Page 16 of Darcy
“Look forward to working with you.” Dodger’s tone is pleasant, but bland. A far cry from the husky voice of the man who coaxed me to orgasm with his words only a few days ago.
“Likewise,” I mouth.
Sully offers me a small smile, then stretches an arm out, gesturing for the band to head towards the doors.
They’re leaving their own party early? Really?
Multiple journalists try to approach them as they cross the gallery, but they’re ignored. The boys move as one impenetrable unit, and every reporter is iced out.
I track them as they leave, watching as Miguel joins the back of their group, slinging an arm around Arlo’s shoulders. No one else sees the small plastic bag that makes its way into the guitarist’s back pocket, and if they do, they don’t care.
I’m too far away to tell for certain, but my heart clenches at the sight.
In the band’s early days, Arlo’s drug problem was legendary. Stills of him doing lines off girls’ asses were plastered over gossip sites.
Has he fallen back on old habits? Was he ever clean?
A long sigh escapes me, and I reluctantly force my attention back to my phone. I have a job to do, and dwelling on how… anticlimactic our first meeting was isn’t it.
I suppose this is why they say don’t meet your idols.
Six
Darcy
My first day at my new job is a late start, and, God, do I need to sleep in. After my mark and the band left, I stayed to maintain appearances, and I might’ve downed a few champagnes in self-pity. Hey, the band was picking up the roadies’ tab, and the least they could do after disappointing me like that was help me get smashed.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can face any of my new coworkers now. Giggly, drunk Darcy danced with just about all of them.
To make matters worse, Miguel left and didn’t return, taking his phone out of reach of the Wi-Fi before I could get my digital claws into him.
My only saving grace was that neither Sully nor the band returned all night. It doesn’t mean I feel any less nervous as I show security my pass and step into the chaos that is backstage at a metal concert.
“Ah, Darcy, just in time.” Sully claps me on the back before I even notice him approach, and drags me into the chaos. “The pyro cages are kept over there.” He points at a far-off corner of the room, empty of anything except the wheeled cages. “There’s a safety checklist they need you to fill out at every venue—health and safety, covering their asses as usual—that’s lying around somewhere. Make sure you find it, or I’ll get my ass handed to me.”
He continues talking at a hundred miles a minute as he gives me the quickest tour of the cavernous backstage space, ending with the stage.
“The band will be arriving later, and then you can go through their safety check. I’ve got the choreography David—the guy before you—used, written down here.” Sully hands me a folded piece of paper. “The band doesn’t mind if you want to change things, but you need to make sure they know where not to stand, so be up here for rehearsals so you can do the safety checks with them. One of the dry ice machines is also temperamental…” A loud clang makes him tense, and he looks over his shoulder. “Be right back.”
Abandoned and alone amongst people rushing around with their own problems, I unfold the paper and groan.
It’s all iron wool, dry ice, and electronic cartridge-based explosives. Not even a hint of nitroglycerine or C-4. Sure, even dry ice can be explosive under the right conditions, but this is so… tame.
I leave the stage—which is bare and empty in the bright daylight—and head towards the cages full of my baby incendiary devices. Only to stop as I see the clipboard tied to the front of one.
There’s so much paper trapped on it that the clip at the top looks like it might break.
“No.”
Not paperwork. Not today. Not while I’m hungover.
I glare at the clipboard and crack my knuckles. “Ah, bureaucracy, we meet again.”
I’m barely ten minutes into the world’s most anal checkbox exercise when my phone buzzes in my pocket, followed by aba dum tssthat alerts me to the fact it’s Prophet.
Unable to help myself—because Prophet so rarely initiates any kind of conversation, and I’ll doanythingto escape the purgatory of paperwork—I draw my phone out and glance at the screen.
[HzD]Proph3t
