The Musician and the Monster Read online

  Oberon wouldn’t let that happen. Would he?

  Ángel’s stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since . . . was it the day before? The day before yesterday? His sense of time was all messed up.

  He might be able to come up with a rational plan if he had some food. Shaking, he pulled the truck onto the road again.

  Just at sunset he passed a green sign that announced: Entering Cascade: Population 939.

  There was not a lot going on in the town of Cascade: a tackle shop that was closed for the winter, a grocery store, a US Forest Service office. Ángel stopped at Auntie’s Homestyle Restaurant (Come Hungry, Leave Happy!) and went in, hoping that the local cops weren’t on the lookout for dirty, sweaty, frightened Cubano fugitives.

  Auntie’s was blissfully warm. The hostess seemed friendly and too busy to be suspicious; she told him there would be a wait for a table, but that he could sit at the counter right away. He perched on a stool at the counter and tried not to be obvious as he glanced around. The place was full of white people, mostly older couples and families. But one corner table hosted five brown people, quietly speaking Spanish to each other. Probably Mexican, thought Ángel, illogically but instantly a little more comfortable.

  He ordered coffee, soup, a cheeseburger, and a side of tater tots. As he waited, the guy next to him paid and left, leaving behind a newspaper. The Idaho Statesman.

  Ángel ate the huge quantity of hot food that appeared before him and read the paper. They must have rushed to print. The photograph on the front page showed Oberon and the other fae envoy with their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Oberon’s face was buried in the other fae’s shoulder, and their identical green-and-ivory hair blew around them. The new envoy had a slender hand cupped around the back of Oberon’s head.

  They were communicating with each other. Through touch.

  The article confirmed that the DOR was very interested in Ángel’s whereabouts. There was a toll-free tip line and everything.

  Oh God.

  Staring at the picture, he wondered if Oberon thought Ángel had betrayed him too. The cheeseburger was suddenly a cold and greasy wad in Ángel’s stomach.

  He didn’t have a home. He didn’t have a family. His best friend was now friends with a DOR agent.

  Oberon was his lover. Oberon was his love. He trusted Oberon. But Ángel had run away. He hadn’t been there when Oberon needed him. And now, right now, Oberon was being comforted by someone else. Someone who could communicate with him better than Ángel ever could.

  “You okay, hon?” asked the waitress.

  He deliberately fisted his sore right hand, letting the pain wash through him and clear his whirling mind. Did the waitress seem suspicious? Did she know they were looking for him? Was one of his fellow diners at Auntie’s going to call the cops on him?

  “Yeah,” he said, huskily. “I’m okay. It’s been a long day.”

  “You want more coffee?”

  “Just the bill. Thank you.”

  He paid and put on his coat, making for the exit. No one seemed to be paying him any attention. No, someone was watching him—one of the guys at the corner table met Ángel’s eyes. He gave an infinitesimal head-tip. Did he recognize Ángel? Or was he just greeting a fellow Latino? Ángel returned the nod and went outside.

  It was full dark out, but the sodium streetlights washed the parking lot in an unnatural pinkish glow. There wasn’t as much snow here as up at Oberon’s estate, but the wind was whipping through town, laden with fragments of ice that stung the skin and worked into his coat.

  He didn’t know what to do. The food and coffee had not cleared his mind. He did not have a clever plan. He felt just as trapped and frozen now as he had in the shed.

  Aimlessly he walked across the parking lot toward the truck, with no better idea than to get in and keep driving.

  His eyes fell on the handsome green-roofed building across the street.

  In front of it, improbably, was a payphone.

  He stumbled up to it through the punishing wind, fed it all the change from his pocket.

  He didn’t even think about it: he dialed the number he’d memorized when he was six years old, the number he’d been told would get him to safety, no matter what.

  “Bueno.”

  “Papá,” said Ángel.

  There was a long pause. Ángel squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if Victor was going to hang up.

  But then his father said, “Ángel. Are you all right?”

