“Oh. Lay it on me.”
Stacy leaned in and whispered, “This brainless groupie whore trounced all of those fuckers in Texas Hold ’Em. I walked away with over five thousand bucks.”
She turned on her spike of a heel and strutted to her friends, leaving a cloud of candy-scented perfume in her wake.
In a sudden, monumental shift of atmosphere, background noise exploded into cheers.
The lights of the stage area fell to blackness, dark pierced only by a show of multicolor lasers as they flicked across whooping fan faces.
Screams tore through the air as the frenetic drum opening to a beloved Fyre hit from a few years ago blew down the hall like sonorous thunder across the ocean.
Helen ran to the action. She still wasn’t quite sure she was doing, but she sure as hell wouldn’t quit.
Twenty-Two
Pandemonium, insanity. Helen was in college the last time she’d been to an arena concert and had forgotten about the sensory overload. From her front-row post on the floor, amplified guitars pumped through her blood.
Thom’s bass beats trembled low in her belly as he swaggered back and forth across the stage, hair hanging over his eyes and cowboy hat topping his head. Fans pressed into her back, angling to get closer. Warm beer splashed her ankle, the space’s palate a swirl of petroleum-tinged electronic smoke and all manner of human smells.
Alertness was key. A high-tech lighting grid hung from the ceiling. Jonas’s wild hair swung, the drummer and his kit elevated on a riser while he thrashed out beats.
Fyre’s legendary set prop, a gothic black carriage pulled by two maniacal carousel horses as large as elephants, hung suspended over the performers by webs of fat clear cables. The piece was massive. A death trap.
The longer she looked at it, the worse her willies got.
One horse, an orange stallion with a gaping mouth and a mane the color of flames, pulled the carriage toward hell.
The other, silvery and white, flew on seraphic Pegasus wings and tugged the operation to heaven.
She jerked her head around, aware in an acute sense of how packed and crowded the arena was. It wouldn’t be hard to get people panicked and scurrying.
Her thoughts ping-ponged back to the horse and carriage. Were they made of fiberglass? Steel? Haunted by maddening intuition, dread without a referent, Helen squeezed her clear crystal from its pouch and stuck the charm in her pocket. Perhaps the sentient travelling mineral would offer direction in crunch time.
Music stopped. Fans went berserk. Lights blinked off, and darkness swallowed all.
Dread emerged from the far corners of her consciousness. Evil was coming for her. All she could do now was look for signs and trust her abilities.
A new light show, a color wheel of pastels hued pink and cerulean and sea foam, danced through the space in streaks as enchanting as the aurora borealis.
Darkness dropped again. Music ceased. People shouted and cheered, stomped feet, the pitch rising and rising. Helen went at her nails as her underarms sweated.
A spotlight blinked on, highlighting Brian. Wearing his stage uniform and the red guitar, he looked right at her, into her eyes, facing a crowd but seeing nobody but her.
Man, on any other occasion she would have mainlined that shit like heroin, the whole cliché of the rock star crush singling you out. But something was wrong, and it would not serve the mission to surrender to swooning.
“It’s been a long and wild ride, and I want to thank each and every one of you for your unfailing support and loyalty on this tour. The fans are our lifeblood, our backbone, and none of this would have ever been possible without you,” Brian boomed into a microphone mounted on a stand.
The crowd erupted.
A lace bra flew on stage and landed at Brian’s feet. Two more followed. Fans whistled.
Brian read off the sizes and brand names on the tags and tossed the undergarments back once he’d identified their owners. “You might miss having these.”
She swooned a tad at the sight of his consideration. So humble, so appreciative, light years more evolved than the stereotype of the blasé, egotistical rock star regarding his admirers with disdain as he granted them the privilege of bearing witness to his talent.
Nope, he appreciated his fans and cared about them. Right down to women like Stacy, who were used to being treated like trash. On high alert, Helen combed for suspicious people, shady activity.
Brian leaned into his mic. Noise lulled, and obedient silence fell. “Sometimes when you meet someone, you see into their soul. Their body symbolizes their spirit in a certain auspicious synecdoche—part to whole, whole to part. And when you see into that soul, you see expanse. Infinity. The essence of the universe distilled but not diluted.”
He tuned his guitar and played opening notes, an aching melody that echoed off of stadium seats in sensual, enchanting beats. Some low notes, some high, made up long dreamy riffs. The tune had a coaxing feel, circular and drifting. Very much the core Fyre sound.
People hoisted phones, their flashlight apps turning the arena into a planetarium dome of electronic starlight.
“This one’s for you, Helen Britney, my constellation of stars. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
“Aww,” the crowd cooed.
“Forgive him, Helen Britney,” a man several rows behind her yelled.
Helen mangled a hangnail until it bled. She’d never felt so helpless, so small, yet at the same time so cherished. Brian was the man for her. Every single cell in her body absorbed this absolute, unflappable truth.
To the tune of his instrument, Brian launched into lyrics, “Star in the night, webwork of heaven, your love it seduces the sky. Goddess incarnate, the way where you see me, your magic it takes me. Bewitched and beguiled, I turn to a child, no choice now but to comply.” He sang a few versus, played a solo, and sang more.
“Now repeat,” Brian told the crowd.
Everyone swayed in a back and forth rhythm, singing the chorus in their vocal hodgepodge.
He finished the song to a
