Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

Beyond the stainless steel and ebony shine of the kitchen and the semi-circle of white leather sofas beside it, floor to ceiling windows offered a view of the city toward the glittering water of the ocean. The sliding doors past the eight-seater dining table stood open, letting in a tickle of the warm autumn breeze laced with a tang of salt. The doors led out onto a terrace where padded loungers circled a small private pool.

Nice
. Extravagant, but extravagances I could appreciate. My previous two live-in assignments—one in training, and my first official one—hadn’t been with clients this flamboyant.

My gaze drifted from the windows to the electric guitar leaning against one of the sofas. A Fender Stratocaster, also
nice
. An acoustic I couldn’t determine the make of sat half-hidden on one of the dining room chairs. A couple amps were stacked near one of the inner doors. I wondered if Ryder had a studio set up right here.

A shiver of excitement raced through me at the thought, and then my stomach clenched all over again. There was another reason I’d been hesitant to take this job. Ryder would be the first musician I’d worked with. And not only that, he was a rocker like Dad. Like I’d once imagined for myself. I was going to be surrounded by reminders of that every day for who knew how long, living here.

“...just didn’t realize quite how
young
,” Fitch was saying to Sterling when I tuned back in to their conversation.

I caught her eyes before her gaze could dart away from me. “I’m nineteen,” I said. “Old enough to do everything but drink, which I wouldn’t be doing on the job anyway. The last guy in here was thirty-five. How well did that work out?”

Fitch’s lips pursed. We both knew it had “worked out” with Ryder upping his antics until he’d ended up in the hospital getting his scalp stitched up after a drunken brawl in a prime Hollywood nightclub two weeks ago. I’d bet she’d rather not have to go through the song and dance of trying to downplay another incident like that to the tabloids.

“Miss Harmen is fully trained and very capable, I assure you,” Sterling said. “I think you’ll find she provides more of a... moderating influence, rather than aggravating.”

“I should hope so,” Fitch said. “That’s what you were hired for. If Colin doesn’t get his act together soon and get on with recording that album, the label’s going to cancel his contract and none of us will get paid.”

As if the biggest thing at stake here was a paycheck. Fitch had no idea the Tether Society offered any service beyond keeping troublesome or sensitive clients on track and steering them away from non-demonic dangers, but she still could have placed a few items ahead of her commission on her list of priorities. Ryder’s future career? His health? His life?

A giggle carried out of the hallway that branched off from the living room. Fitch stiffened, her head jerking around. A young woman with sun-bleached hair and nothing but a short silk robe covering her hourglass figure ambled into view. She was grinning at someone behind her, so she didn’t see us until that someone caught up, catching her by the waist. Then she glanced up and yelped in surprise.

“Colin,” Fitch said dryly. “I did mention we had a meeting at noon.”

Colin Ryder eyed her over the blonde’s shoulder, and then shifted his heavy-lidded gaze to Sterling and me. He had been smiling before, but now his full lips tensed into a flat line. The shaggy black hair that had fallen into his amber eyes did nothing to hide the resentment in that stare, like a knife on my skin.

He straightened up, the lean muscles in his bare shoulders and chest flexing as he let go of his companion.
He
was wearing nothing but bright red boxers. And oh, the body he had on display was even more fine than his publicity shots had suggested. My skin warmed, and I yanked my attention up from the band of fabric just below his taut stomach to his face. Which was pretty fine too, I had to admit, even looking as pissed off as he did right now.

“Wait for me back there,” Ryder said to the blonde, swatting her rear, and she darted out of view the way she’d come. He glanced around, picked a pair of rumpled jeans off the floor near the wall, and stepped into them, not seeming to mind that he had an audience. He stalked the rest of the way to the kitchen island on bare feet. He was looking only at me now. A puzzled line had formed on his brow.

The warmth tingling over my skin prickled up my neck. Maybe he did recognize me. I’d assumed he wouldn’t, given that I’d only spent one semester at the Rushfield Academy for the Performing Arts and that had been more than five years ago. I’d hardly been a focus of attention while I
was
there. Mom had enrolled me under her maiden name to try to avoid any talk about Dad—mainly from the teachers, since no one in my generation thought much about Roy Harmen, twice platinum blues rocker, dead before they’d graduated from kiddie pop. The only thing remotely striking about my looks was my honey-brown hair, which I’d kept short and blunt cut back then, a style that made me wince when I looked at old photos.

