"You okay?" Cam asked, but the crowd was too loud for Lilith to hear him.
Luis gave Karen Walker a pat on the butt as she dashed out from behind the curtain to check the Perceived Slights' amp connections. Fog from a few buckets full of dry ice filled the stage, and a few moments later Chloe King and her band emerged from the wings.
They were pros. They beamed and waved into the stage lights, finding their places at their mics as if they'd played a thousand shows bigger than this. They wore matching white stilettos and leather minidresses in a variety of colors, their pastel pink prom-court sashes draped over their dresses. Chloe's dress was buttercup yellow, to match her solid-gold glittery eye shadow.
"The feeling is mutual, Trumbull!" Chloe shouted.
The crowd roared.
Chloe pouted and leaned seductively into the mic. The crowd was mesmerized, but all Cam could do was watch Lilith. She was leaning forward, chewing her nails. He knew she was comparing herself to Chloe--not just to the way the audience responded, but to the way Chloe grabbed the mic with the flick of a wrist, the way her voice filled the Colosseum, the passion she brought to her guitar.
If he could hold Lilith one more time before they played, Cam was convinced that he could make her see that this performance wasn't about competing with Chloe. It was about what she and Cam had together. He could say the three words that had been burning in him for fifteen days, and her response would tell him whether they had a chance.
Three little words. Would she say them? They would determine both Cam and Lilith's fate.
But before he had a chance to reach for her, Cam felt Jean come stand on his left, then Luis stand on his right. Cam felt the energy coming off of them and realized Chloe's song was over and the crowd was cheering and Lilith was tilting her head toward the sky, maybe praying for good luck. Because Revenge was about to go on, and it was all about their music now.
The Colosseum went dark except for the pinhole spotlight on Luc's eyes as he stood in the center of the stage. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.
"Are you ready for Revenge?"
Two Hours
Center stage.
Deep darkness.
Lilith cupped the cold mic in her hands. Then a blinding spotlight shone on her, and the audience disappeared.
She glanced up at the twinkling disco ball suspended from the rafters. If it hadn't been for Cam, Lilith would have been alone tonight, writing songs in her bedroom. She wouldn't be at prom, facing a packed dance floor, nodding at her bandmates, about to rock.
She ignored her quaking knees, her pounding heart. She took a long breath and felt the weight of her guitar across her chest, the light fabric of her gown. "Two, three, four," she counted off into the mic.
She heard the drums, sudden as a downpour. Her fingers caressed her guitar strings in a slow, sad riff, then exploded into the song.
Cam's guitar found hers in the maelstrom, and they played as if it were their last night on earth, as if the fate of the universe depended on how they sounded together. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. She wasn't afraid anymore. She was living her dream. She closed her eyes and sang.
"I dreamed life was a dream
Someone was having in my eyes..."
Her song sounded the way she'd always hoped it might someday. She opened her eyes and turned back to Jean Rah and Luis. Both of them were completely absorbed in the music. She nodded at Cam across the stage, strumming his guitar skillfully, keeping his eyes on her. He was smiling. She'd never realized how much she loved the way he smiled at her.
When she turned back to the audience to play the second verse, she caught a quick glimpse of her brother and her mother. They were standing apart from the crowd, but they were dancing with abandon.
Lilith could hardly hear herself above the audience's cheers. She spun away from the microphone to jam, arching her back, letting her fingers fly across the strings. This was joy. There was nothing but Lilith, her band, and their music.
After the bridge she reached for the microphone again, and on the last verse Cam joined her, finding harmonies they'd never even practiced.
Lilith lifted her arm and stopped playing, pausing before the final couplet of the song. Jean, Luis, and Cam stopped, too.
The audience screamed louder.
When her arm came down on the final chord, the band fell in with her, right on time, and every voice in the audience screamed.
There was only one thing to do when the song was over. She rushed toward Cam and grabbed his hand. She wanted to be with him when they bowed. Because without him, she wouldn't be here. None of this would have happened.
