“One has to be, to keep up with Mr. Valentine.”
“Where did you find a store open on Easter Sunday?”
She shrugged. “One just has to know where to shop.” She pranced off to prod Alex to keep to his schedule.
During the band meeting, Georgie leaned against the back wall with Jonas and watched Alex hand out set lists scrawled in black marker.
Her brand new laptop weighed in her hands.
The other musicians in Killer Valentine straggled in. The platinum blond keyboard player stumbled when he walked by Georgie, brushing her arms but not crashing into her.
She bobbled the laptop box in her arms, nearly dropping it. Her heart fell at the thought of it crashing to the ground and shattering the screen.
Jonas grabbed the box as it tumbled and helped her lower it to the carpet without bashing it open. Once he turned away from her, the tight smile was gone from his lips and his light green eyes in an instant, and he was back to scrutinizing the band.
There was a time deep in the past when Georgie had been careless with things that cost a few thousand dollars, but now, this laptop felt like Alex had given her a prison cell window to crawl out of.
Alex introduced her to the band members as “a friend,” and Georgie did her best not to stammer at them. Each of Killer Valentine’s band members was more model-perfect than the last. Classical musicians didn’t have to be so pretty, but they dressed better than these ragamuffins in their threadbare jeans and faded-out tee shirts.
Conversely, Alex wore black dress slacks and a black dress shirt open at his throat. Heavy silver and matte black chains circled his wrists, and satin cords with shark’s teeth and obscure pendants hung around his neck. One earring, a chain that ended in a large, green crystal, dangled from his ear. Again, with his long hair framing his hard-boned face with dark waves and those large, dark, liquid eyes, Georgie wondered if he was going for a subtly vampiric look.
Or, with staying up all night, maybe he never saw the sun.
In those clothes, among the other musicians, Alex looked like a rock star, and his body language widened.
He looked like Xan Valentine.
Jonas lounged against the wall, appearing to be a business manager who was forced to suffer through creative meetings, but he was feigning disinterest, there in his trim, blue suit and black tie. His gaze flicked from Alex to each person he addressed, gauging reaction, measuring influence.
The redheaded backup singer Rhiannon cuddled up on one end of the couch, curled around a notebook with her pen poised to take notes. Her scarlet curls bounced on her shoulders. Her studious expression stayed solemn until she looked at Jonas, and then she blushed nearly as crimson as her hair before she turned back at Alex, who was dissecting the bridge of a song called “Nine Levels of Tortured Souls.” Alex would like the guitars to crank it up a notch.
Jonas watched Rhiannon closely, Georgie noticed, and his eyes softened with a smile at the backup singer until one of the other musicians accidentally kicked her, and then his green eyes shone hot with anger.
Yep, Alex was right. Jonas was involved with her.
The drummer, Tryp Areleous, twiddled drumsticks in his fingers and rolled them across his knuckles like he was twirling a miniature baton. His black curls bobbed around his face as his drumsticks spun to a tempo that only he could hear in his head. His thick forearm muscles flexed under the roses tattooed on his tanned skin. When he lost control of one of the drumsticks and it flew through the air and rolled under the coffee table in the middle of the room, Tryp snagged another stick from the back pocket of his ripped jeans without stopping the stick that danced across his other hand.
When Tryp flipped that drumstick and it clacked against the table, Jonas flinched beside Georgie. She had the impression that he had almost jumped across the room to snatch it out of the air before it hit anyone.
Tryp seemed to be listening to Alex, nodding at the right times, but several times, he also managed to spin both his drumsticks onto one hand, keeping both of them whirling, while he checked his phone, thumb-texting to the beat of the spinning sticks.
The lead guitarist, Cadell, who had nodded and scratched his short beard during the time when Alex was talking about the bridge of “Nine Levels of Tortured Souls,” retreated into his cell phone at every opportunity. When Alex started discussing the acoustics of that night’s venue with Tryp, Cadell dropped his head, his black hair curtaining his face, and dove into his phone, frantically tapping with both thumbs.