Colin Ryder, on the other hand, had made a splash from the start. He’d smuggled a guitar into the cafeteria in the first week of classes to serenade some girl who’d caught his eye, and after that display of his wicked fingerpicking and his low rich voice with just the right hint of a rasp, everyone had wanted to team up with him for group work. His smooth tan skin and bright eyes hadn’t hurt his popularity either. He hadn’t been this muscular at fourteen, though, I found myself noting. He must be working out a lot.

Crap. I was checking him out again. Thankfully he wasn’t eyeing me anymore.

“
This
is my new babysitter?” he said, leaning an arm on the polished granite countertop of the island and raising his eyebrows at his manager. “She looks like she’d do better sticking with elementary school kids.”

This time it was annoyance that prickled up my neck, but Sterling chose to ignore the comment. “Mr. Ryder, this is Avery Harmen. Avery, Colin Ryder. She’ll be the Tether Society advisor assigned to you for the remaining duration of our agreement.”

I squared my shoulders and offered my hand across the countertop. Ryder refused to return the gesture, his gaze still fixed on Fitch. I drew my arm back. Well, if that was how he wanted to play this...

“I heard you found advisors older than you to be too... intimidating,” I said, making use of a Sterling-esque pause with a smile and an eyebrow arch of my own. “I trust you won’t have the same issue with me.”

Provoking him was a gamble, but it seemed to work. At least I got a blink in my direction, as if he’d suddenly remembered I was an actual person and not a piece of gear he was discussing with the others.

“
I
didn’t hire you,” he said, and turned back to Fitch. “Why can’t we just—”

“You signed the agreement too,” Fitch said, cutting him off. “It’s in your contract with Spright Records. You renege on that and all this”—she waved her hand to the expanse of the penthouse—“goes away in a flash. We’ve been over this, Colin.”

“I don’t need someone watching over my shoulder,” Ryder said with a scowl. “I take care of myself. They knew what they were getting when they signed me.”

“Well, I think they did expect they’d be getting an actual album out of you,” Fitch remarked.

They stared each other down for a moment. Ryder sighed and looked away, his jaw tightening.

“Don’t think of Avery as a chaperone,” Sterling said in the quiet tone that was his most persuasive. “She’s here to assist you—to make sure you’re in the best possible position to make the best possible music.”

“Fine. She stays in the same room as the others? The cleaner changed the sheets.” Ryder snapped his fingers at me. “Assistant Avery. There’s beer in the fridge. Grab two bottles and bring them to me and my friend, last door down the hall. Pronto.”

He sauntered off, passing the fridge as he went.

Fitch rolled her eyes heavenward. “Your room is the first down the hall,” she said. “It’s very nice. Is that all you brought?”

I prodded my single carry-on sized suitcase with my toe. “I’ve found it’s easiest to start light and then grab anything else I need once I have the lay of the land,” I said. “Why don’t I get Mr. Ryder and his ‘friend’ their beverages first? Got to keep the client happy.”

As I moved, Sterling touched my arm, leaning close. “You can do this,” he murmured. “Tether him.”

3.

I
held the two beer bottles by their necks in one hand, sweating glass slick against my fingers, and knocked on the door at the end of the hall. A giggle carried through it, followed by Ryder’s low laugh. He opened the door with a defiant expression. His face softened fractionally when he saw the beers, as if he hadn’t expected I’d actually bring them.

“Thank you, Miss Harmen,” he said in a dismissive tone, relieving me of the bottles.

Dismissive was fine. Dismissive I could work with. For now, I didn’t need him to like me, just to tolerate my presence. The rest could come later.

I checked out the room Fitch had said was mine, the door closest in the hall to the living room. She hadn’t been lying—it
was
nice. The same pale polished hardwood as the rest of the penthouse, the same spectacular view, though I was glad for the filmy curtain that would give me a little sense of privacy when I wanted it. I sat on the bed and bounced. Good mattress, firm but not hard. Mom liked to burrow into pillow tops, but those always made me feel as if I were drowning.

