The Last Days

Chapter 16

"You're bringing your cat," he said flatly, staring at Moz.
"And Mozzy too!" I said.
"Yes, I see that." Astor Michaels sighed tiredly. "Hello, Moz."
"What's going on here?" Moz said, sounding all manly and jealous, which made me giggle.
But then Daddy yelled something, and we all got in the limo, dragging the suitcases in behind us instead of opening the trunk. The driver put the car into gear and whisked us away.
I waved to Daddy out the back window.
"We're going to our new place, Moz," I explained. "You should come stay there with me."
"Um..." Astor Michaels said.
"I can't go home," Mozzy said, staring out at midnight Brooklyn rushing past. "I saw this thing down in the subway, and the angels caught me. They almost took me away, like Luz always says."
"Angels?" I asked. For the first time, I noticed how shaky Moz was. He was pale with shock, twitching and sweating like he'd seen something much worse than my door exploding.
"It's real, Min," he said softly. "The struggle's real."
I wrapped my arms around him. "Don't worry, Mozzy. We'll take you someplace safe."
"By all means," Astor Michaels said. "Must keep the talent happy."
22. CROWDED HOUSE
-  PEARL-
The morning after the Morgan's Army gig, my phone rang - Astor Michaels calling.
"You gave me a hangover," I answered, still feeling all the glasses of champagne he'd brought me. Mom gave me a stern look across the breakfast table, but I ignored her. Stupid champagne genes.
Astor Michaels laughed at me from the other end. "Well, at least we have something to celebrate. They're finally ready."
I squinted in the sunlight streaming into the dining room. "The contracts?"
"In my hand."
"Your lawyer works on Saturday morning?"
"They were ready yesterday."
Mom was pretending not to listen, but I tried not to swear too loud. Everyone had been nine kinds of bugging me to get the negotiations over with, like the delay was all my fault. "And you didn't mention this last night why?"
"I had a very busy evening in front of me."
"Oh. Your mysterious errand." He'd left me and Alana Ray at the club before the gig had ended, smiling like he had a dirty secret.
"And after that, things got even busier." Astor Michaels sighed tiredly. "If you meet me downtown in two hours, I'll explain everything."
"Explain whatever you want," I said. "Just bring the contracts."
"Contracts?" my mother said the moment I hung up. "Does this mean you're really going through with all this?"
I looked down at my hands, which were quivering a little - half hangover, half excitement. "Yeah, I really am."
She looked out the window. "Why we wasted all that money on school, I don't know, if you were just going to do something like this."
"Juilliard wasn't a waste, Mom. Not hardly. But it's... over."
She looked at me, trying to muster up a look of disbelief, but she knew I was right. Fewer students showed up for classes every day, and those that were still around were all planning some kind of escape from the city. Ellen Bromowitz had called it exactly right: one week ago, the senior orchestra had been officially put on hold for the rest of the year. The infrastructure was already failing.
"Plus," I said, "this is my lifelong dream and everything."
"Lifelong? You're only seventeen, darling."
I looked up at her, about to reply with some snark, but her eyes had turned shiny in the sunlight. Suddenly I saw something I'd never even imagined before: my indestructible mother looking fragile, as if she really was worried about the future.
I wondered if her friends were all doing the same as mine - heading to Switzerland, leaving the city behind. What if no one bothered anymore to raise money for museums and dance companies and orchestras? What if all the parties she lived for had no more reason to exist and simply stopped happening, leaving all her diamonds and black cocktail dresses useless?
Mom needed her infrastructure too, I suddenly realized, and she was watching it crumble away.
So all I said was, "Seventeen years is a long time, Mom. I just hope this isn't too late."
I called Moz's house right away to tell him to come along. The two of us had started the band, after all. This was our moment of success.
His mother hadn't seen him that morning. She wasn't sure if he'd come home the night before and didn't sound very happy about it. Maybe sometimes in the past Moz hadn't made it home on Friday nights, she kept saying, but the way things were these days, he really should know better...
I hung up a little worried, hoping Moz wasn't going to go all lateral on me. Except for Alana Ray and almost-eighteen Min, all our parents had to countersign the Red Rat contracts. With our first gig only six days away, now was not the time to pick a fight.
I called Zahler's house next, but there was no answer, and my brain started to spin with every imaginable reason the two of them might have gone missing. The police were investigating a lot of disappearances lately, especially underground; there was talk of shutting the trains down altogether. But Moz and Zahler wouldn't be stupid enough to go down into the subway, would they?
Not now, when we were this close...
