Well, she would be much less likely to pursue her prey now. Oh, he didn’t think she’d give up the search for him. But she’d be scared. She’d be distracted. They all would.

And that meant they’d make mistakes…and be far less likely to introduce discord into the music of the spheres.

Sitting now in his hideaway, he examined his stinging arm and leg. Just bruises. No broken skin. Still, he was shaky-hand, sweaty-skin…and a Black Scream was just waiting to burst out.

He’d lost his shoe. This was more than a little inconvenient, since he only had one pair and was reluctant to buy another, for fear the police would have put out word to retailers to alert them to a rotund white American in stocking feet buying shoes. With his prey safely unconscious in the trunk of his Mercedes, he’d driven past one of the beaches outside Naples and, when he was sure no one was looking, and there were no CCTVs, he’d snatched a pair of old running shoes a swimmer had left near the road. They fit well enough.

Then he’d hurried back here.

Stefan now walked into the darkened den off the living room. The rhythm section of his next composition lay here, on a cot. He gazed down at Khaled Jabril. The man was so scrawny. His wife had been more substantial. A man of narrow face, bushy hair, full beard. His fingernails were long and Stefan wondered what they would sound like if he clicked them together. He recalled a woman patient, in the hospital, one of the hospitals, New Jersey, he believed. She had worn a sweatshirt, pink, stained with a portion of her lunch. She was gazing out the window and clicking her nails. Thumbnail against index finger.

Click, click, click.

Again and again and again.

Another patient was obviously irritated by the noise and kept glaring at the woman angrily but staring at a mental patient to achieve a desired effect is the same as asking a tree for directions. Stefan had not been the least troubled by the sound. He disliked very few sounds—vocal fry was a rare exception.

Babies crying? So many textures of need, want, sorrow and confusion. Beautiful!

Pile drivers? The heartbeat of lonely machines.

Human screams? A tapestry of emotions.

Fingernails on a blackboard? Now, that was interesting. He had a dozen recordings in his archive. It comes third in the ranking of cringe-worthy sounds, after a fork on a plate and a knife on glass. The revulsion isn’t psychological: Some researchers thought people responded as if the sound were a primitive warning cry—it isn’t. No, it’s purely physical: a reaction to a particular megahertz range, amplified by the peculiar shape of the ear and painfully stabbing the amygdala region of the brain.

No, very few sounds troubled Stefan, though he would be fast to point out there’s a distinction between tone and volume.

Whatever the sound, crank up the decibels and it can move from unpleasant to painful…even to destructive.