  “I’m lost,” Ángel said. Another pause, and Ángel added, “I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to call.”

  “You always can call me, Ángelito,” said Victor gruffly.

  “I didn’t do it.” Ángel hugged himself against the cold, the phone wedged between his shoulder and jaw. “I didn’t sell him out.”

  “No one thinks you did that. We were scared you was dead, Ángel. Are you hurt?”

  “I hurt my hand. They tased me. I can’t stop shaking. But maybe that’s the cold. It’s so cold here, Papá, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Tell me where you’re at. Someone will come get you.”

  “Can you get a message to Oberon? Tell him I didn’t do it.”

  “Ángel,” said Victor, slowly. “Tell me where you at.”

  “Idaho,” said Ángel, sliding to sit on the sidewalk. “I think Idaho. The town’s called Cascade.”

  “Someone’s coming, Ángel. Hold on.”

  “I’m really cold. So cold.”

  He rested his forehead on his knees, the telephone cradle icy against his cheek.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “A Forest Service building, with a green roof. A Shell station. There’s a sign—it says there’s a senior center.”

  “Go on,” said Victor, softly. “Tell me what else.”

  So Ángel talked, describing what he could see of the town of Cascade in the pinkish glare of its streetlights. They’d been cut off by the time the DOR helicopter landed in the parking lot.

  In a featureless office building in Atlanta, Ángel was questioned for hours by a team of DOR agents, led by Neil Jeremy, the red-haired man he’d first met in Jacksonville.

  They didn’t seem angry. Ángel didn’t seem to be in trouble.

  A medic had looked at his hand, and they’d given him dry clothes: socks, tighty-whities, a light-blue DOR T-shirt, and a navy sweat suit, all slightly too big. Under the soft clean clothes, his body was still dirty and rank with sweat and blood.

  His mind felt frozen. He hadn’t been able to nap on the plane, and he was numb with exhaustion.

  “How long were you on the snowmobile after you left Oberon’s estate?” asked Jeremy.

  “I don’t know.” Ángel had answered this question already. Jeremy’s secretary had written it down. He’d already told them everything, everything. “I was really out of it. But I think it was around midnight when they caught me, and it was daylight when we got to the cabin. So it must have been several hours.”

  The only thing he hadn’t told Jeremy was his reason for being outside in the middle of the night at Oberon’s estate. That last conversation with Oberon—Oberon had been so happy, and he, Ángel, so selfish—burned his memory.

  He’d discuss that conversation with Oberon, and no one else.

  “And you think you went south?”

  He remembered the gold-and-flamingo sunrise filling the sky to his left. “At least some of the time we were going south.”

  “But maybe not the whole time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about the men again. Everything you can remember.”

  He told them. He ratted out Logan the goon with relish, and put in a good word for Aaron the not-a-fag-killer. Jeremy seemed to think Ángel had some variety of Stockholm Syndrome when it came to Aaron, but what could he say? Aaron had tased him, had hoisted him over the wall, had put him in the shed to freeze, but he could have just shot him in the snow. He hadn’t.

  “They were
armed?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of guns were they carrying?”

  “I . . . I didn’t see any guns. But they talked about shooting me, and they didn’t seem like they were fucking around.”

  “You didn’t see the guns?”

  Ángel closed his eyes. “No.”

  “What kind of snowmobiles were they?”

  “A single-man sled. Hold on.”

  “Ángel? Did you notice the make of the snowmobiles?”

  “No,” he said, not opening his eyes. He’d already told them he didn’t know anything about the snowmobiles.

  “And what direction did you go?”

  “Sleep,” he said. “I think we went south. I need to sleep.”

  “Ángel.” The voice was gentle, insistent. “One more question, and you can sleep. Okay?”

  Let me sleep, he said. Or thought he said.

  “The day before the attack, you told Oberon to turn off the cameras and microphones in his office. What did you talk about?”

  Ángel’s exhausted mind struggled to wrap itself around this question.

  “You were off mike for about twenty minutes. Why did you do that? What did you and Oberon have to talk about? Did you argue?”

