“Don’t worry about any of that,” Dags said, shaking his head. “Just let me get her away from these guys first. You being here is just going to complicate that… and frankly, it could jeopardize the whole thing if Alvin sees you, or even if Jade does.”
Uri looked at him, visibly upset.
“I could call my dad,” he said after a beat, fury rising in his eyes. “These assholes won’t know what hit them if my dad’s people show up here⏤”
“No.” Dags shook his head, vehement, picturing a full-blown bloodbath in the club, between demons and the Russian mafia. “No way. There’s no time. And Jade could get hurt.”
Uri looked in the direction of the bar, a mixture of rage and fear in his eyes.
Dags followed his gaze.
Jade made it to the bar and now leaned against it next to Alvin. Her high, round butt stuck up slightly from the pose, barely covered by the shimmery white fabric of her dress.
Most of her male escorts had moved to a small seating area to the right of the bar. Three of them stood clustered, drink-less, at one of the tall, round, cocktail tables surrounded by tiki torches. The other two took up positions on either end of the bar. The configuration had all the markings of some kind of security perimeter, with Jade as the focal point. It reminded Dags of Secret Service agents, or paid muscle surrounding someone like Uri’s father.
Dags watched the demon bodyguards watch Jade.
Then he glanced back at Uri, who was also staring at her.
“I can’t leave her, man,” Uri said, shaking his head.
“Just for tonight.” Dags patted his friend’s arm reassuringly. “It’s just for tonight, I promise you. I’ll try to bring her back to your place before morning. And hey, this is good news, Uri. Jade is all right. She’s not dead in a ditch somewhere. She’s not tied up in the murder attic of some ‘Hollywood Jack’ freak. She looks completely unharmed.”
At the other’s doubtful look, Dags added, “You came to me, Uri. You came to me with this, and asked for my help. You need to trust me to do that. You need to trust yourself for thinking I was the right person to ask.”
Dags knew Uri.
Uri didn’t believe in coincidences.
Ironically, Uri was always the one who believed in angels. He believed in fate, in psychic intuitions, in magnetic forces that pulled people together and apart. There was a reason Uri was the one who organized that dreamwalk in the desert.
Dags might have been using that a little.
He told himself it was for a good cause.
In the end, it worked, which is all Dags really cared about.
Uri nodded, reluctantly, but never took his eyes off Jade.
From his face, Dags knew he had that night, and that was it.
After that, Uri would go after Jade on his own.
Chapter 10
My Mistake
Dags watched Jade as men tried to approach her.
They smiled at her.
Dags had no doubt they offered to buy her drinks.
They all got turned away.
They either got turned away by Jade herself, who spoke to them quietly, smiling, touching their arms. Or they got turned away by one of the men Jade walked into the club with, or by “Alvin” with his black jacket, red tie, and red pants.
Whatever the demon inside Jade was doing here at The Dolphin, it didn’t come for sex.
Dags couldn’t read any of the usual demon desires in its behavior, or any of the volatile demon emotions. Even while she was turning down the men who approached her, Jade never seemed annoyed or upset. Indifference shone from her eyes.
Dags could see that indifference from all the way across the room.
Truthfully, he was puzzled.
There was definitely something different about her, compared to most of the humans he encountered who were possessed by demons.
Even the tell-tales were slightly different. Both too little and too much of the black and silver smoke coiled around Jade’s form.
It took Dags a few minutes to realize why that was, at least in part.
He couldn’t see Jade behind that smoke. He couldn’t see any hint of her real, human aura. Usually when a demon possessed someone, Dags could see at least some bare trace of the human host’s aura behind the demon’s.
With Jade, there was nothing.
Dags had no idea what that meant.
He watched as Jade wandered casually around the bar area, talking to people here and there without seeming to stay in range of any of them for more than a few seconds. She would return to “Alvin” every few minutes, or one of her male demon escorts, almost like she was checking in, reassuring them maybe.
She would pause at one of their tables, maybe share a few swallows of the demon’s drink or part of an appetizer plate, then Jade would move on, gazing into the pool or out over the city’s skyline in the direction of the Hollywood Hills.
Dags never saw her talk to any of her demon protectors.
She certainly didn’t come across like she was dating any of them.
If he hadn’t known Jade, and who she was, he would have assumed she was someone famous. He would have thought she was a movie star or a famous pop star, and those men watching her at the bar, with their perfect, expensive suits and expressionless faces, were all her paid protection.
Dags watched her for over an hour, but it didn’t clear anything up.
He occasionally watched “Alvin,” as well.
What were they doing here? Why the hell were they so focused on Jade?
And how was any of this connected to whoever… or whatever… the locals were calling “Hollywood Jack”?
His gut told him there was a relationship there, but he had no idea what it was.
Somehow, it felt important to know more before he tried separating her from the others. He wasn’t sure how he’d find anything out; as soon as they left this place, and got to a minimum safe distance from large numbers of innocent people, Dags would need to make his move.
