I remembered the games that had started when I was still in grade school—the gathering of hens that happened every Thursday at lunch time. “You win anything lately?”
“Thirty-one dollars this week.”
“You tell Dad?”
“No, but then he knows.” She laughed, shaking her head. My father’s ability to guess everything that was going on without asking was legend in our house.
“Who knows what?” Gina popped into the kitchen, dressed for the night out. Her long bright blue tunic had two-inch-wide gold ribbon on all the edges. The sleeves formed a gentle puff at the end, the heavy gathering of fabric accenting how tiny her wrists were. The bottom of the shirt came above the middle of her thighs. Below it, the bright blue heels she wore matched the shirt exactly, but the wide expanse of skin from shirt to shoe distracted me.
“Dad—Bunko winnings. Why aren’t you wearing pants?”
My sister shook her head at my ignorance. She’d grown from a tomboy to a modern incarnation of Sophia Lauren while I was in the army. We both inherited mom’s deep brown hair and brown-ish blue eyes, but Gina used blue colored contacts and a straightening iron to look a lot better than I did. As the top stylist at the ritziest day spa in town, she cared about those things, and she never stopped trying to get me to care too. “It’s a mini-dress. Tunics are in now. Don’t you even watch TV?”
“You’re not seriously going out like that, are you?”
Gina rolled her eyes at me and Mom shrugged.
If Mom wasn’t willing to fight the battle, I wasn’t. I leveled my sister with a passive-aggressive apathetic glare. “Fine. Whatever. Just promise me my dress has more fabric.”
That earned me another look. In the end, Gina put me in a halter top with a skirt that ended in fringe around my knee. True to her nature, she dressed me in black. Maybe I looked good in black, the way she promised, but I suspected my little sister liked to outshine me. Still, with the smoky eye makeup and my hair forced into softly falling waves that barely brushed my shoulders, I looked good. She argued the outfit needed a necklace but I insisted my silver hoop earrings and the bright silver bands holding the muscles of my arm in place were enough bling.
When we met up with Crystal, Gina’s best friend, and Jo, I was outvoted. There was talk about heading back to Mom’s place to rummage through Gina’s collection, but Jo put a stop to it. She took her locket—a magical, expensive locket my friend Douglas technically died over—from her neck and put it on me. I’d worn it when I found her, kidnapped by a succubus. I got her to safety. Douglas ended up a vampire and I ended up a PI, so maybe those weren’t bad memories? The opal petals of the rose on the front were lovely. The black background set off the dress and the diamonds around the edge sparkled, but more importantly the necklace’s magic connected me to Jo. The happy buzz of her excitement for the night filled me. I’d share an echo of her memories and experiences as long as it touched me. That last one was the only reason I was willing to wear it.
2
Burgundy and Blues specialized in all wines, not Burgundy. Bottles stacked behind a glass walled wine rack beside a set of stairs heading toward a wine cellar. The handwritten parchment wedged into a wrought-iron holder on the table told me how I could go downstairs and browse hundreds of high-priced bottles. I read through a list, checking out the highlights, but it didn’t mean much to me. I was the kind of girl who drank beer and belched. The people around me acted like they’d never had gas in their life.
And then there were the non-people, the supernatural set seemed to enjoy the atmosphere. I suspected the statistic of one in ten people being a witch was an underestimate in this bar. Vampires stood out – pale skin with the flash of red eyes and sharp teeth Jo’s maman would find gauche. A very large dog lounging on a gold leash was probably actually a werewolf. None of them seemed to be dangerous, unless you could die from pretentiousness.
“Why am I here?” I asked the universe as a sea of over-moneyed vapid people walked in front of me.
“Because Jo wants you to be here and you’re a good friend,” Gina answered and immediately went back to the wine list.
I played with the necklace Jo had lent me and shifted in my borrowed clothes. I stopped when I saw my hands, with their hard edges and complete lack of a manicure. They were more out of place than the werewolf pretending to be a dog. Just my luck that my best friend and my kid sister had the same taste in bars.
