He missed the carpool for Friday’s party, a college-town rager, hosted by one of the rowdiest guys he knew. When his friends returned the following evening, Peter was itching to wring every bit of action from the weekend that possibly remained. He figured there would be coaxing involved to drag the three twenty-somethings, nursing scrambled heads and stomachs, into the bowels of Chicago, but the moaning and lethargy that met every suggestion (from a glass of bourbon to a lousy board game) were downright obscene. By 11 p.m. his friends lay across the basement, wilted like week-old grocery store daisies.

Peter slammed the apartment door on his way out and stomped to his hatchback. From his pocket, he fished his only remaining lifeline: the internet. He wasn’t just out to get drunk; pain piling steadily against his inhibitions for three weeks deserved a door. The terms he gave Google to work with were “cheap bar open mic.”

From the street, "The Slice is Right" promised a balance between affordable and sanitary. The mic was karaoke, backed by a five-piece band of weekend warriors, spanning a range of ages and nationalities seen only in healthcare commercials. Peter accepted a mildly sticky chair at the edge of the bar, about ten feet too close to the speakers.

He ordered off the summer draft menu; a dark and curvy. Peter wanted to smirk when it occurred to him his beer choice was the antithesis of Kara. He almost did, but he'd been thinking about her constantly, and a pathetic dig like that just made it worse. The beer arrived, opaque and creamy, along with another sad idea – it could be the most head he'd gotten in a year.

People said he and the ex didn't quite click, but Peter wondered if anyone ever heard a judgement like that and actually acted on it. Something like telling a man to get insurance while you're standing on his lawn, watching his house burn. Maybe there were times he hadn't felt he could be himself around Kara – like it was wrong to be – but compromise was the heart of relationships. Doubt was just room to grow.

The first singer picked the type of song the band could pull off with their eyes closed and their fingers broken. Not because it was simple – it was – but because if they did this every week, they played it enough to hate it. A hatred that spilled over to this chubby sports fan, who couldn’t possibly be as drunk as his tortured screams suggested. A minute into the song, Peter noticed his opinion of the performance had crept onto his face, which hurt. The man's friends, meanwhile, blared like weather sirens during every chorus, swaying with their arms interlocked, sloshing beer on each other. Peter left the bunch to have their moment, seeking solace behind a heavy bathroom door.

The restroom walls were papered with a map of Chicago’s streets, stretching all the way across the ceiling. Depending on the stall you picked, you’d be doing your business in Lakeview, Lincoln Park, or Old Town. Peter picked a urinal in the Loop. Washing his hands afterward, he was excited to send Kara a photo of the crapper cartography – until he remembered that, as of 19 days ago, that sort of thing wasn't allowed. Even if for the last few weeks (months, if he was honest) it would be met with “that’s cool.” At best.

Affectionate habits were now little doses of melancholy, like when he glanced at his phone for daily messages that never came. Or threw his backpack in the back seat of his car, because the passenger seat would always belong to her. Things with Kara had ended with annoying fairness and courtesy, so Peter had no excuse for pettiness. But maybe she was enduring the same nostalgic bombardment. Trying to justify the prospect of a better future against a past that felt like home. Making her more human wasn’t helping. She was, though, and it terrified him.

A new bathroom occupant saved Peter from further thought – he ducked out the door before it could close. On stage now was a tall, round girl, whose breathy whispers and hunched posture felt like an apology for borrowing everyone's oxygen. The MC kept smiling at her, waving his arms gently upward, but only a few shaky lyrics managed to peek through the guitars, during interludes and pauses. The girl didn’t do anything about the hair falling into her face, and her eyes hadn’t left the floor once. When the music stopped, Peter made sure to clap loudly. He knew that feeling.

Before finding his sticky chair, he signed up to sing. The roster was modest, killing Peter’s top two choices; his favorite band was an option, but the only track listed was their most famous, accessible hit. There were a dozen volunteers ahead of him, so he worried less about the slower, quieter nature of his eventual selection. By his turn, the night would be winding down.

