Eddi discovered that ignoring the problem for several days only made her feel worse now. "Oh, for G.o.dsake, a bunch of people out of a horror movie want me dead! And I'm not supposed to be scared?"

The phouka took both of her hands in his. His grip was hard, but not painful.

"Eddi," he said, "I will protect you. They will not-they cannot-get past me to strike at you."

She laughed hollowly. "You know, a girl learns to tell when a guy is making her a promise he can't keep."

"Haven't I kept it thus far?"

"I don't know. Have they made any more tries at me?" He scowled and looked away.

"Have they?"

He nodded, a curt bob of his head.

She drew her hands out of his. "Oh."

"I hadn't meant to tell you. I thought to spare you the worry."

"Wouldn't it be easier," Eddi asked after a moment, "if you didn't have to guard me and keep me in the dark about it?"

"Yes," he agreed, but hesitantly.

"Well, then," Eddi said, "let's get all the skeletons out of the closet."

The door to the outside swung slowly open.

The phouka was on his feet blindingly fast, standing between Eddi and the door. She looked past his kneecap and saw a man framed in the doorway, caught in the darkness between the outside and inside lights.

"Excuse me," said the man, "I should have called first. A friend told me you were looking for a guitarist... ?"

His voice was the first clear impression Eddi had of him. It was low, resonant, and musical, with what seemed like a pleasant accent, until she realized that it was an absence of accent. Then he stepped into the room and the light. Eddi thought for a moment of porcelain, but she had never seen anything made of porcelain that looked delicate and rugged at once.

He was tall and slender and interestingly pale. His face was longish, with high, wide cheekbones and a pointed chin, and his eyes, under black lashes and brows, were a breathtaking green. Shining blue-black hair spilled over his forehead in appealing disarray, and Eddi saw that what she had at first taken for reflected light was a wide white streak in his hair, a little off center. He wore a black leather jacket and tight black jeans. Somehow they seemed to bring color into the room.

"Come in," Eddi thought to say, once she could speak at all.

The man looked at the phouka, who hadn't moved since the door opened, and nodded. Then he turned away to bring in the things he'd left on the landing, and the phouka stirred and flexed his hands. Eddi wished she could see his expression.

The man in black returned with a scuffed guitar case, a good-sized amp, an accessory bag, and a smaller case that he carried under his arm. He set them down and came over to Eddi, who scrambled to her feet.

The phouka stepped to one side.

"My name's w.i.l.l.y Silver," the new arrival said. "I don't know how my friend got this address but-are you looking for a lead guitarist? Have I come at a bad time?"

"No! Not at all. You want to audition?" Eddi recognized it as a silly question, and hurried on. "Go ahead and set up. The drummer and the ba.s.s player should be back any minute." That reminded her of Dan, and she looked for him in his little fortress of equipment. He was staring at w.i.l.l.y Silver as if the latter were a famous sculpture that had just appeared, and Dan hadn't decided whether to admire it or worry that someone would accuse him of stealing it.

Carla came rattling up the stairs with four cups of coffee. She stopped at the sight of w.i.l.l.y Silver unpacking a guitar made of some dark red wood, and looked as stupefied as Eddi. The phouka took the tray of cups away from her gently, and Eddi made the introductions.

By the time w.i.l.l.y was set up and in tune, Hedge was back and hunched over his ba.s.s. He seemed as oblivious to w.i.l.l.y as he was to everything, and barely nodded when he was introduced. Eddi found that comforting.

w.i.l.l.y took off his jacket to reveal a high-collared, creamy white shirt that Eddi suspected was silk. He rolled the sleeves up to mid-forearm and hung his guitar on again. Then he looked at Eddi, an open, daz- zling gaze from his green eyes. "Where shall we start?"

Eddi resisted the temptation to tell him, and said, "Do you know, 'Thrill of the Grill'? Kim Carnes?"

"Well enough."

Eddi left her guitar in the stand and went to the mike. Carla gave w.i.l.l.y a pair of four-beats, and he led off with a fast rhythmic fuzzed-out riff. Carla spiked it with her high-hat cymbal on the two and four counts, and it sounded so fine that Eddi almost forgot to sing. He cut way back during the verse to leave room for her vocals and Dan's vaguely demented repeating melody between the lines of lyrics. Between them they gave the first verse a feeling of breath-holding antic.i.p.ation. Then Carla kicked in with the drum fill that signaled the chorus, Hedge and his ba.s.s came into the mix, and the waiting was over. w.i.l.l.y's voice added new weight to Carla's and Dan's harmonies. The bridge, when they got to it, was nice and tight, and w.i.l.l.y's lead break was manic, crisp, and tasty. Eddi could feel them all catching fire off each other, responding to each other's experiments. Carla ended the whole thing with a Keith Moon-like percussive frenzy.

