The Devil's Reprise (4 page)

The walls seemed to throb as I slowly eased myself off the bed. The champagne bubbles were a distant memory, and my tongue felt like it was coated with a layer of sand. I walked a few steps, one, two, three, and stopped outside the door, holding my breath.

I waited a few seconds. Counting. Listening.

Drip. Drip
.

Was that the sound of someone breathing? Or was that my own blood rushing through?

I gently pushed the door open with my splayed fingers and prepared for the worst.

The bathroom was empty. There was a porcelain toilet and something I assumed was a bidet, a tiny bathtub, and a mirror over the ornately carved sink.

And on the mirror, written in red, was
Be Careful What She Wished For.

I stared at it dumbly for a few moments. My first thought was not of fear or my mind being fucked thoroughly but whether it was written in blood or red lipstick or red nail polish. I leaned forward, still too wary to set foot on the tiles, and peered at it closer. It was lipstick, the thick matte kind that Angeline was sporting earlier, but far lighter, brighter.

All of which was totally unimportant. Because someone had left this message for me…hadn’t they?

I exhaled sharply and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the message was still there.

Be Careful What She Wished For.

There was something about it, the way it registered in me. But I wasn’t sure why I was having a connection to it, other than the fact that it was written on my bathroom mirror.

I made my way over to the champagne bottle, drank half of it in a few fizzy chugs, and picked up the phone, dialing the front desk. I tried to explain what had happened, but it was too complicated for their understanding of English, so I just told them I needed to see the manager. Then I asked to be connected to Jacob’s room.

He answered on first ring. “Yellow?”

“You need to come to my room—now,” I said, slamming down the phone.

I paced back and forth for a few minutes, eyeing the bathroom, until Jacob arrived, knocking at my door.

I let him in and pointed at the bathroom. “Take a look at that.”

Jacob went over and poked his head in, looking from side to side. “Your bathroom is bigger than mine. Wanker.”

“The mirror, Jacob,” I said, gritting my teeth. I plucked up the bottle and guzzled the rest of it.

He looked back at the mirror, nodded, and said, “Huh. Graffiti.”

“Is that it?” I couldn’t tell if he didn’t care or was being particularly evasive.

He opened his mouth to say something, his crooked bottom teeth showing, just as the hotel manager appeared in the doorway, looking blasé.

I quickly explained to him what had happened and let him see for himself. The manager looked at us apologetically and pressed his palms together.

“You must excuse me, monsieur Knightly. We, ah, have a housecleaner here who can sometimes be a little…strange. She hasn’t done something like this in a while.”

I studied him, trying to see if he was telling the truth or not. I wasn’t sure why he’d lie, but it was hard to know with the French.

“It’s in English, though, mate,” Jacob said, pointing at it. “Does your loony housecleaner know English, too?”

The manager shrugged. “Perhaps. I will talk to her about this. Like I said, she hasn’t done anything like this for a long time.”

“Well, what else has she done?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest and trying to look slightly more intimidating than a jet-lagged, scruffy-faced musician.

The manager’s eyes were blank as he responded. “Nothing for you to worry about. She won’t do anything like this again. My apologies to both of you. I’ll have someone else clean it for you and send up a few more bottles of champagne for the inconvenience.”

“No bother,” Jacob said, grabbing a white washcloth and rubbing it with soap before running the tap over it. He glanced at me over his shoulder. “No bother about the housecleaner. I’ll take care of this. You may still send up the free champagne, though.”

The manager nodded and left, closing the door behind him. I watched as Jacob smeared the red against the mirror so it looked like a wash of blood. Then he rubbed the wet cloth in harder and the marks faded away.

“You’re making too big a deal out of this,” Jacob said, almost as an aside. Still, there was strain apparent on his forehead and a strange depth to his tone. “So someone wrote this on your mirror. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It could mean something,” I said softly.

Jacob turned to face me, tossing the wet cloth into the bathtub. “Dawn will be here tomorrow.”

I swallowed thickly. “I know.”

“You’re worried about her,” he said, angling his chin down.

“I am now,” I said. I sat down on the edge of the bed. “What if that was meant for her? Be careful what she wished for? The whole deal…my whole deal…was because I wished for something. What if Dawn did the same thing?”

He squinted. “What makes you think that?”

“Something the demons said to us at Lake Shasta…” I said, the memories pouring through me like wet concrete. “Alva, as we were pulling away from her, yelled at us, at Dawn, to be careful what she wished for. They were her parting words to us. It had to mean something. You heard it, too, didn’t you?”

His gaze never wavered. “There was a lot going on at the time, boy, but I don’t think the two are related. You heard the manager. Whacky old loon. Likes to write on people’s mirrors.”

