by Skye Grace
“You were playing the Stones before?” she asks quietly, and his eyebrows shoot up.
“Yeah, you know it?”
“Of course,” she replies. “I grew up with it.”
“Me too,” he responds, a little bewildered. He hadn’t anticipated she’d have good taste in music. No girls in LA have good taste in music, not that he’d met anyway.
“Please,” she smiles sweetly, gesturing to the guitar. She swears his eyes are sparkling now, and yet he looks a little nervous, something she never would have expected from him.
“Really?” he asks, glancing down at the t-shirt she has on under her leather jacket, “I would’ve taken you for a punk rock girl.”
“Punk rock, classic rock, any and all alternative. It’s kind of my existence. So, the song… I’ll help with harmonies if you want,” she grins. Where the hell is all this coming from? How many pairs of balls did I just grow?
“Only if you help,” he smiles, offering her a seat on the opposite loveseat before he sits, guitar in hand. Her heart hammering in her chest, she’s unsure if she can take it and wonders why she thought she could. His deep, soulful voice moves her more than any American Idol contestant, and she attempts to steady hers before joining him a step above. He knows the chords well enough to take his eyes from his guitar and meet hers as they harmonize together.
Jameson begins to open the door, mouth already opening to tell the two of them that they should probably get going. Instead he just stares as the two of them are so tuned into each other that they don’t even notice him at the door. Rather bewildered, he wanders back to the directors to attempt explaining what has just occurred.
“Where’s Jacksen and Aura?” Ron asks with a raised eyebrow. Jameson sighs, slumping over into a chair next to them.
“They’re… singing.”
“Singing? What? Why?” Ron demands.
“I don’t know,” Jameson shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head, simultaneously. “I mean I know what they’re singing, it’s the Stones. I just don’t, ugh. I dunno. I didn’t know Jacksen was even ready for this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing? Doing a read? It’s not rocket science.”
“No, I mean ready for her. He’s been having such a hard time since Yvonne, he’s been a mess and now all of a sudden he’s head over heels for Aura? It’s like a junior high dance in there, man, they’re totally infatuated.”
“And this bothers you, Jay? Because you and her-”
“No!” is all he can get out.
“Because Gabby is a goddess, Jay, and if you don’t know that-” Ron barks.
“No, of course I know she is. Ron, I love my wife more than- Why am I explaining myself to a guy on his, what? Fourth wife now? I’m just thinking of J. I just don’t think the guy’s ready for her right now is all. Y’all are crazy if you think-”
“Well then go get them, kid, or I’ll burst in there myself. We’re not running a dating service here.”
Jameson nods to his long time boss as he gets up and reluctantly walks back to where Aura and Jacksen are finishing up their song. Jacksen smiles up dreamily at Jameson and he tries to act like there’s some shred of normalcy here.
“Time to go, brother. Aura, you ready?”
“We probably should have been, what? Running lines I guess?” she casually jokes as Jacksen stands, holding out a hand to help her up. He eyes her, thinking that’s the last thing they need, knowing that their chemistry could set any lab ablaze. Practice be damned.
She practically floats back to the room where several confused older gentlemen are waiting, and she silently thanks them profusely for not asking what took so long.
“Well, we can already tell you’d play an amazing sister-in-law to Brody. Let’s see what kind of connection we feel here,” Ron laughs, gesturing to her and Jacksen.
“A witch hunter falling for a powerful warlock? I don’t know…” She smirks, then oogles Jacksen obviously, “Oh, okay, I get it.”
The guys laugh and Jacksen just shakes his head.
“So this scene’s a bit earlier on than the one you read with Jameson. Here, Bianca and Blaise are just getting acquainted. She hasn’t told the brothers, or even really admitted to herself yet, that she’s actually a powerful witch. To him, she’s just the enemy now.”
They both nod, and then they’re each handed the scene on a piece of paper, only to set them down simultaneously.
