Chapter Four

Aria

I jerked awake with a scream, and scrambled to my feet.

For a moment, everything was confusion. Where was I? What was going on? What was that noise?

The answer to the first question resolved itself quickly enough. I was in the living room of my grandfather’s house. I must have fallen asleep after Killian’s call - not surprising since I’d used sleep as a defense against him for years - and now it was the middle of the night. Twenty-four hours ago, I’d bought a car with cash from a guy on Craigslist - the better to be untraceable - and driven through the night to get here.

Only to find that it wasn’t unoccupied like I’d thought.

Which was at least a partial answer to the second and third questions.

The walls and windows rattled with the thump of bass. I looked across the lawn.

Down to the carriage house, the lights were blazing bright enough to show the silhouette of a man standing at the window.

Looking right back up at me.

I went to the door and slid it open. Then burst out laughing.

The entire valley echoed with aural assault of ‘You Shook Me All Night Long.’

“AC/DC, dude?” I called across the lawn. “Really? Are you that cliched?”

The silhouette moved. I nodded, smirking. So he was watching me and waiting for a reaction.

But if he thought a little loud music was going to make me give up what was mine, he was very much mistaken. It would take a whole lot more than this to get under my skin. I was numb, a soldier coming home from war.

It would take nothing less than a nuclear bomb to move me.

He was shooting spitballs,

The final riff faded. “Freebird!” I called out. “Play Freebird next!”

There was a hiss of feedback, then a hum. Then all at once the sound cut out and the silence was so full my ears rang.

“Ha!” I laughed. “Giving up already?” I leaned over the railing. “That’s it? I’m disappointed in you, Derek!”

I sort of… was. I hoped he wasn’t done trying to mess with me. This kind of low stakes sparring - teasing back and forth - was something I’d never gotten a handle on. It was… fun. Like the kind of childish pranks the rest of my bandmates would play on each other while Killian was off being sour in a corner somewhere.

I’d always wanted to join in in the shenanigans, but Killian didn’t like me getting too close to the other guys. “You’re flirting,” he’d accuse me any time I laughed at Jules’ ridiculous antics.

Well, Killian wasn’t here now, was he?

My grandfather had an old Hi-Fi system with these massive Marshall speakers that wouldn’t look out of place on stage with me. My parents always got after him for ruining his hearing with it.

To which he’d reply, “Eh? Speak up, I can’t hear you because I ruined my hearing with rock music.”

He was the coolest.

I went back into the house and dragged them out onto the porch, checked the connections by the flashlight app on my phone, then set my alarm for 4:45AM.

“Game on, Derek.”

It felt wrong to sleep in my grandfather’s room, so I set myself up in one of the guest rooms. I expected to have trouble falling asleep, expected to be haunted by the same night time insomnia that had plagued me for years.

But to my surprise, the excitement of sparring with Derek crowded out the usual terrors and I fell asleep immediately, and slept the sleep of the dead. When my alarm went off, I almost ignored it in favor of more sleep.

Then I remembered my mission.

Grinning, I looked out the window. It was pitch black outside and there were no lights on down at the carriage house below me.

Show time.

He’d blasted me with AC/DC. I could hit back with Led Zeppelin. The opening to Black Dog seemed pretty appropriate to the situation. But that would have been too predictable. It lacked the flair and showwomanship I’d brought to all my performances, night after night.

I swallowed hard. My performances. Was I done? Did leaving Killian mean I had to give up music too? We were under contract for a three album deal, and I was in breach right now.

I shook my head. That wasn’t the problem I needed to focus on. Right now, I needed to give my unwelcome neighbor a little wake-up call, Aria-style.