Thanks to everyone who read and to M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng for reviewing.
Roddy slowed as he approached Monroe's house. Normally it looked pretty much like all of the other houses on the street, with the Blutbad markers only differentiating it if you had a functional nose, but right now...
An arm wrapped around his shoulders, and he flinched and braced to run.
"Whoa, easy, just me," Monroe said, releasing him immediately. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."
Roddy looked up and then shook his head. He should have noticed Monroe's approach well before he'd gotten within arms' reach, but Monroe was annoyingly good at sneaking up on people. And that was without the sight in front of him. "S'okay, guess I was a little distracted. Did someone rob a Halloween store and then crash their van in your yard?"
Monroe sighed. "You sound like Nick, you know that?"
Roddy wasn't sure if he was supposed to be insulted or not, but the object Monroe was dragging caught his eye before he could ask. "What's the dead tree for?"
"Decoration." Monroe wrapped his arm back around Roddy's shoulders, pulling him forward. Along with said dead tree—or dead sapling, at least—that he'd apparently just stolen from the park. "Come on, you've got to check this out. Nick loaned it to me."
Roddy was pretty sure that Monroe's house didn't need any more decorations, not to mention that he'd just been complaining about Nick's lack of enthusiasm, but at least he was sounding more like himself than he had been last week. Roddy let himself be led along.
Monroe stopped to drop the dead tree off in the miniature graveyard set up down by his mailbox, because yeah, that wasn't creepy at all, and then he drew Roddy up to the door where an even creepier skeleton-knight-something mannequin was standing.
"Nick loaned you that?" Roddy had to ask. And here he'd thought that Nick was about as normal as a Grimm could be.
"What? Oh, no not him, I picked him up a couple years ago. Nice, isn't he? But the morning star is Nick's, and—actually, just stand back here."
He tugged Roddy back a few steps while Roddy was still trying to figure out what the hell stars had to do with anything, putting one of a pile of pumpkins on the stand in front of the mannequin and then ducking inside. And a moment later Roddy yelped and jumped back even further as the executioner's arm suddenly swung around and the pumpkin was obliterated by a spiked ball on a chain.
Monroe came back out, laughing. "Great, isn't it?"
"Did a pumpkin kill your pet in a previous life?"
"Oh, no, there is no way that you can claim that that wasn't cool." He shook his head as he reset the mannequin. "Halloween is the best holiday. I mean, it's kind of a shame that there aren't any villagers around to terrify these days, but you work with what you've got."
"Right." Roddy was usually on the other side of the whole being terrified thing—predators, seriously—but on the other hand it was hard to be annoyed when Monroe was clearly so pleased. "It was kind of cool, I guess," he relented, "but warn a guy, would you? I don't really like surprises." Or sudden, loud noises, or sharp movements, for that matter.
"All right, that's fair." He waved a hand. "Come on, come in and test the Halloween candy. You can help me pick out some good background music."
That was the kind of Halloween celebration that Roddy could get behind, and he nodded quickly and followed Monroe through the also-insanely-decorated entryway and into the kitchen. And it turned out that unlike Roddy's neighbors, none of whom had ever had any candy to give away anyway, Monroe had the fancy kind and as usual didn't mind Roddy indulging his sweet tooth.
Roddy's obvious vote for theme music was Danse Macabre, because duh, but Monroe was pretty partial to Der Erlkonig, and eventually they ended up with a collection that included both of those plus Bach's Toccata and Fugue, Dvorak's The Water Goblin—and mental notes on both of their parts to find some actual music so they could try that one together because they still hadn't gotten around to any of his stuff—and half a dozen other pieces as well. A couple of them Roddy figured that the neighborhood kids would at least recognize as creepy, and a couple he thought were a vast overestimate of most people's grasp of classical music on Monroe's part, but whatever. At least the house would have a good soundtrack by the standards of people who did know what they were talking about.
"So how did your concert go?" Monroe asked as they left the selected records by his player and headed for the practice room.
"Pretty good. No major screw-ups with any of the orchestra pieces, although the base section really needs to dial it in before the big concert next month. But one of the soloists had an ugly fumble about a third of the way through his piece. He recovered, but it was really obvious."
"I hope no one was nasty to him about it."
"Well, not at the concert, but a couple of the music teachers are absolute assholes about that kind of thing." Not to mention the other students, but that part went without saying. "There's no way that he didn't get sniped at in classes."
Monroe frowned disapprovingly. "Well, that sounds like an excellent way to induce stage fright. Also, language."
Roddy rolled his eyes and then shrugged. A lot of the teachers were assholes, however much Monroe might prefer that he picked another term, but there was no arguing that they knew their stuff when it came to music. It was why he was willing to put up with them even when he was the one in their cross-hairs.
Monroe continued to look disapproving, and Roddy searched for another topic.
"Oh, Nick and Juliette came. It was kind of weird, actually."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, we had the concert, the reception started, Nick showed up and made me throw my glass of wine away—"
"Roddy."
