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Audrey Rose B.
Beautiful anomalies is a retelling of the story of the Pied Piper, set in a more modern world. When children vanish from the little town of Hamelin, Detective Sitara Galrind goes after the man (if he can be called that) responsible for the disappearance. To find the missing children, she’ll need to be smarter than he is, and be careful that he doesn’t whisk her away to another world too. But Sitara has a secret of her own, and the Piper is a master at playing games.
~~~
A square neon lamp hung from the ceiling, and white light flickered on the iron-grey walls of the interrogation room. Sitara’s reflection was stark and bleak in the one-way mirror. The grim lighting tamed the tawny beige of her skin and magnified the purple lines under her eyes, giving her face a sickly glow.
She had slept less than twelve hours over the last three days.
The girl in the mirror looked gaunt, frightening, alien, even in her bland gray pantsuit and tight ponytail. She wondered what her colleagues beyond the glass pane saw when they looked at her. Did they see an exhausted and determined co-worker in desperate need of more caffeine, or an angular and lethal creature, possessed by something raw and wild, hard to contain?
Discomfort forced Sitara’s gaze away from her own face. Besides, the real danger in the room was elsewhere.
Her attention snapped back to the man, if he could be called that, who sat in front of her.
He lounged in his seat like a monarch on a throne, legs stretched out and crossed. His fingers drummed on the edge of the table. Nobody had bothered to cuff him, and it was a miracle that they’d caught him in the first place. Sitara didn’t doubt that the entire unit buzzed with excitement and apprehension over his presence within their walls.
Sitara studied his fingerless gloves, mesmerized by the steady, rapid cadence of his fingers on the table. His gloves were made of granite-grey wool, which seemed like an odd choice. From him, she would have expected leather, silk, or some magical fabric hewn from moonlight and nightmares, not something as plain as wool.
Did the winter nights set his teeth on edge? Did he feel the cold, did he shiver in the wind?
Sitara slid into the opposite chair and examined him.
He wore a plain sweater, dark green like a forest in the night, over a white shirt. A black tie hung loose and careless around his neck. His hair, shades of copper and auburn, was slicked back, with a handful of strands spilling across his forehead. As for his eyes, Sitara refused to linger on them for too long. She knew better than to marvel at the amber flecks in his brown gaze, like golden stardust dancing deep in the abyss.
When he smiled, it was gentle and harmless. A swift curve of his lips, and he turned into a polite young man, a bashful college student, an innocent deer. A mask, a trick.
Sitara’s mouth tightened. “Where are they?”
His laughter chimed like the song of a distant river, buried in memories she didn’t know she had. “Straight to the point, I see.” His voice reminded her of a feather, a teasing caress meant to draw goosebumps.
“I don’t like to waste time.”
“So I see. You found me in four days. Others would have needed weeks.”
“And I’ll find the children just as quick. This, here, is an opportunity for you to cooperate. Reduce your penance. We’re doing you a favor. So you might as well help us before we find them on our own.”
He laughed again. “Oh, I highly doubt you’ll manage that. They’re well-hidden.”
“So they’re alive.”
His smile widened. “Corpses can be hidden, too.”
Earlier, Captain Jace had taken Sitara aside and warned her that she wasn’t ready for this.
“He’s a monster, Galrind,” she’d told her. “A human-looking one, maybe, but a monster nonetheless. His kind usually is.”
Sitara had insisted. She’d read his file enough times to know it by heart. He may have been an enigma built on countless conflicting tales and wrapped up in mist, but that enigma belonged to her.
The Pied Piper was hers.
She had found him. She had smoked him out. She could wring answers out of him, and nothing would kill the resolve burning deep within her.
“Even your kind doesn’t kill children lightly.”
His brow quirked. “My kind? And that would be? Besides, you forget. Humans kill, too. Humans are capable of horrors that rival what ‘my kind’ can do.” He mimed quotation marks, a slick and effortless gesture that seemed too human for him. “We don’t have a monopoly on atrocities.”
“Where are the children, Sorrel?”
She could have sworn the golden specks in his gaze had kindled.
“Ah,” he said. “Sorrel. Is that the name you have on file?”
