The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) (5 page)

A sea breeze jostled the insect, but it held to the mast of her finger. Homesickness tugged at Fynn’s heart, despite everything. She blew a gentle breath. The wing straightened. In a riot of orange applause, the butterfly flew away.

Fynn took out the trash and went back inside. She then made waffles loaded with melted butter and real maple syrup. She sat at the roughhewn table her father had made. Maybe he could visit by himself. Or she could go see him in his cabin outside of the Keep. Damned if she was ever going back inside its walls again. If her mother and sister thought knowing the truth would make her return to the Keep, they were wrong. She never felt more separated from them, more on her own, than she did at this moment. She had to be her own mother and her own sister, too.
I know you have decided not to heed the prophecies, but that doesn’t make them not true.
Her mother’s words echoed in her mind, rankled her nerves anew. She’d never denied the prophecies; she just refused to let them rule her life. Besides, what did the prophecies say about a mother who sacrificed her own daughter to demon infection? If there were demons stirring, then Fynn would fight them alone.

She dressed in her usual jeans, blouse, and blazer, to look somewhat professional for lecture. She twisted her impossible hair behind her head, letting a few tendrils hang out because that was what they were going to do anyway. It felt like the first day of school. The first day of a fresh start.

By the porch, she noticed her mailbox gaped open, a long unsealed envelope hanging out of the end. She looked down the street, but there was no one there. It was two tickets to the Catalyst Club for a show that night. Ritual Madness, a Komo cover band, was playing. Komo - the great rock star...and her first and only love.

Fynn puzzled over the glossy tickets, stamped with fresh ink. The Catalyst Club was a rundown seaside venue, but they were good seats. Close to the stage, on the floor. Too bad she hated Komo cover bands. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or pleased until her phone vibrated in her purse. She didn’t recognize the number, so pressed
end call
. It went off again, this time ringing in the tune of
Fire Arrow
. Her stomach erupted in an entire flock of butterflies. No ring tone existed for Komo’s private love song written just for her.

“Come to the show tonight,” he said when she answered. In the space of three seconds, his voice took over her whole body and then dropped her into silence.
End call. Unknown number.

“Where are you, Komo?” she said to the sky.

An offshore breeze lifted her hair from her forehead, kissed the back of her neck. Fynn stretched her arms out from her chest, like wings, and prayed that Komo himself would appear and swallow her whole.

Classic Dionysus music filled the Catalyst Club with the sound of gravel rolling in silk. Fynn’s friend, Cara, stood at the bar ordering sugary drinks with fancy names. Cara pushed a glass with a skinny straw into Fynn’s hand.

“Drink with me,” she said. “To friendship. And last-minute amazing tickets. And did I mention friendship? I’m so glad you asked me to come here tonight.”

Fynn raised her glass and took a sip. The pink fizzy thing went down like cold fireworks. Awful stuff. Fynn wrinkled her nose before downing the rest of it.

“Tonight is going to be epic.” Cara kissed her cheek. “I’m the biggest Komo fan ever. I know everything about him.”

“Everything?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m a stalker fan. Ask me anything you want to know.”

“Where is he?” Fynn asked.

Cara shook out her hair and laughed. “Maybe he’ll be here tonight,” she said. “The Legend of Komo is real.”

Fynn didn’t answer. She ordered a couple of shots to hide her red face. Komo had disappeared in the middle of a tour for his second album. When the story broke, throngs of fans crowded the gates of his mansion in Los Angeles. He never showed. In fact, it had been over a year without any verified sign of him. His fame had risen higher in the past year, until he became a ghost, seen everywhere and nowhere. His fans stood vigil outside his gates. The Legend of Komo told that the rock star appeared at concerts of his own cover bands if they had talent or if there happened to be beautiful women in the audience. Cara Santos would have been prettier than any other woman in the crowd in the dumpy lab coat and messy braid she wore at their job in the St. Cocha University research center. Cara unleashed in high heels and a dress pouring down her hips like liquid gold was gorgeous enough to conjure the devil. The real Komo would love everything about Cara. Fynn knew that from experience.