“I kinda memorized it,” she says with a sweet but brazen little wink. Jacksen doesn’t even have time to reply, ‘Me too,’ before she begins launching into the dialogue. It’s fresh in her mind, and she just can’t wait to get the words out in the air. To make them feel real, even if this whole day feels like a daydream.
“I’m telling you, I’m the only hunter left. Only one that I know of, only one in my family, anyway. I don’t understand why I’m still here if you’re not going to kill me.”
“I haven’t decided that, yet. You should just feel lucky I took the handcuffs off,” Jacksen, as Blaise, chides.
“Well, what do you want from me?” She spits out, “Let me guess? Torture as repayment? Or am I here so you can fill me in on the finer points of craft and how you only do good. Of course, no evil, no consequences, am I right?”
“Something like that, sounds about right,” he scowls, deadpan.
“So I’m supposed to believe that you and your brother only use your magic for good, but the world is falling apart around us. You don’t think that maybe the repercussions of your powers have something to do with it? You’re a fool to think that your magic doesn’t have consequences,” she hisses as Bianca, her eyes ablaze.
He returns the look with a fiery gaze that is 100% his character and she struggles to keep her knees from becoming Jello.
“What Brody and I do with our powers isn’t the reason for any of this, we’re fighting it with white magic. We know that what we do comes back to us, not you, not anyone but us. This, all around us, everything going wrong. This is what we’re fighting. We didn’t cause any of it,” he growls.
She’s fuming with intensity now as she takes a step closer to him, their breath mingling, “There’s no white or black magic, don’t you get it? It’s all energy, and you and your brother are so worse for wear you’re both crumbling. You can only take so much before it begins to affect your surroundings next.”
Jacksen reaches up and wipes an imaginary drip of blood from her forehead, the cut a casualty of their combat that supposedly happened in the prior scene. “You should talk, you look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet,” he replies snidely.
Aura gets a rush of excitement and unpredictably, does a perfectly believable and unscripted stage slap across his sculpted cheek. The guys all clap, including Jameson, and Jacksen just stares, in complete awe of her. There was a little dialogue left, but apparently they don’t need to hear it. They’re sold.
After Aura’s shaken the hand of just about everyone at Constellation Studios, Jacksen begins to casually walk her out to her car. She tries to remember how words are formed or expressed, for that matter, now that they’re alone.
“I’m so glad you could come in today, Aura,” he says, stopping at the studio’s valet waiting area.
All she can’t think of to say is, “I didn’t use a valet.”
“Oh. No?”
“Can’t necessarily trust them with my baby,” she grins and keeps walking, “I self park at any opportunity.” He follows with eyes aglow and has to a jog a second to catch up, their long legs finally in step with one another.
“You know,” he says sincerely, “You ARE Bianca, Aura. You know that right?”
She continues playing it coy, as it’s definitely working to keep her from turning to a pool of fangirl goo. When she makes it to the Corvette she turns to casually lean up against it, “Is that so?” A puff of wind blows a wisp of her hair onto her cheek, like it was scripted.
“You were fantastic. You’re it for me. I mean, Blais
e. Bianca, you’re it for Bianca.” Jacksen unconsciously brushes his fingers against her perfectly formed cheekbone, tucking the wayward lock behind her ear. Aura’s left with a residual tingle on the side of her face.
“And is this flattery in your job description, along with walking all potential female co-stars to their cars?”
“Well, no. I mean, for one thing, they usually use the valet. Kidding, I rarely even read with people auditioning. But this, it has to be just right.”
She tilts her head back towards the studio and asks, “And that? It was just right?”
Jacksen smiles sheepishly and nods, “You know it was.”
He looks in her eyes as if he’s ready to offer her the world. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”
“My dad’s a musician,” she answers on auto. Stop doing that with him. He’s not a reporter, he deserves more than a rehearsed line. He deserves all of you.
“Really? Mine too. I mean, casually. His Garth Brooks covers were a big hit in my house back in the day,” he laughs and she makes a grimace.
“What?” Jacksen raises a brow, “Oh don’t tell me you don’t like country?”
