Chapter Thirteen
“Where the hell is my kick drum?” Liam shouted. The band was already forty-five minutes late to go on. A restless, hostile energy pulsated through the venue. The promoter was breathing down Skye’s neck and complaining about the potential riot that would break out any second.
“I’m taking the extra cases of water that we had to hand out to the people in the pit from your take-home,” the asshole was saying as Skye searched through the extra equipment backstage.
She whipped around and snatched the promoter by the shirt and slammed him against the wall with her demon strength. The breath whooshed out of him as surprise widened his eyes.
Lowering her chin, Skye let the red haze of her demon vision take over the color of her irises.
“You will not be taking anything out of my band’s take-home pay, and you know why?
Because these people are drinking like fish, and this extra forty-five minutes has added thousands of dollars to your bar tabs, so I think you can eat the cost of three cases of water.
Now if you’d like the show to go on”—she let go of his shirt and pressed both of her hands into his shoulders to shove him against the wall again—“you need to kindly fuck off.”
She strode down the hall, the heels of her boots clicking against the floor. She pointed to one of the roadies. “Get every single person backstage looking for Liam’s kick drum. If you can’t find it in the next five minutes, use the opener’s.”
They nodded and scrambled off.
Kick drums didn’t just poof disappear into thin air.
Or rather, when fucked-up bargains weren’t involved, they didn’t. Skye’s magic didn’t let her materialize things unless she already knew their location, so she had to keep searching along with the rest of them.
As a stopgap, Zara and Skye were both keeping a steady stream of their demon magic funneling toward Remi’s soul to rebind the bargain, but it wasn’t working, and it was draining them both.
Their tour bus was in the shop, but the company they rented from didn’t have another available until they got to Detroit, so Tilted Haze was bunking on the opening band’s bus, making for cramped quarters.
Then Ollie got strep throat, and Skye booked everyone a hotel room in Toronto so the tour bus could be decontaminated.
The opening band’s bass player filled in for Ollie when he was at his worst, though he pushed through and hid his fever from Skye for at least one of those shows.
At this rate, Skye was terrified the entire band was going to get some rare, exotic life-threatening illness—that all of them—the crew, the opening band, everyone, was just going to fall over, and she’d be forced to admit defeat and cancel the tour.
She refused, absolutely refused, to take that walk to the wing guillotine.
They needed a full dose of magic. No patchwork jobs. No hoping for the best. A full redo of the bargain entirely.
The flicker of flames came from behind her as Skye rummaged in one of the back rooms.
“I don’t have time now, Zara,” she said. “I have to find a goddamn kick drum.”
“I think I have a deal.”
Skye dropped the dust cloth back on top of the ancient equipment and spun around. “You do? Seriously? I could fucking use the magic right now.”
Zara shook her head. “I didn’t make the offer yet.”
Skye sighed and resumed her search.
“I wanted to make sure we could pull it off. The band wants a Top-40 song and a contract for four albums.”
Skye threw her body weight into moving about five hundred pounds of amps. “A four-album deal is unheard of nowadays. Negotiate for one album and tell them their Top-40 song will also stream for—” She paused to do the math in her head. “At least eight weeks.”
Zara squinted. “I don’t usually negotiate my deals...”
“What? You just give the motherfuckers whatever they ask for?” Skye asked, wiping her arm over her sweaty brow.
“No,” Zara said, hopping up on top of the amp Skye was trying to move. “I usually just go find someone with a simpler request. It’s too much work to talk someone out of wanting world domination or a humanity-ending plague.”
Zara picked at her nail bed. “I mean, sometimes I’ll say, ‘You sure you don’t just want a bigger penis?’ And then they usually nod, and I endow them. Sometimes, just for funsies, I’ll even send the really repressed little fuckers a daddy to screw their misanthropic ways right out of them.”
“What a humanitarian,” Skye said, chuckling.
“I know, right?”
Skye pushed the amp Zara was sitting on out of the way and shrieked, “Found it!”
She tugged the kick drum out from behind the equipment that looked like it hadn’t been touched or moved in two decades. It’d be a waste of time to wonder how it got back here.
“Tell the wannabe rock stars that soul bargains are like genie wishes. If they get too greedy, it’ll blow back on them.
