Midnight Reign (17 page)

Dawn waited for the clues to surface: a gleam of understanding in Jac’s gaze, a flinch, a tell.

But there was nothing. Just Jac reaching out to Dawn and patting her knee.

Dawn’s instincts told her to push away, but it was a nice touch, lending her some ease. Inexplicably, she put her own hand over Jac’s, but as soon as she realized it, she retreated.

Jac didn’t seem to mind. “I know how that made you feel, and I understand why you needed to take some time before seeing me again. I’m still so sorry about the surprise.”

“I’m over it.”

Jac squeezed Dawn’s knee. “Now that we’ve gotten the awkwardness out of the way, I’m actually flattered that you’d say I’m like her. Gosh, to even be in the same realm as Eva Claremont is just…”

It was like stars were shining in the girl’s eyes. Stars with pointed edges that jabbed and tore.

If she
were
Eva, she was a hell of an actress. Or was Jac truly just another innocent bystander, one who was in direct firing range of Dawn’s agenda?

You can’t go around thinking everything is going to attack you,
Kiko had said.

Once again, she thought of the throwing star speeding toward the homeless woman, the snick of it hitting her arm, the blood on the stuffed animal.

“Hey,” Jac said, leaning closer. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Is it still me?”

The car ahead of them drove away, and the security officer waved Jac forward. Dawn was saved from answering as the starlet pulled up.

And when Jac rolled down her window, allowing the scent of jasmine to permeate the car, Dawn relaxed. She wasn’t alone.

It didn’t take long for them to clear the checkpoint. Paul Aspen’s people had probably prepared an extensive list of who to let through easily. Yeah, Dawn got the evil eye, but the fact that the beefcakes let her through without more of a scene spoke a lot about Jac’s status on the set.

And she went right on thinking that way, too, at least until after the valet parked their car. It was only when she and Jac got to the exquisite teak doors that she started to feel like an outcast among the beautiful people again.

Bodyguards took one look at Dawn and stopped her. Oh well, that’s what she got for wearing the regular I-don’t-give-a-shit gear. She was Jac’s entourage, but she wasn’t a star herself, so that meant she couldn’t get away with the grunge.

As they patted her down, she casually checked out the exotic, chicly overgrown foliage, the torches burning fake fire from wall sconces. The house was a quasi-Mayan temple. How sacrificial nouveau.

When it was over, Jac seemed to think it was a good idea to make her friend forget all about the second-class treatment. Linking her arm through Dawn’s, she guided them both into the house, clearly excited at her big movie-star party. Sad. Maybe this was the first time anyone in the cast had invited her.

“I wonder how many hearts you’ll break tonight,” Jac said as they walked through the foyer. The blaring recorded music—something so hip the band probably didn’t even have a name—was making Jac talk loudly.

Dawn stiffened as they approached the main area. “I don’t break hearts, I eat them.” She was kidding. Pretty much.

Her rigidity had made Jac back off. But then, pulling an impressed face, the undaunted actress reached out and gave her friend’s biceps a feel.

“Look at that. I wish I had these guns! You make everyone here look lazy!”

Even though she was oddly pleased by Jac’s comment, Dawn pretended she wasn’t. It appealed to the part of her that believed she
wasn’t
inferior to these people, and Lord help her, she liked knowing that someone else thought the same way.

They drew nearer to the action, and Dawn tried to remain placid, keeping her rebellious facade intact, presenting the girl who’d spurned all the other Hollywood kids while growing up. It’d been one of many ways to distance herself from Eva, and it’d worked.

As the main room opened up in front of them, she saw that the mansion’s interior was created to seem brittle and broken, the walls fashionably crumbling, the décor utilizing everything from long-stemmed candleholders shooting up from the floor to a polar bear rug in front of an empty grand fireplace.

But the partygoers provided a modern touch. Near a flat-screen TV, a crowd of young hipsters from
Aliantrance
, a fantasy that had scooped the number one spot at the box office for the past three weeks, yelled while maiming each other by proxy with their gory PlayStation street fighting. Scattered throughout the rest of the room, less enthusiastic men and women in silks and chunky jewelry swayed to the techno-flavored music, drinks in hand, cigarettes burning from extended fingers. They were standing against walls, draped over couches, mingling with each other and probably working deals with every breath.

