Chapter 29
“Hey, Twigs,” Malek said into the phone. “How’s it going?”
“Dude.” Twigs’s voice was low, as if she’d been smoking Breeze again. “I heard you were in a scuffle.”
“A scuffle?”
“Yeah! I heard about the gargoyles.”
“Well, yeah.” Malek ran a hand through his hair. It was more like a claw now from all the bindings that Katja had given him, but it still allowed him to fulfil his nervous tick. “I never thought I’d hear a fight with gargoyles described as a scuffle, though.”
“Well, it sounds nicer. More like onomatopoeia.” When she laughed, Malek heard the distinct way her tongue hit her teeth.
“Suppose that makes sense, then. Should I go over what happened, or have you already heard from your source?”
“You mean Jocasta drinking at our bar? Then yeah, I’ve heard most of it. Tough deal, man. Two enemies are always worse than one, even if J’s determined to take out all the Chaos rejects now.”
“Yeah.” Malek had gone over the whole ordeal in his mind at least a dozen more times now.
Having two people after them made so much more sense than only one—and he still couldn’t believe he’d missed it in the first place.
He wanted to blame it on his injuries, but he knew that wasn’t the case.
He also knew that this ordeal hadn’t been why he’d called Twigs.
He’d called Jocasta to fix things, and she was doing just that, so they wouldn’t have to worry about Henri—only George and the crown.
He’d called Twigs because she was always his friend, and never his boss.
“Is this a bad time to chat? If you’re relaxing after a long day, I can call back. ”
“I’m fine. Relaxing, yeah, but I’m also listening to the mix you gave me. It’s my sixth or seventh time. I dig it. Especially track number four.”
“Really? Why do you like it?” Malek leaned against the balcony railing as Twigs’s voice sounded in his ear.
He allowed himself to slip away from gargoyles, The Forgotten King, and whatever was going between him and Caspar, and thought only of music.
Music was what would always get him through the night, even if it was also what tore him apart.
“I have my mic back, you know,” he said after she’d finished spilling about the mix CD.
“You do? Good. Does this mean I can talk about All Trades again? Because I started listening to them, too. I’m thinking of making my own mix tape for you.”
“Filled with All Trades stuff? Are you a sadist?”
“Maybe a little, but only at work with my clients. I want to make a mix for you so I can switch up the track list. I don’t think they were in the right order before. Aiden doesn’t think so either. You know Aiden, right? He’s in the band Never Lose Your Flames.”
“I think I may have heard of them. Why are my songs in the wrong order? They tell a story.”
“But it’s a sad story. It makes it so the good stuff is in the middle and the sad stuff is at the end.
Why would you end with the sad stuff? It’s not a shock.
We all die in the end and we know that. So instead of leading with the good things, you should lead with the sad stuff.
Aiden has a thing about jokes and their punch lines that he always tells me, because he insists it applies to music, too.
Very few punch lines in jokes shock people anymore, so the set up is what really matters.
The set up is the good stuff, so that should be your main focus. ”
There was a lilt to her voice. “You don’t agree with Aiden?”
“I do, but I think he misses some nuance. The middle stuff is good, but only if it leads to a nice ending. I’m so sick of sad songs with nothing to say beyond being sad.
And I’m sick of unhappy endings, too. So I’ve thought about how I wanted all your songs played…
” Twigs listed off the songs as she reordered them.
At first, her tinkering felt as if she was disassembling Malek’s skeleton and putting it back with his hands for his feet and his feet for his hands.
But the more he considered her viewpoint—that the sad stuff was obvious, not a shock—the more he realized she was right.
From what he knew about performing, you had to give the audience what they came to see just as much as you had to surprise them.
But while he could understand starting with the sadder songs, he wasn’t so sure about the ending needing to be a happy one.
“Maybe it’s because All Trades was a punk band,” he said after Twigs had been talking a while. “But I don’t see this working for us.”
“And punk can’t be happy? You’ve clearly never heard of ska.”
