Black Lilith: Book One (Black Lilith #1) (15 page)

The band is tense over breakfast. Slate and Dash are both deliberately cheerful. Tommy is as mild as always, though he’s quieter and more withdrawn. Logan keeps his eyes on his eggs, occasionally shooting unreadable looks toward Mikayla. When they’re finished, they head back to their rooms without much fanfare. Though, when they meet up again at eleven for interviews, it’s as though nothing happened.

Mikayla watches in disbelief as Logan explains the shattering beating he’d received during their video games the night before. Tommy ribs him good-naturedly.

“Boys,” she mutters to herself as she climbs into the bus behind the security detail, and gives the address of the first interview to the bus driver.

Their first night in London had been free of commitments, but tonight they’ve got a performance and interview for a chat show called
Merlin and Friends
. Mikayla had never heard of it, but it seems to be popular. In any case, the venue is surrounded by
Black Lilith
fans by the time the bus pulls up. The fans huddle together in the drizzling rain, wearing less clothing than she would have thought appropriate for such a cold night. They start screaming when they see the band coming.

Mikayla has had to deal with screaming fans nearly every day since she met
Black Lilith
, but it still leaves her reeling. She thinks that she would have been able to handle it better if her first experience with them hadn’t been so harrowing. As it is, she doesn’t let any of the band leave the bus until Jack and Finn have disembarked first and checked out the crowd.

She feels a hand on her shoulder. So she turns to see Logan sitting behind her, leaning over her seat back and giving her a concerned look.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

Mikayla nods. Half of her wants to still be mad at him for that morning. But she can’t. His wide brown eyes look so genuine in that moment that it takes every ounce of self-control she has to remain still in her seat. She would only have to move forward a few inches, and their lips would be brushing. Logan seems to realize that too—his eyes flicker down and then back up, searching her face for something. She isn’t sure what he finds.

“Everything’s fine,” she says. “Jack and Finn will take care of everything.”

He nods and pulls back, leaving her shoulder cold.

They get through the fans with minimal hassle. Mikayla is surprised to find several of the fans—young women in tank tops with
Black Lilith
’s logo across their breasts—asking for selfies with
her
.

“I’m not actually in the band,” Mikayla says, unsure of herself.

“You saved Dash’s life!” one of the girls screams.

The others join her.

“You’re like his savior!”

“I would have done the same thing… I’d jump on a grenade for Dash Todd!”

Dash appears at Mikayla’s elbow and the girls go wild.

“Oh my God, Dash…
I love you!”

“Dash, Dash, Dash!”

“Dash, will you take a selfie with me?”

Their screams are so loud that she reels backward, only to find Dash’s arms around her, holding her in place.

“Why don’t we all take a picture together?” Dash asks, flashing the girls a winning smile.

They love it. Mikayla’s cheeks begin to hurt after the seventh selfie. There seems to be a never-ending supply of girls who want their picture taken with the woman who saved Dash Todd. Mikayla wants to explain that she didn’t
save
him, but the girls are too zealous and too loud. Even if she got the words out, she doubted that they would hear her.

On her other side, Slate is getting similar treatment. Mikayla has noticed that each band member seems to attract different types of girls. Slate’s got the older women in their early twenties, they were the ones who’d linger outside of the green room at the end of the show hoping to meet the band. Dash attracted the older teens, while Tommy seemed to get the more artistic women who wore dark clothes and clutched books of poetry. He also attracted the male fans.

Logan didn’t attract a specific type.
Everyone
wanted a piece of Logan.

He works his way through the line of fans, one after the other, smiling and taking selfies. And thanking them. Logan always thanks his fans. She had asked him about it once, back in LA, and he’d shrugged and said that if it weren’t for them, then the band wouldn’t be where they are today. Mikayla likes that he’s grateful.

When they finally make it to the recording studio, their interview and performance goes by so quickly that she barely even realizes that they’ve been there for three hours.

The band does a quick sound check, does the interview live, then performs
Stray Ink
for a select group of fans. Then they’re back on the bus and headed to the hotel, with a couple of extra passengers. There’s a girl named Chloe clinging to Dash’s arm. She and Mikayla had exchanged a few words as she’d climbed onto the bus. Apparently, she’s studying fashion design at London University. She and Mikayla take a selfie so that Chloe can prove to her friends that she’d met the woman who saved Dash from a rogue fan.

Slate has two new friends for the evening—Ellie and Steph. They seem to enjoy each other’s company as much as they enjoy Slate’s, and Mikayla can see that he’s already planning on how to take advantage of that fact. When their eyes meet, he winks at her. She smothers a grin in her elbow.

Besides Tommy is a girl with black hair and red arm warmers. She hasn’t introduced herself to Mikayla as she’s too deep in conversation with the bass player. They’re bent over one of his notebooks, and she seems to be questioning him in-depth about his lyrics. Tommy has a light in his eyes that he always gets when he’s talking about lyrics. He looks happy. She finds it hard to believe that just last night he was crying silent tears in her bed, mourning the loss of Danielle.

Logan sits next to Mikayla, his eyes on the window watching the streets of London pass them by.

“Nothing like America, is it?” she asks, looking over his shoulder to see the sleet-covered streets and stone houses illuminated by old-fashioned street lamps.

He shakes his head, staring in silent wonder as the bus rolls through the streets.

