Dare You

by Jennifer Brown

  “Apparently,” I repeated.

  “Honey,” she said, leaning toward me again. “Your mother was a truly good soul. What happened to her was a tragedy. She was gone too soon.”

  Pink 2, primary blue B. GONE 2 SOON. B.

  Something clicked. “And you’re sure you don’t know someone named Brandi?” I asked. “Brandi Courteur?”

  “Courteur,” she repeated softly. “Courteur.” She thought for a few moments and then brightened. “Yes. Come to think of it, the name does sound kind of familiar. I think maybe she worked with your mom before I got there. Carrie was quite fond of her. But she had moved on by the time I came around. But I want to say her name was something more common.”

  “Moved on. Do you know where?”

  She shrugged. “Could be anywhere, really. Prison, for all I know. Or maybe she went to work for them at their other place.”

  “Who? The Hollises? They have more than one business?”

  Ruby looked incensed. She sighed. “Well, not anymore. Dreams is gone. All that’s left is the other place.”

  “What other place?”

  She shook her head. “That, I truly don’t know. All I know is the . . . boss . . . had two places. The service and something else. Nobody knew what the other one was. Rumor was it was so hush-hush because it was into big-time illegal stuff.” She poked her fingers into her ears. “And when it comes to that kind of stuff, I don’t want to hear it. I can spend a weekend in the clink, but no way can I do years.”

  So Brandi worked for Hollis, too. That was how she and Mom got connected. But how connected were they? Connected enough for Brandi to know about Mom’s baby? Connected enough to know how on earth Bill Hollis ended up with that baby? And where in the world did Dru fit into all of this?

  My brain ached from all the information. It was so blasted my colors even felt broken. I didn’t understand any of this.

  But I felt like I was getting closer.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “Thanks for the information.”

  Ruby followed me to the door, her face etched with worry. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  “I think you’ve been more help than I ever expected,” I said. Understatement of the century.

  I opened the door, and Ruby took it from me, leaning out as I lunged into the hallway and down the stairs. The air in this place felt too close, too stagnant. As if it were a member of the Hollis family itself, trying to strangle me from the inside out.

  “Nikki, if I were you, I would stop asking questions,” Ruby called. But I was too far down the stairs to respond.

  The farther down I went, the faster I got. All I could think about was getting to my car and getting out of here. Going home. Where I could process all the lies and half-truths and questions. But just as I bounded onto the landing, the door I’d originally knocked on opened up. The eye appeared again.

  “Hey,” a voice said from the other side of the door. I stopped, despite myself. “Hey,” she said again.

  Reluctantly, out of breath, I went to the door. She opened it a little wider—just enough for me to see a pair of full pink lips. “What?”

  “I have something for you.”

  23

  I SAW RAINBOW,” the girl said, stepping aside just barely enough for me to squeeze through the doorway. Unlike Ruby’s, this girl’s apartment was spotless, though filled with so many charms and runes and bowls of herbs and celestial everything it carried the illusion of being cluttered. “Luna. I saw her about a week ago. She was getting into a car with another girl outside a club downtown.”

  “Are you a witch?” I asked, taking in the decor, more than a little uneasy.

  She shook her head. “I just like to collect things. I’m Blue, by the way.” She pointed apologetically to her blue hair, which was the color of sapphires or cupcake icing, or, in my world, strength. “Actually, I’m Celia, but you know how it works. No real names. Prism.” She said the last with a twist of her mouth that hinted at holding back a laugh.

  I felt myself flush, as I always did when I thought about that terrible time I’d posed as an escort for Hollywood Dreams and ended up with my knife at Stefan-the-disgusto’s throat. I’d been Prism for that one night. A color name. Of course.

  Ruby. Blue. Peyton, leading me along her rainbow.

  I trailed my finger along a table filled with little cones of incense, wanting to change the subject. “Does everyone here work for Hollywood Dreams?”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “But yeah. They own this place. They let some of us live here for free. Some of their favorites. Well, his favorites, anyway.” She moved over to a window seat that looked out onto the squat front yard, and sat. Two bicycles were abandoned there.

  I picked up a dragon tear and rolled it between my fingers. “So what will you do now that they’re gone?”

  She placed a hand flat on the window, pressing her palm into it, as if she wanted someone on the other side to reach through and grab her. “They’re never gone,” she said softly.

  “Well, right now they are. Dubai. No extradition. They’re not stupid.”

  She leveled her gaze at me. “And if you believe they’re still in Dubai, you’re the stupid one.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s not like a Hollis to stay hidden. They don’t do anonymity very well.” She spread her fingers out by her face, jazz hands. “Never let the limelight die. I would guess they showed up right around the time that Luna got sprung. Which would also be right around the time that you got arrested, am I right? Pretty convenient, huh? Almost like someone was pulling some puppet strings behind the scenes.” She mimed doing just that. “Anyway. Like I said, I have something for you.” She turned so that her legs hung off the window seat, and then she bent to open a drawer beneath it. From inside she pulled out a box. She held it out for me.

