“Tell me about it,” I said as we walked in the house. As exciting as all of this was, it was scary as hell. Once we split up the band’s take on the night, everyone got slightly less than a hundred dollars. Of course, it was a tiny, surprise show, but still sobering. “I worked on one of the movies this summer. The money was really good, but it’s just not what I want to do.”
Megan’s eyes widened. “No shit. I’ve been trying to get into the costume department on like any of those.” It was official. I was the only person in the state of Louisiana who had no interest in working in the film industry.
“I’ll talk to my sister, she’ll at least be able to point you in the right direction.”
“Oh my God, thank you thank you thank you.” Megan hugged me, and Eli came up behind her, carefully peeling his girlfriend away from my body.
“Abby.” Devon crossed his arms and shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you.”
I was so confused. “Why?”
“Because you haven’t shown Megan the best part of Mo’s house yet.” He rolled his eyes. “Come on, I guess I have to do everything around here.”
Of course Megan thought the taps were bad ass. Once we all filled our cups, I wanted to head back outside. Sometimes these parties got so loud I couldn’t even hear myself think. I didn’t know if I’d have any more time to talk to Megan, but it wasn’t often I clicked with a girl. Nikki was cool, but we weren’t much more than nice to each other. When I talked to Megan tonight, I felt a little giddy.
There’s only so much of these boys a girl can take.
She was busy talking to someone with Eli now, and Devon had already been intercepted, too. I kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be on the deck.”
Since it was a Tuesday, there weren’t as many people who’d come to Mo’s after the show. I took one of the empty chairs on the deck, and started chatting with one of Mo’s neighbors, who had never gone to a Sinister Riot show but was at every after party.
“Hey, Abby.” I almost spilled my beer in my lap when I saw Andrew standing in front of me.
“What are you doing here?” He didn’t have any obligation to us anymore.
“Now that I have some free time, I decided to take a little road trip, try to get reconnected with why I started doing this in the first place.” When Andrew sat in the empty chair next to me, I noticed he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and instead of the polo shirt I usually saw him in, he wore a Social Distortion shirt, jeans, and Chucks. “After a while, you can get sucked up in the machine of it all. I just wanted to spend some time alone with the music.”
He was preaching to the choir. “And you came down here?” Maybe he was on his way to Mississippi to see where all the old blues guys played. That’s the first place I’d go on a music road trip. And then New York. If Devon and I were ever to get married, I wanted to honeymoon at The Chelsea Hotel. Hell, we didn’t need to get married, but we definitely needed to go to New York.
“I came for the show.” Andrew already had a red plastic cup in his hand. I hadn’t seen him inside the party. “And to talk to you.”
“To me?” For what?
“Once I decided to do this, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” I raised an eyebrow when he paused for a sip. “I’ve never met anyone who has the same passion for this business that you do. It inspired me. To be honest, I probably would have lost interest in Sinister Riot before we signed them if I had been dealing with anyone else, but you were the one who made me believe in them.”
“Enough to come to New Orleans and catch a show?” Everyone always told me I did a good job with the band, but hearing it from an actual professional, I felt like everything was falling into place.
“It was good timing.” He smiled sheepishly. “Like I said, I’m actually here to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve been thinking of starting my own label,” Andrew announced, and I had a feeling it was the first time he’d said it out loud. He didn’t look at me right away, but he returned my smile. “None of the corporate bullshit this time, about what’s going to make money and copying the crap that everyone else is doing. I want it to be about the music.”
“That sounds amazing.” And exactly what I had always wanted. I was kind of jealous Andrew had the means to do it.
“There’s only one person I’ve ever met in the business with the passion and the drive to pull it off. After all, these things do need to make money.” He grinned. “And that’s you.”
“What are you asking me?” I didn’t dare jump to any conclusions.
“I think you’d make an amazing A&R representative. It’s going to be a lot of work, and we wouldn’t have a huge corporation bankrolling everything. But I can’t see how any band under your guidance could fail.”
I was in complete shock. All the rejection letters, including one from American Original. All the people who said I was wasting my time with Sinister Riot. And now someone just drove from New York to New Orleans with the sole intention of offering me my dream job. I covered my mouth to try to hold in that laugh that comes out when something is so good it can’t possibly be happening to you.
“This is amazing.” I could barely speak. “How would it work?”
“We can talk about that. You’d be listening to demos, going to shows. If something spoke to you, then we’d go from there. Handpick the artists, really grow their careers. I see it as the same thing you’ve always done with Sinister Riot, but on a much bigger scale.”
I looked back to the house, Devon and Frankie were wrestling in the living room, or something that looked equally stupid. Everything was back the way it was supposed to be. Just for a split second, I considered turning Andrew down. Having more than this had fucked the band up. But we’d all gotten a lot smarter over the last few months, and we knew better than to let some assholes who didn’t care about anything but a paycheck get in our way again.
The band would never have a better opportunity than this. Lightning didn’t often strike twice.
“You know who I want my first client to be,” I said when I turned back to him.
