Interregnum One - Presto
Three days later, early in the morning, Miriam was out jogging on the beaches and found a leather wrapped package left for Kevin up behind some rocks, to prevent it from washing back out again. Inside was a large necklace made of some kind of seashells that Kevin couldn't recognize along with a note in large, slowly written letters, as if the King was unaccustomed to writing in English.
Kevin Bishop. In accordance with our wager, I am hereby presenting you with the Ancestor's Gaze, a talisman which imbues the wearer with the ability to see magicks. It has often been the purview of those Kings and Queens who are unable to pierce the veil with their own vision, something I am able to do, as I have studied the teachings of our finest mages and learned from their ways, as I will do to my own children. Still, considering your dealings with both the Merlin and the Morgana, I think you will find it a useful addition to your arsenal. Perhaps we shall see each other again, Kevin of Clan Bishop, but based on our last encounter... I rather hope not. May the tide ever be in your favor.
The sea lord didn't sign it, because, well, why would he?
Kevin tried the necklace on a few times, and each time he could see an amber floating cord between his ring and each of the pendants and necklaces his partners wore, almost linking them together, the color a nice pleasant warm shade, like a tropical sunset. It was too large and unwieldy to have on day-to-day, but he hung it up in his studio, so he would always have it at hand should he need it, and it became something of a conversation piece for the next few weeks.
It didn't give him any idea of what to do about Midas Day, but halfway to the next one, in the middle of the night, inspiration struck him, and he hopped out of bed and ran down the hall, heading into his office before grabbing a large sheet of paper and a pencil.
And then he began drawing.
After about half an hour, he went back to bed, but everything he thought he needed to beat Midas Day was on that sheet of paper. The start of it, anyway.
The next morning, over breakfast, he explained to Ashley what he'd need from her, giving her the paper, telling her it was a high priority. Ashley understood, and as amusing as she found Midas Days, she completely understood why Kevin didn't want to have to endure it any further.
He was starting to have to do interviews with music channels, magazines, and radio shows about having produced Christy Zen's new album, and it was a surprising amount of people calling what she was doing a departure from her previous work and asking if he'd had a hand in getting her to experiment. Kevin was adamant that she'd come to him with the new sound already mapped out ahead and that she'd picked him because she felt he could help her deliver on that. He didn't want to take any credit where it wasn't due and went out of his way to just say he was helping her pull that sound of out of her team and her songs, although the critics all seemed to be delighted when he admitted he'd played guitar on almost half the tracks on the album.
There were also starting to be more inquiries about other projects he could start scoring, with the Robert Rodriguez project starting to move along very quickly, and it seemed like the score he'd done for Emily Rouchard was generating more than a little bit of buzz. Between that and the Christy Zen album, it felt like nearly everything was happening all at once, even though he'd been working on it all for month and months.
The list of film pitches he needed to consider was growing bigger and bigger. The number of demos he had to review and listen to grew higher and higher. But it was a good thing, being busy, knowing there was something always on the schedule for the next day.
Elizabeth hadn't found the final person to bring into his group, so the seventh pendant, the last in the box, was still there, waiting for someone to claim it. Kevin had been worried about that at first - ending projects was often as hard, if not harder, than starting them - and sticking the landing was something he wasn't entirely certain he was going to be able to do. But Elizabeth assured him things were going well in her search, and that she wanted to be sure to give him the absolute perfect person to close out the house, and she had Fatima's complete and total confidence in taking her time.
And the people in Kevin's world weren't stagnant either. Fatima's bodyguard, Jackson, had proposed to his girlfriend, even though he'd yet to bring her around the house, which was slowly driving Fatima mad. The decision had been made that Jackson would bring her by the house within the next month or two, or Fatima was going to demand they drive straight to the hospital where she worked and refuse to leave until they'd broken bread.
It was a good life.
Two days before the next Midas Day, he was sitting out in the back yard with an acoustic guitar, playing Tom Petty songs around the pool when Ashley came to join him with a giant smile on her face. "You think you're going to be ready for this?" she asked him.
"Dunno," Kevin said. "You ready to live up to your end?"
"Think so. We've got your phone set up so I can track you wherever your mind seems to want to take you, and I think we should be able to head you off at the pass enough to make sure we get to try and see if you're right about this. Can I ask what made you think about it?"
Kevin tilted his head with a sly little smile. "I started thinking about the way he said it, how it was something I'd never done before... and I kept remembering thinking to myself, 'You don't
know
me, man... you don't
know
what kind of life I have or haven't lived...' So how would he
know
it was something I'd never done before, unless it was something I
couldn't
have done before I met him? From there, the list of options shrinks rather dramatically. And I could still be wrong about this. While the list shrinks, it's not just one or two things."
"So why this one?" she said, moving to sit down on the deck chair next to him, so she could snuggle up against him, setting the guitar aside for him.
"Let's just say it feels like proper Merlin sneaky, and even if I'm wrong, it's one thing off the list," he said, wrapping his arms around her. "Your end wasn't hard?"
"Nah, although getting past the initial hurdle would've been much easier if I'd have taken Strazo with me," she giggled.
"Strazo goes where Miriam goes, and Miriam doesn't like leaving my side," Kevin sighed. "So, no joy if I can't leave the house, and we're trying to keep this as quiet and on the down low as we possibly can. I don't want Merlin to know I've got a thought about how to beat his silly game."
"I'm glad you trusted me with all this," Ashley said, leaning her head back against his chest, nuzzling into him as the sun was slowly setting. "I'm so used to everyone treating me like a child because I'm still a teenager, that it's nice to be treated like I'm an adult."
"You'll be twenty-one before you know it, and then you'll spend the rest of your life bitching about how much you miss being a teenager," Kevin said with a chuckle. "Everyone thinks they're 21 and invincible until they wake up one morning and realize that they aren't. Sometimes the reminder's subtle and sometimes--"
"Sometimes it's a former bandmate's death being announced in a newspaper article before anyone's called you personally to tell you about it?" Ashley said. "I saw the article on the counter. 'Former Truth Knife vocalist found dead in homeless shelter; drug overdose suspected.' That why you're out here playing Tom Petty songs?"
Kevin sighed. "Yeah. Danny and I were at each other's throats a lot of the time, and yeah, he absolutely was the misogynist prick that Kerry makes him out to be, at least when he was drunk or stoned, but back when I first met him, he was just a waiter at a shitty Mexican restaurant, living paycheck to paycheck while doing any karaoke or vocalist audition he could, trying to get somebody to take a chance on him. I'm a little surprised nobody's called to ask me to comment."
"They have," Ashley said, taking his hand and holding it within her own. "Elizabeth's told them all to call back in a couple of days, so you can have time to grieve and come to terms with it. She knew you wouldn't want to say anything right away, otherwise it might be something you'd regret."
"Like, 'I've been expecting his junkie ass to OD as long as I've known him' kind of regret?" Kevin said, hissing out the air. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm pissed off enough that I might've said some shit like that. I tried to get him into rehab, into treatment, into admitting he has a huge fucking problem, but that's the thing about guys like that - you can't make them do anything they don't want to do, and he didn't want to do anything but get high all the time. Making music became just a way to fuel his drug habit, and when I caught him pawning off one of my amps...
MY
