Beneath the Glitter: A Novel (Sophia and Ava London) (16 page)

“Body shimmer.”

“Good,” Shoshanna said, tapping the paper.

Sophia listened, fascinated by watching how the team worked, bouncing ideas off one another. But there was something nagging at the back of her mind and she finally realized what it was.

“Excuse me,” she said, interrupting a discussion about whether making the eye shadows look like travelers’ trunks was cute or tired. “What about Miss Rexford? What does she think?”

Shoshanna glanced down as though embarrassed by the question. “Actually, most of this was her idea. She said it reminded her of something she would have done in her youth and she hasn’t been this excited about anything in a long time.”

Ava got out of her chair and went to hug Sophia. “This is happening,” she whispered into her sister’s hair. “It’s really, really happening.”

“I know,” Sophia said, hugging her back.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Ava went on. “I was just—”

“Me too,” Sophia told her.

And finally it felt like it was supposed to.

Or almost anyway.

LonDOs

Sisters

Detangling conditioner

Chili dogs at Pinks

Two large orders of fries

Scope Extra Strength Mouthwash

LONDON CALLING FOR LUXELIFE

Hidden messages

Liam Carlson’s wrap party

Lint rollers

Being featured on the Cute Couples page of
People
magazine

LonDON’Ts

Silent treatment

Not being honest with each other

I Told You So

The third large order of fries

Riding in the car with my sister after she’s eaten a chili dog

Leaving Popcorn and Clover at home alone all day with the closet door open and the dress you were going to wear to Liam’s wrap party on the pouf

Being featured on the Cute Couples page of
People
magazine

14

tendril is the night

Sophia and Ava watched in silence as Lily, head back and eyes closed, rotated slowly on one foot in the middle of the wide, empty hall for the fourth time.

“What do you think she is doing?” Ava whispered to Sophia. They’d seen Lily do many, many strange things, but this was among the oddest.

“Silence!” Lily commanded in a spooky, mystical voice. “I am listening to the ghosts of guests past. They ask if you are sure you wish to enter.”

Sophia shifted from one foot to the other, making the jet beads that covered her flapper dress whisper. “We’re sure,” she told Lily.

They were standing in the entry hall of the Magic Castle, which was supposed to be the site of Liam’s wrap party. The party was Roaring Twenties themed, in keeping with the period of his film, so they’d dressed accordingly. Sophia was wearing a short flapper dress covered in jet beads, with a long pearl necklace and T-straps that Lily had lent her with a passing comment about what a good thing it was that she and Greta Garbo wore the same size. Ava decided to go as more of a sultry nightclub singer, wearing a floor-length gown with over-the-elbow gloves and putting her hair in a side-parted finger wave. Lily was a gangster, in a pin-striped suit her grandfather had once worn to play Al Capone.

They’d arrived a bit after the party had supposedly started—finger waves turned out to be more like frustration waves and then there was talking Lily out of bringing the authentic-looking tommy gun her grandfather had also lent her—but when they walked into the wide, parquet-floored front hall of the Victorian mansion that housed the world’s foremost magic club it was silent and … empty.

And not just empty. There were no windows and no doors apart from the one through which they’d entered. The only thing besides a chandelier was a staircase against one wall with an elaborately carved banister of woodland creatures that curved up to the second floor.

“Liam said we’d have to get past the door to get in,” Ava said. “But I didn’t realize he meant we’d have to find it first.”

That was when Lily had put her finger to her lips and gone into her human compass routine. Still in her creepy voice she now repeated, “I must ask you again, are you sure you wish to forsake the safety of the known world and travel to the precincts of—”

“Yes,” Ava said in a tremulous whisper.

“Very well.” Lily put her fingertips to her temples and said, “Spirits from before, spirits from today, open your portal, show us the way.”

With a soft hiss the entire staircase, which turned out to be an elaborate fake, swung away from the wall and they found themselves in the middle of a rollicking party.

“I came here when I was little,” Lily explained to them happily. “The password is ‘portal’. Like door? The place isn’t really haunted.”

“Really?” Sophia told her with a look of fake surprise.

Lily elbowed her. “Little London believed it for a second. Come on, it’s time to play FTB.”