“And isn’t that kind of disturbing in and of itself?”

There was a knock at the door, causing me to jump. Shit. I was going to hell in a handbasket.

Jacob quickly opened the door and accepted the bottle of champagne from the bellhop. He shut the door and, once he caught the salivating look on my face, popped the bottle open.

“I suppose you deserve this,” he said, handing me the champagne bottle. “Now take it easy. I know you’re feeling like a bit of a nutter at the moment, but we still have this tour to do and we still have this dinner tonight. I don’t know what Angeline’s angle is, other than that she wants to sleep with rock stars, but she still has a lot of sway with the French promoters, and if we want the tour in this country to go right and for us to get paid on time, we have to play nice. I like it a lot less than you do, but it’s something we just have to do.”

“And after this country?” I asked, feeling the bubbles go straight to my head. My father would beat me over the head for drinking such an expensive and—most importantly—sissy drink, but whatever did the job was fine by me.

“It’s Italy—Rome, of course—then, if our visas come in time, we’re flying to Prague. That’s your biggest show, sold out right away. I think you have a really large fanbase there, so if we can get those visas in time, we’re definitely not going to miss that opportunity. After that, West Germany for Munich and Cologne, rounding off in Dublin and London. I’m still seeing if we can squeeze in Norway, Sweden, and Finland.” My eyes must have looked unfocused because he added, “We’ll go over it at dinner. Just…keep your bloody wits about you, Sage; you’re the unfortunate star of the show here and if you don’t go on, no one does.”

He took the other bottle of champagne for himself and went for the door. He opened it and paused. “If it makes you feel any better, Sage, try and think about the girl. But only if you’re in a good place. I like her, Sage. I know you do, too. Don’t let her trip out here be for nothing. See you downstairs in an hour.”

He closed the door and left. My thoughts wanted to drift to Dawn. I drank the whole bottle and silenced them.

Dinner was hell. Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad; after all, I’d had my own personal glimpse into Hell. But it took a fuckload of effort to keep my eyes open. Tricky, Jacob, and Angeline went on and on about the shows in Paris and Nice (we had a day to ourselves on the French Riviera, which was good,
nice
even) and about the musicians I’d meet tomorrow, the guys who would form my touring band. I’d approved them all months ago, but had already forgotten their names or who they sounded like. I wasn’t worried about that anyway; I was worried about myself and how well
I’d
perform.

Angeline kept teasing me with her smooth foot under the table, and I went on pretending it wasn’t happening as we dined on escargots and filet mignon in red sauce and things that were made with the highest fat percentage possible. I was lucky my diet had mainly been alcohol up to this point because the French cuisine seemed like murder for anyone who had to stay in shape.

I don’t know if it was the copious bottles of table wine or the brandy that Jacob ordered for the table after dinner, but pretty soon I was feeling all right. I was flying. It was like the day—and let’s say my
life
—never even happened and I had no cares, no worries, no fears. No guilt. Between Angeline’s toes working their way up my inner thigh and Tricky passing me a tiny vial of coke, under the table was where everything was happening.

“I love France,” I muttered as I stood and headed to the washrooms. I went in, took a leak, did a line, and tried not to look at myself in the mirror. I was about to leave, my head swimming and my heart pumping, when the door swung open and Angeline stepped in.

She swiftly locked the door behind her and put her fingers to her lips.

“Don’t tell anyone,” she said in that breathy, flirty accent of hers, “but I have quite the crush on you.”

I cocked a brow and grinned lazily as the drugs settled over me like dust. “I think everyone knows.”

“They don’t know anything,” she said. “But you’re about to. Do you want to do it here or in your room? Or I could do both. I can do a lot of things…want me to show you?”

She took a step toward me and started unbuttoning her white silk blouse, her eyes glinting feverishly, a wicked smile on her face. “Unless, of course, you can’t. But I don’t recall Sage Knightly having a girlfriend.”

My smile struggled. I didn’t. That was true. There was Dawn, of course, Dawn who I’d be seeing tomorrow. There were also scores of other chicks, but I remembered barely any of their names. And I wasn’t even
with
Dawn. I wanted her here because I
wanted
her, but now she was coming to Europe on official business. We weren’t together; even if I thought it was something I deserved, we weren’t an item. We…I had no idea what we were.

And I didn’t know where Dawn stood in all of this, what I meant to her. Because as I stood there in that black-and-white-tiled bathroom, Angeline displaying her creamy white breasts for me, all I did know was that Dawn had left me. She was with me in Redding, she was with me in the aftermath, and then she left. The only other person on the planet who knew exactly what I had gone through, who went to Hell and back with me and lived to tell about it, went her own way, back to her own state and her own life. She never gave me a second glance.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so disappointed about seeing a woman’s breasts before,” Angeline pouted. “You are unattached, aren’t you?”

