Helen made eye contact with him and scooped the object into her palm.
He blinked, a muscle in his jaw feathering. “No response?”
“No. What were you looking for?”
“No pain, discomfort, or burning?” Putting his drinking glass in a cupboard, Brian snorted a laugh bereft of good humor. “Christ, I’m proper gobsmacked at what I’m saying aloud today.”
“No pain. Why does my reaction matter?” She set the rock back on the counter, showing her palm as proof. Sure, she could pocket the stone, get the thing away from him, but rash behavior might make him balk.
Brian backed away a foot, a curtain of blankness falling over his face. He gathered her tumbler and blasted the inside with a stream of water. A shrunken ice ball dissolved under the tap, ending their camaraderie in an unceremonious trickle down the drain. “I need to get back to my hotel room now. I’ll call you a car so you don’t have to walk across the grounds to the car park.”
As she registered Brian’s expressionless visage in profile, his physical and emotional shutoff as he turned his back to her and fussed at the sink, an irrational wallop of pain and anger sucker punched Helen in the middle of the chest. She should be in sleuth mode. But his rejection hit too hard.
She tamped down her hurt. “You need to listen to me. Because there are people plotting to harm you with witchcraft.”
“Is that a threat?” He slammed the cabinet door, the sound as harsh as the question he fired.
“Of course not. Like I said, I overheard Joe breaking down the plot with someone else.”
“I’m sorry, Helen, I’m not buying this story. Shall I call you a car, or not?”
She stepped closer, trapping him with the most intense look she could muster. “Pushing me away won’t help. Rejecting me will do the opposite.”
“I can’t do this right now. I need to talk to my daughter and get some sleep.”
Persisting undeterred, she grabbed his hand and squeezed assurance into his warm, dry palm. “You mentioned the past. A while ago, you would have dismissed all of this supernatural talk as mumbo jumbo, but not now. Meaning facts changed. What? If I know, I might be able to work with the information. Put new details in context with the things I heard.”
Brian pulled his hand away. “Who are you? What’s your angle?”
He’d entered full retreat mode, stabbed some celebrity panic button and shut down. And in his shoes, she would have done the exact same thing. No wonder so many famous people lost their minds, turning into recluses while babbling about microchips in their heads.
“I don’t have an angle beyond trying to repair damage. If you knew me, you’d know I’m the least duplicitous person on the planet. I think I’m physically incapable of guile.”
Brian offered a ragged exhale, evidence of weariness that kept his humanity in the foreground despite his guardedness. “I played a two-hour show on three hours of sleep, and I’m repeating the process tomorrow and the next day. I’m sorry, Helen. Not now. I can’t. I’ll hang on to your card. I sent a text alert to one of the band’s drivers. A ride will be here in one minute.”
Game over. For a second, she thought she’d broken through. Teased herself into thinking she and Brian shared a special connection. But nah. Helen didn’t connect with people.
Her shell, a spiny exoskeleton forged in defeat, fury, and an indefatigable drive to guard her soft bits, closed over her body. A blast of air tore through a ceiling vent, making her hair squirm like cockroach feelers to round out her buglike sense of alienation. She’d empathized hard with poor Gregor Samsa ever since reading Kafka in her Existentialism seminar.
“Whatever, Brian. Your choice I suppose. I drove, so no thanks on the car.”
Helen left. But she didn’t march off into the night lacking direction. No way.
Crossing the sparsely populated lot on route to her car, she dialed Nerissa’s number. Time to get some information and get cracking casting spells, because she had a hex to reverse and a business to save.
Six
A trio of journalists strode into the dressing room, chatting as they lugged tripods, cameras, and black cases. Seated in a director’s style chair with taut fabric supporting him, Brian brushed a thumb against the hard bump of the crystal impressing into the material of his jeans. Of course he’d saved Helen’s gift. Chances were, “out of sight, out of mind” didn’t apply.
Whether Helen was spying or conspiring against him, he couldn’t say. But after Tilly had confessed to him what she’d seen at some Hollywood Hills party, he couldn’t dismiss or laugh off subjects like witchcraft. Though now he wondered if he ought to have trusted Helen enough to tell her the entire horrific story of Tilly’s witnessing.
Brian glanced at Jonnie, who sat beside him in an identical chair. On the rhythm guitarist’s mobile phone screen, a social media feed blew past. “What was the rumor you heard about Joe?”
Jonnie set the device on his lap. “You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
“Just making sure, because before you said you didn’t want to hear the gossip.”
That was before he needed to rule out the possibility that the kind, intelligent, and witty woman he’d met was embroiled with the manager in question for God knows what reason. He’d been a world-class arsehole to Helen, closing down and sending her away. But if she was party to some supernatural plot, he could not abide. Not when he had a child.
“Now I do.”
Jonnie leaned in, close enough that Brian could smell the sandalwood scent of the gel the man used to spike his shaggy black hair. “They say he’s into witchcraft. That he’s a witch himself, or a warlock or whatever.”
A sizzle of dismay skated across Brian’s breastbone as a link between
