28

He led Fiona out of the room, through the basement, up the stairs of the house. Bill with the acne stood in the foyer, watching them ascend.

“I’m ready,” Peter said to them. “Get your plugs in and wait outside. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Got it,” said Bill. He glanced at Fiona out of the corner of his eye and smirked. “I got that thing you were asking for out of the van. Waiting for you upstairs.”

“Beautiful,” said Peter.

Upstairs, they entered a room set up like the roof the night they had tuned together—the circle of speakers, the laptop and turntable, the master copy. This time, though, the space was unambiguously decorated for a ritual. The floor was chalked with concentric circles surrounding a triangle, each ring in the illustrated echo dotted with planets and notes that corresponded to the diagrams she remembered from the book.

At the center of the chalk design was Betty, laid carefully on the floor.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, slowly approaching her guitar, feeling the humid cloud of power that surrounded them.

“Complete my symphony,” said Peter. “The first step was controlling them, bringing everyone here. Now, I’ll drain everything from them. I will wipe them clean and consume their minds for my own strength.”

She sensed him coming up behind her, and then one of his hands gently clasped her shoulder. She closed her eyes and shuddered, all the times he’d touched her and the excitement he’d inspired in her flooding back in a single instant. For the first time in weeks, she felt safe.

“But I don’t want to do it alone,” he said. “One last chance, Fiona. Please, come with me. You could be so powerful. Play Betty while I spin. You’ll get their strength, too, and then we’ll be one. Admit it—this is where you belong. Away from them.” Emotion crept into his voice. “With me.”

Though it disgusted her to do so, Fiona considered the offer. She and Betty could take all the power from Hamm, all the youth and free will contained in those dank rooms downstairs, and then walk away with it. She’d always known she was destined to flee her hometown, but she’d refused to abandon it out of sentiment; this way, she could have both, all Hamm’s wasted potential and none of its boundaries. And every night, she would lay beside her brilliant lover and feel how deeply they were connected.

She could be something unique, something the world had never known. Double platinum, in the flesh.

All it took was giving him what he wanted.

She opened her eyes.

“You know, my father isn’t right about a lot of things,” she said calmly. “But he was right about you.”

The hand tightened and yanked. She went stumbling across the room, her back slamming hard into a wall.

Peter walked over to his soundboard, kicking Betty aside as he did so. He flipped on a switch; at once, the red demon eyes of every speaker in the room lit up and seemed to stare at Fiona.

“When I’m done,” he said, “I’m going to burn your guitar.” He pressed a button, and the music kicked in.

Sound pierced her mind, making her nerves jump and vibrate. Fiona fell to her knees, grasping her ears. The place surged with his sonic power, emitting a bone-shaking drone like a million down-tuned bass guitars plucked at once. Then he played another note, and another, each one filling Fiona with utter agony. Her stomach cramped. Her head ached. It felt as though a million pounds were weighing down on her, pushing her to the floor.

Peter lowered himself to his knees in the center of his symbol, ready to tune. He laid the Canoris before him, opened to a page with a threatening black triangle at its center. Looking at him now, Fiona saw him ablaze with power. His eyes glowed white. His tattoos seemed to jump and dance in the air around him like a halo of spider’s legs. He was God here.

“You’re going to witness something incredible,” he said in a deep voice that came from a far distance. “All those minds down in the basement, absorbed at once…and you with your potential, in the middle of it all. It will be an epic tuning.” He smiled. “I’m afraid you’ll be ripped apart inside. A side effect of your talent with the instrumentis. I wish I was sorry.”

The instrumentis.

Through the storm of noise raging around her, her mind registered a familiar black shape on the floor, rumbling around with the vibrations like a puck on an air hockey table.

All hope was lost. The Pit Viper would win. But if she was going to die here, she would die with Betty in her arms.

Fighting the music that seemed to beat her down from all sides, doing her best to ignore the hot blood she felt rushing out of her nose, Fiona crawled across the floor and grabbed Betty by the neck.

On the floor next to Peter, the Codex Canoris leaped. Its pages fluttered open to the back section, to the sheet music of the instrumentis.

Peter’s gaze shot from the book to Fiona. For a moment, the energy surrounding him seemed to flicker and weaken as they both registered the response the book had shown her.

Fiona gritted her teeth. Her gut urged her forward. She knew what she had to do.

“Take me!” she screamed over the noise. “Use me! I’m the one you want!”

“You idiot, it doesn’t work that way,” scoffed the Pit Viper, his voice floating above the music. He did his best to sound snide, but she could hear his doubt, clear as day.

“How many like him have you dealt with?” she cried out to the Canoris—no, not to the flimsy book, to the thing that lurked behind it, to the collective of music that guided the hand that wrote the book. “How many people have just used you? How long has it been since someone played your final movement? Take me, and I’ll play only for you!”

