Phoenixrise: A Reverse Harem Romance (The Rogue Witch Book 5)

by KT Strange

  Willa glanced at the door and let out a long breath.

  “I'm really, really glad you came with them,” she said as we walked into the kitchenette. “I know you were off-grid, but things are going insane with the band.”

  “It sounded like not everything was good based on what Eli said after your call,” I said tentatively as I went to grab a tray meant for meetings and Willa pulled out tea and mugs.

  “It's not bad, just Troy has a bee up his butt, and now wants to put all this money behind the guys, which is great for them. But he's already barking about appearances, and how pissed he is they're not on tour with Glory Revolution anymore,” she said. “Do you see the sugar?”

  “Got it.” I placed the cup of sugar on the tray.

  “Good, okay. Now I know you've been really hands on with them, but Troy is in a mood, so just stay super quiet and let me and Charlie do most of the talking,” she said as I grabbed the tray. She shot me a smile as she opened the door to the meeting, and we slipped inside.

  The bubble of conversation popped for a moment as we walked in. Troy was sitting at one end, next to a tall, elegant woman with blonde hair swept into a messy bun. When she turned to glance at me and Willa, I paused.

  There was something about her eyes, ice-blue, with wrinkles around them, and the bright red of her lipstick that almost looked like blood, that made me stop in my tracks.

  Or maybe it was the way she stared me down like I had personally offended her.

  “Is this the intern?” she asked, a sharp edge to her voice. Willa nudged me and I set the tray of drinks down near Troy.

  “Yes, Gem, this is Darcy Llewellyn. She's one of our interns, and has done a great job despite the fact we threw her into the deep end. Darcy, this is Gem Hollaway, she works as an outside consultant with artists when they reach a certain level and need to have a full career strategy mapped out,” Willa said, sliding a notepad and pen over to me. I murmured a quick thank you.

  “I heard you had a rocky start,” the woman, Gem, said, eyeing me up and down as I took a seat. I felt underdressed in my jeans, given her own polished work clothes screamed old money, but I sat down near Finn. Gem's eyes were calculating. She smiled at Troy. “She appears to be fitting in well to her position with the band despite that.”

  The guys tensed, almost imperceptibly. Willa's pressed her lips together. There was an implication in Gem's words that I didn't like. It was practically dripping off her tongue what she thought my position was.

  Troy cleared his throat.

  “We don't have an official policy on fraternization with our bands and the students who do internsh —”

  “Well you should,” she said, cutting him off. “I thought that you knew better by now. In this era of the Me Too movement, you're practically begging for trouble.” She frowned at Troy and he seemed to shrink into himself.

  Troy Granville was arguably one of the biggest assholes in the music industry that I knew of, and he looked cowed in front of this icy blonde woman in her mid-fifties. Part of me bristled at the thought that she was implying I'd turn on Finn and claim that he'd taken advantage of his position as an upcoming indie rockstar god to get into my pants, but what she said made sense. The situation was a red flag especially if you included Willa's talk with me when I first started my internship, where she implied there was a certain level of acceptance of getting down and dirty with the bands I was working with.

  Movement to my left caught my eye and I glanced at Ace as the corner of his mouth turned up. If he was thinking what I was thinking, this Gem woman would've had a litter of kittens if she knew what kind of involvement I had with the whole band, not just Finn.

  “Enough about that, although we will need to discuss image in the coming weeks,” Gem said, her eyes flicking to each of the guys before going back to Troy.

  Image? Ace mouthed at me before snapping his jaw shut as Gem glanced at him. The wide, blue-eyed innocence in his face seem to convince her that he hadn't said anything. She turned back to Troy and Willa.

