Lost Angeles (5 page)

For the first few minutes, she mutters under her breath, pulling out boilerplate contracts and Perrier waters. Her whole body is at an anxious fidget when she stops, spins toward me, and asks yet again, “Are you certain you don’t want to retain a lawyer before signing anything? A deal on the table… you could get an agent like
that
.” And she snaps her immaculately French-manicured nails.

“I’m not worried about the legalities.” It’s the truth, edging closer to my real reason for being here. As much as I love it, the music has been a means to an end, so I pull the papers toward me and start signing on the dotted lines.
All
the dotted lines, everywhere she points with that one, perfect fingertip. In between scrawls, I flick curious glances at the woman seated across from me.

For a while, the doctors had me convinced I’d imagined her. Imagined everything. Then one afternoon, I’d been sitting in the psych ward common room, flicking through the channels without really watching. Then…
boom
. There she was. The redhead who supposedly didn’t exist, on the arm of the world’s most infamous rock star. It was a red carpet clip of Xaine headed into the Grammy awards.

That was the day I started to “recover.” That was the day I started lying to the doctors, to the shrinks, telling them I understood, that I really had hallucinated the whole thing. That my mind had played tricks on me, bending fantasy over memory until I’d pieced together an entire alternate reality from snippets of life and TV. They say that admitting to the problem is half the battle, and my battle couldn’t even begin until I was out of that hospital. That became my new goal: to tell them whatever they wanted to hear for as long as it took to convince them.

But no matter what I said to those people, I knew I had to come here, find her.

Find answers
.

My hand is shaking by the time my last John Hancock is in place, but Reille just sighs heavily and drags the papers out of my grasp.

“Well, I suppose that is that,” she says.

“Yeah, it really is.” I lick my lips and finally muster the gumption to ask, “Look, this is going to sound really strange, but… do you remember me?”

There’s a flicker of something—the kind of panic I’ve seen in my own eyes when staring at my reflection—before she tamps it all down and goes Hollywood Hills
cool
on me. “Most people generally have to be
memorable
for me to remember them.”

“Right,” I say slowly, because what did I expect, really? “The thing is, I remember you.” A pause. “You were on the table next to mine. You know. At that… lab… or whatever.”

I know she knows what I mean, because the color drains from her face lickety-split. Well, what color there is to begin with. Reille Reece is rather tragically wan, the sort of pale-and-pretty you’d find in a campy vampire novel, but that doesn’t stop her from turning a little green around the edges as well.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Leaning back in her chair, she offers up a brittle smile when she adds, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.” Opening a Perrier bottle, she takes a tiny sip and swallows harder than necessary.

I’d feel more sympathy, if she wasn’t bald-faced lying to me right now. “I get it. I really do. Learned the hard way not to say anything if I didn’t want to end up in a strait jacket, bouncing off the walls of a padded room—”

“Look, Miss Chase, I appreciate that you think you know me from somewhere—”

“Who’s Cas?” Grasping at straws, I’m gratified to catch a tremor in her hand, so I push her with, “You kept screaming that he would come for you. That he would make them sorry.”

Reille sucks in a breath and holds it, like she’s trying to decide something, but before she can answer, the intercom beeps twice and a voice cuts between us.

“The car for Miss Chase is here.”

Reille reaches out to press the button; her hand is shaking harder now. “Thank you. She’ll be right down.” Then she lets go and heads for the door without another glance in my direction. “We’ll be in touch about rehearsals. Please have the receptionist take your measurements so they can be forwarded to the wardrobe department.”

It’s less than I wanted but more than I expected out of the ambush, and I have to content myself with the knowledge that the Scion gig will put me on Reille’s radar long enough that she might break down and trust me.

I need her to trust me.

A two-hour hellish drive through traffic gives me plenty of time to reflect on the day, and not just about my first encounter with Reille Reece. However weird he is, Jackson Trace is right. It’s not safe to go home with strange men, or get in the car with them, or wake up naked and alone in places I don’t recognize. I don’t know what I was thinking, and the longer I dwell on it, the more anxious I get. Whole chunks of my memory are still missing, and I know I wasn’t
that
drunk.