Most of the performers fell between college and a first mortgage. They went up, maybe in pairs, became blips on social media, then left for a better place to drink, trailing threads of the audience. Solo acts, who punctuated the youth, formed a mismatched table near the door. Each held the title of regular, but practice hadn't quite made perfect. Peter wasn't really paying attention anymore when the fourth-to-last name was called. The MC sounded excited, but that was his job, and he was building up a squat, sweater-clad fellow, whose hair was thinning at the rate of the crowd from which he materialized.

The newcomer unholstered the mic and rolled his shoulders, accepting a fist-bump from the guitarist. With four taps of his sticks, the drummer counted everyone in. Guitars growled with an extended C-chord, then a second, during which the keyboard trickled in. On the third, it was the vocalist’s turn to jump aboard, which he did with a “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaa-ah-ah-awh!” Peter plummeted 30 years back in time, to the days when hairspray and mascara were basic hygiene essentials. The drums laid their foundation: BOOM, smack, boom-boom, smack. BOOM, smack, boom-boom, smack.

Words shot from the vocalist's lungs and the hair stood up on Peter’s neck. The man was operating many octaves above regular speech, but his inflection was immaculate, his pitch, viciously precise. His voice rose just above the instruments, riding them, guiding them – not with brute force, but pure magnetism. Patrons once headed for the doors froze in their tracks. A forest of smartphones sprouted in the crowd, which the vocalist acknowledged by propping one leg on an amp and leaning out beyond the stage like some hair-metal gargoyle. In between verses, he pumped his whole body to the beat. The man couldn't have been more than ten years old when this song, this genre, reached its peak. Peter’s chest suddenly tightened, unsure if such talent had ever been unleashed upon a larger crowd.

The man breathed life back into the band, who snuck in risky, improvised notes; the youngest guitarist freed his golden ponytail and went for a full solo. The vocalist reveled in this, craning over backwards with the building intensity of the shred, then matching and extending the final note into the sky, sweat gleaming on his brow. Only one roaring, electric verse remained.

The lyrics called for a blitz of rhyme, which the man spat like napalm. A couple of girls squealed. The final refrain rained down like a meteor, and now it was the drummer’s turn to ham it up. The vocalist let his body take every crash of the drums like a blow from a prizefighter. With the final nail on the snare, the crowd of 20 could've drowned out 100. Some artists billed their shows as “the (name) experience.” Peter thought this was what they had to live up to.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the one and only, Rick!” The MC milked another round of hoots and whistles from the audience. Rick shook hands with the smiling band, then trotted down the stairs, straight to the bathroom – no autographs, no photo-ops. In his absence, the buzz of awe faded to murmurs. The revolving doors were back in business. One of the regulars, going up for his second set, may as well have chosen elevator music.

“Peter? Is Peter still here?” He still was, closing out his tab for last call. Conditions were favorable (if disappointing) for Peter’s karaoke round; five people, not counting roaming busboys. The keyboard became strings and the guitars rang acoustic for a melody that had been his friend in adolescence. The song spoke of choices and consequences, accepting the past for what it was. The closing line “I hope you had the time of your life,” left his lips moments before Rick appeared again, hurrying to the exit without a glance at anyone.

Peter stuck around for the last singer as a matter of honor. The guy scream-talked his way through something about making love, then passed the mic off to the MC, who wished all the stacked chairs a good night. Peter turned to assess the drizzle beyond the windows. Nothing worthy of his jacket hood, just late-April chill and wet pavement smell.

Outside, he felt lighter. His insides still ached, and would for weeks, but now it mattered a little less. Heading to his hatchback parked around the corner, he happened to glance down a nearby alley. There was Rick, smoking the last of a cigarette. The vocalist had his eyes trained on a flip-phone, beeping out the familiar pattern of a phone number. He took a final drag, dropped and flattened the square, then appraised the phone critically before closing and hiding it in a saggy back-pocket. Rick shook his head and looked up, realizing he had company.