The brief phone conversation that morning, if she could even call it a conversation, was the first she had heard from him since they were at the Athenian School together. Five years. Fynn hoped he was on a private island somewhere. As a marketing ploy, it was brilliant, though it would have been killing him. Komo lived to perform for stadium crowds. He drank adoration like wine. The distant longing of desperate fans had to be a watered-down elixir. It could never be enough.

Just thinking of Komo made Fynn’s stomach flutter like a greeting from a swallowed Fair. It didn’t matter that the last time she saw him, she was a lovesick, heartbroken teenager. The ear where she’d held her phone when he called still hummed with his voice.

“That’s a sneaky smile,” Cara said. “What are you thinking about, gorgeous?”

“Let’s go to our seats,” Fynn said. Komo was
her
swallowed secret that she kept deep inside. She never talked about him. Memories of Komo had a way of becoming sharp-edged and dangerous. Teenage romances weren’t supposed to last forever, especially when they were one-sided and both parties were in their twenties now. The fact that she hadn’t dated anyone since then just made the memory more of a holy relic than it ought to have been.

Cara’s hair fell like dark water down her back as Fynn followed her toward the stage. If the real Komo did magically appear at the show, he would go straight for her friend Cara and Fynn would die of jealousy.

“Are you comfortable?” Cara asked once they settled into their seats.

“I am,” Fynn said. But she wasn’t. Her stomach had begun to hurt and she was cold.

“You shivered,” Cara said. She slipped off the black and silver threaded angora sweater she wore over her gold dress. She took Fynn’s drink and set it down before guiding her arms through its webbing. Fynn pulled the sweater across her green slip dress. There wasn’t much to it, but she felt instantly better.

“You know, you should let your legs show,” Cara said, pointing to the jeans and boots that Fynn wore under her dress. “You have an incredible body. You should show it more.”

“I hate that feeling,” Fynn said.

Cara raised her eyebrows. “You hate feeling sexy?”

I hate feeling like I’m not ready for a fight.
But it wasn’t something she could say out loud and hope a normal non-Keep person would understand. Komo never minded her jeans and boots. Every other girl who chased after him wore skimpy dresses, short skirts. She was never anything like those girls.

Maybe that’s why he liked them.
A quiet voice taunted inside her head. Before the demon infection, she didn’t know what jealousy felt like. After, she hated the girls who hung off him like fringe.

“I wish I knew what you were thinking,” Cara said. “It’s like you’re on your own planet tonight.”

Fynn started to apologize, when the lights dimmed and Ritual Madness took the stage. The drummer and the bassist came on first to thump out a rhythm. Then a young man with long brown hair strode across with a guitar slung across his shoulders. He almost had Komo’s swagger down.

“My god, he’s hot,” Cara said.

Fynn nodded, but privately disagreed. Compared to Komo, the man was a toadstool.

His fingers plunked over his guitar strings. It was
Angels,
one of Fynn’s favorites from the first album, but only when Komo sang it. The crowd yelled and clapped in appreciation. Fynn wanted to holler, too, but out of indignation, not fan happiness.

It’s just you and me running the streets in Angel Beat City.
The Ritual Madness guy couldn’t sing. Without Komo’s voice, the lyrics weren’t poetry. They were just lame.

Cara whistled. “He sounds just like Komo,” she yelled. She swayed to the music. Fynn tried to do the same, but it felt like dancing to a dirge.

Then he picked out the first chords of something different. The melody was familiar, even if it sounded like the guy was playing it on a guitar made of tin.

“This is a Komo song,” Fynn said.

“I don’t think so,” Cara said. “I don’t recognize it.”

“It’s Komo’s. He never put it on an album.”

Cara tilted her head. Looked confused.

You are my fire girl. . .

This was Fynn’s song. He wrote it just for her. He never recorded it, but would only play it live, for her, during their year at the Athenian School. The song
Fire Arrow
was the only thing she had of his that she was never supposed to have to share. The Ritual Madness guitarist scraped over it, clearly without much practice. It was like watching someone rip the wings off a butterfly.

Fynn ran to the bathroom.
Fire Arrow
followed in muted tones through the walls. She rinsed her mouth at the sink, hoping to stop wanting to puke. She peered into the scratched-up mirror. The dark kohl eyeliner Cara suggested she wear looked spooky, not sexy. Maybe she was just exhausted from so many late nights in the lab. Or maybe she was coming down with the flu for the first time ever. She heard that this was what it felt like.

