Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) (16 page)

The only part of the picture I still didn’t understand was...

“Why?” I said, staring at him. “Why would you want—” The thought of seeing that glint in his chest, watching the life drain from him through it, hit me with a wave of nausea so overwhelming I lost the thread of my words. I swallowed thickly.

“Why not?” Colin said. “They give something back. They give people the jolt they need to take their career to the next level, or to get it back when they’ve mostly lost it. Brian—he was almost a has-been when I met him, and then suddenly he was writing songs like a maniac. He turned out a new album in no time, and everyone loved it. He was getting new fans, he was touring again—”

“And then the Glower took all that away,” I said, my stomach still churning. I couldn’t believe he was saying this. “You know that, right? He didn’t kill himself, not really. They only give their marks a boost so they can feed on the excitement, the high of creative success and the attention that comes with it, and they’re so hungry they don’t care if they leave the mark feeling empty afterward. Feeling like he’s got to try harder, reach farther, push himself to the fraying point to get back that high... And then as soon as he does, the Glower sucks it all away again. It’s like the worst possible addiction, where the rush only lasts long enough for people to know how much they want it, and all the rest is the pain of withdrawal. It wrecks people. It gets harder and harder for them to pull themselves together, and then before long the Glower pushes a little too hard, and they drown in drugs, or throw themselves into stunts too wild to recover from, or simply decide they can’t take it anymore...”

“Because they don’t know,” Colin said. He sat up, the sheet pooling in his lap. “
You
don’t tell them. They don’t understand what’s happening. But I could negotiate. I’d go in with my eyes open.”

“That wouldn’t help you once you’re marked,” I said. “As soon a Glower gets a mark on you— You wouldn’t have any control at all, Colin. They take whatever they want and there’s nothing you could do to stop them.”

His mouth flattened. “Well, maybe I’m okay with that too, if it means that for at least a little while I’m making songs worth listening to, music that’ll last. Can’t I decide for myself if that’s worth the trade-off?”

He was sitting just a few inches from me, the musky-sweet smell of the sweat we’d worked up tickling off his bare skin, the eyes that for a second had seemed to look right inside my soul fixed on me, and abruptly I wanted to squirm away. My heart felt as if it were about to wrench in two. Who
was
this guy? I didn’t know him at all.

“I can’t believe you,” I said. “You knew, the whole time, and you let me—”

I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence, but the wave of my hand—to the bed, to the two of us—must have said enough. Colin’s expression shuttered.

“I let you
what
?” he said, and there was a darkness in his voice I’d never heard before.

I hesitated. “I...”

He got up, snatching up his boxers from where they’d fallen on the floor. “So that’s all this was? Seduce the client to get between him and the Glowers? Whatever it takes to get the job done? Sorry I inconvenienced you.”

“No!” I said. “No, Colin, I— That’s not—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said as he yanked on his boxers and grabbed his jeans. “I’ve had enough of this already. Don’t you see, that’s why— This is the world. People want you there so they can take whatever it is they need for themselves—their reputation, their
job
— No one really gives a crap, and I’m supposed to think that’s worth sticking around for? I’d rather go out in a quick blaze of glory that
I
chose, thanks.”

I scrambled off the bed as he headed for the hall. “Colin!” I said, and he yanked the door shut between us with a bang.

I stood there for a moment, gripping the handle, my skirt drifting down over my naked legs. Colin’s footsteps thumped down the hall toward his bedroom. That door slammed. I cringed and let go of the handle. Then I tilted my head against the door, squeezing my eyes shut against the mess of pain and horror inside.

When Colin still hadn’t emerged from his bedroom a few hours later, the knots in my stomach had shifted enough to make room for a gnawing of hunger. I crept out and grabbed a carton of leftover chow mein from the fridge. I ate it cold, perched on one of the stools by the island at the edge of the haze cast by the fixture over the front door. That light had already been on, and turning on any of the others felt like too immense a task. Besides, the chilled noodles sliding down my throat and the gloom of the deepening evening around me fit to my mood.

It was going to be okay, I told myself. Colin would cool down eventually, and when he did I’d explain to him what I’d really meant and erase the hurt I’d seen in his eyes before he stormed out.

Some part of me didn’t really believe that, though. Or it didn’t believe that explaining myself would be enough to fix everything our last conversation had broken.

Even if he understood that I cared about him, that he’d meant far more to me than any job, I’d heard the determination in his voice when he talked about getting marked. If he wanted it that badly, if he was that convinced it was the only way, if nothing I’d said already had made a difference, I wasn’t sure
anything
I said or did could change his mind.

I’d only choked down a few bites of the chow mein when my phone rang. The sound emanated from my purse on the floor just inside the doorway, where I’d dropped it in our headlong rush as we’d come in. The mouthful I swallowed stuck in my throat before going down. I got up and retrieved the phone.

The call display showed it was Fee calling. My thumb hovered over the answer button. A few months ago I’d have been overjoyed to see her name on the display, to know I could talk through this catastrophe with her. Now, my gut clenched at the thought of hearing a waver or a slur in her voice that’d tell me she wasn’t really with me at all. But I brought the phone to my ear anyway.

“Hey,” I said.

“Is this Avery?” said a girlish voice I didn’t recognize.

I frowned. “It is. Who’s this? Why are you on Fiona’s phone?”