I need to be more careful. Put my guard back up. I’m closer to answers than I’ve been in this entire year, and I can’t mess it up for the sake of a few drinks and the vague recollection of a boy blond bombshell who put his hands up my shirt.

Punching in the code to the front door of my apartment building, I step inside and slam the rusted iron and glass barrier closed behind me. When I turn around and glance up the stairs, nothing’s ever looked better than my ugly, avocado-green hallway with its peeling paint and old wooden steps coated in several lumpy layers of red high-gloss. Not even the loud blast of mariachi music coming from 2C derails my relief at heading three stories up and worlds away from everywhere I’ve been today. When the thin soles of my flats hit my doormat, I sigh with relief and fish around in my bag for my keys. I’m home, which means I can kick off my shoes, my clothes, climb into a hot shower, and scald my skin until everything goes away for a while. It means I can drop into bed and process everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four—

The door jerks open, interrupting my daydream. “
Puta
, where the hell have you been?”

I’m standing there with the key in my hand, staring at a pair of shoes that I’d break my ankles in. Up go the eyeballs, over her tight, red sheath dress, golden bling, and thick, black hair before I land on warm brown skin and perfectly-placed cat-eyes. Doesn’t take long, because Jessamin Rivera is short compared to me, gorgeously effortless, and it’s ridiculous that she looks this good at nine o’clock on a Friday night when I know she’s not going out.

“Well?” she snaps. “I was just about to come looking for you.”

I grin at that, waving a hand at her less-than-sensible gear. “Yeah? You and what army, G.I. Barbie? I think there’s some camo face paint in the medicine cabinet.”

“That’s not funny,
pendeja
.” She steps back to let me in, but keeps one hand on the door so that she can slam it the second I’m inside. “I haven’t seen you since yesterday morning. I was going to call the police.”

“It hasn’t been forty-eight hours yet, so they wouldn’t have done anything.” I drop my bag on the floor and turn to face the irate Latina.

“Seriously, Lourdes.” Jess says my name like my mom used to, with the subtle hint of unspoken middle and last name that signaled I was in trouble. “What the hell is going on?”

“I went to a gig, then I went to an audition, then I came home.”

“A two day gig? A two day audition?” Jess crosses her arms over her chest and sticks one foot out, tapping her toe. “Then how do you explain the twenty apple pies in my kitchen, Lolo?”

I’m already headed down the dimly-lit hallway, but that gives me pause. “What are you talking about?”

With a huff of frustration, Jess shoves me down the narrow corridor until we hit the living room, which is full of stuff. Random stuff. Stuff that has no reason, rhyme, or consistent theme. There are paperweights, balloons, flower arrangements, fruit arrangements, cards, toys,
novelty
toys, sausage baskets, cheese baskets, and other things that I can’t even begin identify at a glance.

“What the fucking butts.” I shoot a look back at her like she can explain the insanity that’s become my life. “What is all this?”

“You tell me,” she fires back.

“I, um…”
I don’t know.
“I, uh…”
Is this really happening?
“Er… did it come with a card?”

Jess waves an impatient hand in the direction of everything that’s gathered in our apartment. “Yeah, about three hundred of them.”

I locate the nearest arrangement of
something
. Cookies, by the looks of it. Cookies shaped like shoes. Plucking the card from the plastic holder, I read the front. A smiling cartoon character with casts on both legs encourages me to “Get back on your feet soon!”

Flipping it open, I find that there’s an actual typed message inside.

Ms. Chase,

Didn’t know what you liked, so I got you one of each.

Welcome to Apocalypse.

X.

I put that card down and pick up another. It’s got an identical message inside. So does the one after that. I keep checking them, like it’s all going to make sense eventually. Like I’m going to find that one card in the midst of all this that says, “April Fools!” or something equally explanatory.

