The Shadow Prince (33 page)

“It’s nothing,” I say in a tone that makes it clear I don’t want to talk about the things Garrick said.

“Haden?”

“I’m respecting your secret. You can respect mine.” Dax is the last person in all the realms I want to know what I did to Garrick. Dax is the only one who doesn’t look at me with disdain because of what I did when my mother died, but if he knew what I did to Garrick two years later, to get rid of the walking reminder of my shame, he may not be able to look at me at all anymore.

I sit on the couch with the guitar. I want to distract myself, like the way I feel when I sing with Daphne, so I play a few bars.

“That sounds pretty good,” Dax says. “I take it things are going well between you and Daphne?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, I got her to help me prepare for the festival, and she trusts me enough to loan me a guitar.” I wipe at the fingerprints Garrick left on the finish. “But it all seems like such small steps. What if it doesn’t add up to enough before the Eve of the Return?” The night I have to tell her the truth and ask her to come with me through the gate.

“Don’t let the importance of your quest make you feel like you have to rush—it’ll only scare her off. There’s a reason we’re given six months—other than the confines of the gate—it takes time and patience to win her affection. She’ll come around. All the little things will build on each other. Like that song you’re playing. It works because you let the tune build as you go. You don’t try to play all the notes at once.”

I look down at my hands, not realizing I’d started playing an actual song. It’s the one Daphne first taught me.

“I can’t make it sound like she does, though. I do all the right movements, hit all the right notes, but it still doesn’t
feel
right.”

“That’s because music isn’t just about precision and mimicking movements. It’s an emotional experience. True music comes from inside. I heard someone say once that the ability to create musical
expression from emotional experience is a uniquely human trait.”

“Then I probably shouldn’t bother,” I say, zipping the guitar into its case.

“Don’t forget, Haden. All of us Underlords are part human. Your mother—”

“Don’t,” I say, standing. Why would Dax try to remind me of her? Why would he encourage me to tap into my human side when, all my life, I’ve been taught to repress it?

I hear the garage door open. Simon has returned from wherever he goes during the day. I don’t feel like dealing with him. And I don’t want him to try to stop me from dealing with the Keres again.

“Where are you going?” Dax asks as I head out of the room.

“Hunting,” I say.

Because Garrick is right. It’s my fault the Keres is here.

And now it’s my responsibility to figure out how to stop it.

I return to the school parking lot with the idea of inspecting the scene more closely in hopes of finding clues as to where the Keres went next. But I am too late. The humans have already found the body, and the area is cordoned off by Olympus Hills security. I stand in the shadows and watch as they load what remains of Mrs. Canova into the back of the OHMC vehicle—until I notice that someone else is watching me.

I see him at the far end of the parking lot, idling on a motorcycle. He wears the same full-coverage helmet that hides his face, but I am certain he is the rider I saw outside the mayor’s party. The same one that seemed to be watching me then, too.

Was he working for Simon or something?

There’s only one way to find out. I start making my way
toward him, sticking close to the perimeter of the school, but he must sense me coming, because he revs his engine and peels out of the parking lot before I close in.

I chase after him, running at top speed over the bridge that leads off the school’s island, but my legs are nothing compared to his motorcycle. He speeds away and disappears into the night.

chapter thirty-eight

I wake to the smell of burning.

A shout from Joe sends me running downstairs in my pajamas to investigate. I find him in the kitchen, muttering swearwords, a smoking frying pan in his oven-mitted hands. The counters are littered with eggshells, spilled flour, and various half-empty containers. Batter oozes out the side of a waffle iron, which sits haphazardly on a stack of
Us
magazines.

“Oi, Daphne,” Joe says when he sees me. “Grab a towel, eh?” He indicates the toppled-over milk container that’s busy glugging out a waterfall of white liquid from the marble island to the hardwood kitchen floor. “Knocked it over while I was trying to save the eggs à la Vince.”

I pull open a drawer and grab Joe’s entire collection of dish towels—all three of them. “Where’s Marta?” I ask, righting the milk carton. I drop the towels on top of the mess. Much to her displeasure, Marta is usually in charge of breakfast. Which usually consists of cinnamon oatmeal for me and a weird concoction of tomato juice, lemon, and Worcestershire sauce for Joe. Basically, a Bloody Mary sans the alcohol.

The dish towels aren’t enough, so I grab an entire roll of paper towels.

“Gave her the day off,” he says, spooning a hefty portion of very crunchy-looking scrambled eggs onto a couple of plates. “Thought we could spend the day just the two of us. I’ve got the whole thing planned out.” Joe opens the waffle iron. The tops of the waffles have stuck to the apparently ungreased upper plate of the appliance. He tries to scrape them out with a fork.

“You
planned
something for today?” I can’t hide the incredulity in my voice. I’m not sure I want to.

“I thought, after breakfast, we could duck out of Olympus Hills for a few hours. My drummer and his brother are opening up a burger joint that has onion rings to die for, and the planetarium is putting together a light show based on my
Saturn’s Ring
album. Which means I was able to pull some strings to get us a private tour.” Joe presents me with a plate of food that somewhat resembles breakfast.

“I don’t know, Joe.…”

He pours a healthy portion of maple syrup over the contents of his plate. “You still like stargazing, right? Because they’ve got one of the biggest telescopes in the country.”

The mention of telescopes and stargazing makes my stomach churn. Or maybe that’s from the smell rising up from my plate. I’m pretty sure scrambled eggs aren’t supposed to be made with cream cheese and … mustard? I push the plate away. “I can’t, Joe. I’ve already got plans.”

“But, Daph, I cleared my whole schedule for you.”

