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The Christmas symphony was an annual event, one that the Baskervilles had been attending for years and that Jack had only recently been introduced to—two years ago, now, first with the Barmas, and then with them—with Lacie, and with Levi Baskerville, in box seats floating above the audience. It had just been them—him, and Lacie, and the music, played by Oswald and by an entire symphony, and now—
And now it was just Jack, in those same box seats, and though the music was the same, and the audience, and the ambiance, something remained as dark and hollow and bitterly cold as the void Lacie had died in. Something remained as dark and hollow and bitterly cold as the void Lacie had died in, though the music swelled with the same holiday bells as ever and the people still smiled and the thermostat was up to eighty degrees now—Jack knew, he had checked.
He had thought that the difference was Lacie’s death, but he had been proven wrong earlier in the evening, the first time Glen Baskerville took the stage and played a violin solo that was gorgeous and haunting and desolate and, for the first time in months, warmed that howling animal that was Jack’s chest.
So the problem was something else. The music or the heating or the atmosphere—because nothing could soothe the loss of Lacie, ever, not in this life nor any other. The music or the heating or the atmosphere—it was most likely the music, because that was the only change Glen had wrought. He must have enchanted his violin, somehow, with some strange Baskerville magic he had kept from Jack. It was the only explanation. The song had been so sad, empty and alone and cold, as if it were the very sound of the hollowness inherent in the world—and yet somehow it had been the most soothing song Jack Vessalius had ever heard in his life. He hated it.
When Glen returned to the stage, this time walking among a flock of musicians as though he did not stand out from them as a peacock among vultures, Jack leaned forward in his seat, just slightly enough for him to be surprised at himself. He shouldn’t have cared. He was here only because his evening was free; he was here only because Lacie had sent him a ticket back months ago, when it was expected that he would attend with the Baskervilles again, that he would go to please her and to see her and to spend time with her, breathe in the scent of her shampoo and watch her eyes dance in tune with her brother’s music.
Now Lacie’s eyes would never dance again, and it was all her brother’s fault; Lacie’s eyes would never dance again, and yet here Jack was, watching her murderer play violin in time with a dozen other musicians, a traditional Christmas carol filling the symphony hall as though this really were a holly, jolly night.
Glen’s face was serious, his eyes fixed on the sheet music in front of him as the bow of his violin sawed back and forth over its strings, each stroke so perfect that you could not differentiate his music from silence. Perfect yet again; Jack thought that he ought to hate this, and yet he couldn’t quite muster that violent, wracking laughter, no matter how deeply he dug. Instead he found only disgust, settling like a quiet reverence in his chest, a soft feathered thing fluttering up the hollow parts of him. When the songs ended, and applause trundled around out of the polite audience, Jack could not have told anyone what music had been played; he could not even say how it had made him feel, except that he had felt, and he hated it, or he wanted to hate it—
He told himself he hated it, and that was what mattered.
Jack left the symphony hall and stood in the dark cold, exhaling fog to cloud the streetlamps. The cold air stung his lungs, but it didn’t push into his chest, didn’t push into where the hollowness ought to have been. Glen’s music still sat there, warm and steadfast; Jack rather thought that it would never go away again. Glen had been warm and steadfast for as long as Jack had known him; he had been so when he was Oswald, when he killed Lacie, when he revealed himself as Glen; he was so now, even though they had not seen each other, had not spoken. How disgusting.
Jack was familiar, now, with disgust; it warmed you, comforted you, came with its own soft contentment. He felt it whenever Glen smiled, whenever he played his music; Jack ought to have expected it to come again tonight, with the violin, with the set of Glen’s shoulders and the gleam of his hair. He breathed again, white mist dissipating in front of his mouth—so quick, so fragile, just like a human life, just like the song of a violin.
He stood until Glen’s silhouette appeared out of the side door of the symphony hall, and then Jack turned, and left, walked down along the frigid street and let the dark surround him. It was too bad that there were streetlamps. Otherwise the dark might have swallowed Jack like a mouth, obscuring him from not only Glen’s sight but his own; like that, there might have been some comfort to be found, disappearing into oblivion, far from Glen Baskerville and the strange feelings he brought with him.
But instead the streetlamps illuminated every step of his path, as Glen’s eyes burnt a hole into his back, and though Jack turned away countless times, he could not escape from that light, that gaze, that pain.
Glen Baskerville watched as the man who might have been Jack vanished into the darkness of the winter night. His blond braid brushed the hem of his long winter coat; the streetlamps and their shadows obscured the color so that it muddled with Glen’s hope and amplified his despair. Why would Jack be here, tonight? Why would he come, only to be reminded of what Glen had done to Lacie?
Glen had played tribute to her, for his first song of the night. It had been a moment of indulgence, unnecessary and weak; he had spent months upon months writing it, hating himself for it, wishing he could believe she would never forgive him for playing it in her honor. When he had stood on the stage and pressed it out into the silence, he had felt nothing but the callouses in his fingers and the pain in his heart; he had known, then, that Lacie would never hear it, would never know he was playing it, calling out to her, missing her. She was dead. She was gone. He had killed her.
He had not looked up to the old Baskerville box, where she was not sitting. He had not looked to see if anyone was there. Nobody who had any sense would dare; the remainders, Levi and Jack, would not lower themselves to watch Glen’s performance. So he had played alone; so he had played to an audience uncaring. So he would not delude himself that the vanished silhouette was Jack; he did not deserve such a beautiful hope.
Instead, Glen walked to the street. A car drove up, shining, warm; he got in without looking at the driver. They wore Baskerville red, the red of Lacie’s eyes, the red of Lacie’s blood; there was no need for him to know anything more.
The car started driving again, and Glen started out the window, into the cold and lonely night. They moved down streets, through cold, through puddles of yellow light and pockets of traffic. The car moved past pedestrians, faceless, on their own or together in the cold; they passed a blond man in a green coat, and Glen’s eyes passed over him, but Jack Vessalius did not look at him, and their eyes did not meet, so no lies could pass between them. Instead, each moved on, alone, vanishing into the cold and silent night.