The sound of magic on the river wakes me from a dead sleep. Gabriel is at it again. Probably figured he’d catch me off guard. I toss back the sheets, mindful not to wake Amy. She murmurs something, turns away. The windows are open and the night has turned unexpectedly cold, making the floorboards icy beneath my feet. I can hear Gabriel’s spell, even from this distance, and I wonder what the hell he’s up to this time.
He’s a backspinner, so I have to focus hard to parse out the elements of the spell. Reverse melodies and lyrics click together in my mind one by one, like bent jigsaw puzzle pieces, and then I have them. Hall and Oates, Peter Frampton and...God in Heaven, is that Toto? I slip on my sweatpants, an ancient NIN concert shirt and then half sprint to the spare bedroom.
I open the door as far as it will go and squeeze through into the cramped space. Hardly room to breathe in here with the sagging bookshelves full of records, the music reference books stacked in unsteady towers, and of course the turntables. Fifteen, sixteen? Most are Technics and Sonys made in the last twenty years or so, but for special occasions I have one of those old record player credenzas with built in speakers. I also have a flip top kids’ model from the sixties with Mickey Mouse painted on the lid, but that’s mostly for my own amusement.
I let my fingers zip along the record spines, loving the hum of magical impulse in spite of the urgency. Within a minute, I have three records tabled and ready to rock: a seventies copy of Cash’s Live at Folsom Prison that pops in all the right places, the latest Wilco record, and an original seven inch of Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick” in pristine condition.
It’ll do.
I drop the needles one by one. They hiss like a nest of angry snakes and then the sound is traveling from each turntable into a phono mixer, through the power amp with its golden glowing tubes and out of the speakers. They’re pointed straight up at the ceiling so the sound can pass through the middle of the musical staff I have painted there. I mumble the invocation. Notes climb and crawl along the staff as the sound hits it, meshing together into one beautiful and brutally righteous song. Electricity crackles from the turntables’ ground wires. Then the music is released into the world, on the hunt, battering at the blasphemy of Gabriel’s song of destruction.
A few seconds in and I can hear his spell mercifully fading in the distance. Tension drains from my muscles. I squeeze into a wobbly metal chair, close my eyes and let the needles ride all the way to the lead-outs.
In the morning I survey the damage.
It’s bad, but not as bad as it could have been. A few of the trees that line the south side of the river near Auditorium Shores are charred black, and the weeds around them are wilted and brown, bobbing on the surface of the cool water that laps the shore. I can see some cracks in the South First Street bridge that weren’t there yesterday. Nothing substantial enough to bring it down. The worst of it is a new plot cleared on the north shore, populated with bulldozers and men in hardhats. That wasn’t there yesterday—I’m almost sure of it. Probably another skyscraper going up. I know who’s to blame for that.
Amy is talking as we cross the footbridge and I realize I haven’t been listening to what she’s saying. I nod, say yep and try to catch up on the conversation but she nails me with a look.
“Do you even care what I’m talking about?” she asks. She’s dark haired, dark skinned and beautiful, dressed in a green sundress, fat shades and tennis shoes. I love the way she looks when’s she smiles but she’s not doing that now.
“Sorry, I’m just...” I trail off, knowing she won’t want to hear about it.
“Jesus, are you looking for damage?” she asks. “I heard you last night. Were you casting spells? ”
“Look around, Amy! Look at that building site. That’s what I’m fighting against. God, the water’s even turning brown.”
She shakes her head. “The water is the same as always and they’ve been clearing that lot for a month now. You can’t progress to that point overnight. I agree that a building there is a scenic disaster and possibly an ecological one, but you need to let someone else handle this.”
“Someone like your firm?”
“Yes, like them. You need to let this go.”
I’m sure she’s wrong about the construction site, but I don’t press the point. We’ve played this tune so many times before neither of us want to hear it. I’m half convinced that Amy no longer even believes my magic is real. She may not want to hear what Gabriel and others like him are doing to the soul of this city, but she’s always at least offered a grudging respect for the things I can do with the music. If she’s been humoring me, I don’t know where that leaves us. I’ve never asked her straight up because I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear what she has to say about it.
“You need to redirect your energy,” she says. “Do something tangible. You’re smart and you’re driven and that’s a lot of what I love about you, but what are you doing with it?”
“You know what I’m doing with it,” I say, and it’s precariously close to a challenge. She doesn’t take the bait.
“Yeah, I know what you’re doing with it,” she says.
I bury my head in the city’s song and pretend I don’t know how she really feels.
I’m in Waterloo Records flipping through the new releases when I see Gabriel. My fingers have settled on a half speed mastered release of Kind of Blue , wishing I had the cash for it and thinking about what sort of righteous magic I could knock out with that kind of awesome, when I see him across from me, flipping through the used vinyl section. He looks like a Banana Republic ad, he smells like a vanilla candle, and he sounds like Limp Bizkit. God, how I loathe him.
He doesn’t notice me at first which means he’s not paying close enough attention to the music —if he was, he’d totally hear The Clash running through my brain and realize how badly I want to stomp a hole in his head with the motorcycle boots I wish I was wearing. He must feel me staring because he looks up, his eyebrows arch and he smiles at me like we’re buddies or something.
“Hey, Rob,” he says. “What’s happening?”
“Record shopping.”
“Haven’t seen you around much lately.”
“Yeah, we’ll I’ve been busy,” I say. “Saving the soul of the city and all that.”
He cocks his head and grows a concerned look. “You still think I’m like a super villain or something? Bro, we’ve talked about this.”
“You’re an asshole, you know?”
“We have different tastes in music, Rob. Period. It doesn’t mean I’m evil and it sure doesn’t mean I’m...what, a witch? Listen to how crazy you sound.”
