“Is she still alive?” My words came slow.
“As far as I know.” Cash stepped toward me, kissing my forehead. “I can’t wait to see you on stage wearing this.”
I was scheduled to go on in forty minutes. I really wanted to go downstairs to the apartment and look for any clues as to what happened to Lennon. I held out hope I’d see her sitting on the couch in one of her flowery vintage dresses, drinking a martini or the last of my tea. Producers kept coming into my room, under the guise of checking on my progress, but I knew they’d been sent here by Cash to hold me prisoner. Between the shiny new headdress bribe and the guards, Cash was making sure I couldn’t back out of the show tonight.
Callie and Rachel were on their way. I had to trust that they’d make things right for Lennon. If that was still a possibility.
The warm-up guy was already out in the crowd. We had closed circuit TVs in the hallway so we always knew what was going on with the show. Unless Cash put a spell over us. Either way, we saw what he wanted us to.
I looked like hell, but that was the beauty of stage makeup. No one dared come close enough to see what a mess I was. I had no idea how I was going to get through this show with so many questions unanswered.
Fastening the headdress under my chin, I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t recognize the girl who looked back at me. I’d become Cash’s puppet.
“Holly! Holly! Holly!” The crowd chanted my name.
A frantic knock at the door startled me. One of the producers opened it and stuck her head in. “Holly, it’s time.”
I should have said no. But the roar of the crowd once the spotlight trained on me made my heart thrum double time. My legs felt like rubber as I approached the stage. The opening notes of I Put a Spell on You did nothing to calm my nerves.
Missing a step, I stopped and shimmied, dipping low with my legs wide. The crowd loved that type of move, it made them forget all about rhythm. I stripped my tailcoat, sliding it across the stage. Thankfully tonight I had a shorter set, and I was already down to the pasties and thong. Making it look sexy took too much effort tonight. The mind was the most active sex organ, and mine was too preoccupied with vampires and deception.
As the music changed to Manson, I picked up the burning baton, running along the length of my arms, up and down my torso, the heat whispering against my body. I let the flames illuminate my skin as the crowd went wild, like they did every night. My body warmed, and it was the closest thing to love as a room full of strangers could provide for me. This is why I performed. It made all the bad things go away, even if it was for five minutes. I dipped the fiery baton past my lips, swallowing the flame.
A white-hot flash of pain surged down my throat, igniting my belly. I fell to the stage, the pain unbearable. Usually, when the flames spread through my body, it tapped like pins and needles against the inside of my skin. But this felt wrong. The usual flames didn’t come.
Something was terribly wrong. I was actually on fire.
I opened my mouth to scream. My lips melted away from the muscle, skin dripping to the floor, revealing my skull. The crowd gasped, and screamed, then went silent. Everything was silent. The center of this fire wasn’t blue. It was black.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I woke up in my own bed. Not the one in Cash’s apartment, but the one I shared with Rainey since long before we moved to Las Vegas. I knew it before I even opened my eyes. The soft scent of my perfume mingling with Rainey’s, and the way the mattress moved under my body. All I’d wanted was to go home.
I had to be dead.
Moving was excruciating. My skin was like the desert floor, cracked and burned. I couldn’t focus, the pain took over everything. A slow burn lingered under the surface of my skin, strangling my muscles. Forcing my mouth open, my tongue felt like a shriveled, dead leaf. I screamed. I could barely hear it.
“Shh.” Rainey’s voice was so soothing, her perfume surrounding me. At least I’d gone to Heaven, but that meant she was here too. It didn’t make any sense. “You don’t have to try to talk, Holly. I know it hurts. I’m going to take care of you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Peeling my eyes open, that’s what it actually felt like, I saw her, so beautiful with her blonde curls surrounding her face like a halo, sitting at the edge of the bed. Her brown eyes reflecting her broken heart as she looked at me. She dipped a white cloth into a jar. “This is a calendula oil. It’s going to help heal the burns. It might sting a little, but it will make you feel better. I promise.”
