Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) (22 page)

“Mrs. Dullahan doesn’t know it’s me for
sure,” Jason said. “She only suspected me because my mom made me
offer to do yard work for her. I don’t think she actually saw me
when I went in and out of the door.”

“She didn’t,” Grizlemor said. “She was away
on the Hunt. That’s why you were able to get in and out of Faerie
without her stopping you.”

“What Hunt?” Jason asked.

“It’s a darkfae entertainment. You don’t want
to know more.” Grizlemor shuddered. “That’s one thing about the
Queen hiring these monsters. Darkfae are dangerous, but they aren’t
the most diligent employees.”

“I think she’s turning away,” Erin said.

Everybody looked back. The black van glided
off down a narrow wooded lane, towards Mrs. Dullahan’s house.

“She’s going home,” Jason sighed.

“So we’re good?” Dred asked.

“I think so,” Jason said.

Dred stepped on the accelerator. As they left
town, Dred played some Prince over the stereo, and their mood began
to lift.

A security guard stopped them at the parking
area near the Sculpture Garden. The area was packed with vendor
booths selling food and drinks, plus a row of Port-A-Poopers.
People were everywhere, most of them Jason’s age or slightly
older.

“This lot’s closed,” the security guard told
them, leaning in at Mitch’s window.

“We’re supposed to play tonight. We’re the
Assorted Zebras,” Mitch said, pointing toward the stage that had
been built for the event. Another band was playing there now, a
dozen people using a wide assortment of bells and whistles.
According to the banner hanging behind them, that was the band
name, Bells and Whistles.

The security guard stepped away and spoke
quietly into his walkie-talkie. After a minute, a second man
arrived. He had long black hair and a turtleneck shirt, headphones
with a big antenna and a built-in microphone, plus a clipboard
thick with papers.

“Yes, I am Franco,” he said, in some kind of
European accent that wasn’t quite French and wasn’t quite Spanish.
“I am ze stage manageur. You are ze Angry Zebras, yes?”

“The Assorted Zebras,” Mitch corrected.

“Ah…you should be ze Angry Zebras. More
passion! More fire!” Franco made a fist.

“We’ll think about it,” Dred said. “Can you
tell me where to park?”

“I zaw your videos, no?” Franco said. “The
music was, how do you say,
muy fantastique
.” Franco kissed
his fingertips at Mitch. “Ze use of
cinéma vérité
technique,
ze destruction of suburbia…it was quite ze statement.”

“I’ll tell Tadd you said that,” Mitch said.
“Parking?”

“Zis parking area is all full,” Franco said.
“You are very late. You must park in ze alley across ze street. I
will send ze stagehands to help with your gear.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Grizlemor hopped
up onto the middle console. He had changed his appearance a little,
making his skin less green and more of a pinkish human color, and
his pointy ears had shrunk, their tips tucked under his cap.
“Whatever these guys can’t carry, I can.”

“Your friend,” Franco said. “He is a dwarf,
no?”

“A dwarf!” Grizlemor shouted. “I hate
dwarves! I sneak up behind them and pull their pants down at public
events! Dwarf, indeed. I’ll make you a dwarf!”

“He prefers the word, um, ‘midget,’” Erin
said.

“Midget? Is midget not ze more offensive
term?”

“He’s a little odd,” Jason said. “We’ll be
right back.”

Dred drove across the street and parked in
the alley. The four band members took everything they could carry,
Erin and Jason helping with the keyboards and drums. Grizlemor
stacked the remaining black instrument cases into a wobbly tower on
top of himself, so that only his dirty leather shoes could be seen
under them.

They walked across to the park, where Franco
was waiting with his arms crossed, tapping his feet, checking his
watch, doing everything he could to let them know they were taking
too long.

“Right zis way,” Franco said when they caught
up with him. He showed them where to leave their instruments near
the stage. People were everywhere—stagehands, security, musicians,
electricians. A huge stage had been built overlooking the lawn
around the Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture, which was a giant
spoon holding a giant cherry in the middle of a pond. The Garden
was full of giant sculptures, but that one was the most famous.

“Ze hospitality tent is down here.” Franco
led them to a huge shaded tent with mesh walls, nodded at the
security guard as they entered. Inside, the large tent had clusters
of folding chairs where the bands were all lounging, cooled by
electric fans. Franco led them to an unoccupied cluster of chairs
near the back.

