Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(56)

Almost.

His personal account was closed. It bounced straight back. But the Registry address . . .

That one stuck.

Three years, and they still hadn’t deleted it. I love the inefficiency of big firms.

“Use a ouija board,” said Angel. “Guy’s dead, right?”

Once we’d left Silverman we stopped for ice cream at Graeter’s, and ate it in our hotel room, watching a movie neither of us liked but, equally, couldn’t be bothered to switch off. Then we dozed to the lullaby of traffic in the street outside, which, if you were really sleepy, you could half imagine sounded like the sea . . .

We slept for maybe three, four hours.

And then the music started up.



I heard it, long before I woke, twisting through my dreams: a sound of brass and woodwind, sinuous and melancholy, dwindling as I rose up towards consciousness, fading at last into a single, breathy whisper, that seemed to trace the notes with difficulty, one to the next. I lay there listening, my eyes closed, my body sunk into the bedding, feeling dreamy still. It was a while before I recognized the voice. It was Angel’s, naturally, but it didn’t sound like her. I knew her sound: precise, clear, classically trained, every note spot on. Now she sounded tentative, uncertain, surprised by each new utterance. I lay there, trying to place the tune. For moments it seemed half-familiar, yet as each sequence approached a resolution, it would shift, and metamorphosize into a new theme. This wasn’t music I had ever heard her listen to. Even its form and genre seemed to waver, sometimes complex, sometimes simple as a nursery rhyme.

I rolled over. Opened my eyes.

The room was alight.

I was lying in a pool of light. Moving, breaking and re-forming: strands of fire that laced across the coverlet, and shifted constantly. Like water running uphill. Mercury, splashing in rivulets over the fabric. It seemed I should have felt the weight of it, felt it slide across me—weight, or heat; but I felt nothing. Great wedges of darkness wheeled across the ceiling. It took a moment till I realized they were shadows from the ceiling fan, itself moving with dream-like slowness.

Dream-like, yes. But not my dream.

Beside me, Angel sat cross-legged, balanced on a pillow, staring at the patterns on the covers as they changed. She read them, stumbling as she went, bending a note in mid-breath, hesitating, catching up, but never going back, never repeating anything.

At first I thought her unaware of me, like someone hypnotized or sleepwalking. Only when the lights stopped moving and she looked up, I realized she was wide awake, and had been all along.

“I hear it,” she said. “I hear it, Chris.” She reached out, took my hand. “Isn’t this the greatest? Don’t you think?”

I heard the faint whine of a car reversing, two streets off, the honk of a horn, like an angry trumpet call.

The light flickered. She sang—hmm mmm mmm dah dah dah—but I could make no sense of it. I don’t know how long it went on. After a time I wormed my way out from the covers and sat beside her, watching what to me were empty patterns shuffling on the coverlet, ever harder to make out. We had shared a dream, or part of it. Now the light was fading, and the lines grew thinner, dimmer. Angel glanced at me, suddenly lost track of what was in her head. Her voice faltered. She cried out, urgently, “Get my phone!”

She flapped her hands. She sang, dee-dah dah dee-dee-dah . . . Her finger traced a pattern on the cloth, now faded into near-invisibility.

“Phone!”

I found her phone. I fumbled with it, set it to record. She sang a few short notes, then repeated them, uncertain now, and sang them for a third time, with some small variation. Another couple of phrases followed. She reached out with her hands, trying to gather up the dimming light, but it trickled through her fingers, oozing out and sinking through the fabric. She chased it. She dug into the bedclothes. A faint glow ran along her arms. She rummaged through the sheets, she beat them with her fists. And then she turned on me, suddenly furious.

“Why didn’t you—? Why couldn’t—? Why were you—?”

I reached to touch her and she jerked back. Suddenly the room was dark. I was cold, and I was wide awake.

“Angie,” I said. “Angel . . . ?”

Her arm was up. Her fist was pressed against her mouth. She sat like that, frozen, I don’t know for how long. I went to put my arms around her and, with a brief, quick movement of her head, she warned me off. I sat there, next to her. I waited. And then very, very slowly, she unwound, came back into herself. She put her arm down and her shoulders sagged.

“Did you hear it? Did you see . . . ?”

“I heard you, singing.”

“But—but you must have heard it. It was just—it was intense, you know? It was—I could hear harmony, and—” She ran her hand over the bedding. “You saw it, didn’t you? You read it?”

“It was just patterns. I couldn’t read it.”

“But, but—oh, shit. What was the tune? I couldn’t see it all—there were parts of it, hidden away, but—oh God. How did it go?”

Tears ran down her cheek. I dabbed at them, brushed them away.

“I don’t think it was real,” I said.

“What do you mean? How can it not be real? I heard—I saw—”

“I think it was a dream,” I said. “Like a shared dream.”