The place seemed empty. Even without our boots on, the dull echo of our footsteps on the marble floor rippled throughout the house. Surprisingly, no valet came to help us take off our coats, so I had to do it myself. What a shame.

It was good to be inside, away from the rain and the cold. Jayda led me to a vast living room lined with French windows and a fireplace on the right wall. Incidentally, a grand piano took up most of the rest of the space.

I contemplated the thing a moment. I decided I didn’t like where this was going, so I turned around to leave. Jayda read my mind and held me back by the elbow.

“Tara didn’t want to say who the pianist was in the video,” she explained, “but there’s only one person in the world who can play like that.”

I waited for Jayda to tell me who that person was, until her meaningful glance made me realize the person she meant was me.

“I want you to play ‘Black Bird Memories,’” she ordered.

I tugged a bit, but Jayda wouldn’t let go. I glared at her without saying anything. Tara must have rubbed off on me.

“Try it. I’m testing something,” she insisted.

“Just mind your own business!”

“For the past two years, you’ve been telling me that you lost your ability to play. If that’s the case, how do you explain the video?”

Anger built up in her words. All pretense of pleasantness drained from her face. She let go of my arm. “Have you been lying to me?”

“No!”

“Prove it. I’ll know if you’re faking.”

Well, if Jayda wanted to hear the shittiest version of “Black Bird Memories” she’d ever heard, then who was I to refuse?

A panicky feeling took hold of me as I sat down and lifted the lid of the piano. As much as I wanted to prove a point, I still didn’t want to disappoint Jayda. My throat tightened. I pressed the keys, the melody rose in the room, but it was uninspired. It sounded like a completely different piece than the one I had played for Tara. It was arrogant to even call those two pieces by the same name. Once I got to the part where I had previously improvised, I was completely stumped and I let my hands slide down to my laps. Torture over.

Flat, lifeless, uninteresting.

Jayda stood behind me. She considered my performance silently.

“So, happy?”

I turned around a little to watch her reaction. Her face remained serious. She spoke to herself more than she spoke to me, “When we started out as The Black Claws, your playing was the most inhumanly beautiful thing I had ever heard.”

I snorted. Even though I knew she wrote the cheesiest lyrics, I didn’t think she’d started talking like that in real life.

“Will you play again for Tara?”

“No.”

“What if I told you I won’t do the music video with her unless you play for me?”

That would be cruel, but not my problem. “Jayda, why can’t you just let it go?”

“Because you can’t let it go.”

I was getting rattled and I tried to keep it inside.

“I think Tara is helping you somehow.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I spat. “I don’t need a human to help me out.”

Jayda was taken aback. She tended to forget the chasm that split freelancers and humans into two different worlds.

I wouldn’t admit that the reason I didn’t want to play for Tara again was that I thought I didn’t deserve to do so. Was it okay for me to try to regain what I had lost as penalty?

The quietness of the huge house became oppressive. Despite what the incessant gossip claimed about Jayda these days, she seemed to have no one important in her life at the moment.

“All right,” Jayda said. “Before you leave, can I ask you something?”

She would ask anyway. I let her go on even though I would have preferred her to shut up.

“Do you know of another freelancer working around here right now?”

I thought of my stalker. “Why?”

“After the incident last Saturday night, I started thinking about anything strange that might have happened before that. Nothing jumped to mind right away, but…”

She paused to gather her thoughts. Something weird was coming up. “I remembered a strange sensation I had during some of the rehearsals. It was like there was always this oboist whose name we couldn’t remember, or that extra technician… No one thought much of it, but it was very unsettling. Then, I remembered there was one spell you used a lot when you worked for me. The stealth spell, right?”

So, there was another freelancer working in the area now. Without saying as much, I probed Jayda’s thoughts about it. “You think a freelancer was at work?”

“I don’t know. I thought a musician may have hired one for their personal advancement. However, what if the freelancer was the one who caused the incident during the show?”

It might suggest that the freelancer’s job was specifically to target Jayda. I didn’t say so because I didn’t want to alarm her for nothing. Besides, a freelancer wouldn’t be allowed to hurt Jayda. “You want me to look into this?”

She smirked. “If it won’t be too expensive.”

I scoffed at the insinuation. I am nothing if not eager to oblige. “I’ll see what I can do.”

This time, Jayda didn’t try to stop me when I got up and walked to the front door.

“They say it’ll snow tomorrow,” she called.

“Yeah, so?”

“Will you visit the bridge?”

I paused while I was putting on my coat. Jayda came in the entrance to get dressed up as well. “I’ll give you a lift back home.”

It’s not like I needed it, but I wouldn’t say no.

***

I don’t think I would have cared so much about Jayda’s problems if I hadn’t seen a connection with my stalker. Did he know anything about this situation?

***

As Jayda predicted, a few quiet snowflakes fluttered down from the gray sky early the next morning. I didn’t really have a reason to visit the bridge; it was more like some kind of pull I felt.

I left the city on my motorcycle to accomplish my pilgrimage. Don’t go imagining me riding some stylish sport engine. My vehicle was just a notch above a noisy bicycle.

So, I drove on until I was well into the countryside. The city yielded to farmlands, and farmlands morphed into dense forests that swallowed up the winding road. Thick clouds filtered the sunlight into a stream of amber. The golden leaves in the trees seemed to glow with a light of their own. Everything was soft and dreamlike. Even the cold stopped biting.

The road eventually crossed a narrow dirt path. I hid my motorcycle among the trees and followed the path for a few minutes, until I reached a small bridge that arched over a river. A dull thud accompanied each of my footsteps on the wooden boards. I stopped in the middle and looked down into the stream.

Questions born on the day Odette disappeared reverberated in my mind: Could someone drown in the river? Was it possible she hit her head and was carried further down?

Had she done all this deliberately?

The snowfall got heavier. The distant mountains became nothing but an indistinct gray shroud enclosing this world. Nature was going to sleep.

I looked down the path, deeper into the forest. Among the sound of the breeze whistling through the leaves, I heard a crackling noise. Probably a bunch of squirrels, I thought, except the sound seemed to be getting nearer.

A shiver ran down my spine. It might be someone hiking. After all, I was on a path. Soon, a man emerged from the forest, covered up from head to toe in dark clothes. He had a long scarf wound around his neck that trailed in the wind.

Dammit, that guy again.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

I might have imagined things, but I got the impression by the way he stopped when he noticed me that he hadn’t meant to meet me here.

“Do you know Odette?” he asked.

Wait, what? Did he know her? It was hard to discern his intention through his monotonous voice.

“So, you do,” he concluded. “You really prey on the best ones.”

“Who are you?”

He moved toward me. I stopped him immediately. “Tell me who you are.”

“My name is Fidelio. I’m just like you… I mean, not like you, I’m much less successful than you are, but I’m also a freelancer.”

Good, I didn’t have to hold back in that case. “Tobias did warn me I might get in trouble with a freelancer.”

“Trouble? I guess Tobias is right. There’s been a lot of talk in the community.”

Community was that lofty name a clump of lowlife freelancers called themselves when they got together to gossip and figure out their next mischief.

“Look, if you want to tell me something, say it now.”

“I want to help you find Odette.”

Time stopped for a moment. What I understood, what Fidelio implied was that… Odette was still alive. I opened my mouth without being able to find the words.

A crow cawed loudly. Fidelio got startled and we both looked toward the origin of the sound. The bird perched on a high branch on a tree just behind me. I turned back to tell Fidelio he should calm down, but he had disappeared.

The dumbass couldn’t have gone far. I stepped toward the spot on which he’d stood two seconds ago, and then, the ground started shaking.