The Monsters of Music Read online

  Mel inspected him. Tall, thin, with delicate features hinting at Asian descent. Cheekbones slashing sharply under half-moon dark eyes. A nice breadth to his chest and shoulders in spite of his skinny build. The lungs in that chest were big enough to give his voice power—real rock-star lungs, if she played her cards right.

  His thin brows drew together as she kept staring, and he shifted, moving a step away from her. His awkwardness relieved her own tension, and she smiled. He was an artist, for sure, and an introvert, apparently. "Do you want me to call you Kiyo or Kiyoji?"

  "Kiyo is fine." He scraped his teeth over his lower lip, a quick, nervous movement. "Are you—are you going to be around?"

  "Yeah, I work here. Errands and small stuff, nothing important."

  "Cool, okay. Do you know where I'm supposed to go now?"

  "Yeah, sure. I'll walk you there. Come on." She turned, careful to keep her hood up and her hair over the right side of her face. "Did you know this place was once a boarding school? They trained kids for the stage and TV here. That's why it has such a huge auditorium-slash-theater space."

  "The architectural detail in there is pretty incredible," he said.

  "It is." Impressive. Most guys his age would be too self-focused to notice architectural details while auditioning.

  Mel paused at the end of the hall before a black lacquered door. "Here it is. Red Room."

  Kiyo quirked an eyebrow. "Sounds a little Stephen King."

  "Yeah, well—there's already a Green Room and a Blue Room, so—"

  He nodded. "Okay. And whoever's in there will tell me what to do next?"

  "That's right. All the competitors will be staying in the dormitory out back, across the courtyard. No more going home until you get kicked off the show. They own you now. Watch yourself." Mel winked her uncovered eye at him and whirled, striding down the hall, resisting the urge she felt to turn back, to hang around him a little longer.

  There would be time for that later. She had preparations to make.

  Kiyo's voice floated after her. "Hey, what's your name?"

  She flashed him the peace sign and kept walking.

  -2-

  Superstition

  Eddie Carver staggered into his dressing room and yanked open the bottom drawer of the scarred desk in the corner. The drawer stuck halfway, and he kicked it to loosen the runners. "Damn these slipshod, second-hand furnishings," he muttered.

  There it was, undisturbed—the bottle he had brought with him that morning. He snatched a paper cup from the stack next to the water pitcher, filled it halfway with amber liquid, and downed the lot. He shook off the sting of the drink and breathed in once through his nose and out through his mouth, slowly. The therapist said breathing would help. But Eddie wasn't convinced that sucking and expelling oxygen could help him as much as three fingers of hard liquor could.

  Setting down the cup, he pulled out his phone and unlocked it, heart pounding, as if the drink might have made the odd text messages disappear.

  But they were still there. And as he watched, a new message slid onto the screen.

  "Good boy, Eddie. I think we're going to work well together. —R.P."

  Eddie swallowed. Resident poltergeist, eh? He'd hated that movie with a passion ever since he was a kid. He had caught a glimpse of it one night, when he'd crept downstairs long after bedtime to sneak a snack from the kitchen. His parents were curled on the couch, eating popcorn and huddling together as a ghostly hand snapped from the glimmering blue screen in the movie. At the time, he had been most upset about the popcorn. How dare they eat popcorn without him? Or have fun without him?

  But later, after he had crept back to bed and sunk into sleep, the dreams came—dreams of little blond girls and ghosts. And they came again, night after night, and then a few times a month. When he was in college he finally worked up the courage to watch the movie with friends, thinking a full viewing might purge the terror.

  Afterward, he woke up in a cold sweat every night for a week.

  So the word "poltergeist" had a special meaning for Eddie, one that mandatory viewings of Paranormal Activity 1-4 with his now-ex-wife hadn't helped. Why she liked that crazy ghost crap was beyond him. She loved it, always got this manic light in her eyes when she talked about the supernatural.

  "There's more to the world than what we see, Eddie," she would tell him. "Don't you long for a little taste of it? Of the Otherworld?"

  He didn't. Because none of that stuff was real, and if it were, it would not be exciting or fun. It would be terrifying, like these freaking text messages.

