Luminary (Expanded Edition)

  * * * * * *

  Wicus listened as the girl sang, hitting every note horribly off-key.

  Emily had a voice better suited to listening to music than actively participating in it. Not that she had a tin-ear. Quite the contrary. She heard the notes well enough, it’s just that something happened between that area of the brain that processed the sound and her vocal chords -- as they attempted to recreate it.

  Fortunately for the surrounding motorists, her windows were up the entire time that her mouth was open. And her howling, though perhaps discernible by wayward canines, did not encourage any of them to follow behind.

  Traffic was light, it didn’t take long to get to her apartment, her voice gleefully massacring only four songs along the way.

  She seemed blissfully ignorant of her cursed pipes.

  Thank God for small mercies, Wicus thought with a smirk.