“Help yourselves to ze craft service table,”
Franco said. He indicated a picnic table piled high with Doritos,
Snickers, boxes of Reese’s Pieces, and rolled-up sandwiches cut
into circles. A plastic tub of ice was filled with Red Bulls, Cokes
and Yoo-hoos.

“Wow!” Mitch said, grabbing Doritos and
Reese’s Pieces on the way to a chair.

“I trust zis is to your liking?” Franco
asked.

“It’s awesome!” Mitch leaned back in his
chair, while Dred swiped a bag of ranch Doritos from him and tore
it open.

“Let us know if you need anything,” Franco
said as he walked away. “I will alert when it is time for your
set-up.”

“Thanks!” Jason said.

“How’s everybody doing?” Mitch asked, in the
general direction of the nearest band. They ignored him, though,
and kept talking among themselves.

“This is so exciting!” Erin said. She flung
her arms around Jason’s waist, and Jason hugged her close. He
couldn’t help his feelings for her, even if they weren’t exactly
welcome. She hugged Mitch and Dred, too.

Soon, Erin’s friends Parker and Kennedy
arrived, chatting happily, and bustled Erin to a chair away from
the group. They pulled up their own chairs and opened bags of
cosmetics they’d brought with them.

“How do you want your eyes?” Kennedy
asked.

“All I can think is, put some color all
around them, like an old glam-rock thing,” Erin said, grinning.
“Just the eyes, though. I don’t want my whole face looking like
that.”

“You’ll need tons of glitter,” Parker said,
setting out tubes of it on the counter.

“Hey, Dred, want your make-up done?” Erin
asked.

“Yeah, we have everything here!” Kennedy
waved at the bags.

“Nope,” Dred said. She tied on a kerchief
printed with cartoony pink skulls. She wasn’t wearing any makeup.
Her baggy t-shirt, shorts and sandals were a contrast to Erin’s
thrift-store dress with its faded psychedelic floral print.

“It’ll look great, I promise!” Parker
said.

“Nah, I don’t want it sweating all over me,”
Dred said, leaning back and propping her feet on another chair.
“Nobody looks at the drummer, anyway. Erin’s our front man.”

“Where’s Zach?” Kennedy asked.

“Is he here yet?” Parker asked.

Jason sank to a chair facing Mitch and Dred.
He wasn’t going to get in another word with Erin, with her friends
hovering around her.

“He can’t make it,” Erin said. “He’s starring
in a commercial in Chicago. Uncle Otto’s Authentic German
Pizza.”

“That’s so hot,” Parker said.

“Awww!” Kennedy squealed. “I bet he’ll be sad
he missed all this!”

Jason tried not to listen.

“Are you ready for this, Jason?” Mitch
asked.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” Jason said.
“The instruments will take care of everything.”

“Mitch and I were talking about the set
list,” Dred said. “We think it would be good to begin and end with
cover songs, just to be safe.”

“Safe?” Jason asked.

“People like songs they already know,” Mitch
said. “We’ll do a couple of those songs we used to goof around
with.”

“Those don’t always turn out well,” Jason
said.

“The instruments will know what to do,” Mitch
told him. “They’re smart like that.”

“That’s why the dullahan is so eager to find
them,” Grizlemor said. He was sitting on the grassy ground,
stuffing peanut M&M’s into a rolled turkey sandwich. He took a
big, crunchy bite and talked with his mouth full, spraying bits of
sandwich and candy. “The fairies invest a lot of magic into their
music.”

“The dullahan is after our instruments?”
Mitch asked.

“Oh, of course,” Grizlemor said as he chewed.
“Even if she doesn’t return them to the Queen, she’ll want them for
her own nefarious purposes.”

“What Queen?” Dred asked.

“The fairy queen,” Jason said. “Let’s not
worry about it right now. I like the idea of doing the cover songs,
that’ll juice up the crowd. Let’s do that.”

“Good, we agree. Go tell Erin.” Mitch opened
a Yoo-Hoo and picked up a Snickers.

“If the chatterbrains will shut up for a
second,” Dred whispered.

Jason looked across the room at Erin. After a
minute, Kennedy and Parker left for the bathroom, giggling and
chatting with each other nonstop. Jason didn’t know how they could
hear each other, when neither of them ever stopped talking.

