Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  “Oh, my bad, are the slutty ones usually quieter?” I can’t help the small, vengeful grin that hits my face.

  Jackson doesn’t answer, just opens the door of the Audi and shoves me inside so abruptly that I almost bang my head on the roof. He drops the computer case into my lap, and I hug it to my chest. Slamming the door closed behind me, he marches around to the driver’s side and plops into the seat next to mine. The moment he’s in, he leans back against the dark leather, taking a moment to breathe.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” Jackson asks on the exhale as he starts the engine, shifts into reverse, and backs out of the parking space.

  “Well, yeah,” I say, tightening my arms around the laptop case, “but they left out the part where a strange man breaks into my hotel room, demands that I put on my clothes, then offers to drive me to my preferred destination. You’re doing this whole kidnapping thing a little ass-backwards, you know, but I guess I’m glad you sorta super-suck at it?”

  “He sorta super-sucks at everything,” pipes a cheerful voice from the backseat. A second later, a hand appears in front of my face holding a colorfully packaged sucker. “Blow Pop?”

  I reach for the candy, but Jackson slaps it out of my hand before I even have the chance to get the wrapper off.

  I shoot him a slightly boggled glare. “Sonovabiscuit, Fig Leaf, and what the hell?”

  “Candy from strangers,” is all he says, concentrating on the road.

  “Fig Leaf?!” The voice manifests between us as a lot of neon-orange hair and clear, silver eyes. The girl hanging over my seat looks like a twelve-year-old Japanese anime character come to life, from the Union Jack tank dress to her six-inch platform boots. “Well, that’s a new one,” she giggles, leaning in until I catch whiffs of cherry from her sucker. “This boy’s about as far from Adam as it gets. Jax here wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a leaf unless it had a designer label on it. And if there was some post-apocalyptic deep-woods action happening, he’d be the fucktard folding poison sumac over his balls—”

  Jackson lifts his hand from the gearshift long enough to put one big palm on her face and shove her rather unceremoniously back into her seat. Classic big brother maneuver, except they don’t look related. He flicks a quick glance at me, then refocuses his eyes on the road.

  “Why don’t you take a nap or something?” Then he tacks on, “Give your mouth a rest.”

  All I can really say at this point is, “Worst. Guardian Angel. Ever.”

  It’s probably a good thing we’re all talking theoretical theology anyway, because if he really was my guardian angel, I would have earned myself a lightning strike from the heavens for that one. Spinning around in my seat, I disregard his annoyed glare, holding a hand out to the girl whose chunky boots are rapping a sharp staccato against my chair. “Hi, I’m Lo—”

  But just like with the Blow Pop, Jackson’s hand swats mine away, grabbing me by the wrist and tossing my own limb back at me like my fist is a damn baseball. “Turn around and sit down.”

  “Better listen to Figgy, Lo,” says the girl in the backseat. “He’s using his serious voice.”

  “Shut your head, Tam,” Jackson tells her. “And no hanky-panky in the Audi. I just had it detailed.”

  “My whole head?” she asks.

  “The whole Audi?” I add.

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” He rakes a hand through his hair, breaking the gel shell in his frustration. “God save me from smartassed women.”

  Tam snorts. “Pffft. Keep dreaming.”

  “If only this were a dream,” he mutters under his breath, “then maybe we could all wake up.”

  The moment those words fall out of his mouth, I can’t help but feel a little something for Jackson, even if I don’t know him at all. That sympathy, empathy, whatever carries over to Tam, because we both go completely silent at the exact same moment, the smiles wiped from our faces.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, turning around in my seat, facing forward and staring out the windshield.

  “Don’t mind him,” Tam chirps over my shoulder, her chin digging into the seat back. “He hasn’t gotten laid in a really long time.”

  “Seriously?!” Jackson snaps at her, but she only leans forward a little more, inhaling deeply and breathing out a little expletive.

  “Phew, you reek of Benny, Lo.”

  I frown at the name, then I get a flash of—Hi, I’m Benicio—but she’s still yapping away.

  “Gross, Lo, it smells like he rolled all over you.”