Peter pursed his lips and nodded once, eager to avoid confrontation. He shuffled a dozen paces away, then let loose a groan; he should’ve told Rick that he killed it tonight. The man knew, of course. He must’ve heard it weekly – but what was the deal with the phone? There aren’t many people you almost call at 2 a.m. Peter’s eyes followed North Avenue, one of Chicago’s main, grid-like streets, to where it flirted with the horizon. He wondered if the intended recipient ever witnessed the side of Rick he met ten minutes ago. Another obvious fact, if the two were close.

The better question was, which voice she believed was more real: what any drunken passersby may have heard echoing from the alley just now, or the rockstar lost in time. 

Rowan and Arabel were awake when the war horn blew. They rarely slept much, merely rags between them and frozen ground. The coals of the hearth died early.

Across the square, faces materialized at tiny windows, bitter and pale as disturbed spirits. Eyes drifted to the great hall, where flickering light and laughter spilled from every crevice. With the visiting duke's guard in the stable, Arabel decided nothing short of the Rapture troubled Lord Merik.

Rowan whispered, joining his sister at the window. Ungodly stench assaulted them, but years as neighbors to horses made the bouquet of manure almost friendly. "Graybloods?"

"Oh, please." Arabel hissed.

Rowan was nearly a man, but towering height and a deep voice only exaggerated his childishness. He hounded traveling merchants for tales of the ruthless, pillaging Grayblood Horde. Stories that ended with only a banner, planted in grisly remains.

“They say their ranks keep growing – they raise the slaughtered to join them.”

“I wish Father knocked this nonsense out of you.”

“Father would've believed the nonsense!” Rowan said, catching his rising voice. “Or don't you remember?”

“It’s been long,” Arabel replied, gripping the windowsill harder.

Her tongue was always sharp, but now her whole body felt drawn like a bow. She debated who to shoot first, given the chance. The visiting duke who'd stolen their parents, or her brother's macabre fantasy.

A grunt begged Arabel’s attention – a wall sentry. Silhouetted against the dusty sky of imminent dawn, he clawed at two arrows in his chest. His partner scrambled for the horn, but changed his mind when a feather-tipped shaft sprouted from his neck.

A sound like thunder crossed with a wild drum beat flooded the night, becoming a tremor in the ground itself. Ravens in the forest scattered.The plank across the wooden gate snapped like a twig. Twenty riders descended, in mail and heavy ashen cloaks – save for the first, his flowing cape the deep crimson of a fresh wound.

The duke abandoned his feast and staggered, yelling, toward the stable, but Red Cape was gaining fast, arrow already notched. Just as Arabel realized it pointed at her, Rowan pulled her inside, under the table.

Guards roared, freeing their steel; a deaf hail of arrows hitting their mark answered. The siblings took rare, quiet breaths. A door shattered. Pleading, groveling. Two thuds. Horses paced and sputtered, then all foreign sounds receeded, surrendering to the caws of returning ravens.

Arabel was confused, almost insulted. What of razing the town? Certainly they'd seen her!

"It could be a trap," Rowan grabbed his sister's arm, face knotted with concern.

"Die cowering, then." Arabel stood.

She kicked the door. Chills swept her at the sight of a banner, billowing in the square. A red eagle, snatching gray fish from a black bear. Below it, a buckler lay, not quite flush with the ground. Her brother lagging behind, Arabel approached the shield, steadying her breath. Faces returned to windows, bathed by sunrise. She lifted it.

The head of the drunken duke and the bulbous, ginger visage of Lord Merik. Arabel gasped, then let herself smirk.

"There's writing," Rowan said, flipping the buckler. Blood made for ink.

"What's it say?"

"Come... west."

Arabel appraised the stable. Corpses of royal guard littered it, trapping two nervous animals. The king had good reason to paint Graybloods as butchers, Arabel thought, but their army consisted very much of the living. Living volunteers.

Shielding her eyes from sun and grinning, she elbowed Rowan. "Would you like to be part of those stories you love so much?"