Wicked Harmony

Chapter 4 | Sin

Chapter 4

Sin

“ I ’m glad you could join us,” he says.

I glance around, looking for the woman that I met earlier. It’s almost like I’m expecting her to jump out of the bushes. But as far as I can tell, we’re the only people up here.

“Where are Dorian and Cal? Shouldn’t they be here for this?” The long-haired guy asks.

“I thought we’d keep it to just us.”

“And what about, uh, Julia?” I ask, my voice coming out at a higher pitch than I’d like. “I figured she’d be here too.” Her texts didn’t give me any indication she wouldn’t be here.

Cal. Dorian. Iri... and the unnaturally good-looking one must be Micah.

My throat is dry as I ask, “You’re Iri and Micah, right?”

“Ding-ding-ding,” the long-haired guy says, his grin widening. “I’m Micah, lead singer of Orpheus Underground, and this is Iri.”

I let out a breath. “Wow, I guess I wasn’t expecting to meet any of you guys in person.”

“Jules was meant to be here too. But she’s dealing with another issue at the moment,” Iri tells me before stepping back and gesturing for me to take a seat beneath the pergola. I perch at the edge of my seat, still in half a mind to get the hell out of here .

But since I can’t imagine this has anything to do with the Herald or The Path, I’m intrigued as to what a rock band might want with me.

“So, you’re Saint. It’s nice to put a face to the name,” Micah says with a soft smile.

Is it? I raise an eyebrow and then glance at Iri. “It’s Sinjin. No one’s called me Saint in over five years. How did you find me?”

He stretches his arms out lazily and cocks his head to one side. “We’re rock stars, Sin. Plenty of money and influence will get you any information you want.”

When I just stare him down, because that sounds like a crock of shit if I’ve ever heard one, he snorts a laugh. He then pours glasses of water for each of us and passes one to me. There’s also a platter of fruit and another of chocolate laid out and I eye them both, snagging a piece of melon and taking a long drink of water before I cross my legs and turn to face the two rock stars.

“First, I’d like to tell you why I wanted to track you down. Then if you’re still interested in knowing more, I’ll tell you how we found you. It wasn’t easy, if that makes you feel any better,” Iri says, squaring his shoulders and facing me.

Kind of, I guess? My mind is going slowly as I try to wrap my head around them knowing both my old and my new name, and where I work.

“I don’t think any of us thought it would take nearly a year to find you,” Micah adds softly.

A year? I scoot forward in my chair and lean in. Now I’m really curious about what they want from me if it took them that long to track me down.

“We've been playing with Orpheus Underground for over ten years,” Iri says, handing Micah a plate before sprawling back in his chair. “We’ve toured almost every year without fail in that time. And our tours are good. Great, even. But we want this one to be something special. Give the fans an experience they’ve never had before. One they’ll never forget.”

“It’ll be our last tour,” Micah adds. “For a while, at least. Possibly ever.”

Iri nods. “So we want to go out with a bang. We decided to have this tour a year ago, and I started researching who we could bring on board for the staging and set design to make it an unforgettable experience.”

I nod dumbly, my lips numb. “Y-you want me to work for you?”

“It’ll be an intensive gig,” Iri adds. “We’d work closely together for the next month as we lead up to the first gig, and then you’d accompany us on all seven dates over the tour. Seven different cities dotted around the world.”

What the what now?

“That sounds nuts, you realize that, right?” I might be shooting myself in the foot here, but it’s true. “You haven’t ever even seen my work.”

“You’d be surprised how much of an impression you left, Sinjin,” he replies. “When I put word out I was looking for someone to bring a unique atmosphere to a stage show, The Path was something that came up consistently. And the rumors were that things went downhill after the leader’s daughter disappeared one day.”

“Not his daughter,” I mutter.

My mind’s reeling. Not only did Iri hear about me from people discussing a cult as having a good atmosphere and then was like ‘hell yeah, I want to hire that person’, he also apparently wants me to come on a worldwide tour with them.

“I know what I want, Sinjin, and believe me, it’s what you can offer,” Iri says, sending my eyebrows sky-high.

“You’d be compensated accordingly,” he continues, as though that’s my issue here. Iri then scribbles something on a napkin and hands it over at the same time that Micah hands me another plate piled with a carefully selected assortment of treats. I take both and shove some chocolate into my mouth, chewing as I glance down at the napkin.

