left but pointedly kept the door open behind her.

“She still thinks I’m ten years old,” Angela said, back to normal.

“All mothers do,” Conrad said, “but the big lesson here is never, ever say no to cookies and pop.”

“Who is the Victor? Who is the Vanquished? Who is the Victor? Who is the Vanquished?”

Angela was in the song. Deep inside it. She wasn’t even thinking about where her fingers needed to be on the keyboard — they went there without her having to ask. The chords, all three of them (she’d added the third), stormed through her in their progression. Lower-higher-middle. Lower-higher-middle. Like they were marching her feet right off the ground.

“Blazing skulls in deepest night! Thunder strikes with demon’s might! Legions fight the wars of sin! But who will lose and who will win?”

Yes, okay, Austin was maybe not the world’s greatest lyricist, but when the music was this loud, felt this deeply, who cared? Who could ever possibly care —

“Ah, shit.”

Angela opened her eyes, unaware until just now that she’d actually closed them. She assumed she’d fallen out of Aspect again, but no, her claws were still there, faltering across the keys as the music slowly died. Instead, Josh and Conrad were looking at Austin, bent forward over his guitar, one hand up on his back.

“Dude,” Josh complained, his tail tetchily whacking the hi-hat. “That was our best version yet. Why’d you stop?”

But Conrad was already hovering concerned next to Austin. “What’s going on?” he said, de-Aspecting to speak.

“Just like the worst pain ever between my shoulders,” Austin said.

Conrad looked closer at Austin’s back. He glanced up at Angela. She could see it, too. A pair of small humps, scaly and yellow, pushed up from under Austin’s skin.

“Dude,” Josh said, more respectfully this time. “That’s a new Aspect coming in.”

“Piss off,” Austin said, standing up, trying to peer behind his own shoulder. “I went through puberty about a hundred years ago.”

“It’s the music that’s doing it,” Josh said.

Conrad gave him a don’t-be-a-moron look.

“No, I’m serious,” Josh said, looking to Angela for support. “You were into it, too. I saw it.”

“I was into it . . .” Angela said, hesitantly. She thought she knew what he meant. Not that the music was literally causing it, but maybe if you got moved strongly enough, if you were dedicating enough of your, maybe soul was the right word, to it, then who knew what might happen.

“Probably just a cramp,” Austin said, standing up again.

“Cramps don’t cause humps,” Josh said, surly now.

“Aspect is malleable,” Conrad said. “He probably just tore his demonskin from the effort, and it healed up in a weird shape.”

Josh’s tail was like an annoyed cat’s, snapping the tom-tom as if ready to strike. “No one ever listens to the drummer.”

Austin returned to the mic, ready to play. Conrad was back in Aspect, but concern was still written across his laced-up, rotting features. Austin said to him, “I’m okay. All good.” Then he turned to Angela with that heavily fanged smile. “You didn’t shift out,” he said. “Good stuff. Really good stuff.” He nodded again, turning around to look at them all. “First time it felt like a real band, huh?”

“As long as you don’t get any more cramps,” Josh huffed.

“Shrug it off, Josh,” Austin said. Then he smiled up at Angela again as if she was in on the joke. The directness of it caught her off guard, and she had to look away, swallowing down a burp of embarrassingly happy fire.

“From the beginning?” she was surprised to find herself asking, because — embarrassment aside — she really, really wanted to do it again. Wanted the feeling back. Wanted how true it made her feel. True enough to find a bit more of herself inside it. Who knew what else there was to discover?

“Count us in, Ange,” Austin said.

Speaking through flames, she shouted it out for them. “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”

Angela’s history and civics books went flying out of her hands and into the bushes. She looked up at Holly, towering above her. “Seriously?” Angela said. “You’re knocking my books away now?”

“And what are you going to do about it?” Holly growled.

“You are the least competent bully I’ve ever heard of,” Angela said, shaking her head. She went to pick up her books. Holly stepped on one of them. Angela sighed and slashed Holly’s lizard calf with a handful of claws.

