Astor Michaels glanced up and down the empty hall. “I’ll tell you inside.”
He turned and walked away, and as I followed, my stomach started to roil again. My knees felt shaky, as if someone was adjusting the exact height of the floor beneath me. What were we doing here?
Reaching an apartment door, he rapped on it twice sharply, then waited a moment. “Don’t want to disturb the tenants, but I think they’re out.”
“Whose place is this?”
He pulled out a key, opened the door.
Zombie was waiting just inside.
“I could always see them,” Astor Michaels began. “Even before it happened to me.”
I was staring at the couch, where half of Min’s clothes were draped: black dresses and shawls and stockings strewn across the room. Two open suitcases lay on the floor.
My stomach twisted again. Minerva lived here now. Astor Michaels had installed her here, his special girl.
“They were coming to the clubs, leaking sex out of their eyeballs, only a few of them at first. But once they got onstage…” He shook his head. “They’re natural stars, charismatic as hell. Except for that one little problem.”
“They’re bug-ass crazy?” I said harshly, looking at the dresser—the old pink jewelry box I’d bought Min when she was twelve was splayed open, full of shiny things.
“Crazy? I work for a record company, Pearl. Crazy I could deal with.” He leaned forward. “But they’re bloody cannibals.”
I looked up into his eyes. Had he just said cannibals?
But then I remembered how Min had hospitalized one of her doctors in the days before Luz. I thought of all the raw meat she ate, the way her teeth grew sharper every day.
Almost as sharp as Astor Michaels’s.
There in the darkened apartment, something cold crawled down my spine. “Why did you bring me here?”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then let out a snort. “Please, I never even tried it, not once. I’m different than the rest of them.” His eyes twitched; he still looked nervous. “Sane. And I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, my dear little Pearl. You’ve done me such a huge favor.”
“A favor?”
“For the last two years, I’ve been looking for someone like me—someone who’s infected but immune to the hunger. A singer who can get onstage and take the New Sound to the world without…” He looked down at his fingernails again, then shrugged. “Quite so much cannibalism.”
I wondered again what exactly had happened with Toxoplasma the night before. Probably nothing a rehab clinic could fix.
“That’s why I was so thrilled when you brought me Minerva,” Astor Michaels said. “She’s real, don’t you see? Not a mimic, like Abril Johnson. But not like those lost boys in Toxoplasma either.” Zombie jumped onto his lap, and he stroked the cat’s head. “She’s immune to the hunger.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said, looking at the clothes strewn around the room. “She had it pretty bad there for a while.”
“Then somehow you’ve kept her together, Pearl.”
“But it wasn’t me. Her parents hired this… esoterica. Someone who knew what to do for her.” I looked around the apartment, wondering how Min was going to get what she needed now. How long would she last without Luz’s medicines?
“Well, if someone’s figured out how to cure this thing, we really do need to move fast. Won’t be long before they bottle it and everyone’s a rock star.” He shivered. “What a disaster.”
I looked at his hands, with their long, sharp, manicured nails. “And it never made you…”
“Crazy? A cannibal?” He shook his head. “Just hungry for raw meat sometimes. And horny, always.”
“Horny?” My skin was crawling now.
“Of course.” He giggled. “That’s how it spreads, you know. It’s nothing but a disease, Pearl. Just some new bug in the water. And as far as I can tell, it’s sexually transmitted. It makes you want to spread it.”
I closed my eyes. So Luz had been right about boys. What else was she right about? I wondered where her angels were, now that I needed them…
Then I remembered that Mark had cracked up too. Had he given it to her? Or vice versa? One of them had to have been cheating…
Zombie jumped up onto my lap, and I opened my eyes.
Astor Michaels was still talking. “I’ve been shagging wannabe singers for two years now, trying to find someone who could keep it together after the charisma set in, and every single one went nuts. Fifteen bands, Pearl. And finally you bring me a rock star already made!” He leaned back, rubbing his palms across Min’s dresses and sighing. “After all my labors.”
I sat there, stroking Zombie, trying not to scream as what he’d just said sank in. Astor Michaels had intentionally spread this disease; he’d been making more casualties like Minerva, broken people stuck in attics by their families, or lying huddled on the street, on subway platforms…
We were in business with a monster. The New Sound was the music of monsters.
I took a deep breath, reminding myself about the contracts. This didn’t have to change anything. Artists had been bat-shit crazy before; it was what you did with your insanity that mattered. We were still a good band, a great band even, even if our whole style of music was based on… a disease.
As long as we were the Taj Mahal of cannibal bands, maybe it wasn’t so bad.
“Okay,” I said.
It wasn’t really, but sometimes saying that word helps.
Astor Michaels smiled. “So we’re in this together, right, Pearl? We have to keep Min healthy, so that all our hard work—yours and mine—finally pays off. Even if she does something that makes you really, really angry. Okay?”
I looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Like what?”
“You know, something she’s not necessarily… in control of.” He shrugged. “The disease makes people crazy, violent, and especially horny. Sometimes even I can’t control myself.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’ve been trying that hard.”
He smiled, revealing his razor teeth to the gums. “A small price to pay for art.”
Zombie’s ear perked up, and he jumped from my lap and ran to the door. A second later came the jingling of keys outside.
“Ah. They’re home,” Astor Michaels said, eyes twitching. “Just remember, we all want this band to be a success. So don’t get mad at poor Min. I’ve seen the change happen with my own eyes, and she’s been through more than you can imagine. So be nice, all right?”
I nodded, but my head was spinning again.
They’re home, he’d said.
They.
The door opened, and Minerva breezed in. Moz followed behind, carrying a threadbare duffel bag.
“Mozzy! Look who’s here!” Min cried, beaming all the wattage of her fawesome beauty at me, her cannibal-rock-star charisma. Moz just stood there staring, looking a little surprised, a lot guilty.
With a twist in my stomach, I remembered his mother’s anxious voice on the phone that morning.
He took a slow breath, then shrugged the duffel bag from his shoulder. It thumped to the floor like a dead body—stuffed full.
He was moving in.
“Hey, Pearl. How’s it going?”
I tried to answer, but my gut was writhing now, squeezing the taste of stomach-ripe champagne up into the back of my throat. Minerva moved a step closer to Moz, five pale fingers wrapping protectively around his arm.
He was hers now. Completely.
With the three of them here together, I could finally see the changes in Moz, all the clues I’d managed to blind myself to: the luster of his skin, the beautiful, inhuman angles of his face. Just like Min back in spring—when the hunger was first welling up—he’d grown a heart-twisting shade more fetching.