... and almost choke.

Shit. That’s a lot of money.

More than I earn in three entire years at my current salary.

I swallow hard and take another gulp of water.

“What exactly is it you’re expecting from me here?” I say, my breath rushing out of me. “You’re not trying to persuade your fans to kill themselves or something, are you?”

My past life was far too cult-like. I don’t want to be part of anything like that ever again.

Micah looks confused. Which suggests he doesn’t know exactly what I used to do for the Herald.

I really hope he never finds out. I’d rather keep that part of my past as a dark secret that never sees the light of day.

Iri’s face is blank and I don’t know how much he knows, or if he suspects what role I played in all that manipulative fuckery.

“No mass suicides.” He refills my water and passes it to me. “Just the best fucking experience of our fans’ lives. They’re gonna look back on the night they saw us and it’s gonna be a milestone they mark their other experiences by. I want to blow them away, you know? Put something positive out into the world. We want it to be like a resolution and an awakening all in one.”

Iri

ORPHEUS UNDERGROUND doesn't do things in half measures.

Thirteen years ago, we were nobodies. And in the time since, we’ve been busy little bees. Ten albums, nine international tours, thirty-four chart topping songs, and thirty million records sold .

Not bad for a bunch of monsters.

We’ve also won a ton of awards and have fans spread across every inch of the globe. From the tiny villages in the mountains of the Orcs, to the biggest cities in the world, we’ve got people that write us letters and film videos and send us shit they think we’d like.

We were also the first band to have a full monster line-up. Or the first successful one, anyway. And sure, Dorian and Micah might pass as human at first glance, which made us a little more palatable when we were first starting out. But now there are bands with shifter front men, vampire bassists and nymphs on drums all over the business.

The four of us paved their fucking way, made it a lot smoother than it was for us crawling our way up.

Ten years of pretty much non-stop touring has been a lot. It’s been a whirlwind of late nights, shitty food, and sweating our asses off for hours to cram onto tour buses traveling overnight to get to our next location.

Thankfully, as our stars rose, things got nicer. The tour buses got bigger, along with the hotel rooms. But the breaks never seemed to get longer.

We’ve been in a cycle of touring, writing, rehearsing, and touring for an entire decade now.

And last year, there were signs we were cracking.

Cal’s always been quiet, but he’s taken to spending ninety percent of his time holed up in hotel rooms so he doesn’t have to face his adoring public. The same adoring public that hit on him every chance they get, that paw at his massive arms like he’s a tame bear released from the fucking zoo.

Dorian’s spent years partying in every spare hour he can find. I don’t know what the hell he gets up to, but it’s probably the tired old cliches: drinking, drugs, and fucking anyone and everyone.

The rest of us either lost our tolerance for that shit a while back, or never had it .

Micah’s the one I worry about most, though. He’s never been one to complain or to make his breakdowns public. But I can see the signs. The tiredness in his eyes, the way he squints like he’s hurting whenever he’s out in public. How he’s become as much of a homebody as Cal, even though he can’t do most of his favorite hobbies when we’re away from home.

Dude’s been falling apart on the inside, and I knew something had to give.

I noticed about eighteen months ago, my brothers would step off stage and they no longer looked like they could slay dragons and surf rainbows with the sheer fucking joy coming from their eyes.

Instead, they all just looked tired as fuck.

Miserable.

When we made noises, like we might need a break, the label came back with a bunch of bullshit about breaching our contract.

We offered them one last tour before we took a sabbatical and they came back with a load of noise about suing us if the tour isn’t a success.

They can go fuck themselves. My determination to make this tour a success has nothing to do with them.

No. I want it to be something incredible for the fans that have supported us, a thank you to them for putting aside petty bullshit and prejudice and backing us all the way.

My bandmates are my brothers. My only family—other than my mother, who, as a literal chaos demon, thrives on fucking drama. Seriously, she keeps trying to set me up with crazy geriatric witches because she thinks it’s funny and those ladies have no shame. Which means my bandmates are the only family I actually want to spend time with.

And we all have our own reasons for doing what we do. I’m not saying we choose to be rock stars because we’re well adjusted. We all need an outlet, and until now this has been what works .

I fucking need this tour to be next level. I need the guys to rediscover that spark of joy from playing music to people who get us on a visceral level.

If this tour doesn’t bring them back to themselves, I don’t know what will.