Well behaved, Dawn thought. The party must’ve just started.

As a tabloid socialite strolled by, her boutique perfume made Dawn want to choke. And it made her realize something else: the jasmine had disappeared, replaced by acrid smoke, the expensively bad perfume, and emerging perspiration.

“I can’t get used to this!” Jac said, sounding half-afraid and half-fascinated by her surroundings. “You’ll protect me from trouble though, won’t you, Dawn? My fencing buddy? My own personal bodyguard?”

“Why not.” Dawn led Jac away from an oily guido approaching due right and headed for a private corner. Even though she didn’t know what to think about her friend, she felt protective. Weird but true.

On their way, they were intercepted by the man himself, Paul Aspen. Reportedly in his late thirties, he was the type who wasn’t actually a “man,” but more of a “guy.” A perpetual Hollywood Peter Pan, he’d shaved off his sandy hair for this buccaneer role, probably hoping to age himself, and had gotten his ears pierced, too. Tall and full of that star-making “X factor,” he was a producer’s wet dream.

His hazel eyes seemed friendly enough as he offered Dawn and Jac two drinks. “I heard on a security scanner that my favorite costar had arrived, and I’m not talking about Will.”

Dawn belatedly recalled that Jac’s other costar was Mr.
Independence Day
himself.

“Who’s your friend, Jacqueline?” Paul added.

Dawn wanted to be ornery and tell Paul Aspen straight out that she was about ten years too old for his tastes, but she shut up for Jac’s sake.

Just about bursting with smiles, Jac made short work of the introductions, telling Paul about Dawn’s stunt work and how she wanted to get Dawn on staff.

Was Jac just starstruck or was there some crushing going on here?

Dawn shifted around, refusing Paul’s cocktail offer. Jac took him up on it though, inspecting the red liquid in the martini glass before testing it.

“What is it?” she asked.

Paul sipped at the one Dawn had rejected. “Death by Sangria. Damned if I know what’s in it, but it’s supposed to be the same old classic with a twist.”

“Mmm.” Jac laughed and stopped drinking. “Good. Dawn, you sure you don’t want one?”

“I don’t drink, really.” Frank had sworn her off booze.

“Well, I’ll be…” Ever the social sentinel, Paul was watching the foyer and raising a welcoming hand to a well-known producer who’d just sauntered in. “There’s Robert, so don’t mind me while I pay homage. I’ll see you girls later?”

“Definitely,” Jac said.

Paul leaned in close to both of them. “Here’s a tip. If anyone offers you a tour of the place, say no. We’ve already had one incident tonight with an anonymous supporting actress, a horny director who shall go unnamed, and a secret room behind the fireplace. Beware of these old houses, ladies.”

He winked and rushed off, Jac’s gaze trailing him.

Dawn got her attention. “Please don’t tell me you’re—”

“No. Oh, heck, no. It’s just…I’m
working
with him, Dawn. I watched him on
Co-Ed Nights
when I was a teenager.” She lifted her glass, but then lowered it when she caught something from across the room. “Oops—nine o’clock. Someone’s checking you out.”

Okay, it was beyond Dawn’s power to resist, especially when she was surrounded by all these reminders of how she’d had to compete with Eva day in and day out. Yup, the old resentment was back and flourishing, so if a man was looking at Dawn and not Jac from across a room, that was a small victory. Disgusting, but pitifully true.

She glanced over and, what do you know. A typical pretty boy was indeed giving her the once over. But when he realized he had her attention, his gaze predictably shifted to the girl next to her.

Eva was winning again, even if she wasn’t actually here….

“Go get him,” Dawn said to Jac, fixing her attention elsewhere.

“No, that boy likes you. I can tell.”

“Forget it.”

Dawn saw a chest full of iced bottled water near a couch, so she went over to it. As she grabbed one, she tuned in to a conversation between two industry types sitting nearby.

The woman had a streak of white dust under her nose and was waxing on about how Hollywood would always be “in the know.” They weren’t irrelevant at all, she kept saying, gesturing madly. Fuck the red states. Fuck the conservative press.

Dawn unscrewed her water and took a sip, hiding a laugh.

Jac was laughing, too, casting Dawn a knowing glance as she guided her outside, where it was much quieter. Jungle plants hovered over a glowing blue pool. Two women were skinny-dipping, watched over by a group of appreciative men discretely smoking weed.

