Chapter Thirteen
BLISS
We only have two weeks to prepare for the festival.
Travel will be easy peasy. There’s a fae district with a portal just outside of the festival grounds, meaning we’ll be there in a matter of minutes, not hours, even dragging all our gear with us.
Lodging is taken care of by the event. We’ll be staying in one of several townhomes used to house bands playing during the festival.
I’ve already signed us up to help out at a scavenger hunt for festival goers to win free stuff. I RSVP’d to the opening masquerade party and a band-and-crew-only day of games and activities. This festival is going to be a lot of work but also a ton of fun.
But unfortunately for me, Goddess’ Trance’s newly reinstated band manager, the merch situation is not ideal and Amelia and Tubbs keep fighting over the set list.
As I go through boxes of band tees and CDs, making an inventory of everything we have, Tubbs taps his drumstick repeatedly against the rim of his snare. “We can’t fit all these songs in our one-hour set.”
“That’s why we’re taking ‘Glaze’ off the set list,” Amelia shoots back.
“That’s one of our best songs, and not to mention has my drum solo. We gotta keep it. It’s our heaviest song and this is a metal festival.”
“Well, we’re not taking ‘You Can Always Reach Me’ off the set list. That’s not going to happen.”
“Fine, then we’ll take off ‘Fractures,’” Tubbs says, whirling his drumstick around his fingers.
Taser picks up one of Tubbs’ wire brush drumsticks and points it at him. “Hell no, that’s my song.”
“Your song?” Amelia arches her eyebrow. “Just so we’re clear here, all the songs are mine. I wrote them.”
“Parts of them,” Tubbs says, rolling his eyes. He’s not wrong. He wrote all the drumming music to the songs and Jordan has some song credits as well from their earlier years playing together.
“We aren’t getting rid of my solo, okay?” Taser says, crossing his arms.
Dericia rolls her eyes and gets up off the couch. “Bliss, give me a call when they’ve all got their egos back in check, okay?” She heads out of the garage and I let loose a sigh as I repack a box of vinyl EPs.
“I hope you weren’t counting on selling a lot of merch, guys, because we don’t really have any,” I say, motioning to the four boxes in front of me.
One box of T-shirts. One box of vinyl. Two boxes of CDs that really don’t sell anymore, which is why there are two. “And we don’t have time to order more.”
Amelia shrugs. “You know this isn’t about money.”
Taser laughs, but it’s hollow. “Maybe not for you, Miss Succubus Blood, but it would be nice for the rest of us.”
“The money will come in,” I say, trying to ease the tension this festival is bringing to the surface.
I can feel my magic rising, ready to try to influence everyone back into a calmer, more agreeable state, but I don’t unleash it.
If I did, I would have to feed that much sooner, and despite my promise to Amelia, I really don’t want to.
“All those songs stay on the set list, okay?” I tell them, looking over at Blake, who gives me a shrug as if to say I’m on my own here.
“Take off ‘Butterflies.’ It’s a longer song with lots of atmospheric pauses and I think it’s better for whenever you end up doing an acoustic set some day.” I stare my sister down, trying my best to look as in charge as possible.
Amelia sighs, flinging herself down next to Blake on the couch and draping her long legs over his lap, pouting. “But I love that song.”
“Amelia,” I say in exasperation.
“Fine, fine, we’ll do away with ‘Butterflies.’” She waves a hand dismissively.
I look to Taser and Tubbs. “Everyone good with that?”
“Yes ma’am.” Tubbs grins, flashing white teeth at me. “Look at you being all manager-y.”
I snort out a laugh. Taser comes over and slings an arm around my shoulders.
“Your first ever Goddess’ Trance conflict back on the job and you resolved it in less than two minutes.
I think we should keep her,” he says, smiling at me.
I give him a tentative smile back and make an excuse to shuffle out from under his arm.
I check my email on my phone as I move to start inventorying our gear.
I need to tell the festival if we’ll be bringing our own or if we’ll need to use in-house stuff.
We definitely need their front-of-house sound engineers, and we probably need some more tech guys to help set up and break down our set, but I think we’ve got enough mics for all the stage inputs we need.
Though none of this I actually know for sure.
I’m going off videos I watched about sound engineering, and since this is literally something one can get a degree in, I’m not sure if I’m making the right calls.
Once the band can afford to pay someone, we need a sound engineer for sure, not to mention technicians and a monitor engineer. The list is long.
“Oh my stars.” I almost drop my phone as I reread the email, hardly believing my own eyes.
“What?” Amelia jumps up from the couch, followed by the guys, and they all crowd around me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” I show her my phone so she can read the email. “We’re opening for Voracious Maw.”
I look over at Taser instinctively. He knows my slight obsession with their music.
Though he doesn’t know that this aligns perfectly with the task I’ve been given.
If we’re opening for them, that could be my way of getting close enough to Wrath to steal whatever I’m supposed to steal.
Maybe the wraith also pulled these strings.
“Awww,” Taser says sweetly. “Your boyfriend will be there, with his sexy mask.”
I punch him lightly on the arm but laugh, forgetting I’m mad at him. “He’s not my boyfriend. I just really love his voice.”
“He does have a sexy voice.” Taser shrugs.
Amelia’s eyes find mine over the phone. She doesn’t look pleased. “Bliss…”
“Yeah?”
