[Santa Olivia 02] - Saints Astray

by Jacqueline Carey

  “Of course.”

  “And Kate… the band’s name’s going to be prominent, right? Big font? This is all about Kate, right?”

  She gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Yeah, of course!”

  Geordie returned it dubiously. “You’re disturbingly good at this.”

  Pilar smiled, dialing. “Turns out I’m good at all kinds of things.”

  “Ah, fuck me.” Donny stared at the multiple images of Loup while Pilar talked on the phone. “Wish there was a way to make more of you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Loup touched his shoulder lightly. “I really am. This is uncomfortable for me too.”

  He looked hopeful. “You don’t—”

  “No.”

  Donny sighed again and picked up the photo they’d chosen. “You think maybe I could keep this one?”

  “I guess.” Loup eyed him. “You’re not gonna do anything gross with it, are you?”

  “No!” He flushed violently.

  Charlie giggled. “Are too, mate. You’re gonna wank off all over it.”

  “Ew.” She plucked the photo from Donny’s hands. “Okay, I really am sorry, but we’ve got to work together, you know? I don’t want to have to think about that.”

  “He does it anyway,” Charlie informed her.

  “Sod off!” Donny shoved him. They scuffled until Loup parted them forcibly, holding them apart at arm’s length.

  “No fighting,” she said sternly. “No teasing, and no talking about wanking, okay?”

  They agreed reluctantly.

  “Good boys.” Loup let them go.

  “Hey, baby.” Pilar ended her call. “What was that all about?”

  She looked at Donny’s flushed face and felt bad for him. “Nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  They played two sold-out gigs in Melbourne, then went on to a smaller venue in Hobart. There, the demographic skewed noticeably older than teenage girls and the merchandising caught up with them.

  “Selling like hotcakes,” Bill Jones reported backstage. Loup worked the heavy bag without comment. “You’re a full-blown fad, girlie.”

  She slammed her fists into the bag, throwing in a couple of roundhouse kicks for good measure, making the bag teeter on its base. “Good.”

  Jones shrugged. “Enjoy.”

  Kate played.

  Fans rushed the stage.

  Loup picked them up and put them back.

  The fan boards buzzed with rumor and speculation. Randall continued to work on new songs. He played one of them on the bus to Sydney, singing and playing acoustic guitar.

  “It’s called ‘Cages,’ ” he explained.

  The song was about loss and despair, and the cages of fear, paranoia, and hatred that people build. And it was about courage and hope being the keys to unlock those prisons. The melody wed the upbeat pop harmonies that Kate was known for with the harder, driving sound the band was evolving, contrasting with the lyrics in unexpected ways.

  It was a really good song.

  “Wow,” Pilar said softly when he finished. “Wow.”

  Randall smiled at her. “You like it?”

  “Yeah, a lot.”

  “It’ll sound real different when we’re done. Charlie’s working on a bass line that’ll take it to the next level. But you get the idea.”

  “I think it’s pretty amazing,” Loup offered.

  “Thanks.” He turned his smile on her, and it was genuine and sincere without a trace of guile. “You inspired it, the both of you. I’m glad you like it.”

  “You’ve got some interesting stuff going on behind all that hair, Randall,” Pilar said.

  He laughed. “Yeah, well… you’re a little surprising in your own right, eh? How many people figure out you’re more than just a pretty face and a world-class set of tits?”

  “Not many,” she acknowledged. “But it took me a while to figure it out myself.”

  “I knew,” Loup said.

  Pilar nudged her. “You don’t have to be all smug about it.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Yeah, you are.” Her voice softened. “But I forgive you.”

  “Oh, go on,” Donny said morbidly. “Kiss her. You know you want to. Everyone on the bus can tell when you do. Everyone on the fucking planet can tell.”

  “Hey!” Pilar said indignantly. “I work very hard at being professional.”

  Charlie snickered.

  “I do!”

  “And you do a very good job,” Randall said in a diplomatic tone. “But Donny’s right. Anyway, we don’t mind, do we?” he asked the bus at large.