Yes. I was unattached. And the ferocity of those feelings, realizing how badly it affected me that she had left, was hitting me hard. Harder than it should have after drinking a shitload and doing blow.

There was only one way out of this one. More blow. And from Angeline.

I grinned at her. “The only thing I want attached, baby, is your mouth on my dick.”

The words, the lies—they came so easily. I barely felt disgusted.

She smiled and went for my belt buckle, slowly undoing it. I licked and sucked at her breasts, generating a shaky moan, before she dropped to her knees on that bathroom floor and undid my fly. She brought out my dick, thick and strong and dying for release, and proceeded to use her very talented tongue and lips to bring me to a hot climax.

After that, we ditched the dinner party and made our way back to my bedroom, where I fucked her until she couldn’t take it anymore. She let me know by raking her nails painfully down my back and biting my neck until I swore I was bleeding. Luckily I was numb inside.

French chicks—they were a little bit psycho, but they made for good dessert.

The next morning I woke up alone with twitching nerves and a massive hangover.

I also hated myself.

Dawn

“I hope you come back,” Eric’s voice broke through my thoughts as I stuffed the last remaining
Creem
magazine inside my messenger bag, which was already full of travel necessities.

I gasped, turned around, and saw him standing awkwardly in my bedroom doorway.

“How long have you been standing there, you creeper?” I asked him. I forced a smile, as if it would temper my racing heart. All morning I’d been jumpy for no real reason and had to chalk it up to pre-departure nerves. My flight was leaving from Seattle this evening, and we had to drive the three hours to the airport.

Eric still stood at the door, his dark eyes stuck to mine. Every day he was looking more and more like my father, more and more handsome, more and more…accepted. Normal. And every day I feared that the Tourette’s would come back for my younger brother and he’d be bullied, alone, and miserable once again.

“Please come back, Dawn,” he went on, still not moving. A hot breeze blew in through my open curtains and made his long white shirt billow around his skinny frame like a sail.

I tucked my hair behind my ears—unruly as always—and crossed my arms across my chest.

“Of course I’m coming back, you dope. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because,” he said slowly, his eyes slowly raking over the room. He took in the stacks of vinyl, the music magazines, the posters on the walls and ceiling—The Who, Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Hendrix, Rod Stewart, and, yes, Hybrid. Still, always, Hybrid. Immortal. The few living things on this earth that could live forever, even beyond their own ends—bands, groups, music. They were all vampires through art.

He cleared his throat and his gaze went back to me again, now pitiful. “You’re done with school. What’s left for you here?”

I cocked my head and snorted in disbelief. “Eric? The hell? You’re left for me here. Dad. Mel. There’s plenty.”

“You’re going to fall in love—”

My forehead scrunched, afraid of what he was going to say. Was it that obvious about Sage?

“—with Europe,” he finished, much to my relief. “And you won’t want to come back.”

“I might fall in love with Europe, but I’m definitely coming back.” I smiled at him, but he didn’t return it. In fact, he looked positively morose, his shaggy hair falling into his eyes, mouth permanently downturned. I hadn’t seen him this way in a long time.

It didn’t help that his gaze was almost…fearful.

I ignored the shudder that wanted to run down my spine and walked over to him, slinging my bag over my shoulder. I put my hand on his arm and squeezed it.

“Hey, bro, crazy monkey,” I teased gently as I searched his face for any signs that it would lighten up. “I’ll be back in less than a month. I’ll call you every chance I get. I’ll write you cool postcards. Maybe some nudie ones I’ll pick up from the Moulin Rouge.”

I thought he’d at least grimace at the idea of his older sister mailing him postcards with nude foreign women on them, but instead his eyes met mine. They’d never looked so dark.

“You feel it, don’t you?” he whispered so low that I found myself leaning in to hear him. “You feel…
her
.”

My throat felt thick and the room turned into a stuffy tomb, despite the breeze blowing in from the hayfields. “Feel who?” I whispered back, trying to hide the tremor in my words. “What are you talking about?”

He stared at me, thinking intently, his eyes narrowing. Then they relaxed. “It doesn’t matter. Just…come back. That’s all. Just promise you’ll come back.” He looked to the floor, to the tops of his scuffed Keds. “I hate it when you leave.”

I wanted to keep questioning him about what I “felt” and who
she
was. But the sharp horn from my father’s new old truck blasted through the house, and I could hear him yelling for me to get a move on.