"What? One glass isn't going to do jack, and the punch they serve is gross. Anyway, Juliette was with him, and her memory must be better because she asked about my classes and stuff and I only told her about those when I was staying at their house around Dad's funeral, but for some reason Nick got this really sad look on his face. Like, I'm the one stuck in lit and composition, and I'm not that depressed about it."
"Unfortunately her memory issues are not better," Monroe said with a sigh. "Just terribly specific. As far as anyone can tell Nick is the one thing that she doesn't remember."
"What? But they've known each other for years, right? They have a house and everything." Monroe had said that the whole thing with Juliette was complicated, but he hadn't said that it was that complicated.
"They have, and they do," Monroe agreed. "But I think I told you that the whole thing was triggered by a Hexenbiest?"
"Yeah, and her a—her cat," he corrected quickly.
"Well, take it as given that it's not your standard sort of memory loss. And right now it's not something that anyone knows how to help, either. It's like she's got a Nick-shaped hole in her mind."
"Oh. Wow."
"Yeah. It's a mess." He shook his head. "And not one we're going to be able to solve here, either. How about we go give that concerto another try?"
"Have a happy Halloween, and stay out of trouble," Monroe said, handing Roddy a candy bar as he shouldered his backpack and picked up his violin case.
"I'm sorry, who in this conversation was mourning the lack of villagers yesterday?" Roddy couldn't help but ask, although he didn't hesitate to take the candy. He'd raided Monroe's bagel collection for breakfast, and he'd get lunch at school, but chocolate snacks should never be declined.
"Very funny. I'll see you next week."
"Happy Halloween, and see you next week," Roddy agreed, waving as he ducked out the door and headed down the street towards the bus stop. The ride to school was a little quicker from here than from his place, but not by that much, and he sorted out the last of his Latin translation on the way. Why he hadn't just selected an independent study for his last elective he had no idea, but he was still inclined to blame a head injury from one of his classmates.
No one was paying any attention to him today, though. He'd handled his responsibilities appropriately during the concert so there was no reason for any of his teachers to pay him any more mind than usual, and Halloween was enough of a draw for most of the other students that their focus was on their evening plans and not harassing one inconvenient violinist.
He even heard a couple snatches of conversation about a rave tonight, with enough detail that he had no trouble confirming which rave it was, and it was just...it was so weird. In the past, when his identity as a DJ had been a genuine secret, it had been kind of funny to overhear that kind of thing. But after last year the word should have gotten out. Even if Sarah had been shipped off to Mars and the other three were in various prison facilities they shouldn't all be so...
He couldn't decide if his classmates' complete obliviousness was a relief or really, really annoying at this point.
Given the concert earlier this week and the fact that everyone's concentration had gone to shit for the holiday Dr. Warren actually let them start packing up after barely an hour, and as soon as the threats about how long they'd be rehearsing next week stopped Roddy grabbed the rest of his stuff and hurried to the bus stop. For once he made the early bus—barely, but still—and even if his plans of dropping off his violin, grabbing the turntables, and heading directly for the warehouse hadn't changed, it'd be nice to have the extra time to run through the new tracks again. He was confident in what he'd put together, but the trailer didn't exactly have the same acoustics as the warehouse.
Sammy's gear was heavy, but that wasn't news, and since Sammy actually showed up early enough to give him a hand as he was hauling it up the stairs, he couldn't really complain. "Any idea what the turnout's going to be?" he asked instead. "Heard a couple kids talking about it at school today, but it sounded like there were a couple other parties planned too."
"Not to state the obvious, but your school is practically ground zero when it comes to weird prep shit in this city," Sammy said with a scoff. "Trust me, for normal kids this is the event of the night."
It wasn't like Roddy was in a position to argue with him, so he shrugged and shoved the table into position, kneeling down to uncoil the wires for the speakers. "Hope you're right, the weather's decent right now, but there's been frost the last couple mornings so I don't know how many more of these we'll be able to do this year." He still hadn't gotten around to picking up any newspapers to pack around the trailer's plumbing yet.
"Eh, figure play it by ear like always. With the weather in Portland it could be sixty again next week. And even if it's not we still ought to be able to get one more good one in before Thanksgiving. Maybe even one between then and Christmas too if we don't get iced out; you know no one really cares once they're packed in and dancing." He paused. "And if you'd let me hook you up with some house parties you'd be a lot busier, no matter what the weather looks like."
Not exactly news, but Roddy shook his head anyway. "Thanks, but no thanks."
"You are so weird."
Weird, maybe, but not dumb enough to need to learn that lesson twice, and Roddy shrugged. "You need the gear back after this, then, or can I hang onto it for a while longer?" He'd like to keep it—in a pinch he could and did mix on his laptop, but considering that it had been donated to the school a year or two before they'd donated it to him it wasn't exactly cutting edge when it came to speed or processing power or audio quality—but if Sammy was getting back into house parties he'd need it eventually.
"Go ahead and hang onto it for now if you're still working on new stuff," he said after a minute. "I'll text when I need to swing by and pick it up."
"Sure, just remember that I get home late most days and need more than five minutes warning."
Sammy nodded, tossing the extension cord over, and Roddy plugged it in and did a power check before queuing up his latest tracks. "Want to hear the new stuff?"
"Hell, yeah. Hit it."