“I just don’t understand you,” Angela said, standing up as Holly limped back angrily. “Everyone’s powerful in Aspect. Why do you keep forgetting?”

Holly de- and re-Aspected in a flash to heal her wound, her face first a human then a lizard picture of fury. She pulled back a massive fist to throw a punch.

“I shouldn’t think so, Miss Spelman,” Miss Jenkins said, two heads reading the papers in her hands, but the third admonishing Holly as she moved down the pathway. Holly lowered her arm, watching Miss Jenkins until she was out of earshot. She turned back to Angela.

“You never used to be like this,” she spat out, as confused as she was angry.

“I used to take my beatings, you mean?” Angela said.

“Well, yeah.”

Angela shook her head. “You’re misremembering. You never even knew I existed before, except as that nice girl in the floral print dresses who played piano and was probably a counselor at church camp.”

“‘Misremembering’?” Holly echoed. “You talk like some old freak.”

“We weren’t even friends in elementary school —”

“You’d better not show up at the dance tonight. I’m warning you. If I see you with Austin —”

“Honestly, Holly, are you totally blind? Or does being a lizard shrink your brain as well?”

Angela felt herself flush — though you couldn’t really see it under the dark gray skin — at being quite so blatantly mean. But it was also a little exciting, if she could admit it to herself. To not care for one minute. To be the monster. Maybe this is why everyone did it, stayed in Aspect all the time.

But then she saw how angry it made Holly, and she felt quite bad. If perhaps not bad enough to apologize just yet.

Holly closed in on her again, her voice a sibilant whisper. “You better watch that Teflon tongue of yours, Miss Remembering. Because you’re right — everyone’s powerful in Aspect.”

“Well,” Angela sighed to herself as she watched Holly stomp away, “at least she remembered to get the threat in.”

On the night of the gig, their sound check was a disaster. Austin was always early in every song, Conrad always late, Josh too fast, and Angela too slow.

“Two hours!” Josh shouted. “We’ve got two hours left, and we sound like crap!” He banged his snare drum so hard with his tail, it went all the way through, tearing the drum beyond repair. His eyes went wide at the disaster.

“There’s at least three snares in the band room,” Angela said. “See if Mr. Zbornick will let us have one.”

Josh nodded gratefully and got up to leave.

“Maybe tell him I’m asking for it,” Angela said. “He knows me.”

Josh nodded again and hurried out of the cafeteria.

“We’re doomed,” Austin said. “Even with a new snare.”

“It’s just nerves,” Angela said. “I read somewhere that if you have a really bad rehearsal, then the actual thing goes really well. It’s when rehearsals are perfect that you have to worry.”

Austin blinked at her. “You’re making that up.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “All we need to do is pretend no one’s here.”

Austin gestured at the empty cafeteria. “No one is here, and we still suck.”

“I mean in our heads. If we can get to that place we do in rehearsals where nothing matters. Where it’s the song doing what it has to do, like we’re just trying to keep up with it and live inside it and be everything it needs for us to be, then isn’t that like our name? Isn’t that what we can do when it’s all working? We become the song. We become what it needs us to be. And if we can do that, then everything else will be fine.”

They stared at her for a minute. “I just thought our name sounded cool,” Austin finally said. “I didn’t think it meant anything.”

Conrad nodded his agreement.

“But I like all the rest of that,” Austin said, smiling at her now. “Is that how you feel when we play, Ange?”

She flushed again. “Don’t you?”

He licked his fangs. “Yeah. Yeah, actually, I do.” He turned to Conrad, who nodded again, seriously.

“We become,” Austin said. “I like that.” He took a sudden ferocious stab at his guitar, sending a wail of distortion and feedback across the empty hall.

It sounded thrilling.

“We become,” he said again and winked at Angela.

