We oohed and aahed at the transformation of Kat Trio. We’d dressed up for gigs before but never at this level. I loved the look of the eyelashes and rhinestones on my eyes.
“So pretty,” Jules gushed. “We look hot!”
“Yeah, I hope you’re able to dance in those,” LaLa said pointing to our shoes. Quickly, Julietta and I reviewed the choreography to get acclimated to the shoes. It was a shaky start, but soon we were able to dance normally. And then we were ready to go. At least on the outside. But on the inside I was a ball of nerves.
Relax, Angel. I'm in the audience. Guess who's with me?”
I sniffed the air. Mom and Dad! That’s supposed to make me feel relaxed?
I remembered not too long ago wishing Mom and Dad could see me perform again, but the thought of it happening tonight made me more nervous. After all, my family hadn't seen me perform for two years. What if they didn't like the way my performance style had evolved? What if they thought I was wasting my time and should focus more on school?
They're not here to judge you. They're here to make sure you don't kill anybody.
Even worse. I had images of Mom or Dad trying to explain to the police how their daughter decimated a crowd of thousands with her voice. I felt myself lift out of my chair.
Angel Brown, get a hold of yourself right now before I come back there! You're getting all worked up and we can't have that tonight.
She was right. I took a deep breath and felt myself settle firmly back into my chair. There was a knock on the door. “Who's there?” I called out while taking another quick look in the mirror. His scent had already answered my question.
“Are you decent?” Sawyer said from behind the door.
“Angel’s butt naked, so come on in!” LaLa yelled.
The door opened, and in walked Sawyer surrounded by his aroma. Overcome with emotion, I struggled to look preoccupied with getting my wings re-attached and avoided his gaze. He couldn’t remember what happened at the house, and his reaction before the glamour was probably only a result of my new singing technique. There was no way he felt about me the way I felt about him.
He caught my eye briefly in the mirror and my temperature rose. Angel, chill out! I took a deep breath and visualized polar ice caps.
After some general small talk about the tracks we were working on, and talk of breaking our collective leg, he walked over to where I stood. “How do you feel?” he asked. His tone and demeanor seemed more intimate than before. Yet, if I told him how I really felt, it would all be over.
“Like everything’s changed.” Drat, I had to keep it light; there was no need to go all General Hospital on him. But it was impossible to keep up a carefree pretense when all I wanted to do was hear him sing again and drown in his arms.
His heartbeat sped up but he didn’t say anything. He only looked at me hard and long before turning on his heel and walking out.
LaLa took in my reaction. “You okay, Angel?”
“Yes, doggone it, I'm okay. When do we start?” There was dead silence for a few seconds before both LaLa and Julietta broke out into gales of laughter. I realized how ridiculous my response had been and laughed, too, in an effort to shake off the Sawyer effect.
Another knock at the door.
It was the stage manager, telling us it was time to go to the stage. We clasped hands and bowed our heads while LaLa quickly mouthed words of inspiration and encouragement. As usual it lifted my spirits, but this time as she spoke the name of Jesus, I couldn't help but imagine him as a small, hunted boy attending Mom's Mahá.
As we were led to the stage, every detail of everything around me came into hyper-focus, down to the rivets in the concrete walls. I'd never been so alert. So ready to sing. So scared. It felt as if my feet weren't touching the floor as we walked on.
They're not Angel. Dad's got glamour action going on so no one notices. I can’t wait until you get out on the stage! I always wondered how it felt to be in front of an audience, and now I’ll get to feel it through you.
We finally arrived at the stage’s wings. There were a number of people there, but Charmain, the main act, was nowhere to be seen. I imagined her in an elaborately appointed dressing room, eating Godiva and sipping Cristal champagne with her entourage.
The stage manager pointed toward the narrow passage leading to the stage. “Wait here until they intro you and then you'll go though this way. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”
“Oh my god,” Julietta said as she peeked out at the audience. “There's a million people out there.”
“A little more than fourteen thousand, to be exact” said a friendly-looking girl dressed in super-tight jeans and combat boots. “It's sold out. I'm Joy. Bass player. Elio.”
Of course. Elio was one of our favorite bands and we were almost as excited to be sharing a stage with them as Charmain. They were funky, edgy, and despite being unpredictable in their musical style, had managed to get a Top 20 hit that rocked the clubs, too. We met the rest of the band members, and we all tamed our nerves by joking and discussing everything except the reason why we were there.
Soon, we heard the applause as our backup band took the stage. We got into position. Over the loudspeaker we heard: “Ladies and Gentlemen. Introducing Kat Trio.”
With whispered wishes of “break a leg,” everyone melted away from us as we fell into our choreographed, slinky entrance onto the stage. After a four-beat pause where we stood frozen on the stage in various poses, we broke into a sequence of Redd’s sexy, leggy moves while the band played an extended intro.
With my new immortal eyes, I easily saw the audience beyond the bright footlights that had always blinded me in the past. So many people! And they were really clapping for us! On the beat where we kicked our legs out, the three of us took our concentration away from the choreography just long enough to flash smiles at one another. Knowing all these people were even remotely interested in our work sent shivers down my spine.
