She turns and heads down the hall and I follow, the hulking redhead behind me. “Is Jacob here?” I ask, looking around. “I thought I saw his car outside earlier.”
“He was, he’ll be back later,” she says, giving me a knowing look over her shoulder. “Something about some portal to Hell he has to go close up.”
I stare. “Are you serious?”
“Hard to tell with her, isn’t it?” Jay says under his breath.
While I’m still trying to figure out whether Jacob is acting as a demon bouncer or not somewhere, we walk down the stairs to the room in the basement. When the heavy door to the studio opens, sound floods out.
Sage is standing in the middle of the room, his black Les Paul hanging from his neck, some righteous tune coming from the amp.
He stops playing and looks up in surprise. “Am I being too loud?”
“Not at all,” she says.
“To be honest, you could be louder,” I tell him.
I know I’ve got the cheesiest fucking grin on my face right now. I can’t help it. Not only is Sage the coolest dude I’ve ever met, but his jam room is amazing, and every time I’m down here I just wish everyone would leave me alone so I could geek out over all the band memorabilia and instruments without embarrassing myself.
A little background: Sage used to be in the 70’s rock band Hybrid. Dawn was the young journalist sent to cover their North American tour. Jacob was their band manager, who was also managing a contract with the Devil who aimed to collect Sage before his twenty-eight birthday.
You know how it goes.
Anyway, the tour went horribly awry, people died, Dawn and Sage managed to fuck and fall in love, and now they’re here, in their sixties and retired, living next door to the Palominos.
“I wasn’t expecting you, Dex,” Sage says, raising his hand in a high-five, and fuck yeah I never miss an opportunity to high-five a rock legend.
I slap his hand and he winces slightly, which isn’t nothing when he’s pretty tall and solidly built for an old dude.
“Sorry. Little too excited there.” I need to calm the fuck down. “Anyway, I just dropped by to run something past you guys.”
Dawn and Sage exchange a furtive glance. “Everything okay next door?” Sage asks.
“As far as I know,” Jay says, giving me an expectant look.
“It’s not about them,” I explain. “It’s about me. And Perry.”
I launch into everything about Mr. Harry Cox from beginning to end, and somehow I don’t even laugh once. By the time I’m done, all three of them have completely different expressions on their faces. Sage looks wary, Dawn looks curious, and Jay, well he’s impossible to get a read on. I think he just might be constipated.
“So?” I ask. “What do I do?”
“Why isn’t Perry here?” Dawn asks. “Does she even know you’re talking to us?”
I give her a look. “Why would you assume I’m doing this without telling her?”
Jay lets out a loud laugh.
“Shut up, Ginger,” I snipe at him.
“Ginger,” he says, shaking his head. “I expected a more creative insult from you, Dex.”
I glare at him. “Yeah well, I ran out of all my ginger insults a long time ago.” I give Dawn an apologetic smile, since she still has some fiery red in her hair. “Sorry, Dawn. You’re okay.”
“It’s hard to say what the right thing to do is,” Sage says carefully, ignoring our skirmish. “I err on the side of caution these days. I’ve had too many hard lessons, I’m sure you understand.”
“But that’s a lot of money,” Dawn says to him.
“It is only if there’s no catch. No exchange. Otherwise the price is too high.”
Dawn turns to me. “I think if both you and Perry are open to dealing with the unknown for a night, if you think you can handle it, then it might be a great opportunity. I know why you might think there’s a catch, but to me it just sounds like a man in love. Maybe I’m a romantic.”
Right. Well I haven’t quite told her that Perry’s not really on board. I just wanted to see if these guys saw any major red flags.
Then again, Jay hasn’t said anything.
I look at him. “Well?”
He folds his arms, chewing on his lip for a moment. “What are you most afraid of?”
“Clowns,” I reply. “And the dentist.”
He gives me a look like I’m an idiot. “I mean, what’s your worst fear happening if you do this?”
“That it unleashes something. That if we contact the dead, that something else, something worse, is listening. Waiting. That we open a portal to the Veil and can’t shut it. That some demon fucking beast thing comes on out. And, personally speaking, having been dragged to Hell by my brother Michael, I really don’t want to go through that again.”
Sage raises his hand. “Am I the only one here who hasn’t died and or gone to Hell yet? Yeah? Then perhaps you better take my advice.”
“You know, what you fear will harm you,” Jay says to me. “If you want to do this, you have to go into it with no fear.”
I laugh. “Right.”
“I’m serious. And if you can avoid it, don’t let Perry punch any holes into the Veil. I’m still not sure what she’s capable of. I know that she can do things that Ada can’t, and I’m not sure how much control she has.”
“Hey, Perry’s got all the control, okay? Don’t you worry your pretty redhead about her.” I glare at him. “Anyway, if things play out like they used to with us, I’m sure we’ll just roll on into that house, walk around talking to the walls, and eventually this lady will show up. That’s how it worked before. You seek them out and they appear.”
Although I’m a bit worried that won’t be the case on my medication. At any rate, Perry will definitely see her.
“And then what?” Jay asks.
“I don’t know, ask her what the weather’s like over there? It’s not up to me anyway, her husband is the one who wants to talk to her.”
“Is he going to be there?”
“I assume so. Or maybe I’m just supposed to ask and transcribe.”
Jay looks at Sage and Dawn. “Maybe I should go with them.”
“Okay, just wait a fucking minute here,” I tell him. “We don’t need a babysitter.”
“Then why did you need to talk to me about it?” he counters.
Fucker.
“I wanted your advice, that’s all.”
“And my advice is that I should go with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I can close up the Veil if shit goes down. Because I can suss it out ahead of time and see that the coast is clear.”
“Is your own babysitter going to let you do that?”
“Jacob?” Jay smirks. “Jacob doesn’t have to know.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Dawn says, walking over to us. “Jacob knows everything.”
“Not everything,” Jay says quickly, smiling about something I assume is Ada-related, but I don’t want to know. “And anyway, I think it would be a good idea.”