“It’s your first name, isn’t it? The one your mother gave you.”
“It’s possible. I do prefer my other moniker, though.”
“Too bad. Sorrel is what I’m calling you.”
“And what should I call you?”
She pursed her lips. “Detective Galrind.”
“I’m not sure that works for me. If you insist on using my first name, which nobody does, it seems only fair that I call you by yours.”
“Forget it.”
Never give one of them your full name, she remembered. Names were powerful things. Everyone on the squad knew this. It was one of the first lessons drilled into your head during training.
He sighed a little and swatted at an invisible fly before crossing his arms over his chest.
“I fail to see how I’m in the wrong here.” He eased back in his seat. The childish part of her considered shoving him so the chair would topple over. “I performed a service. I didn’t get my payment. Take it up with the Hamelin people. It’s not my fault if I was promised money I didn’t get.”
Sitara kept her calm. “There are lawyers for that kind of problem. Most people don’t resort to kidnapping.”
“Eh. The system doesn’t work too well for people like me. But you’d know, wouldn’t you?”
His smile was intruding as a puff of smoke. Her lungs tightened, and she struggled to keep her secrets from creeping up on her face.
He tilted his head at her, fingertips still dancing on the table. There was, she thought, a sort of twisted elegance to him, a magnetism that made her wonder if his flute was needed for people to follow him at all.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
She shot back, “Tell me where the children are.”
He grinned. “Your name’s not worth that much.”
“Then what’s worth it? What do you want?”
“About a million things you can’t give me. Or won’t.”
“You’ve been offered money, if I recall. Or is your memory faulty?”
“Interest rate goes up, darling, and I don’t like being swindled. That puts a price on top of a heavy fare. I got those winged rodents out of their city, and I doubt they could afford my fare in the first place. In fact, there’s probably not enough money in their town or yours to convince me.”
“And how about immunity? We could offer you that. If you cooperate.”
“Ha! Immunity. Good one. One, I don’t trust their kind to hold up that bargain. Two, you assume they could keep me locked up if I didn’t want to be here. That’s not the case.”
The barest hint of a smug smile touched her lips. “We caught you this time, didn’t we? Even if you escape, we could do it again.”
His laugh was the response to a challenge she hadn’t meant to issue. “Maybe I let you catch me. Maybe I’m just where I want to be. Sitting across from the loveliest detective in the squad.”
“Flirting will get you nowhere.”
“Flirting got me plenty of places, actually. But sometimes, I just do it for fun.”
Play along, a bone-rattling instinct screamed within her. Lure him in. You’re more dangerous than he realizes. You are shadow and blood and ice-blue fire, and he won’t know what hit him, and he’ll yield and plead and you’ll win it all.
Sitara considered her options. She knew the specifics and rules of her job well. Her education had been thorough. Still, in practice, she’d found that one particular lesson often eclipsed the others.
Fae-folk were unpredictable, volatile and ruthless. They had a tendency to change the rules and twist any situation to their advantage. A lot of the time, learned methods needed to be thrown out of the window.
Improvisation was a skill that Sitara Galrind mastered.
As tempting as it was to step into the web and tear it down from the inside, she ignored the impulse for now. “If you truly let us catch you, as you say, then that means you have a reason for being here.”
He shrugged like an uncooperative teenage boy called out by an expectant teacher. “Even things like us get bored.”
“Things like us?”
“Yes. Like us. Beautiful anomalies.” His pupils had widened, turning his eyes almost black, like coal that blazed gold instead of red. Sitara’s heart gave an uneasy thump. “But since you found me with surprising ease, I figured I’d throw you a bone.”
“How generous.”
“Tell you what. We’ll play a game. An answer for an answer. Yes or no questions. You answer honestly, so will I. How about that, Detective?”
Don’t play games with a Fae.
She pictured Captain Jace stiffening behind the one-way mirror, muttering to herself, don’t you dare, Galrind. Don’t you fall for that trick...
“Deal.”
She half expected Jace’s voice to thunder through the speakers and summon her back to the other side of the mirror. It didn’t.
Good. She’d already decided that she wouldn’t leave, not unless people came to drag her out of the room. She had the Pied Piper on a hook. The game would be of his making, but that didn’t mean she could not play to win.