  "Just some punk. A stupid kid playing games, and I let myself be taken in." Eddie spat the words aloud, still staring at the phone. "I'll fix this. We'll get rid of that Kiyo kid in the first round."

  Another text appeared. "Oh, I wouldn't do that, Eddie."

  Chills burst over Eddie's entire body, and the hand holding the phone grew moist. He stared wildly around the room, rooted to the spot. "All right, very funny," he said aloud. "Where are you? Show yourself."

  Nothing moved—not the terry-cloth robe over the studded leather chair, not the half-open door of the closet, not even the shadows under the dressing table against the wall.

  Eddie swallowed, licked his lips, and strode to the closet door, throwing it wide. Empty. No one in his tiny private bathroom, or anywhere else in the two-room space that the producer had dared to call a "suite."

  Some suite. Eddie Carver deserved better.

  He often told himself that he had been born in the wrong time, either too early or too late—he kept changing his mind about which one it was. Either way, the gods of the music industry had never gifted him with the most coveted prize—a record deal—and now it was clearly too late. His voice had grown too scratchy for even the roughest of rock.

  Deep down, in some secret part of himself, Eddie wondered if maybe it wasn't that he was born out of his time. Maybe it wasn't that the producers were too busy, that they didn't give him enough consideration, that they were too interested making sales rather than celebrating art. Maybe, beneath it all, lay the cold, sickening truth that he really wasn't any good—that despite his technical prowess and his efforts to do everything right, he lacked something effervescent, intangible. True genius.

  He crushed that suspicion back down where it belonged. Someday, maybe, it would crawl up his throat and swallow him whole—but not today, dammit! He was Eddie Freaking Carver, and no spying little twerp was going to get the better of him.

  He wrenched open the door to his dressing room and belted out the word, "Security!" so forcefully that a pair of guards scampered over to him at once. Pimply-faced, pudgy guys, both of them, fumbling at the tasers on their belts and stumbling over inane questions. "What's wrong, sir? What's the matter?"

  "Someone has been in my dressing room. I want you to sweep it, or whatever."

  "Sweep it?" The taller of the two guards stared blankly. "Isn't that a job for the cleaning staff, sir?"

  "Do a security sweep," hissed Eddie, nose to nose with the man. "Check out the room. Look for booby traps, bugs, clues, anything."

  "Of course, of course."

  "Hey!" Eddie snagged the sleeve of the other guard, the one who smelled like the back alley of a bar. "You got a smoke on you?"

  The man stared at him. "Yeah."

  "Pass one over."

  "Sure, sure." The guard fumbled with his pockets and disgorged a half-empty pack. He tapped one free and handed it to Eddie. "Happy to help, sir."

  His smile, his nod—both were too eager, the faint light of self-interest sparking already. Eddie could imagine what the guard would say to his buddies on his next break. "Eddie Carver asked me for a cigarette. Yeah, me. Asked me to check his room for intruders, too. He trusts me, you know. Might even hire me on as his private security after the contest. You never know."

  That's how humans were, desperate shriveled rats sniffling and sneering and clawing for a higher perch, even if that perch happened to be someone
else's head.

  Eddie stuck the cigarette between his lips. "Light?"

  The guard produced a lighter and snapped it, and Eddie took a long draw. The smoke warmed his lungs, but they spasmed almost immediately—it had been too long since he last smoked.

  Swearing, he strode away from the guard, away from his suite, down one hallway and another, looking for fresh air, or for a place to put the damn thing out, whichever came first. Finally he saw white light through a glazed window, and he slammed through the door into the cold.

  Throwing the cigarette on the concrete walkway, he ground it out with his heel, sucking in a cleansing breath of air so frigid his nostrils tingled.

  "What possessed Archambeau to do this show in January?" he muttered. "I hate January."

  He knew the reasoning, of course. Archambeau had explained it to him when they had their first meeting about the judging job.