“There was an attachment on this email, with the flyer for the event. It has all the bands listed that’ll be playing.”
She hands me back my phone and I look over the flyer, zooming in on it slightly. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“Third row from the bottom, towards the left.”
My eyes snag over a third name in between Umber Doves and Mourning Coffins. I stare at it, a numbness worming its way into my body as I read the name over and over again.
Dead Hearts.
It’s Jordan’s band.
The one he started after Amelia kicked him out of Goddess’ Trance.
I lock eyes with Amelia and simply shake my head. She’s going to be so mad at me for backing out, but there’s no way I can go to this festival now.
“Sorry.” I pocket my phone. My feet begin to carry me to the main house, and before I know it I’m shutting the door to my old bedroom and sliding down it to the ground, where I try to just focus on taking deep breaths.
“Bliss,” Amelia says through the door, softly tapping on it. “Open up.”
“No,” is all I can manage to get out.
She opens the door anyways, but it pushes against my back. “Bliss, get out of the way,” she huffs out in a way only an exasperated sister can. “Let me in.”
I crawl away from the door and it swings open. Amelia looks down at me, a softness to her expression that takes me a bit by surprise. When it comes to Jordan she is always so harsh, telling me exactly what I need to do. Trying to protect me in the only way she knows how.
“Are you alright?” she asks as she sits on the floor beside me. I let my head fall to her shoulder, inviting her energy to protect me. Her arm wraps me up in her protective and fierce fire, shielding me.
“I can’t see him,” I tell her.
“Can’t? Or don’t want to?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes,” Amelia says simply, pausing for a minute to allow the silence in the room to wash over us.
Finally she speaks again. “Bliss, ‘can’t’ means it’s out of your control.
And if that’s true, that’s fine, we can work with that.
But if you can and you just don’t want to, that’s different.
There’s power in admitting that. It becomes your choice then.
I’m just worried you’ll miss out on the festival because you think you can’t when really you can and just don’t want to. ” When the fuck did she get so wise?
“And if I just don’t want to?”
“Then you decide for yourself if you’re going to miss out on something this exciting and fun just because your dickhead of an ex will be there.”
“Who are you?” I ask, looking up at her.
“I’ve grown a lot in the last year,” she says haughtily, throwing her hair over her shoulder. A soft giggle escapes me, despite tears pooling in my eyes. She slaps my arm. “Bitch.”
I smile, but then it falls. “It’s not just that he was an ass, though.”
“I know.”
I lift my head up off my sister’s shoulders and roll my own, as if that movement can somehow imbue me with the strength I feel I so desperately lack. “Fine. I don’t want to see him.”
Amelia nods and gives me a soft smile. She helps me to my feet. “How do you feel about going to the festival and we’ll just avoid him? There are so many bands going, plus the crowds, the vendors—you might not even run into him.”
I nod in agreement. A tear crests over my lower lid, sliding its way down my cheek. “Okay,” is all I can manage to say. I swipe at the tear and the trail it leaves.
There’s a knock at the door and Dericia pokes her head in. “Bliss?”
I motion for her to come inside and she tiptoes forward, pulling me into a crushing hug. “Tay Tay texted me and told me what you guys just found out. I’m so sorry. What’s our plan?”
I can tell Amelia and Reese are looking at each other over my head.
“We’re gonna pretend like he’s just not even there,” Amelia informs her, and I can hear Reese hum in approval.
“Good plan,” she says.
I go to my mirror and start wiping my eyes and fixing my hair, which has gotten mussed with all the hugging. Dericia sits down on the edge of my bed, crossing her legs.
“At least you know that fucking douche isn’t your mate,” Reese says, gathering her braids over one shoulder and tying them into a ponytail to keep them out of the way.
Amelia’s mouth hangs open. “I didn’t even think about that.”
“What?” Reese asks, confused.
“We don’t know that, Reese,” Amelia breathes out.
“But the stars wouldn’t do that.”
“Every Born fae has a mate, even dickheads who don’t deserve them,” Amelia explains. She comes and stands in front me. “It’s statistically unlikely, Bliss. But we’ll just have to make sure.”
I take care not to nod too quickly. The wraith told me Jordan isn’t my mate, and the way he said it, I believe him. But I can’t explain that to my sisters. They would freak out if they knew I even talked to a wraith.
“How so? Making sure would mean I have to get close enough to him to see if there’s a rune in his eye,” I say after a few moments. I guess it would be good to double check. Maybe I was a complete fool to believe the wraith about any of this.
“Maybe not!” Reese says. She whips out her phone. “Maybe he found his mate already. Let me check his socials.”
Amelia and I wait with bated breath as she scrolls on her phone. She looks up at us after a few moments, defeated. “Doesn’t look like he’s been mated yet. When was his bond activated?”
“It would have been last year,” Amelia replies.
“Okay, so we’ll just have to get Bliss near enough to him without him seeing her so she doesn’t have to deal with him,” Reese says matter-of-factly, as if that’ll be easy.
Jordan’s a vampire, which means his superior senses might give me away.
“You can borrow my perfume to mask your scent,” Reese tells me, reading my mind somehow.
“That might just work,” Amelia adds, as I sit down next to Reese and wrap my arm around her waist, leaning my head on her shoulder. Amelia sits down next to us and my two sisters encircle me, and for a little bit, I think I might just be able to take on Jordan if he does end up seeing me.