The first notes drift from the piano, delicate and questioning. My cue.
I close my eyes, willing away the intimidating room, Sterling’s calculating gaze, Milo’s arctic judgment.
My Grandmother Lola’s voice echoes in my memory: “Don’t sing from your throat, child. Sing from that place where your heart meets your soul.”
I open my mouth, and the melody carries me.
It isn’t perfect. It isn’t polished like a studio recording. But it’s mine. Raw and honest, the way jazz should be.
Each note is weighted with my dreams, my fears, my confusion over Sam and his abrupt disappearance.
Somewhere in the middle of the second verse, something shifts in the room. The temperature changes. The air grows charged, electric. Like it knows something I don’t.
Goose bumps rise on my arms, and I feel someone watching me.
Not Sterling. Not Milo.
Someone else.
Someone yet unseen.
My eyes drift open, still holding the note as I scan the shadowy corners of the room.
The door at the far end has opened silently, and a tall figure stands in the threshold, silhouetted against the hallway light.
I can’t make out the face, just the unmistakable outline of a man in black, standing perfectly still, watching.
Something about that presence makes me shiver, though I can’t say why.
I force myself to stay with the song, to finish what I’ve started. But as the final notes fade into silence, the figure steps forward into the room.
And with that, everything changes.
CHAPTER 16
SLAYER
Istand in the doorway of Sterling’s audition room, curious as to why he wanted to meet me here instead of his office.
The sound I hear floats through the room like spun sugar and smoke. I stop moving.
It’s not even clear at first that it’s a voice. It might be a high-pitched, distorted instrument. But no. The phrasing is too human, too raw.
The sound is mesmerizing. Airy, intimate, alive. Like something from another era, yet completely fresh.
I ease forward, shadowed by one of the room’s support columns.
Spotlights trace slowly across the stage, and I catch her in profile.
Bix.
Two questions flash across my mind, sharp and near simultaneous.What the hell is she doing here?Andhow did she learn to sing like that?
This isn’t an amateur luck. She’s not reciting lyrics. She’s channeling something.
The phrasing, the smoke-wrapped vowels, the casual rubato—it’s like watching a voodoo priestess raising souls from the dead.
I remember her red notebook—the diary left cracked open. I read enough to feel manipulated.
