1.
Wednesday heard it as she descended the curving, stone stairs.
That voice.
It was deep and rich with a thrumming quality that reached her very core.
Someone was playing her cello!
The instrument had needed to be restrung, and she had brought it to the only truly musically gifted group of students at Nevermore to find someone qualified to do it.
Wednesday had been unsure that a damp basement was the best place to bring her beloved instrument, but it was in desperate need of repair, so she had little choice. She found her assumptions and the rumored description of the basement by the student body in general had been incorrect.
Typical.
For one thing, it wasn't a basement so much as a catacomb. Leave it to Enid and her furry friends to play a flippant game of telephone with information passed between them to herself.
"I asked Kiba, who thought Tsume might know and she got some info from Hige who said Blue had visited this damp basement where you could maybe find someone," Wednesday's varicolored roommate rattled off.
Not only was it not a basement, it also was not "damp". There was a suitable water shadow playing on the walls from the small reflecting pool situated artistically in the middle of the common room, though.
"You want Kire," a voice had intoned from the depths of an away-facing chair when she inquired to the room in general about the repair of the cello. "He's out, but we'll make sure he takes care of it." The voice was hushed as if the speaker were attempting to control its effect.
These students were not sirens. They didn't have to wear pendants to control their powers at all times, but they did have to put in an effort. Also, the sirens, with their hypnotic voices and ethereal beauty, lived in a dorm that resembled an aerie that would not have been out of place perched on cliffs above the sea. The phantoms (outcasts with harsh deformities who could sing a person into ecstatic madness) preferred an echoing catacomb.
Though she had not felt the need to emphasize that the cello be handled as little by a stranger as possible, Wednesday had also not imagined this student, Kire, would dare draw the bow across the new strings more than was absolutely necessary. She intended to barge through the door from which the music issued but stopped as suddenly as the sound itself.
"The C string is still fragile," a soft, controlled voice said from behind the barely cracked door. "It is a special order - the cello will need to remain here for the time being."
Wednesday didn't even pause to question how the person behind a closed door knew she was there or what she wanted. At Nevermore, premonition was the default state of mind for most of the schools' residents. She pushed the door open and stepped in. Amidst a jumble of books, loose pieces of compositions, and a stacked keyboard that dominated one wall was Kire with her cello.
He was at least six feet tall and, even seated, almost had to slouch to draw the bow properly across the strings. His back was a lean, solid wall crowned with a head of dark, lank hair that touched his shoulders. Behind this veil of poor posture, long hair, and the dim lighting in the room, Kire concealed the usual phantom deformities. He and his classmates had become so adept at this that they could hide in the middle of a brightly lit classroom. Passing assignments between students, one would find a phantom discreetly nose-deep in a book, or bending under the desk to retrieve a pen, or coughing into an overlarge handkerchief. It was bizarrely unobtrusive.
Kire was demonstrating the fragility of the string in question, pointing out the susceptibility in it, the likely hood that it might snap with any amount of passionate playing. His long, dexterous fingers would have made Thing swoon.
"I know a hostage situation when it's presented." Wednesday accused, crossing her arms. "Try me. I once talked a zombie into going to law school instead of eating my brother's brains."
A sound like the rustle of dry leaves constituted a laugh from Kire. "Master negotiator, perfect for my purposes. The C string on your cello will be replaced and the instrument returned by next week. All I'll charge for the work is a favor."
Ask me to tutor you, Wednesday suddenly thought to herself. She was immediately assailed with a vision.
Together, they would be the antithesis of Gomez and Morticia - he: quiet, deferential, but not the soul-sucking-tar-pit sticky sweetness way of her father. She: scholarly, hauteur, allowing him into the icy domain of her space for the most perfunctory brush of his lips on her upturned cheek. They would never walk anywhere, but stroll together in funeral languidity. Their life would be operatic...
Wednesday came out of it with a snap that only showed in the slight dilation of her pupils.
That had not been a psychic vision. She realized with disgust that she had been fantasizing!
"Where is a Punjab lasso when you need one," she muttered to herself, wanting to string the Wednesday who allowed such things up in the rafters.
"Do you know Inea?" Kire asked, glancing at Wednesday over his shoulder. Strands of his dark, lank hair and the general gloom of the dorm consistently hid the worst contours of his face.
What could he possibly want from that blond cherub of a siren?
2.
"Someone is interested in going out with you on Halloween," Wednesday muttered through clenched teeth, wishing it was a King-worthy sadistic clown who was pursuing Inea.
"Mmm-hmm," the siren responded, distractedly carving arcane symbols into the desktop with a bobby-pin. She must have had at least fifty of the little clips in the bouncy ringlets that were so pale blond her hair resembled ocean foam. She had sat across from Wednesday the entire semester, and this was the first time they had exchanged even that many words.
"It's a phantom," Wednesday, not one to beat around the bush so much as burn it to cinders, said bluntly. "He fancies you. Shall I go forthwith and disappoint him?" She opened her notebook and began taking notes as if the topic were nothing more than a fleeting particle in the abyss of her day.