“I’m coming back,” I assured him and pulled him into a quick hug. Our relationship had been very parent/child since our mom died, but now that his Tourette’s had (magically?) subsided and Dad was more of a dad, I was back into the older sister role. Eric had grown more confident, too, and with that came girls and dating, and with that came secrets. Space between us. It was jarring to see him acting like the worried five-year-old who used to run into my room at night when he had nightmares.

“Now come on before Dad has a coronary and I have to drive myself to the airport,” I said, leading him away from the room and down the stairs. We left the house, and as I saw my dad behind the wheel of the truck, staring at us impatiently, I turned back in the driveway, squinting at the sun, looking the house over. The paint was peeling, blue in some places where the years of summer heat hadn’t bleached it, and though my dad had started fixing the house up, the screen door still had a hole at the bottom of it where our old cat, Ratcatcher, had run through it once, and our name on the mailbox still said “merson” instead of “Emerson,” because the “e” had rusted away years ago.

I don’t know why I was taking it all in like that, smiling softly at the house that held more bad memories than good, but maybe my brother’s sober demeanor and that creepy, God-fearing look in his eyes did make me wonder if I would see it again.

Of course I would, though. There was no reason to think otherwise. No reason at all. No matter how many times I wracked my brain over the last ten months to find the source of the guilt I felt, the feeling that my time was running out, that I was in debt to invisible creditors, I hadn’t come up with anything yet.

I didn’t owe anyone anything and I didn’t owe anyone to anything.

“Dawn, sweetie,” my dad said, his voice gentle, like he didn’t want to disturb me. “We’re going to be late, and we still have to pick up Melanie.”

I turned and grinned at him and, by doing so, pushed all those dark thoughts and worries deep down. With my suitcase already in the back of the truck, I climbed in the cab, my knees smashed up against the back of Eric’s seat, and we took off down the dusty road, the windows rolled down and the air smelling sweet.

I shot the house one last look, willing myself to stay positive—I was going to Europe, I was writing for
Creem
again, I would see Sage, my rock god Sage—when I saw something that took the breath out of my lungs. There was something on the roof of the house. The shape of a woman, completely in black.

In the one second that I realized what I was seeing, the figure jumped. Disappeared from sight. And in the next second, there was no one there and the house was being covered by the dust clouds behind us. I kept staring and staring, frozen, hoping that I’d get an answer.

But I didn’t. I looked to the front seat, at Eric tuning the radio, at my father chewing on a piece of hay as he often did, and the sun was bright, and the future was off in the distance, and I figured I couldn’t have seen a woman jump off my roof because that just didn’t make sense.

You feel…her.

My mind didn’t want my brother to be making up crazy mumbo-jumbo, it didn’t want me to think that my brother was turning into my mother and not making sense, so I imagined her, whoever she was.

I chewed on my lip and took deep breaths through my nose until I felt relaxed. It wasn’t until we picked up Melanie and then another hour after that, when we all started discussing music and Europe (my dad had been to Spain when he was younger and had apparently been going through a Hemingway phase), that I made peace with what I thought I saw. Demonic horses in the night. Women in black jumping off roofs. My mind made it all up. Manifestations of guilt, plus too many sessions at the bong.

Right?

By the time we pulled into the Seattle airport parking lot, all my trepidation was gone and I was actually excited.

“I’m going to miss you, bitch,” Mel said as she squeezed my waist just before I went through the security team that was going through everyone’s bags. Eric and my dad had already said their good-byes; Eric’s was surprisingly upbeat, like whatever darkness he had in him earlier was banished, and my father was nervous but proud. I could tell from how tall he was standing and how he kept brushing imaginary dirt and grass off his finest denims.

“It’s just three weeks,” I told Mel again, prying her arms off of me. “And you know I’ll write.”

She wiped at her nose. “I know, but I wish I could be there.”

I smiled. “Most people wish they could go to Europe to follow around a hot rock star.”

“And not just any hot rock star,” she said, her tone growing serious. My stance stiffened, prepared for her to bring up the whole “he doesn’t love you, you’re going to get hurt, be careful” spiel, but instead she put her cocoa hand on my freckled shoulder and said, “Have fun, Dawn. Enjoy every second of it. And don’t you dare forget about me.”

I told her that would be impossible, and then I waved at them, committing their faces to memory, and went on through to my new world.

The flight from Seattle to New York was pretty uneventful. Since it was only the second time on a plane for me, I was still extremely nervous, convinced that we would all plummet to our deaths. The only thing that saved me was the Bloody Marys I downed—the inebriation combined with the empty middle seat meant that I actually got some sleep on the red-eye.

