it does not forget
And it will not forgive
Fight it, fight it
For as long as you live
Steve waited until their set was done and, while a flurry of onlookers went to buy a CD from the drummer, he sidled up to the bass player. The kid stood apart from the others, plucking at a string and listening to its vibration.
‘Sounds in tune to me,’ Steve said.
‘Hmmm.’
‘Pitch perfect, in fact.’
‘That so?’
‘That is indeed a fact,’ Steve said, smiling at the other’s dryness. ‘Though I guess that string gives you trouble, sometimes. Mine used to. Turned out to be the peg.’ Steve forbore to mention that this was because the offending peg had been a last minute fix whittled out of a finger bone found in a Dresden graveyard. It was much too early for that kind of detail.
‘Thanks for the tip.’
‘Any time, kid.’
‘I appreciate the advice and everything,’ the kid said, ‘but I’m sort of busy.’
‘I can see you’re plenty busy. You carry this band.’
That made the boy’s eyes flash. So: he knew it.
‘Is there something you’re after?’ asked the kid.
‘Do you have a passport?’
‘Yeah, but you’ll never pass for me, so I’m not selling.’
Steve liked this boy. A lot. ‘No, seriously. I got a feeling you’ll be going places soon.’
‘That’s a terrible pick-up line and dude, you’re deadly, okay, but you’re not my type.’
Steve grinned at the boy, pleased at being thought deadly, even while suspecting it meant more like… wicked cool rather than actually deadly. He was certainly the latter when he had to be.
‘It ain’t like that at all, kid. This ain’t a proposition. Well,’ he laughed, ‘it is, but not the one you think it is. I’m what you might call a talent scout. No, not like that.’ Annoyance at the boy’s cynical expression crept into his tone.
Steve’s irritation prompted a sudden laugh from the kid. ‘Hey, all right, calm down, mate. You’re not queer, fine.’
‘Never said I wasn’t queer. I said I wasn’t propositioning you in that manner.’
‘So you are queer then?’
‘You are missing the point of this conversation.’
The kid, with that infectious grin on his face, folded his arms across the top of his guitar. ‘Which is?’
Steve closed the gap between them, hazel eyes fixed on brown.
‘Have you ever made things change with your music?’ Steve said, low and earnest.
The boy’s grin faltered.
Steve continued, too soft for anyone else to hear. ‘Have you ever played to the dry ground and made it rain? Sung a baby to sleep and the whole house went quiet? Played so angry you broke every glass in your house, or cracked a paving stone outside? You ever made a fire with your fingers on those strings, kid?’
The boy’s jaw clenched shut. His eyes were wide. ‘What do you know about that?’ His whisper was forced out like a confession over vocal cords tight with fear.
‘I know all there is to know about it, including what it’s for.’
The boy swallowed so hard the sound of it swelled in the air between them.
‘Come with me when you’re done here,’ Steve said. ‘I’ll tell you a story.’
The kid hesitated, but Steve had been in his place before – full of questions and suspicions, and then full of hope when someone at last offered an explanation – and with it a way out of poverty, misery and fear. Well, Steve guessed he still had a lot of those, but his new bedrock of certainty made it bearable in a way it never used to be.
‘Fine,’ the boy said suddenly. ‘I’ll go with you and you can tell me a story. But that’s it. No promises from me.’
‘I haven’t asked you for any yet.’
‘The name’s Aaron. Aaron Maclean,’ said the kid.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘So,’ said young Aaron Maclean, sitting opposite the older man. ‘Music is a conduit for magic, it’s the natural defence against demons, ghosts and other creepy things if you’re born with the gift to use it, and you play bass in the rock band equivalent of Merlin the Magician, fighting dragons in C Major. Does that cover the basics?’
Steve nodded coolly. ‘Maybe more Buffy than Merlin most of the time, and C Major has some more specific uses against things that live in water, but yeah.’
‘You are full of shit.’
‘Could be,’ conceded Steve, ‘and it could be that you imagined those times when you played guitar and set fire to the carpet.’
Aaron frowned uncertainly.
‘Or sang to keep yourself from being afraid of the dark, and had a little light glow on your fingertips, from nowhere.’
‘Used to light up the end of my nose,’ confessed Aaron before he thought to deny the charge. ‘Tickled.’ Then he pressed his mouth shut.
‘I used to glow from my palms to my elbows,’ Steve said matter-of-factly. ‘I was living on the streets at the time, so you can imagine the inconvenience.’
Aaron arched an eyebrow despite himself.
‘It weren’t so bad. There were a lot of hippies and dope heads in California. That’s a lot of people with a funny way of looking at the world. Half the time folks saw me, they thought I was an angel.’ Steve grinned. ‘I wasn’t. In case you’re wondering.’
Aaron dropped his gaze to the cooling cup of coffee in front of him. He’d sat here, listening to this mad story of music and vampires, songs affecting the elements and stealing the cries of banshees and who knew what else besides. It was, if not actually insane, then a ludicrous yarn spun by this softly spoken Yank to pull his leg.
Except for his gran.
Aaron sighed. ‘My gran always reckoned when I sang to birds they listened.’ He cleared his throat gruffly and gave Steve a steely glare. ‘Mind you, towards the end she also said her own grandmother had power over the weather so, you know, not quite sure what to believe.’
‘Maybe she did have power over the weather,’ Steve said. ‘I know a pretty good rain song myself.’
