Page 97 of The Music Demon

First, she looked at him like he was right and truly insane. Then she looked at the guitar and laughed. “Can demons get concussions? Maybe your brain was sloshed about in the storm.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “Just.” He motioned toward the guitar. “Just try.”

Feeling sillier than silly, she took the smooth polished neck in her left hand and was beyond surprised that it felt familiar. Like muscle memory. After lifting the body into her lap, she decided to relax and do as Lyric said. After all, at that point, calling anything crazy would be, well, crazy.

She let the fingers of her left hand glide up and down the fret board and found that it didn’t feel as unfamiliar as she would have expected. They came to rest on the shape of a chord as the fingers of her right hand tried the feel of a single strum.

No one could’ve been as surprised as Shivaun.

“Well,” Lyric said, “you’ve been holding out on me. You’re a musician.”

Shaking her head, she said, “No. I do no’ know how to play this thing, demon. What magic is afoot now?”

“That was an F chord. A significant challenge for beginners. And it gave you no trouble at all. I assure you that youdoknow how to play. Give me a song.”

She laughed again, but stopped short with the realization that, in her new reality, impossible things were commonplace.

“I’m no singer.”

“Do you know a song?”

“Aye.”

“I’ll not make fun of you, Shivaun. Play for me. Sing for me.”

With a deep breath, she shocked herself with a small test and found that, yes. Indeed she could play. When she began, she found that, at least to her own ears, her singing ability was greatly improved.

Oh. A wan cloud was drawn o’er the dim weeping dawn.

And to Shannon’s side I returned at last.

And the heart in the breast of the man I loved best

Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast!

While the doubts and fears of the long, aching years

Seemed mingling their voices with the moaning flood.

Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith,

My true love’s shadow lamenting stood.

But the sudden sun kissed the cold cruel mist

Into the dancing showers of diamond dew;

And the dark flowing stream laughed back to his beam,

And the lark soared singing aloft in the blue.

While no phantom of night but a form of delight

My arms outspread for my darling boy,

And the one I love best, on my wild throbbing breast

Hid his thousand treasures with a cry of joy.

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