“Of course.” Andrew laughed. “I knew you and the band were a package deal. We need to act fast. I’ve had a few phone calls about Sinister Riot from my friends at other labels. Number one is a little hard to ignore.”
“Something tells me they’re going to go for it.” I stood up, legs shaking, my skirt of course catching on a splinter in the chair. “Let’s go tell everyone the news.”
“What’s he doing here?” Devon had Frankie in a headlock, and he almost dropped him when he saw me walk in with Andrew.
“Abby wanted to tell you about her new job.” Andrew was even more excited about this than I was. We were going to make a good team. I always knew deep down, he really cared about the band, and most importantly, the music. Sometimes you had to do things you don’t want to do to get to where you needed to be. I understood that now. “As the Artist and Repertoire Representative at my new, yet to be named label.”
Devon let go of Frankie, sending him stumbling back into the couch. The crowd erupted in cheers and Devon wrapped me in a hug, rocking me back and forth. “You fucking did it,” he murmured against my hair. “I am so proud of you.”
I nodded. If I said anything, I was going to burst in to tears. The dream, it was coming true.
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Abby mentioned that she and Devon were fans of the vampire band Immortal Dilemma…and you should be, too! Keep reading for an excerpt of the first book in my rock star vampire series, Because the Night!
Everywhere I looked along the Las
Vegas Strip, Tristan’s eyes smoldered back at me. On billboards, taxi toppers, and the T-shirts of devoted fans on their way to The Sin City Vampire Club to see him play in Immortal Dilemma. All those women hoped to get a little closer to him, to fulfill their fantasies.
Seeing Tristan like this, larger than life, made it too easy to forget he’d walked out of my life to become the rock star. Tonight, I set out find out why.
As soon as I walked into the Alta Vista hotel with my cousin, Keisha, I knew this was so much more than it seemed on TV. The sleek silver and purple lobby buzzed with anticipation. Groups of girls decked out in black baby doll dresses and combat boots clogged the walkways, giggling and screaming. I knew how they felt. Just being here made everything inside me jump and tingle.
Venomtini bars and Immortal Dilemma slot machines dotted the walkway leading to The Sin City Vampire Club. Keisha and I held hands not to get separated in the crowd.
“You must be so excited, Callie!”
“I’m nervous.” Excited, nauseated--you name it, I felt it.
“Why?”
“I just don’t want to be disappointed.”
So many more people had already staked out their place in the ticket line at the box office. Were we even going to get in? The crowd inside the theater roared, and I was dying to know what I was missing.
“Two tickets, please.”
“Sorry, this window is for online orders only. Tonight’s show is sold out. All the shows sell out weeks in advance.” Seriously? And to make it worse, this woman gave approximately zero fucks that she pretty much just ruined my vacation.
“No thanks.” Now what?
“Told you.” Keisha never had high hopes for this plan. She put her arm around me as I deflated. “We’ll figure this out.” Everyone else in the room seemed to be having the time of their life.
“Ladies!” a man called out. I turned toward him, raising an eyebrow. “Do you need tickets?” he asked hopefully. He was a skinny black guy with a baseball cap and an oversized plaid jacket. He looked as out of place as we did here.
I brightened. “We do.”
“Eighty each.”
“Can’t you do better than that? The show’s about to start.” Even in this time of crisis, Keisha could never resist negotiating.
He checked the time on his phone. “Alright. Sixty each. They’re usually a hundred, but you ladies are cute and the show is going to start soon. I’ve got to get rid of these things.”
“We’ll take them.” I pulled three twenties from my wallet, and Keisha did the same.
He pocketed the money and handed over the tickets. “Here you go. Where you ladies from?”
“Here.”
Keisha’s eyes widened but she didn’t correct me.
“Don’t you know what kind of show this is?” He raised an eyebrow at me. I didn’t look like the rest of the girls here in my eyelet tank top and tie-dyed skirt. “You know you have to be twenty-one to get in, right?” This was the first time I had a chance to try out the license someone had left behind at my mother’s restaurant. If someone looked at it quickly, they might think it was me.
“Thanks. We’ve got it all under control.” I assured him—and myself—as we walked away.
“Nice work!” Keisha high fived me.
My hands trembled as I examined the ticket in my hand. I walked straight into some lady and muttered an apology. I couldn’t believe I was here.
The usher glanced at my ID, ripped my ticket, and stepped aside.
We were in.
A group of girls next to us jumped up and down and squealed. I was doing the same thing on the inside.
The Sin City Vampire Club looked like a modernized Victorian theater. A giant chandelier twinkled above a grand staircase. Fans perched on red velvet Victorian couches and chairs, ornate silver metalwork hung on the dark wood walls, alternating with large gruesome paintings of sacrificial rituals or something like that. Built-in curios housed skulls and jars full of gross things suspended in goo. Tinny, haunting music from an antique Victrola piped in over the PA system. We headed upstairs to our seats. An off-white and faded red striped curtain hid the stage.