Instead of arguing I decide to seethe in silence. Gabriel is a crafty dude. You’ve never met a friendlier guy, but I can hear the music playing in his head and I know what he’s really all about. He can deny all he wants but I know every note and nuance of his being and he’s a vinylmancer. Though it doesn’t technically make him a warper, he’s also a backspinner, and most of the worst warpers are backspinners. It’s easier to distort the song that way. What a hack. I haven’t backspun a record since Motley Crue were in their heyday.
“You and Amy still together?” asks Gabriel. He knows we are; he’s just trying to goad me.
“Yes.”
“That’s cool,” he says. “She’s cool. I see her out places a lot and you not so much so I was afraid maybe you guys had another falling out.”
I reign in my desire to scream, The reason you don’t see me out so much is because I spend all my time holed up in my spare bedroom trying to shovel away the slag heap of doom that you’re trying to bury this city in , but instead I just say, “Well, we haven’t.”
“Good to know...hey, score!” He holds up a battered old REO Speedwagon album. “I don’t think they even released this this one on CD.”
“They all out of Styx?”
He ignores me, taken in by his prize. “Listen, Rob, I’ve got to run. Tell Amy I said hi. And, bro, if you ever want to hang out, maybe listen to music or something, call me up anytime.”
“Unlikely.”
“Whatever man,” he says, heading for the checkout counter, and the sharp little wave he punctuates it with is all the evidence I need to confirm he’s pure evil. 
I’ve lost track of how many times Amy and I have broken up. Usually it’s her leaving me but I’ve done the walking a time or two. Last time I remember that the white vinyl twentieth anniversary reissue of Bleach was on the turntable when she slammed the door. Made the needle skip the groove and came damned close to scratching the record.
This time, it’s all about the magic, and I realize for the first time this might be something we can’t overcome.
Gabriel usually sets his spells loose at night, but this time he’s got his music cruising rush hour, and Amy comes through the door right when I’m at the zenith of my counter spell. The door bumps into one of the record shelves and I whip my head around to face her just as dying notes trickle down from the ceiling like bits of brightly burning paper.
“Damn it! I almost had it!”
Her eyes are wide, and I remember that she’s never been in my casting room while I was actually doing magic. I can tell by the way she drops her briefcase and slowly backs out of the room that she’s scared shitless by the whole thing.
“Amy, god I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to yell. Look, Gabriel is running spells through the fucking streets, infecting the radios and probably shattering stoplights and bending signposts for all I know. I was just trying to counter it.”
“There was fire,” she says absently, still backing away. “You could burn down the house.”
“It’s not really fire,” I say. “It’s more like...energy? I think.”
“You think?”
“Amy, it’s magic. That’s all it is.”
She laughs, but it’s more of a mad cackle, not her normal laugh. She turns and I follow her into the living room where she’s snatching her keys from the end table.“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“You never told me there was fire involved.”
“You’re not this mad about fire. What’s wrong?”
“Everything. Okay, Rob? I come home and you’re in there again doing that and I guess I thought maybe you’d get past that someday. Normal people have jobs and lives.”
“You know this is what I’m about,” I say. “This isn’t a phase I’m going to outgrow. I’m a guardian of this city and that takes a commitment from me. You know all about this, Amy. You know about the magic. Why’s it freaking you out today?”
“You don’t even know what it is!”
“I understand it.”
“That’s a different thing entirely,” she says. “Look, it’s more than magic, okay? That’s just one thing. I think we’re losing whatever it is that holds us together.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
“No, I’ve seen...things that you’ve done with your magic. Enough anyway. But I think it’s dangerous. There are whole covens of vinylmancers out there, you’ve told me that. Why can’t you leave all this to them?”
“Because I can’t. What would I do then? This is my life, Amy.”
“You need to figure some things out,” she says.
I know exactly what she wants me to figure out. Why is it that my girlfriend of eight years, give or take, can get her shit together, land a decent job and generally grow the fuck up while I’m still hopping between part-time jobs at the bagel shop and any number of Austin’s finer fast food chains, avoiding eye contact with any semblance of adulthood? I know better than to keep arguing, so I retreat to the couch and wonder what it’s going to take to get her back this time.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“What? Yeah, I mean yes, I’m listening.”
She screams, comes just short of throwing her keys at me, then she pushes past and heads off in search of someplace where she won’t have to deal with me.
I sit quietly for a few minutes, letting my hatred of Gabriel fester. His fault. He ran that spell just in time for Amy to get home. Come to think of it, that was probably his plan all along. I’m half convinced he has a crush on her, and I wouldn’t put it past him to drive us apart.
My head stops thundering and I hear his spell, still wreaking mayhem on my city.
I leap up, head back to my casting room, cursing his name.
Fucking Top 40 wizard.
I squash his spell without breaking a sweat, but this time that’s not enough. An hour later I’m standing on the doorstep of the cheerful little house Gabriel rents in Hyde Park, and I’m ready to burn the place down if that’s what it takes to stop him.
I squash his spell without breaking a sweat, but this time that’s not enough. An hour later I’m standing on the doorstep of the cheerful little house Gabriel rents in Hyde Park, and I’m ready to burn the place down if that’s what it takes to stop him.
He responds to the hammering of my fist against his door, and lets me in with a wide smile and a pat on the back. “Bro, I never thought I’d see you at my door! What’s the problem? You look a little stressed.”
“I’m more than stressed.” I push past him, peek into his gleaming kitchen and head down the hallway. His bedroom is behind the first door I throw open and I’m glad to hear the humor slip from his tone when he starts to protest.
“What are you doing? You can’t just come in here and start poking through my house. This is really not cool!”
“What do you know about cool?”
“Seriously Rob, don’t!”
He grabs my shoulder to spin me back but not before I open the next door and get a solid look at what is, without a doubt, Gabriel’s casting room. Three turntables, wired into an amp with a few scattered speakers. A small assortment of poorly cared for and poorly chosen records. Candles that smell like someone’s baking a cake.