Peter growled and reached out to grab the Canoris. There was a crackle in the air, and he yanked his hand away again as though stung.

Fiona positioned the guitar in front of her. She could feel the book’s influence spilling out of its ancient pages, moving away from Peter and toward her. Betty began humming like a live wire. She didn’t need a cord to plug in; she and Fiona were the cable, the jack, the electricity, the amplifier. They were raw power, a live wire.

And Fiona played guitar.

The boards of the room stretched outward and then bent back in, rocked by thermobaric music. Peter screamed, his body bent as his power became Fiona’s.

Fiona felt herself lifted off the ground, sensed Betty straining at her strap and yet drawing closer to her. For a moment, Fiona saw an awesome vision—of the room, the planet, the universe passing away beneath her, until she and Betty hung in a vast realm where a great and hungry being greeted her from a throne older than the stars.

Just like that, she was back in the house, crumbling to her knees. When the particles in the air settled, a deep silence fell over the room.

Fiona blinked as her guitar went limp at her side.

The smoke pouring out of the speakers around her emitted the trash fire smell of ozone. The Codex Canoris sat on the floor with a blackened ring around it as though it had burst into flames, but the book itself was unharmed. Peter’s master copy bubbled as it melted, dripping slowly down the edges of the turntable on which it rested. A cool breeze blew over her face from the shattered window.

And Fiona felt…incredible.

Weakened physically, but empowered deep in her heart. She had been touched by something more permanent and powerful than any melody or rhythm.

Scanning the remains of the tuning room, Fiona realized that she was alone. A trail of blood led her out the door.

She found what was left of Peter crawling down the stairs, wheezing and coughing, hair white and burned in patches. His limbs were thin and gnarled, and his tattoos were leaking thin streams of blood that made ugly smears on the wood where he writhed and clawed. When he saw Fiona approaching, he turned and slithered pitifully away from her, a bony hand raised against her. One of his fingernails fell off and clattered to the floor.

“No,” he gasped. “No, please, no more.”

Tears stung her eyes as she watched the boy she’d fallen for cowering away from her. But the strength that now surged through her veins prevented her from breaking down. She was something else now, and the boy she’d loved was gone. Maybe he had been for a long time.

As Peter reached the bottom of the stairs, Fiona noticed them waiting, and froze, repulsed. Peter followed her gaze and moaned in dread.

The teens of Hamm closed in around him, sunken-eyed and aghast. With his power over them evaporated, they suddenly remembered having their minds violated, rewired, and controlled by the Pit Viper’s music. Fiona watched the looks of rage and shame move over their gaunt faces as more and more of them filed out of the basement and joined the sweaty mob.

Caroline was the first one to scream, but then they all did at once, and leaped onto the desiccated DJ with swinging fists and spit-flecked mouths. Fiona put her head down and pushed her way through the mob, unable to watch them tear him apart.

On the porch, Filip Moss sat on a railing, talking to a hunched silhouette with his back to Fiona. “Filip,” she called, and the other figure slowly turned around, making her stop in her tracks.

“Nice swing,” hissed Vince, one hand clasped to the side of his jaw.

Fiona’s heart leaped, and she took a hasty step back, but Filip held up a hand. “It’s all right, Jones,” he croaked weakly. “He’s the one who let us out of the basement. Untied us and everything. He’s been on our side the whole time, we just didn’t know it.”

Fiona eyed the boy warily, then turned back to Filip. “I take it your plan didn’t work.”

“Yeah.” He laughed through split lips. “Calvin Hokes, man, he got me within seconds. Beat me up pretty good. Next thing I knew, I was here. How’d you get here?” He gave her a once-over and squinted. “Where’d you get that guitar?”

“Long story,” said Fiona, eliciting a guffaw from Vince. “It doesn’t matter. We need to help everyone. They’ll be done soon.”

“Done with what?” asked Filip.

…

One after another, the teenagers of Hamm stumbled zombielike out of the house and into the night air. Fiona, Filip, and Vince all helped them walk shakily across the lawn to the vans parked around the side of the building. Some of the kids thanked them profusely; some refused to look at them. Everyone seemed to be coming out of a coma—only now did they notice their hideous surroundings, their cold and thirst.

Only Fiona really knew what was happening. With Peter’s hold over them gone, her friends were seeing clearly for the first time in months.

Caroline, Horace, and Keller all cried when they saw her, and she wept softly along with them. It was hard, being a responsible adult with tears running down her face, but somehow Fiona managed. Caroline and Horace tried to apologize, and she tried to apologize back, and eventually they all just cried more and hugged. It hurt too much to think about it right now. Maybe they’d talk later.

But the basement, labyrinthine as it was, could only hold so many people. Some were still missing. Tess Baron was gone, as was Ronald Schaffer. Amy Golden. Carter Mason.