The room’s location was good too. Voices filtered through the wall as Ryder and his companion wandered past. I’d be able to hear his comings and goings pretty well from here—and therefore ensure the goings included me.

I peeked into the hall in time to see the two of them wandering out onto the terrace, hand in hand. Ryder was still in only his jeans, the woman in that tiny robe. At least he wasn’t already testing the boundaries of this new arrangement. As long as he stayed in the penthouse, I didn’t care what he did here.

I fished my phone out of my pocket as I unzipped my suitcase. Fee answered on the second ring.

“Avery!” she squealed in an over-bright voice that told me in just three syllables that she was already two sheets to the wind and reaching for a third. Bass thumped in the background amid a warble of voices.

“Are you hitting the clubs early, or did you just never leave last night?” I asked. “It’s not even one in the afternoon yet, you know.”

Fee laughed. “Gotta keep up with the shiny Starlet. She doesn’t care much about clocks. Hey! You had your appointment with rocker boy today, didn’t you? Is he as fine as his photos?”

That sounded more like my usual Fiona. True, she’d always been the adventurous type, but since she’d started tethering her current teen wild child client last winter, a little extra wildness had seemed to rub off on her. But Sterling wouldn’t have left her on the job if her extracurricular activities were a real problem. And hey, at least at twenty-one she was drinking legally, which was more than I could say for the guy outside my bedroom door.

“He’s even fine-er,” I said, tugging open one of the drawers on the pine dresser to shove in my socks and panties. “And also asshole-er. He’s only agreeing to having me here because the label’s threatening to cancel his album.” An album I was somehow going to have to convince him to hurry up with recording, along with protecting his soul. “I have a feeling this is going to be a long one.”

“The best ones are,” Fee said. “The more juice they’ve got in them, the more the Glowers want them. I’ll probably be with Kady until I’m thirty. Or she is.”

If she makes it that far,
I thought but didn’t say. Fee had guarded the kid well so far—put off three Glowers trying to mark her already. We could never be sure a Glower wouldn’t come back, but Fee was good at convincing them it wasn’t worth the energy they’d have to expend.

“When you find out where he likes to hang, give me the deets and maybe there’ll be some overlap. We could do a double client-date!” Fee laughed.

The comment reminded me of our last one-on-one get-together, one that we’d had to cut short because of a last-minute visit Fee had agreed to with her mother for reasons she hadn’t gone into.

“Hey,” I said, “did you sort that thing out with your mom?”

“What? Oh, yeah, no big deal.”

Her voice, suddenly terse, told a different story. Fee had kind of a weird relationship with her parents, at least from what I’d gathered mostly reading between the lines. A few years after they’d gone the Chinese adoption route with her, they’d unexpectedly found themselves pregnant with a kid of their own, and I got the sense Fee wasn’t quite convinced they saw her as a full part of the family. It didn’t help that her mom was always on her case about one thing or another.

“Well, I’m glad it’s okay,” I said tentatively.

“Me too!” The background voices warbled louder. “Ack, sorry, got to go, Ave. Keep me in the loop!”

“Of course.”

I finished unpacking, hanging the few dresses, shirts, and skirts I’d packed in the ample closet and plunking my heels and sandals on the built-in shoe rack, setting my laptop on the table in the corner, fluffing my duck down pillow on the bed. In this line of work, I didn’t find myself at the house I technically still shared with Mom very often. The pillow was the one piece of home that came with me everywhere.

My stomach muttered, reminding me that I’d been too tense to force down an early lunch. Fitch had assured Sterling and me that “the people” kept Ryder’s fridge fully stocked and that I could take whatever I wanted from it. I slipped out and padded into the living room, glancing toward the terrace to confirm that my client was still on the premises. My gaze snagged on that smoothly muscled back, and my feet halted of their own accord. Heat crept through my cheeks.

Ryder and his companion were braced against the terrace wall, him facing her as she perched on the concrete edge. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, her spine arching against the metal railing as he pressed his mouth to her collarbone. The shoulder of her robe had slipped down to her elbow, and one of Ryder’s agile guitarist hands was teasing her breast. From the expression on her face, eyelids low and lips parted, his mouth and fingers were playing one very enjoyable melody on her body. I couldn’t see his face at all, only that bare back and his shadow-dark hair in its jagged line across his neck.