"What am I listening to? Oh, just this lateral new band."
My fingers fumbled with the sticky clasp of my new handbag, scrambling around inside until they found my music player at the very bottom. Its earphones were non-helpfully tangled with makeup and hair goo and a million other things I never normally carried. After long seconds of unwinding, I managed to drag the player out and get the phones into my ears. But where was my neck strap? I peered down into the bottomless handbag in horror, realizing I hadn't brought it.
I flashed back to my hours spent at the Apple store looking for just the right strap: sleek black leather with a shiny steel USB connector. I could see it in my mind's eye, still in its packaging, sitting on my bed with all the other crap.
And of course this stupid cocktail dress, like all stupid cocktail dresses, had no pockets. It would look way too obvious just carrying the music player in my hand, and a pair of earphones snaking out from my handbag wasn't going to make me look like the hip young trendsetter I was supposed to be. The kind who says things like...
"No, they're not signed. Everyone just knows about them."
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think.
There was only one place to put it.
I took a gulp of champagne, switched the music player on, and dropped it down my cleavage. It fit perfectly and was kind of warm down there. Really warm - I looked down and realized that while scrabbling in my handbag I'd locked the screen backlight on.
Framed by the black velvet of my dress, my breasts glowed softly blue.
In my champagne haze, it was kind of cool looking. Carrying your music this way might not be the Taj Mahal of class, but it was definitely going to get the guy's attention.
I moved closer.
"What language is she singing in? I don't think it is one, really."
The player was set to shuffle our four best songs - long, intense rants of Minerva's peppered with Moz's cleanest, simplest lines, Alana Ray shattering it all into a thousand glittering shapes, Zahler finally playing a proper bass underneath. As I drew nearer, the music began to synchronize with the bubbles in my bloodstream, my footsteps falling with the beat. I was cool and connected, seventeen and covered with bling, a record company's dream demographic in the flesh.
The world began to shift around me, just like when we played, my fingers twitching with the keyboard parts. Huge photographs rolled past my shoulder, a galaxy of rats' and cats' eyes flickering on my blurry side.
"What's their name? I don't think they have a name yet, actually..."
By the time I walked up beside Astor Michaels, swirling one last smidgen of champagne in the bottom of my glass, I was cool and predatory and confident, the embodiment of our music.
He turned and looked at me, his eyes following the white cords from my ears down into my glowing cleavage. His gaze flashed a little, reflecting the soft blue light.
Then Astor Michaels smiled at me, and his teeth were pointy, a hundred times sharper than Minerva's...
All my lines flew from my head, and I pulled my earphones out, pushing them toward him with quivering hands.
"You've got to listen, man," I said. "This shit is paranormal."
PART IV
THE DEAL
About seven hundred years ago, the disease that finished the Roman Empire returned.
Humanity was already in a bad way. China had just suffered a brutal civil war, Europe had endured a destructive famine, and the Little Ice Age was descending. Across the world, temperatures dropped, crops failed, and whole countries fell into poverty. Wars were sparked by what little wealth remained.
Then a relentless and deadly plague appeared in Asia. In some parts of China, nineteen out of every twenty people perished. The disease was carried to Europe and the Middle East, where it killed a third of the population. The most intense part of the outbreak lasted only five years, but worldwide it left 100 million dead.
Historians once assumed that the Black Death was bubonic plague, a bacterium spread by rats. But that never quite added up: too many people died too quickly. According to some, it might have been a new form of anthrax transmitted from animals to humans. Others believe that an Ebola-like virus suddenly evolved to become airborne, spreading across the world via handshakes and coughs, then disappeared.
But what was the Black Death really, and how did it come and go so quickly?
Keep your ears open, and you'll find out.
NIGHT MAYOR TAPES:
313-314
18. ANONYMOUS 4
- ZAHLER-
The offices of Red Rat Records were fawesome.
Maybe they weren't the biggest label in the world - Red Rat was only an independent - but they had an old town house in the East Twenties all to themselves. Astor Michaels took us inside, saying that the richest family in New York City had once lived there. The ground floor was still fitted out like a money-counting room: antique brass bars guarding the receptionist's desk, the doors solid oak, thick as dictionaries.
There were a bunch of kids waiting in line to deliver CDs and press packets by hand, most of them in full stage dress: black eye-liner and fingernails, ripped clothes and Mohawks. All of them were trying to look fool, but they stared wide-eyed as the five of us were ushered past the brass bars and inside. I got a weird jolt, thinking, We're rock stars, and they're not.
I'd always known Pearl would take us places, but I hadn't thought it would be this fast. I didn't feel ready for it, especially since I'd only been playing my new instrument a week.
But Pearl was unstoppable. She'd even managed some kind of deal with Minerva's parents, getting her into Manhattan on a workday. The two of them were supposedly out buying Minerva new clothes, something about her birthday coming up.
We tromped downstairs to the basement, where Astor Michaels's personal office occupied the steel cube of an old walk-in safe, lit only by the flickering glow of a computer screen. It was as big as a one-car garage, the walls lined with rows of safe-deposit boxes. The foot-thick metal door looked too heavy to move - I hoped it was anyway. If anyone shut it, I would've started screaming.
Huge photographs hung from the walls, artsy pictures of garbage-strewn alleys, gushing black water, and rats.
Yes: rats. And that wasn't the weirdest thing about Astor Michaels.
Our new rep licked his lips a lot, and when he smiled, his teeth never showed. He kept his sunglasses on until we got down into the darkness, and once he took them off, I wished he'd put them back on again. His eyes were way too wide and spent a lot of time lingering on the three girls, especially Minerva.