We ordered glasses. I chugged mine; Gina and Crystal sipped, completely relaxed. Crystal wore a tunic dress like Gina’s, the light pink flowing fabric contrasting perfectly with her dark skin. The two of them blended perfectly with the crowd—a collection of fancy dressers along with a few Hollywood types but that was to be expected in LA. I thought I recognized an actor whose last action film won the hearts of America, if not the praise of critics. He caught me staring and I smiled, a little embarrassed. A few minutes later, a bottle of wine appeared—a red, the waiter told me. He went on to explain about oak and reminiscent of this or that but I was more impressed when he said, “From the gentleman.”
I lifted my glass to the action hero, who smiled and lifted his in return. The warm flavor filled my mouth, along with the tinge of alcohol promising I’d relax soon. Maybe, if I could channel Jo, I could get into this. I brushed her locket with my fingertips. It didn’t connect us telepathically or anything but it reminded me of her, of the way she carried herself and seduced. I did my best to put that in practice as the lights went down. Every eye in the room turned toward the stage. There, in a bubble of light, my friend began to sing.
Jo sang the blues like she was seventy years old, beaten down, and poorer than dirt. She sang the blues like a woman who’d had her heart broken a thousand times. The song said she was trapped in a loveless marriage, with no way out to the man she really wanted, but with the sparkle of stage lights on her blonde hair and her hands around the microphone all I could feel was lust. The listeners wanted her, or they wanted to be her. I sat captivated. I’d heard her voice before, singing old French songs for her mother, but they didn’t have this power. They didn’t transport someone the way the blues did.
Her hair tumbled down between her shoulder blades in a mess of tight ringlets. She was wearing navy blue, a long sheath dress that covered her like paint and wide silk straps that made an ‘x’ over her chest but left her arms and shoulders bare. Jo moved her body in a sinuous rhythm as she sang, pleading with the audience. She didn’t need to—she had them, and they’d give her anything she wanted. Her hands drifted up and down the microphone stand, fingers wide open, the tips painted a dark blue like her dress. She closed her eyes and swayed with the song, a perfect picture of the blues.
One song to the next until the set was done, and then the action hero came over to drink the last glass of the bottle he’d bought. Crystal and Gina fawned over him, but I sat, worried about Jo. I’d heard something in the music that was more than just a song. She might not have the blues the way the person who wrote the song did, but something was going on with her.
“Are you okay out there?” I wondered, fingering the necklace. A pleasant vibe came back to me—not overly happy, not depressed; maybe a little morose, resigned. I worked at sending something back to her. I couldn’t project, not really, but the necklace was magic so it was worth a try. Unfortunately, Mr. Movie Star noticed it. I was dragged into the conversation before I could see how my magic had worked.
“Where’d you get those?” He pointed to the thin bands of metal that made my nerves work through the composite tissue.
“Turkey. Long story, though. Not the best story.” I shrugged.
“I’ll bet it’s pretty good.” His smile was worth a million bucks, or at least that’s what movie producers paid for it. I wouldn’t have given him a dime. I had a nice steady relationship going on, one where I didn’t have to explain things like my arm, my leg, or the baggage inside my head.
“Ahh, it’s not that good. Not like your last movie,” Gi
na cooed.
And just like that, she took over the conversation. I’d never competed with my sister for men. She was five years younger than me and hadn’t been into dating when I’d left for the war. Now, the way she tried to turn his head seemed almost comical. Jeremy Steel might be a hot number around town and he might be my sister’s dream guy but twenty-inch biceps didn’t do much for me. Sadly, there wasn’t a good way to say that. Jeremy kept coming back to me, kept trying to include me in the conversation.
Until Jo walked up. Actually, in public, she didn’t walk like the rest of us. Jo glided over the floor, her dress skimming her toes, dark blue silk tight against her body.
“Move over sweetness. Let me sit next to my girl.” Jo’s smile probably made Jeremy think we were an item. It helped that she got close to me in the little booth, completely ignoring him. “What did you think?”
