Spirited: Paperback

Prologue
Titus

"You want to see something wild?” Dorien Valencourt
peered at me over his absinthe glass, all pouting, richboy
lips and self-satisfi
ed smirk.

I tilted my coke toward him and returned his smile with one of my own. “You’re going to vault over a piano again?”

“I learned my lesson. White pianists don’t jump.” Dorien
winced. I could see he remembered the day at our summer music program when he bet me he could vault over the baby grand and land on his feet. Instead, he nearly impaled his testicles on a cymbal stand and destroyed the hopes and dreams of a generation of Dorien fangirls. He cut a long gash on his inner thigh and paid up from an infi
rmary bed – I still remembered his cavalier grin and the crisp notes he peeled off and tossed at me like confetti.

That was two years ago. We’d remained friends, causing
chaos together whenever we met up at recitals and music
camps. It was impossible not to like Dorien, not to be swept up by the whirlwind of his personality. We lived on opposite ends of the country and I hadn’t expected to see him again until college auditions at the end of the summer, but a week ago he’d randomly shown up on my doorstep, touting a Louis Vuitton suitcase and declaring he was spending the summer with me. As if I couldn’t possibly have had any other plans apart from hanging out with him.

He was half right – I didn’t have plans. My parents made
plans for me. I was to tour the South with them as part of their ensemble – a perfect opportunity to get my name on the lips of their influential friends. But Dorien intervened with his richboy smile and the promise of an influential friend of my own and somehow, they agreed to leave me behind to hang out with him.

“Don’t you rich boys spend your summers in Martha’s Vineyard or Majorca?” I’d asked as he lugged his suitcase up to my second-floor bedroom. A shadow passed over his eyes, but it was gone before I could question it.

“You should be grateful I’ve decided to slum it with my pleb friend. I’ve saved you from a summer of dull recital rooms and cocktail sausages. Besides, I’m bored of my parents and their boring money. You’ll take the fold-out, of course. I can’t sleep on hard surfaces.”

It was hard to stay annoyed at Hurricane Dorien bowling
through my life, especially when he pointed out with an impish grin that spending the summer alone as two sixteen-year-olds in New Orleans would be in
finitely better than tagging along after my parents.

He was true to his word. With Dorien at my side, my city
came to life. It’s funny how you can live in a place for sixteen years and not see it as special until you show it o to someone else. We spent our days walking along the banks of the Mississippi, keeping our eyes out for alligators, or buying cheap absinthe to guzzle beside the duck pond in Louis Armstrong Park (I didn’t touch alcohol – my parents believed if Micah’s friends hadn’t been drinking, they might’ve saved him – but drunk Dorien was hilarious). We spent our nights sneaking into jazz clubs with the fake IDs Dorien purchased from a black market pancake shop on Bourbon Street (the shop was a hub for anything illegal in the city – guns, counterfeit money, secret poker games. The pancakes were also delicious).

We were in one of those jazz clubs now, enjoying our fi
rst
drinks of the evening before the city rose from her slumber and breathed her first jasmine-scented greeting to the night. “Sure,” I said. “Show me something wild.”

Bob Dylan once said that everything in New Orleans was a good idea, but I wasn’t sure even the Big Easy was ready for Dorien Valencourt.

Dorien pushed his chair back and stood up. I thought he
was heading over to introduce himself to the group of girls at the bar who’d been eyeing us since they came in. They were college-aged – a good few years older than us – but with his arresting looks and my muscles, both Dorien and I could pass for twenty-year-olds. But he dodged around them and leaped onto the small stage in the corner. It was empty except for the polished piano in the center and some mic stands set up. A board behind the bar listed the three jazz ensembles that would play tonight – none of them were here yet. Live music in New Orleans didn’t start until late. You had to give the city time to wake up and unfurl her wings.

The bartender waved an angry fi
st. “Hey, man. You’re not
allowed up there.”

Ignoring him, Dorien mashed the piano with his fi
ngers,
launching into one of his wild, incomprehensible compositions.

And just like that, the bartender dropped his
st. And
his jaw.

Dorien’s music soared through the bar, reaching the ears of every patron and dragging their heads from their glasses to pay attention. Dorien played as only he could – dramatically, flamboyantly, with a passion and fervor that sucked the air from your lungs. Dorien bit his lip, his head bowed with focus as his
fingers danced through the scales. The song soared and swooped, a breath of air that raised goosebumps along my arms.

