Adagio’s room is dark, mostly because everything is dark this time of night, but even up here on the twelfth floor, the streetlights shine in through the blinds and leave stripes across her body. I can imagine them as whip marks, with her self-flagellating over what she did. At least I hope she regrets it, and not just because it got her in trouble.
“Hey,” I say, but she doesn’t move. Did the others tell her I’d be coming? I expected her to react with more surprise, but she was already nearly in a fetal position, and all she does now is scrunch up a little tighter. It’d open a can of worms if I sat on the bed, so instead I set my guitar case down and plop onto the floor, my back to the mattress, my back to her, my back to her sisters. The bed shakes, gently but constantly.
Finally, I turn to look at her. She has a pair of sweat pants on, plus a sleeveless crop top, but she shivers, sometimes violently. Shit, they didn’t tell me it had gotten this bad. I feel her forehead—she’s burning up! “You’re hot,” I say flatly.
“Now you notice?” she replies, a couple of forced laughs wedged between her chattering teeth, but then she clutches her arms across her stomach. “Sorry.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing any more of Autumn Blaze.” That’s not fair either. She wasn’t that awful. Maybe we can work on her together. “I’m guessing you don’t actually know who my mother is or… hypothetically could have been… whatever?” She shakes her head. “Was any of that stuff about doubles true?”
“Yeah,” she says hoarsely, “I only lied about the one.”
Pretty much what I figured. Without thinking better of it, I idly reach behind me and stroke her bangs back from her face. I feel her skin tighten, and Adagio curls up harder, another tremor surging through her body. This is bad. “Are you messed up because of me?”
She nods, and the way I phrased it makes it sound like my fault, but she’s in no state to argue. Still, she grasps at my wrist and shakes her head again. I get it.
“Your sisters were worried about you.” I assume she already knows that, but it doesn’t hurt to let it sink in. “Man, what is this? I can’t tell if you’re suffering from something like sickness, withdrawal, or… I don’t know, organ rejection?” Before she wonders why I compared it to all those, I add: “Did Sonata explain her theories to you?”
“And Aria,” she grunts, squeezing her eyes shut. “I see why… you were mad… even though…”
I wait a moment, then finish it for her. “Even though the end result seemed to you like it should be worth it. Yeah, we had a nice chat about that too.”
“Sorry. I’m trying.” She’s been saying that from the start. And I didn’t catch what it meant until now. “I can’t promise I won’t fuck it up again.”
A bit of a gamble—I turn around, on my knees, and lean over the edge of the bed, put an arm around her back, and give her a hug. She’s covered in sweat, but I didn’t even bother to change or shower before coming here, so I probably smell of fish from the restaurant. Though her trembling does ease. “It might be tough, but I need some answers from you. Do you think you can handle that?”
Adagio tries to sit up, but I let my weight keep her down, stirring around the edges, like the violins creating a hush for the featured soloist. So she remains curled up in a ball. “Mmhmm.”
“Your gem absorbed my magic and everyone’s love. It—damn, I don’t know how to explain it.”
She pulls the neck of her shirt down, exposing the red facets, gone dim and distorted in the yellow-green light filtering in. And she finally opens her eyes, peering at me as if anything she does will make me simultaneously save and condemn her.
So I swallow hard and try again: “Did you focus on me because your gem made you? Because it was my magic and my friends’ love it used to fix itself?”
“No,” she says, her voice less raspy. “It’s been years, and I really didn’t think of you much until I saw you at the cafe my first time there.”
“And it only took you how many weeks to talk to me? I thought I’d stayed hidden.” I allow myself a small chuckle.
One of her hands comes unclenched, the rookie cellist ready to release her death grip on her bow after her first audition. And she touches my cheek. “My jewel could sniff out your magic. But I saw you leave the cafe, and I couldn’t blame you for it.”
“I was going to ask if you’d fallen in love before you’d even seen me. Would’ve been a sure-fire sign that your amulet made it all happen, but you kinda answered that already.” Ugh, love always turns any conversation into a rat’s nest. “Was it love at first sight? That’d raise alarms with me too.”
“I definitely admired you.” Her hand descends from caressing my cheek and feels along my arm, interlocks her fingers with mine. “The way you get along with your friends, the way you rose from your own broken jewel—I didn’t even understand until breaking mine. But it was after all the patience you showed, talking at the cafe, treating me with respect. I had no right to it, but… I loved you for it.”
I can’t help sighing. “I feel like an idiot. Talking about being controlled to love someone, and yeah, I had to consider the possibility, but even doing it the right way, what about love does anyone really have even the slightest control over?” She never used her magic to control me, if it can even do that anymore. The euphoria it caused—it felt good simply because it felt good. A special gift she wanted to share with me, me of all people, and it feels good to be loved.