  A chorus of “No!” answered.

  “Oh, fine.” Pilar kissed Loup.

  The bus applauded.

  Donny sighed.

  They played a sold-out gig at a major stadium in Sydney and had so many stage rushers that Bill Jones had to double up on onstage security.

  “She’s become a fucking liability!” he railed at Geordie afterward. “They’re coming here just to try to get past her!”

  Kate’s manager folded his arms. “And do they?”

  “Not yet, no. But this is ridiculous.”

  Geordie shrugged. “A draw’s a draw. Right now, she’s a big one.”

  In the hotel room, Loup rolled her shoulders and tipped her head from side to side, cracking her neck. “Fuck,” she murmured. “I’m tired.”

  “Sorry, baby.” Pilar knelt behind her, rubbing her shoulders. “Does that help?”

  “Yeah. That’s nice, thanks. It’s not that hard lifting them, it’s actually lowering them. Puts a weird strain on my back and neck.”

  Pilar kissed the back of her neck. “Loup, you don’t have to be out there every night.”

  “Yeah, I kind of do.” She turned, her gaze searching Pilar’s face. “I mean, we started this. We made it a thing. There hasn’t been any news from the States. It’s like nothing’s happening. And you said that journalist wanted me there at the interview tomorrow? From Rolling Stone?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, it’s a start, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Pilar looked worried. “But it’s not worth it if you burn yourself out, baby. I don’t think you’re getting enough to eat, and you’re not meditating like Christophe showed you. You skipped the last two days.”

  “Did I really?”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll make up for it. I’ll do it right now.” Loup closed her eyes and sank deep into herself, thinking slow thoughts. Twenty minutes later, a knock at the door and the smell of charbroiled beef tugged her out of it. She sniffed the air. “Hamburgers? The really good, expensive kind?”

  Pilar gave her a wicked smile. “You really are a little animal, aren’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Eat.” Pilar shoved a burger at her.

  Loup ate, ravenous.

  “I thought so. Loup, we need to talk about what you’re going to say at the interview tomorrow. How much you’re going to tell them, you know?”

  “Yeah, I was thinking about that.” She took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Do you remember that article I used to have? The one my mother kept about the Lost Boys?”

  “An army of ravening wolf-men poised at America’s back door,” Pilar said. “Yeah, I remember. But Jaime always said that was mostly bullshit.”

  “It was.” Loup ate a few fries. “But there was like a kernel of truth in it. Maybe just enough, but not too much. For all anyone knows, some of the original kin could have escaped to Canada. Do you think you could get a copy?”

  “Do you remember what paper it was in?”

  “The Weekly World News.”

  “Sure.” She flipped on her Dataphone. “It’s in the archive. I just need to go to the business center to print a copy first thing in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Pilar.”

  “Sure.”

  “No, I mean for taking care of me.” Loup smiled at her. “You w
ere right; I really needed to slow down a little. And I needed food. I feel a lot better.”

  “Good.” Pilar kissed her cheek. “It’s all this travel and freaky hours. And I’ve been busy with this assistant shit. I’ll try to pay better attention and make sure you don’t get too burned out.”

  “Thanks.”

  She shook her head fondly. “You know, half the people in the world would expect it and the other half would get annoyed at me for fussing. You, you’re just sweet.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Very.” Pilar pointed at the bathroom door. “Now go wash off the icky fan-sweat, then go to bed. And I mean to sleep.”

  Loup eyed her. “You sure? I’m really feeling a lot better.”

  “I’m being nurturing. Don’t tempt me.”

  “Okay, okay!”

  The following day, a sharp-witted young journalist named Kate Dunbar from Rolling Stone Australia interviewed the band in their suite.

  “Kate on Kate,” she said crisply. “That’s what we’re calling the feature.”

  Charlie gave her a friendly leer. “I like the sound of it.”