“So how’s work going?” Jac said, turning her back on the scene and taking the opportunity to make a can-you-believe-these-people face.

“Work is work. PI stuff. Top secret. All that.”

“It sounds exciting.”

“Not so much.” Dawn took another drink. “Detecting involves lots of waiting around and running into barriers. And my boss…” She shook her head. “He’s…”

Whoa. Time to shut up.

“He’s what?” Jac seemed ecstatic that Dawn was actually communicating.

Suddenly, Dawn wondered if she was actually a project for this girl. Some people were like that—they gravitated toward fixer-uppers. It drove them, just like fearful bitterness seemed to drive Dawn most of the time.

“My boss is uncommunicative,” she settled on saying. It didn’t give anything up. “He kills me.”

“Aw, just let go of it. Negative feelings suck. Life is so much easier without them.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, all the bad medicine you take in?” Jac made a dismissive motion, graceful, balletic even. “Who needs it?”

I do,
thought Dawn.

Jac touched her arm, spreading a ray of comfort through Dawn’s skin. Still, she couldn’t help shirking away.

“Sorry,” Jac said.

Dawn tried to make like she didn’t know what the other girl meant.

“No, I am.” The starlet tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry I look like her. I’m sorry I make you squirm.”

What was there to say? Dawn took another quaff just to have something to do.

“Can I ask?” Jac said. “What was she like, your mom?”

Shit. “I don’t know. She died when I was about a month old. I was raised by my dad because she wasn’t around.”

“You say that like she meant to abandon you.”

Dawn gripped her bottle. “She didn’t. Abandon me, that is. She’s always managed to be with me.”

Knowing she should be marking the other girl’s reactions, Dawn locked eyes with her, but Jac only seemed confused.

“What do you mean?”

Dawn drank again, waiting. Baiting.

Finally, the actress’s gaze broke away. “It seems like you don’t like her much.”

“Why’s that?”

“Look at you.” Jac held her hand out, chock-full of empathy. “You scream hatred, Dawn.”

That was it—an invitation to say everything she’d always wanted to, whether or not Jac deserved it.

“She’s dogged me my whole life, and not in the way a mom should. It was always, ‘Why aren’t you as pretty?’ ‘Why aren’t you as talented?’ ‘Why aren’t you as sweet?’ And you know what? I went the other way in every category. I got tired of competing with her as soon as I was old enough to feel inferior, and that was real early, believe me.”

She felt so much better now that she was directing her wrath at the proper place, not inwardly, not at every other person who happened to cross her path.

Jac’s voice quavered. “She wouldn’t…I mean, don’t you think she would just want you to be happy if she were alive? Don’t you think she’d do anything to make that happen? Just…you’ve got to
stop
competing with her, Dawn. I’m sure that would’ve made her so sad.”

Throat closing with heat, Dawn held up a finger. “There’s no way I can compete—do you know why?”

“Why?” Jac said, eyes getting watery.

“Because Eva Claremont is the big winner.” Dawn was shaking now. “She took the top prize in the Desert Your Family Sweepstakes, and I’ll be damned if I ever compete for
that
title again.”

If Jac
were
the real Eva, she’d understand that. Eva hadn’t ever died. She’d literally left her family to go Underground.

Jac’s empty hand covered her heart for a second, her gaze exploding with such emotion that Dawn nearly went into defensive mode, ready to fight and bring it all down.

But then, just as if the girl’s response had only been subliminal—a vision spliced between the frames of a filmstrip—it was gone.

Instead, she was shaking her head, holding her drink to her chest like it was a comfort object. “Dawn, poor Dawn.”

Squeezing shut her eyes, Dawn fought—what? Was it disappointment that she hadn’t flushed out Eva? Or was it bottom-sucking disgust at not wanting to admit that her mom really was dead?

God, dead…

“Why don’t you sit down, Dawn.”

She felt Jac guiding her to a chair, felt the give of wicker at her back and the softness of a cushion at her bottom. She buried her face in a hand. Above her, Jac hesitated, probably knowing Dawn wasn’t going to talk anymore right now.

“I’ll get us something else to drink, okay?” Jac said, stroking Dawn’s hair from her forehead. “I’ll be right back, and we can settle in for a long chat.”