“This is, um, Kady Forrest? Fiona was working with me?” The voice trembled. “I just— I didn’t know what to do, and you’re the first person in her favorite contacts, I’ve heard her talk about you before, so I thought if I was going to call anyone—”

Kady Forrest. The Starlet, Fiona’s client. “What’s going on, Kady?” I interrupted, keeping my voice as calm and level as I could even as I clutched the phone. For her to be calling me, for her to sound that way—it terrified me to imagine what could have pushed her to it. “Just tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

She dragged in a breath. “My parents and my sister had to go out of town for a couple days, so Fiona was staying with me. We’ve just been hanging out, watching movies, nothing crazy, I swear—but I think she must have taken something. I don’t know what. She started getting all loopy after she came back from the bathroom, and then all of a sudden she, like, fainted, and now I can’t get her to wake up. I mean, she’s still breathing and everything, but she doesn’t seem
okay
, you know. But I wasn’t sure, if I called an ambulance or something, maybe I’d get her in trouble. Maybe she’ll just wake up on her own...” She trailed off uncertainly.

My mouth had gone dry, but I had years of Society training to kick in and carry me through. In this line of work, drug overdoses were a potential hazard even with unmarked clients. I’d just never expected to have to apply that training to a fellow Tether. To my best friend.

“Okay, Kady,” I said. “You say she’s breathing—like normal, or slow? Is she making any strange sounds?”

“No, nothing weird,” Kady said. “And I think it’s normal breathing.”

“Do you know how to take a pulse? Can you tell me how hers feels?”

There was a muffled rustling as she must have knelt down. “I think so. I... Okay. Um. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a little slow?”

“How does her skin feel?” I asked. “Cool or warm?”

“Warm. But she was sweating. Her hair’s damp.”

“Did she throw up or anything like that?”

“No. No, if she’d seemed really bad I’d have called an ambulance.” Her breath hitched with a suppressed sob. “I just want her to be okay.”

I walked across the living room and back, debating with myself. Kady was right: Fee probably would get in trouble with the Society, with Sterling, if he found out she’d passed out like this while supervising her client. I didn’t know if she’d ever forgive me if I made the decision to call this in. And it didn’t sound as if she were in critical condition. Maybe she’d just nodded out. Maybe she
would
wake up perfectly fine on her own.

If only I could see her for myself, to be sure...

“Kady, where are you?” I said.

She gave me an address in Brentwood. Not that far from here. In a cab, I could probably make the trip in under fifteen minutes.

“Listen,” I said, “just keep an eye on her, and I’ll come and see how she’s doing, and then we can decide—”

I halted, the awareness of the closed door at the end of the hall prickling over me. Colin might have turned in for the night, but I didn’t know that. I couldn’t leave him alone right now, not after the fight we’d just had. He might walk right out of here and into the Glower’s waiting arms.

Damn it.

“No,” I said. “Wait. I...” I paced to the dining table and back, trying to formulate a plan that would protect everyone I cared about. Maybe Kady could bring Fee here? Hauling her unconscious body across town—no. “I can’t,” I said. “I—I can probably call someone else who’ll come help.” Mateo might be free. I thought he’d understand. He and Fee were friends too. “Can you just—”

Footsteps sounded behind me. I turned to find Colin standing at the edge of the living room, fully dressed, his face weary. My heart stuttered.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

I didn’t want to lay this on him on top of everything else. “I can handle—” I started, and he cut me off with a jerk of his hand.

“What’s wrong, Avery?” he said firmly.

“My friend Fiona, she’s at a client’s house, she took something and passed out,” I said.

His expression didn’t shift. “And you want to check on her.”

“It doesn’t have to be—”

“I’ll take you,” he said before I could protest more. “Let’s go.”

14.

T
he Starlet’s house was a big colonial number near the park, with an intercom at the gate I had to buzz her from before Colin could steer the Audi the rest of the way up to the house. I leapt out the second he hit the brakes at the top of the drive. Kady opened the door as I was pounding up the front steps.

“I think she’s getting worse,” she said, her mouth twisted and her pale face ruddy with tear tracks. Despite her fashionably mature shag haircut, she looked so very young. Fourteen? Fifteen? But already on TV screens across the world.

And this was the life that came with that sort of fame.

“It’s just been the last couple minutes,” Kady said as she tugged me into a huge entertainment room. A semi-circle of suede sofas faced a flat screen TV in a built-in oak shelving unit that filled the entire opposite wall. Fee was sprawled next to one of the sofas. My chest contracted. Fee was so full of life most of the time it was easy to forget how small her actual body was. Lying there now, eyes shut, jaw slack, and limbs akimbo, she looked like a child’s doll tossed carelessly aside.

“She made this sound, like coughing,” Kady said, jittering from foot to foot. “I rolled her onto her side. That’s what they always say—to make sure the person doesn’t choke—”

“That was good thinking,” I told her. I crouched next to Fee and touched her forehead. She felt clammy, her skin damp and faintly cool. The fringe of her fine black hair was plastered to her temples.

“Fee?” I said, shaking her shoulder. “Fee!”

Her eyelids didn’t even flutter. Her chest was still rising and falling, but erratically—one breath, then a pause, then two right after each other, then another longer pause. I slid my fingers down her neck to the pulse point. Her heartbeat was steady but sluggish. Not good.

I sat back on my heels, a chill washing over me. She needed medical care. I couldn’t say for sure she’d die without it—but I couldn’t say for sure she wouldn’t, either. And I’d rather have Fee alive and never speaking to me again than gone forever.

“We should get her to emerg,” I said.

“The UCLA hospital is ten minutes from here,” Colin said by the doorway, and I startled. I’d been so focused on Fee I hadn’t noticed him following Kady and me in. “We can drive her there faster than waiting for an ambulance.”

And bring the Starlet? That would be a mess. I glanced at Kady, my gaze catching on the green stones in the studs in her ears. “Fiona gave you those earrings?” I said.

She touched them, looking puzzled. “Yeah.”

Malachite. That was something. “Keep them on,” I said. “For... for luck, for her. And don’t leave the house. Can you promise that? I’ll call the Society; they’ll send someone over as soon as they can.”