“But—”
“End of discussion, Lore.” And he folds his arms across his chest as if to illustrate his immovability.
I can’t help the spark of humor that ignites. “I love it when you’re adamant.” Nudging him with my shoulder, I add, “It’s so sexy.”
“You two are gross,” Asher mutters from the front seat. “Thank god, we’re here.”
O’Reilly’s is packed to capacity, with the overflow lined up on the sidewalk outside, and I realize it must be Saturday night. Asher parks his tank of a car down the alley, far away from the crowd. Once he cuts the engine, he heads straight for the trunk. By the time I’ve wrangled my way out of the seat belt, he’s already gearing up. Covering all his bases, he holsters regular Glocks in addition to the ones modded to hold his UV bullets.
“I know Benicio’s not a vamp,” he explains, racking back the slide and checking that there’s a bullet in the chamber. “But I don’t know what’s going to stop him, either.” Asher spares a glance for Xaine. “I can’t legally let you carry any of this stuff.”
“I don’t need any of that stuff,” Xaine shoots back at him, then dips his head toward me. “She needs something, though.”
“Here.” Asher slaps a can of pepper spray into my hand, and I’m left staring at it with no little bit of disgust.
“Seriously?” Xaine and I say at almost the exact same moment.
“You think that is going to succeed where bullets fail, Reece?” Xaine adds. “Give her a gun.”
Asher glares at me. “I’m sorry, are you licensed to conceal-carry in the state of California?”
I cock an eyebrow at him. “Are you licensed to conceal-carry that pole up your butt?”
“Very funny. No gun for you, smartass.” He trades the pepper spray out for a small taser, running down the features from the safety on the side to the small defensive spike on the bottom. “Stick him with the pointy end, ok?”
“Thanks, smartass.” I watch as he pulls a compound bow out of the trunk for a grand finale. Robin of the ’Hood. “Well, that’s real subtle.”
“I have arrows tipped with trackers,” Asher says over his shoulder. “If he runs for it, I’ll ding him with one of these, and we can follow the little piggy all the way home.”
“You can fit sunlight into a bullet, but GPS requires a whole arrow?”
Ignoring that last quip, Asher shifts his attention to the buildings on either side of us. Everything is painted in shades of gray, like something out of an old black and white movie, all hard shadows and hazy outlines. I swear it feels like I’m living in darkness lately, but this is my stomping ground, so the dirty brick walls are about as familiar as the scent of piss and the group of people gathered at the end of the alley.
“We’ll split up,” Asher tells me. “I’ll head in the back and keep an eye on you from a discreet vantage point. You go in like normal. Try to look natural.”
“I sincerely hope that ‘looking natural’ means that you’re going to stay at least fifty feet from wherever I am,” I say, eyeing the two-hundred-pound arsenal he’s got strapped to every pec and glute. “’Cause there’s nothing especially natural about wearing kevlar to a bar.”
“Funny in the face of danger. Awesome.” He checks the superhero bracer on his left forearm for fit, adjusting the leather strap as he adds, “You might try taking this a little more seriously.”
“It’s a defense mechanism.”
“What about you, Count Chocula?” Asher eyes Xaine. “You’re going to get mobbed the second you step inside.”
The look of distaste on Xaine’s face is comical, and I can’t stifle the grin that breaks out at the sight of it. He stares at the side of the building like it’s riddled with plague, and I can practically see the flashes in his head of squealing fans and girls begging for boob autographs.
He glares down at me when I let loose with a chuckle. “What’re you laughing at?”
“Not a thing,” I say, cramming the taser into my back pocket. “So… Katniss, Edward… we ready to do this?”
“Yeah, I’ll be at the bar, getting a goddamn drink.” Xaine pulls a rubber band out of his back pocket and scrapes his hair out of his face. A pair of shades go on to cover up the eyes and then he almost… almost… passes for Just Another Guy headed into the local watering hole. “And seriously, I want you to jam that taser in Benny’s nutsack the second he gets anywhere near you.”
“I’ll give it my very best shot.” With one last salute, I start off toward the light end of the alley. “But maybe I’ll save it for when we get home instead.” Turning back, I give Xaine a little meow and cat paw, a couple of air pistols, and a wink.
