Page 2 of Liars and Liaisons

I stare at the fire until it warps my vision, like a thick brush splashing bright orange paint across a clean canvas. Phantom sounds of merriment echo down the halls, roaring in my ears like wind-driven waves crashing against the rocky lakeshore outside, despite there being no party tonight.

My men are still burying the bodies from the last one.

A face appears in the flames, soft and flickering against the blurred color. Blue eyes and delicately carved cheeks, hollowing out as the mouth parts to release a scream.

Only it doesn’t come out sharp and brazen; the horror hides itself on lilted wooden notes, carrying across the dim, sunken room like actual music.

Gorgeous, heavenly tones I once would have killed to hear. A melody I would die to reproduce.

Nausea tightens my stomach, indicating just how much has shifted.

The piano’s keys ignite beneath my fingertips, scorching the pads with their wrath. I slide my hands back, folding them in my lap, even as my ears beg to be covered. Beg me to end the incessant tune as it crescendos, carving a path in my bones and sluicing through my bloodstream.

“No.” My reply is short, released on a single breath. It’s more than either brother deserves.

I can feel them exchange glances. Perhaps they’re even considering getting our parents involved, as if my mother would step foot in the Arcadian Woods without being dragged here by her ankles.

As if our father wouldn’t bury me outside the property lines if he thought he could get away with it. He tried when I was younger. Back when he thought beating submission was easier than earning it and that music would pour out of me if I hurt bad enough.

He wasn’t wrong. I have the deep, scarred grooves crisscrossing the planes of my back and the Academy Award to prove it.

The face in the flames sputters, her song dropping abruptly with my answer. An ember snuffed out in imagination, just as surely as it was in reality.

Nathaniel clears his throat, and I hear him shuffle closer. Likely under the impression that our bond from childhood—born primarily from forced proximity and not because we enjoyed each other’s company—might sway me to open up. Or at least acquiesce my presence in the estate in favor of accompanying them.

“You can’t…” he begins, trailing off, as if searching for a particular word. Something to draw me from the spell of the woods. “You’ll drive yourself mad here.”

“Or die trying,” Harrison adds.

“Your sabbatical is over. The university wants you to return, and I’ve set up a room for you in my pool house. Come home, brother.” Nathaniel enters my peripheral vision, his dark hair slicked back with a pomade and his face clean-shaven.

I watch—as if observing outside my body—as he reaches out, clamping a hand down on my shoulder. My eyes track the movement, then slide lower to note the ink smudged along the sleeve of my white button-down shirt. If I glanced at the torso, I’m certain the rest of the fabric would be similarly covered, boring the evidence of frustrated nights spent scouring sheets of music, editing scores, and still coming up empty.

I, Grayson Phillip James, am unable to produceanything.Unable to make sense of the compositions I’ve created or those passed down over the years from family. Even my textbooks—their words once second nature to me at the front of an auditorium—don’t compute any longer.

All I hear is that blasted wooden melody.

Like chimes, cluttering the creative space I spent three decades hollowing out in my mind.

“You have to move on,” Nathaniel says, though his voice lacks any real conviction.

He doesn’t care if I stay here and rot. Not really.

Only if I try to drag him down with me. A James through and through.

They’re right to worry though. Iwoulddrag him and the rest of them down.

Will.

Happily.

“Perhaps this is my version of moving on,” I drone. “Perhaps I’m no longer interested in teaching or returning to civilization.”

Harrison takes a step forward, tapping his fingers on the rim of the piano. “Sydney wouldn’t want—”

A burst of ominous noise cuts him off, and it takes a moment for me to realize my fist was the culprit. It slammed into the ivory keys, drowning out whatever bullshit he was about to spew.

How dare he deign to pretend he knows anything abouther.

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