“Oh, cool,” Pearl said softly, her smile growing. She was staring down at the floor. “That’s great.”

The elevator came, and when they stepped on, I did too, wanting a few more seconds with Minerva. “I’ll come down with you guys, if you don’t mind, and then ride back up.”

“We don’t mind,” Minerva said.

It was quiet in the big freight elevator, the walls padded with movers’ blankets to protect them from the ravages of dollies, amps, and drums.

I cleared my throat. “Listen, Pearl, I’ve been kind of a dickhead.”

“About what?” Pearl said, and Min’s eyebrows rose behind dark glasses.

“About everything; about you. But this band is finally coming together, and I feel kind of stupid about the way I’ve been acting. So… I’m okay now.”

“Hey, Moz. It’s my fault too.” Pearl turned to me, her face a little pink, almost blushing. “I know I can be sort of bossy.”

“She’s got a point there,” Minerva said.

I laughed. “Nah. You just know what you’re doing.” I shrugged. “So me and Zahler should come over tomorrow? Get some new tunes worked up before next Sunday?”

Pearl nodded, still grinning. “Perfect.”

“You coming?” I asked Minerva. “I mean, you’re the singer and everything.” I pointed at the notebooks she still clutched to her chest.

“Um, probably not,” Pearl said. “She’s kind of—”

“It’s very intensive Spanish,” Minerva said.

“Oh. Sure.”

The elevator doors opened, and we stepped out into the lobby, Pearl still pulling Minerva along. A couple of guys were rolling a dolly full of turntable decks into the building, negotiating the bump between stairway ramp and marble floor with extreme care.

Pearl stepped up to the front desk, pulling out a credit card and talking to the guy about next week.

Minerva turned to me and said softly, “See you next week.”

I nodded, swallowing, suddenly glad she was wearing those dark glasses. I wondered how many fewer stupid things I’d have said in my life if all pretty girls wore them. “I’ll totally be there.”

Okay, maybe not that many.

But Minerva just laughed and reached out with the hand Pearl wasn’t holding. Hot as a freshly blown-out match, her fingertip traced my arm from wrist to elbow. Between her parted lips, I could see teeth sliding from left to right against each other, and then she mouthed a silent word.

Yummy.

She turned away from my shiver, back to Pearl just as she finished up and flicked open her phone.

“Elvis? We’re ready.” Pearl snapped the phone shut and looked at me. “See you guys tomorrow. Call me?”

“Yeah. I’ll tell Zahler.” My breath was short, the line Minerva had traced along my arm still burning. “See you.”

They waved, and I watched them walk through the door and out, then make their way toward a huge gray limo—a limo? — that slid into view. Minerva’s mouthed word still echoed in my head, so unexpected, more like a daydream than something that had actually happened. My brain couldn’t get hold of it, like a guitar lick I could hear but that my fingers couldn’t grasp.

But she turned back toward me just before she ducked into the car and stuck her tongue out. Then her smile flashed, wicked and electric.

The limo slid away.

I swallowed, turned, and ran back to catch the elevator’s closing doors. The guys with turntables were piled inside, leaving just enough space for me to squeeze in. As we rode up, I was rocking on the balls of my feet, humming one of the strange fragments Minerva had left in my brain, bouncing off the blanketed wall behind me.

I glanced over at the two guys and noticed they were watching my little dance.

“Fresh tunes?” one said, grinning.

“Yeah, very.” I licked my lips, tasting salt there. “Things are going great.”

PART III

REHEARSALS

The Black Death had a distant twin.

At the same time the Plague of Justinian was raging across the Roman world, a great empire in South America, that of the Nazca, was also disappearing. The Nazca temples were suddenly abandoned, their cities emptied of life. Historians have no clue why this vast and sophisticated culture, thousands of miles away from plague-ridden Rome, vanished at exactly the same historical moment.

Most people haven’t heard of the Nazca, after all. That’s how thoroughly they disappeared.

It wasn’t until the 1920s that the outside world discovered their greatest legacy. Airplanes flying over the arid mountaintops of Peru spotted huge drawings scratched into the earth. Covering four hundred square miles were pictures of many-legged creatures, vast spiders, and strange human figures. Archaeologists don’t know what these drawings mean. Are they images of the gods? Or of demons? Do they tell a story?

Actually, they’re a warning.

It is often noticed how they were built to last, cut into mountaintops where rain hardly ever falls and where there’s almost zero erosion. Amazingly, they’re still clearly visible after fifteen hundred years. Whatever they’re trying to say, the message is designed to last across the centuries.

Maybe the time to read them is now.

NIGHT MAYOR TAPES:

282–287

13. MISSING PERSONS

— PEARL-

The halls of Juilliard seemed wrong on that first day back to school.

This was my fourth year here, so the place was pretty familiar by now. But things always felt strange when I returned from summer break, as if the colors had changed slightly while I was gone. Or maybe I’d grown some fraction of an inch over the last three months, shifting everything imperceptibly out of scale.

Today I couldn’t get used to how empty the hallways felt. Of course, it made sense. All my friends in Nervous System (or ex-friends, really, thanks to Minerva’s meltdown) had graduated last year, leaving the school full of acquaintances and strangers. That was what I got for hanging out with so many seniors when I was a junior.

I picked up my schedule from the front office and checked over the signs saying which classes and ensembles had been canceled due to lack of interest. No baroque instruments class this year. No jazz improv group. No chamber choir?

That was kind of lateral.

But all my planned classes were still scheduled. They made you take four years of composition and theory, after all, and my morning was full of required academics: English, trig, and the inescapable advanced biology.

So it wasn’t until lunch that I began to see how much had really changed.

The cafeteria was the biggest room at school. It doubled as a concert hall, because even fancy private schools like Juilliard couldn’t take up infinite space in the middle of Manhattan. My third-period AP bio class was just next door, prime real estate for getting to the front of the food line. Walking in ten seconds after the lunch bell, I was happy to see all the vacant tables. The familiar floury smell of macaroni and cheese à la Juilliard, one of the nonfeculent dishes here, made me smile.

Even if the System was gone, it was good to be back.

I got a trayful and looked around for anyone I could sit with, especially someone with useful musical skills. Moz and I might want to bring in backup musicians one day.

It only took a few seconds to spot Ellen Bromowitz all alone in the corner. She was in my year and a fawesome cellist, first chair in the orchestra. We’d been temporary best friends in our early freshman days, back when neither of us knew anyone else.

I took a seat across from her. Cellos could be cool, even if Ellen sort of wasn’t. Besides, there was hardly anyone else there.