He reached for her. He smiled. They held hands and moved downstage.
Hold on, Lilith found herself saying to Cam's hand. Hold on to me, just like this. Don't let go.
"Lilith rules!" A voice rose over the applause. Lilith thought it sounded like Arriane.
"Long live the queen!" called another voice that might have belonged to Roland.
"Take a bow, rock star," Cam murmured into her ear.
"Take it with me."
Elation swept through Lilith as she and Cam bent forward. The motion felt natural, as if she and Cam had been touring forever, bowing to rapt audiences all their lives. Maybe this was reverse deja vu, and she was experiencing what the future held.
She hoped so. She wanted to play again with Cam, and soon.
She turned to him. He turned to her.
Before she knew it their lips almost--
"Save it for the after-party," Luc's voice boomed as he hurried onto the stage to stand between them, pushing them apart.
The stage lights dimmed, and Lilith could see the audience again. They were all still cheering. Arriane, Roland, Bruce, and her mother had moved to the front row and were hooting like Lilith was an actual rock star. She felt like one.
Security guards held kids back as they tried to rush the stage. Even Principal Tarkenton was clapping. Lilith saw the empty seats next to him and realized that the Four Horsemen must be backstage right now, preparing to close out the night.
The battle had already been so epic, it seemed insane that Lilith was now about to see her favorite band.
"Quite a night, eh?" Luc asked the audience. "And there's more to come!"
Two ponytailed guys in crew T-shirts guided the other competing bands back onto the stage. Chloe bounded over to Lilith and slung an arm around her waist.
"Nice job," she said. "Even if I was better."
"Thanks." Lilith laughed. "The Slights were great, too."
Chloe nodded. "That's how we roll."
"Settle down," Luc said, motioning for quiet. "Winners and losers must be determined."
Lilith fidgeted between Chloe and Cam. Tarkenton was mounting the stairs to the stage, carrying an envelope and a trophy topped with a golden guitar.
"Have the esteemed judges reached a decision?" Luc asked.
Tarkenton tapped the mic. He seemed as stunned by the performances as Lilith. "The winner of the Battle of the Bands, sponsored by King Media, is--"
A synthesized drumroll blared through the stadium speakers. A sudden competitive surge filled Lilith. Their band had killed it tonight. They knew it. The audience knew it. Even Chloe King knew it. If there was any justice in this world--
Luc grabbed the envelope from Tarkenton. "The Perceived Slights!"
Then Chloe's band was screaming, crying, pushing everyone else out of the spotlight.
"Next stop, prom queen," Chloe squealed, and hugged her friends.
Lilith's ears were ringing as Chloe accepted the trophy. Only moments before she had been having the night of her life. Now she felt brutally defeated.
"Sucks," Jean Rah said.
Luis kicked a stage marker. "We were better."
Lilith knew Cam was watching her, but she was too dumbfounded to meet his gaze. She'd felt like their song had changed the world.
It hadn't.
She felt ridiculous t
hat she'd let herself believe otherwise.
"Hey," Cam's voice was in her ear. "You okay?"
"Sure." Tears stung her eyes. "We should have won. Right? I mean, we were good--"
"We did win," Cam said. "We won something better."
"What?" Lilith asked.
Cam glanced toward Luc. "You'll see."
"Contestants, please exit stage left," the crew boy said.
The Slights were escorted to a card table that had been set up next to the judges' table. On it sat a folded paper placard that read Reserved for Winners. The other bands squeezed into the wings. Cam took Lilith's hand. "Come with me. I know a place where we can watch the Four Horsemen."
"Not so fast," Luc said as he took Lilith's other hand.
She was caught onstage between the two of them, wanting to go with Cam, wondering what Luc wanted. She looked out at the audience, surprised to feel as nervous as she'd been before her performance. On the school's Jumbotron, the huge clock read 11:45. Lilith's usual curfew was midnight, but since her mother and Bruce were in the audience, Lilith could probably get away with staying out later.