  “He did.” The words rumble out of Jackson. “Then he left her there for you know who to find.”

  “Voldemort?” Not what I’d planned to say, but it’s like I can’t help myself right now. Like being a smartass is my last defense against all the things that I don’t really want to think about. Against all the weird that’s happening at this very moment.

  “The Dark Lord?” Tam sputters out. “Close enough!”

  Jackson darts a glance in the rearview, conveying some silent message to his friend that kills the conversation and leaves another trailing silence in its wake. When he shifts his attention to the front window again, the tension slowly eases its way out of his shoulders.

  “Thank you,” I say, and he turns those crazy-blue eyes toward me for a second. “I think.” Then I pause, frowning a little. “Unless this really is a kidnapping…”

  Jackson heaves a beleaguered sigh and rolls his eyes. “Nobody’s kidnapping you, kid.”

  “Well, then. I guess the ‘thank you’ still stands.” I offer up a reconciliatory smile and offer my hand to him in truce. He stares at it grimly for a moment before transferring his scrutiny to my face. “C’mon, Fig Leaf, I can wait you out. I could do this all day.”

  He snorts through his nose, but he takes his hand off the wheel long enough to grasp mine. Warm and solid and reassuring, on the scale of handshakes, it’s at least a nine-point-five. When he finally lets go, that hand ends up on his knee instead of the steering wheel.

  “All day and then some,” he agrees, casting me a few short sidelong glances. “And you can quit calling me ‘Fig Leaf.’ My name’s Jackson Trace. Call me Jax.” After that, he pokes a thumb in the direction of my backseat BFF. “That’s Tamsyn.”

  “Tamsyn what?”

  The look he gives me then is a little sour. “Just ‘Tamsyn.’”

  “Okay, then.”

  After that, the ride gets quieter, but probably not quiet enough for Jax. Tamsyn chatters jovially from the backseat, asking a million and one questions and generally yapping my ear off all the way back from the Valley. Whatever and whoever happened last night, I managed to end up in a fleabag motel out in Van Nuys, so I guess I’m lucky I didn’t wake up facedown on a porn set.

  Or in a gutter.

  Within minutes, I know a little too much about my elfin friend, her shiny new shoes, her choice in smokes, her love of pancakes, and the pretty waitress at The Diner on the West End. It’s calming, in a weird way, and that calm sticks with me until Jax pulls over next to the towering blue water feature in front of Scion. The second the car comes to a full stop, my anxiety returns, bubbling up from my stomach and lodging in my chest. Suddenly, I don’t want to leave the car. I’m plagued by a dark sort of dread that has me dragging my feet. I get that feeling again, the one I had back at the motel. That epic, earth-shattery one.

  It’s not safe out there. Not anymore.

  “Look, kid,” Jax says, interrupting my inner meltdown. “You don’t have to go in. I’ll take you home if you want.” He throws a casual arm over the headrest on my chair, but his tone is dead serious. “Fame’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know. There’s something to be said for being… anonymous.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.” I peer at the trademark glass structure that forms the front of the building. “I’ve been begging Mireille Reece for an audition for months.” Absolutely no need to tell him that speaking with her is infinitely more important than a ch
ance on the Scion stage. “Up until a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t even give me the time of day.” I shake my head, adamant. “No, I need to do this.”

  “Suit yourself,” he says, then adds, “but do me a favor and try not to get in the habit of following strange men to seedy motels, huh?”

  I frown, because really, that’s never been a habit of mine. I am not that girl. “I won’t.” Then, I tack on, “’Cause if I got any sluttier, Fig Leaf, we might have a problem.”

  At his skeptical grunt, I grin, climb out of the car, and sling my laptop case over my shoulder. Trading the Audi’s air-conditioned interior for fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk afternoon heat is like stepping into an oven. I slam the door shut and head toward the building, but a moment later, there’s the sound of a power window rolling down.

  “Hey, Lo!”

  When I spin around, Tamsyn’s orange head is hanging out the opening, her outstretched hand flapping a business card at me.