The same thing Lana had used on Cash, over two hundred years ago.
I moaned in pain and appreciation. Words couldn’t come.
“You’re already looking better.” Rainey talked as she worked, her words had a lyrical rhythm. I always loved that. Listening to her give a reading was like hearing my favorite song come on the radio, and I’d taken it for granted. “We would’ve brought you to the hospital, but it would’ve caused more problems than it solved. Lucille called in a doctor who specializes in people like us. He left me with instructions. In a couple of days, you’ll be perfectly normal.”
Lucille called a doctor for me? I was dead, or at the very least I was hallucinating. This couldn’t be real. Rainey brought a straw to my lips. Before she did that, I hadn’t realized I was half propped up with pillows. “It’s iced lettuce tea with honey. It will help your insides heal,” she explained. Of course she made my favorite drink. Even the smooth, gentle tea stung my raw throat, but something inside me felt like it was coming back to life, like a tiny blade of grass poking through the soil.
I lifted my hand, I wanted to touch her so badly. I screamed, which still was more like a strangled gargle when I saw the blackened skin on my fingers, and the outline of ash my arm had left on our pink sheets. My eyes were too dried out for tears.
“Holly, it’s okay.” Her eyes glassed over, but she didn’t cry. She didn’t touch me, either. I wished I could tell her how much I loved her. I didn’t care how much it hurt. Touching her would have been worth any amount of pain. “You’re still beautiful as ever.”
RAINEY DIDN’T MAKE empty promises. After all, she could See the future. Every day I got better. My skin had gone from black to gray to pink. It still felt too small for my body, but it was coming back. The oil that Rainey used didn’t sting anymore; now it felt soothing. I could blink without pain. My tongue plumped back up, fueled by the tea and honey, but my voice was still little more than a dry whisper.
“How did you know?” was the first question I asked her.
“I was home. I’ve been working the day shift at The Tranquility Tea Room, and I heard screaming. Even though I was alone, I knew it was you, and that it was show time. Once I realized it wasn’t a vision, I ran to my car and drove to Circus Circus like a maniac.” She shuddered at the memory. “Everyone was freaking out. You were charred black, pieces of you flaking from your body. The poor girl who’s been throwing the blanket over you thought she was to blame, and was practically catatonic when I got there. The crowd was flipping out.”
No one had ever believed I actually ignited. They thought it was all special effects.
“I hope it’s okay, but I’ve been donating all the flowers your fans sent to local nursing homes. There was so many, and you were unconscious. I wanted people to enjoy them.”
“That’s perfect,” I said. Leave it to Rainey to think of everyone else’s happiness. “Cash must have flipped his shit.” I wondered if he’d been here to see me. If so, I was sorry I missed that scene, when he came face to face with Lucille.
All the color drained from Rainey’s face.
“Not exactly.” She bowed her head, tracing her finger along a wrinkle in the sheet before looking back up me cautiously. “Cash is dead.”
“What?” She had to be wrong. A crack formed in the still dry plain of my heart, splitting it into a million pieces. Just like that, everything went numb. But no fire.
“He’s dead.” Rainey swallowed hard. “Aro
und the same time you were on stage, the female vampire clan leader that’s in control of Immortal Dilemma confronted him in his dressing room. Somehow, she made him burn. There was a puddle of black goo that ran out of his dressing room into the hallway when I got there. That was all that was left of him.”
I blinked rapidly, unable to form words. It wasn’t the first time Callie had challenged Cash, but what was with the fire power? Since when? Just hours before, she recruited me because she couldn’t do that job. That woman had no idea what she could do. She’d flatten the city without even trying.
But Cash. Gone. Out of my life just as he’d come into it. Again, I felt hollow.
“Oh my God.” I finally managed. Tears struggled to run down my cheeks.
“Holly, you’re actually upset about this?” Rainey had no idea what Cash meant to me. She cut herself from my life before I had the opportunity to tell her. “I think it’s the best thing that could’ve happened to you. Now you have a chance of getting your life back.”
