Black Lilith: Book One (Black Lilith #1)

by Hazel Jacobs

  “Thank you,” she replies, leaning over to take the paper. Their fingers brush, and they carefully avoid looking at each other. Mikayla opens the paper, sees the first date which is hand-written at the top of the page, and raises her eyebrows. “This is next week?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Your tour starts in a week?”

  “It does.”

  “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “Because we just hired you,” Logan responds.

  She gives him a long look, hoping to convey just how unimpressed she is with his attitude. “I have nothing… no notes from the last assistant, no schedules or phone numbers, and I don’t even know what city we’re going to first.”

  “Oh, that’s easy… it’s LA.”

  “That’s not the point!” Mikayla stops herself before her voice gets too high, taking a deep breath to calm herself down. “I just really wanted to be prepared,” she finishes.

  Logan purses his lips. Their eyes lock and for a moment she’s transported back to the concert. That feeling of being pinned down by his gaze returns, almost overwhelmingly so, but she couldn’t look away even if she wanted to.

  Then the moment passes and Logan lets out a breath. “I’m sorry that you don’t have Danielle’s notes. That’s my fault. I told Bass Note to put a freeze on any confidential information until we replaced her. I’ll call them right now and make sure that you’re given everything you need, okay?”

  Surprised, she nods and watches as Logan takes his phone out of his pocket and excuses himself from the room.

  She watches him go, then glances back down at the list of dates. They span for about three months with at least four performances a week. A couple of the dates are doubled-up, and Mikayla assumes that those are matinees and evening performances and not just mistakes on Logan’s part. It looks like a heavy schedule, but when she was researching concert tours the night before, she’d seen groups who would perform in a new town every day.

  Her laptop’s screen goes dark, and she runs her finger over the keypad to bring it back up.

  Outside, she can hear Logan’s husky, warm voice drifting through the closed door, though she can’t make out what he’s saying. It envelopes her the way it had when she’d first heard him sing at the concert. She lets herself listen to it for a moment, before setting the paper with the dates on the table beside her and getting to work.

  Over the next week, Mikayla gives herself a crash course in how to be a good personal assistant. She finds websites and books online, runs over the band’s schedule again and again until she almost has it memorized, and researches each destination on their tour to make sure that she knows enough to plan around train timetables and traffic. She was surprised to see that the band had a scheduled stop in London. Even after seeing them in concert, she still can’t quite wrap her head around how well-known they are. To her, they seem more like new friends than budding celebrities.

  Slate gives her number out to all of the band members. Tommy sends her pictures of cats every morning, while Dash supplies her with YouTube videos of all of the band’s music. She listens to it while she works, losing herself in the intricate, smooth melodies and matching her typing speed with Slate’s drumming. She resolutely avoids imagining how Logan would dance to each song.

  Despite the fact that Logan appears to be the band’s leader, he hardly speaks to her. After he had gotten her access to the band’s tour information, all communication between them seemed to cease. Slate became her unofficial contact in Black Lilith.

  She figures that Logan is still embarrassed about hitting on her. She thinks that it’s probably a good thing that he’s keeping his distance. It’s hard enough for her to listen to his sultry singing voice every day without being in the same room as the man himself, hearing his voice and seeing the way his lips form around the words.

  On the morning before the band was set to leave for LA, Mikayla sends a mass text asking for one last meeting at the Bass Note offices before the tour officially begins. She knows that this is probably overkill, but she can’t help but double and triple-check everything. Her father drilled this fastidious attention to detail into her when she was a kid, and nothing she did could break her of the habit.

  Dash replies almost immediately: Swweet—CU soon. PS I’m bringing cake.

  Tommy sends through a few minutes later: No problem, Mik.

  She finds herself smiling at the familiar nickname. Most of the band has taken to calling her that, though they’ve barely known her a week. It makes her feel more included—she can’t remember the last time someone bestowed a pet name on her.

  Predictably, Logan uses her full name: P.S. If Dash brings cake don’t eat it. He probably made it himself.

  Slate’s response is a little more sluggish: WTF woman, I was having the best dream. You threw off my groove!

  Logan just sends one letter: K.

  “Typical,” Mikayla says, shaking her head at her phone and stuffing it back into her pocket.

  She books the same conference room as last time. Surprisingly, the band actually turns up relatively early. Only ten minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, all four men come charging into the room in a flurry of noise and various brands of masculine deodorant.

  Dash is wearing a Spiderman T-shirt and a backward baseball cap, and when he flops into the seat beside her, she can hear the tell-tale jingle of change in his pocket—a sound she’s come to associate with the band’s guitarist.

  Tommy takes the seat on the other side of her. He does it a little more gracefully than Dash. His hair looks a bit listless and brushes over the bridge of his nose as he rubs his eyes.

  “Tired?” she asks.

  He nods slowly, as though his entire body is stuck in slow-motion. She pushes her coffee cup toward him, and he gratefully takes a sip. They’d learned soon after their first meeting that they both like their coffee the same way—black, no sugar. The rest of the band thinks they’re disgusting.

  “A little bit,” he mutters. “I spent last night going over some new songs.”