“I thought it was amazing!” Jeremy responded.
She gave him a smile as weak as tap water, then looked back at me. “What about you?”
“Better than the French stuff, but you sounded sad to me.”
“It’s the blues—she’s supposed to sound sad.” Gina rolled her eyes at my ignorance.
“Right, my mistake. Are you thirsty? ’Cause we’re out.” I made a display of tipping the wine bottle when I knew Jo couldn’t drink it. My act worked. Jeremy took Gina and Crystal down to the cellar to find something good, leaving the two of us alone.
“Who’s he?” Jo asked the minute they were out of earshot.
“Movie star. Don’t you know him?”
“Eh.” She shrugged. “Not a huge movie fan.”
“So about why you’re sad?”
“Most people assume it’s just the song.”
“I know better. LaRue wouldn’t leave you in a relationship you didn’t want—hell, he wouldn’t leave you period. You don’t have anything in common with those numbers.”
“Oh, it’s stupid really.” Her eyes tracked something across the room. “One of the waitresses is pregnant. They’re talking about a baby shower. I never had one. I mean they just didn’t exist back then. Now it’s not like I’m going to have one.”
“Oh.” I let out my breath. Longing for a life you’d never get wasn’t new to me.
“Stupid. Mindlessly stupid.” She shook her head.
“But it’s not like there’s anything you can do about it,” I said, as much to her as to myself.
“Not me, but you could… Sure you aren’t ready to settle down and pop out a kid for me to play with?”
I gave her a look that could sour milk and she burst into laughter.
“Oh God, if you could see your face,” she managed between giggles.
“That wasn’t funny.” I tried to say it with a straight face but Jo’s laughter was contagious.
“It was hilarious.” She barely stifled the last of her laughter as the rest of our group came back with a bottle of wine.
“What’s so funny, pretty lady?” Jeremy turned on the charm.
“Nothing Elisabeth wants me to share—that’s for sure. What did you get?” She made a big display of talking about the wine and then nixing it for a drink of her own. She went off to the bar and I watched Gina flirt. She was an expert at it, but Jeremy thwarted her efforts by including Crystal and me in the conversation.
“Are you two…close?” He tilted his head toward Jo standing at the bar.
“Best friends, I used to work with her husband.” I tried to put thoughts of us as a couple to rest and squash any chances that he would hit on her all at once.
“She looks awful young to be married.”
“She’s not.”
“Looks can be deceiving that way,” he said, his voice hinting at bitterness.
“Really, how old do I look?” Gina pulled his attention back to her.
“Wanna escape backstage with me?” Jo whispered in my ear from across the room. It was her favorite vampire trick and the only one I tolerated. I hesitated for a split second about leaving Gina with an older, more experienced guy and then took Jo up on her offer.
“Why the blues?” I sat on a couch whose better days were probably a decade before I was born. Still, I relaxed into the comfortably worn brown and orange nubby plaid.
“There’s a power in it. It takes something to lay your troubles down in front of the world, to recognize you can’t hide things away until they’re solved with no one the wiser.”
She was right but I suspected there was something more. “And I’ll bet your mother hates it.”
“That she does. Maman’s views on society are better left unsaid.”
“Really? I always figured being that old, she was above that sort of thing.”
Jo’s mother was the strongest vampire in our city. She called herself the queen. Jo was putting on a set of glittering fake eyelashes while we talked. From the audience, I hadn’t realized the lashes were there. Here they seemed horribly obvious.
“Above racial prejudice, sure. Maman doesn’t care about that, but class distinctions though, oh boy you do not want to go there.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
She put on lipstick, blotting her lips together before she opened them with a pop. “Nope. Intermixed maybe, but not at all the same.” She considered a different color, nixed it, and grabbed the lip liner. Her hand was steady artfully drawing around her heart shaped lips making them fuller. “So tell me about Mr. Man out there. Should Ted be worried?”