She knew what his first question would be before he spoke it.
“Is your first name Sitara?”
“Yes.” It was no surprise, that he’d know. Perhaps he’d known before they’d even met.
He smiled. “Spells, that’s a pretty name. One of the Fae queens, if the old titles still apply, was called Sierra. It sounds like a note from a violin, I always thought. Yours is a bit harsher. It has a hint of bite, like you. How much do you know about the queens?”
“I’m not answering any extra questions.”
He nodded. “That’s fair. Your turn, Sitara.”
He drew out her name like honey on his tongue.
He was so easy to hate.
Her pulse sped up with each second. “Are the children alive?”
“Yes.”
Her chest loosened in pure relief. “Are they...”
“My turn.”
She held her tongue. He studied her face for a long time, stretching out the seconds, his eyes surveying each detail of her expression- her set jaw, her withering glare, her tight mouth... He let his gaze linger on the last feature and licked his lips. Slow, suggestive. Deliberate.
Sitara rolled her eyes.
“Have you ever killed?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
Three times.
First, there were the stories that people knew, two final and unforgettable shots that haunted some of her sleepless hours.
But long before, there had been an accident, a nightmare of blue tendrils that swiveled and swirled and refused to relent.
You’re a dead man, a teenage girl had said, and soon, the dead man had thudded on the floor.
She didn’t let the covert memory throw her off track. “Have the children been harmed?”
His lip twitched. “No.”
“You promised honesty.”
“I am honest. The children have not been harmed. Should you get them back, they’ll be good as new. Perhaps even better.”
Her heart skipped at the last part. It was a clue. It meant something.
If only he could be quiet for a second so her brain could work, then click, but he gave her no chance to reflect on the sentence.
“Have you ever seen Mornreeve?”
Her mind was still chasing after his previous words. She hoped that Captain Jace would pick up the thread.
“Sitara.”
“Sorry. Please, repeat the question.”
He complied.
Maddening visions of ivory-white buildings and onyx-black rooftops, glazed in dazzling moonlight, swarmed her mind. Like the stories about the Pied Piper, the many tales that spoke of Mornreeve scattered into a thousand directions. The descriptions agreed on its colors and its architecture, but when it came to its character, no accounts coincided. To some, Mornreeve was a nightmare that even daylight could not appease. To others, it was an endless pipe dream that rendered life on the human side tasteless and vapid, a memory that ached like a phantom limb.
The only certainty was that Mornreeve changed whoever visited it. Once you saw the Fae City that sat on the frontier of the two worlds, you were never the same again.
Sitara had once met a woman who’d lived there for a while, for fifteen days or a century, she’d said. She’d returned to the human world with the wildness of hungry animals in her gaze.
Of Mornreeve, she’d told Sitara this, “It is like an architect forced someone to stand on a ledge before a dizzying abyss of starlight, then pried that person open to take that vertigo and build a city from it.”
That was how Sitara liked to picture it.
She shook her head. “No. Is that where the children are? In Mornreeve?”
The Pied Piper grinned like a child who’d found a ladybug on his windowsill. “Clever girl. Yes.”
Sitara felt her stomach clench. Mornreeve was an odd, maddening territory that answered to neither Fae nor human laws. Her unit had no jurisdiction there. Mornreeve was untouchable, impregnable, and Fae-human relations were so strained that it would take a long time for them to get the children back.
“Have you ever wanted to see it?” he asked. “Visit it?”
He’d made honesty a requirement. “Yes.”
She was thankful for the one-way mirror. She didn’t want to know what her colleagues thought of her answer.
“Now, tell me the truth. Is there something other than money that would convince you to let them go?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what it is.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not done playing yet.”
“I am.”
“But it was just getting interesting.” He folded his hands and leaned forward. Embers glinted in his eyes, flakes carved from the sharpest gold. “I have so many more questions.”
“I have plenty for you as well.”
“You want an answer, you need to give me one.”
“No. I ask the questions here.”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. “Don’t make yourself into a swindler, Sitara. We made a deal. Let’s not ruin a perfectly nice time. But if you want to forget about the Yes and No answers, fine, except it’s still my turn. Now, you answer my question, I’ll answer yours.”