Inea flicked irritably at a bit of eraser, carved into the shape of a heart, that had bounced onto her desk from the back of the room. "Is it the one that, like, doesn't wash his hair?" A couple of tiny paper airplanes with kiss emojis doodled on them came in for a landing to join the eraser.
Wednesday imagined that Kire could probably wash his hair with industrial degreaser and it would still come out the same. Some things were just endemic to certain outcasts.
"Tall, dark, brooding. Your basic haunt of the repertory cellar. You know the kind." If Wednesday had meant to make Kire sound less than interesting, why was she herself suddenly imagining gothic boat rides on underground waterways?
"Oh, him," the siren sighed, sounding bored. "We were partnered in History of Music class on a project, and now he's like, obsessed, or something." A rubber band with Inea's name in fancy script written on it stuck in her hair. She snatched at it and turned sharply toward the source of the barrage. "Ral! If you don't stop it, I'm going to take this amulet off and make you!"
The "cupid" elemental in the back row flashed a perfect, shining smile and winked at Inea as if he liked the idea.
3.
"On Halloween, we masquerade as 'normies'," Bianca informed Wednesday at lunch. "We wear cheap costumes, cat ears or mustache glasses, and actually go trick-or-treating. It's fun, I guess." It seemed the popular siren was trying to sound bored about the whole thing, but there was something in her tone that said Bianca actually looked forward to it.
Wednesday had to collect intel on what the Nevermore ritual on All Hallow's Eve was after Inea had unexpectedly acquiesced to Kire's request.
"Tell him," Wednesday had said while standing in Kire's doorway again. "Tell him he has to dress up, like, really dress up. Then, maybe we can hang." In her deadpan, unmocking tone, the response somehow sounded more deprecating than if she had actually bit her lip and twirled her hair in imitation of Inea.
"Thanks," Kire said, somehow keeping completely to the shadows as he crossed the room to give Wednesday the cello. "See you there, too?"
4.
"This is so cool!" Enid half-shrieked as Wednesday stood with her roommate and Inea on the edge of the Nevermore crowd streaming in a long line toward Jericho. Dressing as "normies" on Halloween" had been almost a challenge as they needed to look both casual and costumed to a certain degree. Enid had chosen spangly cat ears and matching makeup while Inea had gone with a simple cheer-leader outfit. She looked like she'd just stepped off the side-lines at Jericho High. Wednesday was in black. She had allowed for a small Jack-O-Lantern pin for the outcast Halloween spirit of conformity.
"OMG!" Inea shouted, jumping and waving her pom-poms as a figure detached from the shadows to join them.
Kire, all skeletal six feet of him, was dressed to the nines as his namesake phantom with white mask and swirling opera cloak to boot.
Inea squealed in glee and Wednesday wanted to smack her into next week.
5.
The Nevermore student body trick-or-treating circumambulation of Jericho ended back at the school commons with a full-scale, sugar-induced revel. Wednesday had (willingly) lost track of Inea and Kire somewhere along the way. She had let Enid drag her around to look at Halloween props and to find the houses with full-size candy bars. Now the wolfling was in slap-happy mode and Wednesday muttered about finding something "very hot and bitter" to either get Enid to drink or just dump all over her.
Of course, Wednesday couldn't avoid seeing the too-tall Kire's mask floating above the crowd. From a distance, she saw him laugh and twirl Inea around, enveloping both in his voluminous cape for just a moment. She was sure she saw the siren press her mouth against Kire's lips, the only part of his face not hidden by the mask.
Wednesday's gaze in the moment was as sharp as shattered glass, and her thoughts involved carnivorous plants...
"He didn't sing. She didn't sing," Enid suddenly stood behind her, dropping her chin onto Wednesday's shoulder. "Nobody sang!" She was now bleary with fatigue, crashing from the sugar high. "I wanted a strange duet."
Wednesday just rolled her eyes.
6.
Knowing intimately the many shades of black, Wednesday was able to pick out an ebony shape in the dark near the phantom dorm.
"I never thanked you for fixing the cello," she said, rather lamely in her own ears.
Kire, still masked, turned toward her. Wetness dripped from his chin. "I can't breath... don't look OK?" He turned and shoved the mask clear of his face and into his hair. The distressing sounds of someone choking on their own tears were briefly muffled, then stifled with a handkerchief.
"How'd it go with Inea?" she asked tightly.
The folding of his back and movement of his shoulders and head suggested he was wiping the moisture out of his eyes. "Oh...it was...so great!" he laughed in rustling leaves.
Kire was...happy!
"She said we should start a band, or do musical theater, or something, and wants to talk more about it." He slid the mask out of his hair and adjusted it back in place. "I've got a composition I've been thinking about that I want to get down on paper for her." With that, he disappeared down the dormitory steps with a flip of the extravagant cape.
Wednesday almost didn't hear him call back to her over the sound of crashing chandeliers in her head.
"If you ever need help with the cello again, come see me."
Then he was gone.