When Alex and Rhiannon sang through a couple of lines from “Lay Your Ghosts to Rest,” trying out a different harmony, Cadell drew his whole body around his phone, almost shaking with the intensity of his focus. He did not say a single word the whole band meeting, and Georgie wasn’t sure she had heard him sing the night before, though he had certainly talked that morning when he had discovered her in Xan’s suite, the jackass.
While Rhiannon and Alex sang those few lines, Jonas relaxed against the wall, letting his head rest against the plaster and smiling. When he opened his eyes, he watched Cadell staring at his phone, occasionally swiping the screen but laser-focused on whatever was on there.
The keyboards player and the rhythm guitarist, Rade and Grayson, sprawled on the couch like long-limbed reflections of each other. Alex had called them The Terror Twins before the meeting.
Rade’s white-blond hair, tipped with purple, hung over the arm of the couch from where he was splayed like he had been thrown there, boneless and broken. His hands—long, trim pianist’s hands, not callused like the guitar players’—lay limply on his flat stomach. His closed eyes vibrated behind his lids like he was dreaming, but because he kept opening his bright blue eyes and trying to focus on Alex or Grayson, Georgie suspected that he was hallucinating.
Grayson stroked his fingers through his blue hair, all the way from the pale teal at the roots to the navy-black ends just above his shoulders, languidly, lingering on his skin and in the strands, like he was seducing himself with his own hands. The rapturous expression in his pale hazel eyes never changed, not even when Alex stood over him, threatening to personally kick his ass and throw his diseased corpse on a plane back to Los Angeles that very night.
When Grayson gagged, nearly vomiting in his drug-addled reverie, Jonas clenched his fists and his body went tense, whether to apply the Heimlich maneuver or—from the fury in his pale green eyes—to slap the guitarist around, Georgie wasn’t sure.
After the meeting, Alex stormed up to Jonas. “Can’t we keep those two from getting so fucking stoned that they can’t function?”
Jonas told him, “Look, I’m metering it out, but they either saved some up to get this wasted or else they scored some of their own last night. I can’t be on them every damn minute.”
Georgie stepped to the side to give them an illusion of privacy, nudging the laptop box over the plush carpeting with her foot.
Alex’s British accent became harsher when he was angry, more upper-crust like a vitriolic lord about to whip a servant. “Hire some minders for them, some fucking babysitters, people whose jobs it is to keep them away from that shit, if you can’t do it because you’re too busy tupping the backup singers.”
“Xan, your voice,” Jonas said.
Alex stomped back to Rade and Grayson, grabbing Grayson by the collar with both fists and shaking him. “If you do not lay off of that shit, I will sack you. I will not allow you to destroy this band merely because you cannot control what your nose hoovers up. Both of you had better get your shit together by showtime.”
Jonas muttered, “Well, it’s probably heroin or ecstasy, not cocaine, but that’s not the point.”
Alex stalked back to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Georgie watched The Terror Twins stumble to the front door that led out of the suite. Jonas trotted after them, presumably to make sure they got back to their own rooms safely. Redheaded Rhiannon ran after him. She smiled at Georgie on her way out.
; Georgie leaned down to pick up her laptop box.
Tryp toddled by, asking, “You want me to carry that for you?”
“No, thanks. I’m only going back there.” Georgie gestured to the bedroom.
Tryp glanced at the bedroom door, then looked back at her. “Where Xan is?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’d leave him alone for a few minutes. When he gets worked up like that, he can get rough.”
“Oh, Xan is fine.” Alex was fine, anyway.
“I caused most of Xan’s shit fits that I was on the receiving end of, but he can bust a move when he needs to.”
“He hit you?” Georgie asked. No way.