  "This show is the cure for the post-holiday blues," Archambeau had said, his eyes alight. "Think about it—everybody's feeling down, everybody's stuck inside, right? They're looking for something new, something they haven't seen before. And bam! Here comes our show, Voices Rising, and it's just a state-wide thing, but hey—it's different, and who doesn't love a good singing competition, right? Who doesn't love music?"

  Eddie had merely nodded. He nodded at everything Archambeau said, because the money was good and alimony wasn't, because he was tired of struggling to find students willing to pay his coaching rates. Because Archambeau would pay him well to sit in a chair and judge young singers as he, Eddie, had been judged so many times. It felt like revenge, and justice, and the distant hope of a vacation somewhere nice.

  He held onto the image of "somewhere nice" as he surveyed the courtyard he'd stepped into—a broad gray expanse of crisply aligned paving stones, a few of them cracked and oozing shriveled moss. Thin strips of hardened snow marked the lower edges of each stone bench and concrete planter. At the far side of the courtyard rose the immense dormitory building that once housed all the students of the Leroux School for the Performing Arts.

  As Eddie looked up at the building, at its grim stone facade and uncompromising rows of windows, he saw a face behind a pane of glass. A hard, white, inhuman face, with black holes for eyes and a dark drooping mouth.

  His whole body jerked, and he staggered back against the door, fumbling for its handle. He blinked once.

  Still there. And what was more terrifying—a white-gloved hand lifted beside the face. Lifted, and waved at him. The face canted to the right, and Eddie whimpered, tugging the door open and throwing himself through it. He ran back to his room, arriving just as the guards were coming out again.

  "Nothing in your suite, sir," said the cigarette guard.

  "Bugs? Hidden cameras?" Eddie could barely speak, he was panting so hard.

  "No bugs that I saw," said the guard. "But we'll send pest control in first thing tomorrow, okay? Meanwhile, if you see a big one, holler. We'll be right down the hall."

  Eddie, torn between disbelief and terror, couldn't answer.

  -3-

  Irreplaceable

  Mel snickered, sliding into her swivel chair and tossing the mask and gloves onto the desk. She propped her feet on the desk's edge and watched Eddie Carver on her laptop screen as he tiptoed around his room, re-checking every shadowed space. Fortunately, he didn't look thoroughly. If he had, he might have found what the useless security guards didn't see—a tiny camera nestled in a dent above the bathroom doorframe, overlooking the dressing room, and a microphone attached to the underside of the leather chair.

  Planting bugs and cameras in the judges' rooms wasn't part of the original plan, but she had done it anyway, in case the information she could glean from those feeds became valuable at some point during the contest. As a lowly assistant, she'd been drafted as part of the prep team, tidying the rooms and setting out all the small extras like mints, tissue packets, and snacks, filling the mini-fridges with water and soda, and doing a last quick spritz of the mirrors and doorknobs with Windex. It was easy to stow the tiny cameras and microphones in her bag and tuck them into convenient corners of each suite. Connecting to them from her computer proved much more complicated, but she had managed it, thanks to a few online forums and walkthroughs.

  Already the effort was proving useful, enabling her to terrify one of the judges into submission. Mel hated self-important men, and she had never had the chance to mess with one's head before. It was fun—intoxicating.

  Amusing as Eddie was, though, Mel had other things to do besides watch him unravel. She closed the video feed window and hopped out of the desk chair, the only modern piece of furniture she had brought up to the dormitory attic with her.

  When she first arrived, the long room had been choked with dusty furnishings and boxes overflowing with old costumes. Now it was a gloriously arranged riot of stage props and set pieces, vintage costumes and rainbow finery. Three large cages, probably from a performance of Chicago, lined the far end of the room. She hadn't ruled out their usefulness yet, but until she found a purpose for them, she had covered them in lush crimson curtains and black tulle. The huge, ornate bed from Romeo and Juliet was hers now, its mattress piled with a Bohemian tangle of teal and scarlet and orange and cream, in the richest fabrics she could find. Her cat, a white cloud of fur named Prince, sat atop a tasseled cushion, watching her with mild suspicion.