“He was my father!” I gave the words all the power I could manage as Rainey’s jaw dropped in shock. I had to continue before she realized that meant I was part vampire. She was the only thing keeping me alive. She couldn’t shun me. “I went back to Bethlem, and he was there with my mother.”
Her eyes brightened, but the shock didn’t fade. “You found her?”
“Yeah.” The rest of me crumbled. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
One massive loss at a time was more than enough.
“It didn’t go well, I take it?” Rainey took my hand in hers as I frowned. “I’m so sorry.”
“You were right. I shouldn’t have gone,” I said. Rainey started to protest, but I cut her off. “I was so obsessed with finding the family that didn’t want me that I drove away the one that did.”
“No.” Rainey didn’t know how much it meant to me that she was here to have this conversation. “You had to find out, even if it was bad. You needed to find that piece of you.”
“Why are you so good to me?” I didn’t deserve it. She was right, she always was. I was selfish all along. I wanted things that made me larger than life, and they left me empty.
Rainey didn’t answer me. She pressed her lips together, trying to suppress a smile, and dipped a clean cloth into the calendula oil jar. She ran the cloth across my forehead, then down the side of my cheek, resting just below my jaw. Staying like that, so close to me, I could hardly take it. I was starting to feel things again, and they were good. I had to get it right this time.
“Kiss me,” I whispered.
She jerked her hand away, dipping it back into the oil. “My heart doesn’t mend as easily as yours.”
I gasped. Maybe feeling things wasn’t so good all the time. “But you’re here.”
“I didn’t say never.” Our gazes locked. “Just not yet.”
Too many emotions were still too raw, and I probably wasn’t being fair to anyone, wanting anything right now. I needed to get back to a place that I could take care of myself. As Rainey continued to work, I wondered if I’d ever been there in the first place.
I couldn’t believe Cash had been destroyed. “Have you talked to anyone from the show since that night?” I asked. “Things have to be in uproar.”
“A little bit. There haven’t been any more shows since then. Stephen’s beside himself, I hear, having to refund all that money for missed performances.”
“We had a great show without Cash. We can do it again.”
“Holly.” Rainey took a deep breath. “You have to prepare for the possibility that you won’t be able to perform again.”
“It was a fluke.” The whole awful night came rushing back to me. “I don’t even know where to start. I guess I do have to talk about my mom. When she saw me, at that mental hospital, she told Cash she chose me over him. I swear to you, she recognized me, she knew I was her daughter even though we were probably about the same age. And she told me to back to Hell.”
“I’m so sorry.” Rainey grasped my hand. I laced my fingers through hers and brought them up to my mouth. She didn’t resist. Her skin felt like velvet against my lips. “It makes sense that I couldn’t See anything with her, if she was connected to Cash. I wondered if she even existed.”
“That’s a good question. Has anyone said anything to you about a girl named Lennon?”
Rainey squinted at what seemed like a sudden change of subject. “Not that I remember. Why?”
“She started hanging around Cash a lot once I moved in with him. They were dating, or whatever. But Rainey, she looked exactly like my mother. She was all done up, so probably more like me, but now I think Cash confused her with my mother. He totally cast a spell over her.”
“Do you want me to try to get in touch with her?” Rainey asked. “I don’t know how I’d do it, but there must be a way.”
“Yeah. Ask around, at least. I know she’s best friends with Callie, the clan leader. Anyway, I don’t know what you heard about Cash’s performance, but he was doing live sacrifices on stage.”
Rainey clapped her hand over her mouth. “You’re shitting me.”
“I wish. But of course, because he’s Cash Logan, or was, everyone ate it up. He and Blade were recruiting these poor women—”
“Blade was in on it?” Rainey’s mouth dropped. “Shit. He seemed like such a nice guy. You didn’t get involved with him, did you?”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “We needed to learn how to control the flames. And when I did it, he got upset with me.”
