“Lay it on me.”
“Recall what happened the day the hex began its work. What you did, where you went after you left my home. With whom you interacted and any emotions associated.” With those parting words, the elderly witch left L&E, leaving the mirthful tinkle of wind chimes in her wake.
Fourteen
Tilly glanced up from one of the many fashion magazines fanned across the mattress of her canopy bed. Though she glared like only a mad teenager could, the childish dimensions of her—her bent and swinging legs, her fuzzy frog slippers—slew Brian.
The blue silk pajamas swallowing her gangly frame brought out the ferocity in her sapphire eyes, scalpel sharpness she’d inherited from her mother.
“What? Loom much?” Tilly said.
Brian stood in the doorway of his daughter’s old bedroom, which fortunately he’d preserved even after she moved out to live with her stepmother, Kris.
Tilly’s new bodyguard, Brutus, an ex-military man with python arms, texted from his seat on a pink couch. Relief and worry cascaded over Brian in competing intervals. Tilly threw a wobbly when he’d told her she was going on tour with him, an epic fit of inconsolable proportions. They’d compromised with the bodyguard. She was safe, that was all that mattered.
“Nothing,” Brian replied.
“So why are you staring at me?” A blend of irritation and amusement strung her melodious syllables, bringing out the faintest flutter of an English accent.
He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m relieved.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You never told me what’s going on, and why I have to be held captive here like a baby when all of my friends are going to the rave.”
“Someone threatened you in an effort to coerce me. It’s just for a little while, until I can establish if the threat is legitimate. You saw the girl being cut at that ceremony, so you should understand the severity of my distress.”
“Ugh, everyone who’s anyone in Hollywood right now is fake Illuminati. I’m sure it was nothing but a branding ritual, a little tattoo on her tummy. I overreacted. You are such a helicopter parent. I’m seventeen, not seven.”
She resumed reading, leafing through glossy images of emaciated models matching the ones cut out and taped to the walls. He needed to distance his daughter from the toxic modeling lifestyle Kris seduced her into, but that problem would have to fill up a future day.
“I need you to take this seriously, Matilda. I was gobsmacked by what I saw.”
“Okay, okay, whatever. I won’t accept candy from the clown who drives the white van.”
“No sneaking out tonight. I mean it. If I find you gone, you really are grounded. Which means no more fashion shoots.”
“Tyrant,” Tilly grumbled. “Fine. Consider me your gulag prisoner.”
Brian exhaled a burden of tension, laying a hand over his heart. “Dinner’s at six. Or should I say, brinner. I’m making your favorite, chocolate chip pancakes.”
“Those haven’t been my favorite since I was ten. And quit trying to use modern expressions, it’s cringe-worthy. Oh, before I forget, some woman was here to see you.” She ripped out a page.
Startled, he ran through possibilities. A state-of-the art security system kept overzealous fans, stalkers, and other uninvited guests far away from his Los Angeles home nestled deep in the Hollywood Hills.
“When? What did she want?”
Tilly snipped, red scissors outlining a woman’s picture. She popped out her paper doll and set the cutout on a growing stack. “Earlier this morning, while you were out running. It was weird. Like, really really weird.”
“What do you mean, weird?”
“I dunno. Like she wasn’t all there. I can’t explain.” Tilly rolled out of bed and walked to her dresser. She taped the latest photo to the wall, adding to a collage of scantily clad stick figures posing around the oval of glowing bulbs that circled her mirror.
“Well, can you try?”
“She was like…spacey. She blinked a lot. Then she was babbling, then she ran off before Brutus could deal with her. I assumed she was some nutty groupie or whatever.”
That hadn’t happened in years, not since one of Thom’s jilted conquests turned up on Brian’s property barefoot and screaming, wielding a gun and demanding Brian call his bassist.
He’d had the gate put in the next day, thirty feet of iron and spikes not even an Olympic pole vaulter could clear.
“What did she look like?”
“Cute. Pretty, in a regular person way. Dark eyes. Long brown hair with blonde highlights, freckles on her nose and cheeks. Big boobs, not super skinny. She was wearing a silver dress, like haute couture, and she talked with a funny accent. Like the people in that movie Fargo.”
Confusion smacked Brian upside the head, knocking out reason and logic. Minnesota accent? Helen? No way. “She didn’t say her name?”
Tilly kicked discarded clothing out of her path and made her way back to bed. She belly-flopped on her mattress. “Um yeah, she did. Ellen? Haley? Something like that.”
If Helen was in town, she wouldn’t have shown up unannounced, acting odd. But he hadn’t spoken to her since leaving Denver a few days ago, and this incident was as good of an excuse as any to call.
“Alright. I’ll figure it out. Don’t sneak away from Brutus. You are not safe.”
Tilly rolled her eyes.
Brian left his daughter and walked down the hallway to his room. He took his phone off the nightstand and went out on the patio, leaning over the glass balcony overlooking his infinity pool. Shimmering water merged with scruffy hills and the twinkling orange and yellow lights of the Sunset Strip below. The deck, terra cotta tiles, and padded lounge furniture in vibrant colors of aqua and cobalt, livened up his pool deck.
Though he got lonely in his castle on the hill, Brian’s comfortable home did calm him. Nice to have a break from touring to spend some time appreciating the fruits of his labor.
Sure would be nice to have a certain someone around to share the luxury with, sip margaritas and watch