I laughed and one of the other performers glared at me.
“Sorry,” I offered, but the woman stormed by with an angry look. Jo made a face that set me off laughing again.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she said drolly.
“A definite no. First, because Ted is hot. Actually no, strike that. First, because he gets me. He totally gets where I’ve been and how I think. Second, because he’s hot. Something tells me Hollywood A-list actor Jeremy Steel wouldn’t know the first thing about war or having nightmares. I don’t want to be the one to teach him.”
“So Gina can have him?”
“You noticed that, huh?”
“Me, the bartenders, the astronauts on the space station—girl is nothing if not obvious.”
I shook my head, not sure how to respond. Thankfully the flashing of a light saved me and I watched Jo’s second set from behind the curtain. It didn’t lose any of its power when seen in profile. Unfortunately, Jo sang more for the love of it than for money, so two sets and she was done. We wandered out to the main area after she’d taken off her stage makeup.
We found Gina cuddled up closer to Jeremy than she cuddled her pillow at night. She wasn’t going to let him go until she had to. Crystal hooked up with a friend of his, another actor whose name I didn’t know. Together, they looked like the cover of a magazine about the young and sexy in Hollywood. I lasted all of five minutes before Jo picked up on my mood and offered me a ride home. I was beyond grateful.
We hit traffic but the two of us could talk about anything and nothing for hours, the way most friends did. Before I realized it, we’d arrived at my place, Jo standing politely to the side while I fussed with the locks.
She knew I hadn’t let people tour the upstairs yet. Ted had seen it, done the walkthrough with me before the place had really been mine, but people in general didn’t get to see it. I didn’t want to hear their opinions; I wanted to keep this place safe, away from people. But Jo wasn’t like the other people I knew. She’d been turned right around 1850, from what I could guess. Her classic beauty and youth were never going to change. She’d always look just about seventeen, and always act like the world was a safer, saner place. I liked that about her. Her eternal optimism meant she’d see the happy possibilities in my wide open space, not the emptiness. That was why I was willing to invite her in.
“You don’t have a bed.” So much for happy possibilities. Jo’s face made it clear she thought I was nuts.
“Not enough money yet. I’ve got office stuf
f because clients need to see it. I’ll buy the rest when the cash comes.”
“Seriously? You’re going to live like this—no bed, nothing?”
I swallowed a wise crack about how her kind slept in coffins and nodded.
“You want my old stuff?”
“What?”
“From my apartment? Now that Jean-Laurent and Maman are getting along, I can live with him, so the bed, the rest of it, it’s all up for grabs. “
“You’re just going to give me an entire apartment’s worth of furniture?”
“Pretty much.” She paused for a second. “Except the kitchen. I never got any kitchen stuff.”
“Right.” I nodded, trying again to wrap my head around how vampires lived.
“So, you want it?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Great. I’ll bring the stuff by tomorrow night.” She took a long look around the empty space. “It must be weird, living on your own, owning your own business. Scary and exciting at the same time.”
“You’ve never done it, have you?”
“Nope.” Jo shook her head. “With Maman or Jean-Laurent, my mother or my husband, never on my own.” She sounded a little wistful.
“I’d offer you a spot as a roommate but that’d pretty much ruin it wouldn’t it?”
“Pretty much. Besides, I don’t think I could safely live on my own, you know?”
I knew. Not too long ago Jo had been kidnapped by a succubus and kept, against her will, fed off like a cow for almost three weeks. Finding her had started our friendship, and though it was too soon for me to say something about it, I thought she should have gone into therapy over the whole experience. Instead, her mother and her husband had killed her captor, slowly, while she’d watched. I guess vampires weren’t like other people at all.
3
I slept late on Friday, then dressed in jeans and white T-shirt to blend in and took my camera to LA. Dan, the maybe-cheating movie producer, spent the morning at a coffee shop, and the rest of his day at work. At least I assumed as much; I gave up on anything exciting happening after I tailed him to and from a business lunch.
Hollywood Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective Page 2
