Wild Thing

by Blair Babylon

  “They didn’t change. They were just revealed.” Her tone was more bitter than she had meant it to be.

  The bed creaked as he shifted. “Who is after you?”

  That was weird. His British accent had softened.

  “It doesn’t really matter. They’re pretty bad people. I need to run.” She ran her hand down his arm. “Thanks for letting me hide with you. These have been the best weeks of my life.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I’m going to miss you.”

  Warmth feathered over her lips, his breath, scented with tea and whiskey. Softness pressed against her mouth, and she kissed him back in the dark.

  He whispered against her lips, “I’m going to miss you, too. Don’t go yet. Just a few more days.”

  “Because your songs aren’t finished?”

  “Let’s say that.”

  “They said they were going to kidnap me in New York, take me to my mother’s house, and use me to get in to see her. If they catch me, they’ll probably shoot me in the road outside her house. If they don’t, they’ll torture me to try to get money out of my mother, and she won’t give it to them. I have to leave, Alex.”

  His breath sucked in sharply, and his arms wound around her shoulders and waist and tightened. “I won’t let them take you.”

  “They will, if I don’t run.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s a Russian mafia family, a bratva. My dad swindled them for a lot of money.”

  “You don’t mean the Butorins?”

  She leaned away. “You know them?”

  “The Butorins and other Russian mafia families were all over Le Rosey, the boarding school where I grew up. Sergey Butorin is a year younger than I am. Tatiana was at Flicka’s brother’s wedding.”

  “Tatiana Butorin was in Paris?”

  “So it is the Butorins who are after you.”

  “Yeah.”

  He gathered her back into his arms. “I don’t think even Wulfram von Hannover could call off Tatiana Butorin if it’s about money. That’s how she measures her power and influence. Even when we were kids, the Butorins would forgive any stupid kid stuff unless it had to do with money.”

  “I owe them the money that my father stole from them.”

  “My God, Georgie.” His arms tightened around her. “I could pay them off.”

  “I’ve taken enough money from friends due to my father’s machinations. I’m not doing it again.”

  “You mean Flicka?”

  Georgie’s head dropped forward, and she leaned away from him, nearly curling into a miserable bundle. “Oh, God. You know about that?”

  “It was in the report. You were very young.”

  “Being young and stupid isn’t an excuse for something like this.”

  “That’s very true.” His eyebrows flinched downward.

  She said, “I have to leave.”

  “Don’t go, Georgie. Stay where I can protect you.”

  He must have forgotten to use his British accent because his inflections had become almost pure French, sliding over the consonants like Zhor-zhie.

  “You’re in the crossfire,” she told him. “You might get hurt. They’ll take me if I don’t run. It’s best for everyone if I leave.” Her arms tightened around his neck, her fingers tracing the strong muscles of his back and the ridges of his tattoos, palpable even through his tee shirt.

  “But not tomorrow,” he said.

  “No. The day after.”

  “Bon.” Alex laid his head on the pillow, and his breathing smoothed and deepened as he slept.

  Georgie fit herself against him, feeling his warmth and the cords of muscles around his arms and chest, smelling the smoke and whiskey in his skin, memorizing him, and slept.

  CHANGE OF PLANS

  Xan Valentine

  The first time that Xan had a fucking moment to himself was during the sound check, when Georgie had wandered away to talk to Yvonne about something and the rest of the band was involved with setting the levels on their instruments.

  Xan found his privacy tent shimmeringly empty and spoke to his phone, “Adrien.”

  His vision flashed blue as he said the name, a reassuring, calm-sky blue.

  The phone dialed, and Adrien picked up. “Ouias?”

  At the sweet sound of French, with the gentling pressure of Adrien’s voice, the darkness fell off him like inky water splashing to the ground.

  Alex whispered, “Pull all the minders off Rade and Grayson and attach them to Georgie. There have been credible threats on her life. I want her in a security bubble every minute. Do it right now.”

  “Your Grace, the detail was brought here—”

  “I understand, but her life is more important than those two.” Alex stared at the white canvas of the tent ceiling, exasperated. “We’ll keep one person on each of them. They probably won’t notice that the rest of the detail has gone missing. But I want everyone else covering Georgie, but unobtrusively. Don’t tip her off that you’re with her. And Adrien—”

  Flash of blue.

  “Yes, Your Grace?”

  “I want you, personally, with her every minute that you’re on duty.”

  “My primary responsibility is to you.”

  “I need you to be with her.”

  Adrien sighed over the phone, a low buzz in Alex’s ear. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  EATING FUGU

  Georgie

  Georgie awoke alone in the huge bed on her last full day with Alex. Silver-blue curtains hung around the padded headboard behind her, and the crisp bedsheets snarled around her legs like she had been fighting them all night.

  Alex must have had an early morning.

  Silence filled the bedroom. Even the dust motes floating in the dim sunlight that filtered through the drapes seemed lethargic, as if the blow dryer that might have bobbed them around had been shut off a long time ago.

  He might have been gone for hours.

  Last day.