  “It was damn disgraceful the way you ditched on the GR tour,” Troy's eyes skipped from one guy to the next, resting on me for a moment. I wanted to say something, but it wasn't my place. The way Willa was holding herself, shoulders tense, a pen clenched in her hand, made me feel even more wary of Gem and what was happening in this meeting. “You guys made me look like assholes, and no agent wanted to touch you until…” he trailed off and looked at Gem. She smiled, a heaviness around her eyes despite the smile she had pasted on her lips.“Becoming a viral sensation in less than a week will do wonderful things for an artist’s career, but it can also bring on new challenges,” Gem said, taking over for Troy smoothly. “We had some initial hiccups when were alerted that some of the views on the video were from click-farms and not real,” she paused and shot Troy a significant look. “But that won’t happen again, I am sure.”

  Troy’s cheeks went a mottled red color and I swallowed hard. Holy shit, she was practically calling him out as having manipulated a viral hit for Phoenixcry, or at least, padding the views.

  Willa coughed delicately.

  “We don’t employ any social media companies that use third party click-farms,” Willa said, drawing the attention away from Troy. “We think that it might have been an enthusiastic fan trying to help the band.”

  “Yeah, speaking of enthusiastic,” Charlie said, flipping the subject. “The guys and Darce nearly got mowed down in a department store.”

  “The local fanbase is energized and expanding,” Willa explained, “We’ve had a bunch of new kids sign up to the street team here in Seattle. I’m honestly not surprised —”

  “This was more than a few fans,” Finn said, settling back in his chair, one hand behind his head, “More like a few dozen fans, and not any I recognized from our local shows.”

  Gem’s eyebrows raised so high I expected them to disappear into her hairline.

  “Well,” she said, “That’s a pleasing development. I suggest an immediate local show to capture that growing fanbase. I’ve put in word with my associates at some of the larger booking agents that we’re interested in a buy-on.”

  Troy nodded briefly.

  “I’ll green-light that,” he said.

  “Hey,” Eli sat forward in his chair with a frown. “I don’t know about a buy-on, that’s a lot more debt to take on with our contract. Willa said we were close to recouping our tour and recording costs for the album.”

  “You are,” Troy’s eyes glittered like ice as he spoke, “And while I appreciate that you’re concerned, don’t forget, it’s not in your contract to veto any marketing or touring expenditures we decide to make on your behalf.”

  A chill fell over the room, my guys tensed and I sat there, frozen in place. Willa’s pen was the only noise, scratching over her paper as she wrote notes. From the hunch of her shoulders, she looked worried.

  “Right,” Eli said, a crease forming between his eyebrows. I got why he was concerned. A buy-on would add on a huge expense to the band’s touring costs, forcing them to pay for an opening slot with a larger band, anywhere from a few hundred bucks to a couple thousand per show. A two week tour could easily turn into a twenty-grand debt that their record would have to earn back in royalties before they had fully recouped and started actually making money.

  I saw Troy and Gem’s point, but it was a stressful one for the band to deal with.

  “Don’t we want to earn our touring opportunities, rather than buy them?” Cash asked, looking as skeptical as Eli looked frustrated.

  Gem laughed, a tinkling sound.

  “That’s so sweet,” she said before frowning, “but foolish. Right now you have a unique opportunity that most artists never get. I would have thought the five of you would have been thrilled with this news. I don’t work with just any band that someone trots through my doors, you know.”

  How do you explain to someone that just a few days before, the guys had been trapped, tortured, and convinced the
y were about to die at the hands of a mad fire witch? We’d been fighting a battle far more important than which band to tour with, and it was hard to switch that survival-mode off.

  But we had to. The guys needed to. If they were going to push forward with their careers, something that meant so much to them that it was pretty much their reason for existing, then we’d need to deal with these changes.

  “I think,” I said, trying not to swallow hard when every pair of eyes in the room trained on me. “That the guys are just overwhelmed with this happening. They do great with the fans, but what happened in Macy’s was something else entirely.”

  Cash made a noise of agreement and I smiled at him. Gem’s eyes were glued to my face.

  “That’s an astute observation for an intern,” she said and clapped her hands together after a moment. “Therapists!”

  “What?” Finn thumped forward in his chair; he’d pushed up on the back legs of it. Cash pulled back from the table, sitting up straight in his seat.

