Lost Angeles (34 page)

I screw up then, flashing the fangs when I grin, and the girl closest to my elbow lets out a shriek like someone grabbed her ass. “Oh, my god, it’s
Xaine
!”

Jax’s voice chimes in, loud and clear and full of revenge for the Beiber comment. “Oh, my god, it
is
Xaine! Look everyone, it’s Xaine!”

I’d punch him in the dick, but judging by what just happened to my wrist, I’d break every one of my fingers, and that’s not what I want on the front page of the
Enquirer
tomorrow morning. The mini-muffin hovers next to Jax’s elbow like a bouncy little terrier, the kind that rich girls carry in their purses. Trace likes them travel-size, I guess, but she still smells like the raspberry body wash version of Benicio, and I’m not letting her out of my sight.

Putting my hands on either side of Lore’s waist, I lift her off the floor a good six inches and head for the stage. “Coming through!”

God, now I
sound
like Trace.

The raised area is barely more than a platform, two stairs, and some fire-hazard Lekos washing the area in swimmy amber light. I deposit Lore next to a bar stool and smack her once on the ass, just to get the crowd going. They’re already cheering and clapping by the time I point a finger at the douchebag sitting there with his acoustic guitar, mouth hanging open. “Hand it to the lady.”

Not waiting to make sure he does it—because he’s going to do it, and we both know it—I turn back to the audience. The door guy is having a hell of a time keeping people back, but Benicio has to be headed in here if he’s within ten miles of the place. Everyone’s chanting “Xaine! Xaine! Xaine!” with Lore’s name tossed in there often enough to make an interesting remix. I put a finger up to my lips and the entire place goes quiet, save for one last piercing shriek of “I love you, Xaine!” and my answering shout of, “I fucking know, now shut up!”

Everyone laughs, then there’s a hush, and I hand that silence off to Lore. She sits there in my T-shirt and jeans, full glamour-puss makeup and porn-star hair from the photoshoot. The girl looks like a million dollars and doesn’t even it realize it. She licks her lips, but I doubt she’s nervous about playing. She’s been here before, performed here before…

But she hasn’t performed here with me a foot away from her. She hasn’t played while waiting for the other goddamn shoe to drop.

“Now, you’re all going to behave yourselves,” I tell them. “You’re going to shut your mouths, open your ears, and listen to my girl here. And if you’re
spectacularly
good, maybe I’ll sing a song or two in a couple of minutes.”

“What are you doing?” Lore whispers, cupping her hand over the mic to keep the words from carrying. “Have you lost your mind?”

Leaning in, I bring us eye-to-eye. This close, I get a better picture of all the details I tend to miss when I’m blasting through life at a hundred miles an hour. The blue of her eyes? It’s not the same as mine. There’s no ice or aquamarine comparison to be made here; no, her eyes are deeper, darker. Not the color of the sky, but the color of the ocean. Endless. Fathomless. And right at the center there are little flecks of gold, the slightest slivers radiating outward until they disappear.

The tiniest hint of someone else.

Lore fidgets, those irises flashing sideways and back. She’s getting more anxious with every passing second, probably because we’re deviating from the plan. Not like we really had a plan to begin with, but this definitely wasn’t in her mental playbook.

“Sing a couple of songs,” I tell her.

“Why? Where are you going to be?”

“You wanted to be bait, sweetheart.” Without waiting, I sling the guitar strap over her head. The instrument settles into her lap, and Lore cradles it like she was born holding the damn thing. “So be bait.”

With that, I stand up and step back, giving her another nod, sterner this time. Lore stares up at me for a long moment. Pursing her lips, she finally looks away, twists very carefully atop the tall stool, and offers up a smile to the crowd.

“I, um, wasn’t really expecting to play tonight.” She’s got that perfect mix of shy innocence and wry mischief, like some puckish faerie on a string, running into things trying to keep her balance, determined to prove she can do it all without actually flying. “This is a new one, but I guess they’re all new to you, really.”