That said, I knew I was going to meet my assigned photographer looking like a hot mess, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. As soon as we unloaded at JFK in the wee hours of the morning, I ran for the nearest restroom and tried to wake up. I pulled my wild red hair into a ponytail, washed off yesterday’s makeup, and put on a thick coat of beauty cream before putting on some foundation and mascara, but even that wasn’t enough to make my face catch up to the new time zone. I sighed at my bleary-eyed reflection and ran my toothbrush through my mouth. I didn’t know why I was trying to impress some photographer anyway—he wasn’t Sage.

In fact, his name was Max, and that’s about as much as I knew. At first, the whole me-going-to-Europe thing was just Sage’s idea, but then somehow it became an assignment from
Creem
, and this time they wanted someone else to document the adventure. I guess I couldn’t blame them for wanting someone to corroborate this next story, but I did feel slighted. I really thought I proved myself with the story about the fall of Hybrid and all the other concerts I covered and musicians I’d interviewed since then, but I was afraid that
Creem
still thought of me as some flaky girl who lucked out.

And I mean
really
lucked out.

I left the restroom, my brain trying to remember what the French word for toilets was (la toilettes? W.C.?), and headed for my gate. The flight to Paris left in an hour, and I had been warned that these international flights boarded really early. By the time I reached the gate, I was sweating up a storm and my shoulder was feeling carved in by the strap on my messenger bag. Served me right for trying to cram too much stuff into it. I definitely didn’t need a whole tub of Vaseline on the plane for the dry air.

At the gate, the first class section was already having their tickets taken by trim, well-groomed women in pale blue skirt suits and jaunty hats. Their teeth seemed impossibly white, like something out of a Colgate commercial, and they had this aura of grace about them. Were all French women like this? I looked down at my corduroy bell-bottoms with frayed ends and my polyester tank top I had scooped up at the Salvation Army. I didn’t stand a chance if any of these chic French chicks decided to go for Sage.

“Excuse me,” I heard a southern accent drawl. “Are you Dawn Emerson?”

I brought my cloudy head out of my hate bubble for French flight attendants and looked beside me. There was a tall dude—like as tall as Sage, if not taller—standing beside me and looking me over. He was built like a brick house—not fat, but just large…broad shoulders, really wide chest. He was wearing a denim shirt with sharp points and embroidery, the kind that cowboys wear, and jeans with a massive bronze belt buckle. A cigarette hung lazily from his full lips, and his eyes were a bright emerald green and hooded in that way that you couldn’t tell if he was stoned or just naturally relaxed. His hair was an orange brown, and a few freckles were scattered across his nose and grooved forehead. I couldn’t tell how old he was really, maybe my age, maybe late twenties, and I just blinked as I tried to bring everything up to speed.

“I’m Dawn,” I said slowly, instinctively offering the man my hand. He eyed it, smiled to himself, then sandwiched my outstretched hand between both of his and gave it two quick and hard pumps.

“Max,” he said, still grinning. It was a nice smile, though it had a condescending jackass tinge to it. “I’m your photographer. They did tell you about me, didn’t they?
Creem
, I mean.”

I nodded, feeling stupid. “Of course. Sorry. I just got off the plane from Seattle, and I’m not sure how I’m dealing with five hours of sleep, let alone the time change.”

“You haven’t traveled to the East Coast before, have you little lamb?”

If he wasn’t so darn cute and if that accent wasn’t so darn infectious, I would have frowned my proud feminist eyebrows at his “little lamb” endearment. “No, first time.”

“Shucks,” he said, scratching at his ginger sideburns and giving me a sly glance. “Looks like we have a novice on our hands. Well, little lamb, I promise I’ll be gentle with you.”

“Too bad I can’t say the same,” I retorted, straightening up. It wasn’t that Max was hitting on me, but I didn’t want him thinking I was some naïve little flower, either. Or a lamb.

He grinned and nodded at the perfectly poised airline crew. “We’ll be boarding next. Got us seats in the smoking section.”

I looked down at my ticket. Back of the plane, he was right. I was too sleep-deprived to notice that before. I didn’t know if I could handle another flight, let alone one with this Max fellow blowing smoke in my face, but I guess I had no choice.

We got on the plane, shuffling past the refined people in first class, and made our way to the very back. The air back here stunk, despite the fact that the whole airplane shared the same air. I felt like the cool kid sitting at the back of the bus, especially as Max sat down beside me, taking the dreaded middle seat and granting me the window. Not that I hadn’t been assigned it anyway, but I could totally have seen Max pulling some kind of ranking or seniority bullshit about it. Instead he was strangely gentlemanly.