  “Right.” She gave him a piercing look over the top of stylish reading glasses. “Let’s get to it, shall we? Kate the band is known for radio-friendly bubblegum pop, but rumor has it you’re trying out some more mature fare on this tour. Tell me about it.”

  They deferred to Randall, who rambled on at length and with occasional eloquence. Loup leaned against the wall in her security togs, arms folded.

  Kate Dunbar scribbled efficiently. “Fans coming of age, hmm. You think they’re ready to embrace the darker side of Kate?”

  “It’s not darker, exactly.” Randall pushed his bangs back. “It’s deeper.”

  She played a clip of concert footage on her Dataphone. “A harder sound, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Are you seeing a shift in your fan base?”

  He glanced at Loup and smiled. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s get some background.” Kate Dunbar consulted her notes. “So you all grew up as friends together in a working-class neighborhood…”

  For the next hour, she excavated colorful anecdotes about their boyhood and life on the road touring, the kind of material their traditional fan base adored. Then she changed the subject.

  “So.” Her sharp gaze pinned Loup. “You.”

  “Me?”

  Kate Dunbar nodded. “According to my research, you’re either a human GMO, a werewolf, a clever hoax, a publicity stunt, the actual Kate who inspired the band’s name, or some combination of the above. Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  The journalist looked taken aback. “What do you mean, can’t?”

  “It’s complicated.” Loup shrugged and pulled a folded copy of the Lost Boys article out of her waistband and handed it over. “All I can tell you is that one of these guys was my father.”

  She scanned the article. “This is ridiculous.”

  Loup smiled. “You think?”

  “I do.” Kate Dunbar whipped off her reading glasses and rose. “And I don’t intend to play along—” She blinked, startled, as Loup crossed the room with inhuman speed, hands on her shoulders urging her gently and inexorably to retake her seat. “Oh!” The journalist stared. “You’re…”

  “Not a hoax,” Loup said softly.

  “No.” She swallowed visibly. “There’s a story here, isn’t there?”

  “Yeah,” Randall answered, tossing his bangs. “But it’s not one we’re ready to tell yet, is it, lads?”

  They shook their heads.

  Kate Dunbar was still staring at Loup. “You are a GMO. There are fairly well-substantiated rumors in North America and actual documented cases in Mexico, although none from a source willing to go on record. I know, I looked into it.”

  “Tell her she oughta look into the other thing,” Charlie suggested to Loup. “Those… whaddya call ’em? Outposts?”

  Loup winced, and Pilar put her face in her hands.

  “Charlie!” Randall threw an empty beer can at him. “Shut it!”

  Kate Dunbar’s gaze flicked back and forth between them. “Is that about those internment camps along the southern border of the U.S.? They were in the news a while ago.”

  “I can’t say anything about that,” Loup said.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Won’t.”

  “Can you give me a name? Date of birth? Hometown?” the journalist pressed her. Loup shook her head.

  “Our Mystery Girl’s gotta stay a mystery for a while. It’s for her own good.” Randall gave her his yearning look. “You’re not gonna kill the story because of it, are you?”

  “Hardly.” The journalist summoned her resolve. “All right, this has been very interesting.” She stood tentatively. Loup stepped back and let her. “I’d like…” She licked lips gone dry. “I suspect this may be a bigger story than I reckoned. If I’m right, we might be talking a cover story. The band’s scheduled to do a photo shoot in the warehouse district this afternoon. I’d like you to be in it.”

  “If it’s okay with the band.”

  Randall grinned. “Hell, yeah!”

  The very collected Kate Dunbar left the suite in a daze. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Nice work.” Geordie congratulated them all around. “Well played!”

  “It’s not a game, man,” Donny objected.

  “Even so.”

  “It’s really not,” Pilar murmured. “You guys do realize this could get political, don’t you?”

  “Geemo rights!” Charlie thrust his fist into the air. “Fight the power!”

  “I’m serious! Charlie, you shouldn’t have said anything about Outpost. You could put Loup in a lot of danger.”

  He looked sheepish. “Sorry.”

