“I’m glad you like them,” Brendan said.
“These are just mockups,” Luke said. “The final book will be far better.”
“Better than these?” Rose asked.
“Light years.”
The final drawing was a quick sketch of Rose’s graduation certificate, centered on her name. Beneath this, in stylized script, were the words, Change is Coming.
“That’s the end of book one,” Luke said. “You approve?”
Rose couldn’t find her voice. She nodded. She hadn’t realized till now what the graduation meant to her. Anna Rose Carver, child of slinkers, had never finished anything like this in her life.
“We have a release for you to sign,” Brendan said. “Just legal stuff. Says we’re allowed to use your name and likeness and entitles you to residuals.”
Rose signed. “Anything else?”
“We go to press in three weeks,” Brendan said.
“So soon? Will you be done?”
“We’re fast, sweetie. At least, that’s what our conquests tell us.” Brendan huffed on his manicured fingernails and polished them on his collar.
“And we want to get this thing out in time for the launch party we already scheduled for May,” Luke said.
“Party as in music and drinks?” Rose asked.
“Party as in a hundred thousand book and comic fans, fellow artists, influential editors. That sort of thing,” Brendan said.
Rose rubbed at the tracking device in her shoulder. “This is something I have to attend?”
“It’s called MegaCon.” Luke gave her a smile two parts mirth, one part mayhem. “It’s one of the biggest geek parties of the year. So yes, you’re coming. It’s a must.”
“Where?” Rose asked, ready to protest it being too far away.
“Florida,” Brendan said.
“You’re not getting out of this, Rosie,” Luke said. “This is just the first of many. We’re gonna be making the rounds the next few months. Nothing sells graphic novels like live appearances.”
“Plus, Luke and I will be dropping hints about you and Drawn everywhere we go the next few weeks.” Brendan held up a calendar display on his tablet computer. Every weekend denoted a different event, and each had a special note that read: Promote Drawn!
“Your fans are going to be drooling before you ever set foot at MegaCon!” Luke fairly bounced in place, giddy.
“Don’t look that way,” Brendan said. “We’ll be there with you.”
“I’m sewing your costume!” Luke said.
Rose blanched. “Oh, God.”
By the time Rose extricated herself from the twins’ company, her Fitbit clock read 1734. Careful not to draw speed—no one could use their powers outside approved times on Camp Den for fear of satellite or aerial surveillance—she ran for Links. She hit the front entrance, sweaty and probably smelling of it, at 1742.
She swore.
Matt had reserved an office on the third floor for team interviews. Rose debated waiting for the elevator but ended up bypassing it for the stairs. She took them four at a time, drawing speed along with dexterity to maintain her balance, and bolted through the third-floor doors less than a minute later.
She met Matt in the hall, headed for the elevators. He walked with the aid of a silver cane, something she hadn’t noticed when she had seen him from afar at graduation this morning. Seeing him like this brought her up short.
“Never seen a man use a cane before, Carver?” he asked, quirking that half smile of his.
Rose was so surprised to have caught him—she thought for sure he had given up waiting on her and gone home—that she blurted the first thing that hit her tongue. “Not at Camped In.”
He huffed. It was something between a laugh and a desultory snort. Camped In was the recruits’ name for the place when draw sergeants weren’t around.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you would be healed by now.”
“I still have bullet fragments entangled in the joint. Every time Dr. Stanislaw thinks she’s got them all, there’s more.”
“How many surgeries have you had?”
“Seven.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “You’re late by the way.”
“I’m sorry about that too. I was with the twins.” Rose leaned against the wall, self-conscious under his gaze.
“I’ve seen their sketches. They do good work.”
A silence fell between them. They stood next to a large window that showed the main training area on Rose’s right and a recessed doorway on her left. She tried the door. It opened.
“Is it too late?” She gestured inside the darkened room. “That is unless you’re going to fire me.”
“I’m not firing you, Carver. But I want you to know, I had nothing to do with putting you on my team.”
“Okay…” Rose raised her eyebrows.
“Left to me, I wouldn’t have chosen you for my team.”
Rose rocked back on her heels, stung. Had she really raced up here for this? “I’ll put in a request for transfer first thing tomorrow.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Look,” Rose said, “you say you like me, but I’m a trainee. Then I graduate, and you complain because I’m on your team. I don’t know what the hell you want from me, but—”
Gently, without force, Matt put three fingers to her lips. “That came out wrong. I’m sorry. I would not have put you on my team because then I could do this without feeling like a lecher.”
He cupped her face and kissed her.
Rose was no great judge of kisses. She had only ever had one legit kiss in her life. Junior year in high school, in the fourth town her family had moved to in seven months, Brian Greer had taken her to a movie, dinner, and then kissed her in his dad’s car outside her parents’ apartment. It had been a messy affair, not because Brian came on too strong, but because he had lousy aim. He kissed the bottom of her nose then slid gradually down to pucker against her lips. Despite the awkwardness, it had been sweet. Brian had been sweet.
Her family had moved away a week later when her dad got a job in Kansas.