And it was such a friendly wink, filled with so much affection and decency, with so much admiration and comradeship, that it kind of did the trick. Instantly and in the right sort of way, Angela fell out of love with him a little. Enough for it to matter, enough for it to count. She played the riff from “The Victor and the Vanquished” on her keyboard, and Conrad joined in on bass. Austin picked up the riff, and they blasted through it, furiously, much faster than its usual magisterial pace, finishing in a disintegration of guitar, bass, and Gothic Choir that left them all panting.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Austin said into his mic to the empty room. “We are The Becoming.”

And he was right. They were more than just the three of them.

They were a band.

The door clattered open, and Josh came in wearing the snare in a harness like he was in the marching band. He stopped at the weird energy between the three of them onstage. “What’d I miss?”

They were moments away. Megs was using seven of her hands to finish setting up her DJ equipment to the side of the stage. Her remaining two were holding Wuthering Heights so she could read it for English class.

Through the curtains, they could hear the growing crowd in the cafeteria beyond. School dances were never all that heavily attended, but clearly a larger-than-average number of people wanted to see the band.

Wanted to see Austin, Angela thought as she watched him peek through the curtain for the hundredth time. But that was okay. If she wasn’t in the band, she’d want to see Austin, too. That she was in the band just happened to make it a million times better.

“How’s it looking?” Josh said, tapping his feet nervously behind the drum kit.

“Nearly full,” Austin said, stepping away from the curtain and readjusting his microphone stand, also for the hundredth time. He glanced over at Angela. “Holly Spelman’s out there, with Jenna Marks and Fatima Ridderbos.”

“Oh, yeah,” Megs said, turning a page and not looking up. “I meant to tell you guys. I overheard Holly saying to Jenna she was going to hurl a bucket of fish soup onstage during your performance.” She looked over her book at Angela. “At you.”

“Fish soup?” Josh asked.

“For the smell, I guess.” Megs shrugged. “Maybe it’s all she had at home.”

Angela’s shoulders slumped. “Honestly, that girl.” She stepped away from her keyboards with a sigh. “I’ll go talk to her —”

“No need,” Megs said, returning to her book. “I landed my famous Nine-Palm Slap upside that dragon head of hers and said no one but no one was going to risk damaging my equipment with soup and that if she tried anything at all during your performance, I’d introduce her to my famous Nine-Fisted Punch.”

“Thanks, Megs,” Angela said.

“De nada.” She turned another page. “Anyone read this? It’s seriously messed up.”

Miss Jenkins poked her three heads through the stage door. “I’m going to have the Audiovisual Club open the curtains and dim the lights in five minutes. You guys ready?”

“As we’ll ever be,” Austin said.

“Well,” Miss Jenkins said, holding up her fists, pinkies and thumbs out. “Rock on.”

They stared at her in silence until she left.

“Teachers,” Josh said, shaking his head.

“I’m out, too,” Megs said, her many hands making the last adjustments to her equipment. “Don’t touch any of this when you’re playing.”

“We won’t,” Angela said.

“I mean it.”

“I mean it, too.”

“You, I trust,” Megs said, pointing at Angela and heading for the door. She made a complicated movement of blessing with all of her hands and left them to the countdown.

Conrad took out slips of paper from his pocket. He handed one to Josh, one to Austin, and one to Angela.

Good luck, they read.

The final seconds passed in a kind of noisy silence, no one saying much, just waiting, waiting. Then there was a roar as the lights in the cafeteria went down. Josh sat up behind his drums, sticks and tail at the ready. Conrad did a quiet last tune of his bass, turning the amplifier up slightly. Austin positioned himself behind the microphone. Angela made sure her programming was ready for “Blood Tears,” which they’d decided to open with after all.

There was nothing left to do. They looked at each other in anticipation. Angela felt like she was continually falling out of a car that was driving way too fast, but maybe not in a bad way. She coughed a little nervous fire and momentarily lit up all their faces.

“Ready?” Austin said.

The curtains opened.

