Chapter Text
Wednesday Addams had crossed international borders with fewer complications than she encountered while attempting to leave the Eurostar.
The train had arrived at St Pancras International at precisely 2:07 p.m., exactly on schedule. Wednesday had approved of this. The carriage doors had opened without incident. She had approved of that too.
Then she had attempted to manoeuvre her luggage onto the platform.
Her ordinary suitcase presented no difficulty. The second case, however, had been custom-built by her father for this particular journey and possessed the approximate dimensions, weight and visual charm of a portable coffin.
It contained Wednesday’s cello.
It also contained several concealed compartments, reinforced locking mechanisms and a humidity-control system Gomez had insisted upon after becoming convinced that the English climate intended to murder the instrument.
Wednesday had assured him that London’s weather was merely damp, not sentient.
Gomez had replied that this was exactly what the English wanted foreigners to believe.
Wednesday gripped the handle of the case and pulled.
It lodged firmly against the lip between the train and the platform.
She pulled harder.
Nothing.
A businessman behind her cleared his throat.
Wednesday turned her head slowly.
He immediately stopped.
She returned her attention to the case and calculated whether the application of controlled violence would damage the cello. Before she reached a satisfactory conclusion, a gloved hand appeared beside hers.
“Allow me.”
The gentleman was elderly, dressed in a dark wool coat and a hat that belonged to an age when people still carried duelling pistols for social emergencies. He lifted the lower end of the case while Wednesday guided it over the gap.
Together, they lowered it safely onto the platform.
“Thank you,” Wednesday said.
The words emerged with the solemnity of an oath sworn over an open grave. She did not enjoy requiring assistance, but refusing to acknowledge it would have been discourteous.
The gentleman merely tipped his hat.
“Have a good day, miss.”
He disappeared into the stream of travellers before Wednesday could decide whether the phrase had been sincere or threatening.
She adjusted her grip on the cello case and began making her way through the station.
St Pancras was offensively beautiful.
Iron arches curved high above her, meeting a vast glass roof through which the grey London daylight spilled. Brickwork glowed red against the steel. Trains breathed along the platforms while footsteps, announcements and rolling suitcases combined into a ceaseless mechanical pulse.
Wednesday had seen photographs, of course. They had not adequately conveyed the building’s peculiar balance between cathedral and machine.
She might have appreciated it under different circumstances.
Instead, every muscle across her shoulders was rigid.
The final of the International Young Classical Musicians Competition would take place in two days. Wednesday had performed before judges, orchestras, aristocrats and one exceptionally judgmental collection of preserved human heads. None of this concerned her.
What concerned her was that her mother had expressed confidence in her.
Morticia’s confidence was never loud. It was far worse than that. It was absolute.
Wednesday had spent the entire journey mentally revisiting every passage of the piece she would perform, inspecting each note for weakness until the music no longer resembled music at all. It had become architecture. Cold, precise and liable to collapse if one stone sat imperfectly.
She was halfway across the main concourse when she heard the piano.
Wednesday stopped.
The melody was soft beneath the noise of the station, but it did not belong to the speakers overhead. It moved independently of the announcements and footsteps, threading between them rather than competing with them.
There was something bright within it.
Not simple. Not careless.
Bright.
Wednesday changed direction.
A crowd had gathered near the centre of the concourse, loose at the edges but tightly packed around something she could not yet see. Several people held up their phones. A child sat on his father’s shoulders. Two station employees had paused nearby, apparently deciding that whatever regulation was being broken was not worth enforcing.
Wednesday approached until the crowd shifted.
There was a piano in the middle of the station.
More importantly, there was a girl playing it.
She looked approximately Wednesday’s age, perhaps a year older. Her blonde hair fell around her shoulders in soft waves, interrupted by streaks of pink, blue and violet that caught beneath the station lights. She wore a bright striped jumper under a cropped jacket, several rings and enough colour to cause permanent retinal damage.
Her eyes were closed.
She was smiling.
Not at the crowd. Not for the cameras.
She smiled as though the music had whispered something privately amusing to her and she had no intention of explaining the joke.
Her fingers moved easily over the keys. She was not playing for applause. Wednesday recognised that immediately. The girl played because the piano was there, because she was there, and because leaving the silence intact would apparently have been intolerable.