Astor Michaels had given me the address of a huge block of apartments on Thirteenth Street. I got there right on time and found him waiting in the lobby, an alligator-skin briefcase clutched under one arm.
"Shall we go on up?" he said.
"You live here?" I frowned. The lobby carpet was a bit threadbare in spots, and two security guards sat in reclining chairs behind the doorman, eyeing us carefully, shotguns across their laps.
"Heavens, no. Red Rat owns a few apartments here. I thought you might want to see one."
I didn't know what he meant by that, but I looked at his briefcase. "Whatever."
The elevators were the old-fashioned kind, zoo cages on cables. An ancient guy in uniform slid the door closed after we stepped in, then wrenched a huge lever to one side. The machine began to rise, the floors passing just through the bars. My hangover started to grumble about the three cups of coffee I'd had.
Astor Michaels turned to me, clutching his briefcase a little tighter. "Pearl, I've been doing this since the New Sound was really new."
"That's why I tracked you down."
"And I've signed fifteen bands in that time. But yours has something special. You know that, right?"
As I watched the floors slide past, I let myself smile, remembering how thrilled I'd been to find Moz and Zahler. "We've got heart, I guess."
"That heart is Minerva, Pearl. She is what makes you special."
We came to a stomach-jerking halt. I swallowed, my heart beating harder, wondering where Astor Michaels was going with this. Did he not want to sign the rest of us? Was he trying to make me jealous of Min?
The elevator man was nudging his lever one way and then the other, bouncing us up and down to align our feet with the red-carpeted floor on the other side of the bars. I tried to remember how many glasses of champagne Astor Michaels had bought me last night.
"I know Minerva is special," I said carefully. "I grew up with her."
"Indeed."
Finally the elevator lurched and bumped its way to a halt, and we stepped off into a long hallway. The cage rattled shut and slipped away.
Astor Michaels just stood there. "Of my fifteen bands, Pearl, eleven have self-destructed so far."
I nodded. That was pretty famous, how Red Rat bands tended to explode. "All part of the New Sound, I guess."
"And why do you suppose that is?"
"Uh, I don't know. Drugs?"
He shook his head. "That's what we usually tell the press. But it's rarely true."
I narrowed my eyes. "You mean, you cover up the truth by saying it was drugs? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"
"Generally. But certain things are worse than drugs." He shivered. "Late last night, Toxoplasma had something of a meltdown. Right after their very first gig too. Those boys never really got along, you know."
I saw a line of sweat roll down his forehead. It was the first time I'd ever seen Astor Michaels looking discomposed.
"What happened?"
"Who knows, exactly? It was all very stressful. And expensive to clean up." He looked down at his free hand, picking under the fingernails with his thumb. "And messy."
"They broke up?"
"Not exactly." He didn't smile. "As you say, that's always been the problem with the New Sound. Toxoplasma had heart, but they only lasted a single gig. One gig!" He let out a long sigh. "Morgan's Army may last forever, but of course they're not the real thing."
"Hey, maybe they weren't perfect last night, but I thought they played a great set. What do you mean, 'not real'?"
Astor Michaels glanced up and down the empty hall. "I'll tell you inside."
He turned and walked away, and as I followed, my stomach started to roil again. My knees felt shaky, as if someone was adjusting the exact height of the floor beneath me. What were we doing here?
Reaching an apartment door, he rapped on it twice sharply, then waited a moment. "Don't want to disturb the tenants, but I think they're out."
"Whose place is this?"
He pulled out a key, opened the door.
Zombie was waiting just inside.
"I could always see them," Astor Michaels began. "Even before it happened to me."
I was staring at the couch, where half of Min's clothes were draped: black dresses and shawls and stockings strewn across the room. Two open suitcases lay on the floor.
My stomach twisted again. Minerva lived here now. Astor Michaels had installed her here, his special girl.
"They were coming to the clubs, leaking sex out of their eyeballs, only a few of them at first. But once they got onstage..." He shook his head. "They're natural stars, charismatic as hell. Except for that one little problem."
"They're bug-ass crazy?" I said harshly, looking at the dresser - the old pink jewelry box I'd bought Min when she was twelve was splayed open, full of shiny things.
"Crazy? I work for a record company, Pearl. Crazy I could deal with." He leaned forward. "But they're bloody cannibals."
I looked up into his eyes. Had he just said cannibals?
But then I remembered how Min had hospitalized one of her doctors in the days before Luz. I thought of all the raw meat she ate, the way her teeth grew sharper every day.
Almost as sharp as Astor Michaels's.