Caught, Gabriel lets me go, slumps his shoulders and starts grinning again. “Okay, bro. Guess you caught me.”
“Damn right I did!” I step into the room and flip through his stash. A few decent records but mostly crap. “What are the candles for?”
“To focus the...um, magic.”
“That’s what your soul is for, stupid.”
“They smell good anyway.”
“What are you doing here, Gabriel? What turned you bad? You hate me or something?”
“No way, bro!” he says. “I’m one of the good guys.”
“Bullshit! Your spells are half ass and they’re causing the city harm.”
“Maybe they’re not good, but I’m trying to help.”
“Then why hide all this? You could have told me about it and I’d have helped you?”
“You would have?”
“Okay, maybe not. But why’d you hide it?”
“I’m still learning the ropes. Shit, Rob, you’re like some kind of super wizard or something. Everybody knows what you can do. You’re a pro and so far I’m just a dabbler. My spells don’t do much, you know? It’s embarrassing.”
“Your spells do a lot,” I say. “None of it good.”
“You’re wrong about that. Look, I know you don’t like my taste in music or whatever, but we’re on the same side here. They may not be as good as yours, but I’m casting spells to help the city. We’re all working against the Coven of Silence, right? Enemy of my enemy and all that?”
“How do you know about the Coven of Silence?” I’m not buying into his innocent act. I have a keen ear for spells, and I know for damn sure that his are wreaking havoc.
“Franklin told me.”
“Aw, hell. You’re mixed up with Franklin.”
“Sure, he’s my mentor. I met him at Starbucks.”
“There’s nothing Franklin can teach you that you want to know.”
“You know him?”
“Yes,” I say. “If he’s the one teaching you, maybe you’re not so much evil as you are just incompetent. Franklin is a wanna-be. Used to hang around the record stores petitioning covens for membership until they all turned him down. Then he decided to go it alone. Be a rogue vinylmancer.”
“Like you.”
“Nothing like me.”
“But he’s not evil?”
“He’s not trying to silence the city or anything, but he’s not exactly its greatest benefactor.”
“He’s starting his own coven. He wants me to join.”
“I’m sure he does,” I say. “Look, man, don’t take this personally, but you have no business doing this. You’re either evil or really misguided. Either way, I’m gonna have to smash your shit.”
And I do. I start with the turntables, dumping them over with a shove and snapping the tone arms with a few well-placed stomps. I cave in his speaker cones. For a second I consider going after his records, but I can’t do that. Breaking records is bad juju, no matter how terrible they are. I expect Gabriel to stop me. He has muscles and I don’t. But he just stands there watching me with a mixture of hurt and surprise, as if I’ve somehow betrayed our non-existent friendship.
When silence settles in, he whispers in a shaky voice, “That was really not cool, bro.”
“No more spells,” I say, then I leave him to the ruin of his aspirations.
Amy is at my place when I return.
“Thank God you came back.”
“I didn’t come back,” she says, shoving a few knickknacks into a wilted cardboard box. “I mean, I came back, but not to stay. I came for some of the stuff I left. Do you remember which of these CDs are yours?”
“I don’t own any CDs.”
“Oh, right. Record albums. Accept no substitute. You know, even CDs are last century now, Rob.”
“Amy, can we talk for a minute?”
“Talk all you want.”
“Please sit.”
I don’t know if it’s the whine in my voice of if she’s just too tired of everything to keep standing, but she sits with me, and I tell her about Gabriel. She’s unimpressed.
“So he’s a wanna-be wizard,” she says. “So what? I’m here willing to listen to you and that’s what you feel is the important thing for us to talk about?”
“It’s just that you thought I was obsessing about the guy and I wanted you to know that there was kind of a reason for it. I mean, I’m not a hundred percent sure he’s actually evil, but he’s causing major damage regardless.”
“That’s just one symptom of your madness.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“No, not really,” she says. “I mean that you obsess about a lot of things. They’re important things. I get that. I’m just not one of them.”
“You are.”
“Rob, all you talk about is records and magic and saving the city from warpers or the silent coven or whatever. Austin was doing okay long before you got here. Take a day off every now and then.”
“I can do that.”
“No you can’t.”
I’m about to protest again when someone starts pounding on the door. Nobody ever knocks on my door.
“Go away!” I yell, and then in a lower voice, “I’m not getting that.”
“Go ahead.”
“Seriously. This is about you and me right now. 
“Just answer the damn door, Rob. It’s irritating.”
Amy and I are arguing, but she hasn’t left yet. I’m afraid if she leaves with her stuff, she’ll never come back. I get up and answer the door.
“Greetings, vinylmancer,” says the man standing on my doorstep. I know in that instant that I’m screwed.
“Hello, Gomez,” I say. “What do you want?”
Gomez is a short, round dude with a graying mullet and wire rim specs. He wears a tee shirt that reads GOT VINYL? and a faux leather trench coat with tassels down the sleeves. He’s an old school vinylmancer, a ranking member in the city’s top coven, and I don’t need to read his scowl to know the disdain he has for rogue vinylmancers.
“This is not a social call,” he says. “Please address me accordingly.”
My patience was thin before this joker showed up. Now it’s stretched to the limit. Mock formality and stupid conjurer names are two of the many reasons I’ve always avoided joining covens. The guy who apprenticed me, Jasper Meeks, was a former coven member and he taught me to keep my distance. There were times when the buddy system might come in handy, but so far I’d done more than fine on my own.
“Fine,” I say. “To hurry this along. Hello, Spindlemark.”
“You’re looking...tired,” he says.
“What do you want?”
“I’m delivering a summons from Dr. Audible. The Cult of the Black Circle requires your presence.”
“I don’t respond to summonses.”