“Goddamnit, Lore,” he starts in, but I’m already ducking through the haze of menthol and cloves, headed for the front door. The crowd gathered outside is the usual revolving conglomeration of warm bodies intent on adding to the daily smog tally, one cigarette at a time. I recognize a couple faces, and one in particular.
Having escaped Jax Trace’s front seat, Tamsyn is tiny. Miniscule. If there was a scale of human smallness, she’d be a freaking pixie. What she lacks in natural height, she makes up for in shoe, balanced atop seven inches of platform latex and leather.
“Heya, Lo,” she pipes up as I slip by her. With a flick of her fingers, the butt-end of her clove goes flying and she charges forward to keep up with me. “How’s it hangin’?”
I hear a muttered curse behind us; if I had to take a guess, she just nailed my undead shadow with the business end of her discarded cigarette. I keep walking, barely throwing a glance over my shoulder as her short legs double-time to keep up. Standing side by side with her, I feel like King Kong in drag. Or rather, King Kong in a too-tight pair of guy’s jeans and a well-worn band T-shirt from the mid-nineties.
Either way, tonight is not the night to get waylaid by someone other than Benicio. “Oh, y’know. The usual. Same shit, different day?”
“Aw, man, I hear that.” Tamsyn keeps pace with me, taking three steps to every one of mine, chattering her head off about the new song and how she heard it twice on the way over tonight. By the time I jerk my chin at Charlie the bouncer, she’s sporting a small pucker in the center of her forehead. “Did you know there’s a guy following you?” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder even as she waves her ultraviolet handstamp and reflective armband at Charlie.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, not daring to cast a glance in Xaine’s direction. “Security, you know.”
I’m so intent on running through the motions that it startles me when someone screams my name. I look toward the sound, but then heads start turning, and I find myself staring into a couple hundred unfamiliar and excited faces. The tenor of the room shifts, and for the first time in my life, I’m very conspicuously the center of attention.
In a flash, there are people all around me, clogging up any venue of escape and waving bar napkins in my face. Tamsyn sticks with me, though maybe not by choice. Without any other option, my eyes scan the crowd briefly for Xaine, needing to reassure myself that he’s here and watching. That I’m not alone.
The instant I see him, I feel better. As tumultuous as he is, his very presence seems to instill me with a sense of peace. He can do anything. Does everything. Never stops or holds back or talks himself out of stuff. He’s fearless and brash, overbearing and outrageous. He’s had four hundred years to become the man that every other man wishes they could be, and in a few short days, he’s become the part of me I never knew I needed.
“I love your song!” An enthusiastic voice recalls me from my reverie. A smile spreads across my face as my attention lands on a girl who can’t be more than my age. Younger, probably. She beams from ear to ear and holds out a scrap of paper. “I’ve been listening to it on repeat!”
“Thanks,” I hear myself saying, “but it’s really not my song.”
“Oh, I know!” Her face becomes even more enthusiastic, impossibly enough. “I’ve seen Xaine in concert like ten times, but I wish
I had a voice like yours. So great.”
I take the paper and sign it with a blue pen that someone shoves into my hand. Then I smile and sign the next, and the one after that. When I glance at Xaine again, he’s wearing a knowing smirk. He makes a little gesture, the tiniest go on wave of the hand. It must be strange, to watch fame from the outside, probably as strange as it is for me, looking out from the inner circle. We’re like two satellites—
… fallen out of orbit,
Circling one another,
’Cause all we know is gravity…
—and all we see are stars.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Xaine
It takes approximately six seconds for everything to go to complete shit.
Lore ducks into O’Reilly’s first, trading me in for an Itsy Bitsy Bodyguard with bright orange hair. I catch a whiff of our boy Benny, but then I realize it’s different, a little more subtle, a little more… something, but before I can figure out what that is, I get stuck at the door. I’m lacking the requisite handstamp and over-21 bracelet, but a couple of hundred-dollar bills take care of that. Trouble is, I have to dig them out of my wallet and hand them over to the gorilla standing between me and my girl and whatever is waiting for us inside, and that takes far longer than I want it to.