He approached Erin, who was checking her dark
red lips in a cosmetic mirror. With all the glittering make-up, she
looked almost like a different person, some model from a
magazine.

“Erin?” he said. She smiled brightly at him
in the mirror.

“Hi, Jason. Want to sit down?”

He took the chair beside her and told her
Mitch and Dred’s ideas about their set list.

“Sounds good to me,” Erin said. She turned
and looked him in the eyes. “Is there something else?”

“Yeah.” Jason fidgeting in his chair while he
reached into his jeans pocket. He took out a square of folded
notebook paper. “You know I don’t really write songs, right?”

“Right…”

“But this one I’ve kind of been working on. I
thought you might like it, or you might take a look at it, or
something. It’s called ‘Angel Sky.’”

“You wrote a song? That’s really cool.” She
smiled at him, holding his eyes with hers, while her hands unfolded
the page.

“You don’t have to read it now or anything,”
Jason said.

“I want to.” Erin looked at the page. As she
read, her smile faded, and a serious look came over her face. She
looked up at him. “Jason, is this—”

“There’s our girl!” Kennedy said as she and
Parker returned. They took up posts on either side of Erin, as if
to block Jason from getting too close to her. Their endless
conversation took over, and soon Jason moved back to join the rest
of the band.

“Grizlemor was saying maybe we should go easy
with the instruments, if we don’t want to wreck any more
buildings,” Jason said.

The goblin, who hadn’t stopped stuffing his
face, gave a thumbs-up.

“We want to blow this crowd away, though,”
Mitch said.

“We don’t have to try so hard,” Jason said.
“Just play kind of lightly. Let the magic do its thing.”

“Sounds good to me,” Dred said. “I don’t want
to make any more earthquakes, with all these people around. And I’d
really hate to be the person who broke the Spoonbridge and
Cherry.”

They heard the sound of instruments tuning
out on the stage, and then a huge crowd screaming.

“Who’s the next act?” Jason asked.

“Programmed Chaos,” Mitch said. “Some local
band.”

“They’re great,” Dred told him. “Their songs
are like social and political criticism with an ironic pop
overlay.”

Jason shrugged. “Okay. Sounds good.”

Eventually, Programmed Chaos began to play
their first song, “The White House is Their House,” which had
gotten some attention from college radio stations across the
Midwest, as well as NPR.

“Oh, Programmed Chaos!” Erin said, jumping up
from her chair. Her friends followed her toward the stage.

“Their singer is so cute!” Kennedy said.

“He really is,” Erin agreed. Then she stopped
at the door. “Are you coming, Jason?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, let’s go watch,” Dred said as she
stood up.

Jason caught up with Erin, while Dred and
Mitch followed. The six of them left the room, leaving Grizlemor
alone to wolf his way across the refreshment table. Mitch tried
again to wave to the other bands, but nobody would look at them.
Jason wondered if they resented how the coordinator had kicked out
another band to make room for the Zebras, who hadn’t even
auditioned.

They stood to one side of the stage, watching
the band. Erin and her two friends danced along with the music.

Jason looked out at the quiet, bored-looking
audience of thousands, most of them teenagers. The show had sold
out and the park was packed, but nobody seemed to be getting into
the music.

Programmed Chaos, which consisted of three
college-aged guys, finished their first song. They received sparse
applause and scattered boos.

“Rough crowd,” Mitch said.

The band went into their second song, and the
whole crowd starting booing halfway through. By the third song, the
crowd started chanting “Ze-bras! Ze-bras!” and stomping their
feet.

“Oh no,” Erin whispered. “I feel bad for
them.”

“I feel bad for us,” Dred said. “We have to
play for this audience, too.”

The band hurried through another song while
the crowd drowned out their music, chanting for the Assorted
Zebras. The crowd pelted the band with lemonade cups, soft
pretzels, and shoes.

“That’s it!” the lead singer shouted into the
microphone. “You want us gone, we’re gone.”

The crowd applauded and whistled.

Programmed Chaos hurriedly broke down their
gear with the help of stagehands, then stalked off the stage,
glaring at the Zebras.

“Stupid kids just want to hear you,” the lead
singer sneered at Erin.

“Yeah, way to ruin the gig for the rest of
us. Thanks a lot,” the band’s DJ said. The three of them carried
their equipment towards their small bus, and the lead singer went
inside and slammed the door.