“You might want to make an exception this time,” says Gomez. “He’s called a gathering of the covens. Even the digital wizards. The Coven of Silence is making a new play, a big one.”
“What’s this have to do with me?” I ask, frustrated. I can feel Amy’s presence behind me, and the prospect of losing her looms large. “I’m not affiliated with any of you fools.”
“Rogue vinylmancers are being summoned also,” he says, ignoring the slight. “You in particular are needed. This concerns you in a way.”
“In what way?” I ask, growing nervous.
“You have a friend named Gabriel?”
“Gabriel is not my friend.”
“We have seen you together. In record stores. In clubs occasionally.”
“He went to school with my girlfriend. We aren’t friends.”
“An acquaintance, then.”
“Barely.”
“Well, he’s a problem.”
“Why should I care?”
“A problem the covens might have to eliminate.”
“Do what you have to do,” I say, but we both know it’s a bluff. These coven guys are hardcore with anything that thwarts their agenda. Hard as it might be to believe, I’m a little less impulsive. Might be that Gabriel is working with full force against the city, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. But doubt lingers and I can’t expel it quite yet.
“You’ll come,” says Gomez.
“When?”
“Sundown. At the shop.”
Already the sun is retreating toward the hills. If I’m going to make it, I’ll have to leave soon.
I slam the door without giving him an answer.
Amy clutches her box of stuff against her chest. She looks bent and vulnerable, and I’ve never seen her this way before. The fact that I’ve done it to her reduces my opinion of Rob Aikins, rogue vinylmancer, by several orders of magnitude.
“Amy, they might kill him or something.”
“You don’t have to explain,” she says. “This is important.”
“It is, I swear. I’m sorry.”
“I get it,” she says. “I’ll lock up behind me.”
When Gomez spoke of the shop, he meant River City Records, the hole-in-the-wall record store owned by Ted Stagg, aka Dr. Audible, the chief bigwig of the Cult of the Black Circle. I know where it is even though I never shop there. The way I figure, there are more good record stores in Austin than you can shake a speaker cabinet at; why go to Ted’s? First, he’s a tool . Second, he’s gonna keep any good records he has for conjuring. What’s left to sell is pure crap.
I make good time getting there, but when I bang through the glass door plastered with show posters and advertisements for new releases, I walk right into the middle of the meeting, already in high gear. Some obscure French folk record plays quietly in the background, and the forty or so people crowded into the cramped store all seem to be speaking at once. You’d think it would be nothing but boomers and a few children of the seventies, but I’m gratified to see a few teens and twenty-somethings scattered in with the lot of them. They may be drinking the coven Kool-Ade, but at least there will be someone here to tend to the city when all of us pushing forty and worse types have shuffled off.
I see Ted just beyond the mass of humanity shoved in between the vinyl bins. He’s about my age, thirty-five maybe, but he dresses like a teenager from the eighties. He’s with the heads of three other vinyl covens, and a few digimancers stand at a bit of a remove, like the second-class citizens they are. Why anyone thinks they can manipulate a city’s soul, or anything’s soul for that matter, with a digital format is beyond me. They’re charlatans, hacks at best. There’s nothing digital about the magic. We’re talking revolutions per minute here, baby. Pure and glorious analog.
Ted sees me then, calms the place down and all eyes turn my way. I’m an outcast here, a rogue vinylmancer. They hate me and I love it.
“So you decided to come?” says Ted.
“Couldn’t resist the invite,” I say. “You said sundown, right?”
“Sundown was ten minutes ago.”
“Huh. Well, I’m fashionably late. Can you just tell me what this is about?"
“You are friends with the rogue vinylmancer Gabriel Byrd?” Ted throws the words at me like the severest of accusations. “The one who calls himself, Free Byrd?”
Free Byrd? Jesus, what a dork. “I went through this with your lackey. For the record, we aren’t friends. In fact, I thought he was a warper until today. I’m still not totally convinced he’s not, but I think maybe he’s just incompetent.”
“He is a tool.”
“Pot, meet kettle.”
Ted scowls. “I mean to say, he’s a tool of the Coven of Silence. They’re using him to drain the citysong.”
“That makes no sense,” I say.
“Then let me lay it out in simpler terms,” he says. “The citysong is the very soul of the land, a blessing from the earth that has existed here, in this place, for ages uncounted, a pure source of—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I wave him off. The guy really likes to hear himself talk. “The song is what makes everything awesome. I’m not a newbie. I read the instruction manual. Thing is, I’ve probably fought more warpers than all you guys put together, and even they don’t side with the Coven of Silence. If you think Gabriel is a warper, why do you think he’d be working for them?”
“I didn’t say he was working for them,” says Tim in a slow, even voice, like he’s speaking to a particularly dense child. “I said he was their tool.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is, we believe the Coven of Silence is using him against his own will. And we believe he is not the only vinylmancer in their thrall.”
What he’s saying hits me then, and I try in vain to keep the Oh Shit expression from leaping to my face. I hate the satisfied look he gets, and I recover my cool a second too late. If what he’s saying is true, this is bad business. The way things work is, there are vinylmancers like me who work to keep the citysong on an even keel, to maintain the status quo and maybe even make things better if we’re lucky. Then there are warpers. They’re vinylmancers with a different agenda. They want the city’s power for themselves. They work spells like we do, but they use them to draw tiny bits of the citysong inside them. They’re leeches, and they’ll use what power they pull in for personal gain. This hurts the city, and the side effects are everywhere, but they’re smart enough to know if they take too much then one day the citysong is gonna die and they’ll be cut off.
The Coven of Silence is another matter. I know most of the warpers in town, and I spend a fair amount of time working up spells to counter them, but I have no idea who the Coven of Silence is. Just that they’re an other-dimensional band of losers dedicated to sapping all that mojo from the earth and killing it, and I’m pretty sure they’ve been around for centuries. They don’t want the magic for themselves, they just want it gone. Nobody I’ve ever asked about them knows why, or much of anything else about them, even big mucks like Ted. All we know is they’re slowly draining the place, and we work up spells as best we can to keep it to a minimum. The citysong is finite. Every note they take away is a note we’ll never hear again.