"So it comes to pass," Luc said into his microphone, "that Love and Idleness, Death of the Author, and Revenge are not the only losers tonight. All those who entered tonight's lyrics contest...are also losers. All of you except for one."
Lilith's breath caught in her chest. She had nearly forgotten the email from Ike Ligon. The Four Horsemen were about to cover her song.
Her disappointment waned. Winning the Battle of the Bands would have been great, but the music she made onstage with Cam, Jean, and Luis was what mattered. Everything else was gravy.
"I've asked Lilith to stay onstage," Luc said to the audience, "because I think she knows the song the Four Horsemen are about to play."
A curtain rose at the back of the stage, and behind it were the Four Horsemen. Rod, the beefy dark-haired bass player, gave the audience a wave. Joe, the eccentric blond drummer, held his drumsticks aloft with a bemused expression. Matt, the keyboard player, was glancing at his set list. And in the center of the stage, Ike Ligon, Lilith's musical idol, looked at her and grinned.
She couldn't help it. Lilith screamed, along with every other girl and three quarters of the boys in the audience.
"This is so cool," she said to Cam.
He just smiled and gave her hand a squeeze. There was no one Lilith would rather be here with than Cam. This moment was perfect.
Ike locked eyes with her and said, "This one's for Lilith. It's called 'Vows.' "
Lilith blinked. She'd never written a song called "Vows." Her heart started racing, and she didn't know what to do. Should she tell someone there'd been a mistake? Maybe Ike had simply gotten the title wrong?
But by then it was too late. The band began to play.
"I give my arms to you
I give my eyes to you
I give my scars to you
And all my lies to you
What will you give
To me?"
The song was beautiful, but Lilith hadn't written it. And yet, as she listened, chords began to jump out to her in the fraction of a second before the band played them, as if she could anticipate where the song was going.
Before she realized what she was doing, the words were in her mouth and she was singing, too--because somehow she knew "Vows" was meant to be a duet:
"I give my heart to you
I give the sky to you
But if I give my speed to you
I cannot fly to you
What will you give
To me?"
A boy's voice filled her ears, singing along to this song she somehow knew from deep within her soul. Only it wasn't Ike.
It was Cam. There were tears in his eyes as he sang, his gaze locked on Lilith.
"I give a heart to you
I give a soul to you
I give a start to you
Do you know what to do?"
Why did it feel like they had sung this song together before?
They couldn't have. But when she closed her eyes, a vision came to her: the two of them seated before a body of water. It was not the fading trickle of Rattlesnake Creek but a swelling, crystal river somewhere far away and long ago.
She'd just written the song, for him. She wanted him to like it. She could see in his eyes that he did. She could feel it in his kiss when he bent down and graced her lips with his. There was no strain between them, no resentment, and no fear. Wherever, whenever they were, she had loved him deeply, and they had been practicing for something--a wedding.
Their wedding.
Somewhere, long ago, Cam and Lilith had been engaged.
Lilith opened her eyes.
The Four Horsemen were just finishing the song. The guitar cut out, and Ike sang the final line a cappella.
"What will you give to me?"
The crowd burst into applause. Lilith stood still.
Cam took a step toward her. "Lilith?"
Her body shook. Light exploded before Lilith's eyes, blinding her.
When she could see again, her gown looked different: whiter, and without Arriane's alterations. Lilith blinked, making out what looked like a dark cave at sunset, the sky fiery with streaks of red and orange. She was still facing Cam, just as she'd been facing him onstage.
She clutched her hands over her heart, not understanding why it hurt so much. She spoke words in a language that was new to her, but that she somehow understood.
"The night you left, I dreamt I taught a flock of nightingales a love song, so they could find you and sing you home to me. Now I am the nightingale who has traveled all this way. I still love you, Cam. Come back to me."
"No."
His answer was so clean, like the slice of the sharpest knife, that Lilith doubled over in pain. She gasped and rubbed her eyes--and when she drew her hands away...
The cave was gone, the sunset gone. Cam was gone.
