Chapter One — The Wrong Room for a Superstar

Sixteen minutes before the world got a new VESPER song, the ceiling speaker at Ninth Street Record Annex began making the sound of a spoon dying inside a blender.

Luna Reyes stopped in the doorway, carrying a cardboard tray of lemon sodas, and listened to the strangled metallic screech.

“That,” she announced, “is not on the official track list.”

Thirty-seven folding chairs faced a little platform that had once been used for poetry readings, one marriage proposal, and a man explaining why vinyl records were scientifically warmer than human affection. Tonight, someone had hung a black paper crown above the platform. Under it, a hand-lettered sign read: GRAVITY THIEF — LISTENING NIGHT. NOT AN OFFICIAL VESPER EVENT.

The final sentence had been underlined three times, presumably because the first two had failed to discourage anyone from asking whether VESPER himself might appear.

Junia Kade crouched beneath a table, surrounded by cables. “Tell me that was the kettle.”

“We don't have a kettle.”

“Then tell me we have insurance.”

The speaker shrieked again. A man in the front row clapped twice, experimentally, as though the equipment might be waiting for applause.

Luna set the sodas down. “We have fourteen minutes.”

“Fifteen,” Junia corrected, checking her phone. “And you promised you'd stop counting out loud.”

“I promised I'd try. The distinction is legally meaningful.”

Junia slid out from beneath the table. Her hair was pinned up with a screwdriver, which Luna suspected was either a practical choice or the beginning of a workplace injury report. During the day, Junia restored old radios and transit displays in a repair workshop. In the evening, she was apparently expected to rescue audio equipment belonging to strangers who believed the words wireless and effortless meant the same thing.

“What's the actual signal path?” Junia asked.

Luna stared at her.

“The thing the music goes through, Luna.”

“I know what a signal path is. I just thought you might appreciate hearing the question answered by someone competent.”

“Cruel. Refreshing, but cruel.”

The volunteer host, Tessa, emerged from the stockroom clutching an instruction manual and looking as though she had discovered an urgent new religion.

“The laptop's working,” she said. “The playlist's ready. The speakers were fine ten minutes ago.”

“Were they playing music ten minutes ago?” Junia asked.

“Not exactly.”

“What were they playing?”

“The little noise when you connect something.”

Junia closed her eyes. “That's not a test. That's a greeting.”

At the front of the room, a child wearing a homemade black mask tugged on his father's sleeve and asked when the concert would start. His father pointed at the underlined sign, with the defeated patience of someone who had already done this four times.

Luna knew the feeling. Her unverified account, @orbitafterdark, had spent most of the week explaining the difference between a release, a livestream, a live performance, and an actual supernatural manifestation of VESPER in one's kitchen. People had insisted on debating the last one.

She had been a VESPER fan for years, long enough to distinguish a genuinely clever piece of stagecraft from an elaborate lighting cue designed to distract from a bad vocal night. He almost never had bad nights. Which was inconvenient, because it made arguing about him far too easy.

“Okay.” Luna pulled the paper crown off the wall. “What do you need me to do?”

“Keep everybody entertained,” Tessa said, too quickly.

Junia added, “And don't touch any plugs.”

“That's an outrageous attack on my qualifications.”

“Your qualifications are in making people listen, not making speakers listen.”

Luna faced the crowd. “Small technical interruption. Our sound system has decided it would rather pursue a solo career.”

A few people laughed. One man called, “Can it sing?”

“Not well enough to open for VESPER.”

That earned a louder response, though a woman in a denim jacket folded her arms and said, “We'll see about that. Some of us like musicians who don't think they invented oxygen.”

Luna pointed at her. “Perfect. A dissenting opinion. Please stay. We need somebody to keep this from becoming a cult.”

“It is already a cult,” Junia said from the floor.

“A critically engaged cult.”

While the room entertained itself arguing over VESPER's last tour, Luna noticed the problem Tessa had missed. Behind the laptop, an adapter hung halfway out of a battered audio interface, its metal end barely gripping the socket. Each time Junia moved the table, the speaker produced another miserable squeal.

“Junia?”

“If you're about to ask whether I tried turning it off and on—”

“Your left elbow. The little silver thing.”

Junia followed her gaze. “Oh, you magnificent menace.”

She reseated the adapter, secured the cable with a strip of gaffer tape, and played an ordinary test recording. A clean burst of applause came through both speakers. The room answered it with applause of its own.

Tessa looked ready to hug the table.

“Don't,” Junia warned. “One emotional embrace and we'll lose the left channel.”

Luna returned to the front. “As you can hear, we have stolen sound back from the jaws of death. Please direct all appreciation to Junia, who possesses the rare gift of fixing things without calling them idiots.”

“I call them idiots constantly,” Junia said.

“Only privately. That's professionalism.”

The clock above the counter read 6:57.

As the audience settled, Luna retrieved her lemon soda. She had expected this evening to be a room full of strangers celebrating a singer who seemed almost too enormous to belong to the same world as their scuffed little record shop. Instead, a handful of people had helped move chairs, passed around spare charging cables, and applauded a repaired connection as if it were an encore.

She liked that. More than she would admit to her account's followers, who were currently expecting a reasonable woman to transform into a public embarrassment the instant the song arrived.

The bell above the entrance rang.

A tall young man stepped in, dark hair slightly windblown, an ordinary charcoal jacket zipped to his collar. He paused just inside the door, taking in the crown, the rescued speakers, and the audience's argument about whether VESPER could ever be accused of subtlety.

He smiled to himself.

Tessa waved him toward the last empty chair. “You made it. We're about to start.”

“Sounds like I missed the exciting part,” he said.

Luna, still holding the cable tape between two fingers, glanced over. “Only if your idea of excitement is watching thirty people nearly get defeated by an adapter.”

“Depends,” he said, with a look of entirely unreasonable interest. “Did the adapter win?”

Junia called from the table, “Not yet. Don't tempt it.”

The stranger laughed, genuinely, then went to stand beside the rear shelf instead of taking the chair.

Luna turned back toward the front, hiding the small, involuntary smile that had appeared on her face. There was a VESPER release to attend to. Whatever the stranger's problem was, it could wait.

On Tessa's laptop, the countdown dropped beneath sixty seconds.

The little record shop fell quiet.