  After she showered and ate from the cold breakfast tray in the living room, even drinking the tepid coffee rather than call anyone to bring her fresh, Georgie sat at the piano Alex had bought for her, resting her fingers on the keys.

  She was just taking a backpack with her tomorrow, just a change of clothes or two and her new computer. Rebuilding her life would take a while.

  Georgie pressed the keys anyway, limbering up her fingers. She dialed the volume all the way down so that the piano whispered to her like Xan singing just for her.

  She wasn’t worried about what would happen to the piano when she left it behind. Tryp had been eyeing it with the same avarice with which he had been staring at her leftover French fries the other day, asking, “You gonna eat those?”

  Her phone, again perched on the speaker, lit up. The caller ID read Her Royal Bossypants.

  Georgie had one last chance to talk to Flicka, too. She should really take a hammer to this phone after today, or at least wipe the contacts and memory to donate it to something.

  Last day.

  Georgie tapped the screen. “Hi, Flicka?”

  “What the hell is the matter with you why aren’t you answering my calls are you still around Alexandre Grimaldi did he lock you in a dungeon are you dead in a forest somewhere?”

  Georgie raised her voice above the shrieking. “I’m fine! Really, I’m fine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “New Jersey.” Georgie mentally inserted a generic Jersey joke, but she couldn’t be troubled to actually say it.

  “Did he hurt you? Please say you’re all right!”

  “I’m fine. Alex isn’t like that.”

  “He is. You just don’t know him.”

  “Flicka, honey, I love you. I know you’re trying to do the right thing, but Alex isn’t like that anymore. He’s been amazing, the perfect everything, and I’m leaving tomorrow, anyway. I just wanted to talk to you one last time.”

  “Oh, God, Georgie. He’s got you convinced, too. I know him a hell of a lot better than yo
u do. I was there when he did it.”

  Georgie stroked the piano that Alex had given her because he was kind and considerate and had surrounded her with music.

  Flicka had to be wrong. “You saw him kill someone?”

  “Not the actual murder, but I had to testify at the trial.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Georgie said, pressing her fingers down in a C-chord to firm up her voice. “I’m leaving tomorrow anyway. I don’t really want to know.”

  “You have to know. You have to leave now.”

  “He’s fine. I’m fine.”

  “Listen to me. We were driven to music lessons together every day. I took class at the university, but Alexandre’s parents paid for his violin tutor to live near Le Rosey. That day, the car picked me up from class first. When we got to his tutor’s house, Alexandre was sitting in the snow, almost naked. Blood streaked his whole body like he had painted himself with it. His teeth were chattering, and his fingernails were blue. His sister was lying on the ground, covered in blood. He’d wrapped her in all his clothes, and he carried her to the car and got in.”

  “He has a sister?”

  “See? You don’t even know that. Christine Marie was okay, but Alex collapsed in the car.”

  Unwanted images rose in Georgie’s mind. “Sounds like he was trying to take care of her.”

  “Yeah, he was so considerate of his sister, but his violin tutor was dead in the house.”

  “So you didn’t see what happened inside.”

  “Even Christine Marie said that she didn’t remember.”

  “So you don’t know. You don’t know if the violin tutor attacked him and he defended himself or something.”

  “It was all very hushed up because he was a minor, but Alex had beaten his violin tutor to death with his fists. It wasn’t a lucky shot with a fireplace poker or a paring knife or something. It was brutal. They said that it must have taken a long time. I can tell you this, though: he was different when he got into that car, and he stayed different.”

  Georgie gripped the phone more tightly. “Different, how?”

  “He was always close to his friends, really close to them, like we all were because it was a boarding school and our families didn’t want us.”

  “Oh, Flicka.”

  “Listen to me. After that, Alex was angry all the time, and he got really possessive about his sister, like he followed her around and he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. She was two years behind me, and she clung right back. There were whispers that something abnormal was going on between them, but I don’t think so. It didn’t feel like that. It seemed like he was ready to kill someone else if they looked at her wrong. And then he did.”

  Georgie wedged her phone between her ear and shoulder and played nearly silent arpeggios on the piano, watching her fingers and listening intently to the faint notes. “So who was the second person?”

  “He and Christine Marie went home for the summer to where their parents lived in Monaco, and he almost killed a conductor.”

  “Like, a train conductor?” Georgie asked, still watching her hands.

  “Do you think I would be talking about a train conductor? The conductor of the Monaco Philharmonic!”

  “That’s really weird, Flicka.”

  “It was really hushed up, like they came back to school the next year and no one even knew about it until Pierre—who’s his cousin so he was there—said something to Wulfram. Wulfie called the school and wouldn’t let me ride in the car with Alex to music lessons anymore.”

  “I just don’t see it. He’s had some reasons here to get mad, good reasons. He stomped around a little, but he didn’t lash out. One time, he played the violin to calm himself down—”

  “It always comes back to that violin. There is something about that violin.”

  “—but he’s never been violent at all.”

  “He attacked two people and killed one of them. I can’t believe you’ve been around him so long. Can’t you leave today?”

  “No. I promised, and my plane ticket is for tomorrow.”

  “Don’t let him play the violin, at least. It has something to do with that damn violin.”

