Page 103 of The Music Demon

With the garage door back in place, Lyric dropped the top and rolled down the windows. As they backed out of the driveway he switched on the AM radio. The local station was playing a new song by The Doors; ‘Moonlight Drive’.

With a quiet laugh from deep in her throat, she said, “You’ve taken control of the radio station, too?”

He shook his head. “No. That one’s just coincidence.”

Shivaun had to admit that negotiating the curves of Big Sur on a moonlit night in a twenty-foot-long convertible was a pleasure like no other. And she couldn’t imagine doing it with someone other than Lyric.

Lyric tried to concentrate on staying fully present in the moment and enjoying the night, the drive, the nearness and the intoxicating scent of the female. He appreciated the look of her hair blowing in the wind. She put her arm out to enjoy the sensation of air rushing past. And Lyric reveled in the fact that her happiness was a living thing; perfect, pink, and rounded like an oval. At least that was Lyric’s experience of the moment.

Still, his mind kept drifting back to the face he’d seen staring at them from the other side of the stage. He couldn’t shake the notion that he’d seen that face before. But he told himself that life as long as his was bound to encounter similar faces. There was a cap on everything. Even uniqueness.

But then he remembered Shivaun’s words from a few days before.A strange person staring from across the street.

“You think Doo’s goin’ to get everythin’ he wants?” she asked.

“He’s setting himself up for a chance at it.”

She laughed. “No.Youset him up.”

“I put him in the right place at the right time and covered his necessities. The rest is up to him.”

“Well,” she said, “I think he’s goin’ to get everythin’ he wants and ‘twill all be ‘cause of you.”

“Don’t be thinking it’s about anything but the music. I’m compelled to serve the music. Nothing more.”

She sneezed. “Need I say more?”

Lyric was caught off guard by the suggestion he was lying. He hadn’t intended to, hadn’t thought he was, but he was new to checking in with feelings. Looking over at Shivaun, he was momentarily arrested by the way her eyes sparkled at night.

“You try to make something of me that I’m not.” With a flash of insight, he thought there might be the kernel of opportunity in her starry-eyed, girlish insistence that he was the sort who was misguided by morals. “But if you think so much of me, why won’t you accept me as mate?”

“Why the hurry? If we’re goin’ to live forever, basically, we can take our time.”

“If we’re meant to be, which I believe we are, why wait?”

Shivaun’s internal lie detection sent off a warning. Not that what he’d said was an outright lie, but that something in his tone suggested a shading of the truth. There was something he was being careful tonotsay.

“Demon. Pull this giant automobile off the road right now and tell me what you’re hidin’.”

“I’m not…”

He’d begun to speak the protest forming in his mind, but realized it was useless to try to fool another demon with truth sensitivity. With a deep sigh he momentarily looked away from Shivaun, out the driver’s side of the car. When he turned back he pointed, directing her attention to a road sign. The headlights were bright enough to allow even humans to read ‘SCENIC LOOKOUT JUST AHEAD’.

After two minutes of uncomfortable silence, they pulled onto a small, but level graveled space with a few giant boulders around the edges. Lyric cut the engine.

Shivaun got out, shoved the heavy car door closed, and walked over to the cliff’s edge. It felt like there was nothing in the universe but the two of them, a vintage icon of America’s mid-twentieth century love affair with cars, and the crashing of waves against rocks far below. The half moon hovered above a shelf of fog that looked out of place, but illumination fought through the mist and created an otherworldly scene where filtered moonlight met ocean calm just beyond the breaks.

“What would happen to me if I fell?” she asked. “Would I just float to earth as we did after the storm?”

Lyric hadn’t been expecting the first thing out of her mouth to be about a subject unrelated to timely mating.

“You mean would you cease to exist?”

“Aye. ‘Tis what I mean.”

The fact that he didn’t answer immediately was disquieting. It could mean that he didn’t know or that he didn’t want to say or that he was trying to find a way to shave the truth.

Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. The fact that you aren’t a natural-born demon is a wild card. I think you’d survive. But please. Let’s don’t test the theory.”