“It’s not just that. The band is dead, Twigs. The scene is dead. Everyone is spiritually and royally fucking dead. When everything happened, I had to take a long, long look at my life and my choices. And I had to move on. It’s that simple. So as much as I appreciate you being my little fangirl—”
“Hey, don’t say fangirl like an insult. I’m an aficionado. Don’t demean the word.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine. Fans do the best work sometimes because they understand and see your work, but they also see the potential.
And I understand. All Trades is dead, but All Trades wasn’t the scene you’re talking about.
That makes you the only band around, and you guys mattered, but not that much.
The scene can’t be dead because you’re not that important. ”
Malek laughed. “You know, I’ve been hearing that a lot today.”
“Good. Sometimes you need to remember that you’re not the centre of the world. But you are the centre of your world, so if you think you’re not a prince, and if your scene is so dead, then why not bring it back to life?”
“Maybe. There are just so many things in the way.”
“Like what? Your little adventure? Just start the band when you get back.”
If I get back, Malek thought. He appreciated Twigs’s vote of confidence that he’d make it out of this alive, especially since he was only growing more and more nervous about what they needed to do.
Malek caught a glimpse inside at Natasha and Katja sitting at the table, going over Katja’s necromancer books.
Since you didn’t have to be a supernatural to be a necromancer, Malek wondered if Natasha would take up that lifestyle too.
Or maybe she could use her knowledge as a consultant on cases instead, keeping up with pop culture depictions of supernaturals to see how much people actually knew.
As Katja’s hand rested on Natasha’s knee, Malek felt his heart pang for Caspar.
He wanted to imagine something good, something interesting about their future—but it felt as stagnant and dead as the scene he’d been in.
The ending was always the same. Abe died.
Malek didn’t want to replace Caspar with Abe in his mind and ruin two lives.
Even if Caspar was good at betting, Malek still worried about the odds—especially now that they were tangled in two games, not one.
They were far, far more likely to win one battle and lose the other, and Malek wondered if he should sacrifice himself for Caspar’s goals.
“You got quiet,” Twigs said. “But your breathing looks like rain in my mind.”
“You’re so high.”
“I’m not, actually. I just have synaesthesia, and I see a grey slick of water when you’re like this.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that you’re lonely and sad and you feel trapped inside. You feel trapped in your own band. But let me tell you this: If you think punk is dead, like everyone else seems to think, then don’t make another punk band. Don’t resurrect All Trades—do a new band in a new genre.”
“Oh, yeah? And what other genre am I suited for?”
“I don’t know. But you’re eclectic. You like a lot of different things. I can see as much from your mix tape.”
When Malek was a kid growing up, he didn’t want to be pigeonholed in any of his interests.
His family listened to traditional music from Nigeria, including the French rap artist that blew his mind when he was seven.
Then he found other rap artists, classic rock, and the eponymous punk album by The Clash.
Malek had surprised everyone he’d gone to school with when he brought out Celine Dion, something his grandmother had listened to nonstop near the end of her life.
Malek liked the way he’d shocked the other kids, and he knew he wanted to keep doing that in his life.
So when Idris wanted to start a band, it had been an easy choice.
When he’d gotten out of the Summerland and tattooed his body from head to toe, he’d even asked the artist to put some Celine Dion lyrics in his family crest. Music had been his family; the genre never mattered.
So maybe what Twigs was saying was right.
“I’m thinking something weird and eclectic,” she went on, “like Broken Social Scene or Arcade Fire. A huge cast. Something that has cymbals crashing everywhere. Cymbals making symbols, like the air streaks from planes when they fly into the blue sky. Something that sounds like that. That’s what you are, Malek.
Air in the sky that I can see and touch. ”
“You should write poetry, dear,” Malek said. “Or maybe just some lyrics for me.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Now, assure me that you’re okay before I bug you about something else.”
“Oh. Um. I guess we’re fine. Time is the key here, I’m pretty sure. And we’re carrying around a bunch of brass so we can take down the gargoyles, if that ever happens again.”
