Daron shoved the thought away. “Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands up in defense. “I trust you.”
Something strange flickered in Kallia’s grin. “Good,” she said, bending to the last heavy case, left unopened.
“The whole band you brought wasn’t enough?” Daron stared on in dread. “What’s that, costumes?”
Out of spite, Kallia snapped her fingers and let the awful music roll over his words. But when he snapped back, the instruments changed their sound. Snap after snap between the two, the harsh music flooding the Ranza Estate changed from discordant scratches to sounds slowly folding into one stream. Like a pack of wild wolves who’d been separated, finally realizing they’d walked together before. The melody mellowed, the instruments remembered.
As Daron prepared to snap again, Kallia effectively silenced them.
“But they were finally getting along!”
“They’ll survive.” Her lips bunched, holding in a laugh, as she popped open a trunk. “Don’t forget why we’re here, Demarco.”
Not costumes, to Daron’s chagrin. Nothing colorful or with any flair. He had to reach in for the slim handle of the feather-topped object to believe his eyes. “A duster?”
“You wanted this place cleaned up.” With the proud lift of her chin, she removed the rest of the supplies. “Struck a deal with the hotel maids to look the other way while I raided their closet.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Front-row seats to the next show. We have more admirers than we realized.” She snatched the duster right out of his hands. “Now, pick up a broom and a dustpan, and get to work.”
* * *
They cleaned without speaking in their respective corners of the room. The instruments had regained their collective rhythm, weaving songs softly in the background while they worked.
Kallia used the end of her duster to scrape out a thick gathering of cobwebs, while Demarco began lifting large pieces of overturned furniture, righting them. Sometime in between, he’d shed his coat, revealing a casual white shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms. His shirt had begun to plaster to his back with sweat when, perceptive as a hawk, he glanced behind with a scrunched brow. “What is it?”
Her pulse jumped. “You missed a spot.”
She returned back to dusting with a fury. It was the music pushing at her nerves. Not that it wasn’t beautiful and lively. But her soul preferred edgier rhythms, the kind of songs made of night that soaked into her body and escaped in the drumming of her fingers, the need to move.
To her surprise, Demarco was not as averse to it as he’d implied. She’d amused herself the whole way to the Ranza Estate thinking about how he’d react, but he treated it as a welcome addition. As long as it stayed background music. Nothing else.
Darting a glance at Demarco, she sent a whisper of a song that had been weighing in her mind, and speared the memory of it into the hearts of the instruments. The change was abrupt—the upbeat jumps of the violin slid into its new notes like a knife spearing smoothly, deeply, into flesh. Another violin harmonized, just as the guitar went from strumming to plucking a crisp, melodic undercurrent. The cutting edges to all the smooth lines.
Kallia didn’t even wait before she let her hair fall loose, unbuttoning her light jacket while kicking off her boots to her socks.
“Wh—” The shift in Demarco’s shoulders was instant. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” She tossed her belongings to a newly cleaned corner before spinning back around, letting the movement ripple from her leg to her hip. “You don’t have to turn away, Demarco. It’s not like I’m naked, I’m only going to—”
“I know what you’re doing.” Stubbornly, he kept his back to her. “And if you think I’m joining you, you’re out of your mind.”
“I’ll keep to myself,” she promised sweetly, arching her hands in the air, lifting her leg high. Warming up. It had been too long since she last felt she could move so freely.
She swayed over to the trunk of cleaning supplies for a broom. Its bristles slid into corners as she hummed the song behind her lips, lost in it. She imagined herself at the House, dancing until her body was on fire, leaving trails of sweat from her dripping hair behind her. She’d wipe the floors with the instruments still playing, preferring the show to go on even if it was all in her head.
It didn’t feel like that anymore, with Demarco’s eyes on her.