“I see you understand now,” says Ted.
“Hang on. Are you saying that the Coven of Silence is...what...controlling the warpers?”
“Not all of them, but some. Have you heard how much the city cries lately? The Coven of Silence is persistent in its efforts, but not terribly efficient. They’ve been at it centuries and it might take centuries more to totally silence the song. They can’t use the magic as we do to access the song; but a warper can. A warper pulls it to himself in huge greedy portions. We believe the Coven of Silence has found a way to build a bridge between themselves and many of the warpers. Instead of slowly leaking the song away to another plane of reality, they’re using the warpers as a convenient delivery system. A warper pulls the song inside, and it moves right through her and into the Silence. Even you must understand how alarming this is.”
I do understand. At least when a warper uses the song to make himself handsome or get a break on his parking ticket or whatever, it returns to the city. It’s tainted a bit, and it leaves scars, but it’s still fundamentally the same. But if all that magic they pull in is being removed from our reality altogether, who knows how fast the citysong could go quiet.
“How do you know this?” I ask.
“We have plants in the warper community. They report that warpers have lost their ability to use the bits of the song they harness. Only the sharpest among them have realized what’s going on and shut down their activities for the time being. But most are still feeding the Coven of Silence. They’re unwitting conduits of their own destruction!”
“Dramatic.”
“This calls for drama, Rob!”
“No, this calls for action, Ted.”
“Dr. Audible, if you please!”
“Whatever, we have to do something about this.”
“Why do you think we called you here?” Gomez pipes in from the peanut gallery and I give him the skunk eye.
“Because you guys aren’t smart enough to figure this out on your own?” I say.
“We’ve already devised a solution,” says Ted. “It involves you and your fellow rogue.”
I glance around. I know most of the people here, but they’re all affiliated with some outfit or another. Then I see Franklin, slouching in the corner. He’s one of those guys who always looks mildly stoned. Bald head on top, long ponytail in the back. Today he’s wearing a lime green polo shirt, cargo shorts and flip flops. All eyes follow mine, he catches the drift, nods in my direction and says, “Hey, Rob. What’s up, guy?”
“Seriously?” I say. “You’re lumping me in with that guy?”
“This is not about magical ability,” says Ted. “This is simply about circumstances.”
“Lay it out now or I’m gone,” I say.
“Fine. Franklin is Free Byrd’s teacher, and you are his acquaintance. He will trust you both.”
“Fat chance of that. I kicked in his fucking speakers.”
“Still, you’re in a position to approach him. You tell him he’s to be your pupil. His former master will consent. Whether he’s truly evil or simply...poorly trained...he will welcome the teaching of a vinylmancer of your caliber. And while you’re helping him conjure, you will be attentive to the song. You’ll listen for the connection to be made, and you’ll allow your mind to follow the song to the plane of the Silencers. Do you understand what this will mean? We’ll know how to reach them. We can strike at them! Their greed has provided this opportunity. We have to take advantage. We need you to map the path to their lair and return that knowledge to your brethren. Then we’ll come at them as a hammer to an anvil! We’ll bring down the full weight of our fury and smite the Coven of Silence once and for all!”
Ted turns an earnest expression my way and in an almost pleading voice says, “What say you? Will you lend your talents to the service of your brothers?”
“Here’s the thing,” I say. “Your plan is insane, and I think mildly suicidal.”
“Will you do it?” 
“How come you can’t do it?” I ask. “Any of you?”
The room rumbles with nervous energy. I know the answer to my question. It’s obvious. The plan is fairly sound. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. But it’s also potentially deadly, and nobody here is willing to volunteer to take that hit.
“It’s dangerous,” says Gomez. I have to give him points for not sugar coating it.
“Yes it is,” I say. “So bring in the losers, right? Someone expendable.”
“You can’t expect me to risk such an undertaking,” says Ted. “The coven can’t be left without leadership. Each of us is an integral part of the struggle for the soul of the city. This is important work we do. We can’t afford for that work to be halted.”
“What you’re really saying is, you’re all cowards.”
“We’re not cowards!
“You like to sit back and work up your spells, all safe in the knowledge that you’re not really in any kind of danger. Worse thing that can happen is you piss off some warper and he gives you hives, right? Meanwhile, me and people like me are on the streets, really working the magic. You people don’t deal in real life. I do.”
“Are you saying you’ll do this thing?” Ted asks stiffly.
“I don’t know.”
“The alternative is bad,” says Gomez.
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, no threats,” says Ted. “It’s just, the only viable alternative we can consider is...doing away with Free Byrd. And the others.”
“Wait, killing them?” I say. “That’s a little...what do you call it...maniacal? Listen, Gabriel is a human. Warpers are humans. I don’t care what they do, they don’t deserve killing. We’re protectors, right? We don’t kill anyone.”
“Exactly,” says Ted, his formality starting to crumble beneath the weight of his desperation. “We don’t want that. None of us do, seriously. But this can’t go on. We can’t let the Coven of Silence rip all the magic from the world. If...murder is what it takes, we’ll do it. What other choice do we have?”
“I don’t know, but you aren’t killing Gabriel. You aren’t killing anyone, got it?”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“You guys are all fucking nuts.”
I turn for the door and the room erupts.
Outside, the citysong is melancholy.
I head up the block on foot, desperate to put some distance between myself and those crazies. I hear footsteps behind and then Franklin is keeping pace beside me, grinning and smelling like incense.
“Hey, Rob,” he says. “So what’re we gonna do?”
I’m amazed that Amy picks up the phone when I call.
“I’m kind of tired,” she says, and she sounds it.