“Well, maybe you should have thought to make sure
my
schedule was clear before making all these plans. Did you just
suppose I’d have nothing better going on? I have a life of my own, you know?”

“Oh,” Joe says. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I should have checked with you first.” He sounds so dejected, I almost waver.

“I need to get ready,” I say, before I can be talked into changing my mind.

I leave Joe at the breakfast table. I look back before heading up the stairs. He stabs a forkful of eggs à la Vince, shoves it in his mouth, and then promptly lets it all fall back out onto his plate.

“Bloody hell,” he says, wiping his tongue with the sleeve of his bathrobe.

I stifle a laugh and head for my bedroom. I pick up my phone from my bedside table and dial a number I never thought I’d actually call when he gave it to me.

“Hello?” Haden answers. He sounds surprised.

“Are you busy today? I thought we could fit in another lesson.”

“I’m available,” he says. There’s a touch of eagerness in his voice before he tempers it. “What did you have in mind?”

“A field trip,” I say, wanting to get as far away from Joe and Olympus Hills as possible for the day. “I think it’s time I give you a more advanced musical education. Pick me up in two hours.”

“I don’t even know where to start. I mean, there’s the classics. Like Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Debussy, and then some more modern stuff like the Kinks, the Zombies, the Beatles of course, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, the Velvet Underground, the Who … Ah crap, that’s just the 1960s.”

“This is starting to sound like it’s going to take a year,” Haden says.

“I know. This is even more difficult than I thought it would be.”

I researched online and found a music store a few towns over from Olympus Hills that still has an old-school listening booth in it. I’d already arranged with the manager—thanks to the generous cash allowance Joe had given me—for us to have use of the booth for the entire afternoon. But that isn’t feeling like nearly enough time at the moment.

I take a great big breath and let it out in a puff. “Okay, I’m just going to grab some of my favorites from different decades. This might take a bit.” I look up at Haden and see that he’s watching my hands as I pluck different albums from the bins.

“What should I do?” he asks.

“Hmmm. Go pick something out. Anything you want.”

The strangest look passes over his normally stony face. Hesitancy? Uncertainty? Almost like no one has ever given him the option of picking something out for himself before. It’s the first time I’m seeing him with an unguarded expression.

I smile at him reassuringly. “There’s no wrong choice. Just surprise me.”

He nods and that stony mask of his slips over his face again. I miss the more open look.

I watch him for a moment, his long fingers curling over the edges of the CD cases as he flips through the albums. He glances back at me. I look down at the album in my hands.

After I’ve got a stack of CDs that’s almost as tall as I am, Haden comes back with an album. He holds it up for my inspection.
Shadow of a Star
by Joe Vince. The frown forms on my face before I can stop it. Of all the thousands of albums in this place, he had to choose that one.

Haden pulls the CD back. “I chose wrong, then?” His voice is gray with disappointment. “It’s your father’s album, yes? I thought it would be good to familiarize myself—”

“Pick something else,” I say abruptly. “Anything else.”

“Why?” he asks.

The personal question interests me, since he’s always trying to deflect mine, but what’s more is that I actually find myself wanting to tell him.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

I sigh. “I’d only ever met Joe four times before I came to live with him back in September. The last of those times was when he made a surprise appearance at my tenth birthday party. He made a big deal about giving me his guitar, the first one he’d ever bought with his own money—and he taught me the words to his favorite song. He cried when I sang and he said I had
his
voice, and he told me that
this time
he was going to stay in Ellis.

“I followed him everywhere for the next few days. He taught me to play the guitar, and took me out at night to see the constellations. He told me the stories behind them, and we even wrote a song about the stars together. But five days into what I thought was the best week of my life, he left me standing at my front room window with a telescope, waiting for him until it was almost midnight and I realized he wasn’t coming. One of his handlers sent a note the next day, saying Joe had gone back to California. Without even saying good-bye.

“I spent the next year learning every single one of Joe’s songs until I could sing them even better than him, thinking somehow if I did this, he’d be impressed enough to come back. But he didn’t.” I shrug one shoulder. “I’d call him with the hope of singing to
him over the phone, but he never answered. He never sent postcards. Never visited again. And after a while, I moved on from my father’s songs and started writing my own. Joe likes to tell people I have his voice. But he’s wrong. It’s
mine
.” I point at the album in Haden’s hand. “That song, ‘Shadow of a Star’—that’s the song I helped Joe write when I was ten years old. It’s considered one of his greatest hits—the one that solidified his ‘God of Rock’ status. But I hate it. I turn it off anytime it comes on the radio.”

“I can see why,” Haden says.

“You know he had the audacity to invite me to go stargazing again today? He arranged this whole, grand daddy-daughter day and rented out the planetarium’s telescope. He didn’t even get
why
I didn’t want to go. I had to tell him I had plans so he’d drop it.”

“So that’s why you called me?” Haden asks.

I nod. “Sorry.”

He shrugs. “I’m happy to be your other plans.” His jade green eyes lock on my mine for a moment. Then he turns away. “I guess I should find something else.” He tucks Joe’s album into a stack of Top 40 rock and then migrates to the indie section. He comes back a minute later with a new CD. Death Cab for Cutie.

“How’s this? I liked the name of the band.”

“Perfect,” I say, and lead him to the booth. It’s a small, glass-enclosed room at the back of the shop. It’s such a tight fit for both of us that I can feel the heat radiating off his body as I sidestep around him to get to the stereo. He smells of citrus and soap.

I linger for a second longer than I need to.

“We’ll start with a couple of classical numbers,” I say. There’s an odd tremor in my voice. “And then we’ll move on to some more modern stuff.”