by KT Strange
“Stop it,” Cash said and Ace’s jaw snapped shut, his lips pressed together in a tight line. He looked pissed, his shoulders hunching, and I realized there’d been a thread of command in Cash’s voice. He might not have been Eli, who seemed to be the alpha wolf of their ragtag little pack, but as Cash stared down Ace, it became clear that Cash was higher up on the pecking order.
Younger? Did Ace mean... a lot younger? Werewolves lived for centuries, going from a few decades of puppy-hood into young-adult and staying there for a good century or a century and a half. I had no idea how old any of them really were, because they all seemed my age or a little older, maybe mid-twenties or around there. I glanced between the two of them before Rory interrupted the tableau, blowing out of the building with a groan.
“Cash, you need to go deal with Finn and Eli. If they wreck the studio again, I’m not going to be able to cover for them and Troy is going to have all of our asses,” he said as he fished out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. A cigarette was at his lips and lit up before I could blink. Cash growled, low under his breath.
“Ace, take Darcy for coffee. I’ll deal with those punks, Rory,” he said and disappeared into the building. Rory waved his hand in the air to disperse the smoke, shooting me an apologetic look.
“Bands. Too much testosterone, not enough sense,” he said with another drag on his cigarette.
“Hey,” Ace protested, but grinned at me. “Well, more coffee for us. Plus Sparrow’s has the most freaking delicious lemon bars I’ve ever had in my life. I’ll get you one. C’mon, let’s go.”
“If the guys are arguing, shouldn’t I—” I looked over my shoulder at the door, a shiver of fear running through me.
“Cash’ll deal with it. And Charlie’s there. He’ll talk sense into them once they’re calmed down enough to listen,” Ace said, wrapping a hand around my wrist. “C’mon, let’s go. You can pretend to be my girlfriend. Cabe is always giving me shit about never bringing in girls. Please?” His request startled a laugh out of me and I let him take me down the street.
“Cabe?” I asked.
“The coffee guy. Best coffee in the city, I swear to god, but he’s a real asshole about my lonely heart status,” Ace said, letting my wrist go when we were half a block away and he was sure I wasn’t going to turn back.
“You’re in a band, signed to XOhX, and it’s not like you’re bad to look at,” I said, “how the hell are you single?”
Ace snickered.
“I’m not bad to look at huh? Thanks. Uh, well, when you’ve got four other pack brothers hovering around you all the time? And we’re sorta focused on the band, music and stuff, before anything else,” he said, and his voice dropped down low. “It’d have to be a pretty special girl to understand that I’m not like a regular guy.” I shivered again, not from fear this time, my skin breaking out into goose flesh as he looked up at the sky. We’d come to a stop at the end of the block. “When you live a long time,” he continued, “you don’t want to fall in love with someone who’s just going to fade away in a few decades and leave you.” He let out a gusty breath. “It’s nice to be able to talk about this with someone who gets it. I mean, you’re a witch, sure, whatever, but you know what I am.” He gave me a warm, even smile that melted the wall I’d been keeping up around the band, just a little bit.
“You could fall in love again,” I said, “right? I mean it would hurt, but...” He shook his head and gave me a funny look.
“Wolves mate for life,” he replied as he glanced up and down the street for cars. We crossed to the other side.
“Oh, I didn’t know...” I trailed off and felt the yawning hole of my not-knowledge gaping inside of me. I had no idea wolves mated for life. The thought made me sad for Ace, until— “What about a female werewolf? You know? You could scratch each other’s backs... chase rabbits together...”
Ace let out a bark of a laugh. He was cute, and almost sweet, I decided, the way his sandy blond hair shagged across his forehead where he’d tousled it at some point, and hadn’t bothered to fix it. That and his blue eyes. I knew that guys in bands were usually attractive, maybe not model-hot or anything, but even still, the guys in Phoenixcry looked like they’d been plucked out of the pages of some fashion spread in a magazine. If they weren’t so dangerous and my new clients, I would’ve been crushing on them. Did that make me seriously unprofessional? I didn’t want to think about it.