Tryp shrugged. “He wanted to, that’s for sure. He got that look in his eye, that manic rage, that my stepfather used to get right before he yanked his belt off. I mean, Xan got worked up because I was doing something that might get myself thrown in prison or kill someone. And when I ran off to Vegas and got married.”
“Oh, come on.” Georgie tapped the box with her toe. “He wouldn’t fly into a rage about someone getting married. What, were you twelve or something?”
“No, it was a week ago.”
“Oh.” Tryp did look awfully young to Georgie. “Congratulations.”
“See? That’s what a normal person says, and thanks.” He twirled a drumstick across his knuckles like the class clown playing with a pencil in sophomore social studies.
“How old are you?” Georgie asked.
He ran a hand through the wild, black curls around his face. “Twenty-one.”
“That’s not too young.” It was pretty young.
“I am not appropriately committed to music and the band and my art.” He hit the consonants hard, an attempt at mimicking a British accent, and pronounced the last word like aht.
Georgie would not be so rude as to say so to Tryp’s face, but yeah, she could see Alex’s point. From what she had read on her phone that morning, Killer Valentine was balancing on the crest of a rogue wave of fame, and Xan Valentine was the propulsion and the rudder. Her focus had been like that when she had been at Tanglewood, just like everyone’s was. “He’s under a lot of pressure.”
“Well, yeah.” Tryp looked away. “I’ve gotta catch the bus to the sound check.”
He bent and picked up her laptop box with one hand.
She held out her arms. “Really. It’s fine. I’ve got it.”
“Suit yourself.”
As Tryp transferred the box into her arms, Georgie’s hand brushed Tryp’s arm right over where a thorn-studded rose vine twined around his forearm.
Even though Tryp’s vibrant black and red tattoo stained his skin right under her fingertips, his arm felt smooth, just like normal skin. If she had had her eyes closed, she would never have known that a tattoo lay just under her hand.
She could feel the furrows and texture of Alex’s tattoos beneath her fingertips at night.
It was weird that she couldn’t feel Tryp’s tattoo, right?
UNPLAYABLE
Georgie
Tryp left, and Georgie nudged the bedroom door open with her hip, holding tight to the brand new laptop box.
Inside the bedroom, Alex paced. He was almost running from wall to wall, his legs stretching and his heels biting into the carpet. He held his hair out of his face with his fists clenched near his temples.
She asked, “Alex? Are you all right?”
“Xan. I’m Xan, now. Rade was fine this morning. He was lucid. He was coming back to the band and music. Why is it always so fucking cold in hotels?” he growled. The thermostat was bolted to the wall beside the door, and he strode over, poked it, and slammed the cover shut. “I hate the cold.”
Boarding school in Switzerland must have sucked for him. Their mutual friend Flicka had said that the school had decamped to the second campus in Gstaad, high in the Alps, for ski season every year.
Georgie set her laptop box over by Alex’s luggage, propping it against his abnormally thick guitar case.
Alex paced, almost running toward her and then veering off, walking around the bed and then turning on his heel and coming right back at her before he turned away,
George asked, “Should I leave?”
“No. I’m fine. It’s just too damn cold in here.”
He still paced, burning off the fury with strides that looked like he was running somewhere important. He pivoted at the walls, but Georgie wouldn’t have been surprised if he had run up the plaster and pushed off.
He kept walking toward the luggage pile and then veering off as if a force field repelled him if he got too close, like there was something in there that he craved and hated.
Ah.
Georgie went back out into the living room of the suite and looked around, but the brown stuffed couches and the polished wood dining set were all empty. She locked the front door.
She stuck her head back into the bedroom. “Everyone else has left.”
“So?” He careened toward the luggage but swerved away before he reached for the guitar case.
“I’ll head down to the coffee shop for a latte or something, if you want me to.”
“Why would I want that?” he asked.
“If you want to be alone.”
“I’m fine.”
“You want to play it, don’t you?”
He sat on the bed, his hands tight around his head, bent over.