Her eyes crinkle, but her wisp of a smile drains of all humor. “Sirens are supposed to control it completely.”
“Do you know what Aria wants me to do?” She doesn’t answer, her face a prisoner, bound up in irons and awaiting sentence. “She says I need to promise to love you, long-term, so we can get you through this and out the other side. And if I screw that up, it’ll damage you, seriously. If I can’t make that vow, or if I just don’t feel that way in the first place, then I need to break it off now, never see you again.”
She squints at me. “Aria said that?”
“Honestly, I think it’s selling you short to say you couldn’t pull through and eventually find someone else, and maybe by then, your gem wouldn’t react so much the next time.” Her face clouds, and I can see the question already forming on her lips.
“You must not have much faith in me if you think I’ll keep having failed relationships,” she says, averting her gaze to the wad of sheets shoved down past her feet.
There’s a lot about being human that she doesn’t know. “It’s just how life goes. I’d assume the same for myself, too. But Aria said if it went that way, I needed to smash your gem. She said you wouldn’t stop me. She said she could make sure it grew back the right way again, the siren way.”
“Even less faith than I accused you of having,” she mutters.
“Except it’s obvious what she wants, or else she would have already smashed it for your own good. She didn’t know it on a conscious level, but taking away your ability to love? Only if she had no other choice.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with it?” she asks, her voice rising, but she coughs, the hoarseness returning.
I can’t stay angry right now. I don’t want to. But the fatigue, the frustration, the pain—her jewel glows, and even as I watch it, one small crack near the edge disappears, seals over. I remain kneeling beside the bed and get out my guitar, start on the same chaconne I played for her once. No bass strings on a classical guitar, but I fill in that line with my humming, my own voice a lower range, just like she noted before. A love song, yes. I don’t even know if I mean it, but I hope it helps.
Adagio smiles as she listens, and she peers up at me, her eyes questioning, asking me the same thing I’m asking myself. She hums as well, her trembling gone still, and with no flowers in here to grow in response, I close my eyes, placing both of us in the park among bowers of beautiful blossoms, fragrant florid air, and nobody else but us. Then the last chord echoes, and I set my guitar back in its case.
“Do you mean it?” she whispers, clutching at my arm as if it’s the safety line hauling her out of a chasm. “Do you love me?” Her gem gleams in the muted light, and the skin I can see on her chest, neck, shoulders has turned to scales, already anticipating my reply.
I reach out and touch one of those shoulders, smooth but soft, and warm, pliant, velvet under my fingertips. “Yeah, I think I do. I love you like a friend—” Her face falls, but I hold up a hand. “Let me finish. I love you as a friend. Very much. I don’t want to see you hurt this way, and I care very deeply about you. I think you’re finally starting to get what that means, so don’t dismiss it as some second-tier kind of love. I understand you better, why you did what you did, but while that needs to change—” she purses her lips and nods “—I still love you, and you’re very important to me.”
Before she can assume that’s the end of it, I take another breath. “I’ll always feel that way, and I hope you know how special it is to have another person in your corner like your sisters are—” she nods again “—but… can it be more than that?”
I know the answer. But I need to phrase it right so she doesn’t misunderstand. “Life happens. It’s unpredictable. I can’t promise that nothing will ever screw things up, but I want to try. I do love you, and even though it’s been sorely tested, it didn’t go away.”
She smiles, tears streaking her face, and her amulet flares even brighter, the scales spreading down her arms.
“Is that enough?”
“Yes,” she says without pausing to think, and she sits up, throws her arms around me, and hugs me to her.
“Because if it isn’t, then maybe we need to do what Aria said,” I add, patting her on the back.
“It’s enough, it’s enough!” she blubbers, and I reach behind me to feel her forehead. Still too warm, but not as bad as it was.
That leaves only one thing still missing. “You just need to learn to consider other people’s feelings better.”
“I can, I will, you’ll teach me!” she says, shifting onto her knees, on the mattress above me, and looks down, cupping my face in her scaled hands and tilting it up to kiss me. In my head, the full symphony rings out again, the music returned, the music that she brings to my life. Her lips slide off mine, across my cheek, down to my shoulder, where she rests her head and sobs while I stroke her back.
When it seems she’s calmed down, I let go of her, straighten up, and stuff my hand in my pocket. “I’ve given that a bit of thought.”
At last, her eyes show some life, peering at me like a child whose mother is dangling his favorite candy in front of him. She doesn’t want to lose this any more than I want to take it from her. But part of that is trust, which is why I need to make sure I don’t touch her right now.
I withdraw my hand from my pocket and hold up my geode.
Adagio tenses up for a moment and sags a little. “Okay. You can use it.”
“No,” I answer, shaking my head. “That’s why I can’t touch you with my hand right now. If I’m holding it and I do that, it’ll activate.”
