The sound system kicked on, playing Killer Valentine’s older songs and a few songs from other hard rock bands.
Half an hour until show time.
Georgie asked, “Do you have appearances tonight?”
“Two,” Xan said, checking his phone. “One seems to have cancelled.”
“Oops. Sorry.” She wasn’t.
He shook his head. “I can’t control everything.”
As the voices in the arena outside the tent rose to a scream and the thundering boots condensed into a rhythmic stomp, Boris finished Xan’s hair and stage make-up. Xan flung on a black frock coat and went to meet the fans. He was already twitching with eagerness, almost shaking to get out there.
Georgie followed him through the dim tunnel, flickering neon lights sketching the corners of the ceiling, toward the stage.
She touched his arm just to tell him to break a leg or whatever. Xan grabbed her with one arm around her waist, dragged her to his chest, and kissed her roughly, his lips claiming hers for one last instant before he marched on stage.
Yeah, that was Xan. Everything that was Alex had burned away.
The rest of the band was already on stage, and the crowd roared as Xan trotted on. The arena may have been small, but the crowd acted huge, swarming and shrieking and screaming the songs back to them. Xan skipped his first set break, staying on the stage and driving the crowd into a frenzy during Tryp’s drum solo and Cadell’s guitar bridge.
Georgie asked Jonas, “Is that common?”
“No,” Jonas replied, texting madly on his phone. “His voice needs that break.”
Boris tapped her arm. “Honey, I’m getting a cold or something, so I’m going to head back to the hotel at half-time. Can I do your disguise now?”
“Sure, Borry. Are you okay? I can do my own make-up.”
“Not as well as I can. Come on. I’ll do a simple updo, but you need proper stage cosmetics for those cameras.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Just make sure you get it all off at night. That goop will clog your pores. Let’s go.”
Boris primped and fussed over her, but he wasn’t feeling well and had her done quickly. She didn’t look like herself, which was the whole point.
Just before he left, he got in one final swipe: “You would look so very different if we gave you a pixie cut.”
“Keep your scissors away from me, you butcher.”
“At least highlights?”
Georgie had been hanging out with rockers for a while. “Maybe highlights, when you feel better.”
“I’ll get your long hair, my pretty, and your little dog, too.” But he sounded tired, and Georgie sent him off to the hotel and bed.
The mid-show break arrived, and the whole band trotted off the stage, Xan last. He took one look at her swept-back hair and smoky-eye make-up with glittering rouge on her cheekbones and caught her by the hand, hurrying to his tent, where he shoved her onto the rickety make-up counter and pressed himself between her legs, kissing her hard, his hands everywhere. He stripped his coat off and dropped it to the floor at his feet, still kissing her.
When he finally let her breathe, she laughed, “Wow, Xan. Good show?” He breathed warm whiskey into her mouth, and the scent of lemon cologne and testosterone wafted around her.
“Great show.” He grabbed her ass and dragged her closer to him. “Wait until I get you back to the hotel.”
His jeans pressed between her legs. The skirt of yet another new dress hiked up around her legs, and she could feel his arousal against her thigh. “Don’t you have to keep your voice warm or something?”
He ducked his head to her neck, dragging his lips and teeth from her shoulder and up her skin to behind her earlobe, and started to hum that song that he had never found the words for, “Scrambled Eggs.” The melody started deep but rose with triumph. His breath vibrated against her throat, his lips stroking her skin. In places, the song sounded almost like a hymn with the way that the music soared to the highest notes.
Xan had drawn her closer to him, and warmth rolled over her arms.
“You only have a few minutes,” she whispered, even though her arms were tight around his neck and her head, thrown back.
“I’ll be thinking about you the whole time,” he said. “I want to cancel all these damn appearances and take you back to the hotel.”
“I double-dog dare you.”
He chuckled against her throat. “But I’m your demon lover, so I’ll make you wait.” He pulled back, his lips swollen and his dark eyes, glazed. “It’s time. Walk with me to the stage.”