  “We’re not learning new songs right before we go on tour,” Slate tells him sternly. “We’ve already got enough shit to deal with without trying to remember new songs.”

  He takes a seat across from Mikayla and pops a caffeine pill into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously. She grimaces when she sees the white powder on his tongue. And he thinks she is disgusting for drinking her coffee black? She’s surprised that he hasn’t had a heart attack with all of the caffeine that he puts into his system. Not just caffeine either, she suspects that Slate dabbles in all kinds of artificial stimulants.

  She’s already decided to pay close attention to the band over the first few weeks of the tour. It wouldn’t do for them to be brought up on drug charges under her watch.

  Were personal assistants liable if their charges get arrested?

  Would Bass Note fire her if one of them got caught with something illegal?

  She makes a mental note to look into that before she gets on the plane tomorrow.

  “These songs aren’t for the tour,” Tommy replies patiently. “They’re just… for me. And maybe for the band when I’m done with them.”

  “You should make sure you get enough sleep,” Logan says. He’s looking as handsome as always in a faded orange shirt which seems to make the blues and whites in his tattoos burst with vibrant color against his skin. “Can’t have our bass lagging.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Tommy declares. He takes another gulp of Mikayla’s coffee and returns it to her. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mikayla responds.

  She meets Logan’s soft brown eyes across the table. He looks a little bit tired as well, though more well-rested than the last time she saw him. He holds her gaze for moment—just a beat longer than casual—before looking away.

  “Who wants cake?” Dash asks, pulling a blue plastic container out of his backpack and setting it proudly on the meeting table. Through t
he plastic, she can see a dark mass that could probably be cake-shaped, but it seems to be drooping on one side.

  “I would literally rather die in an explosion,” Slate deadpans.

  Tommy shakes his head at the container as though it has mortally offended him, and Logan just raises an eyebrow as though he’s surprised Dash would even ask. Dash’s face falls, and he turns pleading eyes to Mikayla.

  “I’d love some,” she says, ignoring the horrified gasp from Slate across the table. “But first… we need to go over a few things.”

  She shuffles through her notes. Even though she has her laptop open next to her, she always prefers to write longhand during meetings. The click-clack of a keyboard can be off-putting when people are trying to talk.

  “Now… first venue, The Getty. The organizers want three sets of forty minutes each. Do you have a set-list?” she asks.

  Logan clears his throat. “We’ve got the first set planned out,” he answers. “But during our last couple of shows, we found that the audiences were responding differently to different songs. We thought that we could keep an eye on the audience and change up our sets to suit them.”

  “Maybe you could keep an eye on the audience for us, Mik?” Tommy questions. “We’ll be on stage, so we might not be the best judges of what the audience thinks.”

  “I’d be happy to,” she responds. “But wouldn’t it be a good idea to make… I don’t know, playlists? Sort of… like a set for different moods?” The band all look at her with interest, Dash even going so far as to cock his head like a Labrador puppy. So she tries to elaborate on what she’s thinking. “So if the audience is mellow, you go with Set A, but if they’re hyped you go with Set B, or something?”

  Slate nods thoughtfully. “That’s actually a good idea.”

  “Dibs on planning the Get Hyped Mix!” Dash says.

  “It’ll save us some stress between sets,” Tommy adds. He gives Mikayla a tired smile, which she returns. “We can actually relax instead of arguing over which songs to play next.”

  She glances over at Logan, who’s examining his thumbnail with a considering expression on his handsome face. When he looks up, and their eyes meet again, he nods. “Dash and I can work out some set lists tonight, and have them ready for everyone to approve by tomorrow. But we should still build in some room for spontaneity,” he adds quickly. “Too much repetition and it’ll start to feel like work.”

  “God forbid we should work,” Tommy replies, rolling his eyes.

  Mikayla makes a note and looks at the next item on her list. “Hotel rooms. Your last assistant, Danielle? She booked three rooms at each venue. Two doubles and a single. Is this still okay with everyone?”

  She isn’t sure how she’ll be able to change it if it isn’t. She would probably have to take the band’s requests back to Bass Note and ask for more funds. They haven’t given her access to any petty cash for incidentals like extra rooms.

  For some reason, mentioning the last assistant’s name sends a shiver through the men around the table. Slate’s eyes flicker toward Tommy, who’s examining a groove in the table with almost scientific concentration. Dash looks nearly as stern when his eyes land on Logan. There’s something in his expression that she can’t understand.

  Logan returns his brother’s stern gaze with one of his own before grunting, “It’s fine.”

  Mikayla makes a note of that as well, wondering what had just happened there, but knowing that she hasn’t known them nearly long enough to ask. She’ll need to investigate that further—what happened with her predecessor, Danielle? Why did she leave the band right before their tour, after she’d already put so much work into organizing everything for them?

  “We’ve got tour buses booked here in America and one in London, but I noticed that the buses are a bit small. It’ll be cramped.”

  “We’re used to it,” Slate claims. “We’ve been living in each other’s pockets for years.”