“I never thought a witch could have a sense of humor,” he said with a grin, which turned sad in another moment. “It’d be pretty hard to find a female who wasn’t into one of the older guys,” he said with a huff. “They’re... older. I’m a millennial baby, but just barely. And also, there’s really not a lot of packs left. Most of the females are older—much older. Werewolves tend to have more males born than females,” he hesitated for a moment and pointed to a doorway. “There’s Sparrow’s. Let’s get coffee for the rest of the guys. They’ll be pissed their little fist-fight meant they had to go without.”
“Fist-fight?” I asked, stopping in my tracks. Ace turned and rolled his eyes.
“C’mon Llewellyn. You’re running with wolves now. Our blood runs hot and our tempers hotter, so what’s a little fisticuffs among pack-mates? Not much. Coffee, and donuts. That’ll make everything better,” he said. I stayed put, so he stomped back to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “It’s no big deal. We heal fast. You won’t even see a shadow of a bruise on Finn’s face by the time we get back.”
My mouth opened to protest but he hushed me, and I gave in. What was I going to do, anyway? Interrupt their brawl? Then they’d really know how powerless I was, and that wasn’t information I was going to give up to them, under any circumstances.
Seven
Ace was right about one thing: I didn’t notice a single bruise on any of the guys, although their clothes were rumpled and there was a broad scowl on Eli’s face that wouldn’t budge even when Ace offered him a chocolate smothered donut. I left them to patch things up and spent the rest of the day at my desk, going over my on-boarding package that Willa had sent to my new XOhX email address. There was a lot of information to absorb. The band wasn’t big enough yet to have a dedicated booking agent, so a lot of those duties were going to be falling to me, although Willa said it was fairly straight-forward.
Finn stopped by my desk again, grabbed the cactus, and gave me the address for the house show. Dress nice, he’d said, but he didn’t specify what he meant by that. My budget over the last few years had been pretty skinny; nothing like what I was used to living with my family where there hadn’t really been anything off limits to me.
When I walked into our dorm-room, I found that Max still wasn’t back from her emergency visit with her father, so she wasn’t there to help me cycle through my three ‘fancy’ outfits. In the end I picked some dark-wash tight jeans that made my butt look like I worked out harder than I did (thanks Lycra!), and a loose, off-one-shoulder black sweater shot with silver thread. For a moment I went to put on silver earrings but paused and thought better of it. What if silver made the guys uncomfortable? I needed to spend more time with Ace. Of all the guys, he seemed the most open to sharing information without judging me too badly. He’d said he was younger than the rest of the guys, so I guessed he was anywhere from his mid-twenties to mid-thirties in actual solar years, although in werewolf years, he was barely into adulthood. Maybe that was why he was so open with me, because of all of them, he was closest to me in age.
I got an Uber over to the condominium tower where the show was being held, and stared up at it. The glass building was one of the tallest I’d ever seen and, as I pushed open the front door, I saw an actual concierge standing behind a desk. The woman smiled at me as I approached.
“Um, hey,” I said as I fished my phone out of my purse and squinted at it. “I’m here for the Liu... I’m trying to get to the Liu apartment. It says PH4 on the invite I was sent...” I trailed off as the woman smiled again.
“What’s your name, please?” she asked.
“Darcy, Darcy Llewellyn,” I replied. She looked at a tablet and tapped the screen.
“Final elevator at the end of the hall. It will take you directly to Penthouse Four,” she said, gesturing down the hall behind her. The marble floors stretched out all around me, and I took a breath to keep certain memories at bay. The council chambers were lined in marble, black though, not white like it was in the condo’s lobby. Still, the echo of my shoes on the stone flooring reminded me too much of the last time I’d seen my father, scowling down at me from his council seat. The elevator couldn’t arrive quickly enough, and I watched headline news on a small TV in one corner of it’s small space as the floors beeped by softly.