Dorien had a gift.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat as I thought of
another person with the gift. A person who could write music that could tear your soul to pieces and stitch it back together in three-and-a-half minutes. A person who should have been in this bar with us but was instead six feet under.

The girls crowded the stage, grinding against Dorien as he played on. One of them tipped his head back and poured her drink down his throat. Dorien dragged her into his lap and laid a trail of sticky alcohol kisses along her neck, all the while playing perfectly. Because he’s Dorien.

A crowd of people wandered in from the street, drawn by
the music conjured from Dorien’s dark heart. They gathered around the stage – captured, enraptured, blessed by the melody of a music god.

My chest ached, groaning under the weight of memories.

At the end of the piano, I noticed a Les Paul nestled into a
stand, a line of effects pedals lined up along the stage, waiting for the evening’s booked performance to take the stage. My fi
ngers itched to pick up the guitar and join Dorien. My mind pricked at the spaces in his composition I could
fill. His eyes met mine across the bar. Those slate-grey orbs didn’t beg me, they commanded.

I dug my nails into the sticky wooden table.

It took everything I had to remain in the chair.

The weight on my chest held me frozen.

If word got back to my parents that I was playing electric
guitar in a dimly lit club…it would destroy them all over again. I pictured them the night our doorbell rang. I bounded down the stairs, thinking it was Micah home from the concert. But it was the police, to tell us he’d never be home again. I remembered my mother’s face crumpling like tissue paper wadded into a ball. My father beating his chest, crying to God to bring back his son.

I couldn’t do that to them.

So I downed the rest of my coke and watched Dorien’s
passion burn through his
fingers as jealousy raged inside me. The bastard had everything – money, talent, brash con
fidence. I wished I could taste that kind of freedom, but Micah had taken it with him to the grave.

When he
finished the song, Dorien stood and took a deep
bow. The crowd erupted into applause. Even the grumpy
bartender whistled and hooted.

All except me. No way was I going to applaud the cocky
bastard.

Dorien slid back into our booth with two of the girls hanging off his arms and that arrogant grin perfectly arranged. His cheeks and neck were smudged with lipstick. He dropped three napkins on the table between us. Each one had a phone number scrawled in crimson lipstick. “You should have joined me up there.”

I flexed my arm muscles. “That stage isn’t big enough for my guns and your ego.”

Dorien unbound himself from his two admirers and leaned forward, slapping his hands on the table. The mirth in his eyes vanished. “This should be our lives, Titus. Playing in bars like this, being on the road, writing music that speaks to us. No rules, no obligations. Being in the real world, not trapped in stuffy concert halls and orchestra pits.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m not. I’m deadly serious. Let’s do it, you and me. Let’s
make music on our own terms.” Dorien’s eyes ashed. I stared at him, for the
first time seeing that the darkness behind them wasn’t part of his act. Maybe Dorien wasn’t here because he was bored and could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

Maybe the great Dorien Valencourt was running from
something, too.

“You sound insane.”

“You want to get out from under the thumb of your parents? This is how you do it. You need this just as much as I do.”

“What exactly is the this you’re proposing?”

“We form a band. We re
fine the songs I’ve been working on and show them to the world. We take classical music away from stuffy halls and elitist wankers and give it back to the people. We make it cool again.”

I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the insanity. I had auditions this year at Juilliard, the Royal Academy of Music, Conservatoire de Paris. I couldn’t just drop everything for one of Dorien’s crazy schemes. But instead of shutting him down, my mind twisted around the melody he’d just played, seeing the gaps, hearing the harmonies and layers I could add. I could feel the music humming in my veins, and I hadn’t felt music like that since Micah taught me the riff to Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs.’

I opened my eyes. Dorien leaned in close, his shit-eating
grin devouring his whole face.

“I knew you’d say yes.” With the certainty of someone
who’d never been told no in his life, Dorien accepted another cocktail from the bartender – the aptly-named hurricane, on the house as thanks for his performance – and took a long sip. “Now, we need a third. A violinist, I think. I’ve someone in
mind. Have you met Ivan Nicolescu?”