“Stay away from him. All the vampires. They’re monsters.” She already forgot I was half vampire. I could make her no promises. That was the worst part. “Where were they finding them?”
“I think the girls who advertise on the moving billboards and the business cards they give out on the Strip. I don’t know, no one would answer my questions. Anyway, Cash decided it was Lennon’s turn, because she needed to pay for what she did to him at Bethlem.”
“Shit. So he was crazy.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. Admitting it felt traitorous. “It’s easy to fall victim to your own hallucinations in that world. Whether you’re a magician, a monster, or both. He swore to me he wouldn’t bring Lennon on stage, but he made me help him capture her. I’m worried about her. She shouldn’t get hurt just because she fell in love with my father.”
I don’t know why I felt so strongly about Lennon. I hadn’t been nice to her at all while she was seeing Cash. But there was something about her that I couldn’t let go. It wasn’t that she looked like Lana, it was the images that swirled around me every time we were in the same room. And as much as I shunned her, there was something motherly about her. Maybe Cash hadn’t been so crazy after all.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“That fucking vampire bitch stole my fire!” I threw my empty mug across the bedroom and it shattered against the wall. Now that I was feeling good enough to get out of bed and move, I wanted nothing more than to get back to work. Cash had said to me many times the show must go on.
For him, for me, it had to.
“Holly, calm down.” Rainey tried to defuse my frustration all night long as I attempted to summon flames. Ever since that night Rachel absorbed them into her body, I hadn’t been able even produce a spark. My rage about it alone should have caused an inferno. But instead, there was nothing.
After a couple of awful run-ins with Lucille, it was clear we couldn’t be in the same room together without wanting to kill each other. I was still too weak to destroy anyone, and it was crueler to let her live. And suffer. Lucille probably thought the same thing about me. So Rainey brought me back to her apartment. It made things complicated on a whole different level. All this time so close to Rainey, yet she was still miles away from me. “You’re still healing. These things take time,” she said.
I hadn’t been back to Circus Circus. The thought of it scared the hell out of me. So many bad things happened in that theater. The ghosts, the pow
er, all just lingering there with nothing to do. The show was on hiatus, since the two marquee performers were out of commission, and all the rumors Rainey heard made it sound like it could be permanent.
“Cash created her.” That made Rachel my stepsister. Sort of. There was no precedent for this kind of thing. No matter how it worked out, we were becoming an incestuous little bunch. “She took Blade’s fire away, too. I wonder if he has his fire back.”
Every time I tried to call him, I got his voicemail. Even if it wasn’t full, I would have never left him one. Clearly he didn’t listen to them. No one did. Rainey had made several attempts to get in touch with Callie, but the Mistress wasn’t taking her phone calls. We had no idea if Lennon was still alive. I didn’t even know her last name, and any online searches for Lennon Las Vegas just brought up The Beatles Cirque du Soleil show.
“Stay away from him.” Rainey crouched down to pick up the broken ceramic pieces from the rug. “He could still be sacrificing women, wherever he is now. You saw how fast Cash turned on Lennon. You’re lucky that wasn’t you.”
She was one hundred percent right. My mother had chosen me over him, yet it was Lennon that he wanted to make pay. I guess he thought I did a good enough job of making myself miserable.
“Maybe Cash had spelled him, too.” I was never going to get Rainey to take Blade’s side, I understood that. I had to talk to Blade eventually, now that neither of us were under my father’s influence. To see if there was anything left between us. We figured out how to control the flames, now we needed to learn to reignite them. “He’s not a bad guy. He’s just really angry.”
“Vampires have been nothing but trouble for you.” Rainey crawled back into bed next to me, our bodies instinctively curving against each other. She tucked my hair behind my ear. It was getting long enough that I could put it in a ponytail again. “Take this chance for a clean break.”
“They’re a part of me now. I’m half vampire.” I still hadn’t told her how much a part of me Blade had become, because it was the last thing she needed to hear after she spent two weeks nursing me back from a blackened pile of ashes. “And the fire is what makes me special.”
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