The Flower Bowl Spell (15 page)

Someone comes by and hands Tyson a beer. Dos
Equis with lime. I keep expecting him to reach out for Cheradon, to
grasp her hand or claim a kiss. He takes a pull on his beer and
starts talking to one of the carpet loungers.

“Something to drink?” Cheradon asks.

I almost say sangria but remember Ty’s
warning. “Just water is good. Or fruit juice.” Cheradon doesn’t
even raise an artistically sculpted eyebrow (five shades darker
than her hair) as she signals the bartender.

“I like the article you wrote about Ty’s
band,” Cheradon says, her slight overbite charming the bejesus out
of me.

“Thanks.” I pause and decide to be truthful.
“I really didn’t feel it was all that special. It was just, you
know, typical.”

“Are you kidding? No, no, no, no, no.” She
grips a pillow with one hand, her nails clean and natural. “It
really got to the heart of the band. I think you could be their
biographer. Shit, fuck that. I think you could be
Yeah
Right’s
biographer.”

“You’re joking.” I try to meet Tyson’s eye,
but he’s getting his palm read by a Cheradon Badler wannabe. More
like stroked and tickled.

“Well. Of course we’ll have to see. But sure,
why not? I mean, if these two shows go well, it could be the start
of something, you know.” She shakes her head. “Madcap, baby.”

“Madcap.” I like it.

The bartender sets down a bottle of Evian and
a glass of pineapple juice topped with a tadpole of maraschino
cherries, melon, and a paper umbrella. Cheradon holds out her wine
glass to me and I obligingly clink. The noise is loud enough to
turn Tyson’s head. He looks at me, and I know he’s heard every word
we’ve said. And even though Cheradon hasn’t acknowledged her, I’m
sure that the girl who is practically licking his fingers will
never ever get the privilege of entering this room again.

I look over the questions I’ve written in my
notebook. “What do you do,” I say, “to get ready for a
performance?”

Cheradon looks around the room. “This.” She
puts her hand near my knee. “Ty says you were best friends with
Alice.”

Hearing Alice’s name takes me by surprise.
We’re going there? I look in Cheradon’s eyes, but they are all
friendliness and ease. Her aura has gone coppery again. I am
instantly distracted from the interview.

“We were friends,” I say. “That’s right.”

“I wish I could have known her.”

I nod. “She was…she was a really good
person.” This is the highest praise I can think of for anyone. In
Alice’s case, I mean it.

Cheradon mirrors my nod. “That’s what I hear.
She was a saint.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

“How could she not be, going to Africa to
help the little starving mommies and babies, only to get—” She
searches for the right word. “Only to get punished.”

Some things are easy to know, like Cheradon’s
possessive hold over Tyson, and his adoration of her. Some are not
so easy. Like the reason why Cheradon would bring up Alice and say
such things in this situation. Maybe she’s just trying to make a
connection with her interviewer. Or maybe she’s prodding my
weaknesses.

My heart, that old barometer, is beating
rapidly, and I silently ask it to quiet down. It does me the favor
of listening, and I feel the heat in my skin cooling, the tension
on my face dissolving. I put my hand on her shoulder as I say, “You
would have loved her.”

When I touch her skin a puissance spell tings
against my senses. It sparks up my arm and I see stars.

You’ve
got
to be kidding me.

It’s weak. Any half-trained pellar could
break it. Underneath it though, I read through her guise and
recognize for a moment the iron-like grasp she has or plans to have
on everything she desires. But then she adjusts in her seat,
delicately brushing away my hand, and her false front is back.
Still, I am no longer under her charismatic pull. All I can do for
the moment is pretend I didn’t see that glamour, and wonder who it
is that’s helping her.

Chapter Fourteen

There isn’t much time to process Cheradon’s
magick act, as production assistants pop in and kick out
practically everyone who isn’t a band member from Cheradon’s
vampirish party room. Ty manages to slip out the door with me,
mumbling something about being my escort back to the kids’
room.

“Is it always like this?” I ask him, and even
as the words leave my mouth I know they are naïve, but I sense he
wants to know that I’ve been impressed.

“Pretty much.” Tyson lets go of a tired sigh
as we walk. “So. What did you think?”

“About Cheradon?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s really something,” I say, pleased with
my prevarication. Nice and neutral. “Tell me again how you two
met.”