"Ah," said Carla, when the last chord had faded. "Better than s.e.x."

Eddi found herself blushing.

"Speak for yourself," Dan said. "But yeah, that was all right."

"All right? Come on, Roch.e.l.le, loosen up." Carla sighed. "We were terrific. We charmed the bolts out of the rafters." She turned to Eddi, and pointed at w.i.l.l.y Silver. "Where did you find this guy?"

"Just lucky, I guess." Eddi looked at w.i.l.l.y and looked away, feeling unaccountably shy. "Still interested?"

"Maybe-but you haven't heard it all yet." He opened the smaller case at his feet and lifted out an electrified violin.

There was a question in his face, a challenge. He wasn't asking if she wanted him to play the violin; he was daring her to think of something for him to play it on.

"Oh, let's do some nice cobwebby David Bowie," Eddi said, and picked up her guitar. "Can you play 'Suffragette City' on that?"

A fierce, lopsided grin washed across his face, and he propped the violin under his chin.

It was superb. w.i.l.l.y and Dan worked out the balance between fiddle and synthesizer by what seemed telepathy, and Eddi kept her own guitar playing at something just beyond percussion. They were de- mented, they were loud, they were ridiculously theatrical. Carla threw her sticks in the air and caught them on the fly. Dan hunched over the keys like Frankenstein over his monster. Hedge wrinkled his nose and showed his teeth occasionally, which for Hedge was the rim of hysteria. Eddi did Joan Jett cheerleader leaps. And w.i.l.l.y... he jumped, he swaggered, he danced, he mugged shamelessly. He was beautiful.

When it was over, Eddi flung her head back and laughed for sheer excess adrenaline. Then she saw the phouka.

He was standing very straight against the right-hand wall. His chin was a little tucked, in a way that made him look wary. His black tilted eyes were wide, and they met hers before his gaze slid downward, before he could shutter away his look of dread and longing behind his eyelids.

Her mood faltered as the phouka walked out of sight behind a hanging sheet. Then Dan started up a sustained, electric gospel chord on the synthesizer, and intoned, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called Life...."

w.i.l.l.y laughed, set down the violin and grabbed for his guitar. He shot Eddi a sideways glance and a teasing grin as he slid the strap over his shoulder. Eddi's insides gave a curious, not unpleasant lurch. Then they both turned to watch Dan ham his way through the introduction to "Let's Go Crazy."

Carla started the drumbeat, and they poised for the leap into the song. Dan got to, "In this life, you're on your own!" and with a pointing finger, handed the lyrics off to Eddi as w.i.l.l.y and Hedge began the slashing low-end rhythms of the guitar intro.

w.i.l.l.y had turned to watch her, playing everything to her. It egged her on. She matched his guitar riffs, then let him split off into a burst of single notes, then matched him again. She began to mimic his move- ments and he noticed and responded, until they'd established an improvised ch.o.r.eography. Sometimes they were shoulder to shoulder, the necks of their guitars parallel as railroad tracks, and she thought she could hear him breathing. She sang into whichever mike was nearest, and on the choruses they sang into one mike, their faces close to keep within the pickup range. They mugged at each other, baring their teeth like a pair of snarling cats. His green eyes glowed like deep water.

They led the band through the song as if it were a circular staircase they ran up. At its peak Eddi let him go, let him tear into a solo that seemed to rend the air apart. His whole body went into it, arching backward like a parenthesis, and she could see the moment at which he became unconscious to anything but sound. The last chord was both the resolution they had rushed eagerly toward, and the bittersweet end of it.

Carla whistled and cheered, and Danny sprang out of his fortress and ran over to thump her on the back. Hedge looked judicious, and nodded.

w.i.l.l.y wiped tendrils of damp hair off his forehead and licked his lips, catching a bead of sweat that sparkled near the corner of his mouth. Eddi's shirt was sticking to her back.

w.i.l.l.y grinned suddenly at her. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Wanna join a band?" she said.

w.i.l.l.y nodded. "Good idea."

None of them could resist trying a few more. They did the Beatles, "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You" as the Ramones might have covered it. As they came out of it, w.i.l.l.y said, "Oh, h.e.l.l," and cranked up the characteristic lead line for "Johnny B. Goode." When they were done, they did it over as snaky blues.

At last Eddi declared them officially off duty, and Carla suggested going out for coffee.

"Not Embers, not Perkins, and Chester's is too far away," Eddi said.

"Nope, nope, let's go where everybody goes to gossip about everyone else's band. The Ediner. Calhoun Square."

"They got room to sit six people?" Dan asked.