  “This is serious stuff, okay?” Pilar said. “It’s not just about having a gimmick.”

  “We know.” Randall tossed his bangs. “Like you say, I’m not stupid, eh? After hearing your story, I figured there’s no way you and Loup would let us exploit her for PR if you weren’t planning on exploiting us right back. It’s cool. We’re down with the fight.”

  “Excuse me?” Geordie Davies looked from one band member to the next. “Fight? What fight?”

  “Freedom.”

  “Whose bloody freedom?”

  “Theirs.” He pointed at Loup and Pilar. “Geemos in America. All those poor sods stuck in… whaddya call ’em? Outposts?”

  “Yeah,” Loup said.

  “Oh, no.” Geordie was shaking his head. “Oh, no, no, no! I don’t know what this is all about, lads, but it is not cool and we are not down with the fight.”

  “Yeah, we are,” Donny said.

  “You’re a fucking drummer in a fucking pop band!”

  “C’mon, Geordie, man.” Randall’s voice took on a coaxing tone. “We can be crusaders for social justice. How many times have we talked about how to take the next step? Used to be bands did this kind of thing all the time. This is it. This can be our thing. It’s our cause. It makes us relevant.”

  Geordie glowered at him. “You want to be a big fucking hero, Rand? That it?”

  He thought about it and smiled. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Oh, fuck me!”

  They argued for a while longer, but it was obvious that the band was adamant and this was an argument their manager was going to lose.

  “It’s official,” Pilar whispered in Loup’s ear. “The Loup Garron effect is in full force.”

  “I guess so.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  After a final sold-out gig in Brisbane, the band flew to Osaka.

  “Ever been to Japan?” Donny asked Loup on the airplane, leaning forward in his seat.

  She laughed. “No.”

  “You’ll like it,” he assured her. “The fans are different. Way more polite. Bet we won’t have any stage rushers.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a break from it.”

  “Th
is is so weird,” Pilar murmured. “We’re gonna be, like, all the way on the other side of the world, baby.”

  “We already are,” Loup reminded her.

  “Yeah, but it didn’t seem like it. I mean, they speak English in Australia. This is gonna be way different.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think we’re going to see much more than the hotel room and the concert venue.”

  “You will in Tokyo,” Donny offered. “We’ve got back-to-back gigs at the Budokan and a whole day to recover before we fly back.”

  “A whole day.” Pilar nudged Loup.

  “I’ll take it.”

  They had an uneventful flight followed by a long wait in the immigration line. All the agents wore surgical face masks. Loup watched them perform a strange procedure on the travelers in line ahead of them, inserting their index fingers into a small handheld device.

  “What the hell?”

  “Blood test,” Pilar said. “Checking for flu virus. I read about it. Guess they did it everywhere for a while. They’re still being extra careful in Japan. They were hit hard because the population’s so dense.”

  “Huh.” Loup smiled tiredly at her. “You’re a wealth of information.”

  “I try.”

  Their Japanese liaison met them on the far side of customs and immigration and whisked them in short order to a waiting hotel.

  “Right.” Geordie Davies glanced at his sleepy-eyed flock and consulted his watch. “Sound check at six. Let’s try to get a little shut-eye, shall we?”

  In the hotel room, Loup flung herself on the bed. “Told you.”

  “We could go out,” Pilar said. “Unless you’d rather sleep.”

  “Does it involve food?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay.” She bounced up, suddenly more energetic. “I’m in.”

  Outside, they walked the teeming streets. Pilar consulted the GPS system on her Dataphone with dubious results, while Loup gazed all around at the colorful signage and unfamiliar characters, listening to a rush of language that was wholly unfamiliar. A smiling young woman in a T-shirt that said FRISK! addressed her.

  “Sorry?”

  “Please to try?” The young woman handed her a tiny can of soft drink labeled FRISK from a tray slung around her neck. “Frisk is frisky!”

  “Sure, thanks.” Loup tried it. “Not bad.”