Starr Gaze's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Starr Gaze had the words for the song that would raise her dead idol. She did not have a way to keep him here. Every witch knew the rule: a summoned spirit fades fast. Call a ghost with no tether ready, and he vanishes before the first note. She wanted one duet with the rocker who taught her to play. One song. That was the whole reason she'd brewed this spell at all. Her cabin smelled of wax and old amp smoke. Guitars hung from the beams by their straps. A green vial of summoning brew bubbled on the stove. Starr had tried three anchors already. A silver ring melted. A bottle of graveyard dirt cracked. A braided lock of her own hair burned to ash the moment she lit the candles. Nothing held. The brew would spoil by dawn. She grabbed her cloak and went to the one person who hated rules enough to break the right one. Captain Beefheart ran his band out past the crying willow, a tree that wept black sap and watched with burning eyes. She found him on the porch, tuning a guitar and then yanking it badly out of tune on purpose. He did not look up. "My tethers keep breaking," Starr said. "Every anchor I build, the ghost slips it." "Because you build cages," Beefheart said. "A ring. A string. Those are bars. A ghost walks through bars." He plucked a sour note and grinned. "You don't hold a man with a box. You hold him with a sound he can't leave." Starr stared at him. "Make the song itself the tether." "The brew calls him. The wrong note keeps him." He pointed at her chest. "Play something that's never been played. He stays to hear how it ends." She ran back through the willow's drooping branches, her heart loud. In the cabin she set the vial beside her amp. She lit the candles. She did not write a perfect melody. She played the ugliest riff she knew, a broken, lurching thing that refused to resolve. The brew hissed and poured out as mist. Purple and blue fog swirled up from the stove and took a shape. A tall rocker formed inside it, long pale hair, a green guitar strapped across a leather vest. His red eyes opened. His fingers found strings. Starr held the wrong chord. She did not let it land. The ghost leaned toward the sound, hungry for the note she wouldn't give. He did not fade. He stayed. "Keep it crooked," he rasped, and struck a chord beside hers. They played. The riff twisted and never settled, and he could not pull away from it. The tether held. But the fog kept pouring from the vial, thicker now, filling the cabin, pressing at the shuttered windows. Starr realized the brew would not stop until it emptied. And the longer she played the wrong note, the more it was calling. Other shapes stirred inside the mist behind her idol.