Page 25 of Beautiful Sinners

“Red?” Tristan asks when my hand convulses in his, my breaths labored.

Beads of sweat track across my brow and down my neck as my left side tingles with licks of phantom fire, burning chemicals, and the ease of the knife as it sunk into me, cutting through layers of epidermis and muscle until the pointed steel tip hit bone; the man with the constellations smiling down at me, his face quickly blotted out by a bright, comforting light. Just as I was reaching for that beautiful light that promised me peace, I was brought crashing back down to earth in a fireball of pain and agony.

“You’re safe now. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

He should have left me to die with them.

CHAPTER 9

“Syn,” Tristan calls after me.

I keep walking who knows where because I’m already lost. I hate mansions.

Turning a sharp right, I find myself in a room with a wall of windows and a grand piano much like the one I saw at Hendrix’s house.

Constantine is the first to get to me. He presses his chest to my back, nothing more, just to let me know he’s there.

“Do you think it survived?” I ask Hendrix when he and Tristan crowd around us on either side. “The Steinway in the room with the stained-glass dome ceiling,” I clarify.

Hendrix pinches his lips together. Another shrug.

“Do you still play?”

He and Tristan used to play so beautifully, their talents advanced for their age. They would be compelled to perform at Society functions, and I would sit on the floor at the foot of the piano bench to listen—something my mother would chastise me for. Apparently, it was unseemly for the only child of the head of the Council to be seen sitting cross-legged on the floor with her dress hiked up to her thighs.

“I haven’t in a while. Not since…”

Not since I disappeared.

Tristan’s arm brushes up against mine. “Why did you bolt?”

I didn’t stick around to hear anything else Cillian had to say. I’d heard enough. Everyone I have ever met has manipulated or lied to me. I’m so sick and tired of all the secrets.

“Cillian is who saved me from the fire,” I reply emotionlessly. The compulsion to shut down and make myself forget is tempting. I did it before.

There’s a sharp intake of breath. “How is that possible?”

“James,” Constantine says.

That’s what I had thought as well. Papa hid me away in Ireland for a reason.

Walking over to the moonlit-bathed ebony piano, I lightly glide my fingers over the white and black keys before taking a seat on the leather-cushioned bench. I loosen my fingers by tinkling out a C-major arpeggio.

“Join me?” I ask no one in particular and scoot over when Hendrix slides the bench out another foot to make room for his long legs. He grunts in annoyance when his knees bump under the key bed.

I begin softly playing Pachelbel’sCanon. I discovered a couple of years ago that Pachelbel wrote lyrics for that piece of music; the words those of longing, devotion, and forever love that last through time and separation. It hits a little too close to home.

When Hendrix joins in, playing the background accompaniment, I sink into the serenity of the music and just exist in that moment. This song was the first one I taught myself to play on my portable keyboard. I don’t know what it is about this specific song, but the melody is like injecting GABA—the chemical in the brain that produces a calming effect when the body is under stress—directly into the bloodstream.

When we finish, Hendrix immediately launches into a fast rendition of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” I watch on in awe, captivated by his skill, as his hands move smoothly back and forth along the keys. Whenever I tried to learn how to do a syncopated rhythm, my fingers would twist into pretzels, and it would sound more like goats jumping across the piano keys.

I bump into his side. “Show off.”

He looks at me and winks. I don’t know why I find his ability tonotlook at his hands while he’s playing hot as hell.

When Hendrix finishes, I let my fingers randomly press keys with no song in mind. “Why did Aleksander do it?”

When I spoke to him at the tower, he didn’t seem like a person who’d do anything on a whim, which means he’d been planning what happened this morning for a while.

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