“Just outside Portland in Vancouver,
Washington. She caught our show at this little club. Or her manager
did. Told her we’d be good together. As bands.”

This must be the manager who liked my story
on Arsenic Playground. “Is he here?”

“D.B.? Of course. I’m surprised he hasn’t
talked to you yet. He’s kind of a control freak. Likes to have his
hooves on every little detail.”

I make a mental note to be sure to talk to
D.B. “So as a reporter, I feel it’s incumbent upon me to ask if
you’ve set a date for your nuptials.”

Tyson stops walking, hands in pockets, and
leans against the wall. “Off the record?”

At this point, I’m not even thinking about
the article. I nod.

“After the tour. We’re heading up to Anderson
Valley. Cheradon’s got a place there. Vineyards and whatnot.”

“Whatnot, eh? Sounds divine.”

“It is.” He smiles a secret little smile, and
I wonder what he’s thinking. “She told me that it was okay to tell
you,” he says. “Off the record.”

“Why all the hush-hush?”

“It’s fun. And it tells the gossip-rag rats
up
yours
. And…I don’t know. I just do what I’m
told.”

We look at each other for a moment, and I
have to tell myself to turn my frown upside down. He smiles
back.

“Do me a favor,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“Take off those five-hundred-dollar
sunglasses.”

“Actually, I think they were a grand.” He
removes them. There are fierce little indentations where the nose
pads have settled into his skin. The beginnings of crow’s feet
frame his brown eyes. He glances at me and away, unable to hold my
gaze. I see grief. Good grief, grief that should be there, but the
strange thing is that there’s nothing else. None of the rosy pink
glow that surrounds him when the glasses are on.

“Cheradon gave you those glasses, right?” I
reach for them.

His face clouds, but he recovers with a
light, confused laugh and pulls them away from me, cleaning them on
the bottom of his T-shirt. “I didn’t hear her tell you that.” He
puts them back on and looks down at me. “What are you, psychic?”
The grief is there still, but it’s been smothered way down.

I look back at him until he glances around.
We are alone in the hallway, and, it seems, alone in the building.
He reaches for me, his hand cupping the back of my neck and pulls
me towards him. We kiss and my eyes close. It’s a long one, not at
all innocent, and after he pulls away I admit to myself that I wish
we could do it again.

A door at the end of the hall leading to the
staging area bursts open, and a blond middle-aged man hurries
towards us. “There’s my guy!” he booms, a bundle of jazzy bonhomie.
“Ty, we gotta go. You’re already fifteen minutes late. Let’s not
have a riot like we did in Cleveland, capiche?”

He glances at my press pass. “Ah, you must be
Ned’s gal.” He holds out his hand. “Chad Beane. Good to meet
you.”

I take his hand and get a good look.
Everything about him is on the surface: all he wants is for Ty to
get on the stage ASAP. “They treating you good? You going to write
about our legendary boys and girls and the fans who just can’t get
enough?”

“Like Depeche Mode.” I can’t resist. He is
still holding my hand, long past overdue on giving it back.

“Hey hey!” he crows. “This chicky-babe knows
her mod bands. I like it. Listen, hate to break up this cozy
klatch, but the boy really does have to skee-doo if he knows what’s
good for him. Sweetheart.” He lets go of my hand only to wind his
arm around my waist so we are pressed hip to hip. “I’ll see you
afterwards, and we’ll talk. Okay? Okay. Ty, let’s vamoose.”

He steers Tyson by the shoulders down the
hall and out the doors.

****

Viveka’s girls are curled up on either end of
the couch. Someone, probably Zanna, has covered them with blankets.
I smooth back their hair and Romola stirs without waking, sighing
through her nose. Cleo opens and closes her mouth once. The video
game is still going strong, although it’s on mute, and the boys and
Saville are still in its thrall. The Buer demon salutes me and I
give him a nod.

“All present and accounted for, my dame!” he
bellows, breaking through the mute and into my ears, and jumps back
into the fray of a pit of serpents.

I sit down between Cleo and Romola, and to
distract myself from the kiss, quickly take some dutiful
journalistic notes on my impressions, even as my mind works over
what I know—or think I know—about Cheradon and Tyson. I’ve only
filled half a page when my phone rings. It’s Cooper, and the sound
of his voice fills me with homesickness and—if I want to be
completely honest—guilt. Even though witches avoid guilt. After we
check in on our days, I ask him about the locket.

