Ghost Aria by Jeffe Kennedy

regard.
    She had, perhaps, already become a little addicted to it.
    He stopped so abruptly she nearly crashed into him.
    â€œListen.”
    She thought he meant to listen to him, but he said nothing. The shadows stilled and seemed to fold their wings, settling around them with the quiet. Not entirely silent, however; in the singing distance of the acoustics, sounds traveled to her. Not the golden voice, serenading her, but the harsh vocals of police speakers, the whoop of a siren. The tromp of footsteps.
    â€œOh no.”
    â€œOh yes. The daylight world searches for you.”
    Shit . She really hoped her father wouldn’t find out. All at once she felt thirteen again, getting caught after sneaking back into the house. Her father had accused her of staging the rebellion to make him let her live with her mother and showed her how very badly her plan had gone wrong.
    â€œHave I been gone that long?” It hadn’t felt very long. She didn’t have her phone, so she couldn’t check the time. “Where are my things?”
    â€œWhere you left them.”
    â€œNo—you moved them.” She remembered now. The strange sounds, the chandelier falling while she stood petrified below. What had really happened?
    â€œI must go.” He still held her hand and now drew her closer. “Give me a kiss.”
    â€œTell me your name.”
    â€œCall me Master.” He whispered it, like a secret, like a promise, and followed it with a searing kiss that chased the confusion and questions from her reeling mind.
    He set her on her feet and she became aware she’d been clinging to him. A gloved thumb rubbed over her lip.
    â€œClose your eyes for a moment.”
    Rather than risk another discussion about the blindfold, she did. A sound like sandpaper and a whiff of dusty air. Then he pulled her by the hand a few steps and let her look again.
    She stood on the very lowest level, outside the sealed door she’d seen on her first day. Feeling an odd sense of déjà vu, she traced the image carved into the door. The collar and whip that had instantly captured her attention.
    â€œI don’t understand all of this,” she whispered.
    Her voice echoed back. She was alone in the empty hallway.

7
    T he martial thump of boots on metal jerked her from her daze.
    She hurried down the murky hall to the central spiral staircase and peered up through the grate. The levels were lit up to three above where she stood. Voices created quite a din, with shouts, doors banging, and dogs barking. They’d brought out search dogs?
    Creeping as noiselessly as possible, she skulked up one flight of steps on all fours, keeping her profile low. She made it to the next level up without setting off shouts of alarm and decided not to risk another. Being that far down would help with her story that she hadn’t heard anyone.
    Unfortunately she needed more of a story than that.
    Why would she have come to this level—without her keys, dammit—and stayed down here when Carla needed her help? Could she fake temporary amnesia? The chandelier fell and she hit her head, can’t remember what happened but miraculously sustained no injury. And somehow wandered off.
    Had the chandelier really fallen? Or had she only imagined it teetering above her, one of its crystal pendants spinning through the air like a snowflake, then soundlessly shattering on the floor?
    If it hadn’t really fallen, then she’d sound insane.
    If none of this had really happened, she had to consider that possibility.
    Think. Think. Think.
    She slid along the wall, trying doorknobs as she went, underneath the video cameras, out of range of their unblinking black eyes. No little red lights gleamed in the dark, however, so perhaps whatever happened to the one in the prop shop affected these, too. If that had happened.
    It all whispered of mental imbalance, a thought that made her nerves cringe, the sensation of fingernails scraping