  “What is it?” I said, still staying rooted by the table of tears and scents. Something about Blue made me afraid to trust her. Or maybe what made me so uneasy was that she was the first one to sound like she was telling the truth.

  She shook the box. “It’s for you. I’ve been holding on to it.” I still made no move for it, so she shook it again. “It’s from Peyton.”

  Crimson. So deep and red I felt like I was wading through it. The color I always thought of now when I thought of my sister. Even sister had turned into a crimson word from me, while before it had been butter yellow. That was how much Peyton had infiltrated my life.

  My legs shook as I crossed the room. I didn’t even hear the dragon tear leave my fingers and rattle to the wood floor. I felt beamed in by Blue’s eyes, which I had just noticed were so light green they almost looked otherworldly. They were mesmerizing. I fell onto the seat next to her.

  “Take it,” she said, shaking the box at me one more time. “It’s not a bomb.”

  I was afraid to touch the box. Afraid that the moment my fingers landed on it, a bomb actually would burst—a crimson bomb.

  “Now you’re supposed to open it,” Blue said, and giggled. She hooked her feet together and swung her legs, and not for the first time I was reminded what a couple of pigs Bill and Vanessa Hollis were for using girls like this to make money.

  “Peyton gave this to you,” I repeated. “For me.”

  She nodded. “For the one and only Nikki Kill.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “Nobody else.”

  “And why are you just giving it to me now? Why didn’t you bring it to me when she was in the hospital? Or when she died? Or . . . I don’t know . . . like a thousand times between then and now.”

  “She said if she did everything right, you would come for it. And that I should just wait. So I just waited. And here you are. So wait no more. It’s yours. Open it.” She nudged me a second time.

  I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone very dry, and pulled the lid off the box. Inside was a wad of cotton. Under that was a key on a nondescript ring. I picke
d it up and let it dangle from my fingers.

  Blue tapped it with her fingertip, and it swung gently back and forth. “She said if she was right about you, and if you understood everything she left behind for you, you would know what to do with it.”

  “What’s it to?” I asked. I turned it, studying it for any hint or clue, but there was none.

  Blue shrugged. “That, she didn’t tell me. She didn’t want me to get mixed up in anything just in case her parents should get wind that you were snooping around. Which they obviously did.”

  I shook my head, dropped the key back in the box, held it out for Blue to take.

  She leaned away. “No can do, chickie. I had orders to give it to you. I’m giving it to you. It’s yours now.”

  “But I don’t have the first clue what to do with it,” I said. “Peyton was wrong. She . . . overestimated me.”

  Blue tipped her head to one side. Her choppy bangs fell over one eye, and in that moment I could see why someone would want to be with her. She was mysterious and beautiful . . . and vulnerable. All things I was not. “According to Rainbow, you have all the clues. You just have to put them together.”

  “Why did Peyton give this to you? Why did she trust you?”

  “We were friends.” She shrugged, staring down at her feet. “I think she felt bad, like her parents were using me or something. But they kind of saved me from the streets. I’d rather be Blue, high-end escort, than the alternative, you know?”

  “Well, neither one is exactly ideal,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, neither was my home life. This was a step up.” She gave me a whatcha gonna do smile. “Anyway, she came over to check on me sometimes, hang out, and I read her fortune, did tea leaves, pulled cards, whatever. Between you and me, I don’t know how to tell fortunes at all. I was making it up as I went along. But she was Peyton Hollis, you know? I mean, who gets lucky enough to have her for a friend, right?”

  Only half the free world, I thought. Or at least half the free world hung on to her like she was their friend. Which, now that I thought about it, was not friendship at all. It was kind of the opposite of friendship. Not for the first time, I felt a pang of sorrow for Peyton.

  “So she gave you a key.”

  “She figured I was the last person anyone would go to if she was in trouble. Anyone except you, that is. She knew you’d come. And she was right.”

  I ran my finger over the key’s surface. “Yeah, I guess.”

  She brightened, jumped off the window seat, looking so much more like a sixteen-year-old kid than a worldly Hollywood Dreams escort. “You want me to tell your fortune?” she asked. “I mean, I’m getting better.”

  “Better at making it up?” I asked. We both snickered.

  “Totally,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

  “Maybe some other time. I’ll come back.” I closed the box, glad to see the key gone, and held it in my lap. “I’ve got to go. You said you saw Luna. Recently.”

  “Yeah, she was getting into a car with some dark-haired chick. I would have followed them, but I was kind of, you know, with a guy. Working. Pretty sure the dark-haired chick plays in a band or something, because she was hanging out with some real rockers. Or maybe she’s just a groupie. All I know is she was making out with a guy with a green Mohawk in the parking lot before she got in the car and picked up Luna. I think he was a guitar player for some punk band.”

  Viral Fanfare. She’d seen Gib Talley from Viral Fanfare. He was making out with a dark-haired girl who knew Luna.

  Shelby Gray.

  Shelby knew exactly where Luna was. And she was hanging out with her.

  I fucking knew it.

  24

  I FIGURED YOU were too quiet this morning not to be into something,” Detective Martinez said the next morning, standing in my driveway, leaning against my car. This time he had only one coffee in hand. He must have gotten tired of buying me coffees to throw away.