I’d never expected to see so many velvet and lace jackets and gauzy tutu skirts in one place. Some fans wore fangs, others had their faces painted like skeletons, and still others had fake blood dripping from their mouths.
Keisha started talking to the girls next to us, a dark-haired girl with too much black makeup with her perfectly put together red-headed friend. “Have you been to the show before?”
“We come all the time,” the redhead gushed. “First time here?”
Keisha nodded, her head on a swivel. This was so not her thing. She’d rather be out dancing. “It is.”
“The TV show does it no justice. It’s like pure sex.” The redhead licked her lips.
Some fans considered their attraction to the band to be a paranormal connection they referred to as Bloodlust, but I never believed it. They liked the music, the guys were hot. They could hide behind all the supernatural garbage they wanted to try to justify their obsession, but they couldn’t feel what I felt. After all, Tristan was the first guy I ever kissed.
A ballerina came on to the stage with no fanfare. The curtain didn’t rise and the lights didn’t dim.
She moved so delicately, she could have been dancing on a cloud. Her severe bun had been powdered, and her ribs showed through the plain white leotard. As she spun around, trapeze artists flipped above her. Two other performers peddled on tricycles with giant front wheels. The music became more and more frenzied and the spotlights pulsed and strobed on each performer.
So entranced by the ballerina, I didn’t notice the man step from the shadows until the music stopped. The other performers had disappeared. With one arm clamped around the ballerina’s waist, he pulled her head back to the side, exposing her neck. She held still, graceful, even under siege. Then, almost too quickly for me to see, he pressed his mouth to her neck until her body went limp.
The house lights fell and the crowd went wild. Everyone around me rose to their feet, screaming and crying, jumping up and down. Emotion pulsed and throbbed through the room like the lights overhead.
The beat of the drums ripped through room like fireworks. Heat exploded through the theater, burning my skin even back in these crappy seats. The rest of the band rose up through the floor on giant pedestals, and the whole place shook with the crowd’s screaming.
Tristan commanded the left side of the stage. His long, dark hair flowed free, and he’d painted his face in some sort of elaborate skeleton design that was almost pretty. Under the guitar he wore a red fuzzy coat, open, no shirt underneath, and black shiny pants that must have been poured around the shape of his body. Standing on the pedestal, he played his guitar with his head tipped back, his eyes closed, swaying to the beat. Eerie, peaceful, yet somehow still beautiful, drenched in red light.
The pedestals lowered and Tristan sprang onto the stage. Roaming like a predator and whipping his hair around, he teased the fans by leaning over them with his guitar but staying just out of reach. He smiled wide, showing those horrible, horrible fangs. I hated that part of his costume.
I forced myself to tear my eyes away from Tristan. The singer strutted around the stage, his spiky hair sticking out above old-fashioned goggles. He danced with the burlesque dancers on the riser, singing to them and running his fingers down their bare, bloody arms. They shimmied in front of huge screens playing old horror movies. The bassist painted himself silver, and he moved like a robot.
All the songs all sounded the same to me. As much as I tried to like them, Immortal Dilemma just wasn’t my thing. Too heavy. Tristan was my thing. When the singer stopped and hoisted his microphone stand over the audience, the crowd screamed out every word.
A single, red spotlight framed Tristan as he began his guitar solo. He shed his jacket and an audible gasp escaped from the audience. A sleeve of brightly colored tattoos decorated his left
arm. That was new. I wanted to trace my finger along each line, to understand their story.
I needed more. So much more.
He plucked and pushed the guitar strings, almost making it cry. A hush fell over the crowd when his solo came to its finish. He walked up to the microphone and paused.
“I’ve waited so long to see you again.”
I swear that’s what he said, even with the echo again…again...again… rolled through the theater like a wave. The crowd swooned. I couldn’t breathe. My imagination had to be playing tricks on me. There was no way he could know I was here. Impossible.
Keisha grabbed my arm so hard she bruised it. She heard it, too.
It had to be a coincidence.
The rest of the band came back out for the encore. I stood there in my Tristan-induced daze until the band took its final bow.
“What did you think?” the dark haired girl asked, jarring me from my trance.
“It was amazing.” My voice sounded as far away as the rest of me was.
“You girls should totally come hang out with us.” Her friend grabbed my hand, way too familiar. “We’re headed to an after party. There will be all sorts of hot vampire guys there.”
“You really think they’re vampires?” Keisha barely got the words out without laughing.
“We know they are.”
“Okay.” Keisha turned to me and rolled her eyes.
“I think that sounds great.” I needed to move fast to make my plan work. Whether or not the hot guys were really vampires, these girls might know how I could find Tristan. I’d come to Las Vegas as soon as I had a chance, once school was done. I wasn’t going to let a little obstacle like him being insanely famous get in my way.
“Are you sure, Callie? You don’t want to stick around here?” Keisha didn’t seem convinced.
“Why would we want to hang around with a bunch of tourists?” I extended my hand to our new friends. “I’m Callie, and this is my cousin Keisha.”
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