She said, “I’ll leave, if you want.”
“Don’t leave,” Alex choked out, his voice strangled in his throat.
“It’s okay to play it.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s just me. I’m just a stowaway, not a band member, and I’m not going to stick around. Go ahead.”
He retrieved his guitar case, laid it on the bed, and flipped open the lid. His light oak acoustic guitar lay nestled inside the velvet padding, the one he kept with him, like a doctor keeps his stethoscope at hand even on plane flights or a police officer carries an off-duty gun.
Laying the guitar on the bed, Alex sprung latches deep inside the case and reached in with his fingertips, gingerly removing a violin.
This was the first time that Georgie had seen it up close. The finish was a deeper shade than the rich reddish-orange varnish that she had seen on other concert-quality violins. “Why is it so dark?”
“It was stolen and thought lost for a few decades,” Alex said, cradling it in his large hands. “The thief smeared black shoe polish on it so no one would recognize it for what it was.”
He set a cotton handkerchief on the chin rest, tucked it under his chin, and laid the bow on the strings. A note sang from the violin, a lush, vibrant tone that shimmered in Georgie’s ears.
Her knees wobbled and she sank onto the bed. “What is it?”
“A Stradivarius,” he said, almost breathless. His eyes closed as he listened to the note he drew forth from the instrument. “Its name is Lady Ley.”
The song “Lay, Lady, Lay” came to her mind. She asked, “Like Bob Dylan?”
His eyelashes barely parted, but a hint of a smile relaxed his mouth when he saw that she was grinning. “Yes, exactly like that, I’m sure.”
“Aren’t you supposed to play a violin every day or else they die or something?”
“Yes.” He changed direction with the bow, spinning a different note into the air.
“Do you?”
“Every day.” The notes that dropped from his bow became shorter, quicker, and his fingertips danced on the neck of the violin. He used the bow to saw at the violin, hard, violent strokes that grated the music from the strings.
Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 35
Performed by Joshua Bell
The notes flew in a fury of sound from the violin, the notes so close together that it sounded like two violins playing in harmony. Liquid lightning runs that he knifed from the violin interspersed with discordant grinds.
“Don’t the other guys notice?” she asked.
“I
usually sneak out to the tour bus in the middle of the night,” he said, still playing. “Cadell knows that I was at Juilliard for the violin. I think he knows that I still have one.”
Alex slid his fingers as he vibrated the notes from the violin.
Georgie recognized the sensibility of the music, the voice of the composer, if not the actual piece. “Tchaikovsky?”
He glanced at her from the corners of his dark eyes. “Yes.”
He turned away, gliding the bow over the strings, and played the piece.
When the music fell away from him and he opened his eyes, the anger was gone, and his body sagged.
“Which one was that?” she asked.
“Concerto in D Major, Opus Thirty-Five, the unplayable concerto.”
Georgie leaned back on the bed. “Obviously, it’s not completely unplayable.”
“Obviously. Tchaikovsky had been married for three disastrous weeks and left his bride, and he wrote this in a fit of rage and hate for everything, including music. It was pronounced unplayable by the Czar’s violinist, far too technically difficult for any violinist to ever play and certainly never perform, which means it took over three years for someone to dissect it, and now every serious violinist must include it in their repertoire.”
He wiped down the violin’s chin rest with an alcohol pad and pressed the Stradivarius back into the velvet niche in the case that rested on the bed beside her. Georgie shifted on the bed, and the strings sang as the case vibrated. He replaced the guitar and snapped the lid shut.
Alex stood there a moment, his muscular hands resting on the lid like he was holding it closed. A tremor ran through his shoulders, and he looked up, over the case at her. “I’m all right now.”
“Okay.” She watched his long, callused fingers, spread apart on the case. “You weren’t all right before?”
“I get angry sometimes,” he said.
The drummer’s warnings floated in Georgie’s head. “Everyone gets angry.”
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