Asher, you fuck, you’d better have her back until I can get in there.
By the time I make my way past the hulking meat puppet, I’ve lost the trail of whatever-it-was that I caught outside. The crowd inside has IDed Lore, and they are giving her the A-list crush. She’s surrounded four people deep on all sides, all of them squealing and waving slips of paper at her, snapping iPhone pics and yelling at each other to “hashtag it DJ Lore!” Far from looking flustered, Lore’s gone full Kardashian, down to the wry grin. More importantly, she sets up an invisible fence of cool that the fans actually recognize and respect. The orange-flavored munchkin is helping, for whatever reason, elbowing anyone who gets too friendly. I leave them both to it, sticking close enough to wade in if she needs me while I keep an eye out for Asher.
Bingo. He’s taken up residence against the back wall in one of the blank spots where the dim lights don’t quite overlap. A nonchalant lean obscures most of the bow riding his back, but there are a couple interested parties eying him already, and it’s only a matter of time before some liquored-up coed asks to handle his weapon.
The whole place is the typical mom-and-pop dive that the hipster crowd recently decided is worth saving. More bar than nightclub, the dance floor is scabbed-up hardwood, probably original to the building. Nonexistent light system. Decent sound system. There are recessed, leather-upholstered booths where people are cozied up with microbrewed beers and specialty cocktails. The two dudes behind the bar are wearing vests and have suitably scruffy faces, but neither one is our boy Benicio.
He’s not here. Not yet. Even with an overwhelming amount of regrettable cologne and Axe body spray, old wood, older brick, spilled drinks, and sweat, I’ll pick out the scent of him the second he steps foot into the place.
If he steps foot in the place.
Maybe he wasn’t quite as dumb as advertised and figured he’d better stay away. He has to know that I’ve got a lock on him now. That, at the very least, the cops should be interested in him as a suspect.
Cocksucking motherfucker. When did I start thinking like Asher?
Right about the time Lore decided to dangle herself like a worm on a hook over a tank of piranhas, I guess. No sharks in the water yet—
“Oh, hello. Shall we call you Mr. X? I didn’t even see you there.”
—just a trained seal.
I roll my eyes and turn to peer at Jax Trace over the edge of my sunglasses.
With a smirk, he adds, “Oh, wait… yes, I did.”
“Jackson.” I don’t offer him my hand, and he just stands there like some douchebag supermodel version of Clark Kent. Tonight, he’s rockin’ a pink-purple plaid shirt, black vest, and blue Marc Jacobs wingtips with gold plates on the toes. It hurts to look at him, mostly because he’s so put together that he could be a Stepford Wife. From the studded, slant-stripe tie to the Burberry skinnies and right on up to the expensive hair product holding his dark waves so perfectly in place, Jackson Trace is everything a hipster could be if they could afford to spend eight hundred bucks on a single pair of pants.
“Really subtle disguise you got there.” He gestures idly to my ponytail, then encompasses the glasses with a wave of his hand. “Almost too subtle. So subtle, in fact, that it’s really not subtle at all.”
“Fuck off.” I’ve got my gaze trained on Lore, but I’m pretty sure I can spare the half-second it’s going to take to ram Jax Trace’s shiny teeth down his gullet if he doesn’t shut up.
“No, really,” he just keeps going, “it’s like the Inception of subtlety. Was that what you were going for? ’Cause, uh… nailed it. I’m especially keen on the after-midnight Aviators, genius. Nice touch.”
Right about then, some asshole decides we need a bit more mood and dims the overhead lights. I can still see perfectly fine, but it’s going to look weird and draw more attention if I keep the glasses on now. Pulling them off, I stuff them into the pocket on my jacket. “Thanks, man. You should write a style article for the Times. Going to need a new gig, if you keep dropping the ball on signing the next hot thing.”
His gaze travels to Lore, and there’s an infinitesimal pause in the near-constant stream of babble that is Jax Trace. I’ve watched this man talk for four hours straight about whatever god-awful topic happens to be on the plate, but one glance in her direction and he’s actually quiet for a minute.