“Are you wearing it?” he asks.

I touch it. “Yes.”

“Good. I thought it was about time you
started wearing jewelry again.”

“I know. But tell me more about Foxy Lady.
Was she selling a bunch of butterfly lockets or just this one?”

“No,” he says. “But I didn’t look. Why? Does
someone else have one too? Is it not a
unique
antique
as she described it?”

I almost tell him no, that no one else has
it, but I think about what Smarter Memphis said, that Cooper knows
nothing. “Actually, Romola and Cleo recognized it. They said their
mom has one just like it.”

There’s a silence on the other end for a long
moment.

“Cooper?”

“Well,” he says. “That is rather deflating
information. How disappointing.”

“I’m not disappointed,” I say. “I love it.
But I do find it odd.”

“Coincidental?”

“No such thing.”

“Right.” He chuckles. “Everything is
connected
, my sweet infidel.”

I laugh. “Where is this Foxy Lady?”

“Hang on.” I hear him rummaging in his desk.
“Here’s the receipt.” There’s the click of his glasses as he shakes
them out and places them precisely on his nose. “Foxy Lady’s alias
is Gladys Jones. And she lives in Santa Barbara. Well isn’t that a
coinci—”

“No, it’s not.” Because there’s no such
thing. I make the connection immediately: Gladys Jones was Gru’s
right-hand priestess, except she went by the magickal name Bright
Vixen. Foxy Lady indeed.

Curiouser and curiouser.

The door opens. It’s Chad Beane looking for
me. I say goodbye to Cooper, grab my things, and tiptoe out of the
room.

“Don’t worry,” Chad says, maybe because I’m
frowning. “You and me, we got the best seats in the house.”

We head through a door that goes directly
backstage. Chad leads me up some stairs and we are there on the
skirt of the stage next to a lit-up control board. The drum kit,
guitars, and mics await. A swirl of magenta, blue, and yellow
lights dance around the hall, sweeping through the audience, a
throng of mostly teenagers and twenty-somethings. Some in the crowd
sport Yeah Right T-shirts over whatever they’re already wearing,
Cheradon’s image front and center on their chests. She’s winking
and biting her tongue in a way that looks as if it must hurt, but
pleasurably.

Chad tells me he’ll be back, gives my hip a
squeeze—I need to kill Ned for setting me up with this handsy
monster—and leaves. I pull two soft earplugs from my pocket and
twist them into my ears. From stage left, Tyson, Babs, Horatio, and
Hugo stroll out as if they couldn’t be less excited about
performing. The crowd shouts its welcome.

Horatio climbs up behind the drums, Babs and
Hugo strap on their guns, and Ty grips the center microphone in his
hands. No one can see his eyes behind the sunglasses, and his mouth
is a thin line. Even though he’s not super tall he looms large in
the spotlights, his oversized boots and jeans bulking him up,
creating myth where he stands. His formfitting T-shirt enhances his
skinny, muscled torso and makes the girls scream even louder.
Yum.

Don’t think
yum
! I tell myself.
Shit.

Babs, resplendent in go-go boots and a
thrashed vintage Gucci minidress, strums the opening chords to
their second biggest hit, “Baja Oregon.” During our interview they
told me it’s a love song to Northern California’s liberal social
and environmental politics, although it sounds to me more like an
angry ballad about a teasing hoochie mama who won’t move up north
from L.A. because her singing career is just getting started.

Whatever it’s about, the crowd goes bonkers.
Like a human wave, they surge forward as one, pushing against the
metal barriers that separate them from the large men wearing yellow
security windbreakers in front of the stage.

Something dims one of the magenta lights and
automatically I look up at the ceiling. Three fairies are just
alighting on a steel beam. They’re dressed in dark colors, their
clothing stylishly tattered, their hair sticking up. Pixie punk.
One of them waves to me and I lift my hand slightly. They are
rocking out and I wonder if they are here for me or the music.

I go back to my scribbling. Not the things
I’m thinking but the things I know readers will want to read, like
what Arsenic Playground plays and what variations on lyrics Tyson
uses—which I pick up because I’ve already memorized their best
songs. Even if it weren’t part of my job, it wouldn’t be hard to
do. They are
that
catchy.