Taking a breath, Lore plucks a pick from the mic stand and looks down to find the right finger placements. The entire time, I’m counting off the metronome ticks in my head, one, two, three, four, until she strums out the first chord.

Wasting words, and wonder why

My heart is on my sleeve,

You kill some faithless part of me,

And I can’t even grieve.

I wallow in the taste of you,

The scent of sweetest sin,

Swallow down my deepest fear,

So I can let you in…

I give myself a second. One precious moment to let that voice sidle over every one of my senses. It’s like she’s sliding a knife between my ribs and right into my useless heart. I get it then. I get
everything.
Hot and cold. Love and hate. Joy and sorrow. I feel every last thing that I’ve been holding away from myself for so long. I’m molten glass plunged into a bucket of ice water, with Lore threading cracks throughout my entire being.

And then I have to exhale slowly and open my eyes. Step away from her, even though I don’t want to move. After one quick glance at Asher, I head straight back to Jax Trace and his Shrinky Dink sidekick for some answers.

“Guess dumpster diving with Ke$ha has its perks,” he gets out as I slide into the booth on the opposite side and squeeze in so far that the girl becomes the compressed filling in a really uncomfortable man-sandwich. Jax’s eyes are on Lore, but mine, well, they’re all over Orange Pop here.

“What the fuck, dude?” she fires off, squirming because I’ve got her pinned tight.

My nostrils flare, because seriously, I’ve never caught a whiff of anything quite like this before. There’s
woman
there, all right, along with some
other
woman, telling me she definitely plays for the other team. There’s also the suggestion of secrets, the same smell that lingers in places where they store really old books. Ozone, like before a summer thunderstorm. And—

“What are you, an ass-sniffing bloodhound? Quit crowding me.” She levels the demand at me like I give two shits what she wants right now.

My gaze slides over her. “Look, toots—”

“The name is Tamsyn
,
dickhead.”

“And
my
name, surprisingly enough, isn’t dickhead,
toots
.” Then I look at Jax. “Are you going to tell me why you’re running around town with a sin-eater? Your pet pixie here is the second one to come skulking around Lore lately. Incidentally, every time that happens, my girl wakes up with her panties around her ankles and her head in the proverbial spit sink.” Jax opens his big, stupid mouth to answer, so I tack on a cavalier, “And when that
doesn’t
happen, that
other
sin-eater tosses a dead girl into the dumpster behind Scion or in my swimming pool. So don’t lie to me, Trace.”

Lore is still singing her heart out, like it’s Madison Square Garden and not some shitty dive bar off the side of Koreatown. iPhones capture the whole thing, the 21st century version of a Bic lighter at a concert, and in ten minutes there will be a hundred different angles of this performance splattered across the Internet. Thankfully, the crowd has almost completely forgotten me for the moment, so I get the opportunity to sit back and watch. To sit back and listen.

So let it go,

Let it fall away,

’Cause I am bold,

And braver than you know.

So let it burn,

Let the battles rage.

I’ll fight ’em all,

So the weak can have their turn,

Ooooh, let it burn…

The audience watches her like she’s the answer to all their prayers. It’s twisting something up in Jax, too, I can see it. He takes a second to think. To sort through every word in the English language twice, picking and choosing the ones he’s going to lay on me. And even if he takes all night, I know I’m not going to like what I hear.

Because I’m an impatient bastard, I turn to Tamsyn and add, “Sound like Benicio’s calling card to you? Because we were hoping he’d show tonight.”

She scowls at that, dark eyebrows rushing together. “Yeah, yeah it fucking does.
Fuck
.” Rounding on Jax, she surprises us both. “I told you that was him. Cocksucker.”

Jax flicks it off, his eyes still pinned to Lore. “Yeah, well, you tell me a lot of things, Tam, but pancakes are not always the answer, and vagina is not as difficult as you seem to think.”

That shuts us both up, because I have no clue what Trace is on about, but Toots apparently understands and steam just about comes out of her ears.

