When Devils Sing(55)

“Only in this thirteen-year time may I walk this earth. With the cicadas I rise, and with the cicadas I fall.” Crow paused. “A fate forced upon me many years ago—by my brother.”

“You could’ve told me,” Neera argued weakly. “Thirteen years ago, you could’ve just been honest with me.” Her anger faded to hollow sadness as she realized why Crow hadn’t been honest all those years ago. In a hoarse whisper, she asked, “You knew Ajay was going to … to die then, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Crow had never shown emotion before, but somehow, his avian gaze turned sorrowful. “You were only a child.” He inched forward, his long talons snapping twigs and brambles as he moved closer. “But, I am here now.”

“It’s too late.” Neera rubbed her eyes, barely aware of the fresh tears that pooled down her cheeks. She gestured pitifully to the broken guitar at her feet. Quietly, she said, “It’s ruined. Everything is. It’s all over.”

Crow’s beak hovered above the Yamaha, grazing the shining wood and the loose, untethered strings. Lightning bugs gathered around the guitar, lingering for a moment before dissipating into the dark. “Broken things cannot be unbroken.”

Neera met the devil’s bottomless, black gaze. “You can’t fix it?”

“I cannot,” Crow admitted as Neera continued to cry, unashamed now. Her tears fell in a steady rhythm on the Yamaha, sliding off the polished wood like raindrops. “However,” he said, and even for a creature so ancient it sounded like a concession, “the instrument can be made anew.”

“Yes.” Neera nodded, willing to plead on her hands and knees if that’s what it took. “Please.”

Crow’s wings fluttered, the sound like falling leaves. “Is that all?”

A loaded question. Neera opened her mouth to say yes but paused. Another request rose within her, unbidden. A want that would be damning if she spoke it aloud. Something not about love, or death, but about power. A seething, aching desire that had been growing within Neera for a very long time.

“I want to be heard,” Neera began slowly. “I want a voice the world will love.” Her breath hitched in her throat, and the rest came pouring out of her. “I want to make music … that will immortalize me. I don’t want to be forgotten.”

Like Ajay.

Crow’s empty eyes gazed into Neera’s. “There is a cost.”

“I know,” Neera whispered, recalling Ajay’s long-ago warning. “Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”

Crow’s ink-black feathers ruffled, falling from his wings and onto the forest floor, transforming into dried leaves. “One day, with little warning, your voice will vanish, and it will never return.”

Neera struggled to temper the fear in her gut. “And the guitar? Will I lose that, too?”

Crow’s head shook from side to side. “Consider it a gift.”

The notion of a kindness from the devil felt wrong—impossible even, but what choice did Neera have? A creature stood before her, willing to give her the world. All she had to do was take it. To one day lose her voice was a horrible thought, but the future wasn’t guaranteed, anyway. Not when the promise of death hovered over the Singh family in a week’s time.

After a long beat, Neera finally said, “I accept the cost.”

The heavy silence was broken by the shrill, high-pitched call of a cicada. It reverberated through the woods like a bloodcurdling scream. Neera looked all around, searching for the insect. Its call was steady and pulsing, and Neera startled with the realization it was close.

It was coming from the Yamaha.

Neera peered into the guitar’s opening, finding the squirming bug within. Small and buzzing, with red veins and shimmering iridescent wings. The cicada trembled inside the guitar, echoing all around her.

“Am I supposed to…?” Neera couldn’t bear to finish the question.

Crow nodded once.

Gingerly, she reached into the hollow space of the Yamaha. The cicada crawled into her hand, its spindly legs sending a shiver down her spine. She pulled her hand out, staring at the insect. It pulsed and throbbed in her bloodied palm, its scream growing louder, nearly deafening in its intensity. Saliva pooled on her tongue. Neera couldn’t tell if it was revulsion, or hunger.

Neera didn’t hesitate as she placed the live cicada in her mouth and swallowed it whole.

“It is done.” Crow’s wings expanded, as if in response, stretching out fully for the first time. From her place on the ground, his wings seemed never-ending. They covered the forest, growing so large that they touched the tree canopy high above them.

As Crow’s wings flapped, kicking up dirt and pine needles, Neera’s eyelids felt heavy, her body growing tired. She lay beside her guitar, nestling in the earth.

The last thing she saw was the devil taking flight.





CHAPTER 21REID





Reid longed for the days when he didn’t speak, and no one expected him to do otherwise. There was the briefest reprieve in the aftermath of his mother’s passing where silence was his greatest gift. His grief had been too great of a weight on his tongue, so for years, he said nothing at all.

Barely a day had passed since the news of Dawson’s drowning, and Reid couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, despite the social obligations expected of him. He was afforded many luxuries in his life, but the space to grieve was not one of them.