Page 10 of Scorpio Season

Below that is a phone number.

“You’re looking for a drummer?” Luca blurts.

The newcomer turns to look at her. She looks like she’d be in a rock band: Her black hair is cut in a shaggy mullet, and her dark eyes are smudged with eyeliner. Luca can’t even count the number of piercings in her ears, matching the silver glint of her septum ring. She’s even taller than Luca, though some of that height is sponsored by her clunky platform boots. “Yeah. You interested?”

“Yes,” Luca says without thinking.

The newcomer studies her, eyes traveling slowly up and down Luca’s body, lingering for a moment on her cursed frog shirt. There’s the hint of an accent seeping into her words as she asks, “You drum?”

Luca nods. “Since I was nine.”

“Sweet. Shoot me a message, yeah?” She taps the flyer with one tattooed knuckle. Luca is still trying to place her accent. Birmingham, definitely, and something else—Russian, maybe? Polish? “I’ll send you the address. We’re meeting tonight.”

“All right,” Luca says, nervous for no reason at all. “Yeah. Will do.”

“D’you have any videos of you playing?”

“Yeah. Just . . . covers and stuff, but—”

“Nice. Send me those. I’ll show them to the band before we meet.”

Luca feels like she’s caught up in a riptide, everything moving too fast for her to comprehend what’s happening. She’s never felt like she was chatting with a force of nature up until this moment. “Okay. Yeah.”

The slow curl of the stranger’s lips reveals a chipped front tooth. “I’m Izzy.”

“Luca.”

“Luca,” she repeats. “Message me. Really. You would fit with us.”

Luca blinks at her, unsure what that means and how Izzy could have gathered that much from one look at her. “Okay.”

Izzy’s gaze is startlingly intense as she gives a short nod, like that settles it. She turns around, then looks over her shoulder once more to point at Luca. “Your shirt,” she says. “Brilliant.”

“Thanks,” Luca manages, just barely suppressing the urge to give a stupid thumbs-up. Then the door falls shut again, leaving her to stare at the wine-red flyer. She hesitates for all of a second before tearing it down and bringing it with her back to the counter.

“What was that about?” Jemma asks. In the absence of any customers, she has started playing Candy Crush on her phone—her second strategy of entertaining herself at work, after petty pastry theft.

“She’s in a band,” Luca says. “They’re looking for a drummer.”

Jemma’s eyes light up. “Oh my God. Are you going to join?”

“I think they have to decide that,” Luca says.

“Okay, but are you going to try?”

Luca curls her fingers around her coffee cup for comfort. “Do you think I should?”

“Yes. Go forth. Follow the hot goth to your destiny. You know you want to.”

For the first time that day, Luca’s lips twitch into a real smile. For weeks, she’s been standing in front of the Board, looking for something to break through the aimless monotony of her day-to-day and make her feel useful. Maybe this is it.

Maybe it isn’t, but at least she can say she tried.

She pulls out her phone and drafts a message.

4

“We are not playing ‘a ballad for bruised knees’ as our first song.”