  Mikayla wants to respond that she had not been living in their pockets for years and that she might take exception to being stuck on a bus for days on end with a group of men she’d just met. Especially, if groupies were going to be a regular part of their lives, but she swallows it. This isn’t about her comfort, after all, it’s about the band’s experience.

  But Logan is watching her thoughtfully, apparently reading her mind well enough to know what she wasn’t saying. “The bus we got for the American leg has a private cabin at the back,” he says. “It’ll be a quiet place if you need to work.”

  She frowns and pulls up the receipts on her laptop. None of the bus’s specs had mentioned that. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” Logan replies. He opens his mouth to add something, then seems to change his mind. His eyes flicker to Tommy, who’s still observing the table and avoiding everyone’s gaze before he closes his mouth and nods. “Yeah, it’ll still be cramped, but you’ll have your own space. The bus in London will be a bit more public, but we won’t be using it that much. London’s a pretty small city, comparatively speaking.”

  “Oh,” Mikayla says. She’s never been to London—she’s never even left the country before. “Well, that’s good to know. Thank you.” He nods. “Tomorrow, we’re going straight from the airport to the venue,” she continues. “I don’t suppose I need to stress that you can’t be late for the plane? American Airways isn’t as cool about tardiness as I am. They’ll probably just take off without us, and we really can’t afford to miss the sound check.”

  She isn’t entirely sure what exactly happens in a sound check, but it sounds important. Danielle had highlighted it in her notes. The band nods together, apparently agreeing that it is very serious business.

  “We’ll be on time,” Logan asserts in a tone which leaves no room for argument.

  “And sober,” Tommy adds, sending a grin at Slate.

  The hint of tension in the air dissipates when they see Tommy grinning. He looks normal, as though he hadn’t just been staring at the table like he was trying to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Mikayla wants to ask if he’s all right, but she knows that now isn’t the time. He seems all right. He brightens and even lets out a laugh when Slate sticks his tongue out at him.

  “You’re one to talk, you little shit,” Slate replies.

  Mikayla raises her eyebrows at Tommy, who shrugs. “I’m an artist,” he says by way of explanation.

  “You’re a little shit,” Slate says.

  “About roadies and sound technicians,” she interjects before someone gets tackled again. “We’ve got tickets for them too, but Dan—um… the notes I’ve got here says that they’re not coming with us to London?”

  “That’s right,” Logan responds. He leans forward and rests his arms on the table, exposing his beautiful tattoos to the light streaming in through the windows. “They don’t have international passports… but we’ve got a couple of locals lined up with the venue.”

  “Do you have their contact details?” Mikayla asks. “I’ll touch base with them a week out from the event.”

  Logan reaches into his back pocket, arching his back just enough that his T-shirt rides up and exposes a bare inch of skin above his jeans. She catches a glimpse of a dark snail trail before realizing that she’s staring, and turns back to her laptop to cover up her reaction.

  It’s just physical, she tells herself. You haven’t dated in a while, that’s all.

  Logan drags his phone out and pulls up the contacts list. He leans over the table so that she can see the screen as he scrolls through, pausing at a few names and nodding for her to note down the numbers and email addresses. His cologne wraps around her like a warm breeze, and she has to chew her lip, almost painfully, to keep her expression neutral. She’s both relieved and sad when he finally pulls away and sticks his phone back in his pocket.

  “Okay,” she says. “Does anyone have anything they want to ask or bring up before we start talking about dietary requirements?”

  “Here Mik… h
ave some cake,” says Dash. He opens the plastic container to reveal a misshapen brown mass of icing and a fork.

  Tommy shakes his head silently at Mikayla.

  While Slate leans forward to stage-whisper, “Mik, please, we love you too much to let you hurt yourself like this.”

  “You’re all assholes!” Dash says.

  She glances at Logan, wondering if he too was worried about her health. But what she sees brings her up short. Rather than looking concerned—or even indifferent—he’s observing the proceedings with a tender expression. His mouth is curled into a soft smile as his brown eyes flicker between Dash, Slate, and Tommy, and his posture is relaxed in his seat. He reminds Mikayla of a father looking at his bickering family over dinner. Both exasperated by their behavior and unmistakably, unequivocally, fond of them all.

  Her breath catches in her throat. It had been one thing to see him grinding against the mic during his performance, or to see him smiling at her when they were alone over a week ago, but the look on his face is so heart-warmingly domestic that for a moment she forgets that she’s supposed to be tasting Dash’s cake. She just stares at the man across from her, wondering what it would be like to see him look at her like that, and feeling herself blushing at the thought.

  When their eyes meet, his expression falls into guarded amusement and Mikayla’s heart sinks. Of course, she thinks as she picks up the fork to distract herself, Logan won’t be looking at her like that anytime soon. He is her boss. She really needs to stop thinking about him as anything more.

  She cuts a piece of cake, ignoring Slate and Tommy’s amused-warning looks, and sticks it into her mouth. It’s gritty and dry, but the faint chocolate taste makes it just palatable. The fact that Dash smothered the whole thing in a thick layer of store-bought chocolate icing went a long way to making the whole experience more bearable.

  Schooling her expression into something that could be mistaken for enthusiasm, Mikayla speaks around her mouthful, “It’s good.”