The piece ended.
Applause rose around her.
The girl opened her eyes, laughed and gave an exaggerated little bow from the bench.
“Thank you, thank you. My world tour will be announced as soon as somebody agrees to lend me train fare.”
Several people laughed.
Wednesday did not.
She was too busy listening as the girl rested her fingers on the keys again and began another melody.
Wednesday knew it.
The recognition came before the title. A sequence of notes, familiar but altered, the rhythm made softer and more contemplative beneath the girl’s hands. Wednesday had heard it years ago, half ignored from a radio Pugsley had left playing while constructing an unsuccessful flamethrower.
She did not consciously make a decision.
One moment she stood beyond the edge of the crowd.
The next, she lowered her suitcase, laid the custom cello case flat upon the floor and opened its catches.
The nearest spectators noticed first.
Whispers travelled through the crowd as Wednesday removed the cello. She inspected it quickly, extended the endpin and tightened her bow. The heavy case was strong enough to support her weight, another feature her father had enthusiastically demonstrated by standing atop it while fencing with Thing.
The station clock above the concourse read precisely 2:18 p.m.
Wednesday sat down.
The pianist had not yet seen her.
Wednesday listened for four measures.
Then she joined.
The cello entered beneath the piano with a low, velvet note.
The blonde girl’s head snapped around.
Her fingers did not stop.
For one fractured second, surprise flashed across her face. Then her eyes widened, her smile became radiant, and she laughed without making a sound.
Wednesday continued playing.
The crowd expanded as people turned towards the music. The circle opened around the two of them, phones rising like a field of small glass eyes.
The pianist adjusted immediately.
She shifted the melody, leaving space for the cello to answer. Wednesday followed, then challenged her with a variation of her own. The girl’s eyebrows rose. She responded with a run of bright notes that should have been frivolous but were technically precise.
Wednesday felt the corner of her mouth threaten movement.
She suppressed it.
The girl saw anyway.
Her grin became unbearably pleased.
They reached the end together, holding the final note until it disappeared into the vaulted station.
The applause was immediate.
The pianist turned on the bench so completely that she nearly slid from it.
“That was amazing!”
Wednesday lowered her bow.
“It was adequate.”
The girl stared at her for a beat.
Then she laughed.
It was not a polite laugh. It burst free, warm and delighted, and Wednesday experienced the deeply inconvenient sensation of wanting to hear it again.
“Come closer,” the girl said, patting the empty space beside the piano. “You’re practically in another postcode over there.”
Wednesday looked at the distance between them.
It was less than three metres.
“I am appropriately positioned.”
“You’re hiding behind a wall of tourists.”
“I do not hide.”
A woman in the crowd called, “Go on, love!”
Someone else began clapping rhythmically.
Others joined.
Wednesday surveyed them with increasing displeasure.
The clapping grew louder.
The pianist leaned towards her and stage-whispered, “I think you’ve been democratically overruled.”
“Democracy is mob rule wearing a respectable hat.”
“Probably, but they’re not going to stop.”
She was correct.
Wednesday disliked her already.
She rose, lifted the cello and dragged the reinforced case nearer to the piano. The crowd applauded her relocation as though she had completed an arduous migration.
Wednesday sat again.
The girl beamed.
Up close, Wednesday could see that the coloured streaks in her hair were not random. They were carefully placed through the blonde, bright flashes revealed whenever she moved. She had pale blue eyes and faint freckles across her nose.
“What kind of music do you know?” the girl asked. “Is it all classical?”
Wednesday considered the question.
She knew precisely two hundred and eleven classical compositions in full, fragments of many others, a selection of funeral hymns, several operatic murder scenes, a collection of folk songs and considerably more contemporary music than she generally admitted.
“No,” she said eventually. “I know a few things.”
The girl did not appear insulted by the answer.
“Do you know ‘Numb’?”
Wednesday blinked once.
“By Linkin Park?”
“Yeah.”
“I know it.”
The girl threw both hands into the air.
“Yes!”
Several members of the crowd cheered with her.
She spun back towards the keys.
“Okay. Follow me, cello girl.”
“My name is not cello girl.”
The opening notes began.
Wednesday stared at the back of her colourful head.