  I glanced around, my face burning. “What are you doing here?”

  “I haven’t heard from you since you left my place, so I thought I’d stop by on my way home from breakfast”—he held up his cup, cheers-style—“and talk you out of whatever it is you’re planning to do today.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to do something?” But even I wasn’t buying it. The inside of my sunglasses turned liar gray.

  “Because you’re you.”

  “Maybe I’m going to meet a friend,” I said. “To go shopping.”

  He stifled a grin. “Right. You, with a friend.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Cut the crap, Nikki. You aren’t going shopping with a friend.”

  I pushed past him, letting my shoulder catch his full-on. He jumped back to avoid a splash of coffee that popped through the lid. He was too slow. I smiled to myself and unlocked my car, but when I went to pull open the door, it wouldn’t open. I looked up; he was holding his hand against it, above my head.

  “Move.”

  “I’ll move when you talk.”

  I sighed, exasperated. “I’m going to get a doughnut.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I don’t have to tell you where I’m going. I don’t let people in, remember?”

  He pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully. “True. But I’ll just follow you.”

  I grunted and knocked my head against the car door a few times. “You suck, do you know that?”

  “I’ve been told.”

  The truth was—and I hated to admit it, even to myself—he was right. I did have plans. Plans that had come to me out of the blue in the shower that morning. Plans that made so much total sense, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of them before. Plans that seemed urgent.

  Plans that he would definitely not approve of.

  “You’re burning daylight.” He leaned forward and whispered, “All the good bargains will be gone.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If you must know, I’m going to Gold Goose Studios.”

  His brow creased while it sank in, and then his eyes bugged so hard I could see them through his sunglasses. “The production studio?” I nodded. “As in Bill Hollis’s studio?” I nodded again. “Are you crazy? I think you might be. You are officially clinically insane.”

  “This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” I said, taking advantage of his surprised state to pull the car door open. The paint had a yellow handprint on it.

  “I’m not going to let you.”

  I barked out a laugh. “You sure as shit can’t stop me.”

  “You’re just going to walk in? And what?”

  “It’s Saturday. Nobody will be there.” I hoped that was true, anyway. If I ran into any die-hard super-employees who just couldn’t stay away on a Saturday, I was going to have to do some fast talking. “I just . . . want to look around a little, is all.” I felt the key that Blue had given me poke my leg through my jeans pocket. I had no idea what it might open, but Bill Hollis’s office was just as good as any other place to start looking. “You can get in your car, drive away, and pretend you don’t know.” I turned the key and my car roared into life. “You’re blocking me.” He didn’t move. I put the car into reverse. “Fine, I’ll push you out of my driveway.”

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. He tossed his coffee into the yard on the way to his car.

  IT WAS NO surprise that Gold Goose Studios was lavish. Every bit as lavish as Hollis Mansion. Bill Hollis liked his luxuries, there was no doubt about it. And he could afford them.

  Unsurprisingly, the building was surrounded by a locked gate with a key card scanner.

  If I had learned anything, it was that people didn’t suspect you of things if you just acted like you were supposed to be there. I pulled right up to the scanner and pushed the help button. After a second, the speaker clicked on.

  “Help you?” said a bored voice on the other end.

  “I lost my key card,” I shouted into the speaker. �
�Can you buzz me in?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t let anyone in without a card, ma’am,” the voice said.

  “I’m cleaning crew. You can’t make an exception?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mr. Hollis will fire me if I miss another Saturday.” There was silence, so I added, sounding as tearful as possible, “Please? I won’t tell anyone. I’m just here to dust stuff, I swear. I’ll be in and out. Please don’t make me lose my job. I have kids.”

  There was more silence, and I had my finger out to poke the button again, when the gate slid open.

  “Thank you,” I said to myself as I pulled through. I could see Martinez’s car idling at the curb, too upstanding-citizen-yellow to follow me in. The gate closed slowly behind me, officially leaving me on my own. Just the way I wanted it.

  Getting into Gold Goose Studios from the parking lot was nothing. I pressed the help button at the door and got the same bored voice. This time I didn’t have to explain anything before the door clicked open.

  I was in.

  The administrative office was on the tenth floor, and I took the elevator up. My every move was probably being recorded by some sort of state-of-the-art security-camera system, and the thought of a Hollis watching me roam through their offices sent a chill down my spine. I shook off the fear and pressed on.

  All the lights were out, the place lit only by the glow of computer monitors. It was a cubicle farm, but it was a posh one. Every desk was home to a big-screen monitor and a cushy leather chair. I wondered who had been running the place while Bill Hollis was in Dubai. I wondered if the police had been here after Dru’s death. Probably not. Why would they? What would they be looking for?

  Hell, what was I looking for?

  “I don’t know, but I’ll know it when I see it,” I whispered, moving quickly through the cubicles to a bank of offices on the far wall, trying the key in every single door. It didn’t work. All of the offices were gorgeous, but one was more than gorgeous. One was something you’d see in a magazine. It had to be Bill Hollis’s office.