Matt’s kiss was far more pleasant than that one. Though he too was tentative, and not the least bit aggressive, his soft lips pressing against hers ignited a fire in her throat, and strangely enough, her cheeks. She was blushing.
He pulled back. “Was that rude? I don’t mean to be. I can’t seem to talk when I’m around you. It’s like I revert to awkward teenager.”
Rose grabbed him by the lapels, pulled him to her. With their lips just touching, she said, “Shut up, Snow.”
She fumbled behind her, opened the door, and dragged him inside.
14
Conventional Thinking
“You’re sure about this?” The spandex around Rose’s boobs kept bunching underneath. She pulled it straight for the hundredth time.
“What part?” Luke paid her scant attention. He held a mascara mirror to his left eye, checking his eyeliner. The man looked ridiculous. He wore what might have passed for an Egyptian Pharaoh costume, except for everything about it! The high collar reached his pointed prosthetic earlobes. A series of pleats ran down his shoulders almost to the getup’s comically dagged sleeves. And as if that alone didn’t push him over the cliff of anachronism, he wore his hair in a perfectly coifed bowl cut that made him look like one of the Beatles circa 1965.
“This costume for a start. I feel like you guys should wheel me out there with a stripper pole.”
Rose’s blue, skin-tight stretch suit left little to the imagination. Thankfully, the twins had sewn in a couple of concealers to keep her more prominent parts from poking through the material. It was supposed to be an assault uniform, the kind she might wear in a firefight against Breathers. And while the overall effect might have been one of toughness and durability with its fake ammo pockets and knee-high leather boots, Rose thought it spoke more of teenage boy fantasies and once in a lifetime honeymoon escapades
.
“Stripper pole, huh?” Brendan said. “Not a bad idea. ‘Course, that suit wouldn’t peel very easily. We might have to oil you up.”
Rose swatted his arm in mock outrage.
He grinned.
Rose peeked through the curtain separating her from what looked like roughly one billion people crowded into a conference room. The partitioned waiting area she shared with the twins seemed to grow smaller. She finally understood the mega in MegaCon. Mega crowds. Mega excitement. Mega nerves.
Her stomach fluttered. She hadn’t known it could do that.
“Don’t worry about the crowd,” Luke said. “Lots more will show up once we get out there. Those are just the early birds.”
“You know,” Rose said, “Egyptians didn’t wear those sorts of robes.”
Luke gave her a withering look. “We’re not Egyptians, you Philistine. I’m a Romulan.”
“And I’m a Vulcan.” Brendan made a show of smoothing his already flat collar. His costume, gold on burgundy with a decidedly floral sense though it contained no flowers whatsoever, favored Luke’s. And yet, comparing the two, Rose saw minute differences in the cut and fit that gave each a distinctive flair.
“Is that Star Wars or Star Trek?”
“You are severely undereducated, woman,” Luke said.
“So, you have to be a nerd to understand the costumes?” Rose quirked an eyebrow at them.
“Don’t even go there.” Brendan held up both hands as if stopping an out of control bus. “In a second my brother’s going to start a debate about whether it would take a nerd or a geek to recognize proper Star Trek uniforms and aliens.”
“A geek.” Luke lifted his chin like a priest making a pronouncement on the nature of God.
“Nerds watch Star Trek, Luke. It’s well established. Geeks have no utility.”
“Both watch, geeks obsess. Fact of life.”
“And you’re going to tell me nerds don’t obsess?” Brendan’s fists found his hips, his robes puffing out like an affronted owl.
“Not in the same way. And their obsessions usually lead to lucrative careers in the sciences, whereas geeks can tell you Spock’s grandmother’s name.”
“I still—”
“Guys, please.” Rose stole another look through the curtain, and her breath caught. Somehow, even more people had managed to crowd into the conference area. She had never imagined she would yearn for Camp Den, but at the moment, a nice live fire exercise in the back woods sounded lovely.
“Rose…” Luke’s expression shifted from outrage to pity in a flash. He took her hands. “Rosie. Look at you, pale and shaking. Are you really that nervous?”
“Yes, dammit.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about. This is a launch party. These people are here because they love us. Turn on that charm and wow them.”
A MegaCon organizer slipped his head through the curtain from the crowd side. “Two minutes, guys.”
Rose drew calm and charm.
“See that? You look better already. You’ve got this.” Brendan gave her a reassuring smile.
“Do you know the other reason these people are destined to love us?” Luke asked.
“Why?”
“Because we have plants in the crowd. Robin loaned us a bunch of her newbies. They’re all out there charming the hell out of those people.”
“You do that at all your launch parties?” Rose looked askance at the twins. That sounded like cheating to her.
“We don’t generally have people working the crowd for us; we Pruett boys have more than enough to spare.”
“That’s something I don’t get.” Rose smoothed the spandex over her midriff for the thousandth time. The outline of her bellybutton kept showing. “You get these fans through charm, but charm doesn’t last. How do you convert them to lasting votaries?”
“Simple,” Brendan said. “We give them swag.”
Rose arched an eyebrow at him.
Luke peeled a copy of Drawn the graphic novel issue one from a stack by the curtain and held it up for display. “Swag as in merchandise. You give a prospective votary something to remember you by, and they’re more likely to last. It’s a sort of token.”