Fynn ripped out a paper towel to wipe her face. Her mother and sister would say the club wasn’t safe. They would say that demons lay in wait in big crowds.
Look for the glowing eyes.
Mother Brigid’s warning. Demons had the eyes of cats in the dark. It made them easy to spot, if you knew what to look for.

“Demons don’t exist,” Fynn said into the mirror. It was fun to say, though it was a stinking lie. The sound of the band thump thumped through the walls. How in the hell did that stupid band know
Fire Arrow
?

Fynn tugged at the shoulders of the scratchy sweater. She took a deep breath. It could have been that Komo had sold the rights to it. She shouldn’t have been hurt or even surprised. They hadn’t seen each other since he left Athenian to go on his first tour and she went off to St. Cocha for college. It had been five years since then. She was a professor, a lead researcher in immunology living her own life. As for Komo, he could have called her from anywhere. Maybe he really was on an island somewhere far away.

On Fynn’s way out of the bathroom, another little earthquake ran up her spine. She didn’t know why she felt so cold. She shivered while she smiled in response to Cara’s concerned look.

Then the room changed.

Fynn’s skin reddened, as though she were sinking into a hot tub of rose water. Heat bloomed in her belly from an intoxication that did not come from the candy-tasting bar drinks.

She clutched Cara’s arm. “Komo is here,” she said.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Cara said.

Fynn didn’t have time to argue. She fished through her bag for mint gum. Her breath tasted rank. She ran her fingers through her hair. Komo loved its shiny coppery bronze. At Athenian, he sat behind her in class, so he could wind it into little braids. A whole group of the girls dyed their own hair red, hoping for the same, but not one got even close to Fynn’s color of metals moving through fire.

Heat spread across her shoulders. It snaked around her throat. She wasn’t over Komo. She could still feel his fingers in her hair, tugging at her scalp. The back of her neck tingled with the memory of the sensation of his breath so close to her skin.

“You’re crazy,” Cara yelled over the band.

But Fynn wasn’t crazy. Komo was in the building. She knew this the way she knew her own heart beat in her chest. To prove it, the music screeched in a train crash of missed notes as a man taller than any of the other guys walked on from the side. He was tall and broad-shouldered, almost too big to be a human man. Surely too beautiful.

It was Komo. Fynn’s Komo, striding across the stage in faded denim and an old t-shirt. A leather ribbon tied his long hair back. He did not look up at first. He just studied the neck of his guitar, as if he ever needed to watch what he was doing when he played his music.

The audience rose in a wave. He grinned at everybody, as if he was surprised to see them there. They screamed as he nodded his great head like a lion shaking his mane. Fynn was pushed up to the stage by a tsunami of crazed fans.

The Ritual Madness guitar player twiddled away even clumsier than before, but Komo still bowed to the band with respect. He stepped to the microphone. Fynn wanted to close her eyes to truly enter the music, but she didn’t want to miss looking at him. It had been so long since she could just look at him.

“Goddess of fire, goddess of my life. . . .”
He growled into the microphone, like he wanted to eat it. There was only Komo, there was only ever Komo. The music lifted Fynn from the floor. The music lifted her from everything. Komo’s long brown fingers played a lazy game over the chords, but his eyes darted across the crowd beyond the stage lights.

Then his eyes landed. He saw her. He sang her name around a smile like the rising sun.

Cara’s fingernails dug into Fynn’s shoulder. “He just said your name. I swear to God, Komo just said your name right out loud.”

Fynn kept her eyes locked on her old friend Komo. They were at least that, old friends. Two of the same, strange kind.

Komo howled in ecstasy and the crowd answered. He bounced around the stage on the balls of his feet, as if on springs. Komo’s guitar wailed along, a whole other voice with a soul and will all its own. Everyone in the club at that moment thought that Komo was their personal rock god. Their faces lit up in true abandon. Even as she danced, Fynn’s heart dipped in a sweet ache because Komo made everybody feel special. Komo made everyone think he was singing for a private audience. Music critics wrote about it, but nobody could explain it. Komo had a magical effect.