Page 48

"Leave him alone," Sola hisses.

I push up off the floor and bolt for the back stairs, taking them two at a time with one hand dragging against the wall to steady myself as my pulse kicks hard enough to blur my vision. Nobody tries to stop me. Maybe they already know where I'm going.

I slam my bedroom door behind me and drop straight to my knees beside the bed. My hands won't work. Then I shove aside the loose blanket hanging over the frame and reach under the warped floorboard near the wall, fingers digging into the narrow gap until the edge gives and lifts.

The bundle is still there, folded tight in oilcloth. Hidden where nobody would think to look unless they tore the whole room apart.

When I finally pull it free, the page looks exactly the same as it did the day the merchant woman pressed it into my hands in the Düren market, old and strange and too fine for our house, the notation running across it in sharp, unfamiliar lines that look like no music I've ever seen.

I've still played pieces of it anyway, testing phrases on the cello when nobody was home, even when the notes made something in me feel strange and unsettled afterward.

Ever since then, the house has never felt right.

Doors are left open. Drawers are turned out. Footsteps echo where there shouldn't be footsteps. Shadows in the lane too often to be chance. Düren is dangerous, everybody knows that, but this is different. It keeps circling back, keeps finding us.

Tonight they even came to the house.

My hands close around the papers so tightly the edges bite into my skin. This has to be the reason.

I want it gone. I want all of it gone.

I grab the little tin from under the windowsill where I keep stolen matches for candle wax drips and music stand tricks, shove the papers and the matches under my shirt, and climb out through the narrow roof hatch before I can think better of it.

The night air hits cold and damp, making me suck in a breath too fast. I crawl up the slanted roof on hands and knees, tiles rough under my palms, until I reach the flatter edge overlooking the dark line of the woods.

I can never see beyond them.

Only the trees, black and crowded and still.

My heart is still going too fast. My fingers won't stop shaking.

Burn them. Burn them and maybe they'll stop coming back.

I don't know if that's true. I don't care if it makes sense. Right now, it's the only thing I have.

I strike the first match too hard and snap it. The second catches.

The flame flares between my fingers, lighting the edges of the paper gold, and for one last second I hesitate, staring at the notes that never looked like notes to me at all, only something secret and wrong and too old for my hands.

"I don't want you," I whisper, my throat tight enough that it comes out broken.

Then I touch the flame to the corner.

Fire eats the music fast, faster than I expect, racing across the dry edge with a soft, hungry sound as the paper curls inward and the lines disappear into black.

I drop the burning pages into the metal rain bucket bolted near the roofline and stumble back, breathing hard as the flames climb and crackle, destroying everything Sola told me to protect.

My eyes sting.

Smoke rises in a thin dark ribbon, curling up into the night.

Please let this fix it. Please let them leave us alone now.

Below me, somewhere inside the house, I hear Ma shouting my name. Then Sola calls for me too.

"Rowan!"

I flinch so hard I lurch for the new band strapped around my wrist, thumb pressing clumsily against the smooth metal, but the dangerous flutter in my chest refuses to settle.