“A talisman.” Brendan swiped the comic from his brother and held it aloft in both hands. “A thing of beauty that speaks to them. And even though you give a million of the same token to a million different people, they all cherish the one that belongs to them.”
“Athletes do it with jerseys—” Luke began.
“That should be a bumper sticker,” Brendan said.
“—musicians with songs, actors with movies and posters.”
“And all the great succubus lovers throughout history did it with cheap jewelry and bad poems.”
“And Society has never caught on to you doing this? Never came after you?” Rose asked, her anxiety momentarily displaced by fascination. The twins lived in a strange limbo she had never imagined.
Luke shrugged. “We’re either so cloaked under spook radar they don’t know we exist, or we’re too prominent to make disappear. Either way, they don’t bother with us.”
Rose felt a pang of sudden and surprising guilt. “But if you’re seen with me, won’t that tip them off you’re working with the Order?”
Brendan grinned. “I seriously doubt government spies are watching this lot. We’re safe.”
“Besides,” Luke picked a piece of lint from his otherwise immaculate robe, “I’m far more concerned with talent scouts. I have it on good authority there’s an executive from Netflix scoping out this con…since we invited him.” He flashed Rose a sinister grin. “If we get that kind of deal, there’ll be no end to our votary count.”
“Netflix?” Rose scrunched up her nose. “What would a movie site want with my graphic novel?”
“Eggs and baskets, Rose! You think Drawn’s our only foray into sharing your story with the world? We’ve got big plans for you, girl. And that includes the little anime we started drawing the day we met you.”
“What’s an anime?”
Luke covered his mouth as if scandalized.
An announcer introduced the Pruett twins and their newest star, Rose Carver, before either could answer. The curtain opened to reveal a U-shaped table covered in red cloth with three folding chairs pushed beneath it. Beyond the table stood a legion of giddy fans gathering their collective breaths.
“Tell you later,” Brendan said.
He pushed Rose ahead of him through the curtain, and her heart performed an acrobatic move in her chest.
The crowd erupted with an earsplitting roar. Despite protests from the security guards, the first three rows surged toward the table, and Rose took an involuntary step back, instinctively drawing speed and strength. Several of them held up signs with a panoply of hand-drawn figures Rose couldn’t identify. Some of the twins’ previous comic book heroes?
“It’s fine.” Luke put a reassuring hand on Rose’s back, staying her instinct to fight or run. “They’re fans, not enemies.”
The twins leaned across the table, shaking hands and chatting as the crowd pressed close. The boys exuded charm, their smiles like chrome in sunlight. Reluctantly, Rose joined the fray, offering her hand to the throng of smiling people. Though she still felt skittish, the crowd’s enthusiasm soon overwhelmed her fear. She found herself smiling and greeting total strangers as if welcoming them to her home.
Maybe she had that part backward.
After a couple of minutes, Brendan said, “All right kids, back to your seats. We’ve got a panel to do here.”
Showing little reluctance, those fans who had so eagerly dashed forward with unbridled exuberance a moment before hurried to their seats. And no wonder. Rose could see in their eyes the near drunken euphoria of the good and truly charmed.
Several dozen copies of Drawn stood on the table. The cover depicted Rose dressed in a waitressing outfit sprinting down a lonely backwoods road at night, headlights following her in the distance.
Brendan took one of these in hand. “You all know we’ve got a new book coming out.” The crowd tried to cheer, but he held up a palm to forestall them. “This is the story of Rose Carver. She’s a succubus. Not a demon, or a vampire, just a woman with some extraordinary abilities. Rose wants nothing more than to live her life like any normal person, but circumstances force her into a high-stakes game of government espionage, murder, and world domination.”
“It’s a hell of a good read,” Luke shouted.
People laughed.
“This,” Brendan said, pointing, “is the real Rose Carver. We are ripping off her true story for fun and profit.”
Rose smiled. People smiled back, watching her with adoring, lusting, loving eyes. The feeling was intoxicating. No wonder the twins liked cons.
“Feel free to ask any questions you like, except for one,” Luke said. “Do not ask us where we get our ideas.”
More laughter. Rose didn’t get the funny. She would have liked to ask that very thing. Of course, in the case of Drawn, she knew the answer.
Hands shot up, and a couple of volunteers with cordless microphones entered the crowd. One handed his to a young woman in the second row dressed as some beast with a uniformly lumpy head and a black leather bustier that lifted her breasts to an alarming, and no doubt uncomfortable, degree.
“Okay,” she said, “first, I love Rose.”
The crowd applauded.
“Uh, thank you,” Rose said.
“What I need to know is will she get more votaries while she’s training at Camp Den? I know she already got Renni and Lee, but it just doesn’t seem like they’re going to be enough, ya know?”
“Oh, an advance reader,” Brendan said. “Glad to have you—glad you’re enjoying the online preview. Thank you for supporting our Kickstarter.”
“As for your question,” Luke said, “what do you think we’re doing right now? This is all about getting votaries for our Rose.”
Drawn Page 14
