"Done by the Heat" ended and "Take it and Go" began. He was taking refuge in Breaker Street's more forceful songs tonight, he thought grimly, able to deliver them as the audience expected. The crowd resonance stirred up by the few tender love songs he'd sung had come too, too close to breaking him down; he hadn't been able to even face the thought of singing "Believer Girl".

The current song's driving rhythms couldn't disguise the fact that something was raking along the edge of his nerves, fraying them with its touch. A dissonance, a wrongness ... he tried to write it off as a product of his own fears, only to feel it strengthen the more he fought it. Something ugly.

What was it? Normally he tried to at least partly shield himself from the energy of an audience, knowing that the overload of sense impressions, needs and desires could leave him disoriented and high as any drug. But for Pippa's sake he'd thrown his gates open wide tonight. Was this nails-on-chalkboard sensation the result?

His eyes sought out his brothers, still circling through the audience ... whatever this was didn't seem to be touching them. Restless and uncertain, he tried to pick out faces in the crowd. Where the hell is it?!