She respectfully shakes her head no and adds, “I’m just glad you left your twang back in Texas.”
“I’m just glad you showed up today,” he counters flirtatiously.
“I don’t think you could’ve stopped me,” she smirks.
“I’ll admit, I was a little worried you wouldn’t. I was concerned this whole thing would be, I don’t know. Beneath you or something.”
“Jacksen, you really think I’m that type of girl? That’d I’d look down on the Protectors, feel above it because I’m on the network?”
“No, no,” he sincerely backtracks. “I don’t. At all. I mean, I think you’re the polar opposite of that girl. That’s why I asked you to come here,” he apologizes, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You were on a billboard on my way over here, on the cover of a magazine on the receptionist’s desk on the way in. But you’re so much more than that.”
Chapter Eleven
Her foot is hard on the gas and nothing can curb her elation until, finally, a thick clot of traffic stops her and she frowns until her phone begins to buzz. She looks down, figuring things are slow enough that she can mess with it.
“I’m not supposed to use this in the car!” she squeals into the receiver, not checking to see who’s calling and then, her voice lowered, “I could get arrested!”
“You’re in stopped traffic, you brat! Could you just look to your left?”
“Lacie!” Aura screams, spotting her co-star just one lane over in a white convertible rental. “Why didn’t you say it was you?”
“Why didn’t you look at your screen? Hey, what are you doing now?”
“Nothing! I couldn’t possibly have plans after what just happened to me! I’m surprised I’m still upright, Lace.”
“Why? What happened? Something big? Why didn’t you tell me something big?” Lacie demands, while Aura kicks herself. She’d only told Lex, she’d been so wrapped up, and is still getting used to having so many confidants to tell things to. It can be kind of exhausting, she muses. She tries to remember how Lacie would typically respond to something like this and can’t. The excitement just bubbles from her and she shouts into the receiver, “Oh, nothing. Just an audition with the man of my dreams for a movie version of my favorite thing in existence!”
Lacie screams so loud that the sound flies out of her car and across traffic. “Jacksen! Protectors movie! No f’ing way, what?!”
“I know, right?!” Aura giggles.
“No. Like. No. Way. What?” Lacie’s cranes her neck and looks back at Aura, baffled.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, it happened so fast.”
“Ohmygod. Tell me, no. No. Don’t tell me, not on the phone. We need to have lunch like right now.”
“Yes, lunch, sounds amazing but,” she sets down the phone, strips off her jacket, and picks the phone back up, “I’m sweating my ass off, Lace. You don’t have a little sundress in your trunk I could squeeze into, do you?”
“I couldn’t dream to have anything that’d fit your curves Aur, hashtag I wish! Now, we could get you something cooler to wear and then go to lunch, god, what were you thinking with that leather? It’s not the city you know, all black doesn’t work here the way it does at home.”
Aura and Lacie run to the first shop they see on Melrose. Aura picks a cream colored, linen and lace little spaghetti strap dress that barely covers her ass and it’s a sigh of relief, if slightly inappropriate for lunch in Beverly Hills.
“I just don’t understand why you’d know about this all weekend, holed up at the house with Alexis, and not call me?” Lacie whines, aggressively sipping her iced tea.
“I just, uh, didn’t want to bother you?” She can tell from one look at her friend that is was the wrong answer entirely. The death glare Lacie shoots Aura causes her to shrink back in her chair.
“I’m sorry, am I not the one who watched every season of the Protectors with you when we filmed ‘The Squad?’ The one who talked you off the Jameson ledge and counseled you through the whole Rowan thing? Is that all so easy to forget?” Lacie goes supersonic and Aura drops her voice in an attempt to calm her.
“What if I told you I, that I’m am having trouble remembering… large chunks of time?” she whispers, while inside she panics about the magnitude of what Lacie has just said. What Rowan thing?
“I’m not dealing with your stupid pranks again, not today Aura,” Lacie’s butt flies off the chair so fast you’d have thought a server had brought her something with gluten in it.