She threw him a withering glare. His mouth formed a perfect curve, a striking smile that quickened her heartbeat.
“Tell me,” he said. “What do you feel, now, Sitara? Sitting here, in front of me. What do you think? Feel?”
She adjusted her shirt collar in a mindless gesture. The fabric was cool against her moist fingertips. “That’s two different questions. Thinking and feeling are not the same.”
“Let’s start with what you think, then.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What I think? You want to know what I think?”
“That’s what I asked for.”
“Fine. I look at you, and I think to myself, ‘What kind of man is heartless and greedy enough to take his revenge by kidnapping children?’”
He flashed her a grin that was all teeth and menace. “Ah, but you forget. I’m not a man.”
As Sitara studied his spine-chilling smile, she realized the inescapable truth.
Questions and games would lead her nowhere with him. He would drag out each round until the outcome played in his favor.
If she wanted to retrieve the children, she would need to break him.
She thought she knew how.
Sitara Galrind was a focused, sharp-minded woman who picked a lane and crossed its length until she’d reached her goals. People deemed her a resolute and fierce future sergeant whose willpower induced respect, but she was also a creature of habit. She wolfed down two cups of coffee a day in her trademark flowery mug. She ordered the same Thai lunch on Wednesdays. She listened to the same flute concerto every rainy weekend. She dropped her keys at the bottom of her purse and always wasted at least fifteen seconds trying to get them out. She scowled at people who cursed in her vicinity, and her jaw dropped in pure dismay every time she caught herself swearing.
They thought her predictable with good reason, but they lacked a crucial piece of information.
People knew that Sitara Galrind possessed enough drive to climb the highest mountains.
They didn’t know she could throw herself into the violent waters of a wild stream and change its current.
She left her chair. The Piper’s relentless gaze followed her every move.
She circled the table, her step slow and deliberate, a predator circling her prey.
She strolled towards the space behind his chair and leaned forward to whisper in his ear, “You will tell me how to get them back.”
The table rattled when the Pied Piper gripped its edges.
Wisps of dark blue magic, like ink in water, crawled out of Sitara’s mouth and rushed along his jawline. He threw his head back to avoid them. The magic flew by and writhed over the table before fizzling and vanishing like smoke.
Captain Jace’s voice boomed on the microphone, a sharp warning. “Galrind!”
Sitara turned and glared at the one-way mirror. “You will not be heard,” she commanded.
The glass cracked, and an ear-splitting sound whistled through the speakers. It reduced Captain’s Jace bellowing voice to a chaotic buzzing.
Footsteps hurried towards the interrogation room.
Sitara took a step, looked at the door and said, “You will not open.”
A vein of indigo landed on the handle and locked it in place. A weight slammed against the door from the other side, but Sitara knew it wouldn’t budge for now.
The Piper’s eyes glittered. “You’re part Fae, too,” he murmured. “I knew I felt it when you came in.”
Magic pulsed on Sitara’s tongue, craving release after being buried for such a long time. She’d tamed her own mouth and muted the ferocious and daunting power that simmered up her throat for years. Now, it wanted to howl. Lethal and violent commands threatened to burst from her lips.
She could have ordered his veins to ice, his heart to burn, his eyes to plunge him into a darkness of complete horror. The formidable possibilities tempted her.
You are still human, Sitara told herself. You are human, you are human.
She planted her palms on the table and looked into his tantalizing eyes. “You will tell me how to get them back. You will.”
A smirk curved his mouth. “You know, they might actually throw you in jail for this.”
“I don’t care.”
He examined her like she was a thread in a tapestry he meant to unravel without knowing which string to pull first.
“No,” he said at last. “I guess you don’t, do you?”
“Tell me. Or else...”
His lip twitched in amusement. “You think your little trick will make me talk? That’s cute. That’s very cute.”
She met his gaze without flinching before speaking in a voice of nightmares. “Your neck is filled with iron.”
Blue light crawled like insects on the Piper’s throat, and his breath hitched. He panted, but his eyes were alight with pure exhilaration.
She grimaced. “... Are you enjoying this? You are messed-up.”