My stomach gave an uncomfortable turn and my ears popped. The doors opened with a soft woosh and a ping. The sun hadn’t set yet; Finn had given me instruction to arrive long before the guests would be coming. I stepped out of the elevator, eyes wide at the sight in front of me. A massive, soaring great room spread across the width of the entire building, and at the far end, back-dropped by a dominating scene of the city below, was a low stage with black curtains hanging on either side of it.
My idea of a house party was nothing in comparison to this. House parties were usually in frat houses, with a lot of drunk people stumbling over rotten couches, with solo cups littering the floor. At the Liu residence on penthouse level four, there was a crew of stage hands setting up, and even a portable sound booth toward the back of the room, tucked beside what looked like a bar and... possibly a catering table. I looked around for a friendly face but the guys weren’t in the room, and the event crew ignored me.
The click of heels on the custom engineered wood floor made me turn. A girl, definitely not of drinking age, walked toward me, her mouth drawn tight. The clicking was from what I was certain were a pair of Valentino rockstuds because nothing about her screamed a girl who wore knock-offs. Her long, black hair hung straight to her waist and she was so thin I felt self conscious about the slight food-baby I had from a hastily scarfed microwave burrito before I’d left the dorms.
“Darcy Llewellyn?” the girl asked, holding out a slender hand to me. Her wrist dripped with Tiffany bracelets and, as I shook her hand and met her eyes, it was like looking into the gaze of one of the other young witches at our coming-of-age party; challenge, dismissal and derision all warred with one another in her expression.
I did the only thing I could do to fight back: I smiled.
“Are you Candy Liu?” I asked. She flicked her gaze down my body and her lips pressed together for a moment before she broke into an easy, faux smile.
“That’s right. Thanks for coming. Cash told me all about you. You’re so lucky to land an internship assisting them,” she said. “They asked me to bring you back to their change room, so if you’d follow me,” she said, turning on one, thousand dollar sole, and walking in the direction she’d come from. I took a few long strides to catch up to her.
“I’m not really assisting them—”
“Tonight is going to be epic. I’ve invited half my grade, and also the best people from the other private schools as well,” she said, “the food and drink is usually off limits to the help, but since you’re with the band...”
I’m with the band… That seemed like a phrase I was going to be using a lot in future. It was work not to roll my eyes as she referred to me as the ‘help’, but given the size of the penthouse she was living in and the opulent furnishings, I supposed I should have been grateful I hadn’t needed to come up in the service elevator.
“That’s nice of you, thanks,” I lied as we turned the corner into a smaller hallway and she knocked on a carved, wooden door.
It swung open into what had to be a library or study. Eli was right there inside the doorway, blocking our view in. His gaze moved from Candy to me immediately, and pinned me to where I stood.
“Elias,” Candy gushed, and it felt like she was about to vibrate right out of her skin. That was right, his full name was Elias Gunner. I’d read it in his bio but forgotten like an idiot. “I brought Darcy right to you like you asked.”
“Miss Llewellyn,” he said, practically breathing my name. My cheeks pinked. He really needed to get over bringing up my family name all the time. I couldn’t help that we were on the council, and he didn’t need to make such a big deal over it.
“Thanks Candy,” I said as I stepped past Eli, trying to ignore the frisson of energy that I felt as Eli watched me go. Behind me I heard him say a few words to Candy, and then the door shut again.
“Thanks for taking that one for me, man,” Cash said from where he was sprawled on one couch. “If she paws at me again, I swear I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
“Awwwww, is the big bad wolf afraid of a little eighteen-year-old girl,” Charlie mocked from another couch, although he was staring at his phone as he spoke. Cash growled at him.
“More like I’m worried how I’m going to explain the blood stains on the floor,” he snarled. I should have been alarmed by the threat of violence against Candy, but I felt certain that Cash had better control over his wolf-tendencies than that.
My view of the room, and its floor-to-ceiling windows and walls lined with books, was blotted out as Ace slipped up in front of me and enveloped me in a sudden hug.