Aura grabs Lacie by the hem of her trouser shorts, roughly pulling her back down into her chair.
“I’m not f-ing with you!” she whisper-screams to her. “I mean, look. What’s your favorite book?”
Lacie’s lower lip juts out.
“See!” Aura yelps. “I can’t sludging remember! You know I would if I could!”
“It’s Wonderland, you know that,” Lacie croons, incredulous.
Ha! The irony. “Well, okay, what if Alice never woke up? What if the rabbit hole wasn’t a dream and she was stuck there?”
“We all know Wonderland was better than reality. Weirder, sure, but Alice could have overcome her fear and ruled the whole kingdom. It could've all been hers, but she woke up.”
“Because waking up is easier,” Aura stares into Lacie’s eyes, begging her to believe it, that she’d truly found out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
“I think I’m gonna be sick.”
When Lacie gets back from the ladies’, stomach emptied, she sits down to find four champagne flutes worth of Kir Royales, “These are all for us?” she asks.
“Alcohol seems to help me remember.” Aura begs, “Please, I need to remember!”
“Uh, I think you’ve got that backwards, babe. Trust me I’ve seen it.”
“Jameson ledge and the Rowan thing? Believe me,” she takes a long drink of her cocktail and then grasps her friend’s hand, “Please, Lacie, I need you to tell me. Pretend I have amnesia, I don’t care. Please.”
Lacie shakes her head and gets up, paces outside the restaurant briefly, and comes back and sits down in defeat. “Fine, let’s say I believe you, you’re having memory lapses. What’s your medical diagnosis?”
“I haven’t actually been to the doctor,” she admits, knowing that ‘time travel to a dreamland that you don’t wake up from’ isn’t exactly a current diagnosis they just give out like Fibromyalgia or Ebola.
“I haven’t told anyone, Lace, except… I may have told Jameson this morning but I-”
“What? Jameson? The you-haven’t-spoken-to-in-years-Jameson?”
“I was so confused,” she admits, “It just felt right, like I could trust him for some reason.”
“Oh, yeah, the guy that slept with you, told you he couldn’t live without you after a week and then promptly marries someone else? Oh
, yeah, like how could I forget. Super trustworthy.” The truth is that Lacie loves Jameson, thinks he’s a sweetheart, gorgeous, and a pretty good actor. But the amount of time she spent listening to Aura whine about the whole situation had soured her view of him, just a little, though she had forgiven them both and continues to be a lover of both Aura and The Protectors to this day.
“Please, pretend I’m a stranger. Tell me exactly how it happened. How was Rowan possibly involved?” Aura practically pours the cocktail into her mouth until it’s just an empty glass, and Lacie begins to rehash the story with every detail that she can remember. She takes a tentative sip from one of the flutes.
“Once upon a time, Whit flew a random girl, fresh out of UCLA, to a beautifully dirty place called New York City, to be in our little indie movie that we had no idea would blow up into a giant hit show on The Network. God, the thought of you not knowing this is just ridiculous. Ok, so yeah, we were all surprised when you brought your high school bestie to join us that first week, but apparently she was visiting you and it just worked out that way. Rowan was sweet, we all liked her. And we all liked you, instantly, but when this slunk went down with you and Jameson, we all found it very difficult not to think of you as the devil incarnate. You had to do a LOT to regain our trust, but Rowan? Shit, she could never trust you again Aur, nothing you did could make it up to her. You’re literally telling me you don’t remember this?”
The foggy recollection feels like an old movie she’d watched before but couldn’t remember all the details. “We were at a rooftop party, I spotted Jameson and I just...ditched everyone, just like that? Left Rowan in a strange city with girls she didn’t know? How could I do that?”
“It wasn’t just you. Jameson was there visiting old friends from high school too, and he left them all in a flash, saw you and just forgot why he was in the city. It was mutually slugged-up, Aur, not exactly that the two of you were possessed but like, instantly infatuated with each other.”