  What?

  “You were upset when you left the house. Did it have something to do with what you talked about off-mike? Did Oberon break your guitar?”

  Ángel forced his eyes open. “What? No.”

  Jeremy's eyes were blue and innocent. Ángel frowned at him. That question made no sense. He was so tired, and none of these questions seemed to make any sense.

  Deliberately, Ángel said, “I told him to turn off the mikes, and then I sucked his dick.”

  Jeremy’s eyes widened, his nostrils flaring.

  “That what you wanted to know?” demanded Ángel, his voice ragged. “Here I thought you were trying to find out who attacked Oberon, but really you just want to know whether we were fucking? Well, we were. What else? You want to know if he tops or bottoms?”

  Agent Jeremy’s fair skin flushed, his eyes now downcast. “I wrote your employment contract. It made no mention of—of sexual—”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  “It was never our intention—”

  “Am I free to go?” Ángel stood up and swayed alarmingly. “You’re not arresting me or anything, right? I can leave?”

  “Ángel—”

  “Okay then, I’m leaving.” He went to the door, fumbling with the knob.

  Agent Jeremy stood up and opened the door for him. “Emma,” he said to his secretary, “take Mr. Cruz to a hotel. Make sure he has everything he needs. Ángel, we’ll talk more when you’re rested.”

  “Can’t wait,” snarled Ángel.

  At the hotel Ángel thought he’d sleep like the dead, but he was restless, plagued by dreams that he wasn’t safe, that he was lost, that he was missing something vital. He bolted awake near dawn gasping Oberon’s name. Tunneling beneath the sterile-smelling hotel-bed blankets, he tried to calm his mind and sleep again. He couldn’t seem to get warm.

  He was still tired when a knock on the door dragged him out of bed at eight thirty. Expecting Agent Jeremy, he shuffled to the door and opened it, and was nearly bowled off his feet by Marissa, all curves and curls and a powerful hug. He put his arms around her, resting his cheek on her head, and watched with dawning bewilderment, as Chandler Evanston and Victor Cruz stepped into the room.

  “How did you get here?” he demanded.

  “We drove all night!” Marissa’s strong arms tightened, and then she pulled back to scrutinize him. “We picked up your dad in Jax on the way. You look like shit.”

  “You look amazing.” She was big and beautiful, wild hair and lush mouth, radiating health and joy, just like always—even after the grueling ten-hour drive from Miami to Atlanta.

  Then Victor was there, and, awkwardly, Ángel accepted his hug too. “Mijo.” Victor cupped Ángel’s face in his hands, brows crooked with concern. “They hurt you. They treat you bad?”

  “No, I—” Suddenly overwhelmed, Ángel felt his eyes fill with tears. His father despised displays of emotion, so he swallowed them. “They— No, it was okay. Until it went bad.”

  “It wasn’t okay,” said Chandler. She had seated herself at the hotel desk while the other two crowded around him. She was in civilian clothes—jeans and an Oxford shirt. “None of it. You were a virtual prisoner there. You had no avenue for escape or opposition to anything that happened to you. No ground to stand on for resistance.”

  He blinked at her, and saw, to his surprise, that she had cut her hair: the long sleek braid had been lopped off above the shoulder, and her dark locks waved softly around her face. It made her appear disconcertingly young. “I resigned from the DOR the morning of the attack,” she explained.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s debatable. I hired Logan.” She cocked her head, ice-blue eyes assessing him. “You really don’t look so good.”

  “And you stink,” said Marissa. She gave him a little push toward the bathroom. “Shower and shave, Angela. When’s the last time you ate?”

  He shook his head, wonderingly. “I think I was in Idaho.”

  “I’ll order breakfast.”

  When he emerged from the bathroom, Marissa had turned the bed into a lavish room-service buffet: eggs, ham, fried potatoes, cheddar grits, sliced tomatoes, biscuits, sausages, orange juice, and coffee. Good Southern food. He accepted a cup from his father and a plate from Marissa. “Can we eat all this?”