“I know,” I say. “I didn’t call to argue.”
“Well, that’s a bonus.”
I tell her about the coven meeting, about what they want from me.
“Where are you now?” she asks. I can tell by the tone of her voice that she’s still pissed with me. But she cares about what’s happening. She cares about me. That’s something.
“On the way to my place, with Franklin.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I guess what they want me to. I don’t see another option.”
“You can’t use Gabriel like this,” she says. “How’s that any better than what the Coven of Silence is doing to him?”
“You know me better than that. If Gabriel is going to be a part of this, he’s going in eyes wide. I’m telling him straight up what the plan is. If he doesn’t want to do it, I’ll figure something else out.”
“So you’re going to do it tonight?”
“No reason to wait,” I say. I gotta say, Amy, I’m a little hurt you aren’t begging me not to do this.” I laugh when I say it, but it’s not entirely untrue. “You got the whole part about mucho danger and might get killed and all that?”
“I got that part,” she says. “But like you said, I know you. This is important. And not in a yeah-whatever-quote-unquote-sarcastic-bullshit kind of way. I hate this shit but I get it, okay? I know you’re the kind of guy that’s not going to leave this sort of thing for someone else to clean up. Just be careful. I might be pissed at you, but I don’t want you to get killed.”
“So you think I’m a standup guy?” I say.
“I’m not in the mood for this, Rob,” she says.
“Sorry. I appreciate you listening. I just wanted to talk.”
“Okay, we talked.”
“We can talk again later?”
“Call me when you’re done. And do me a favor, Rob.”
“What?”
“Don’t die.”
I’m probably the last person Gabriel expects to show up on his front porch with an arm load of records, and he stares at me in bleary eyed wonder as if he’s trying to reconcile the grinning fool on his doorstep with the raging maniac that insulted his magic and kicked in his speakers. Franklin is with me, carrying a stack of vintage turntables from my backup stock.
“So, sorry about smashing your stuff,” I say.
“What are you guys doing here? I was sleeping.”
“Sorry about that. Took a while to dig up some of this stuff. Short version is, I’m here to fix your conjuring room so we can mess with the Coven of Silence. You in?”
“It’s cool, Gabe,” says Franklin. “Rob is good people, no matter what he might seem on the surface.”
Gabriel doesn’t so much invite us in as he shuffles out of the way so we can come in with our load of gear. I head straight for the conjuring room and start wiring it back up. Gabriel is in a tee shirt and ratty sleep shorts but he helps Franklin carry in a couple of small speaker cabinets that I hope will do the trick. They won’t sound like much, but I doubt the Coven of Silence is expecting studio quality audio from Gabriel. While we’re setting up the gear, I fill him in on the situation. I was straight with Amy when I told her I wasn’t going to blindly use the guy. I’m not his biggest fan, but if he’s really just a dupe, he doesn’t deserve that same treatment from me. He looks stricken as Franklin fills in the details, then a cold anger overcomes him and I knew by the way his fingers start flipping through the records I brought that he’s going to help us.
“I don’t understand this,” he says. “I’m not a warper. What the hell did you teach me, Franklin? I’m conjuring spells to fight the bad buys, not to pull power from the citysong. How are they getting the stuff from me?”
“Hey, I taught you like it is,” says Franklin, throwing up his hands in protest. “Don’t blame me, man. You’re screwing something up.”
“He’s probably not doing anything wrong,” I say, surprised at myself for coming to Gabriel’s defense. “Look, Gabriel, when you first start tinkering with magic, even your good intentions can blow up sometimes. Especially if you’re resorting to backspinning to get your sound. It’s easy to pull a little of the magic into yourself until you learn to control things better so you don’t. That’s probably all this is. You’ve got good intentions, but you’re accidentally drinking in some of that power. It’s hard to resist, believe me. Even now when I connect with the song I want to pull power from it. So don’t kick yourself. The Coven of Silence is the enemy here. The fact that you know how ridiculously dangerous this is and are still willing to help is proof enough for me that you’re on the side of right.”
“Exactly,” says Franklin. “That’s what I was getting at.”
By this time we have four turntables in place, I’ve salvaged the amp, and the speakers are pointed skyward. The musical staff on the ceiling looks decent enough, so I tell Gabriel which records go where and he begins to table them.
“I’ll light the candles,” says Franklin.
“You don’t need candles, bro,” says Gabriel.
And suddenly I feel it, the heady influx of power, a tiny bit of the citysong riding its way back into the casting room. The walls seem to spin a bit and my head goes light, but I resist. I’ve spent years coveting the magic and still keeping it at bay
When the records are in place, we crowd around the mass of turntables, listening to the amp’s tubes hum in anticipation.
“So what now?” asks Gabriel.
“Now you do what you normally do,” I say. “Once they reach out and grab the song , I’ll hitch a ride. Mentally, I mean. I won’t actually leave the room. I don’t think.”
“Let’s go then,” he says, then he drops the needles one by one. The song is comprised of a few of my records, with one of his in place as a plant. Might make the Coven of Silence suspicious if he developed good taste too quickly.
Gabriel isn’t as bad a vinylmancer as I thought, despite his love for the scratchy backspin. Within seconds, the sound is rising up, animating the staff, and then the song is out in the world. It hunts, searching for warper songs in an effort to drive them away before they latch on to power from the citysong. And suddenly I feel it, the heady influx of power, a tiny bit of the citysong riding its way back into the casting room. The walls seem to spin a bit and my head goes light, but I resist. I’ve spent years coveting the magic and still keeping it at bay. Now that I’ve explained it to Gabriel, I feel him trying to resist too, but I nudge him as a reminder that he needs to let the magic in this one last time. It’s the lure that will hook the bad guys.