  A massive wire-and-foil chandelier, spray-painted gold, hung over the bed. All along the walls she had set up her favorite set pieces—a giant bespectacled eye from Gatsby, two crazy junkyard sculptures from Cats, a painted wooden bake oven from Sweeney Todd. The juxtaposition of the lavish and the raw, the sharp and the soft, fed her soul in a way she didn't care to explore.

  She pulled on the hoodie again, ruffled Prince's fur, and said, "Behave yourself. I'll be back soon."

  The cat meowed and caught the tips of Mel's fingers with his pointy teeth. She shook her hand free and left, closing the door carefully so he wouldn't escape the attic.

  Her first stop was the dingy office of the housing manager, a gaunt woman with pixie-cut hair and two dozen sharply cut wrinkles around her mouth. The plastic nametag pinned to her blouse read "Lisette Boucher."

  "Hi, Madame Boucher." Mel pronounced it "Boo-shay," as she knew it should be, and the woman gave her a tight smile. "Need help with anything?"

  "Everything." Madame Boucher swept a hand across her eyes. "They keep sending me residence papers for more contestants, and most of them are not even complete. This woman, she wrote half a sentence in the box for 'Additional Requests.' What am I supposed to do with half a sentence? I have to type in all this information and assign rooms to the contestants within the hour, but I also need to meet with the caterer."

  "I can do the typing and the room assignments," said Mel.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah. We're not sorting them by gender or anything, right? It's just a matter of writing down a room number for everyone."

  "Yes, but you have to make sure that anyone with mobility needs is on the first floor."

  "Of course."

  Madame Boucher grabbed a folder and a clipboard. "Well then, I'll go deal with the caterer while you get to it. Thank you, Melanie."

  Mel ducked her head in response. She was used to answering to "Melanie" now—after all, the name Melpomene was too confusing for most humans. Not that she liked the name much herself, anyway. Melpomene was the Greek muse of tragedy. Fitting, maybe, but depressing.

  The job was done in half an hour—all contestants assigned to their rooms, all information from the residence forms entered into the spreadsheet. Mel tossed the paper forms into the shredding bin, but she folded Kiyo's form and tucked it into her back pocket. She had given him a room near the far end of the third-floor east hall, by the stairs, while all the other contestants were housed on the first and second floors. The third floor was for the stage team, the film crew, and the rest of the on-site staff, but most of them were in the
west wing. To be safe, Mel marked "Mold Problem—Do Not Assign" on the rooms adjacent to and across from Kiyo's space.

  "No one will bother us now," she whispered, tapping the screen with a chipped black nail.

  Madame Boucher would be back soon. Time to swipe the dormitory master key.

  She took it from the tray of neatly numbered keys in Boucher's filing cabinet. Mel left the woman a sticky note—"Mission Accomplished"—on the desktop monitor and hurried through the dormitory to the side exit. All the contestants would still be waiting in the stage building, probably enduring some kind of congratulatory orientation speech from the producer, Gils Archambeau. Then they would have refreshments, mingle a bit, and disperse to their rooms. She had seen it all on the schedule when she brought Archambeau his espresso macchiato that morning.

  Thirty minutes until Boucher returned to the office. Thirty minutes to have the duplicate key made.

  Mel swept the cover off her motorcycle and gritted her teeth as she jammed on the freezing helmet. Next time she would have to remember to bring the helmet inside so it wouldn't be so freaking cold.

  The bike growled to life, and she zoomed out of the parking lot and down a side street. A couple blocks' ride would bring her to the corner store, Zapz Mart, where they had a DIY key-cutting machine.

  She had used the machine once already, when she first arrived in town and persuaded Archambeau to hire her as a coffee-getter and odd-job-doer for the singing competition. When his back was turned, she had palmed the auditorium master key, the one that could open any exterior door. No newfangled keycards in this joint. Lucky for her, because duplicating a card like that was a pain in the ass.

  Once she twinned the master key for the dormitory building, she would have full access to the complex—or at least the two buildings being used for Voices Rising.

  At the front of the Zapz Mart, two men lounged against the wall, one of them huffing a cigarette. He reached out and tapped the ash right onto Mel's shoulder as she passed by. She brushed it off and turned, keeping her head low.