Rita Alam.

Fiona checked five times, each round of the basement more frantic than the last. She asked her friends, but none of them had seen her since the party had started.

“But they brought her here,” shouted Fiona as Keller shook his head. “They must have.”

“We didn’t see her,” said Horace, tears coursing down his face.

“At the party, there was a guy,” sobbed Caroline. “An older guy. He kept talking to her…after that, I don’t remember. God, Fiona, there’s so much I don’t remember.”

“Think, Caroline!” urged Fiona. “She can’t just be gone!”

“Jones,” said Vince, “she’s not here. We’ll figure it out—”

“She has to be here!” screamed Fiona. She ran for the basement stairs, but Vince intercepted her and held her tight. She fought against him for a few minutes, and then let him hold her as she burst into sobs.

William Hokes seemed relatively together, and he offered to drive one of the vans full of kids back to Hamm. Surprisingly, he asked about his brother. When Fiona tried to tell him what had happened, he held up his hand to stop her. “It doesn’t matter what he did in there,” said William, shaking his head. “I need to bring him home. My mom, you know? She loves Cal so much.”

But no one could find Calvin Hokes. All that was left was a bloodstained mask.

Some of the other kids from the basement weren’t too messed up to drive, and Fiona, Filip, and Vince organized groups to van people back to Hamm.

As the last of the transports, driven by Filip, rolled into the darkness, Vince sauntered off and came back with a gas can sloshing around in his hand. Fiona got his meaning quickly. “We’re not going to call the cops or anything?” asked Fiona.

“You want to talk to the police about all this?” asked Vince. “Not me. I say we burn it down and never, ever, ever come back.”

“But then Peter—the Pit Viper, he gets away with it,” she said.

“He’s not getting away with anything,” snapped Vince, pointing at her. It was the most emotion she’d ever seen from him. “We shut him down. Any and all of his friends better watch themselves. They learned an important lesson today: our people are not to be fucked with.”

Fiona should have flinched at his outburst, but the heart behind it didn’t frighten her in the slightest. She began to understand what Vince was doing here, what he’d been doing the whole time.

“For you?” she asked. “What was it?”

Vince sighed, running his hand through his hair. “My brother, Mike,” he said. “He was Geraldine Brookham’s boyfriend. He gave her the dose that killed her.”

“Jesus, Vince, I’m so sorry.”

“And he knew that he should never go back to that fucking mill, but he did it anyway. He felt so guilty about Geraldine.We all loved her, my mom and me and him. She was the bomb, you know? And he killed her. So he just wanted to die.” He shook his head. “Mike, man, he was so cool. He was everything I wanted to be, and he just let them take him. And when I heard the rumors about the Pit Viper spinning the mill, and saw that Perry kid for the first time in years, I thought…” His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard and shook his head before continuing. “They never found him. He could still be out there. I have to know.”

His honesty warmed Fiona. He was letting her see his pain, no frills, no defenses. She put a hand on his shoulder. “You did the right thing, Vince.”

Vince nodded slowly and sniffed. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. That guy, the Pit Viper, kidnapped my brother. He fucked my entire life up.” He raised the gas canister and unscrewed the cap. “So I’m going to wipe that piece of shit off the face of the earth, is my feeling.”

“Let’s do it,” she said.

…

The house went up quickly, the old wood yielding to the flames in no time. They watched it burn from the lawn, the heat searing Fiona’s face. She wanted to say goodbye to Peter, to the side of the person she’d known and cared for, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. That his love had led her here, burning down a house after saving her brainwashed friends, poisoned all their time together in her mind.

She expected Vince to lead her to another white van, but instead he brought her to the Fiddlers’ hatchback parked a half mile down the dirt road, one window broken and the busted dash dangling wires.

“Impressive,” said Fiona.

“Not all Hamm kids are angels,” mumbled Vince.

Once he’d re-hotwired the car, he drove them slowly back to the highway, the flaming skeleton of the house flickering in their rearview mirror.

Fiona watched Vince in the glow of the dashboard lights. Something still bothered her.

“If you were trying to avenge your brother,” she asked, “why’d you let this happen to everyone?”

“Because of Udo,” he said. “My brother didn’t get found dead in a ditch. Plenty of his friends did, but not Mike. This fucking creep, the guy behind it all…I wasn’t just gunning for the Pit Viper, I was going after him. Because if I find him, he can tell me what happened to my brother. But then there was this chick with her own plan fucking things up for me left and right, so I had to improvise.” Vince looked at her face and visibly softened. “Okay, look, maybe it’s shitty that I let the Pit Viper take everyone in town to get to Udo, but it was the only way. That DJ was just a puppet. I want to cut out the cancer, not just treat the symptoms, you know?”

Fiona nodded. “Don’t worry, Vince,” she said. “We will.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Swordfish is fine,” he mumbled.