Georgie slid off the counter and Xan steadied her because her legs wobbled on the floor. She laughed, her breath a giggly gasp in her throat. “I guess I’m looking forward to going back to the hotel, too.”
Xan pushed the tent flap away from the opening. “That’s odd.”
Georgie walked out beside him, looking at the dark stage. “Shouldn’t Tryp be out there by now?”
The crowd was still milling around the dim auditorium, though the house lights were at half, which was the two-minute warning for the audience to return to their seats.
A black-suited security guy, one of the new ones, approached. He muttered, “Mr. Valentine, there’s been a problem.”
Xan glanced at the dark stage and the crowd boiling below the barricades. “The show is about to start. Why isn’t Tryp on stage?”
“Which one is he,” the big guy glanced at Georgie, standing with her hands on her hips, “sir?”
“The drummer, Tryp, should already have taken the stage. Black hair. Tall kid. The show should be starting now.”
“You need to come with me, sir. There’s been an incident.” His strong French accent slid over his speech, sounding like he put Ss and Zs into his words.
Xan asked, “What happened?”
“You need to see.”
The burly guy led them to another white tent. Black, scorched stripes on the canvas marked the tent as Rade and Grayson’s. Georgie had heard the stories about the exploding bong and the red-hot heroin spoon igniting the supposedly flame-proof fabric.
Xan threw back the tent flap and strode in. Georgie caught it and followed him.
Rade and Grayson lay on the carpeted floor of the tent. Their heads flopped back and forth like they were dreaming. Rade was curled into a fetal position again, and rubber tubing snaked over Grayson’s leg, a livid bruise around his ankle where he had tied it off to get to the veins on the top of his foot.
Xan surveyed the situation, pale, and he ran one shaking hand over the top of his head and down the ponytail in back. “Well, fuck me.”
He crouched, checking first Grayson’s pulse, then Rade’s. His dark eyes creased at the corners as his eyes narrowed with anger. “Should we call an ambulance?”
“I don’t think so,” Jonas said. “I’ll get Yvonne in here to watch them. She’s an EMT,” he told Georgie. “They’re just stoned. Really damn stoned. I hate these guys.”
Xan stood. “Make sure she’s got the med kit handy.”
Jonas pulled a white duffel marked with a red cross from a trunk. “I had a special one made up for their tent. All kinds of antidotes in here.”
Georgie took Xan’s hand. He gripped her fingers almost too hard, but she felt like he was holding on, not like he was trying to hurt her.
Xan asked, “How long have they been like this?”
Jonas stood, wiping his hands on his pants. “We just found them.”
“Gentlemen?” Xan asked the security guards.
The bigger of the two very large men replied, “After we retrieved them from the stage, we patted them down and searched their bags. Because they were abusive, we took them to this tent, searched the premises, and left them here.”
“There’s no use starting a blame game,” Xan said. He loosened his grip on Georgie’s hand, stretching his fingers. “I want a post-mortem on how this happened, but we need a stronger plan for the rest of the month. Where are Tr
yp and Cadell?”
“On their way to this side of the stage,” Jonas said. “We just had the roadies tell them to come over.”
Their tents were on the other side of the stage this week. The tunnels behind the stage wound back behind the technical rooms, a long walk.
Xan gripped Georgie’s cold fingers and led her outside the tent. “We need to discuss our options.”
“Don’t you have to cancel?” Georgie asked, trailing behind Xan as he led her around the tent to a dark corner. “Don’t you need Rade and Grayson to play the songs?”
Xan spun Georgie and cornered her against the cold, cement wall.
On the other side of the tent, beyond the stage, the crowd chanted and stomped a jarring, adamant beat.
Xan bent his head and said, “I need you.”
“Jesus, Xan! Now?” She glanced around the dark, dusty backstage for roadies or house techs who might see them screwing against a wall. She was pretty hot from necking in his tent, but seeing Rade and Grayson stoned out of their minds had taken the edge off.
