“Okay, I’ll stop.”

He shook his head sadly. “You don’t mean that. Deep down, you think I’m an unstable asshole. You think I can’t handle telepathy, but you can. Well, you’re half right. I can’t handle it. It’s too bleak. A while ago, when Alex and Helena were hovering over me, wondering if I’d had a heart attack or something... they’re supposedly my two best friends in the world, and you know what they were thinking? Helena was going over names of other songwriters, trying to choose a replacement for me if I died. And Alex, he was scarcely there. I don’t know where his mind was, but I couldn’t pick it up. Stupid me, I expected some kind of sympathy...”

“You can’t tell me Alex didn’t care,” I said. “I saw him, Roland. He was crying... he was truly worried.”

“That’s not what the parrot was broadcasting.”

“Then maybe parrots don’t broadcast everything. I saw Alex right there beside you while you were unconscious, and he was crying, holding your hands...”

I stopped suddenly.

“He was holding my hands?” Roland asked. “While they were still bloody?”

I remembered the brown stain I’d seen on Alex’s hand when he’d come to get me in my hut.

“God, no,” Roland murmured. “Not Alex.” I shivered. “No. It’s not Alex.”

Outside, hurrying across the compound, I asked myself, So what? Alex or the Singer, he was just a person who recorded songs. He might come across like a lunatic, but so did half the other acts in the music industry. And even if he was dangerous, I was no delicate flower. Back when I was getting started, I’d sung in bars filled with street scum and run by organized crime. If the going got rough, I could handle myself.

So why was I terrified?

No time for terror — I had to tell Helena what was going on. How she dealt with the Singer I didn’t know, but she’d kept him on a leash for years. If anyone could control the situation, she could.