Then she placed her bow against the strings.
The station seemed to lean closer.
The girl played the introduction with a slower tempo than the original, turning the song into something mournful and spacious. Wednesday entered beneath her, carrying the melody through the cello until it ached.
The pianist looked sideways at her.
Wednesday looked back.
Something passed between them.
Not agreement. Agreement was too deliberate.
Recognition, perhaps.
The girl shifted into the chorus, playing harder now. Wednesday matched her. The cello gave the song a rawness that made every note feel freshly exposed. Around them, the station blurred into movement and light, but the music remained sharply defined.
Wednesday stopped thinking about the competition.
She stopped thinking about the judges, the final, her mother’s confidence or the flaw she had imagined in the third movement of her chosen piece.
She simply played.
When the song ended, the blonde girl was breathing quickly, her cheeks pink.
For once, Wednesday did not wait for her to suggest what came next.
She raised her bow and began “Rewrite the Stars.”
The pianist’s mouth fell open.
Then came that laugh again.
She turned back to the piano and joined immediately.
Their second duet became a third.
The girl began “Viva La Vida.” Wednesday answered with the cello.
Wednesday retaliated with “Paint It, Black,” which made the girl glance over with open delight before transforming the piano accompaniment into something dramatic enough to belong in a gothic ballroom.
The girl launched into “Bring Me to Life.”
Wednesday followed it with “Bad Guy.”
By the sixth song, the crowd had become enormous.
Travellers stood on the upper level to watch. People leaned against railings. A station employee had abandoned all pretence of working and was filming from beside a column. Somewhere within the crowd, a child shouted that the cello lady looked like a vampire.
Wednesday considered this the first sensible observation anyone had made all morning.
Twenty-one minutes and eighteen seconds after Wednesday had joined her, the final note ended.
The station clock read 2:39 p.m.
The blonde girl lifted both hands triumphantly.
The crowd erupted.
Wednesday remained seated, chest rising more quickly than usual. Her fingers tingled. A strand of hair had loosened beside her face.
She felt...
Calm.
No.
That was insufficient.
She felt alive.
The girl turned towards her, eyes shining.
“That was incredible. You’re incredible. You look like you’re planning six murders, but musically? Incredible.”
“Only six?”
The girl’s smile flickered into surprise.
Wednesday realised she had made a joke.
Disturbing.
Before either of them could address it, music chimed from the girl’s coat pocket.
She frowned, pulled out her phone and glanced at the screen.
Her face changed.
“Oh my God.”
She shot upright so quickly that the piano bench scraped backwards.
“I’m late!”
Wednesday lowered her cello.
“For what?”
The girl shoved the phone into her pocket and seized two bags from beneath the piano.
“For something I was supposed to be at fifteen minutes ago, which is already bad, but they think I’m going to be early, which makes it much worse.”
“That sentence lacks structural integrity.”
“I know. So does my entire life.”
She slung one bag over her shoulder, nearly struck herself with the other and caught it at the last second.
Then she looked at Wednesday.
The panic vanished from her face.
For one brief moment, the station, the crowd and the forest of raised phones seemed to disappear.
The girl smiled.
It was softer this time.
“If we ever meet again, I want to play together again.”
Wednesday’s grip tightened slightly around her bow.
“Statistically, London has a population of almost nine million people.”
“So I’ll take that as a yes.”
Before Wednesday could correct her, the girl stepped forward.
She leaned down.
Soft lips pressed against Wednesday’s cheek.
The contact lasted less than a second.
It was still long enough to empty Wednesday’s mind of every coherent thought it had ever contained.
The girl pulled away with a brilliant smile.
“Bye, cello girl!”
At precisely 2:58 p.m., forty minutes after Wednesday had first joined her at the piano, she was gone.
She slipped through the crowd in a blaze of colour, calling apologies as she narrowly avoided colliding with a suitcase. People parted to let her through. Within seconds, the station swallowed her.
Wednesday remained completely motionless.
The crowd was silent.
Then someone said, “Aww.”
Wednesday slowly turned her head.
The crowd abruptly remembered that many of them had trains to catch.
By that evening, Wednesday had restored herself to a tolerable condition.