Xan’s voice dropped still further, and the faint scent of whiskey floated on his breath. “I need you to play the keyboards for the second set.”
Horror slammed her. “Oh, hell no!”
Air fled and she couldn’t suck any in.
She gestured to the mob. “All those people! There might be—”
Her stomach cramped and threatened to yank her inside out.
The stage behind Xan dimmed as she fought for air. “Oh, God no! I can’t, I can’t!”
Xan wrapped his arms around her. “Breathe.”
“No, no. I can’t. They’re all out there and I can’t.” Tremors wracked her arms, and her knees wobbled. “You’re drunk. I can’t.”
“I need you, Georgie. It’s a small venue in Buttfuck, Pennsylvania. No one will recognize you. You’re already in stage make-up. You look beautiful, but a different kind of beautiful.”
“No, Xan. It’s too much.”
“You performed ‘Alwaysland’ at the club a few weeks ago.”
“That was just one song, and in a small club. Not a concert like this.”
“This is just a few songs. I’ll cut the set down to the bones.”
She glanced beyond him, past the tent where Rade and Grayson lay stoned, to the stage. “All those people—”
“I’ll be in front of you. I’ll block you every chance I get.”
“I’m scared. I’m too scared.”
He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, pressing her face against his chest. “I’ll be there with you. You can do this. Georgie, you want to do this. You began to feel the thrill in the club.”
“This is different.” She could already feel them all staring at her.
“All art is communication and what it means to be human. Music can’t exist in isolation. Someone has to hear it or else it’s not music. You have to let it go.”
Just because he made sense didn’t mean she wasn’t freaked out. “I don’t know.”
“Trust me. Be with me on the stage. I’ll keep you safe until we emerge on the other side.”
“You always say that.” Her hands curled into fists on his shirt.
“I have always kept you safe. You can do this.”
“What if I fuck up the show?”
“Anything you play will be an improvement over nothing. Cadell and Tryp will step up. You know the keys I write in. Just fill in the sound with chords, if nothing else. Can you play chords?”
“Of course I can play chords!” she choked out, putting a little force into it. He knew damn well that she could play chords. She had banged out arpeggio scales since she was five.
“That’s all I ask. Be with me on the stage.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. I need you to do this for me. Play the music with me.”
He held her in his arms, maybe to hold her up because she was trembling so much, until Jonas stuck his head around the corner and called, “Xan? Tryp and Cadell are here.”
Xan held onto Georgie’s hand like he thought she might bolt, and that was probably smart of him because the long tunnels that led away from the stage looked pretty damn inviting. Around the side of the tent, near the stage with the trampling crowd, Cadell and Tryp waited.
Georgie, at five feet eleven in her teetering heels, only came to their shoulders. She didn’t often feel like the shrimp in the pot.
Cadell shook his head, his black hair swishing sadly around his chin. “What major fuck-ups.”
Georgie was still shaking like the earth was falling apart under her feet, and Cadell’s voice sounded far away in the darkness.
Tryp ran his hands through his thick curls and asked, “So we’re going to cancel the show, half-way through? Do we give them their money back or just screw them?”
“It’s just a small show,” Jonas said. “You’re overbooked for the Northeast as it is. We’ve got a bigger show in Pittsburgh tomorrow. We can just refund these tickets.”
“No such thing as a small show,” Xan said. “Two thousand people will tweet and blog and hatebook and post vomiting gifs about how we cancelled the show because we don’t give a shit. We’re finishing the show.”
Cadell reared back like Xan had socked him with an uppercut. “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”
“Georgie will sit in on keyboards. I can play bass.”
Cadell, Jonas, and Tryp turned and stared down at her, which was kind of like an oak forest bending to examine her.
Tryp asked, “You play the keyboards?”
“Piano,” she admitted.
“You know our music?” Cadell asked.
