Rachel Caine & Kristin Cast & Claudia Gray & Nancy Holder & Tanith Lee & Richelle Mead & Cynthia Leitich Smith & P. C. Cast (25 page)

Then Evan began to sing, and Andi simply ceased to matter.

His voice was rough. Gravelly, as if the sound should have hurt coming out. I drank to satisfy desperate thirst, and I'd never tasted anything so wonderful. He'd said he wasn't much of a vocalist, but he was
wrong
. Or else he'd lied. Mere humbleness couldn't account for such an understatement.

His voice was raw emotion, gritty and gorgeous. I wanted to take off my clothes and roll in his voice. Wrap it around me. Wear it. Breathe it. Live it. His song filled me so thoroughly that for the first time in my life, I understood how empty I'd been before. How dull and tedious. I couldn't make sounds like that. Couldn't form notes with my fingers or throat. And I wasn't sure how, now that I'd heard him, I could ever live again without his sound around me. In me. Singing. Making beautiful, aching music, just for me.

“Mallory!” Andi pulled urgently on my arm again.

“Just one song.” I dragged her back into the house with me. “I can handle one song. And you owe me.” I risked looking away from Evan long enough to glare at her, suddenly sure my own eyes were flashing fiercely. I couldn't compel like a
bean sidhe
, or mesmerize like a siren. But I would do or say whatever it took to get close to Evan. To hear his song.

I needed it. I would die if I couldn't have it. I was sure of it.

“One song. Then I'll drag you out of here by your hair, if I have to,” she snapped. Andi was mad. Because someone else was singing, soaking up attention? Or because I wanted to
listen
to someone else singing?

“Fine.” Though I wasn't even sure what she said next. I couldn't hear her over. . . .

Evan
.

I don't remember winding my way back through the crowd. Don't remember nudging, or pushing, or stepping on toes. But suddenly I was there, and he sat in front of me on a drum stool, a beautiful acoustic guitar on his lap. It sang for him like he sang for me. His fingers slid over the frets, and he plucked the strings without a pick. His head bobbed with a beat he'd created from nothing.

All around me, people danced. They swayed, and bobbed, and clutched one another to the rhythm of his aching melody. I wanted to dance—needed to live out those notes—but I wouldn't ruin his song with my clumsiness.

Then Evan looked up and saw me. He smiled, and his eyes lit up again, brighter than before, and suddenly I was warm inside.

His fingers flew across the strings, and the heartsick, wandering melody deepened, ripened, gaining focus and complexity. His voice teased new words from the air between us. They were his lyrics, but they were mine too. I couldn't have sung them. Couldn't even have written them, but he drew them from me. Gave them to me.

They were ours.

And all at once I understood.

Evan wasn't like the others. Not like the sketch artist in downtown Dallas, or the singing waitress last month. He was more than a temporary fixation. More than a one-night song to scratch my soul-itch. Evan was . . .

The word tasted like a delicacy, but I thought it in a tiny, formless whisper, hardly daring to believe. Was it possible? Was that why Andi had insisted on going out? She couldn't have known, of course, but she didn't need to. Not if this was real, if it was meant to be.

If I was right, Evan and I could give one another everything we'd ever craved. We could make magic together. We could make
music
. I would feed his talent, and he would feed my soul. He would get fame, and fortune, and critical acclaim, and I would get
him
. If he was truly

then I could have him. I could
love
him. And if I was very, very careful, we might live almost a human lifetime together.

My mother once savored a genius for thirty-six years.

I stood frozen, a statue in a room full of motion, thunderstruck and lost in the sound. I could no longer think. Couldn't breathe. I could only lap at his genius like a starving cat with a bowl of milk.

And when he'd finished the last notes, when they hung heavy and lonely in my heart, the cold darkness descended again, and I collapsed. I fell to the floor in a heap of talentless limbs, uncoordinated fingers. And I cried from the emptiness.

“Mallory!” Andi whispered fiercely, trying to pull me up before anyone noticed. But I couldn't move. The silence was too heavy, and I couldn't fight it. How do you slink back to live in darkness after you've been warmed by the light?

Evan set his guitar down and knelt in front of me. “What happened?”

“That was . . . beautiful,” I whispered, frustrated and humiliated by my own inadequate, artless vocabulary. He'd given me the most amazing gift I'd ever experienced, and I couldn't even tell him how I felt.

“Thanks.” He grinned and pulled me up as new music snaked through the room from several speakers, cool and mechanical after the lifeblood he'd just shed for us. “I never played it like that before.” He tugged me gently away from the crowd, his brown eyes lit from within, and I would have followed him anywhere. I barely noticed Andi trailing us. “I think you're good luck.”

“Great,” Andi mumbled under her breath. “Mallory, we have to go.”

“Stay for one dance,” Evan said, without even glancing her way. His eyes were all for me. So were his hands, and his mouth, and his
songs
. “Just five minutes.”

I wanted to. Desperately. But I would only humiliate myself and embarrass him in front his friends. So I started to shake my head, but Andi beat me to the punch with an ugly laugh.

“Mallory dances worse than she sings.”

I glared at her, then glanced apologetically at Evan. “She's right. I can't dance.”

When Evan laughed, the sound was melodic. “I'm not asking for a world-class waltz. Just one slow dance.” Before either of us could argue, he turned and pushed a button on the stereo, and the speakers went silent. The crowd started
to grumble, but then he pressed one more button and a slow, sultry song slid into the room. The protests melted.