He grinned as the trail of magic fizzled on his jaw. “Guilty as charged.”
“The children.”
“I don’t think so.”
“All right. Maybe I can’t make you tell me. But I can make your silence very unpleasant for you.”
“Oh, please do.”
“Galrind!”
Captain Jace’s voice thundered past the white noise in the speakers. The door handle rattled.
Still lounging in his seat as though he’d crowned himself king of the precinct, the Pied Piper studied her, his eyes twinkling. “Someone’s going to be on probation,” he sang.
“You’re going to be quiet,” she snapped. Ink-like smoke snapped his lips shut. “The only thing you’re allowed to tell me now is how to get the children back.”
Magic pulsed through the distance between Sitara Galrind and Sorrell, the Pied Piper. A rippling flux of power kept them apart yet bound them together, a strange tug on both their ribs, their very own gravity. Sitara’s magic dwindled, and her relentless stare became her only weapon.
Sorrell’s throat bobbed. He opened his mouth.
The door flew open. Sitara didn’t have time to turn.
Electricity droned behind her and brutally latched onto her neck. The darkness closed in on her, sucking all light out of her surroundings, all except for the golden flecks still shining in the Pied Piper’s eyes.
~~~
Rain drenched Sitara’s navy blue coat. The wind had bent her umbrella backward and rendered it useless. She’d stuffed it at the bottom of her bag before upturning her collar and shielding her head with a soaked magazine she’d never planned on reading anyway.
Water splashed all over her legs as she hurried through the deserted street leading up to her building. Despite the late hour, cars growled and raced through puddles in the adjacent boulevard. The rain blurred the city lights in the distance. At the edge of the narrow alley, a lamppost glowed and glazed the wet pavement in yellow light.
Sitara snuck under the thick gutter that lined the building’s entrance and shuffled through her purse for her keys. Sodden strands of black hair had escaped her ponytail and stuck to her face. She grabbed her phone to aim its light inside her bag. Two texts from Mara Jace flashed across the screen. The young woman ignored them.
Nearly a month had passed since Sitara’s encounter with the Pied Piper. One bold move had sufficed to ruin everything she’d ever worked for.
She tried not to let it darken her mood, but the looming end of her career was a growing lump in her throat, an anchor pinning her down to the bed each morning.
Her fingers brushed against a slab of cold metal in her purse. She was still fumbling to grab her keys when a shadow crept up on the brick wall in front of her.
Sitara turned and froze.
While the storm battered the entire city, it drizzled down on the Pied Piper, the suggestion of a rainfall around his silhouette. His coat was deep brown like rosewood, and his skin tone looked warmer than it had in the grim interrogation room. Instead of pale and sallow, it was light amber, closer to the rare pictures of him she’d seen before. His black scarf hid most of his dark green turtleneck, and the weather had tousled some of his hair. He smoothed it down and shoved his hands in his pockets. Before he did, Sitara recognized the same gray gloves he’d worn during their first meeting. She wondered if there was a story behind them, or if he simply liked to feel the wool on his skin, even when the climate didn’t call for it.
He smiled. “Good evening, Sitara Galrind.”
She tried not to look into his eyes. The eerie amber light from the lamppost magnified their unnatural shade. “I thought you’d gone back to Mornreeve for a while.”
One of his eyebrows arched. “Back to Mornreeve? You’ve done your research. You know I don’t spend much time there.”
“Maybe you should consider it, given all the trouble you made on our side lately.”
A grin crossed his lips. “Trouble is my middle name.” She rolled her eyes. “And besides, things ended well for all parties involved last time. The children are back in their boring little beds, and I got my money. No harm, no foul.”
Things ended well for all parties involved. Anger kindled in the pit of her stomach. It certainly hadn’t ended well for her. She’d spent the past month telling herself that next to the safety of the children, her career didn’t matter, but the comfort of that thought lessened with each day spent trying to occupy her busy mind.
Sitara adjusted the hem of her coat over her legs. “I’m surprised you took their deal,” she said. “It was barely what you were promised in the first place.”
He delved his hands deeper in his pockets and shrugged. “I grew tired of the little game.”
She leaned against the damp wall. Rain dripped down from the gutter above her. “Well, good. You were right to agree. And right not to harm the children.”