  “Fig Leaf’s digits,” she chirps as I take it. “Just in case. Oh, and steer clear of—”

  Without waiting for her to finish, Jax puts the car in gear and pulls away from the curb. I watch until the Audi’s gone, procrastinating mostly, then I turn toward Scion, staring ever-upward at that gargantuan water feature. The club is the Emerald City of hot spots in Los Angeles, the be-all end-all of vampire playrooms. I’ve never been inside. Hell, I would guess that only one percent of the one percent actually makes it past the velvet ropes, but two days ago I got a call from Mireille Reece, representative of one particular rock star, looking for one particular opening act.

  You get the call. You take it.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Xaine

  They pulled a corpse out of the dumpster behind the club this morning and everyone immediately suspected me. “Blame the Vampire” is a game that I have more than a passing familiarity with. I’ve seen enough pitchforks and torches in my four hundred years to know that it’s usually stake first, ask questions later, so I guess it’s progress that I’ve spent the last two hours under police investigation.

  Still, so much for social equality.

  You’d think the world would be used to us by now, seeing as how vampires have been out of the proverbial closet since the Industrial Revolution. It’s doubtful America would have sent England packing if we hadn’t eyed this country and decided we liked what we saw. My kind won wars, stole land, and sculpted this place to suit our needs. Technology evolved because we wanted it to. Needed it to.

  Doesn’t seem to matter in the long run, since we’re suspect numero uno when a corpse turns up. The cops are still having trouble explaining why I’m being questioned, given that the girl’s body doesn’t have a single fang mark on it. Easy enough to point the finger, I guess, but slightly harder to prove. I think I’m just supposed to be grateful that they did me the courtesy of conducting the “interview” in an upstairs office rather than dragging me downtown in handcuffs.

  All of it put me in a really shitty mood. I’m never at my best when I’m tired or hungry, and right now, I’m both. Prowling down the hallway, I wince at the horrible noises coming from the auditorium.

  Auditions.

  Apocalypse is mine, from the six-story water feature in the front atrium of the Scion nightclub to the bank of offices that shuffle contracts for the record label, but I pay people to deal with this kind of crap. The trouble is that one of the people I’m paying snags me by the elbow as I’m passing the VIP balconies and fixes me with That Look. Reille must have put out the major PR fires already, but she’s running on pure adrenaline, taurine, ginseng, caffeine.

  “Damn it, Xaine, you aren’t ducking out now,” she tells me. “I prescreened hundreds of acts. The least you can do is sit through ten.”

  “No can do, sweetheart. I’m going home to do all the things. Eating, sleeping, fucking, and not necessarily in that order.”

  “Don’t be a dick.” Reille looks up at me with eyes that shift colors when she’s pissed or scared or happy or coming. Yeah, Orgasm Green might not be on a paint chip anywhere, but I know exactly what shade it is. Right now, those eyes are dark and hard. She has to be here, but she wants to leave. She wants to quit, but she needs this job. She wants to tell me to go fuck myself, but she hasn’t had time to put an exit plan together. “This isn’t even my job. If you hadn’t fired Matty—”

  “Don’t talk to me about him right now,” I mutter.

  Matty, short for Matthias, a kinda sorta little brother. Young for a vamp, too stupid to live if he thought he could get away with funneling dirty money through my nightclubs. And not just domestically, but internationally. I hadn’t even wanted to give him the job in the first place, but Scipio progeny look after their own.

  Speaking of Scipios, I am going to have to pay Roman a visit tonight. Tell him what his youngest has been up to.

  But apparently not before I sit through a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears wannabe musical auditions. One word to the negative, I could be miles away from here, cruising Sunset, heading for Pacific Palisades and peace and quiet. One look at Reille shoots that idea right to hell. Even if I leave, she’ll haunt me, follow me home like the ghost of try-outs past, blowing up my cell and making my life hell until I come back.

  “Fine.” With a dramatic sigh, I follow her into the balcony area and fling myself into a chair. “Be a pal and order me a drink, would you?”