But one song on the Top 40 and two months of streaming is safe.
Then you tell them that it’s up to them to take their band to the next level.
Make it sound like the American Dream. We’re giving them an opportunity, but they have to do the hard work to find success. ”
Zara hummed. “So you want me to sell them the same false promise their government sells them?”
“Yep.”
Zara shrugged. “Okay.” Flames brightened the dusty, dank room, and she sifted away.
Skye lifted the kick drum and exited the back room. She waddled down the hall and handed it over to one of the crew members.
“Skye found it!” someone cheered.
The entire backstage applauded, and Skye waved a gracious hand. The crew went back to preparing for the show as Ollie and Liam jogged over, West following behind.
Ollie kissed both sides of her face. “You’re the best, Skye.”
“We’d literally be lost without you,” Liam said.
“Or ripped to pieces by pissed-off fans,” Ollie said.
“No worries,” Skye said.
West said nothing, but he dipped his head in appreciation, and then the three hiked up the stairs to the stage.
Remi appeared by her side with his arms crossed over his chest. He wore black ripped jeans and a leather jacket, along with his beat-up combat boots.
Skye had seen the show enough times to know that the jacket would be discarded by the end of the first song to reveal his bare, tattooed chest and black suspenders over each shoulder.
The women would all scream. A few would shout that they wanted to have his babies. At least one of them would faint.
Skye would have rolled her eyes at the spectacle this man created, but most days, she was just watching from backstage, trying not to be the one who fainted.
The man in question rolled his eyes at her. “And Skye saves the day. Again,” he muttered. “Shocker.”
Before she could respond, he walked away, taking the stairs to the stage two at a time.
The fog machines kicked on, and a flash of light lit Remi up for a moment before he disappeared into the darkness again.
His deep, sexy voice rasped out his hello. The crowd went ballistic. The band started their first song, and the stage lights worked in time to the music. Skye’s magic hummed in her veins, drawing her forward. She went up the stairs and peeked out from the edge. She couldn’t stop herself.
Remi was made to be a performer. He slipped into the most him version of himself when he held a microphone.
His smiles were easy; his jokes were smooth and slick.
A seduction. The crowd ate up every second.
He danced and sang and worked the stage, climbing on the amps or falling to the floor and writhing around as the sexy metal songs called for.
Toward the middle of the set, the band looped through different versions of the beginning of a song to build anticipation in the crowd, giving Remi a second to drink some water and wipe the sweat off his face.
His back to the audience, his eyes connected with Skye’s as if they were magnetized. Intensity drifted between them, and it struck Skye straight through the heart, trapping her in the snare of his gaze.
She didn’t recognize the emotion building in the pit of her stomach.
It wasn’t anger, but there was a slice of it.
It wasn’t possession, but there was a dash of that too.
It couldn’t be sadness, but an almost melancholy flavor lingered.
She didn’t know the name of this emotion, and she didn’t know how to make it stop.
The band continued, though now none of the notes were recognizable songs, so the crowd’s eagerness bled into random shouts of “I love you, Remi.”
He cut the strange connection between them and turned to strut to the front of the stage.
Remi just stood there, holding the microphone stand, staring broodingly into the crowd as he got into the moodiness of the next song.
The band’s loop seamlessly faded into the opening notes of the most popular song on the album, and the crowd erupted.
Remi’s voice boomed through the speakers, lulling everyone—including Skye—into a trance.
She might have stayed in that trance for the rest of the show, except one of the crew grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.
“We have a problem,” the guy said.
Skye sighed. “What now?”
“Lief went to the hospital after their show. They have mono, and Georgina and Kansas both have fevers too.”
Skye squeezed the bridge of her nose and looked up at the ceiling. “Are you telling me my entire opening band has mono? An illness that only teenagers are supposed to get? An illness that can take months to recover from?”
“Well, technically, Lief only turned twenty last month, but yeah, it’s bad luck.”
“Bad luck,” Skye repeated. Her sanity felt as though it was slipping through her fingertips. “Right. Because what else could it possibly be.”
The smell of smoke tickled her nose. She turned toward the source and watched a demon walk out of the flames.
It wasn’t Zara.
Bad luck, indeed.