She had checked into her hotel, inspected the room for surveillance devices, unpacked her clothing and examined her cello for damage. She had ordered black coffee and a meal she had no intention of finishing. The competition itinerary rested on the desk beside her.
She was studying tomorrow’s rehearsal schedule when her phone rang.
The screen displayed one word.
Mother.
Wednesday answered.
“Good evening.”
“Wednesday,” Morticia said warmly. “How is London?”
“Overpopulated. Damp. Architecturally tolerable.”
“How lovely.”
Wednesday heard the faint crackling of a fire in the background. Her parents were likely in the conservatory. Her father’s muffled voice drifted through the call, followed by what sounded like the clash of swords.
Morticia continued, “Did your journey pass without incident?”
Wednesday’s eyes moved towards the cello case.
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
It was not an ordinary pause.
Morticia Addams had many forms of silence. This one carried the delicate satisfaction of a spider noticing movement in its web.
“How curious,” she murmured.
Wednesday’s suspicion sharpened.
“What is curious?”
“I wondered whether you might tell me who she is.”
Wednesday became still.
“Who?”
“The charming young woman who kissed you in St Pancras.”
The silence that followed was profound.
From the background, Gomez shouted, “She kissed her?”
“Cara mia,” Morticia said, apparently turning away from the phone, “I was attempting subtlety.”
“She kissed our little storm cloud!”
A crash followed.
Possibly a dropped sword. Possibly her father fainting into a suit of armour.
Wednesday looked towards the dark hotel window.
“How do you know about that?”
“My darling, everyone knows.”
“That is mathematically impossible.”
“Your duet appears to have been recorded from at least thirty-seven separate angles.”
Wednesday closed her eyes.
Morticia’s voice became silkier.
“One video has already received several million views. The title is rather sweet. ‘Mysterious Pianist Melts Wednesday Addams in London Station.’”
“I was not melted.”
“Of course not.”
“I displayed no visible emotional reaction.”
“Another video is titled ‘Goth Cellist Forgets How to Breathe After Rainbow Girl Kisses Her.’”
Wednesday said nothing.
Morticia hummed thoughtfully.
“The internet seems particularly fascinated by the way you watched her leave.”
“I was assessing her escape route.”
“How romantic.”
“It was not romantic.”
In the background, Gomez recovered sufficiently to demand, “Did Wednesday ask for her number?”
Morticia relayed the question.
“No.”
“Her name?”
Wednesday’s jaw tightened.
“No.”
“Any means of contacting her?”
“No.”
Another pause.
This one was worse.
“My poor little raven,” Morticia said gently. “You allowed a beautiful stranger to kiss you and vanish without learning a single identifying detail.”
“I did not allow anything. It was an ambush.”
“A wonderfully executed one.”
Wednesday walked towards the window and stared out across London’s wet, glittering streets.
Somewhere in the city was a girl with coloured hair, an infuriating smile and no apparent respect for personal boundaries.
Wednesday did not know her name.
She did not know why she had been at the station.
She did not know where she had been rushing to.
She knew only the sound of her piano, the shape of her laugh and the brief warmth her lips had left against Wednesday’s cheek.
Her fingers touched the place before she could stop them.
Morticia went very quiet.
Wednesday lowered her hand.
“Mother.”
“Yes, Wednesday?”
“Not a word.”
“Your secrets are always safe with me.”
Gomez shouted from across the room, “I have already ordered commemorative prints!”
Wednesday ended the call.
Her phone immediately vibrated with a notification.
Then another.
And another.
She opened the first against her better judgment.
A video filled the screen.
There she was, sitting beside the station piano, cello braced between her knees. Beside her, the blonde girl played with her whole body, bright hair moving as she laughed.
The caption read:
UNKNOWN PIANO GIRL AND WEDNESDAY ADDAMS JUST TURNED ST PANCRAS INTO A CONCERT HALL AND THEN SHE KISSED HER???
Wednesday watched the video once.
Then again, strictly to examine the audio quality.
A third viewing revealed no additional technical information.
She paused it on the final frame.
The girl was leaning towards her, smiling.
Wednesday stared at the image.
“Unknown piano girl,” she murmured.
Somewhere beneath her irritation, something unfamiliar unfurled.
London contained almost nine million people.
Wednesday had never particularly enjoyed impossible hunts.
Until now.