  “He has to play it every day. It’s a Stradivarius, and you have to play those constantly or else they spoil or something.”

  “It’s like you’re deliberately putting yourself in danger.”

  “The Butorins are definitely trying to kill me. Alex has saved my butt twice. Besides, his security guys are always around.”

  “I’ve always thought they were for everyone else’s safety, part of the deal with the court to make sure that he doesn’t kill anyone else. At least don’t be around him when he plays the violin.”

  “He should give it up, if that’s the case. He should sell that Strad and just stop.”

  “He can’t.”

  “Of course he can. It’s his life. He can give up the violin if he wants to.”

  “You haven’t seen him play.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “You haven’t seen him perform. You haven’t seen him with an orchestra. Composers are fighting to work with him. You USians haven’t heard the rumors and whispers, so you don’t know any better. Word filtered around that he had shown up at my wedding, and four conductors have called me, trying to get his contact information.”

  Logic crystallized in Georgie’s head. “If he nearly beat a conductor to death, you’d think they would have more sense than that.”

  “Nope. Moririshi Morimoto said that working with Alexandre Grimaldi is like eating fugu.”

  Georgie played the quiet piano faster, her fingers clunking on the keys. “I’m sure Alex would be thrilled to be compared to a poisonous fish.”

  “They want him. They would line up to get a taste of him. Fugu is alluring and addictive. Chances are that the chef prepared it correctly and cut out the poison gland without poisoning the meat. Probably. But the fish is delicious, ecstasy on a plate, a life-changing meal, and you get high from it, so you take the chance. You might die, but if you live, you’ll be changed. They all want to work with him because he’s a genius, and they’re all trying to consume him and change their lives, even if he might kill them.”

  Georgie lifted her hands from the piano keys. “That’s sick. He’s a human being. He doesn’t want to play dead composers’ dead music. He shouldn’t be consumed.”

  “They all want a piece of him,” Flicka warned her, “and they mean to have him, someday.”

  MY SECOND DEAD ART FORM

  Georgie

  “You’re leaving tomorrow,” Alex whispered to her in the dark.

  Light shined in the window from the moon overlooking the Hudson River, reflecting in vertical lines off the skyscrapers of New York City on the other side.

  “My flight is at three o’clock,” Georgie said, pulling the sheet over her shoulders. “I can wait until after lunch to say goodbye.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” He shifted, and the mattress moved beneath her. “Look, Georgie, I have resources—”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t. I don’t want anything from you, and I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to have to explain or try to convince you. Please, just talk to me about music for a few minutes.”

  “Music.” His flat tone sounded like he didn’t understand. Reflections from outside the window glinted in the shine of his eyes.

  “Tell me about Killer Valentine. Tell me anything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why you want to have a band instead of play the violin.” She was treading perilously close to dead violin tutors, and she really didn’t want to ask him about that.

  She just wanted a few minutes with him, a few, last, precious minutes, to talk about music like they always did.

  He cleared his throat, and the dark form of his silhouette against the window turned in profile. He said, “It’s a dead art form, you know.”

  Her heart fluttered. “Dead—what?”

&nb
sp; “Rock. It’s a dead art form. I got out of classical music, but rock is just as dead. It has been for decades.”

  “Rock isn’t dead. Classical is.” Even a few weeks ago, she would have argued differently, that classical lived on in millions of hearts while popular music was never really alive. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “Said what?”

  “Just because classical isn’t innovating anymore, not really anyway, doesn’t mean that it should be abandoned. But rock isn’t dead.”

  “Rock and roll has been dead for decades. Most popular music is pop and folk and commercialized pablum, not rock.” His hand stole across the sheets and found her fingers.

  She clutched his hand. “I don’t even know what the difference is.”

  “It’s greater than the difference between post-modern atonal and Baroque.” He rubbed his thumb across the back of her knuckles.

  “Hey, you know what they say: if it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it.”

  “Yes. Quite.”

  “I’m sorry. Go ahead.” His fingers were warm in her hand.

  “Rock had the same types of progressions, bass lines, and rhythm as the blues, just at a faster tempo. It was a pure art form until the garbage era. Soundgarden wanted to be Black Sabbath but weren’t allowed to say so. Nirvana was a mix of late-seventies punk and the Pixies.”

  He rolled closer to her and reached across her, dragging her body across the sheets to fit against his.

  She ran her fingers over the round muscles of his chest. His heartbeat pulsed under her palm, and she whispered, “So who killed it?”

  “There was a disconnect, a misinterpretation, after the garbage era. Later bands thought that darker meant better, but it was just darker.”

  In the darkness of the hotel room, Alex sat up and moved, sitting near the pillows. He leaned over and picked her up, settling her in his lap, and cradled her.

  She murmured, “We can’t sleep sitting up like this.”

  “I don’t want to sleep,” he said. “I want to talk about music with you before you leave. I want to talk about how everything fell apart, because when everything falls apart, sometimes you can’t put it back together. The music publishing companies destroyed rock because they were looking for the next Nirvana without understanding what made them great, and they didn’t want guitar solos. If you don’t have guitars, it isn’t rock.”