Lilith was in a dismal shack, leaning against the wall. She recognized the unmade bed, the wooden bucket full of rancid water and days-old dirty dishes in the corner. Flies the size of hummingbirds swarmed streaks of lard on the plates. Everything was familiar, though she didn't know why.
"I told you to clean the dishes," a woman's voice said in a slow drawl. "Ain't gon' tell you again."
Somehow, Lilith knew that on the other side of this wall, a metal wire had been strung between two nails. She knew that she could play that wire, could make it sound like a fine instrument of many strings. She yearned to be outside with it, to feel the sting of copper on her calloused fingers.
"I told you, you can't play that dumb wire until you clean the dishes," the woman said, picking up a knife. "I've had it with that wire."
"No, please!" Lilith shrieked as she raced outside after the woman.
Lilith wasn't fast enough, and the woman carelessly cut the wire in two. Lilith fell to her knees and wept.
She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, she was straddling a horse bounding across a frozen road in a hilly countryside. She grasped the reins, holding on for her life. Her breath fogged before her, and her skin blazed, and she knew that she was dying from a fever. She was a gypsy, sick and starving, dressed in rags, expected to sing love songs in exchange for crumbs.
She blinked again, and again, and each time Lilith remembered another hellish experience. She was always a struggling musician, miserable and doomed. There was Opera Lilith, sleeping in an alley behind the theater. Orchestra Lilith, tormented by a cruel conductor. Troubadour Lilith, starving in a medieval city. In every existence, worse than her poverty, the loneliness, and the abuse was the rage darkening her heart. In every existence, she loathed the world she inhabited. She wanted revenge.
Come back to me, she'd begged Cam.
No.
"Why!" She shouted the question she'd been too hopeless to ask every other day of her life until now. "Why?"
"Because"--a deafening hiss filled her ears--"we made a deal.
"
"What deal?" she asked.
Lilith opened her eyes. She was back onstage in Crossroads. The audience was motionless, terrified. It was as if time had stopped. The Four Horsemen were gone, and in their place Luc was standing in the middle of the stage.
"Lilith!" she heard Cam scream. He rushed toward her, but Luc held him back and beckoned to Lilith to step toward him.
She looked around at all of the frozen faces in the audience. "What's happening?"
"Here," Luc said into the microphone. She stepped toward him, and he handed her a glass ball--a snow globe. "The missing piece."
Lilith held it up. Inside was a miniature cliff jutting out over a tumultuous ocean. A tiny figurine--a girl in a white wedding gown--stood at the cliff's edge. The ground beneath Lilith swayed, and then she was the girl in white, inside the snow globe. She scrambled backward, away from the edge. She could smell the churning ocean, and beyond it she could see the glass encasing everything.
"Take a good, hard look at your future, Lilith," a voice behind her said.
She turned to see Luc, reclining on a rock.
"Without Cam," he said, "what do you have to live for?"
"Nothing."
He nodded at the water. "Then it's time."
Luc looked the same as he did in Crossroads, but Lilith understood that he was more. The boy before her was the devil, and he'd made her an offer she'd been too lovesick to refuse.
"I brought you to him," he said, "and you did your best. But Cam didn't want you, did he?"
"No," she said miserably.
"You must hold up your end of our agreement."
"I'm scared," she said. "What happens after--"
"Leave that to me."
She gazed into the sea and knew she had no choice.
She didn't jump so much as lean forward--into the air, and then into the water. She let it take her. When the waves crashed over her, Lilith didn't try to rise above them. What was there left to try for? Her heart was heavy, like an anvil, and she sank.
Then she was at the bottom, in the filtered light, alone. Black water filled her nose and mouth, her stomach, her lungs.
Her soul.
Back onstage, Lilith faced Cam.
She could sense Jean Rah, Luis, and the other performers from the battle, all gathered around them. The audience was dumbstruck, waiting to see what Lilith would do. But she could focus only on Cam. There was a wild look in his eyes.