I saw Mom, Dad, and Cici to my left, toward the front. I saw Sawyer sitting in the front row surrounded by other members of the music industry insiders’ club, including Raj. Nina sat with them, watching our every move, no doubt taking notes. A whole host of local artists were in attendance; some, we'd met through the years, some we'd beaten at competitions. I even saw classmates from school.
Beneath everything was the steady clatter of mortal movements, breathing, activity, and heartbeats. I took a deep breath and inhaled the epic aroma of mortality. Ahhhhhh...
And then I saw her.
She was sitting in the fourth row, sixty-eight people in from the right. It was the lady my reflection had morphed into. She was smiling at me, and it was the most frightening thing I'd ever seen. It was less a smile than a baring of teeth. She may have been alone, or she could have been sitting with a hundred other anomalies. I couldn't tell because she alone had my complete attention.
She had no heartbeat.
Whoa, Angel. Calm down. Dad's working harder so whatever just happened, let it go.
Cici could pick up on my thoughts and feelings, but for some reason she couldn't see I was responding to the Lady in the audience. The Lady who could somehow shield my perception of her from Cici and Dad's telepathy. In the minute it took me to register all of this, the intro choreography wound down and the musical cue came for us to start singing. Despite my success with Mr. C.’s technique, I quickly offered up a silent prayer to not kill anyone with my voice before we broke into the opening line of “Get Out of Here:”
“Motorcycle, boat, jet/
Helicopter, corvette.
I just gotta get out of here.”
Some sections of the crowd went wild. There were comments ranging from “Who the hell are they?” to “I knew them back in the day, before they blew up” to “This is my favorite Kat Trio song!” In my mortal life it took all of my concentration to execute a song just right, but now I could do it while simultane
ously taking in a ton of additional information. Some of the comments from a lot of guys, and a few girls, were focused on our costumes: what was underneath them and the body parts exposed or not exposed. Gross. I made a mental note to block out this type of X-rated chatter from the audience.
I watched the sound waves bounce off the back walls of the Garden and ricochet to the front. The colors glowed in the darkness beyond the stage, mingled with the lights emanating from hundreds of cell phones, and then gently dissolved into the air. After a while, I missed the mortal feeling of concentrating solely on the song and decided to block out everything superfluous. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the music.
And then there was no sound. No music. No heartbeats. There was nothing at all. I opened my eyes. The band seemed frozen. Julietta, LaLa, the audience, even Mom and Dad. Nobody moved.
“Mom?” I reached toward her, but she seemed frozen. My voice sounded as if I were in a weird echo chamber. “Dad?” Same response. Cici! I listened. Nothing.
What was going on? Why was I the only one capable of moving or, apparently, thinking? Then it occurred to me. I did this. Dad said it took a year for abilities to solidify, and here was an ability I didn't even know I possessed.
Somehow, in my desire to fully connect with the music, I had un-connected everybody from the flow of time.
20. THE LADY
The entire audience, and everyone I loved, was frozen in time and I wasn't sure how I did it. Even worse, I didn’t know how to get things back to normal.
Mom, Dad, and Cici, frozen along with everyone else, weren't able to help me out of this one. How could I undo something I didn't even know how I did in the first place?
“If you get any higher off the stage, you'll be flying.” The Lady, immune to what was happening, calmly surveyed the scene. “This is your doing,” she continued. “You possess power you are not even aware of.” She laughed then. Hysterically. As if she were sitting front row at a comedy club.
I wanted to tell her to stop laughing and shut up, but my sense of self-preservation kept my own mouth closed. I didn't even know what she was. All I knew was she had no heartbeat, yet somehow lived. She was now an individual, separate from me and immune to my influence, and seemingly immune to my family’s powers. “How do I know you're not responsible for this?”
“It's all you, Angel.”
“What are you?”
“A part of you.”
She smiled again. I wanted to punch her teeth down her throat.
“You've got a terrible temper. You're very close to sending this place up in flames.” She glanced suggestively at my family.
“Leave them alone.” My hands clenched painfully as I stared at her with hot, angry eyes.
“When the Council finds out about this interesting power you have, it'll get downright dangerous for you. They might want to kill you.”
“Is that a threat?”
“To put it in a cliché human way, that's a fact.” It didn't escape my attention that she implied she was not human. Turning her face away from me slowly, she pointed to three individuals scattered about the room. They, too, were frozen. Were they Council members? The Lady nodded as if she heard my thought. “A newborn onstage before all these mortals. Of course they came to see firsthand. I think I will help them figure it out.”
She reached her hands out to the three Council members, and in the blink of an eye, performed a movement that unfroze them and them alone. In a flash, she returned to her seat in the audience and sat completely still before any of them saw her. I gasped at her audacity.
Like gophers in a strange landscape, the Council members scrutinized the Garden, then each other and then, finally, me. I recognized one of them; Charleston, the black-eyed man from Mom’s office. I could only guess what they were thinking. They gawked at Mom and then back at me in astonishment. I had to get things back to normal. I didn't know how to, but I had to figure out how to fix it. Fast.