  “It’s on the DOR’s bill,” said Marissa, with rancor. “I’m thinking of ordering more. Talk, Ángel.”

  “I was upset,” he said. “So I went outside for a walk . . .”

  Marissa let him lean on her as he ate and told the story, and by the time he was scraping cheese off his plate with his fork, he felt physically better. His heart still ached, though, with a palpable pain, so after he set his plate down he said, “What I really need to do is talk to Oberon.”

  “Why?” said Chandler, bluntly.

  He and Chandler were the only people here who knew Oberon, who knew what it was like in that house in Montana. “You know why. He was worried when I disappeared.”

  “He was, but I’m sure the DOR has told him that you’re okay.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “I still need to talk to him.”

  “I listen to your podcast,” said Victor, who’d been quiet.

  “You do?” Ángel said.

  Marissa put in, “Everyone listens to it. People talk about it on the bus, in the grocery store. It’s good.”

  “Everyone likes the elf-lord,” said Victor. “Made him seem like a nice guy.”

  “That was the idea.” Ángel felt shyly pleased. Victor had never come to listen to Ángel perform, so far as he knew. He disapproved of his career as a musician.

  But he liked the podcast, and in spite of the years of anger between them, a little flower of pleasure opened in Ángel’s heart.

  “I’m sorry I sent you there, Ángel,” said Victor. “It was weak. It was wrong. I never should have done it.”

  “It wasn’t so bad there, though,” said Ángel. “I like him. He’s extraordinary. I wouldn’t have met him without you. So it’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” interrupted Chandler. “Ángel. Oberon is not your friend.”

  He scowled. “Yes, he is. You know what he is to me.”

  “I know that he used you,” she said. “And God help me, I and the rest of the DOR abetted him. He put you in an impossible position. He played with your mind. He made you think he needed you—”

  “He does need me!” cried Ángel.

  “He needed a warm body,” said Chandler. “To survive, he needed someone. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else—Lily, or me.”

  “That is such bullshit,” said Ángel. “If you think that, you don’t know him.”

  “I’ve known him for years,” s
he said pitilessly. “I know what he is. He’s a creature that needs touch to survive. When he first arrived, he wanted to touch everyone—he tried to touch me—I know how awful it was.”

  “No—”

  “He procured you, and he took what he needed. And on one level I can’t blame him, because that’s what he needed to live. And maybe to live with it you need to pretend you had some kind of special relationship with him. But it’s time to wake up, Ángel.”

  “He didn’t procure me,” spat Ángel. Both Marissa and Victor drew back.

  Chandler faced him down. “He manipulated you!”

  “He closed himself in his room and quietly started dying, all by himself. He didn’t ask for anything. I went to him.”

  “You were groomed—”

  “I’m not a child!” Ángel shouted. “I am not a victim. I did it because I wanted to. That make you uncomfortable? You feel better about it if you think of me as a poor innocent kid? Okay! I get that. But my eyes are open, Chandler. I do what I want. I have always done what I want, even if other people don’t like it.”

  “Okay,” soothed Marissa. She wrapped her arms around him from behind, holding him, putting her chin on his shoulder. “Okay, Ángel.”

  “What I see,” Chandler said, gently but implacably, “is someone who is strong, but who was caught in an impossible situation. I see how independent you are. I do. But do you see the contortions you’re turning right now, to convince yourself that what happened was okay?” She ticked off points on her fingers. “You were imprisoned. You were under constant, constant surveillance. He watched you sleep. When you disabled the cameras, he made you feel guilty about it. Anytime you asserted your independence, he made you feel bad about it, like it was hurting him. He used your estrangement from your family. He used your loneliness. How could any of that be acceptable?”

  Ángel was silent.

  “You were fucked by the elf-lord, Ángel! And I’m culpable for that,” Chandler said. “I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

  “So will I,” said Victor humbly.

  “Goddamn it,” said Ángel. He looked at Marissa. “Do you think that too? Do you think—”