“Don’t get any delusions. Just because I didn’t kill them doesn’t mean I didn’t consider it. They just paid me before I could.”
“How nice of you, to make sure my opinion of you is cemented.”
“It’s my pleasure.” He paused. “So. You got fired, huh?”
Her jaw clenched. “I’m on probation. They’re reviewing my case.”
“To determine how dangerous you are, I assume. How long did you think you’d be able to hide your magic, anyway? Doesn’t your little anti-Fae unit have detectors or something?”
“First, it’s not an anti-Fae unit. It’s a special task force that handles Fae-related cases. Second, as someone who spends a lot of time on our side, you should know those detectors aren’t worth shit.”
His laughter could have ripped the night apart. She didn’t flinch. “Cursing! Oh, I like it. There’s something about human curses. They’re so honest and simple, straight to the point. Fae curses are too showy.”
The keys were cool in Sitara’s palm.
The building’s entrance was near. She could have retreated to her apartment in a matter of seconds. She could have ended this discussion. She could have stopped lingering in the rain with him.
The Pied Piper bit the inside of his cheek and kicked a crooked hole in the pavement. “To think. You caught the big bad criminal. Helped save the day. But you’re not a hero to them, are you? You’re a monster.” He smiled. “Like me.”
She smirked to hide the effect of his words. “Maybe. But there are different types of monsters. I doubt even they can miss the difference.”
His grin widened, and her stomach iced.
“What? What is it?”
“You said they.”
She tightened her grip on her keys. “It’s late. I have to go to bed.”
“Wait.”
Something flashed on his face, an uncharacteristic lack of poise. He took a small step forward then straightened abruptly, as though he needed to keep himself from taking another one.
She narrowed her eyes at him, a warning not to inch closer.
“You know,” he said. “The stars look more beautiful, on the other side. They seem closer, somehow. Like they’re always ready to devour you.” His voice dropped to a lush and dangerous whisper on the word, a reflection of the thrilling consumption he described. “You’d like it there. How about a vacation?”
“You should be a travel agent.”
“Interesting thought. You know, I might give that a try. I bet I could sell a trip downtown for the price of a cruise to Tahiti.” He grinned again. “I’m very charming.”
“If you were so charming, you wouldn’t need a flute to get people to follow you.”
“Point taken.”
The silence that stretched out between them needled Sitara like a discordant note in a lullaby. For a moment, the Pied Piper stared at the water warbling through the gutter. He wiped his damp face with his gloved palm and rubbed his jaw.
“You know,” he mused without looking at her. “I could play my pipes, now. Steal away someone I like, for a change.”
Sitara laughed, a mask of derisive indifference. “I’m very flattered.”
“You should be. But the offer is real. It’d be profitable for me, to take someone like you to Mornreeve.”
Deflection felt safer than taking him seriously. “Always running after money.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean money. Profit comes in many forms. I do nothing needlessly or pricelessly, but cash isn’t the only thing that’s worth my attention. It’s a pointless currency on the other side anyway. If you’d seen Mornreeve, you’d understand.”
“Since I haven’t, why don’t you explain it to me?”
His smile held a trace of sincerity it had lacked so far. “How do you think Mornreeve was built? Mornreeve is an impossibility, darling, a beautiful anomaly. Like you and me.” He gestured between them. “Humans and Faes shouldn’t collide, yet they do. Most of the time, it’s pure devastation, a strange crime. But sometimes, it makes things like us, things that don’t quite fit anywhere. Not on the other side, and not on this one. Mornreeve is the same.” He slipped his hands back into his pockets. “It was created by magic like yours, by voices carried beyond the limits of physics, of reality, of the possible. I can play my music and make someone forget what their name is, but you... You’re a maker. Your voice, your desire, it bends reality to its will. You’re like the others that built Mornreeve, the architects. People who could say, ‘This moonbeam will become a house’, and the light solidified to make it so. Mornreeve is eternal, Fae-like, but what’s human about it is that it’s ever-changing, in constant mutation. What’s built is rebuilt and is rebuilt. You could make your mark on it. Build a few things of your own.”
