The next afternoon, I went to the opera house. The company was doing a stage rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet, and I thought I should have a look at how things went with Tara. Get a feel for what I was working with.

If you remember well, the first time I went to see Tara at the MBT, someone found me and asked me to leave. The second time, a few girls gave me weird looks. Well, this was over now. There were quite a few rules set by the Order that prevented me from using my powers as I wished. The main rule was that I couldn’t use my powers unless it was for a client. Well, now that Tara had officially become my client, I was allowed to use a “stealth spell,” thanks to which I would be able to walk around the opera house without anyone questioning my purpose there. I would be seen and heard, but no one would be able to tell that I was out of place.

Have you ever heard of “change blindness”? This is a phenomenon during which people fail to notice glaring changes happening in a scene, even though it is happening right in front of their eyes. The stealth spell worked a little like that. People would see me without noticing me.

***

I crossed the paved public square that led to the main entrance of the opera house with all the confidence of a veteran in my trade. The sudden opening of the massive wooden doors didn’t throw me off me in the least. That is, not until I saw who came out of them.

A tall woman wearing a long black coat with ridiculous feathery shoulder pads walked nonchalantly down the majestic granite stairway. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her eyes were obscured with sunglasses. I had reasons for not wanting to meet with this woman, other than our differences in styles.

It was too late to backtrack, so we inevitably crossed paths. I did my best to appear unperturbed, even as two sturdy bodyguards emerged from the opera house after her.

“Hey, Christine,” she called out.

I pretended I had just noticed her and was struggling to put a name on her face. “Oh, right. Hey, Jayda. How’s everything?”

She then started talking to me as though we were some old acquaintances who hadn’t met in years. Which, I guess, we were. Jayda and I, along with one other girl, used to play together in a band called The Black Claws. We’d been doing pretty well until our disbandment two years earlier.

“Well, did you see the ads?” she asked.

Of course, I’d seen the ads. They’d been plastered all over the city for the past six months. I just didn’t feel like talking about them at the moment. “I haven’t. You have something coming up?”

She smirked at my lie. “I’m giving a show in the concert hall. I just passed by to have a look. It’s already sold out, but there’ll always be a place for you if you want to come. As a token of my gratitude.”

On top of being an old fellow musician, Jayda was also a former client. Helping her solo career take off was one of my greatest successes, and my last contract before I went on hiatus.

I declined her offer, “Thanks, but I already got everything I wanted from you.”

She lifted her sunglasses. The right eye was steel gray. The left one was clouded over, unseeing. “Well, thank god.”

She let the glasses fall back on the bridge of her nose. I proceeded to walk past her and her two bodyguards, up to the entrance.

I brushed off this encounter for the time being. When I say “brushed off,” I really mean that I obsessed about it for the rest of the afternoon. What a nice start. Someone had already seen through my stealth spell. I guess Jayda would, since she was used to my methods. Let’s hope I wasn’t too rusty though.

***

The dancers of the MBT were hard at work in the W. P. Theatre. I chose a seat around the middle of the parterre to observe the rehearsal. A group of six female dancers were currently on stage; among them was Tara. I knew the whole thing was supposed to be joyful, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell just by looking at her. It was like she could perform the hardest steps to perfection, yet smiling was still too difficult.

The rehearsal felt like it would never end. When at last they were done, I went up on the stage and caught Tara before she left with all the others. My tap on her shoulder elicited a high-pitched yip on her part.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“I’m working.”

People around us moved on as though nothing was the matter. Tara stared at them nervously as they gradually left the theatre. She was probably afraid that one of them would turn around and ask what the hell I was doing here. However, it was more likely that they might wonder why she stood there fidgeting like she was hiding a dead body in her duffel bag.

Once everything became quiet, I said, “Let’s have a look at something.”

I spotted an upright piano in the left wing and carefully wheeled it closer to the side of the stage, along with its stool. Tara stood there, wondering what this was all about.

“I watched you for a bit and I thought it was the most boring thing in the world.”

A twitch in her arm suggested she was this close to slapping me in the face. “Can you avoid being rude?”

She had a point. “Of course, sorry. What I meant is that you should be more expressive if you want a principal role. No one will pay to see a dancer who looks like she doesn’t want to be there.”

“You think no one’s ever told me this before? I don’t need you as a private teacher.”

“If you know the problem, why didn’t you correct it?”

“It’s not that easy!”

“Exactly, and that’s why you need me.”

I looked down at the keys of the piano and faltered. My plan was to play something while she danced and worked on her problems, but I realized that if my own playing was expressionless, it wouldn’t help her much.

“Do you have something that can help me?” She’d softened up a little. Maybe she thought I was already getting fed up with her.

I cleared my throat. “If you were a tier B client, I might give you some item with a charming spell in it. For a tier A…”

I had the feeling I didn’t have Tara’s undivided attention. She scrolled through something on her phone and looked back at me once she seemed to have found what she wanted. She waited for me to finish my sentence, and I insisted for her to move on with what she meant to say. I mean, my dissertation on tier A and B spells didn’t really matter.

“Can you help me with this?” she said, holding out her phone to show me an Instagram video. “I posted this last week, but I didn’t get a good reaction. It’s a clip from a solo I made for myself.”

The video showed her dancing alone in a studio. Technically, there was nothing wrong with Tara, there were even some interesting moments. Like all the rest, however, it felt boring and artificial.

Something caught my attention. “That song… it’s ‘Black Bird Memories.’”

“You know it?”

“Black Bird Memories” was actually a song I had composed while I was still in The Black Claws. It had never become very popular, but it always remained dear to me. I felt weird knowing that Tara liked this song in particular.

“I wanted a piano version, but I couldn’t find any,” Tara said. Was that a request?

I sat down and pressed a few keys to remind myself of the melody. A heavy emotion took hold of me.

“You think you can play it?”

I shrugged without much conviction. We would see. I kind of wanted to give it a try. Tara went to the center of the stage and started moving as I played the first chords.

The choreography was contemporary. It really suited her. She had such a perfect control, and yet a perfect sense of release. Maybe classical ballet wasn’t her thing, but then she was so good at it too.

I maintained a tempo that was slower than the original. “Black Bird Memories” was already a sad song, and I tried to stretch it out a little, to give it more intensity, so that Tara could really feel it. Then, if I added some runs with the left hand…

Tara had such breathtaking leaps and turns that made time stand still. I wasn’t sure whether she was the one following the music, or whether I was the one following her. Before I knew it, I was improvising on the theme and she didn’t seem thrown off in the least.

I had been scared to play and be disappointed in myself, yet again. I soon forgot about my fear; I hadn’t felt so inspired to play in a long time. I even thought I wanted to compose a new piece just for Tara.

A lump formed in my throat as I finished with an arpeggio. She looked at me as the last note resounded throughout the theatre. We remained still a moment. Had she felt it too?