He lets the magic in, and right away I feel the Coven of Silence latch on. Gabriel doesn’t react, and neither does Franklin—they have no clue that anything has changed. Power continues to flow into Gabriel, but now it moves out of him just as quickly and I know exactly where it’s going. I focus on the citysong and allow myself to be carried along. It’s just that easy. One second I’m watching Gabriel stare intently into my eyes, and the next I’m gone, my mind ripped away and carried out with the music, away from the world we know and into another reality entirely. I can no longer hear the song, but I can feel it, cradling me in the motion of its waves, and that sensation of rightness is the only thing that keeps me from screaming out in sheer alien terror. They know I’m here, and at once they turn the power back at me. Their thoughts are flayed open and I can hear them consider me. I understand what will happen if they catch me and it’s way too much to bear so I struggle, I take hold of the full fury of the citysong and sing out a roar of resistance. The real world pulls back and I’m yanked from the Silence and dropped like a bomb into the middle of pure aural chaos.
Gabriel’s spell is broken but the power amp is screeching and the records are whizzing along at seventy eight revs per minute and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs as the citysong recoils back into the earth with a furious, atonal hum that damn near causes my ears to start bleeding. Franklin has already bolted out the door and I can see by the look on Gabriel’s face that everything went ape shit while I was out of it. He’s pressing his hands to his ears and screaming but I can’t hear him above the din. Tears course down his face and he’s on his knees amid a scattered mess of broken records. My legs are so shaky I fall down next to him and press my forehead against the rough shag of the carpet until the noise of the citysong’s anger finally subsides.
I raise my head and see Gabriel, huddled in the corner, clawing at his ears and slamming them with his palms. It’s not until I’ve tried repeatedly to speak to him with no response that I realize what’s happened.
The Coven of Silence has taken his hearing.
My first call is to Amy.
Within minutes she’s there in her little ecofriendly micro car desperately trying to convince Gabriel that he needs a doctor. He’s staggering around his front yard, shaking his head, flatly refusing. He’s wound up and pissed off. He knows a doctor’s not going to be able to fix what’s wrong with him, and he knows what my next move is going to be. I can’t fathom what must be going through his head. What was the backlash like in that room while I was reality hopping? The few seconds I had to endure were bad enough. Gabriel’s eyes are wide and haunted, and when Amy tries to take hold of his arm and gently pull him toward the car he shakes her off and screams at the top of his lungs.
“He’s not going to the doctor,” I say.
“He needs to go! You need to convince him.”
“I don’t think it’s going to help.”
“Why did you call me?” she says. “Why did you bring me into this if you don’t want my help?”
“I do want your help. I need you here, Amy. Look, Gabriel’s not going anywhere right now, and I just need you to help me keep him on an even keel until I can pull this thing together.”
“What thing?”
“We have to strike back at the Silence. Tonight”
“You have to be shitting me!”
“We have to. Gabriel lost his hearing helping me find a way in. I know where it is now. I can get there again. But who knows how long that path will remain open? Maybe the Coven of Silence moves around, and maybe they can seal themselves away somewhere safe. I’ve got to pull the covens together and make something happen fast. And you may have noticed Gabriel is losing his fucking mind. There is no way you’re telling that dude that he’s being left out of the revenge party. Can you just stay with us and help me?”
“Why do I keep coming back to you?” Amy turns and begins trying to calm Gabriel again. She’ll stay here, and she’ll help because she’s not the kind of person who’d leave. I knew that when I called her, and I know now that bringing her into this might finally drive her away from me for good.
My second call is to Ted.
Straight away he tries to take charge, but I shut him down. This is my thing, and this is Gabriel’s thing. I’m terrified enough to admit to myself that I need help at this point, but I’m not about to let the covens back into the driver’s seat. I’m sure they could form a committee and determine the most prudent method of striking back after a few weeks of deliberation. But there’s no time for that.
I give him explicit instructions. He doesn’t like taking orders, but he doesn’t have much choice at this point. I’m the only one with a way into the Silence, and that fact alone is all the bargaining power I need. After a few minutes of weak protest, he starts taking notes.
When we finish, I scavenge a notebook and a pen from Gabriel’s kitchen. I write GET YOUR BEST RECORDS in the notebook and wave it in Gabriel’s face. I don’t have to ask him twice. He heads for his spare bedroom and emerges with an armload of vinyl.
We all squeeze into Amy’s car and head for my place.
I’m gonna get my best records too.
The predawn streets are empty when we pull up to the warehouse Ted owns on the East side. He used to run raves in the place back when they were in fashion. I knew it would be perfect. The weedy parking lot is full of cars and it’s obvious that Ted has taken care of things. We haul our stuff inside and even though I know what to expect, the sight still blows me away. The room is full of turntables, maybe two hundred. Vinylmancers flipping through their boxes of records, cuing up their favorite songs. Double table backspinners with expectant fingertips on the glossy grooves. Extension cables snaking around people’s ankles and out the door to gas generators coughing out smoke. All manner of speakers laid on their back and pointing up at the rusty corrugated roof where some industrious soul has done a hell of a job painting a massive staff with dripping red paint. Day-glo graffiti lingers on the wall from the warehouse’s glory days, and the whole proceeding is cast in the soft yellow glow of the place’s one unbroken halogen lamp.
Ted and Gomez are on my ass the second we come though the door.
“You’ve lost your mind,” says Gomez.
“Rob, we need to think about this,” says Ted. “We can’t use the citysong as a weapon.”
“This was your idea,” I say. “Remember? You’re the one that wanted me to find a way to strike back. Well I found one. You may not like it, but that’s your problem.”
“This is wrong,” says Gomez.
He’s right about that. What I’m planning goes against the nature of our craft. We’ve spent years learning to resist taking in the power of the citysong, and yet I’ve proposed to Ted and the rest that we build one massive spell to do just that, to bring the citysong inside ourselves. Then together we’ll turn the full power of the song back at the Coven of Silence, like a weapon.