“Ringin’ any bells,
hermana
?” asks Jess, apparently tired of my gape-mouthed, wide-eyed staring. “What about the pies?”

“What pies?” The question comes out a little absently, because I’m spinning in slow circles, letting my eyes sweep over the floor-to-ceiling “one of each” cluttering up my home.

“The ones in the kitchen,” Jess says before adding, “Apple. Twenty of them.”

Eyes narrowed, I stare at her. “Are there really twenty apple pies in the kitchen?”

She points a finger at the couch. “Are there really five dildos in the corner?”

With a squint, I read the labels on the five bright-pink boxes next to the sofa and offer up a tentative, “Yes?”

“Then you better believe there are twenty fucking pies in the kitchen.”

It’s like I’ve landed in some weird universe where dicks and pies are the perfect welcome-to-the-big-time gifts. Worst part is, I know exactly who “X” is, and as I think about it, my hands start to sweat a little. I didn’t spot him there today, but stage lights aren’t conducive to seeing the audience. I didn’t expect him, either, and I’m glad I didn’t know.

Probably would’ve choked if you had.

“Where was this gig?” Jess demands.

“Scion,” I say, clutching a fistful of paper in each hand, rubbing the pleasantly-ribbed vellum between my fingertips. “I got the job.”

“Congratulations. I’ll pop open that bottle of Cristal and we can toast the gig you landed with the mentally-unhinged vampire.” Except Jess makes no move toward the champagne. That and the dripping sarcasm tip me off that she’s less than pleased by this turn of events.

“You’re supposed to be happy for me,” I say slowly. “You know how hard I’ve worked for this.”

No lie. I’ve taken every DJ gig I could get my hands on, spent nights at bars with my acoustic guitar, handed my business card out to every suit and sleazebag who offered me his hand. Plenty had offered more than a hand, but
not that kind of girl
carried over to sleeping my way up the record exec ladder, so it’s taken a long time to land a break, and now Jess is raining on my parade for all it’s worth.

“Xaine is dangerous. He blows through women like tissues. He
breaks
them.” Jess folds her arms across her chest.

“I’m not there for him,” I tell her. “You know that.”

“You’re still walking into a viper’s nest,” she says. “Any one of those vamps in that place has enough money and power to kill you and make it look like an accident. And
Xaine
…” Jess huffs out a derisive sound. “He’s a Scipio. Which makes it all a hundred times worse.”

“Like I said, I’m not there for Xaine.” Jess doesn’t look the least bit appeased by my reiteration of fact, which sparks my irritation. “And how do you know so much about him anyway?”

“Oh, I know plenty about him, and none of it good. So we’re gonna call a courier service and have this dumped on Scion’s front stairs.” She heads off to find her cell phone, normally glued to her hand.

She must really be upset if she put it down, even for a second.

I follow her into the kitchen, where she’s shifting apple pies around and muttering like a crazy person. “Jess.”

“I’ll dildo him, that shirtless
capullo
.”

I take a stack of five pastry boxes out of her hands before she can toss them to one side. “
Jess
.”

“What kind of sick freak sends sex toys to a stranger?” Her elbow nudges a vase sitting precariously on the edge of the counter.

No, not a vase. A fish bowl. A fish bowl with flowers in it, or maybe a vase with fish in it. Either way, it’s the weird cherry on a spectacularly-weird sundae, and I’m standing there with my arms full of pie and my options are laugh, or cry.

Leaning against the wall, I tip my head back. The first tiny giggle catches hold of me and then
it’s on
. Sliding to the floor, I’m helpless, caught in the throes of something more than the ridiculous sight of the fishy floral arrangement or the shoe cookies or the fact that I haven’t had anything to eat in god knows how long. Reaching a hand up, I get the nearest drawer open and scrabble around until my fingers close down on a fork. The other hand is already untying the string on the top pink cardboard box and flipping the lid open. And by golly, there’s pie, oozing cinnamon juice around pastry so buttery that it’s yellow.