Power Trio

Evan rolls his shoulders. He starts this one off solo. The string of his Reeve tenses under his finger. It feels more eager somehow, this bass. Younger and more vicious than his Prelate. He plucks and its first note fills the space, sending hissing vibrations up Kell’s cymbal.

He teases a muted, staccato line out of the bass and then the flamenco strum of a chord. He mouths the starting rhythm to Kell, and she slips into his cadence with a deceptively calm roll of the toms. Evan clears his throat as he steps up to the mic. He’s still not used to singing. To his ear, his voice is a quaking hatchling compared to Thekla’s tramontane cry. But they like how he sounds.

And apparently, so does the secret metaphysical scaffolding of the universe. So what the hell, why not.

Across a silk-smooth crescendo, Legendary build their wall of sound, brick by staticky brick. Thekla, unburdened from her duties on the mic, takes the chance to show out as a guitarist on Field Fire. She still works in chords as opposed to Sion’s searing single and doublestopped leadline, but she throws in these palm-muted strumming patterns and augmented notes, hammering on and off and sliding her way down the neck. Her usual part is a washy bed of hum to lay her words across; here she turns it into a flowing river, bubbling and transformative. When she’s really focusing on her playing, Evan’s noticed, she does this thing where she shuts her right eye and pooches out her lips, like she’s waiting for a kiss.

When she doesn’t have a mic to stick to, Thekla’s habit is to pace, as if her guitar is tugging her from place to place and she can only follow. It brings her in front of Evan, now, and they play face-to-face. He dips into the chorus and she opens her other eye, watching him with a familiar intensity. It’s the same expression she had on the couch that night at him after their first date. That gaze of wonder and appetite.

Thekla moves through life analytically, always careful to look before she leaps. Evan tries to have that confidence she wants from him, but even with her encouragement, he often has a hard time imagining he deserves the love the women of Legendary show him. In moments like this, though, when he gets Thekla out of her head and into a place of unvarnished fascination, he manages to feel proud of himself.

They finish the song, Thekla’s cherry-red axe flowing to its echoing conclusion. Evan smiles at her. “That was…” Then he remembers they weren’t just trying to make good music, they were casting a spell, and he glances at Sion’s frustrated face as the lead guitarist scribbles across his sheets. “That was a good first go,” he says.

“Hmmm.” Sion crumples up one of his pages and tosses it into a corner.

“Should we be changing what we’re doing?” Kell asks.

“Only if you want to,” Sion says. “My part is all that’s holding us back.”

Thekla makes a few experimental chord shapes. “Thek,” Evan says. The goblin looks up. “Don’t change it too much, okay? You’re sounding so sick on this one. I’m obsessed.”

Her ears go a little pink. He loves making them do that.

“Right, let’s reset.” Sion rubs his forehead. “Second time’s the charm.”

* * *

“Fifth time’s the charm.”

* * *

“Seventh time’s the chime. The Charm.”

“Can we take a second?” Evan croaks. “And get some water, maybe?”

Thekla tuts. “Sion, we’re not going to cast anything if you blow out poor Evan’s vocal cords. Is there a kitchen and a cup in this boardroom purgatory?”

“Of course. Rest your throat, Evan H,” Sion says. “I will be back shortly with a pitcher.” He opens the padlock. “I’ll just stick this on the outside to keep the rest of you in, shall I?”

“Sion,” Kell warns.

“Kidding.” Sion slips out.

Kell settles on her drum throne, taps out a little sidestick flamadiddle. “Took about this long last time.”

“True, babe. True. I thought we’d gotten pretty good at it, but here we are again.” Thekla wanders over to Sion’s music stand and rifle through his writing. “I guess disobeying the rules of nature is kinda tough, huh?”

“I’ll tell you what’s tough.” Evan coughs. “Singing this much, dude. I feel like a stripped screw. I don’t know how you do it, Thek.”

“We managed Trapped without a bass that one time,” Kell says. “Maybe we can try an instrumental.”

Thekla has turned her guitar down to below conversational level and is plinking her way through Sion’s notes, that concentrating wink back on her face.

“My theory is that the more we use a spell, the easier it is to cast it,” Evan says. “Like resistance training, more than a conscious thing.”

“Oh, that reminds me.” Kell hits an excited little rimshot. “There’s a gym near Trio Terrace. Like a five-minute walk. I was wondering if you guys wanted to check it out with me.”

“And expose how weak my lifts are?”

“Dude, not even. Do you know how romantic it is to hit the weight room with someone you’re dating?” Kell sighs happily. “Evan Human, there is nothing hotter.”

“You say that now. I get mad sweaty when I’m working out. Like an employee asked me if I was okay once.”

“I’ve seen you sweaty. I like you sweaty.” Kell winks. “I’ll let you spot me.”

That gets Evan thinking.

