The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage Read Online Free Page B

bother locking it when Carson and Lina, at least, judging by the cars in the long driveway, were home?
    I don’t think I’d ever come around when the door was locked. Feeling a little resentful that I had to do it at all, which was another stupid thing given that I didn’t actually live there, I knocked.
    Like they’d hear me, with the music so loud.
    I pounded, then I pounded harder, then I put the strength of my deceptively lean muscles behind the knock. The door rattled in the frame.
    Then I remembered the grungy little garden gnome in a planter next to the door. I tipped it over, grabbed the hidden key, and unlocked the door. I replaced the key with a quick glance at the street to make sure no neighbors had seen the deep dark secret hiding place.
    I opened the door and flinched. The music was loud. Very, very loud. It hurt. It made my sternum ache. It made me a little nauseous. I couldn’t get a deep-enough breath in.
    “Hey!”
    No good. Fingers in both ears, I made my way to the living room, cringing with every step.
    Lina and Carson were seated on the floor in front of the wall unit that held the stereo and TV, their backs to me. Lina had one of Car’s graph-lined composition books in her hand.
    Carson leaned forward and turned the stereo down by about half until it was just unbearable, not agonizing. He shrugged and said to Lina, “No vocals laid down yet,” in that voice people use when they want to be heard above the buzz of a crowded party. “But you get the idea!”
    The ends of her hair—only those tips were still the pale blonde from when I’d first met her—bounced on her shoulders as she nodded. “I like it!”
    I hovered at the edge of the room. For no reason in particular, I felt like I was intruding on something. Maybe I was.
    Lina and Car met when they were both in grade school, and I know things got pretty heavy for them a couple of years ago, when Car’s parents died right around the guy’s eighteenth birthday.
    It was never really talked about, and I never asked, but I was almost positive things got heavy between them, back then. At least for a little while.
    Lina and I were a little over a week away from our first anniversary, and sure, we’d been though some pretty damn heavy shit of our own…but I still felt like an outsider around them sometimes.
    “Nate! Hey, TV star!” She put one hand on Car’s shoulder to balance herself when she stood up, which didn’t thrill me. “C’mere!”
    Car stopped the tape at the same moment Lina hugged me. The sudden, blessed drop in the decibel level gave me a moment of swaying vertigo.
    Lina shifted her stance and held me tighter. “Easy there, tiger. You all right?”
    I squeezed her. She felt really great. “Just the…loud.” I caught Car’s eye over Lina’s shoulder. “Hey, Car.”
    “Hey, Nate! Nice job today.”
    “Thanks.” Lina and I downgraded our hug to holding hands. “It was…crazy.”
    Car said, “Did you—" at the same time Lina said, “What did you think of Car’s new song?”
    Car closed his mouth and grinned, eyes wide. Whatever he was going to ask me about the show was forgotten.
    “Oh…well…”
    “Oh, don’t sweat it, Nate.” Car waved a hand at me. “It’s not even done.”
    “It’s not that.” I matched his smile. Car’s enthusiasm about his own music was easy to catch and not at all egotistical. “It was…y’know…these ears!”
    Car winced. “Ah, yeah, right. Sorry, man. Here…” He twisted around and turned the stereo volume knob way to the left and pressed the play button on the tape deck. “Here, try this.”
    The sound poured out at a level I could handle. Turns out I thought it was all electric guitar and bass guitar because that’s all it was—no drums. The guitars sounded like a swarm of angry bees armed with chainsaws. The bass snapped, crackled, and chugged like a barbed-wire snake around the guitar.
    “I’ll have Alex play on the actual track, of course,” Car said. “I