The first notes were just a bass guitar and drums, with a high hat for accent, but the rhythm brought with it images of damp, sweltering nights and little clothing. Evenings when it was too hot to touch anyone else, but you wanted to anyway. I felt the heat in spite of the air conditioned room, because Evan pulled me close and his magical, musical hands were on me. And when the words began, he hummed in my ear, so low that no one else could hear.

I couldn't dance. Not one step. But I could put my arms around him and let him move us both to the music. Guiding me. Playing me like he played his guitar.

I wanted to make music for him, but I couldn't. Art was mine to give, not to make. And it took every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep from giving that song to him as he hummed it. From molding it and making it his. Ours. I forced the urge down. Buried it in the feel of his hands on my back, of his lips as they brushed my ear. I would enjoy him the normal way, if only for a few minutes.

Content in his arms, I closed my eyes, and when I finally opened them, I saw Andi watching us over his shoulder. Watching
me
. Rick stopped at her side, two cups in hand, but she brushed him off without a word, and her hard gaze never left mine.

I closed my eyes again, blocking her out. But a minute later, she pulled me away from Evan before the last notes had even faded around us. “We have to go,” she snapped,
glaring at him now. “I have to be home before my brother gets off work.”

“Stop it!” I hissed as she pulled me toward the door, but she didn't let go, and I didn't want to cause another scene. “Didn't you hear him?” I whispered desperately, tripping after her. “We're supposed to be together. He's
genius
, Andi! My first.”

“You're not ready,” she insisted, and I stumbled over the threshold as she dragged me onto the porch.

“Wait. . . .” Evan followed us to the door, but Andi didn't stop, so he jogged down the steps after us.

“How do you know what I'm ready for? You're a siren. You eat people. You don't know a
anything
about true art.”

Andi stopped at the curb and whirled on me, her eyes flashing in fury. “You can be pissed if you want, but you saved my ass, and now I'm saving yours. And if you don't get in the damn car, I swear I'll sing to him, and he'll forget he
ever even met you
.”

“You're a bitter, jealous bitch,” I spat, tears filling my eyes.

For a moment, she looked like I'd slapped her. Then her expression went blank and hard. “I'm all you have. Get in the car.”

“What's your name?” Evan stumbled to a stop on the sidewalk. “Can I . . . ? Maybe we could hang out sometime?”

“I don't think so,” Andi said, dragging me toward the car, and my heart broke as his expression crumpled.

“Mallory Bennett,” I called out, and Andi's grip tightened until it hurt. She opened the passenger door and pushed on my shoulders until I sat, then slammed the door. She raced
around the front of the car, slid into her own seat, and had the engine started before Evan made it to the curb. And as we sped away from the party where she'd almost killed and I'd almost lived, I twisted in my seat to watch Evan fade into the darkness, fighting back the cold steadily seeping back into my chest.

I hadn't even gotten his last name.

Andi tried to get me up before she left for work, but I couldn't look at her without hating her. So I pulled the covers over my shoulder and stared at the wall. She curled up next to me and brushed hair back from my forehead. She said she was sorry. She promised that there would be others like Evan, later, when I was ready to nurture true genius.

But my readiness wasn't the problem.
She
wasn't ready to share me.

When I still refused to look at her, she got dressed, and right before she closed the bedroom door, she swore that the next time I found a genius, she wouldn't stand in my way. She would help me.

But I could hardly hear her. I heard Evan in my head, and in my heart. It was a hollow echo of the live performance, but it was enough to drown out everything else.

I spent the morning in Andi's bed, huddled beneath her covers, but no matter how many blankets I piled on, I couldn't get warm. Had Evan's warmth shown me how cold I truly was? Or was I colder for having lost him?

The sun was high and bright when my phone chirped, signaling a new email. I rolled over and glanced at the clock. Eleven twenty-three. The day was half over. If I could survive another few hours, I'd make Andi take me out again. Anywhere loud enough to block out the echo in my head. She owed me.

The phone chirped with another email. But Andi was more of a texter. . . .

I fumbled on the nightstand, then flipped open my phone and selected the latest email. The sender's name was Evan Taylor. The message read, “Mallory, if this is you, please call me.” There was a phone number below the signature.

My heart thumped almost painfully as I dialed, and my pulse shot through the roof when he answered. “Hello?”

“Evan? It's Mallory. How did you get my email address?”

He sighed, and the sound was melodic. “Facebook. Thank goodness you posted a picture. There are four Mallory Bennetts in central Texas.”

“I. . . .” I'd lost all words.

He laughed. “Are you busy? You wanna do something? Get some lunch?”

Yes.
“No.” Even cold and aching for him, for his music, in the light of day, with Evan's song a mere memory, I knew I shouldn't. Not without Andi there as backup. Even if she was wrong and I
was
ready for Evan, I wasn't ready to be alone with him. Not for too long, anyway.

“No?” He sounded so surprised, so heartbroken, my chest hurt.

“Yes.” I closed my eyes, ashamed of my weakness. “Absolutely, yes.”

“Where are you? I'll come over.”

My eyes flew open and I glanced around Andi's wreck of a room. We hadn't done laundry in two weeks, and I didn't even know where Ty kept the vacuum cleaner. So I gave him my address. My mom always cleaned before she left town because she hated coming home to a dirty house.

“I'll be there in an hour.”

The phone clicked in my ear, and I flipped it closed, my heart pounding. Then I flipped it back open and emailed Andi. She had to leave her phone in her locker while she was on the clock, so we'd have at least a couple of hours of privacy before she got off work at three, in plenty of time to rescue us if something went wrong.

My precaution in place, I threw back the covers, tugged on the jeans I'd worn the day before, and grabbed my keys. Eight minutes later, I pulled into my own driveway and headed straight for the shower.