“I’ll let you spot me on the squat rack,” she says. “You ever spot a squat, loverboy?”

The lights flicker.

Evan and Kell look to Thekla, who’s frozen in her tracks. “Dude,” Kell says.

“That, uh.” Thekla takes a ginger step away from Sion’s music stand. “That may have been nothing.”

The door creaks open and Sion enters with a sleeve of plastic cups and a pitcher.

“Thekla wants a turn steering the spell,” Kell blurts.

Thekla grips her guitar. “You snitch.”

Sion deposits the pitcher on the floor, blood-red stare on Thekla. “The lights in the hallway flickered,” he says. “That was you.”

Thekla stammers. “I mean uh, maybe. Maybe not.”

Sion rushes to his guitar and straps it back on. “Chords. What are the chords?”

“Uh.” Thekla rests her fingers on her strings to remind herself. “On the verse it’s all open, D major 7 to Em9 to G. And then the chorus is 4-6-5-1 barred up the neck.”

“Good. Good, good.” Sion snaps his fingers at Evan. “Play us in. I’m on rhythm and Thekla takes lead.”

“Ohmigod, Sion, let him get a drink first at least,” Thekla says, but Evan’s already hammering through the intro. He’s as keen as Sion to try this.

Verse two is when it happens. Evan’s words, shaky and creaking on their last run, shift, reverberate in his skull as he releases them. His hands enter that flow state, their position and articulation guided by some divine metaconsciousness. It’s different, somehow, with Thekla. Sion’s music bound them up, moved them like marionettes. Thekla’s force is like a sure and fast current. Evan shuts his eyes and lets himself be pulled at speed, feels the wind on his face. Now that they are wielding it with intent, he can embrace this unexplainable focus. The anticipation tingles in his gut.

And then it happens. Not a loud sound, but that sound’s sudden absence. The light pressing against Evan’s lids goes black. Total darkness.

Except for two golden eyes, glowing like fire.

“Open the door.” Thekla’s whisper of command is silkier than Sion’s reverberating order, but just as impossible to disobey. Evan turns on his heels, strides through the dark with purpose. The cable pops free from his bass as the tether ends. His hand closes around a knob and he pulls the studio door open, revealing a dim, flickering hallway beyond.

The lights flutter back on. The sound of his cable jack’s fuzzy feedback as it lies on the carpet. And Evan sees the padlock on the floor in two pieces. The latch is bent and the wood splintery from where the force of the opening door ripped the padlock in half. He didn’t even feel it.

Sion squawks in excitement and pulls a sleek phone out to take a picture of the busted lock. “Sylvans and fucking stars. It worked. Thekla, my dear, you have cast your first spell.”

Thekla’s expression is bewildered and unfocused. “That felt…” She opens and shuts her mouth a couple of times. “That felt insane,” she says.

“It felt good, didn’t it? It felt right.” Sion is texting the picture to someone. He sees Evan looking over his shoulder and quickly closes the app.

“It did.” Thekla looks worried. “God. It did. Pass me some of that water, Evan?”

“Of course.” Evan pours a cup and hands it to her. The surface shakes as she holds it.

Kell is out from the drum kit, arms wrapped around Thekla. “Babyyyy! That was fucking amazing!”

“Amazing.” Thekla’s daze is cut through by a pointy little smile. “Can I see that?” She reaches for the lock. Evan put it in her palm. She turns it over, staring at its broken contours as if trying to ensure she isn’t dreaming. “Holy shit. You pulverized this thing.”

“You did,” Evan says. “I was just your… Sion had a word.”

“Vessel,” Sion supplies.

“Dude, next time we do this, I wanna be the vessel,” Kell says. “Everyone else has gotten a turn. Cast your spooky spell on me, Thekla.”

“Should we try it again?” Thekla’s still shaking with excitement.

Sion extracts an additional padlock from his guitar case. “I’d be crestfallen if we didn’t.”

They bust that lock, and another. On the third, Thekla screams jubilantly, rips the guitar from her body, and leaps into Evan’s arms, heedless of the bass between them. He catches her in a spin, kisses her. “You’re a fucking magician!”

Sion averts his eyes and clears his throat. “Bard.”

That night is their final one at Kell’s old Darrowbrook spot. Tomorrow, the movers are coming to pack the orc’s bedroom up and bring it to the new place. No safe words or rough stuff tonight—they fuck like lovestruck teenagers, drunk on unfiltered adoration, swimming in the depths of their passion for each other.

Evan lies spent, held tight in a pile of technicolor fairfolk, feeling a devotion beyond words to Thekla Kamiyon and Kellax Falrak. He and Kell watch Thekla’s body droop as she falls asleep between them, and steal one last kiss from the day before they join her.

The next morning, the article comes out while Evan’s relaxing on the fire escape with an acoustic guitar, and his new life explodes.