Then her eyes narrow. “You can’t give that up.”
“Yes I can. It’s not the same as the other girls’ geodes. They help fight off enemies. This one never did that. It helps me understand people. And that’s what you’re missing.”
“You’d… do that for me?”
I nod, and I know all the questions that must be coursing through her mind. “Well, I’ve given it a little more than a bit of thought: you’re not a touchy-feely person anyway, so you wouldn’t have to change your behavior to avoid using it.”
“What if I—?”
“I know, what if you’re tempted to use it for bad reasons? I don’t think you would now. It’s not a weapon, just information. The old you would ignore it or use it against people, but if you wanted to return to the old you, then you’d have to smash your gem, which would destroy the geode, too.”
A brief tic crosses her cheek as she fits the final note into the chord. “You don’t mean I’ll be wearing it.”
I set the geode on the bed next to her, take my hand off it, and strain upward to kiss her softly, and let her rest her forehead against mine. “Info is just info. It’s what you do with it that matters. It won’t change who you are, not like adding love to your amulet did. You’ll still be the Adagio I like, the Adagio you like.”
“But when I touch you…”
That earns her another smile and kiss. “I trust you with that, the same way you trusted me.”
So she sits up tall, closes her eyes, sets her jaw, and angles her chin toward the ceiling, fully exposing her jewel. One long split still runs across the bottom left corner. I take the geode and hold it up to her amulet, careful not to touch any of the scaled skin surrounding it. Red crystal against red crystal, blending in perfectly as the geode barely sits into the narrow rift. I press it in a little harder. “This might hurt a bit,” I say, and she braces herself.
Then I pound a fist against it, cracking her gem apart and embedding the geode between the pieces. She winces, grunts, cries out briefly, but immediately, her amulet flares, and glowing tendrils bridge the gap, wind their way around the new piece, use the fresh, rare supply of magic to heal their form. The red brightens more and more until I can barely look, and for an instant, a full siren lies there, coiled on the mattress, scales, fangs, fins, hooves, bigger than I remember her being.
But with another flash, there sits my Adagio, her amulet almost pristine. A few chips remain, a few imperfect facets, but we’ll get there. Eventually. She lets out a breath and opens her eyes.
“Well?” I say.
She takes my face in both hands, looks down on it, her eyes searching. “It’s odd,” she murmurs. “Not like the direct mind reading you talked about. More like… a strong hunch.”
That is different, but maybe the magic just works differently for her. “What’s your strong hunch telling you?”
Her eyes flick back and forth between each of mine for a second, then she grins broadly and leans forward to kiss me. I reach my arms around her neck and pull her close, flute trills ringing in my ears. It’s still her, thank goodness—I thought it would work this way, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure.
It’s still the Adagio I know, unchanged, ostinato.
When she finally stops to breathe, tears streak down her face. “What’s wrong?” I ask, wiping them away for her.
“I see now,” she whispers. “I see what I did to you, how it made you feel.”
“And the old you wouldn’t have cared,” I add on her behalf. “The new you cared but didn’t understand. Now you’ve got it all.”
“That’s the fuckin’ truth,” she says, laughing.
“It’s alright. Really.”
Several times, she kisses me, backs off, smiles anew, kisses me again, still holding my face. And she gets an odd squint to her eyes, peering toward the open door, where it has been rather conveniently quiet. “If you two are going to listen anyway, you might as well come in.”
Sonata struts through the doorway, looking rather proud, followed by Aria, at more of a slink. “So are you a couple?” Sonata asks.
Adagio looks to me, awaiting her cue from the conductor, but I’m no maestro. I just smile. She can say it.
“No.”
Sonata droops like a willow tree. “Aww. Why not?”
“Maybe it’ll get there—I want it to—but it’s not fair to call it that now. We need to take it a bit at a time, but we’re in a good place, enough that it’ll stop kicking the shit out of me.” And she adds with a grimace: “I hope.”
“Then yay!” Sonata shouts, jumping into the air, and Aria draws a pigtail over her mouth to hide her grin, but she can’t keep it from shining in her eyes. “Sushi party when?”
Adagio finally releases her grip on my face, so I return to sitting on the floor with my back against the bed. She rolls onto her stomach, and soon enough, her head appears over my shoulder. I check her forehead again. “Still a little fever.”
“It’ll prob’ly take a while. She’s gotta absorb something she’s not tuned to,” Sonata says, but she keeps staring at me.
I let out a sigh and imagine the sound of bagpipes slowly dying with it. “Alright. We can do sushi. But I don’t know how much I can afford to give out—”
“Oh, we’re paying,” Aria cuts in.
“Totes,” Sonata adds.