“Elena Nicolescu’s brother?” I met Elena at a music camp
last summer. She was a waif from Romania who barely said a word to anyone, but was the greatest pianist I’d ever heard. I remembered she had a twin brother, white-haired and silent, with those same ice-cold eyes that bore holes in your skin. He played the violin. He was nothing special compared to his sister, but he had a certain sledgehammer style.

“That’s the fellow. He lives at Manderley Academy, can you believe it?” Darkness passed through Dorien’s eyes again, but it was gone before I could comment on it. “He must be a vampire. That’s the only reason I can think someone would want to shut themselves away in that shithole.”

“My parents made me apply.” Both Dorien and I were
attending auditions for the major college music programs at the end of the summer. Manderley was low on my list. Why would I want to go to a rundown old mansion in the mountains when I could study in Paris? Or London? So many metal bands played in London, and it was almost far enough away from my parents for me to be able to breathe.

Almost.

“If she offers you a place, don’t take it.” Dorien slurped his drink. “I studied at the Usher School in New York. Victor is a
fine tutor, but Gizella Usher is a piece of work.”

I could smell the syrupy licorice of Dorien’s absinthe from across the table. My temples pounded. I didn’t really want to go to any of the schools I was auditioning for. Four more years of playing cello sounded like hell on earth. But what choice did I have?

Dorien was offering that choice.

“My friend Gabriel has a band named Octavia’s Ruin.
They’re heading out on tour in a month. The opening act just pulled out and they need someone to replace them. I played him some tapes I made and he said if I could
find a band and put a set together in time, we can have the opening slot. If we want it. I know it’s insane; that’s what makes it fun. What do you say?”

I leaned back in my chair. It wasn’t heavy metal. It wasn’t
the roaring guitars and pounding drums I craved, but it was diff
erent. It had heart and soul and feeling, and that was enough. Dorien left space in the music for me to make it my own. His song flowed through my head, and I felt rather than heard the rough edges where his genius met the hurricane of his soul. Instead of polishing all those edges off, we could create something raw and bold and beautiful.

I could make the cello heavy metal.

I could do my own thing, away from my parents, away from the pressure of replacing the perfect son they lost.

I slammed my
fist down on the table. “I’m in.”

Ivan flew down to New Orleans a week later. He was just as silent and terrifying as I remembered. But the moment he raised his bow and ripped through an improvisation that bowled me over with its quiet malevolence, I knew he was the violinist for us.

We recorded the album at Skulking Dog Studios, the same studio where my parents cut their
first recording. The music flew from our
fingers. Dorien joked that he sold his soul at a crossroads to give him the compositions, and I almost believed him. Every note, every motif, every phrase dripped with black magic.

Ivan spent every moment we weren’t practicing or recording on his phone to his sister, talking to her in harsh, barked tones in his native Romanian.

One of the girls Dorien met at that bar turned out to be an
amateur fi
lmmaker. She took us to the Lafayette Cemetery one night and had us run around in black cloaks and pale face paint, then cut an arty video for our
first song, ‘A Graveside Story.’ We released it online and Octavia’s Ruin shared it with their fans and before we knew it, we were climbing the Spotify charts.

By the time my parents burst through the doors at the end of summer to take me to my auditions, Broken Muse amassed eighty thousand social media fans and we’d been booked on a ten-city European tour. I showed them the music video. Mom watched in stunned silence, tears streaking her cheeks.

Dad stormed from the room and slammed the door so hard it rattled the whole house.

I packed my cello and left with Dorien the next day. We
blew off our auditions to play the nightclubs of Paris, Berlin, and London. We followed the Octavia’s Ruin tour bus in a tiny van jammed with gear, partied every night until dawn, and slept on friends’ couches, in roach-infested hostels, and in the van on the side of the road during a freak Polish thunderstorm.

Dorien was in his element – every night another crowd to enchant, in every city a new girl or guy to warm his bed. But sometimes, if I watched him carefully from across the stage, if the moonlight through the van window caught his face before he fell asleep, I saw that darkness creep into his eyes.

We never spoke about it, but I knew that Dorien wasn’t just chasing fame and riches and hot groupies – he was running from something so rotten that even on the other side of the globe, he couldn’t escape its hold on him.

Manderley Academy
Book 1 - Ghosted
Book 2 - Haunted
Book 3 - Spirited