Looking back, she’d be able to remember all of it and none of it. The forty-five-minute set passed in a blur that started feverish and only got more so. They hadn’t discussed onstage patter, and it turned out that Austin was, for this early performance at least, paralytically shy about talking to a crowd, so after they roared through “Blood Tears,” they barely took in three seconds of applause before Austin was already counting them in too fast for “The Beauty of Reckoning.”

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. They were making a sound beyond glorious. Nothing else mattered at all.

During maybe the fifth song or possibly the sixth, Angela started to breathe fire at emotional high points in the music. Austin’s guitar would reach a crescendo, and she’d punctuate it with a geyser of flame. The first time Austin looked surprised but then shouted, “YEAHHHHH!!!” and she kept on doing it, without even thinking, without even calculating when she should. It happened as it should happen, as the music needed it.

Josh played with such fury, his tail bent one of the cymbals nearly in half, but instead of it being another disaster, he improvised with the other cymbal and the hi-hat, and it sounded even better, purer, louder — if that was even possible. Conrad thumped his bass like a massive engine driving the band, his decaying fingers spraying blood and viscera as he twanged on the strings. Even Austin’s voice was stronger, shouting through the crowd’s roars, feeling their energy, singing it back to them. He may not have been able to crack jokes between songs just yet, but every word he sang was an acknowledgment of them, and they knew it, could feel it, screamed it back at The Becoming with every fevered drumbeat.

They reached the end of “London Condition,” their second-to-last song, and Austin finally, finally gave the crowd a moment to just scream. Angela felt like she was blazing, and maybe she was. She sprayed fire across the upturned faces at the edge of the stage, even the roaring lizard snout of Holly Spelman, but no one minded. They just roared back.

“This is our last song,” Austin said, to disappointed shouts from the crowd, but even the disappointment was couched in appreciation of what they were witnessing.

Austin looked at each band member in turn — Conrad, Josh, Angela. They’d moved “The Victor and the Vanquished” to the end of the set, and they were going to play it at the super-fast speed they’d found in the sound check.

They’d never done the whole thing like that before. But it was going to be incredible. Angela knew it before they’d played a note.

Austin closed his sulfurous eyes, swooned into the microphone, and shouted it for them.

“ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”

And they were away. If Angela was soaring before, this was more like orbit. Her claws had never played faster, her voice at the first chorus never sounded finer, her heart never lifted so high.

Which is when it began to happen.

Josh — arms and legs thudding in monstrous, unstoppable rhythm — didn’t even notice as the spike on his tail grew by nearly a foot and began shooting flashes of lightning every time it smacked the metal of the cymbals.

The laces ripped themselves from Conrad’s mouth as he raised his voice to join in with the singing, retying themselves like hard-earned battle scars across his cheeks and forehead.

The hump on Austin’s back began to glow as the song built toward its final chorus, light splitting from the seams as his skin cracked open, and two enormous, chrysalis-wet wings unfurled behind him, newly born, ready for flight.

The Becoming were becoming.

But it was Angela to whom all eyes turned, all but her own, which were closed, as her fireproof tongue blasted off its thickened coating, as the furry skin burned away in a cascade of light, as the claws moving in their patterns across the keyboard shed their weaponry . . .

And there were arguments later, arguments that would follow her for the rest of her life, about whether what emerged on that fateful night was a new kind of Aspect or was just her normal non-Aspect self she was trying to pass off as a new kind of Aspect in an audacious affront that was almost an Aspect unto itself.

It also wasn’t true, because in her new Aspect she visibly glowed and could start fires just by touch, if she wanted. There were age-old, imperfect theories that Aspect was just an exaggerated version of yourself, and maybe for some people, maybe for Angela, her truest Aspect really was just her.

Only more so.

But she didn’t care, not then, not later, not ever. Because in the middle of the music, playing with her friends, burning in the kiln of the crowd’s roar, she became.

In the front row of the concert, an angry Holly Spelman never stopped looking at Angela, not knowing whether she should cheer or boo, a confusion that would also follow her for the rest of her life.

“Just look at her,” she raged to anyone who could hear. “She’s beautiful.”