Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) (18 page)

“The thing is,” he started, and hesitated. “Why did you stop drumming, Avery? Really?”

Somehow I hadn’t expected that question. It hit me like a jab in the gut. But he needed honesty.

“I was scared,” I admitted. “I... Dad played a lot of different instruments, let me try out all of them. I could have taken up anything I wanted. But I picked the drums, after the Glower took him, because that seemed safe. He always used to joke with the guys in the band about how no one ever looks way back on the stage to the drummer’s little fortress. I thought I could just play and enjoy doing that, and the rest of that stuff, the stuff that broke him down, it wouldn’t get to me.”

“But it did,” Colin said.

“Yeah. That winter showcase performance at Rushfield—it was the first time I ever played in front of more than a handful of people. I
knew
I was playing well. And it felt... It felt incredible. Not just the playing, but knowing how many people were watching, knowing they were into it... I finished and all I wanted was to do it all over again.”

“Yeah,” Colin said with a hint of a smile. His hand turned in mine, squeezing my fingers. “I know that feeling.”

“It scared me,” I said. “Because I wasn’t sure, even knowing about the Glowers and what they did, that I wouldn’t be tempted. If I liked the feeling that much, wanted to keep feeling it that much, I didn’t know if I’d be strong enough to deal with the times when people weren’t interested in listening. When I was struggling to play anything they’d be interested in. Because everyone has those low points. So I stopped.”

“You see,” Colin said, “I can’t do that. I can’t be scared like that. The music... It’s the only thing I have. If I don’t give it everything I can, there’s no point. So I want to go all in, whatever it takes, whatever I have to use or give up. You made your choice. I’m making mine. Can’t you understand that?”

My throat closed up. I didn’t know what to say. I could feel, in that moment, that nothing I did say would make him see things any differently. At least not right now.

“I can understand that’s how you feel, even if I don’t agree with what you want to happen,” I said after a moment. “But can you just— Whatever you feel you need do, can you hold off for just this week? Show up at the studio, keep laying down tracks, do that opening act gig as if everything’s good? Because if you start acting out again, before that... I don’t know if you’re still going to have a record to be putting out there.”

“They’re that close to canceling the deal?” he said, and I lowered my head. He sucked air through his teeth.

“All right,” he said. “Until after the concert. It can wait that long, now that I know how close I am anyway.” He let go of my hand and stood up. “I guess you should get your things. There’s not much point in you staying here when I don’t need the protection.”

I watched him walk away knowing this could be the last time we were in the same room together, and every step was like a needle to my heart.

15.

A
s I walked to the cafe where I was supposed to meet Fee, the mid-day chatter on the sidewalk around me felt jarringly bright in contrast with the coil of dread in my gut. Early that morning while I was settling back into my room at home, Sterling had called me to let me know Fee had been discharged from the hospital, and Fee had texted me an hour ago asking to me have lunch with her. The request had been so brief I hadn’t been able to read her mood. I hesitated as I came up on the place, clutching the purple teddy bear with Get Well T-shirt I’d grabbed at a gift shop. Then I dragged in a breath and pushed inside.

Fee was perched on a stool at a table near the front of the cafe, her elbows braced on the tabletop. She glanced over as soon as I came in and hopped to her feet with an energy and a smile that reassured me. The flush was back in her smooth cheeks and her dark eyes were clearer than I’d seen in months, but she still felt too thin when I hugged her. I guessed that part of recovery would take time.

“I got this for you,” I said as we sat down, handing her the teddy bear. Fee took it, studied it, and raised her eyebrows at me.

“I’m not an invalid, you know,” she said.

“I know,” I said, blushing. “I just thought you’d like it.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I do, and there is no way you’re taking it back.” She squeezed one arm around it as she flagged down the waitress, and some of my dread dissipated.

I considered the menu and asked for just the soup of the day. After this lunch, I was due to meet with Sterling for the first time since Colin had “fired” me, and my dread about
that
had stolen most of my appetite. Fee mustn’t have been feeling one hundred percent yet either, because she only ordered a coffee and a salad instead of one of her usual platters.

“So... how are you doing?” I said after the waitress had left.

Fee shrugged, fingering one of the sugar packets. “It wasn’t exactly the greatest experience of my life, but I think I’ll be back to normal pretty fast.”

“Are you going back with the Starlet?”

She nodded. “Yvonne’s there now, but Sterling okayed me to pick things up again next week. I pointed out how much progress I’ve made and the great ‘rapport’ we have. He wants me to stop by the office for regular drug tests until further notice, though.”

I hid my flicker of relief. “That sucks.”

“You don’t really think that,” she said, eyeing me. “You’re probably dying to say you told me so.”

The dread swelled up like a punch in the gut. “No, Fee,” I said. “Not at all.”

“Then why are you acting so weird?” she demanded. “You’ve hardly looked me in the eye since you came in.”

I opened my mouth, paused, and forced myself to say, “I just wasn’t sure— I was scared you’d be angry with me. Because I got the Society involved. I didn’t want to, Fee, I swear, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Oh.” Fee blinked at me. I made myself hold her gaze, and realized there was nothing accusing in it. She reached across the table and grasped my wrist. “Of course I’m not mad at you, Ave. I’m
glad
that I could count on you. You have no idea how good it is to know that I’ve got at least one friend who cares about me enough to do whatever it takes to make sure I’m all right, even when I’ve been kind of a jerk to her and she’s not sure I’ll even appreciate it. You did the right thing. I’m the one who was acting stupid. I didn’t want to worry about anything, so I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I took or how much or where it came from.”