I squeaked in surprise as his big arms wrapped around me and I was crushed into his chest.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he murmured into my hair before he let me go when I squirmed. “Sorry,” he apologized with a little shrug. “I just like to hug people I like.”
“Thanks,” I said, catching my breath again, my heart thudding away in my chest at his closeness. It was still hard to not react with fear, but bit-by-bit I was losing the baked-in dread from a lifetime of hearing the worst of werewolves. My family would have been freaking out to see me so relaxed around a wolf. Maybe it was a good thing I was spending time with them. My family had been wrong about a lot of things, as I’d learned.
“You want a Redbull? We have like a hundred. Candy went all out,” Ace said as he crossed the library to where a mini-fridge had been set up against one of the walls of books.
“No, I’m good,” I said, as I sat down on one of the couches. “So did you guys need me to do anything?”
Finn looked at Eli before shaking his head.
“We’ve got this. We’ve done a hundred of these things.”
“Eighty-nine,” Charlie interrupted before going back to his phone. He was going to need it surgically implanted in his hand if he wanted to get any more attached to it. “It was eighty-nine. This is our ninetieth house-show.”
I let out a soft whistle and all five of them snapped their heads to look at me before going back to what they were doing. Cash was drumming his fingers on his thighs again, like he had in the recording studio, and I could see he had an ear-bud in as he played along to a track.
“That’s a lot of shows,” I commented. Charlie lifted his head from his phone and locked it, tucking it in his pocket before he answered.
“Well, we want this,” he said, glancing at his pack and band-mates. “There’s always going to be someone out there who’s working harder, and is hungrier than you. Someone who wants it worse than you do. We want to be that someone. We’re starving,” he said, the last word nearly cracking in his throat with such intensity that I felt my own breath catch in my throat. He gave me a brief smile. “I need to go talk to Candy about the stage set-up for the opening act. You can come along, but she’ll listen better if a competing female is not in the room,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
Cash chuckled as Charlie left.
“What he means is that Candy’ll get jealous if you’re there, and he likes her attention too much to want her to split her focus between admiring him and being mad at you.” He winked at me and I looked at the door where Charlie had gone.
“Does he, um, does he have a thing for her?”
“Fuck
no,” Finn piped up from across the room where he was squirting honey into his mouth from a squeezable honey bear. “Charlie just likes to be admired, that’s all. If you ever want him to do what you want, just flutter your eyelashes at him and compliment him on something stupid, like the shape of his nose or something. He falls for it every time.”
“Finn,” Eli called from a table that was set up with a few laptops on it. “Can you come finalize the set list with me and stop gossiping.” Finn twitched for a moment before he went, leaving me with Ace and Cash. Ace toyed with the pull-ring on his Redbull as his eyes tracked between Finn and Eli then me and Cash.
“You all right, kid?” Cash asked him. “Too much caffeine?” Ace shook his head.
“Just hoping tonight goes good. We have a lot of merch to shift, and I think Troy heard about the show so if we don’t sell well, he’ll be pissed that we gambled and lost on a stupid house show.”
“Candy’s paying us three thou’ to be here. That’s huge for us,” Cash pointed out. “Troy can’t be mad at us for something we set up before we ever signed to the label.”
I felt like I had been dropped right into some sort of private scene where I didn’t belong. Half of what they said made no sense.
“You guys really want it bad, huh?” I asked, looking from one to the other. “Most artists are worried about selling out period, not selling out of merchandise.”
Cash gave me an even, flat look.
“Well maybe they have mommies and daddies to run back to,” he said, his voice clipped. “We don’t. Excuse me.” He got to his feet and went to Finn and Eli. He said something, too low for me to hear, and left the room. My cheeks were hot with embarrassment, although Ace was purposefully not looking at me.
“Don’t be mad at him,” Ace finally said after a few moments of awkward silence.
“Mad? He’s the one who’s mad at me, not the other way around,” I countered, my voice rough. “I know I said the wrong thing, but I don’t know why it was wrong.” I gave Ace an expectant look. He squirmed and shook his head.
