The Secret Songs of D.C. Silverenn

Chapter Thirteen

I roll my eyes at the TV. There's no way the couple on the reality show purchased the cheaper home they were presented with. The top tier one was gorgeous, akin to a mansion tucked away in the mountains. It fit every description they gave. So what if it was a little more than their budget? They'll need to renovate the cheaper one anyway.

"They're smart," Emi says. "That's the one I would've chosen."

"But the bathrooms are terrible," I argue. "Unless they want to go to the facilities in a time machine, they need to redo the walls and tiles to not look like the 80s."

Emi shakes her head and looks back at her music. Presumably, the neighboring guests have gone to sleep by nine o'clock, so she's doing the next best thing to practicing—reviewing her music. I'm grateful that we can't play late in the evening. It gives us an excuse to watch TV, a rare occasion since we don't have cable.

A preview for the next show flashes on the screen. The hosts are going to help preserve a weathered farmhouse. I flip to the channel display, scrolling through the other programs that are on right now. I'm more into the luxury shows, ones that reflect a world different from my own.

Nothing else is on, so I turn the TV off. I lean against my pillows for a moment, the remote loose in my palm, trying to figure out what to do.

"You going to bed?" Emi asks.

I'm about to say 'why not,' when I remember something. "No. I think we should take a look at the next Silverenn score." Funny how I completely forgot about it.

"Can't we do that tomorrow?" Emi groans.

"I don't think we should wait. Besides, I'm not quite tired yet."

"Fine."

I lean over the side of the bed, pulling the scores from my viola case. I scoot over to make room for Emi, who sits cross-legged beside me as she peers over my shoulder.

"'Thrice the four completes amen. Words appear in the ring of ten,'" I read from the beginning. "We're looking for a title that has 'T' and 'W.'" I shuffle the pages around until I find 'The Wistful.'

"The piece is in f minor. I'm assuming 'B' is the chord we're looking for," Emi says.

I point my gaze at Emi. "We should never assume anything."

"What else could the fourth mean?" She reaches into the desk, her hand returning with a pencil. "Here, we can use this to mark all the four chords in the music."

I grab a pencil from my case. Emi takes the first two pages while I take the second two. The four chord pops up at a normal frequency, considering that it has a predominant function within the music. When we finish, we spread the four pages out across the bed.

"The B chord appears more than three times," Emi says slowly.

"Yeah. But only three of those times matter." I squint at the music, eyes trailing across the bars until I reach the final line.

The final line. Three measures before the end, there's a C7 chord followed by an F minor chord. Then, it switches to the B chord before finishing on a high F.

"Emi, the piece ends in a Plagal cadence," I say. "Also known as the amen cadence."

"I just spotted another one on the first page," Emi says, excitement inching into her voice. "And another on the second!"

"Thrice the four completes amen!" I exclaim. My eyes drop to the clues again. "'Words appear in the ring of ten?'" Emi just squints at the music. I lightly pencil in the note names of those three measures. "Maybe it's an anagram. B-D-F is the first measure, then F-A-D, then B-C-A-D."

Wrinkles crease Emi's brow. "Sounds kind of like a phone number."

I stare down at the three measures, the ten notes.

Ten. Ten notes, phone number, ring of ten.

"Oh my gosh, Emi! I think you solved it," I say.

"Huh?"

"There are ten letters in the three measures, mimicking the separations within a phone number. When we call someone, we're going to ring 'ten' numbers." I quickly calculate the phone number using the notes' scale degrees in f minor. "We need to call 462-176-4576."

Panic flashes in Emi's eyes. "Are you insane? We can't call that number."

"Why not? It's part of the treasure hunt."

"But..." Emi rolls off the bed to grab her phone, then rejoins me, thumbs at work on her screen. "Well, the area code checks out. It's for some county in Pennsylvania."

She continues typing. Curious, I lean over her shoulder to see that she's searching up the full phone number. Of course, no results pop up.

"You can't just search private numbers up," I say.

Emi sets her phone on the bedside table, ignoring my comment. "It's probably out of commission by now. It's been decades."

"There's only one way to find out."

"But what if the person we call comes after us? And Pennsylvania is awfully close to Ohio. We have enough problems on our hands."

I think for a moment. "If you're worried, maybe we can find another phone to use."

"It's not like there are payphones on the street."

"No. We just have to get creative, and some sleep. Now that this is solved, I think I'm ready to go to bed."

Emi whacks my arm. "You just don't give up, do you?"

"Nope." I drop the music and pencil back into my case.

"Too bad you can't have the same dedication to your viola playing."

I pause, staring at the wall. Then I twist, my arms shoving Emi's shoulders. She wobbles and falls to the floor with a thump. She glares up at me, but for some reason, a smile twitches on her lips.

"Okay, fine. Maybe I deserved that. But just know that you can be a very good violist when you want to be."

"Are you comparing me to other violists or other musicians?" I half expect her to make a viola joke, but she doesn't.

"Good compared to all musicians." She stops resisting the smile, allowing her face to light up for a second before wiggling under the covers on her bed. "Good night. See you in the morning."

Now I smile. I reach over and flick the light off, snuggling under my own comforters. It doesn't matter that it was eighty degrees outside earlier. Hotel rooms are always cold to me. And the weight is comforting, hence the name a comforter. Its warmth envelopes me, lulling me into a deep sleep.