When they get back to the hotel, Mikayla arranges new rooms for Tommy and Logan. Or, at least, she tries to. After she’s sent Tommy and his new friend upstairs, she turns back to the concierge to discover that there are no rooms left.

“That was the last one, I’m afraid,” the woman behind the counter says.

Mikayla shares a look with Logan, who is the last band member left in the foyer. Dash has already gone upstairs.

“I guess you could… share with me?” she asks hesitantly.

There’s a fission of tension in the air as he nods. Mikayla tells herself that sharing with Logan is no different than sharing with Tommy, but they both know that’s not true. They travel up the elevator in silence.

“I might head down to the pool,” Logan says when they come out of the elevator. There’s a pile of clothes outside of the door of the room he shares with Dash. He gathers them into his arms and follows Mikayla into her room. He looks hesitantly at the bed before saying, “I can sleep on the floor.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says, going for a light tone. “It’s just one night. Probably.”

“I don’t know why we don’t just get one room each,” says Logan wryly as he drops the pile of clothes onto one of the royal blue chairs, fishing out a pair of swimming trunks and turning to her. “I’ll just… did you want to come with?”

“Oh… sure.”

“I’ll just get changed then.”

“I’ll-yeah…”

He disappears into the bathroom. Mikayla wonders if she should get changed too. Usually, she’s in her pajamas when she meets Logan in the pool—a shorts and tank top combo which allows her to dangle her legs in the water while he swims. It would feel weird for her to stay in her skirt and blazer if she’s going to follow him down to the pool, wouldn’t it?

She decides that she will get changed into her pajamas. Just as she’s stripped down to her underwear, the bathroom door begins to open and, panicking, she quickly covers herself with the robe.

“Ready?” Logan asks. He’s wearing the other robe which had been hanging unused in the bathroom.

Mikayla nods as she tries to quell the rising blush in her cheeks. It’s not as though he saw anything. She’ll just have to remember not to undo her robe that night.

They head down to the pool on the fifth floor. She does her best not to think about how easy it would be for some passer-by to mistake them for a couple in their matching robes.

When Mikayla enters the pool area, she’s expecting to see the usual gray walls and nude shower heads, and get hit with the strong smell of chlorine. Instead, the pool area is painted in a mixture of charcoal black and light blue, with bright light streaming into the room from beneath the clear water of the pool itself. The room is split into two levels, and there’s a black ladder leading up to a steaming room above. Mikayla thinks that the spa might be up there. The air smells of fresh water and lavender. Across the room, there’s a massive grayscale painting of a bonsai tree.

Logan lets out a low whistle. “This beats the shit out of the public pool back home.”

“I never thought I’d ever see something like this,” Mikayla confesses.

They stand for a moment, poised at the entrance of the elevator, unsure about whether to enter or not. Then, together, they take a step inside.

“Why don’t we check out the spa?” Logan asks.

“You don’t want to do laps?”

He shrugs. “Maybe later.”

They head upstairs to a small square room with a bright white light for a ceiling. The spa is square shaped and takes up most of the room. Potted lavender grows on either side of the steps leading up to the water.

“There’s a bar!” Logan says, taking off his robe and jumping into the water with a splash. He wades across to the opposite wall where, sure enough, there’s a bar set up with champagne and whiskey glasses.

“Maybe it’s for the guests,” she suggests. Logan reaches for the glasses. “For the
other
guests,” she emphasizes. “Maybe they were going to have a meeting or something.”

“They can put it on our tab,” Logan says. His bare back is to her, and Mikayla finds herself tracing the hard lines of his muscles with her eyes.

He pours two glasses of champagne as Mikayla settles herself on the side of the pool. She dangles her legs over the side, as usual, no surprise to find the pool water deliciously warm. She accepts the champagne from Logan, and they clink glasses, the light tinkling echoes around the room as they sip.

She wonders if now would be a good time to bring up the fight that morning. She isn’t sure what she wants to say. She wishes that she knew his side of the story. Why he fired Danielle? And why he’s now so adamant that the band have nothing to do with their PAs beyond the professional? But she isn’t sure how to bring it up without sounding accusatory. Maybe she should ease into it.

“So can I ask about the tattoos?” Mikayla questions after setting her glass on the edge of the pool and leaning back on her hands.

Logan, who still has his glass in his hand as he searches the side of the spa for the controls, looks over at her. “What do you want to ask?”

“Why did you get them?”

He smiles wryly. “I needed the cash.”

“Cash?”

His fingers found the controls to the spa. There was a mechanical whirring and then the water around him filled with bubbles.

“Dash broke his leg when he was eighteen,” Logan says. “I couldn’t really afford the medical bills, so I kind of sold my skin to a tattoo parlor that was training some new recruits.”

“That’s… brave,” says Mikayla.

Logan snorts. “Yeah, nothing hurts more than a green tattoo artist, who doesn’t know how much pressure to put on the needles. My arm was a mess… scabs and ink everywhere.”

Mikayla gives his arm a critical look. It seems fine now.

“Oh, this isn’t what they did,” Logan says, following her eyes. He gestures at the blue swirls and old-fashioned microphone, and the black edges of the records which weave around his bicep. “The apprentices did skulls and shit. Would have looked cool if they hadn’t been so bad at their jobs. I think one of them turned out kind of melted. Once they were healed, I got them covered.” He points out one of the blue swirls over his wrist. “See here? You can just make out a hula girl?”