He couldn’t afford to wait.
He wouldn’t risk Jade like that.
Maybe the demon inside that Alvin guy would talk, when Dags got to him.
He was about to get up, to walk over to the bar and order a cappuccino, see if he could get a better look at any of them…
…when someone sat down in the lounge chair next to him.
The same lounge chair Uri had vacated, maybe an hour earlier.
Dags turned, and immediately every muscle in his body tensed.
It was Phoenix.
“Just how long do you plan to stare at that woman?”
Phoenix’s voice was cold.
Folding her arms, she went on before Dags could recover enough to answer.
“If you want to fuck her that badly, why don’t you just go talk to her, Dags? Instead of acting like some kind of serial killer, marking out his next victim?”
Dags felt his jaw harden.
Phoenix didn’t lower her stare.
“There’ve been murders, you know,” she said, even more coldly. “Or hadn’t you heard? I know keeping up with current events isn’t exactly your thing⏤”
“It’s a job,” he cut in, his voice a growl. “It’s a job, Phoenix.”
“Is it?” she shot back. “And what the fuck was it in that private room downstairs? Was that part of your ‘job,’ too, Dags?”
“What the hell do you care?” he snapped, before he could stop himself. “Where’s Karver tonight, Phoenix? I thought the two of you didn’t go out in public without the other? I mean…” His voice shifted to a harder sarcasm. “…why go out at all, if you aren’t going to get your photo taken? Why bother to leave your glass mansion by the sea, if you’re not going to get pictures of you holding hands and making out with your movie star boyfriend all over social media?”
His jaw clenched painfully as he thought about his own words.
“…or is that what this is?” he muttered, glancing around. “Hoping to stir up a littl
e controversy, ‘Nix? Give a nice boost to the gossip threads?”
“You are such an unbelievable prick.”
He opened his mouth, about to answer that.
Then he closed it.
Reeling back what he’d just said⏤and more than that, the punch behind his words⏤he found himself agreeing with her assessment.
“I came to you,” she reminded him.
When he didn’t answer, she leaned over the table, her voice low.
“I could have just walked out, Dags. It would have been a lot easier. After all, you haven’t answered a single one of my calls in… what has it been? Four months? Even after Asia told you to pick up, that I needed to talk to you, you still blew me off.”
“You have a boyfriend,” he growled, his jaw hardening again. “A very public, very famous boyfriend. What part of that is unclear?”
“The part where I don’t only talk to men because I plan on sleeping with them, Dags.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” he growled, louder.
Realizing that had been too loud, he clenched his jaw, glancing around where they sat. He grew conscious that eyes followed her everywhere, that ears would strain for every word she said, every word they said to one another, just because of who she was.
Swallowing his anger, he lowered his voice with an effort, leaning closer to her.
“Things aren’t normal with us,” he said, soft. “You know damned well they aren’t. I was trying to do the responsible thing. The adult thing. The thing least likely to hurt you, or me. Or anyone else involved. Even Karver. At least not any more than necessary⏤”
“Adult?” She grunted a disparaging laugh. “Adult. You’re kidding, right?”
“Phoenix⏤”
“Just shut up,” she snapped. “Are you going to talk to me? Or not?”
He closed his mouth.
He found himself staring at her, in spite of himself, drinking in her appearance, somehow focusing beyond just the physical details, even though he couldn’t see her aura. The lack of a visible aura was maddening, though, even more so with this. Some part of him strained to see it, growing more and more frustrated when he couldn’t.
There was something so strange about the way he processed her, even the way he processed her physicality. He almost couldn’t see it like he did that of other women. He couldn’t categorize her as “pretty” per se, or even “hot,” although he knew, objectively, that most people thought of her as both things. She was a damned movie star, for Christ’s sake… but when he looked at her, he didn’t really take her in that way.
He barely knew her. He didn’t understand any of this.
He didn’t understand how he looked at her more as someone he knew, not just as an acquaintance, which is technically what she was.
He looked at her the way he looked at Jade, or Uri, like someone he’d known for years, for decades… someone he’d ceased to categorize the way he did strangers.
All of that flashed through his mind now, just like it had when he first met her.
He remembered that first night so clearly, at that damned house in Malibu where she’d likely go back tonight. She’d go back to hang out with her roommate and best friend Asia, to fuck her boyfriend, another movie star by the name of Karver Jamison, and Dags wasn’t a part of any of it. He wasn’t a part of her world. That was made abundantly clear to him.
The hell with this.
The hell with all of it.
“I can’t do this.” He glared at her, feeling his jaw harden. “I can’t, Phoenix. Maybe you can. Maybe you can play ‘platonic female friend’ with me. But I can’t play ‘platonic male friend’ for you. I can’t do it. I wish I could. I really do. But I can’t.”
She frowned, staring at him.
