Page 238 of Haunt Me

No one says anything.

On the first night in Munich, I fall apart in the middle of a song.

“Do you want to stop?” Jude asks me that night. I’m so tired I can’t get up off the floor. I shake my head and get dizzy.

Jude lowers his long body onto the floor next to me.

“Don’t think about the fans,” he says quietly. His face is wrinkled with worry, and I hate it. Not his face. Well, his face too a little bit right now.Why won’t he leave me alone?“Don’t think about the money. About everyone who is working on this tour. And don’t you dare think of me or Skye or Miki or any of the musicians.”

“What…” It takes too much effort to speak. My throat is shredded to pieces. “What should I think about then?”

“Yourself,” Jude says.

Yeah, right.

“Dude, you gotta eat something,” he goes on, relentless. My eyes have drifted closed, and it’s just as well because I don’t have to look at his stupid face while he’s saying stupid stuff. “You look like crap.”

“Sleep,” I murmur. “I need to sleep.”

I feel someone lift me with an arm around my shoulders and then I feel nothing.

Finally.

…

We are in Paris.

Everyone is enjoying what little time we have for sightseeing. Jude and Skye take selfies with the Eifel Tower flashing in the background and try going to a club incognito. All I do is miss Eden.

Every beautiful thing I see, every café, every little bookstore, every green tree by the Seine, makes me think of her. I can’t stop thinking about her; I know how much she would enjoy being here, experiencing everything with me.

No. Head in the game.No time to fall apart.

The Paris shows are going to be huge. People from all over the world have gathered here to see us perform, to dance with us, to sing with us. The stadium has been sold out many times over for months. There are going to be so many surprises, so much happening. Meanwhile, I feel like checking myself into a sanatorium in Switzerland like a soldier in the aftermath of the Great War. And never coming out.

Before I know it, I am on stage, opening night.

I break my own tradition, singing one of my new songs,No One Has Fantasized About This More, as I’m lifted onto the stage, and the stands erupt in screams.

“We have so many surprises for you tonight,Paris!” I yell the minute I finish my first song, and the stadium yells back my name. My real one, not Issy Woo. Then I speak a bunch of French to them, and I hear a snicker over my earpiece.

Freaking Skye is laughing at my French accent. Then:

“He’s here,” his voice says in my ear.

“Is he ready?” I speak away from the mic.

“Affirmative,” Skye tells me. He should be talking to the stage manager, not me, unless it was extremely important. It is. “I should warn you, though. He is in a murderous mood.”

“So am I.”

I nod at Jude, our signal forPierce Me. Tonight’sPierce Me.

He nods back. He’s ready. The team is all set. We’ve rehearsed this part to within an inch of its life. All that’s left is to actually do it.

I step to the front of the stage. The crowds roar when they see I’m about to say something. Ineedto say this, for me. I’m not hoping Eden will ever hear this—I killed Saint Hope dead during that interview. But I need to say it for myself, in order not to fall apart again. The gaping void inside me throbs like an open wound, but I push it to the back.

“This is not a song. It is me. I have survived whatever tried to destroy me,” I say, “and, in the process, I have become a song. This song.”

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