Maybe we’ll destroy them for good, or maybe we all die. The outlook is cloudy.
I’m not crazy enough to come up with something like this by myself. This is the city’s idea. It’s aware of me now, it won’t stop singing its intentions in my ear. We won’t be using the city; the city will be using us.
There are turntables left open for Gabriel and me. Gabriel, Amy and I begin loading up our records, and when we finish, I realize everyone in the room is staring at us, waiting for me to start the proceedings. The hair stands up on my arms and I see the first slivers of daybreak begin creeping in from the high row of windows along the east wall. I raise my voice above the constant hum of vacuum tubes.
“So, here’s the thing in case Ted didn’t give all the details. We’re putting together a spell. One big spell. And we’re going to use it to call the citysong to us. When it gets here, I’m going to direct it at the Coven of Silence. The citysong wants this. It’s tired of the bullshit. It has a target for its angst now. But I can’t bring the full force of the city here by myself. Help me get it here, and I know which way to point it. Those fuckers will never know what hit them.”
I half expect a rousing cheer, but everyone continues to stare at me with varying degrees of disapproval and fear. But no one makes a move to stop me, and no one bolts for the door.
“I guess that’s it,” I say. “Let’s start.”
I drop the needle on my old Homestead copy of Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising , and Gabriel follows suit with two Public Enemy records. Amy helps us with a few more and then the room is in sudden motion, hissing and crackling in a caustic maelstrom of noise, one song joining another and another as a two hundred needles find two hundred grooves. A few of the casters have candles, and some, including Gabriel, are already whipping their records backwards into reverse screaming fits, but the whole thing comes together in one grand song that’s as beautiful and terrifying as anything I’ve ever heard.
My spell is the bludgeoning core around which the whole noisy wreck comes crashing together. I’ve never orchestrated a song like this. Twelve turntables loaded with hip hop, speed metal, no wave noise rock, Bakersfield honkytonk, indie sludge, straight edge hardcore. This is an assault. I can hardly stay in the room as all those elements pull together with every conceivable genre of music circling around. They pull together, all these songs, and rise up as one to set the staff in motion. The notes on the staff are blindingly bright, and within seconds the roof is on fire. A few people begin screaming, but most of them are into it. Electricity sizzles along speaker cables, leaps from amp to amp, snaps and pops from every burning stylus. I’m scared to death we’re all about to die. More than anything, I’m scared Amy is going to die. But she’s standing there, staring up at the flames, and she doesn’t look afraid.
The city continues whispering in my ears, reassuring me as the din swells and batters its way through the burning ceiling. I know what it wants, and for once I give up all resistance and let the magic flow into me and ride out on the melody of our spell. The citysong is using me now, using all of us, just as the Coven of Silence has been using warpers all over town. I let it have me.
I don’t travel with the song this time, but I can hear it punch its way through the seams of the Silence and the flood of shock and terror that backlashes through the music is enough to drive me temporarily crazy. I can’t see who or what the Coven of Silence is, but I can hear them in their death throes. After centuries of snapping at the citysong’s heels, they finally screwed up. They took too big a bite and revealed themselves. They let the full-on fury of the song find a way in and now they are buried in noise. My noise.
The sound of their internment is music to my ears.
When the citysong finally withdraws, we all find ourselves standing around, staring at one another. The fire overhead slows and dies, and the burning staff grows still. Most of the records have run their course, but we allow the few that haven’t to play out at a low volume, just music, not magic, and the sound of all those instruments and voices helps fill some of the emptiness we all feel at the sudden absence of the citysong from the warehouse. When the room finally grows quiet, someone starts to clap, a few whoops join in, and then it’s a full-blown celebration.
We kicked the Silence’s ass.
This day, we’ve done something real .
The citysong is so loud and healthy that I see people dancing along to it as they go about their business. Amy has begun listening for it, and in quiet moments she can make out the lilting melody of the magic as it wells up from the earth. She has seen the change. She’s a believer. In the power of the city, if not entirely in me.
We’re having coffee at a sidewalk café on Fourth Street a few months after that night in the warehouse, and I do my best to keep things light and pretend I don’t want us to be anything more than friends. That’s our arrangement, and it seems to suit Amy. She’s happy. Happier than I remember her being during our time together. I like to think that’s a side effect of the magic, and not a side effect of ending our relationship.
“Gabe is coming over tonight too?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m meeting him at End of an Ear this afternoon to pick up a few new records. Stuff with a beat, you know? That works for him. He can feel the music. He’s really into it.”
“And you won’t laugh if I bring my Dave Matthews Band records with me?”
“Like I’d make fun.”
“Oh perish the thought.”
“I don’t care what you bring,” I say. “It’s all music. It all works.”
I’m still not a fan of covens, so we’re not calling what we have a coven. Amy, Gabe and I settled on “music appreciation society” and that’ll do for now. I’m teaching them slowly, making sure they build up a resistance so they can keep from accidentally sapping the magic. There are still plenty of warpers out there doing that, and plenty of work to do in order to stop them.
“Cool, then I’ll see you tonight.”
We stand to leave and Amy puts a hand over her eyes to shield them from the brilliant sunlight. We are close, and I think for a second that she’s going to lean in to kiss me, but it doesn’t happen. She looks into my eyes, like she’s trying to figure out if I’m still an asshole or if I’m really starting to grow up. Problem is, I’m not so sure myself, and until I am, there aren’t going to be any second chances with a woman like Amy.
“This is a good place we’re at, right?” I ask. “I mean me and you. Friends.”
“A very good place.”
“You ever think about that place we used to be?”
“More than friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Sometimes,” she says.
“If you ever want to go there again, all you have to do is ask.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Amy says with a smile that I can neither read nor resist. I wait for her to make a move, to give me a sign.
But we just stand there, together.
For once, the silence is golden.