“Aren’t you on a juice fast?” Sophia reminded her.

Lily looked scandalized. “Which part of vodka and grapefruit juice isn’t a juice?”

“I didn’t believe it,” Ava protested. “I was just playing along.”

“Excuse me, Ava?” a familiar-looking woman said as she joined them at the bar. Ava noticed that she glanced at Ava’s drink—ginger ale, two cherries—before she looked at what she was wearing, which seemed strange until she introduced herself. “I’m Tana, Liam’s publicist? Liam asked me to bring you over. He’s right there”—she pointed into the thick of the crowd where enough flashes were going off to make it look like a minor lightning storm—“but he couldn’t get away himself.”

“Is that okay?” Ava asked Sophia.

“Of course,” Sophia said. “You don’t have to ask my permission. Do whatever you want.” She turned to Lily and they clinked glasses. “To boytox,” they said, like they were affirming some private club that only they belonged to.

Ava gave what she hoped looked like a jaunty wave and went. She knew her sister was only repeating things she herself had said, but somehow it didn’t feel the way she’d expected—

Whatever she had been thinking completely left her mind as soon as she saw Liam. Or more accurately the way he smiled when he saw her, like there was no one in the world he’d rather be with.

“Hi,” she said, gazing up at him.

“Hello, beautiful.”

LIAM CARLSON CALLED HER BEAUTIFUL!

Even though they were in the middle of a crowd, with reporters listening and cameras shooting them from every angle, when he put his arm around her and smiled down into her eyes he made her feel like there were just the two of them there. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and whispered in her ear, “Smile for your fans, babe. That’s what they want to see.”

For a fraction of a second her mind flashed to Dalton, and him saying, “Don’t you get tired of always selling things?”

But then he added, “I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have you as my girlfriend,” and she forgot everything except the thrill of being with
LIAM CARLSON! HER BOYFRIEND
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*   *   *

Sophia leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the wind rushing by her ears blanket out all thought.

Driving up Pacific Coast Highway on a moonless night as the passenger in a convertible Porsche was not a bad way to spend part of a Saturday night, Sophia decided. The lights of the city were less bright so you could actually see stars like tiny diamonds embedded in the inky sky, and the scent and moist feel of the ocean air wrapped around her like a blanket. She had the sensation of escaping from her life, just for a little while, and it felt great, like a dream.

“Are you warm enough?” Hunter asked from the driver’s seat now.

“Perfect,” Sophia said.

“I’ll say,” Hunter answered with a grin, failing to notice the way Sophia’s smile tightened slightly at the corners.

Sophia thought of what Lucille Rexford had said the day they met her at Corrina’s office. “When someone offers you an opportunity to make your dreams come true, you don’t question them. You just take it.”

Maybe that was so you didn’t have time to think about the consequences, Sophia thought. Like how much work it was to launch a makeup line. Especially if the person in charge decides she wants it done as soon as possible which, in Lucille Rexford’s language, appeared to mean yesterday or maybe even the previous week.

“I’m sure she has many good qualities,” Ava had said, tipping her shoes off and collapsing onto the couch after a sixteen-hour day at the LuxeLife offices.

“But none of them are patience,” Sophia had finished for her.

It was exhilarating and exciting as well as exhausting, and it came with the added benefit that she and Ava didn’t have the time or energy for any more disagreements. But she was aware that the tensions were still there.

Like that night at Liam’s wrap party, when Ava had asked if she could go with Liam’s publicist, Sophia’s first instinct had been to say no. But Ava was right—she wasn’t a child. It was her life. Sophia had no say over it.

Although she’d had to propose the toast to boytox with Lily to distract herself from the sudden urge she’d felt to cry.

Lily had to run off “to say hi to Uncle Harrison and Aunt Calista” so Sophia was alone when Giovanni came and stood next to her, holding out a white linen handkerchief and saying, “It’s clean.”

He smiled at her. “I of course will not comment on perfection but perhaps a little bit here.” He touched the corner of his eyes. “It is a pleasure to be seeing you again,
stella
.”

She realized her body had been aware of his presence before her mind, as though it had felt a little more alert, a little more alive.

She took the handkerchief with a grateful smile. “What does
stella
mean?”

“Star. It, how do you say, pants you.”

