He’d be suicidal for going anywhere near a Constantine bitch without their approval, but even so, the thought of him trying gave me a bizarre territorial feeling right in my gut. I didn’t want him to go near that Constantine bitch. I didn’t want anyone to.
I wanted to be the asshole to tear her apart.
I carried on scrolling through the Blue Hawk shit until I came to his show listings for the coming weekend.
Saturday night. Blue Hawk, live at Cyrus Bar. Downtown.
The times tallied up nicely with Elaine’s calendar entry. Yeah, that must be the venue.
Alto wasn’t far out of Morelli Holdings when I called him back up on his cell. I could hear the traffic outside his car window, barely a block away.
“What?” he asked. “You after some more crazy shit today?”
My request didn’t sound all that crazy, not on the surface.
“Terence Kingsley,” I said. “I want his possessions. I want his ID, and his laptop, and the other shit we took from his apartment.”
“From London?” he asked. “The shit we packed up from London?”
I turned the business card in my hand. “Yeah, from London.”
“I’ll get it,” he told me. “Might take a few days, but I’ll get it.”
“I’ll need it for Saturday,” I said. “Non-negotiable. Bust down the place yourself if you have to.”
I could almost hear his frustration. My targets were always fucking tight, but not usually this tight. Still, I paid well for them.
“Saturday afternoon, then,” he said. “I’ll head over myself if I have to.”
I called up Elaine’s social listing again. “Get it to me by four.”
“I’ll get it to you by four,” he said, and I ended the call.
I summoned up my finest British accent before I put my cell on anonymous caller and dialed the number. It was a bored young dumbass who answered with a grunt of Cyrus Bar.
“I want to book for Blue Hawk,” I told him. “Saturday night.”
“It’s fully booked,” he replied, and I let out a laugh.
“Nothing’s ever fully booked for me,” I said, then remembered who I was pretending to be. “What’s your name, boy? I’m sure I can pay you sufficiently.”
“That’ll be an extra twenty bucks,” he told me. “VIP entry. I’ll make sure you’re on the list. Cash at the door.”
Twenty bucks was a joke. Just like he was.
“VIP entry. Perfect.”
I heard him click some keys. “What’s your name?”
I smiled at the business card still in my hand as I answered him.
“Terence Kingsley,” I said.
6
Elaine
The week had been a drag. I was sick when I woke up on Saturday morning, insides struggling against the drink and drugs from the social night before. I’d been on a party high, stretching out from Petra’s crappy charity gig on Thursday until I passed out late on Friday. One long round of intoxication that had slammed me into the weekend with vomit.
I looked a mess in the bathroom mirror. My eyes were sunken, even though they were still almost pastel in their blue. My skin was deathly sallow, crying out for a layer of concealer. My lips were dry and cracked, and I felt sick.
I stumbled through to the kitchen and made myself a coffee, but it hit my guts hard, making the nausea worse.
I’d missed a call from Tristan so I called him back as soon as I’d forced myself to kick back the caffeine, hoping I wouldn’t retch with him on the line.
His tone was fresh enough to hurt my ears when he answered.
“Hey, baby. You still on for tonight? Please say you’re still coming.”
If I had any sense I’d call it off and say I was busy with Constantine crap, but I didn’t want to. Our bond of friendship was way too deep, and I was way too curious. Curious to meet the weird piece of cock who had blatantly worked Tristan up into a lather.
“Yeah, I’m still on for tonight,” I told him.
He let out a whoop, and I managed a smile, even through my shitty hangover. I was still smiling when I spoke again, ignoring the pulse of my headache.
“I’d better pick out a good outfit for the place. Don’t want to stand out like a Constantine beacon, do I?”
“No diamonds,” he laughed.
“No diamonds.”
“Shit, I gotta go,” he said. “I’m meeting up with Kayleigh-Jane for a park run. Almost there.”
My heart dropped a little at the thought. His life was so light against my darkness. He had so many people who cared about him. So many people who welcomed him with arms wide open. But that figured. He was a careable-about kind of guy.
Part of me wished I could ditch being a Constantine forever and start again. Somewhere I could be free, where people had no idea who I was, or who I was surrounded by. Where the world wasn’t governed by what I should be doing, and what I was failing at.
Failure should’ve been my middle name. I was the queen of failure. Still, it hurt when people pointed it out constantly.
I guessed Cyrus Bar was as close to freedom as I was likely to get anytime this century.
I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. I’d ditched one of my regular charity events with little more than a too busy, and nobody had really pushed me for explanations, thank fuck. I didn’t want security buzzing about the place, or a chauffeur waiting outside, or scowls from my family members if they realized I was heading to some lowlife venue to see some lowlife performer without a billion-dollar record deal.
No. This could be my one night off. The one night I could mingle without anyone even looking my way.
Or so I hoped.
I didn’t have any clothes in my wardrobe that weren’t designer, so I improvised. I took a tight little black dress and tore some tights up for underneath, then checked myself out in the mirror. Yeah, that could do it. I would usually style my hair to perfection before I went anywhere, but I paused as I reached for my hairbrush. No. Messy suited me fine.
It was strange calling a cab to my apartment later that night instead of pressing the buzzer for a chauffeur. It was stranger still to meet them at the rear of the complex, not risking security catching me on my way out and alerting my mom to my disappearance.
I settled down into the backseat and tugged my gloves up higher on my arms. My eyeliner was a sweeping black, giving me an emo goth look at total odds to the woman I was. I liked it.
“Cyrus Bar,” the cab driver said as we pulled up outside.
The line of people on the sidewalk by the main doors was about as opposite to events in Bishop’s Landing as you could possibly get. Rocker types in messy, torn t-shirts, black lace, and boots. I guess this Blue Hawk guy attracted quite a weirdo fan base.
I tottered down the line on stilettos, and Tristan was waiting for me there, right by the main doors. He looked seriously damn good. Tight black jeans with a leather jacket over a fitted black tee, and his mahogany hair swept back from his forehead like a guy from the 70s. If Blue Hawk was in any way still wobbling over his sexuality status, then seeing Tristan Fields tonight would surely seal the deal.
He whistled when he saw me. “Hell, baby. You sure look fucking good.”