“Okay,” I said with an exhale of relief. I set my hand over hers. “I just didn’t want to lose you. And... don’t beat yourself up too much, okay? I’m certainly not in a position to criticize anyone for getting carried away in the middle of a job.”

Fee’s eyebrows leapt up again. “Oh, really? Apparently I’ve been
way
too distracted. What happened? Spill!”

My throat closed up at the memory of Colin’s face as he told me to go. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it yet,” I said. Other than the awful talk I was going to have to have with Sterling in less than an hour. The thought of it rubbed against all the painful spots still raw inside me. “I’ll give you all the details when I’ve got my head sorted out.”

“Promise, bestie?” Fee said with a playful gleam in her eyes.

“Promise,” I said, smiling back at her as the flicker of relief became a flood.

“So you’ve returned home,” Sterling said the second my butt hit the chair opposite his desk. He stayed standing, pacing slowly between the bookcases on either side of the narrow office, past the photos that hung on the back wall of him with clients famous enough that I could recognize them on sight.

“It seemed like the only reasonable option,” I said.

“It’s never
reasonable
to abandon a client without even checking in with us,” Sterling said, halting to lean over his desk. His hands fisted on the glass surface. “What were you thinking, Avery? You know how hard we’ve been working on Ryder’s case. First you drag him off to Fiona’s... misadventure, and then you up and leave?”

My spine stiffened. “I was thinking,” I said carefully, “that if the client told me directly to leave his home, I ought to listen to him. Especially when he already knows exactly what we’re trying to protect him from, and he’s stated that he doesn’t want or need our assistance.”

Sterling hesitated. “He knows...?”

“He
knows
,” I said. “He knows everything—about the Glowers, what they do, why they do it—almost as well as we do. There was some British musician, a rocker named Brian someone, who was marked and hung himself in his house here in L.A. about four years ago? He was mentoring Ryder. Ryder found him, saw the Glower with him. This whole time, he’s known exactly what we were trying to do. What we were trying to protect him from. He’s been making things hard on purpose.”

Sterling’s expression had frozen. He shook his head, as if he could erase the facts I’d laid out by denying them.

“He
wants
to be marked,” I told him. “I can’t stop him if he’s making a conscious choice.”

That remark broke Sterling’s daze. “Of course you can,” he said, rapping his hands against the desk. “That’s your job. You find a way to change his mind. I don’t care how. We lose him, and we lose all of Spright Records’ business.”

My job. Even as guilt prickled through my stomach, another question pushed in front of it. “Is that really what’s most important? Their
business
?”

“You know what I meant,” Sterling said. “The well-being of every artist they work with, from now until as long as they keep producing records. Think of all the lives that are riding on this, and then return to your post and make something work.”

I stared at him. His eyelid twitched, his dark skin slightly grayed beneath the mottling of acne scars, and suddenly he didn’t seem intimidating so much as desperate. Almost... pathetic. Before I’d made any conscious decision to react, I was springing to my feet.

“This isn’t on me,” I said. “I did my best.”

Sterling’s face hardened. “That is not how a good Tether thinks. If you give up—”

“
I did my best
,” I snapped. “I got him to open up to me. I found out what’s going on. That’s way more than the two guys before me managed to accomplish. Why aren’t you bitching them out?”

Now Sterling was staring at me. “Avery,” he said, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen. My talk with Fee was still whirling in my head. I’d been a real friend to her, I’d looked out for her, by doing what I knew I had to in order to get her out of that mess, even though I’d been terrified of how she’d think of me afterward. Why had I been so hesitant to be a real friend to myself all this time? It didn’t matter how scared I was of what Sterling would think if I stood up to him—I wasn’t going to be able to keep being any sort of Tether if we went on like this. It was time for
him
to listen.

“You’ve been acting ridiculous since you first put me with Ryder,” I said with a slash of my arm through the air. “Putting all the responsibility on me, making me feel like the world depends on my pulling this together, reining him in, protecting him from
everything
, not just the Glowers. The way you’ve been treating me,
you
might as well be a Glower, pushing and pushing to get what you want no matter how it affects anyone else. Well, maybe if you’d eased up I wouldn’t have felt I had to push things with him so far, so fast—maybe we’d have found some kind of balance without everything blowing up in my face. But that’s what happened. That’s the mess we have now. And I’ve done everything I can to fix it, so if you’ve got some great solution in mind, why don’t you get on with it?”

I headed for the office door, my heart thudding, not quite sure what line I was drawing. Would I be able to come back to the Society if I left this conversation here?

Would I
want
to, if I couldn’t?

My fingers had just closed around the knob when Sterling cleared his throat. “I apologize,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t realize... There’s been so much pressure... Of course it wasn’t fair of me to displace so much of that pressure onto you.”

I turned to face him. “Okay,” I said.

The silence stretched for a moment. “With Ryder,” he started, “you could— ”

I held up my hand to stop him.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him, Sterling,” I said. “I really don’t. But I think I’ve played every card I can with him. I gave it everything I had, and I couldn’t change his mind. If someone’s going to, I don’t think it can be me. I’m not going back.”

Sterling paused, and then nodded. “I’ll see what I can work out. And... why don’t you take the rest of the week off? I think you need that, and you’ve certainly earned a break. We’ll start talking about possible new placements on Monday.”