“You slummin’?” he asks, right back to playing Doofus the Schmuck with a shit-eating grin and rocked-back posture that screams preppy casual. “Must admit, you keep working your way lower and lower and lower. Pretty soon you’ll be dumpster diving with Ke$ha trying to find the next hot thing.”
“What the hell do you want, Trace?” I’m only half-paying attention to him, because I keep scouring the crowd gathered around Lore and eyeballing the back wall to make sure Asher’s still in place. I keep catching whiffs of something that reminds me of Benicio. It trips all my triggers, and yet isn’t his signature scent at all. It’s the difference between night and day. Black and white. A dude and—
A fucking girl.
“I want to know what you think you’re doing, Xaine—” Jax starts in, but I’m already shoving off the wall and cutting my way through the crowd to Lore. Trace is right behind me, still running his particular brand of verbal diarrhea, only now it’s a nonstop stream of “’Scuse us, pardon me, coming through, watch your drinks, that’s a really nice shirt!” right up to the point where I reach out to snag the orange pixie by her Hot Topic slut blouse and his hand gets in my way.
It’s been a long time since anyone reminded me what it was like to be human. To be fragile. To remember what broken bones and bleeding feel like. But in the split-second that Jax Trace reaches out and deflects my hand with his, the impact causes a tremor of actual pain to shoot straight up my arm.
“Hands off the mini-muffin there, Jumpy McGrabberson,” he says.
“Holy fucking shit, Trace.” Gripping my wrist, I glare daggers at him.
Lore whips around, the fan of her gold hair catching what’s left of the light. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Asher trying to make up his mind if he’s going to shoot first and ask questions later. A shake of my head and he eases back, but only a little.
“Is he here?” Lore’s gaze jumps past me, scanning the crowd briefly before coming to rest on my unwanted company. “Oh, it’s you.” The way she says it gives me a pang of satisfaction. She gives Jax the once-over and comes up smirking. “Nice shirt, Fig Leaf. Steal it from a Beiber fan?”
I screw up then, flashing the fangs when I grin, and the girl closest to my elbow lets out a shriek like someone grabbed her ass. “Oh, my god, it’s Xaine!”
Jax’s voice chimes in, loud and clear and fu
ll of revenge for the Beiber comment. “Oh, my god, it is Xaine! Look everyone, it’s Xaine!”
I’d punch him in the dick, but judging by what just happened to my wrist, I’d break every one of my fingers, and that’s not what I want on the front page of the Enquirer tomorrow morning. The mini-muffin hovers next to Jax’s elbow like a bouncy little terrier, the kind that rich girls carry in their purses. Trace likes them travel-size, I guess, but she still smells like the raspberry body wash version of Benicio, and I’m not letting her out of my sight.
Putting my hands on either side of Lore’s waist, I lift her off the floor a good six inches and head for the stage. “Coming through!”
God, now I sound like Trace.
The raised area is barely more than a platform, two stairs, and some fire-hazard Lekos washing the area in swimmy amber light. I deposit Lore next to a bar stool and smack her once on the ass, just to get the crowd going. They’re already cheering and clapping by the time I point a finger at the douchebag sitting there with his acoustic guitar, mouth hanging open. “Hand it to the lady.”
Not waiting to make sure he does it—because he’s going to do it, and we both know it—I turn back to the audience. The door guy is having a hell of a time keeping people back, but Benicio has to be headed in here if he’s within ten miles of the place. Everyone’s chanting “Xaine! Xaine! Xaine!” with Lore’s name tossed in there often enough to make an interesting remix. I put a finger up to my lips and the entire place goes quiet, save for one last piercing shriek of “I love you, Xaine!” and my answering shout of, “I fucking know, now shut up!”
Everyone laughs, then there’s a hush, and I hand that silence off to Lore. She sits there in my T-shirt and jeans, full glamour-puss makeup and porn-star hair from the photoshoot. The girl looks like a million dollars and doesn’t even it realize it. She licks her lips, but I doubt she’s nervous about playing. She’s been here before, performed here before…
But she hasn’t performed here with me a foot away from her. She hasn’t played while waiting for the other goddamn shoe to drop.
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