Sophia laughed. “Suits.” She’d thought the laughter would break the spell but it didn’t.

“I am sorry to come upon you like this, without warning. In person I am taller and even more devastatingly handsome, no?” he joked.

“Oh yes,” she played along. Only it was true.

He held her eyes. “I hope you will not find me imposing, but this is the second time I have seen you look sad at a bar. Perhaps you should consider a different pastime?”

“Maybe I should.”

“On the other hand, I am also the possessor of good crying upon shoulders.” He tapped his shoulder. “Firm, but not too firm. You see?”

Sophia laughed. “I will remember that.”

“As you wish.”

Out of nowhere Sophia said, “I got a kitten.”

His eyebrows went up. “Yes? But this is wonderful news. Congratulations.”

She nodded. “But I don’t know what to call it. I keep picking a name, then changing it.”

“Ah.”

“I can’t make up my mind about what the right name is.”

“Maybe it is not time yet.”

“But this is stupid. It’s just a kitten. Why can’t I pick a name?”

“Then it is not stupid. For some reason it is important. When you figure that out, you’ll know the name.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes. It is easy.”

She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You said that about big things happening. That it would be easy.”

“And big things have happened, no?”

Sophia nodded slowly to herself. “They have. How did you know?”

Giovanni threw up his arms. “She asks a psychic, ‘How did you know?’”

She laughed. “That’s right, I forgot that you are a bartender and a psychic.”

His head went from side to side. “
Sí
and no. You can keep a secret?” Sophia nodded. “Really I am not a bartender.”

“What are—”

A beautiful woman in a floor-length beaded caftan with a massive jade pendant threw her arms around Giovanni.
“Amore mio,”
she said, kissing him on both cheeks. “Here you are. I have been looking for you.”

She had the kind of effortless good looks only European women could have, Sophia thought, and she was sure that the woman’s nearly elbow-length glossy brown hair dried naturally in the waves it had. Sophia looked down and realized she was crushing Giovanni’s handkerchief in her hand.

“Sophia, this is my friend Nina from Rome. She does the design of production for this movie. She is very talented, but also a bit crazy. You must not listen too much to what she says.”

Nina linked her arm through Giovanni’s. “What kinds of stories is our Giovanni telling you?” she asked, caressing his cheek. “Has he spoken of his sculptures? Or perhaps the one about his family estate on the Po and his vineyards and string of polo—”

Giovanni gave her a pleading look. “
Madonna,
do you try to ruin me? I do not tell stories to this
signorina,
I would not want to bore her.”

Nina laughed, but there was something in it that showed such intimacy between them, as though they knew all of each other’s secret places, that made Sophia a little jealous.

“You’re an artist?” Sophia asked him.

“Look what you have done,” he complained to Nina. To Sophia he said, “No, no, I would never say that. I make art, yes, but as to being an artist, I’m not wise enough yet. Perhaps in fifty, eighty years. Right now I am just a sculptor.”

She laughed. “What do you sculpt?”

For the first time since she’d known him, Giovanni looked uncomfortable as though talking about himself made him uneasy. “Marmosets,” he said, looking away. “Tiny monkeys. It’s a metaphor.”

“I wish I could see one of your sculptures.”

“Perhaps one day you will come to my studio and—”

Another stunning woman, this one in a red silk dress trailing a red feather boa, joined them then, shaking her short dark hair. “Of course I find you two at the bar talking to a beautiful woman,” she said. She held out a hand with three large rings on it. “I am Lucretia. Nina’s girlfriend.” She kissed Giovanni on both cheeks and said, “Now you give her back.”

Nina took Lucretia’s hand and any envy Sophia might have felt—which she didn’t of course because she wasn’t even interested in Giovanni since the only people more unreliable to date than bartenders are artists (and psychics? That wasn’t even a category!)—disappeared. Not to mention that she didn’t even know him, or understand how she felt around him—sort of jangling and tingly—or why when he looked at her even when he was joking it felt somehow serious, as though he was looking not at her but into her in a way she wanted to be looked at, had
always
wanted to be looked at, and yet it was entirely unnerving and made her want to hide as well. But if she had felt any envy it was only for the connection the two women seemed to have, nothing else.