Page 5 of Bewitched By the Phantom
The lead singer finally looks away from me, only to glance back at his band when they launch into their song.
“Holy shit,” Claudia whispers beside me.
“Yeah,” I rasp, agreeing with her.
The singer turns back and his eyes find me again. Just as his lips part to start singing, he blows me a kiss. If I wasn’t a strong, independent bitch, your girl might have melted right there. But I have standards. And a single air kiss from a drop-dead sexy mystery man isn’t going to do it for me.
The lie feels easy, up until he starts singing.
“The candles drown in their own wax,” he groans into the microphone. “The mirrors forget your face. We are the notes left unsung. The silence that takes their place.”
“Oh,” Vivian sighs. “Wow.”
The violinist leans into the microphone and they both sing the next part in raspy whispers.
“You kneel in the pews of a church built from bone. Your prayers taste like rust on my tongue.”
The singer’s fingers dance along his guitar, filling the area with their sound. Everyone is paying attention. Not a single person is distracted by their task. Hell, every stagehand is standing, struck by their sound, and I don’t blame them. This is . . . this is fucking music.
“Sing, oh sing, the Hymn for the Hollow!” the singer crows. “We are the ghosts of the song. No saints left to hear you. No heaven to wrong.”
I think I sit like that through their whole set, enraptured as they play. Every time his eyes flick back over to me, my heart skips a beat. It should be flattering. Instead, the longer their song goes on, the more pissed I get.
This man drips charisma. He’s sex on a stick, fucking phenomenal, and for fuck’s sake, there’s no way we have achance in hell of beating them, but fuck if I’m going to let that stop us. My eyes narrow and I sit back as I cross my arms across my chest. His smirk only seems to grow at the clear indication of my annoyance, and that only serves to piss me off more. I don’t know him. He certainly doesn’t know who I am, so he can wipe that smirk of his face.
They finish and Claudia fucking wheezes. “How the fuck are we going to follow that?” she chokes out.
“Shut up. We’re amazing and you need to get your shit together,” I growl.
She shakes her head. “Fuck. You’re right. We’ve got this.”
“Fuck yeah we do,” Lidia growls, but then she winces. “Do we?”
“We do!” I snarl.
“Do you need another take?” Ted asks The Cadaver Cantata, his eyes as wide as everyone else’s.
The singer glances over at me and smirks. “I think that’ll do it. Thank you.”
And then they exit stage left, leaving everyone breathless.
I’m annoyed. I’m intrigued. But mostly, I can’t understand why he literally haunts me long after he’s left the fucking room.
Chapter
Four
“Hell Hath Honey to the stage,” Ted announces.
We stand and move over to the stage, prepared to follow up that performance with our own and somehow not embarrass ourselves. We’re good. Hell, I don’t think we’d be here if we weren’t, but The Cadaver Cantata is something otherworldly. Shit, even The Medusa Complex before them were amazing. We may have gotten ourselves into some real fuckery here.
“Do you have any special instruments we need to hook up?” Ted asks as we step forward.
I shake my head. “No. Just the normal set up.”
His eyes flick over the four of us in our sweats and t-shirts. “I see. Then it’s ready when you are.”
Even Ted doesn’t believe in us. And he’s dressed in literal dad cargo shorts. Somehow, that’s more of a slap in the face than anything else.