Eddi remembered the phouka, and looked around. He was not in sight. She propped her guitar in its stand and went the way she had seen him go earlier, around the wall of sheets.

He was looking out the grimy windows at the pa.s.sing lights of traffic on Washington Avenue, one forearm against the gla.s.s to pillow his head. He looked up when he heard her, and smiled.

"Sounds wonderful," he said.

She licked her lips. "Are you okay?"

"Always, my primrose. What, have you decided that I'm in need of protecting, too?"

"No, I just... I wondered where you'd gone, was all."

He stepped forward and took both her hands. "You missed me," he said. "Admit it. Tell me you cannot live without me." His lips were twitching.

"You're a jerk," she sighed.

"And you love it."

w.i.l.l.y looked around the sheet. "Sorry to disturb," he said. "I'll meet you at the restaurant."

"Right," said Eddi, and drew her hands out of the phouka's loosened grip. "You've got a ride?"

"No problem." w.i.l.l.y smiled and disappeared behind the sheet.

"You want to go for coffee?" she asked the phouka.

"No, I have to wash my hair. Of course I want to go for coffee, my pet. I never leave your side, after all."

His lips curved in a taunting smile.

Eddi blinked at him. He never left her side. A new wrinkle to that sprang suddenly to mind. "Oh," she said.

"Oh, what?"

There was no delicate way to address the question. Why didn't I think of this before? Because I gave Stuart the boot, that's why, so little things like privacy didn't matter. Oh, lord. "Nothing," Eddi croaked, and hurried back to the band equipment.

"He gave Hedge a ride," Carla told her, not needing to say who "he" was. "And Danny already left."

w.i.l.l.y's guitar was in its stand, his amp turned off, his effects rack pushed neatly to one side, and the violin lay ready in its case. He'd left his equipment. It was a sort of silent promise.

"Jeez, you say 'coffee,' to this bunch, and they're gone," Eddi said. "Well, let's go see if the wagon has rusted away yet."

"Hey!" Carla squawked.

The phouka looked thoughtful. "It is downhill to the restaurant. Isn't it?"

"Oh, G.o.d, not you, too. Leave my car alone!"

Eddi and Carla plunged down the stairs giggling, and the phouka followed more slowly. He was quiet in the car while Carla and Eddi talked band. Eddi went from feeling nervous about him to being annoyed.

The blasted band had been half his idea, after all; now that it was a.s.sembled, did he want to spoil her pleasure in it?

Dan was standing guard over a table for six and a pot of coffee when they arrived. Carla plunked down next to him. Eddi and the phouka squeezed behind the table and onto the banquette.

w.i.l.l.y came down the aisle with Hedge close behind him, and Eddi was suddenly embarra.s.singly conscious of the empty seat beside her. It didn't seem to embarra.s.s w.i.l.l.y; he slid next to her. The phouka leaned forward and beamed at w.i.l.l.y. w.i.l.l.y only nodded at the phouka and snagged an empty coffee cup.

Eddi turned to the phouka and whispered, "What are you doing?"

"Me? Nothing at all."

"Good. Keep it that way."

He batted his eyelashes at her.

The talk was all business, but with an eager edge-what to name the band, what songs to do and in what way, what connections they could count on for bookings. Particularly what to name the band. They began with jokes like "Free Food" and "Girls in Lingerie 24 Hours" ("Hard on the lingerie," Carla said gravely), moved on to serious ideas, lost control and made more jokes. All the while Eddi stole glances at w.i.l.l.y beside her, seeing the way his green eyes squinted when he laughed, the way he bit a corner of his lower lip when he was thinking, the way his hands moved when he talked. Sometimes she would find him watching her.

Dan stood up at last and said he had to get home. "You're a party p.o.o.per, Roch.e.l.le," Carla said.

"Ain't my problem you can't have fun without me." He reached for the check, but Carla twitched it away from him. "I love rich girls," he sighed, and sauntered away.

"Tsk." Carla shook her head. "Eddi? Want a ride?"

"We're closer to your place than mine. I figured I'd ride the bus or something."

Eddi could almost see Carla's thoughts. A raise of the eyebrows, a glance toward w.i.l.l.y-then a blink and a glance at the phouka.

"Okay," Carla said. "Last call for the taxi. Hedge?"

Hedge shook his head and mumbled, and wandered off down the aisle and out of the restaurant.

"He's cute," Carla said dryly. "He wouldn't be if he didn't play ba.s.s like that, but he does. Oh, well. See you tomorrow, kids."

She waved the check, and w.i.l.l.y snagged it from her fingers. He followed her as far as the cash register.

Eddi stood by the phouka for a moment, staring at the floor.