“I didn’t say a fucking thing about pancakes tonight, douchenozzle, I was telling you B had something to do with those dead bodies they’ve been splashing all over the news.”

“So you
do
know him.” I squeeze her a little harder, like a tube of toothpaste with the cap only half-on. Enough pressure, and she’s going to squirt out whatever information I want, if Jax keeps his mouth shut long enough for me to get it out of her.

She pushes back at me with her leg, trying to get me to move. “Yeah, I fucking know him, you stupid fanger.” When I don’t budge, she narrows her eyes a little. “How’d you like to wake up with
your
head in the spit sink?”

“Hit me with the juice, pipsqueak, and I’ll eat you for breakfast.”

“Shut up, both of you.” For the first time, Jax fixes superhuman Super
man
eyes on me. The damn fool look is gone from his expression now. He’s deadly serious and I have to say, it’s all that much more jarring for its rarity. “Are you honestly inferring that you placed Lore up on that stage hoping to lure a serial killer out of hiding?”

“Because that’s somehow worse than letting him mind-fuck half the valley while you shop for vests?” I fire back.

Jax leans in really damn close, so close that mini-muff is squashed against the leather like the aforementioned pancakes. She lets out a squeak, but that doesn’t seem to faze Trace in the least; he simply closes the gap between us like he’s got every right in the universe to get in my face. In return, he gets nothing from me but the hard line of my jaw.

“Little girls are one thing,” he says, “but Lore is something completely different altogether.”

“Why? Because she can sing? Because you want her for Genesis?”

“No, you giant, narcissistic asshat, it’s because…” Then, instead of answering the question, Jax lifts one hand slowly off the tabletop and points a finger at Lore. “Get her the fuck off that stage right fucking now.”

“Or what? You’re going to hair gel me to death? Strangle me with your dipshit tie? Or make me wear those ball stranglers you call pants?”

“I will trip you into sunlight, Xaine,” he says, “
after
I strap you to a cross and huck wooden darts at your chest.”

I motion to Asher, who’s standing about as close as he can get to the stage without crawling up on the platform, bow in hand. “Talk to him about buying some UV weapons. You wouldn’t even have to wait for dawn. And you’ve missed the fucking point entirely—”

Then I stiffen, because the Y-chromosome match to Orange Pop is somewhere in the building; I can smell him. Every fiber of my being wants to launch itself at the stage, but if I do that now, it’s Game Over. Instead, I make sure Asher’s looking my direction, then nod at him. He was already on high alert, but I can practically see his asshole tighten up as he turns the scan the room.

That’s right buddy, you keep that pole clenched right where it is.

The only complication is that it’s packed wall to wall in here and I need a way to separate the fans from the Fuzzy Bunny mindfuckers. With that in mind, I flash my fangs at the next waitress who heads past the table. When she ducks nearer the booth, I toss my black AmEx at her. “Try to keep up, ok?”

She gapes for a second. “What’s this for?”

“Hold on a second and you’ll find out,” I tell her, sliding out of the booth, stepping onto the bench, and planting both feet on the table the second the last notes from Lore’s song fade to nothing. “Intermission! Drinks are on me!”

The bellow carries to the farthest corners of the room, and the applause that had already started doubles over on itself. The bartenders start lining up shot glasses as everyone turns and makes a beeline for the liquor. They act like I’m personally pouring each drink myself, and that’s fine by me, because as long as they’re headed away from my girl, they can think whatever they want. I keep my eyes peeled after that, because I’ve tipped my hand, made a spectacle of myself, and everyone in the place is headed for the bar.

Except for Benicio. He’s headed straight for Lore.

The world is completely silent for all of three minutes. It’s just enough time for me to close my eyes. Just enough time for me to get comfortable. Barely enough time for me to
forget
. Absolutely everything fades away, slipping from my fingers the moment they strike that first, soft chord. It’s easy to lose myself in the music, to let the worry and fear slide away and just let it all go.