He stared at her green eyes, at the gold flecks that looked like bits of complicated metal, like real gold swimming in her pale irises. Her mouth, her cheekbones, her jawline and chin, the curve of her neck. He knew all of it, had more or less memorized all of it, but somehow he looked past it too, in a way he didn’t with the women he’d actually been sleeping with for the past however-many weeks since he first laid eyes on Phoenix.
“What do you want from me?” he said, when she didn’t speak. “Do you want something from me, Phoenix? Something I can actually give you?”
She blinked, leaning back in the chair, as if his question startled her, even confused her.
She stared at him, and he stared at her.
Then she looked away.
He followed her face as it looked away, studying her profile the same way he’d studied her features from the front. He saw emotion fill her eyes as she stared away, saw her jaw harden like his had.
Then, something in her eyes seemed to indicate a decision of some kind.
Or maybe it was closer to a surrender.
She turned back, looking at him.
It struck him that she looked at him the way he looked at her.
There was something in that look, something past the way a relative stranger looks at another relative stranger.
It was maddening.
“No,” she said, her voice cold. “No. I don’t want anything from you.”
Rising smoothly to her feet, she stared down at him.
He knew she wanted him to see the anger there, but he saw past that, too.
He wished like hell he didn’t.
He wished he only saw the anger.
“I made a mistake,” she said.
Dags opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, she turned around, walking away from him.
For the second time that night.
She just… walked away.
Chapter 11
Stake Out
Dags got his cappuccino.
He’d never wanted to leave a place so badly in his life, but Jade was still there, as was Alvin, as were the five demons guarding her from the area by the bar.
Someone took his seat before he was able to get back with his drink.
The club was more crowded now.
There were more people in the pool.
Dags heard the bartender say they’d be showing a movie soon, some slasher flick people could watch from inner tubes and floating lounge chairs.
Dags ended up on the opposite side of the pool from where he started, sitting cross-legged on a lime-green pillow. He found it in a pile of other pillows on a woven floor mat that was likely there for movie nights as well, presumably for those who didn’t have clothes compatible with floating in an inner tube.
Dags leaned against the low wall under the railing around the edge of the roof, and continued to watch the demons by the bar.
He also found himself looking at Phoenix, who’d gone back to sit with her friends.
She was on his right now, and easier to see.
Plenty of other people in the club were staring at her, too, so his stare likely wasn’t noticed by anyone in there, likely including her, given how used to people staring she must be by now. She never went anywhere without dozens of eyes on her. She never went anywhere without being noticed, photographed, videoed, tweeted about.
Forcing his eyes off her profile for what felt like the twentieth time in as many minutes, he found Jade in a sweeping glance and exhaled in annoyance, checking his watch. Pulling out his phone, he was about to scroll through his contacts to find a number, when…
…another person plunked down next to him, even closer than Phoenix had done.
Dags turned slowly, a frown already forming on his lips.
Again, he managed to be surprised when he saw who was sitting there.
Unlike Phoenix, this woman was grinning at him.
“Hey, Angel-guy,” she said, smacking him cheerfully on the thigh. “Weren’t you going to come over and say hi?”
He flinched at the smack, then felt something in his shoulders relax.
“Asia,” he said. “Hi.”
She laughed. “That’s all you got? ‘Hi’? That’s the best you can
do? After months and months of blowing us off? And no, I don’t count the whopping two seconds you deigned to talk to me on the sound stage that day… especially since you clearly didn’t want to see me then, either, and only talked to me because I ambushed you.”
Dags glanced around, his eyes darting to Jade at the bar, then back to Asia.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, remembering her past track record with demons. “This isn’t the best place for you tonight.” He hesitated. “…or Phoenix.”
Asia laughed, shaking her head.
Her eyes and voice grew openly amused.
“You really are a piece of work, Angel-guy,” she said. “What happened to you? Who hurt you? You’re like a walking mass of bizarre psychological issues⏤”
“Did you want something, Asia?” he cut in, his voice holding more of an edge.
Undaunted, she leaned against the wall next to him, propping her knees up as she balanced on a purple heart pillow. Setting the martini glass she held in three fingers down next to her on the bamboo mat, she looked out over the club, watching a group of people dancing on the other side of the pool.
Dags found himself looking where she was looking.
Phoenix was in the group of people dancing.
She held a martini glass in her fingers, too. It wasn’t the right color for a regular vodka or gin martini.
Appletini, he guessed.
Maybe a Cosmo.
“Yeah,” she said, exhaling, returning her gaze to him.
When she didn’t elaborate, he met her gaze, quirking an eyebrow.
“I’m working right now,” Dags said. “Did she tell you that?” He grunted. “Or does this strike you as the kind of place I hang out on my days off⏤”
“What the fuck is your problem?” she cut in, frowning.
Dags blinked.
Leaning into the wall next to her, he bent his own knees, his hands hanging off the edge of them as he rested his arms.
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