“Good. Sounds like you have a plan, however slapdash,” Twigs said. “By the way, tell elemental boy I’m sorry. I really did think he was a con artist.”
“Oh, he is. He’s just on our side now. I’m still working out where he can go next to find his brother, but we got sidetracked because of this new mess.”
“But you trust him?”
“Oh yeah, I do. Definitely.”
“So it’s Caspar that has you bummed right now.”
“What? No. I trust Caspar. I…” Malek cut himself off before he could finish the sentence. It didn’t seem to matter, though; Twigs understood the space between his words and the rain-drenched silence.
“What do you think of when you say his name?”
“What do you mean?” Malek asked.
“With me, you made a mix CD of what you thought of when you said my name. So what do you hear when you think of him?”
“Oh.” Malek swallowed. He touched his lips, feeling the kiss and the tingling sensation from the drug they’d shared the first night they’d met.
He remembered the intoxicating taste of his skin when they’d almost fucked before Natasha arrived.
Then he saw Caspar’s crumpled body after the gargoyles had tossed him around, and felt how fragile their bond had become, stretched thin as gossamer.
The gossamer shifted into the low rumbling of a rainstorm, turning the same yellow colour as the sky after a lightning strike.
Malek shook his head and pushed away the image.
That was Abe. That was the yellow of Abe’s djinn skin when he got aroused, and when the two of them touched, it was like spring grass against their hands.
Caspar wasn’t yellow, but red. He was hot sand and the feeling of cocoa against Malek’s tongue.
He was the sound of the crackling fire, explosions of light, and a tectonic plate shift, causing a volcano to burst. Caspar was the sinking feeling when blood loss happened, but also the strength that came from a kiss planted just right.
“I think of a lot of things,” Malek said. “Mostly how badly I want to kiss him.”
“So why haven’t you?”
“I have. We’ve been so close, we’ve slept in the same bed. I’ve tasted him—”
“But?”
“But no sex. The timing never seems right. People or circumstances keep getting in the way. And I’m starting to think it’s fate intervening.
Showing me that even if I can be free, I can’t make him be free, too.
Even if we get what we need from the Montréal exhibit.
Even if, by some chance, we manage to shake off the gargoyles and the Chaos Mages and beat those odds, I still worry he’ll become a djinn and be scooped up by something horrible. ”
“And if he runs away with you instead?”
“Then the ending is always the same: death, death, death. No matter what we do, we’ll always be out running from our families. Our patriarchs.”
“That was the story with Abe. Start something new. Change genres, change songs. Things can be different.”
Malek let out an exasperated breath. He didn’t know how Twigs’s words could be so beautiful and poetic and still sound like stock phrases.
He closed his eyes and heard the trumpet from one of the songs he’d put on her CD, then the acoustic guitar from another.
Soon his entire first album with All Trades came back to him, but he rearranged it in the order that Twigs suggested.
And it sounded better than it did before.
He started to imagine the small quests they’d already gone on as a song to sing later on, when the adventure was over.
He swallowed hard when he realized everything he wrote was a love song.
It was going to end well. He was sure of it.
“I think you may have something, Twigs.”
“Oh yeah? What do you see when you think of Caspar?”
“Gold like my crown, but also purple. As if our skin blends together into a bruise, but one I want to feel.”
“Oh. That does sound pretty good.” She let out a low laugh. “Be sure to burn me that CD too. I want to hear what your tiny fluttering heart comes up with.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Now, don’t get too ahead of yourself. You still have to get your crown. But I’m convinced of one thing, Malek.”
“What?”
“There is no divine fate, only what we make of our lives. So our decisions must matter. The moment you decide to love someone is the moment you become much more powerful than you realize.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Twigs.”
“Thank you. Goodnight, Malek.”
When Twigs disconnected the line, Malek stayed there for a couple long seconds.
He blinked and saw the gold and purple, the bruise under his hand.
He ripped off the bandage and flexed his fist. Smarting pain, but nothing too bad.
He braced it against the balcony and then felt it give away.
He could do this. He was healed, and now he knew exactly what he wanted.