  “I already did.” She points at the four-pack of Starbucks cups sitting on the ledge, all of them Venti, extra hot.

  I reach for the closest one and let my head fall back on the chair. “I didn’t kill that woman, Reille.”

  “Do tell.” Her glare cuts right to my blackened heart. “You were the last one seen with her. Half a dozen strung-out college kids swear you brought her into this very VIP suite.”

  The Type O tastes stale, and “extra hot” isn’t nearly hot enough for me. Never is really, unless it comes straight from the tap. “Fucking and killing are two different things—”

  I stop myself, but not before I’ve crammed half my foot down my own throat. There’s a fine line between love and hate, and I’ve walked both edges of that line with the svelte redhead to my left. Fucking and killing, in that order, except she managed to survive the whole ordeal despite my best, blood-drunk effort. So really, given my track record for severely maiming the ones I love, I guess I’m not all that surprised that the police hunted me down for questioning this morning.

  “What do I need an opening act for, anyway?” I lean back in the chair, kicking my foot up the ledge. “Never needed one before.”

  “Because you are going to start giving back, Xaine. Paying it forward. Supporting local music, supporting new musicians, supporting something that doesn’t have to suck you off first.” Reille crosses one leg over the other and starts swinging her foot the way she does when she’s feeling fidgety. She’s wearing a pair of those red-soled designer heels the Beverly Hills housewives cream themselves over, beige and shiny, adding four or five inches to her petite frame.

  They look like stripper shoes.

  Really, really expensive stripper shoes.

  The music starts up, if you can even call it that. Reille’s fingers twitch around her pen and the clipboard in her lap, but not just because she’s irritated. See, the real problem with letting a vamp feed off you isn’t the chance of dying, it’s the feeling that lingers after. An itch you can’t scratch with your fingernails. A creeping, crawling need to give it up again, and again, and again. The sensation that things only make sense when fangs sink through your skin. Reille was addicted to that feeling, addicted to me, for the better part of six months. She’s in some bullshit recovery program right now, with the Tiffany bracelet and “30 Days Sober” charm to prove it.

  “What did you think about that one?” she asks when there’s a lull in the noise, pen poised over the paper.

  I slide another inch down in my chair just to piss her off. “Fucking horrible.
”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then,” she fires back.

  “Take it however you want, sweetheart.” The second group fires up, and I swear I want to stick my fingers in my ears. “I am trapped in hell. Musical fucking hell.”

  At least musical fucking hell is posh. The private balcony’s appointments are luxe; once we get a group of VIPs in here, we like them to open a tab and settle in for the night. Everything is leather and glass and cold-lit with blue LEDs to match the glass panels composing the main dance floor below. Under that is water. Thousands upon thousands of gallons of it, all filtered and purified and moving like blood through veins. It was the only thing I really cared about when we built this place, and the only thing I bother noticing when I’m onstage.

  Well, that… and her.

  Reille and I had been nothing short of tempestuous. We went from madly in lust to just plain mad before I realized what was happening. It was like one of those TV show relationships where people scream and throw stuff, then go at it like cats in heat because that’s how good the sex is. I wanted her, sure enough, still want her, because I flooded her veins with so much of me that I can smell it on her skin, even now. My brain is over the relationship, but the rest is biologically bound to her, like it or not, despite the fact that everything we had ended the night Caspian Declan pulled the purple Dior veil from my eyes.

  Leave it to him to use clothes to ruin everything. I wouldn’t know a designer label if it punched me in the nuts, but Reille did. It was one of the first things I noticed, along with her affinity for tequila and one-night stands. So I did what any guy trying to get a piece would do: I chucked her into the Apocalypse jet and took her to Paris. She found some insanely-priced piece of couture in a back alley vintage shop, then refused to let me pay for it. Got all ruffled-up offended and insisted she could afford it, even though she had to put it on three separate credit cards. Never wore it for me… but apparently she wore it for Cas. He took great pleasure in telling me all about it at a stupid museum gala, how it happened the first night of my international tour. The second I was out of sight, she beelined straight to him. And dinner between friends is never just dinner between friends, not with Reille.