  “Success and life coaches! That’s what these boys need,” she said, looking thrilled with herself. Eli cocked an eyebrow.

  “I’m not following,” he said, voice flat.

  “Troy, please tell me you have at least two on call. You know what happened to that Olympian I had as a client when she refused her sports therapist —” Gem smiled when Troy nodded. Ace shot me a wild-eyed look. Charlie was the only one of the guys who looked mildly calm.

  “You mean we gotta talk to someone about our success?” Ace looked less than thrilled with this idea. He shot me another panicked look that screamed are you fucking kidding me?

  “It’s lonely at the top,” Gem said with a saccharine, patronizing smile. “You’ll need to talk to someone so you don’t sabotage yourself as your careers really begin taking off.”

  “Huh,” Eli said, his voice still flat as a board. “Alright.”

  “I’ll make a few calls,” Willa said, sounding like she was holding back a sneeze. When I glanced at her, her lips were twitching and she was desperately trying not to grin.

  “I’m sure we can find room in the budget for that,” Troy added with a swoop of his head. “So, anything else you’re thinking of in the meantime, Gem?”

  Gem cast a critical eye over the guys.

  “The look is good, I believe in the package,” she said with a wave of her hand, indicating the five guys and their appearance. Finn looked at Cash who shrugged one shoulder.

  “The ladies seem to like it,” Cash drawled, making Ace snicker softly.

  “Yes, I assume they rather do,” Gem said, her gaze landing on me and sticking. “I think perhaps the only other issue that I wish to address is the appearance of availability on Finn’s behalf.”

  I felt, more than saw, Finn stiffen, and even Willa paused, her pen leaving a blot on her pad of paper. Gem gave me an icy smile, all diamonds and daggers. “I realize that everyone is entitled to their little relationships, however it is important that everyone in the band seem attainable by their fans.”

  I froze in my seat. Finn let out an audible huff of air, bordering on irritated. Gem didn’t even spare him so much as a glance before she gave me another one of her bone-chilling smiles.

  “The public display of whatever it is that is occurring between the two of you ceases, immediately,” she said.

  “I —”

  “It stops,” she cut me off. “No adorable Instagram photos. No snuggling at the shows, backstage or otherwise. No coy little Tweets or vague posts, yes, Mr. Gunner, I am talking to you.”

  “Which one of us?” Eli muttered. Gem glanced at him and smiled, this time warm amusement in her eyes.

  “Well it’s rather obvious which twin is involved in a little tour romance with the intern,” she said before grinding her attention back onto me. Willa was stock-still beside me, I could barely hear her breath. I was hardly breathing either.

  “Normally we don’t tell our artists who they can have relationships with —” Troy started, but Gem raised her hand. A glisten on her right hand ring-finger drew my eyes to a diamond-studded emerald set high on a platinum setting.

  “I work with only the best,” she said, “And my artists listen to me. Perhaps if you were a little more heavy-handed you wouldn’t have issues like Mr. Tupper crowding up your roster with his wretched reputation and foul attitude.” At least there was one thing I could like about Gem Hollaway. We both had an intense dislike of Jake Tupper. “Well, I think that about sorts things for now. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow, Troy.” Gem stood, picking up a handbag that I knew had to cost about thirty thousand dollars. “It was excellent meeting you boys. Willa, always a pleasure,” she said, before showing herself out.

  Silence reigned over us, the clicking of Gem’s shoes faded out onto the production floor.

  Thank every small god for Willa, because she immediately got to her feet.

  “Troy, you’ve got a call in five minutes,” she said. “I’ll go over things with the guys, and you go take your call, okay?”

  Troy glanced at the band, giving them a brief smile.

  “Good meeting, guys,” he said before rapping his knuckles on the table. “We’ll have you topping charts in no time.”

  He left the room, taking any small amount of positivity with him. Maybe Gem and Troy could make the guys top the charts, but at what cost?

