Elias hesitated. He hadn't touched a string since the funeral. But the shop felt heavy, the walls lined with the ghosts of a thousand silent jazz clubs and orchestral pits, all waiting for a pulse.
Elias didn’t want to be there. He held a cello case like it was a casket. It belonged to his grandfather—a man who played with such ferocity that he’d once snapped a bow during a concerto and kept going with his bare hands.
"Because you're not selling a cello," she said, returning to her flute. "You're trying to sell your soul so you don't have to feel anything. Come back when you’re ready to sell me a trumpet you actually hate. Until then, get that beautiful thing out of my shop before I charge you for the concert."
The note was low, a tectonic shift that rattled the glass jars of bridge pins on the shelves. Then he played a scale. Then a fragment of the Bach Suite his grandfather loved. The shop seemed to expand. The dust motes danced in time. For a moment, the debt, the cramped apartment, and the grief disappeared into the vibration against his chest.
"It’s worth ten thousand," she said flatly. "But I’m not buying it." Elias blinked. "What? Why?"