"What are you thinking?"
I shifted around on my chair, skin itching again. "I'm wondering about you."
"Mmm," she purred. "If I'm crazy? If I'm bad?"
I swallowed. "No. But I don't really know you, outside of practice."
"I think you do know me, Mozzy. That's why I wanted you to call. Because you know things."
"Um, I do?"
"Sure. Just close your eyes."
I did, and she started humming, the sound barely carrying over the wires. I imagined her singing in the practice room, drawing me into her slipstream as we played. Fragments of her songs echoed in my head. It felt like I was being pulled somewhere.
She stopped humming, but her breathing still reached my ears.
"Where do you get those words, Min? For our songs?"
She laughed softly. "From underneath."
"Like, from underneath your conscious mind or something?"
"No, silly," she whispered. "Underneath my house."
"Uh, really?" With my eyes closed, she seemed so close, like she was whispering in my ear. "You write in your basement?"
"I did at first, back when they let me go down there. I had fevers and could feel something under the house. Something rumbling."
"Yeah." I nodded. "I know what you mean. I can feel something kind of... underneath us when you sing."
"Something in the ground." She was breathing harder now. "You do know things."
"Sometimes I feel like my music's just buzzing around in the air. But you pull it down, tie it to something that's real."
"Mmm. It's realer than you think." She breathed slowly for a while, and I just listened until she said, "Do you want more, Moz?"
I swallowed. "How do you mean?"
"Do... you... want... more? I can give you the rest of it. You're only tasting a little tiny fraction."
I opened my eyes. The darkness in the kitchen was suddenly sharp. "A fraction of what?"
"Of what I have. Come over, and I'll show you."
The table seemed to tremble: my heart beating in my fingertips. "Come over... now?"
"Yes, Mozzy. Come rescue me and Zombie."
"Um... Zombie?"
"He's my undead slave."
I swallowed. "Yeah?"
She let out a giggle, just above a whisper. "And his breath smells like cat food."
"Oh." I let out a slow breath. "Zombie has whiskers too, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, and he also knows things. But... Moz?"
"What?"
"I'm hungry."
I laughed. She was so skinny, I never thought of Minerva getting hungry. She ate a lot of beef jerky at rehearsal, but I figured that was for her voice or something.
"You want to go and get something? I'll wait." I wanted to sit there in silence for a minute or two, just to recover. Just to scratch myself all over.
"Can't."
"Why not?"
"See, here's the thing. The door of my room has this smelly lock. On the outside."
"Really?" I blinked. "Like, your parents keep you locked in at night?"
"Daytime too. Because I was sick before."
I closed my eyes again. A new layer of hovering badness sprang up all around me, filling the room with a buzzing sound.
"That's why you have to come rescue me," she said. "Come let me out and I'll show you everything."
I bit my lip. "But you live in... Brooklyn, right?"
She groaned. "Don't be lame. Just take the F train. Half an hour."
Just half an hour. Plus however long it took the train to come, maybe an hour total. Not forever; I wasn't afraid of the subways yet.
And if I didn't go see her, how long would it take to fall asleep in my room all alone? A thousand hours, at least.
Every time I'd watched her sing, her songs moving through my hands as I played, I'd gone to bed that night with her cries still echoing in my brain. Every time, I'd imagined a thousand ways of following her back to Brooklyn, and now she was inviting me.
If I said no, this itch would never leave my skin.
"Everyone's asleep here," she was saying. "And I can show you where my music comes from."
"Okay, Min. I'll come." I stood up, like I was heading out the door right then, but my head started to spin. I sat back down. "But how are you going to get out?"
"You're going to rescue me. It's easy. Pearl does it all the time."
"Um, am I supposed to climb up to your window or something?"
"No, silly. Just walk up the stairs." She giggled. "But first, you have to find the magic key..."
16. LOVE BITES
- MINERVA-
Mozzy was taking forever.
I was dressed up so pretty, it was killing me just sitting here at my desk, staring at myself in the mirror. Zombie was pacing, knowing from the tinkle of my earrings that we were going out.
"Not long now," I said softly. My stomach rumbled.
The thought of Moz coming over had changed the balance inside me - the hungry thing had woken up, stirred from the sleep Luz had forced upon it. I'd already chewed through all my emergency beef jerky, trying not to think of the way he smelled. So yummy and intense.
I took a bite of pork rind, letting its unctuous texture coat my mouth. Zombie wandered over and mur-rowed, so I gave him my fingers to lick.
"You can go play with your little friends soon."
I looked at the clock: after two. Smelly Moz. What if he'd chickened out? I wanted to get closer to the earth. Singing felt wonderful, but I needed to feel the dirt under my fingernails, to smell and taste the things down there.
I needed to learn more, to put flesh on the words in my notebooks.
My stomach rumbled again, and I felt funny in a way I hadn't for a while. Like before Luz came along - kind of... inhuman. That wasn't good.
Mustn't eat Mozzy, I thought, and peeled a clove of garlic. It was fresh, the way Luz said was best, the papery skin still flecked with purple. The clove split between my teeth, sharp and hot as fresh chicken blood. My next breath sucked the flavor into my lungs, and my nerves steadied.
"That'll teach you," I whispered to the hungry thing inside me, then took a swig from the little bottle of tequila Pearl had smuggled in, swishing it around my mouth. Didn't want to taste funny for Moz.