There in the darkened apartment, something cold crawled down my spine. "Why did you bring me here?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then let out a snort. "Please, I never even tried it, not once. I'm different than the rest of them." His eyes twitched; he still looked nervous. "Sane. And I wouldn't hurt you for the world, my dear little Pearl. You've done me such a huge favor."
"A favor?"
"For the last two years, I've been looking for someone like me - someone who's infected but immune to the hunger. A singer who can get onstage and take the New Sound to the world without..." He looked down at his fingernails again, then shrugged. "Quite so much cannibalism."
I wondered again what exactly had happened with Toxoplasma the night before. Probably nothing a rehab clinic could fix.
"That's why I was so thrilled when you brought me Minerva," Astor Michaels said. "She's real, don't you see? Not a mimic, like Abril Johnson. But not like those lost boys in Toxoplasma either." Zombie jumped onto his lap, and he stroked the cat's head. "She's immune to the hunger."
"I wouldn't go that far," I said, looking at the clothes strewn around the room. "She had it pretty bad there for a while."
"Then somehow you've kept her together, Pearl."
"But it wasn't me. Her parents hired this... esoterica. Someone who knew what to do for her." I looked around the apartment, wondering how Min was going to get what she needed now. How long would she last without Luz's medicines?
"Well, if someone's figured out how to cure this thing, we really do need to move fast. Won't be long before they bottle it and everyone's a rock star." He shivered. "What a disaster."
I looked at his hands, with their long, sharp, manicured nails. "And it never made you..."
"Crazy? A cannibal?" He shook his head. "Just hungry for raw meat sometimes. And horny, always."
"Horny?" My skin was crawling now.
"Of course." He giggled. "That's how it spreads, you know. It's nothing but a disease, Pearl. Just some new bug in the water. And as far as I can tell, it's sexually transmitted. It makes you want to spread it."
I closed my eyes. So Luz had been right about boys. What else was she right about? I wondered where her angels were, now that I needed them...
Then I remembered that Mark had cracked up too. Had he given it to her? Or vice versa? One of them had to have been cheating...
Zombie jumped up onto my lap, and I opened my eyes.
Astor Michaels was still talking. "I've been shagging wannabe singers for two years now, trying to find someone who could keep it together after the charisma set in, and every single one went nuts. Fifteen bands, Pearl. And finally you bring me a rock star already made!" He leaned back, rubbing his palms across Min's dresses and sighing. "After all my labors."
I sat there, stroking Zombie, trying not to scream as what he'd just said sank in. Astor Michaels had intentionally spread this disease; he'd been making more casualties like Minerva, broken people stuck in attics by their families, or lying huddled on the street, on subway platforms...
We were in business with a monster. The New Sound was the music of monsters.
I took a deep breath, reminding myself about the contracts. This didn't have to change anything. Artists had been bat-shit crazy before; it was what you did with your insanity that mattered. We were still a good band, a great band even, even if our whole style of music was based on... a disease.
As long as we were the Taj Mahal of cannibal bands, maybe it wasn't so bad.
"Okay," I said.
It wasn't really, but sometimes saying that word helps.
Astor Michaels smiled. "So we're in this together, right, Pearl? We have to keep Min healthy, so that all our hard work - yours and mine - finally pays off. Even if she does something that makes you really, really angry. Okay?"
I looked at him through narrowed eyes. "Like what?"
"You know, something she's not necessarily... in control of." He shrugged. "The disease makes people crazy, violent, and especially horny. Sometimes even I can't control myself."
"Doesn't sound like you've been trying that hard."
He smiled, revealing his razor teeth to the gums. "A small price to pay for art."
Zombie's ear perked up, and he jumped from my lap and ran to the door. A second later came the jingling of keys outside.
"Ah. They're home," Astor Michaels said, eyes twitching. "Just remember, we all want this band to be a success. So don't get mad at poor Min. I've seen the change happen with my own eyes, and she's been through more than you can imagine. So be nice, all right?"
I nodded, but my head was spinning again.
They're home, he'd said.
They.
The door opened, and Minerva breezed in. Moz followed behind, carrying a threadbare duffel bag.
"Mozzy! Look who's here!" Min cried, beaming all the wattage of her fawesome beauty at me, her cannibal-rock-star charisma. Moz just stood there staring, looking a little surprised, a lot guilty.
With a twist in my stomach, I remembered his mother's anxious voice on the phone that morning.
He took a slow breath, then shrugged the duffel bag from his shoulder. It thumped to the floor like a dead body - stuffed full.
He was moving in.