Page 21 of Bewitched By the Phantom
She laughs, but I’m not joking. I half expect Edward Scissorhands to pop out at any moment.
/-/-/-/
I’m standingin a candlelit corridor in a building I don’t recognize, but somehow it feels more familiar than any place I’ve ever been to. A woman in a large ballgown any woman would be envious of walks in front of me, her hair pulled up on the nape of her neck.
“Hello?” I call but she doesn’t turn toward me. She’s following the sound of a piano playing in the distance, and out of curiosity, I start to follow after her.
What is this place? Where am I?
The woman begins to sing a song that I know, lyrics that I know, as the melody changes to the familiar tune that’s been haunting me for a week now. Her voice bounces off the walls as the piano grows louder, as we grow closer.
We round a doorway, and I catch sight of the piano in the middle of the room, a man wearing a golden mask playing on it.
Erik?
He’s dressed in an old timey suit, his fingers dancing over the keys as the woman sings. She turns, and I get a good look at her face.
Atmyface.
“What the?—”
They sing together now, their voices rising and falling together in harmony, the sound so pure and blissful, it’s like a spell being cast upon me. I stumble forward, drawn toward the sound, wanting to wrap myself in it. When they wind down and finish and the last notes of the piano disappear, Erik looks from the woman leaning on the piano over to me.
“Don’t leave me again,” he whispers. “I can’t live without you.”
I wake up with a start back in my bedroom, sitting up in the small twin bed. My eyes are wet and I reach up to wipe tears I don’t remember crying away, my chest aching with pain. Their melody,ourmelody, sticks in my throat.
Chapter
Fourteen
They finally drop the names of the eight bands moving forward, and I’m pleased when our name is the fourth they call. We celebrate with the other seven bands, which includes, unsurprisingly, The Cadaver Cantata and Raoul’s band, Angels Bleed Mercury. Apparently, we’re all moving forward. And that should be happy news.
Up until they reveal that the audience had unanimously requested a collaboration challenge between the bands to test versatility.
“That’s not what we do,” Claudia growls. “It doesn’t make any sense. We’re bands. Not individual singers.”
“I get that,” Ted says. “But it’s a good way to break up rivalries and force cohesion. Honestly, I think it’ll be epic. And this is what the audience wants.”
“We ain’t doing it,” Nadia growls.
“On the contrary, you are,” Ted says. “You signed a contract. It’s in there that we can change the structure of the competition at any time. NYX wants this. The audience wants it. That’s how this is going to go.”
Nadia bares her teeth at him and he scurries away before she can take a bite. “This is bullshit,” she hisses, as pissed as I am.
“Alright, we’re pairing everyone up,” Ted says from the front of the room now for everyone to hear, a clipboard in hand. “Angels Bleed Mercury, you’re with Medusa Complex. The Cadaver Cantata, you’re with?—”
“Hell Hath Honey,” Erik interrupts, his eyes flashing black so fast I almost miss it.
Ted pauses and frowns. “Well . . .” but then he looks up at Erik and slowly nods. “Yeah. With Hell Hath Honey. That works.”
I narrow my eyes. I’m annoyed, a little flattered, but mostly unnerved. I swear my entire time at this Battle of the Bands has been one long “what the fuck.”
That’s how we end up in an empty room two hours later, both of our bands spread around us with various expressions of annoyance.
“We just have to play one song,” Claudia points out. “It doesn’t gotta be that deep.”
“I’d rather rot in hell,” Nadia sneers over at Erik’s band.