“I’ve been working on your oeuvre—”
“Oh, well, if you know our oeuvre,” Cadell mocked.
“—and Xan and I have been working on the new songs.”
Cadell glanced at Xan. “So she’s your mystery co-writer?”
His incredulous tone pissed her off. As if Georgie, who attended Tanglewood for performance and studied with major pianists at Colombia and Yale, wasn’t worthy of his consideration.
“What,” Georgie said, jutting up her chin. “You thought I was just a piece of ass?”
They all looked at Xan with trepidation in their eyes, but Xan had already broken into a grin.
“We didn’t think that,” Cadell said.
“Yeah, you didn’t,” Xan said, “but she’s not.”
“She’ll be okay?” Cadell seemed skeptical.
Seriously! These guys didn’t think she could play their facile, monoharmonic popular music? Cadell was such an egotistical ass. Georgie regretted not calling hotel security on him and having him thrown out of Xan’s room. “I’ll be fine.”
Jonas leaned in, staring hard at Xan. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s the only chance we’ve got,” Xan said. “We can make do without my backup guitar, but we need a bass and keyboards or else it sounds like shit.”
He shook his head. “We should cancel it.”
“We’re not cancelling it,” Xan said. “We’ve cancelled too many shows this tour. Way too fucking many.”
Jonas rolled his eyes and turned away.
Xan laid his hand on Georgie’s back. “She can do it. She’s an excellent musician, just a little performance anxiety.”
Tryp leaned down to Georgie. “You want a shot? I’ve got a flask. Xan always has his, too.”
“No thanks.” Dulling her reaction time sounded like a terrible idea.
Xan said, “She knows the songs, but we are going to pare the set list. She’s just going to try filling in the background with some chords.”
Cadell’s shoulders sagged in relief. “That seems doable. You okay with that?”
Georgie nodded, looking him straight in his pale hazel eyes. Fuck him and his sexist preconceptions.
She could play his elementary, repetitive melodies with one hand, even if that hand had two broken fingers. Hell, he was a guitarist. He
probably couldn’t even read the grand staff. He probably read tablature.
Georgie would show him that she could damn well play.
THE SECOND SET
Georgie
Darkness fogged the stage. Glow-in-the-dark tape frosted the edges of the risers and the marks where the musicians were supposed to stand so that they would be in the spotlights but safely away from the pyrotechnic fire.
Burning spotlights.
Jets of flame.
Smoke like the burning, sulfurous fumes of Hell.
Georgie’s breath caught in her throat.
All the anger and defiance in her whole life couldn’t push air through the fear choking her.
Xan caught her fingers and raised her hand to his lips, kissing the back of her knuckles. “You can do this,” he said. “You were born to do this.”
Air shot down her throat in a stream, and she coughed.
Out in the darkness, Tryp slammed four trash beats on his drums, and the spotlights blasted him with white light like he was engulfed in pale fire.
He played a roll around the drum kit, and Cadell’s guitar sang a keening note above the pounding drums. Spotlights flew over the audience and honed in on Cadell, pinning him to the stage with beams of light.
The crowd screamed for blood or music. Georgie couldn’t tell which.
They wanted her to walk out there, to stand in the lasers frying Tryp and Cadell and in front of the mob screaming a blast wave of sound.
Xan stepped forward, tugging her hand, pulling her even though every nerve in her body was begging her to run the other way.
Yet, she followed him.
Walking onto the stage was like stepping into a roaring tornado built of light. The follow spots blasted her and Xan where they stood. He led her to the keyboards and held her fingers as she stepped up onto the riser, holding her long skirt aside so she wouldn’t step on the diaphanous fabric, tear it off herself, and fall face-first off the stage, probably with her naked legs kicking in the air.
The crowd would laugh at her.
The techs would hate her.
Xan would despise her.
He walked away as she adjusted the office chair to the right height in front of the keyboards.
Wild Thing Page 12
