Page 68 of The Baritone's Rival

Elliott’s eyes went cold, and he puffed up his chest. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to be conscious or whole to be my mate.”

Oscar steeled himself as Elliott hissed and lunged at him.

Chapter 22

Trent

Trent plunked out the run on the piano one more time. This wasn’t going well.

The building was quiet. The practice rooms were entirely empty other than him and the lone violin down the hall. Honestly, the violin was doing better than he was. He’d been stuck on one phrase for twenty minutes.

His voice was a little large to be singing Handel, but he loved the music, and it showed a good contrast to the heavier Verdi and Puccini that made up most of his repertoire. Anthony had encouraged him to push his ornamentation further, but the heft of his big tenor voice struggled to execute what they’d decided on.

It was lonely work, but ordinarily Trent didn’t mind that. Most of the real effort of being a musician happened alone. At this level, singing was an elite sport, requiring a high degree of focus and muscle coordination.

He started the phrase again.

As he reached the apex, his voice finally locking into the melody, he felt a sudden squeeze and pull in his chest. It was surprising and somewhat painful. He gripped the cover of the grand piano to steady himself.

At first, he worried he might be having a heart attack, but after a moment, the pain dulled. He checked in with himself. No sweating, no dizziness, no nausea. He was fine. There was just an invisible force yanking at his chest.

Something was wrong with Oscar. They hadn’t completed the mating bond, but they’d been intimate. That could be enough to connect them. As the waves of uneasy discomfort surged through his body, he was sure that Oscar was in trouble.

The pull wasn’t urgent. Oscar wasn’t dying. But he was definitely in danger. Unfortunately, Trent had no idea where he was. Elliott’s covenhouse was in Canarsie, supposedly, but he didn’t have an address. Besides, the tugging wasn’t coming from deeper in Brooklyn. It was from Manhattan.

He didn’t have many options. If he spent the night wandering the city, blindly following the nascent mate bond into dark alleys, that wouldn’t help Oscar at all. Instead, he had to go where someone might know where Oscar was. The Grosvenor covenhouse.

He stuffed his binder back into his backpack and hurried out into the hallway, slamming the door to the practice room behind him. He was practically running, typing the address into his phone at the same time. He ignored the judgmental looks of the other music students as he burst out onto the street.

Trent grumbled to himself as he jumped into the rideshare. It was a chunk of change to take a car from downtown Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, but he had to do something. Oscar needed help.

The tiny Chrysler Neon that had picked Trent up was falling apart. He was like a sardine in a tin can rattling around a grocery bag. The driver was an elderly man with thick glasses, and it took every ounce of control Trent had not to yell at him to go faster.

When he arrived at the covenhouse, everything was quiet. The large apartment complex was intimidating in its silence.As he reached the front door, a young woman materialized out of the shadows. With long, lustrous hair and light brown skin, she was very pretty, and her face gave off a don’t-fuck-with-me energy that Trent found appealing.

“What’s your business, human?”

Trent rolled his eyes. She had probably been human less than a decade ago. Some folks just really leaned into the whole “creature of the night” persona.

“I need to see Freddie.”

“The master is out.” She didn’t move from her post in front of the door.

“Anthony then. Tell him Trent is here.”

Trent saw her eyes flick off to the upper right corner of her field of vision. She was conversing mind-to-mind. After a moment, she sighed.

“Come on.”

The vampire led Trent to the common area of the covenhouse, back where he initially met Freddie. That was the day that Oscar was first attacked, and that Trent had discovered that his voice teacher was one of the undead.

The place was bathed in diffuse light, a few antique lamps casting an amber glow over the room. Anthony sat in a large upholstered chair, reading a thick leather-bound tome.

“Trent. What are you?—”

“Where are Freddie and Oscar?”

Anthony’s brows furrowed. “They went on an errand.”

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