I supposed the first move was to calm down. I took a few deep breaths and, afterward, noticed air particles starting to move, but still not enough to get things back to normal. I concentrated on the air particles, willed them back into circulation. Concentrating on the fourteen thousand plus people in the room, mortal and immortal, I willed them to move, to breathe, to become animated once more. And they did. As if they'd never stopped. They didn't even know what had happened. I picked up the exact note that emanated from my mouth the moment before everything went screwy.
The Council Members looked around in amazement. I shut my mind down. I'd tell Cici later, but for now I had to keep this to myself until I understood what happened. And, I would have to tell Mom. For her to hear it from the Council first would be disastrous. Her commitment to the Council was an ancient bond that seemed to surpass even her commitment to me. How could she defend me when I didn't even know what I was capable of doing?
As we performed the closing chorus, I heard the roar of the crowd, but I couldn't enjoy the appreciation. The Lady flashed that eerie smile and clapped her hands with an exaggerated cadence. I realized she'd set me up. My vocal tones of love quickly turned to tones of outrage. I extended the vengeful notes into an impromptu solo. The dark beyond the footlights turned bloody red black, and the roar of the crowd turned to frenzied screams. Scuffles and yelling broke out in various areas around the Garden. Angry exchanges mixed with the dull sounds of fists pounding on flesh. I sensed Jules and LaLa’s confusion. The band desperately tried to cover this unrehearsed extension of the song even as their playing grew more aggressive and driving.
The Garden and our music had quickly descended to the brink of chaos in response to the angry notes coming from my mouth. And, in the midst of it all, the Lady sat. She glanced pointedly at Mom who stared at me with an eerie gaze. Her face seemed carved from stone, and her eyes were unreadable. A chill went up my spine.
Cici confirmed what I’d suspected. Mom’s considering shutting you down by taking molecules out of your brain. The way she did Tunde.
I refused to let the Lady succeed in destroying my family. I willed myself to feel the calming energy emanating from Cici and Dad as they worked to bring my anger level down. I allowed myself to relax back into the loving space Mr. C. instilled in me and ended the song on a note of bliss. The applause was deafening and continued long after we'd left the stage.
Backstage, Elio members regarded us in awe as the crowd continued to chant our name under their introduction. Bravely, Joy and her fellow band members went out to the stage despite the fact the crowd still clamored for us.
Nina rushed toward us. “What was that at the end? When did you rehearse that?”
LaLa glared at me. “We didn't,” she said pointedly.
“Doesn't seem to matter, does it?” Jules said to me. “It’s always about Angel.”
“I'm really sorry.” I scrambled for the right words. “I got carried away.” It was a lame explanation but I didn't know what else to say.
“Last time I checked,” LaLa continued, “Kat Trio wasn't a solo act.”
That hurt. It seemed as if everything the three of us had built together was falling apart, and from the looks of what went down on stage, it could only get worse. I’d worked so hard not to kill anyone with my voice, but ended up freezing everyone with it. There was no hope for me. The girls’ reactions were nothing compared to what I was about to face from Mom, not to mention the Council. I was done.
I threw up my hands in resignation and turned back to Nina. I was ready to quit. But before I could tell her to kick me out of the group, Nina smiled ear-to-ear. “Whatever that was, Angel, you better keep doing it, because I've never seen a crowd react like that in my entire career.”
Jules started to say something, and then backed down as Nina continued to rave. “The crowd literally went ballistic with that solo. I guarantee you the papers will have stellar reviews tomorrow.”
One by one the members of our backup band came up and shook my hand. I heard myself thanking t
hem for being on their toes and going with the flow. LaLa turned away, and the look on Julietta's face said it all.
She looked betrayed.
A girl ran up to me. “You Angel?” she asked breathlessly. Her heart hammered as if she’d run at top speed to get to me.
“Who’re you?” I asked.
“I work for Charmain. She’s asking you to her after-show party.”
“Me? What about my partners?”
“She just said you.”
“No thanks. Not without them.” I tossed the words over my shoulder before turning my back to her. I caught Julietta's look and it brought back every memory we shared, every gig, every dream we shared, every defeat and embarrassment we'd ever suffered. She wrapped her arms around me and I took in her sweet, delicious smell and hugged her back as hard as I could without hurting her. LaLa wrapped her long arms around the both of us and we stayed like that for a while. I knew I’d have to pull away before my instincts got the better of me but for now, just for a few brief seconds, I reveled in our bond.
A frenzied voice caught my attention. Down the hall, hundreds of feet away in the green room, Raj frantically called the car service and begged them to send the Hummer back to collect us. The label execs had changed their minds, he explained, and were now willing to pay more for the “new girls” now there was apparent star potential.
So, before the audience erupted into pandemonium, the execs were okay with us finding our own way back home. I held back a cynical snicker. Like Nina, the label execs saw dollar signs in an audience manipulated from one side of the emotional spectrum to the other. They didn’t understand the nature of the manipulation, but it didn’t matter. As far as they were concerned, the results in the crowd could be translated into sales. Soon they surrounded us, smiling and circling like sharks smelling blood in the water. They shook Nina's hand while regarding us with flashing teeth. I hugged my girls closer and wondered who was scarier, the mortals or the immortals.