I wait a second to make sure they don’t mind, but they keep smiling. Adagio drapes her arms around my neck from behind. “Okay. And I’m having a birthday party in a couple days,” I say. “I hope you’ll all come.”
“You sure…?” Aria says.
“I’ll explain everything to the girls, it’ll all be okay, no problem.”
“She means it,” Adagio cuts in, her fingertips lightly touching my throat. She’s really having fun with her new ability, not that the others would know, depending on how much they overheard.
But they nod, so… I guess I’ve got my week planned. I let my head flop back, and finally the fatigue sweeps over me. Almost twenty hours since I got up this morning, and Adagio’s gentle touch on my neck is pretty relaxing, so I’ll just close my eyes for a minute…
I wake up to soft whimpering next to my ear. The sun glares in my eyes, but it’s not up that high yet. Good, since I still need to shower and change, but at least I don’t open until eleven today.
Curls of orange sit massed against my cheek. She stayed looking over my shoulder all night? I turn to see—ow! Shit, my back hurts! I dozed off while slumped over, and it didn’t do my spine any good.
I scoot my ass until I’ve got some support behind me, then I reach above my shoulder and run my hand through Adagio’s hair. “You didn’t move?” I ask.
Her fingertips continue tracing patterns on my neck, and she shakes her head. “Too much on my mind.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
She shakes her head again.
“Why are you crying?” I say quietly, but I don’t really know how volume would matter. Just to sound gentle, I guess.
A quick sniffle, like the rattle of maracas. “I didn’t want the feeling to stop. I was scared if I took my hand away, I’d find out it was wrong, and I’d touch you again and learn how you really felt about me. It’s stupid, I know.”
“No, I’ve been there. When I first learned my friends could actually care about me, I was always afraid it might just stop at any time, for no reason. Just because the world decided I didn’t deserve it.” Then I struggle through the cramp in my back, stand up, her hands sliding off me, dangling limply to the floor. So I sit next to her on the bed, take one of her arms, and lift her palm to my face. “Still there, right?” I ask, rubbing her back with my other hand.
“Yeah,” she replies, her soft crying starting up again. She’ll get used to it, and then she’ll be fine.
I check her forehead again. “Fever’s gone up some. You want something hot or cold to drink?”
“I feel okay.”
Not really an answer. But given how enamored she was last night, I have to ask: “Did you try out your power on your sisters any?”
She nods, a timid little oboe venturing into the silence. “Yeah. They let me before they went to bed. Nothing too surprising, but it was nice.” Then she sighs. “I still don’t like touching people, though. I doubt I’ll want to use it on anyone else.”
Unless she needs to, I almost say. It wasn’t the most in-demand of our geode powers, but it came in useful sometimes. We may have to ask her someday. But until then, it won’t matter, and really, it’s better this way. “You think they might ever want to find someone special too?”
Her eyes briefly grow distant. “Yeah. I bet they’d be willing to try. Someday.”
“Good. Now listen, I’ve gotta go home and clean up, get a change of clothes, and go to work—”
“You’re leaving?” she says, withdrawing her hand and propping up on her elbows.
“Well… yeah. I have to work.”
“I… I don’t…”
“I’ll be back later.” Poor girl. I’ve never seen her so insecure. “You’ve got your sisters here. Unless you want to come along. You might find it boring just sitting in the restaurant all day, but if it’d make you feel better…”
She rubs her head as if she has an Autumn Blaze-level hangover. “No, no, you’re right. Of course you have to work, and of course I have to go to work at Bullseye, too, and I need to book the Dazzlings’ next performance, and…” Another hard sigh, verging on a cough. “I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me. I’m so scared I’ll lose everything I’ve gotten. But when I think about it—Sonata and Aria have stuck with me forever, the geode magic is screaming at me that you don’t have any intentions of leaving me, but I can’t make my head listen to reason.”
Oh shit, I never unblocked her number. I take out my phone and handle it right there. “I’ll text you while you’re at work, okay? Every hour. I’ll check in on you, we’ll decide something to do after quitting time, whatever. I won’t drop you. We’ll get through this. Maybe we’ll even do open mic night sometime.”
“You mean it?” she asks, perking up. I smile, and after a shuddering breath, she adds a smile of her own. “This love thing had better be fucking good, or it’s so not worth it.”
“Oh, it’s worth it,” I say as I stand, and the pain in my back has eased enough for me to bend down. I repay an old gesture and give her ass a squeeze, then roll her over, off her stomach, and kiss her, good and hard.
“Totally worth it,” she says with a sly grin as she steals one more kiss before letting me go. It’s nice to have some of that brassy personality surfacing again. I peek on my way out the door to see if her smile falters. She stays strong, stretched pretty tight like a theorbo string.
But she’s constant, enduring, ostinato. She can take it.