  Sixteen

  Darcy

  The guys were like a powder keg waiting to explode, after that meeting with Gem and Troy. Willa’s presence kept them calm right after Troy left, and before they could open their mouths she eyed them each and laid down the law.

  “I don’t want to hear one word,” she said, face stony. “I know that was rough, but it could’ve been worse.” She eyed Finn. “You know what you need to do, right?”

  Finn growled, and I bit my lip to keep from telling him to be quiet. He didn’t need me undermining him just then.

  “It’s not right —”

  “It’s business.” She stared him down, firm determination in her eyes. “You’re lucky that you didn’t get shelved after what happened with Glory Rev. Seriously, Finn, don’t fuck this is up.” She squeezed my shoulder, and shook her head. “It’s not worth it.”

  Finn’s eyes flared, murder in them, and my heart hurt to watch him so upset. Eli spoke up before his twin could say something stupid.

  “We got the memo. No more cutesy photo ops. It’ll be taken care of, trust me.” Eli’s gaze washed over Finn like cold water and I glanced away. They were going to fight later, I just knew it.

  “Well that was fun,” Charlie said as we broke out into the fresh air. The night had fallen during the meeting, sun setting and leaving us under street lights. Finn’s hands were shoved in his pockets, and he responded with a grunt. I wanted to go to him, but figured it was a bad idea when we were standing right outside the label.

  “We need to get new instruments,” Ace said, standing close to me. His fingers twitched and when I caught his eye, he smiled ruefully. “Gotta admit not touching you is harder than I thought it would be, especially now knowing that we can’t.”

  Finn snorted, rolling his eyes.

  “Shut up, Ace.”

  “Hey,” Charlie snapped at Finn. “Don’t talk to him like that. Just cause you got your hand caught in the cookie jar —”

  “Whoaaaa,” I said, “one, I’m not a cookie jar,” I said, my cheeks going pink when Cash winked at me, “and two, we need to not have this conversation here. Okay? Deep breaths.”

  “Right, zen bullshit, whatever,” Finn said, his expression hard. His words cut and it felt like he had physically shoved me.

  “Not that I enjoy being the voice of reason here,” Cash said, “but we should probably hit up Music Central before they shut for the night.”

  Finn’s upper lip curled.

  “Yeah, can’t let our sugar daddy down by not spending his money.” Finn’s words were clipped. “You guys do whatever the fuck you want. I’m going for a walk.
”

  “Um, no you’re not,” I replied, panic rising in my chest. “It’s not exactly safe for you out on your own.” Finn turned on me then, for what felt like the first time, his eyes furious.

  “What you think I can’t manage on my own?” he demanded. “You think I need you breathing down my neck, keeping me safe, Darcy? Oh sweetheart —” He let out an empty laugh. “You have no fucking clue what I’ve seen and lived through.”

  I inhaled sharply, shock rooting me to spot. The rest of the guys were dead silent, a pall of discomfort falling over us. Finn shook his head once and spun on his heel, stalking off down the street.

  My fingers were shaking as he disappeared around the corner. He’d never talked to me like that. Not ever. He was my safe place, and now my heart had been ripped right down the center. He may as well have slapped me across the face.

  Ace was the first to move, his expression thunderous.

  “Asshole,” he muttered, curling an arm around my shoulders. Numb, I let him.

  “I’ll go talk to him,” Cash said. Eli made a noise but Cash shook his head. “Oh hell no. You’re going to make it worse. You two are like a hurricane and a volcano sometimes. Nah, you stay here.” He pointed at Eli, who glared back at him. “Stay,” he ordered, before jogging off in the direction that Finn had gone. As his footsteps faded into the dark, we were quiet. Ace was warm against me and I leaned into him hard, feeling like I was going to fall over.

  “Well it’s not like we need those two to get instruments. I know what Cash wants for his drums, and if he’s not happy he can just exchange them,” Charlie said, breaking the awkward silence. Eli just made another grunting sound. Charlie pulled out his phone and glanced at me and Ace. “I’ll call us a car.”