All of a sudden, Sitara’s heart felt too small and caged for the wildness that wanted to spill from it. She’d never thought of her strange magic as a means of creation. To her, it had always signified danger, destruction, a sin to hide and bury.
There were so many things that she’d wanted, and so many that she’d considered impossible for her. She’d seen magic as an unwelcome force that boxed her in and forced a part of her into hiding.
The idea that she could turn the impossible into a reality wrung the breath from her lungs.
She dug the tip of her key into her palm, a reminder that she was still human enough to bleed. “How would that be profitable to you, exactly?”
He shrugged again. “I have my ways. Besides, you grow bored after a few decades. I’m always looking for new investments.” He adjusted the hem of his gloves. “Think about it.”
“May I see them?”
He blinked. “See what?”
“Your flute. You carry it, don’t you? May I see them?”
She didn’t know what mad urge had pushed her to ask. He studied her expression, letting her request hang between them. He shook his head. “Maybe next time.”
She hid her disappointment well. “If there is a next time.”
“I’d like to think there will be. That’s my optimistic side. Don’t tell anybody I have one.”
A smile threatened to slide over her lips.
“And besides,” he continued. “You might not see the pipes tonight, but darling, soon, you’ll hear them.”
His tone indicated the end of their discussion.
He didn’t disappear in a flash or stroll back up the street. Instead, he wandered into the drizzle and melted into the darkness, his brown coat and auburn hair blackening like a late evening sky. His silhouette slid into the night like the last trace of sunset, until there was nothing but rain and glittering yellow light in his wake.
Sitara downed a long breath that filled up her lungs and hurried back to her apartment. She showered, slipped into her nightgown and crawled into bed.
The dizzying lights flashing through her curtains kept her awake for a while as she watched them glowing on her bedroom walls. One second, the spines lined up on the bookshelves were emerald green, then sea blue, then lemon yellow. The lights came from a nearby store whose sign towered over the adjacent boulevard. Each night, it started flaring around midnight and didn’t stop until right before dawn.
Sitara wondered if Mornreeve had 24-hour stores or any stores at all.
She curled up in a bundle of sheets, faced away from the window and stared at the bird silhouettes painted on the wall next to her bed. One of them lingered inside an open cage while the others soared over the headboard, delicate white shapes on shabby teal paint.
Sitara sighed, closed her eyes.
She opened them again when the music began.
A high note whistled through the night, then a quieter one, then a slow, teasing one that fizzled into a breath of air.
Goosebumps spread across Sitara’s arms, and she murmured, “Oh, no.”
The subsequent notes, forlorn and pleading, spiraled around her like creeping vines before diving into her chest. They inched closer to her ribs until they enclosed them, greedy guardians of the heart battering the bone.
The melody deepened to a darker, more feral rhythm that tightened its grip on Sitara’s soul. The music flowed like a river whose current kept quickening, rushing towards the vast and boundless ocean where drowning was inevitable, even welcomed.
Sitara turned over on her back, stretched out her arms over her head and closed her eyes once more.
Somewhere, in this world or the other, the Pied Piper played for her. He called to her. He beckoned her into his web of magic and promises and winnings. His music rolled over her like the tide frothing on the sand. It blew through her and scattered her thoughts, silenced her reason. She no longer felt the mattress underneath her. She was a child floating through a waking dream, a bird freed from a cage, a half-Fae girl whose only limits were the ones she’d made.
Like the stars from the other side the Piper had mentioned, it felt like the music would devour her, except it never did. The eerie, enchanting song hovered over her, like rain that drizzled down from the sky and stopped half an inch from her eager skin. It was a simmering storm refusing to thunder, the suggestion of a devastating tempest that would flood her senses if it roared. The music drew her towards a ledge without granting her the satisfaction of the fall.
It felt exhilarating. It felt dangerous. It felt like home.
Despite the call of the Pied Piper, Sitara didn’t leave her bed that night.
When the melodies finally lulled her to sleep, she dreamed of building impossible houses out of sunlight, maddening bridges out of wind, wild gardens out of shooting stars.
She woke up dazed and exhilarated and terrified, knowing that one day, those visions would refuse to remain tucked into her imagination.
One day, she, too, would follow the Pied Piper.
