Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) (8 page)

A thirty-something man dressed in janitor khakis emerged from one of the iso rooms, pushing a wide broom. But he wasn’t any janitor. His white-blond hair and pinkish skin exuded the same shimmer as the redhead who’d been staking out Ryder.

Glower.

It could have
been
the redhead in a different guise, but something about him—the frequency of the light that emanated from him, the tone of his movements—told me it wasn’t. So he might not be here with any particular target in mind, yet. I guessed this place made a good front for scoping out potential marks. In that uniform, it wouldn’t have been too hard to convince someone to give him access to the building.

I stepped into the live room, closing the door behind me. The Glower looked up at the click. “Just finishing up,” he said, but his voice cut off on the last syllable as he registered my expression. “Ah. Hello.”

“Do you want to just leave or are we going to have to make it a production?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest.

He gave his broom another push. “If you’re here playing guardian angel, you don’t have to worry. I’m not interested in whomever your charge is.”

“I don’t want you being ‘interested’ in anyone,” I said.

“Well, I’m afraid that’s a condition I can’t agree to.” He reached the corner and turned to look at me again. “Your kind really are unfair to mine, you should realize. Though I suppose I can understand it, circumstances being what they are. Who was it for you, who died while you watched and left you
seeing
?”

My back stiffened. Of course the Glowers knew how it worked: that their final act of feeding changed something in the minds and eyes of anyone who witnessed it. It hadn’t occurred to me they gave the process much thought beyond trying to ensure there were no witnesses, though.

When I didn’t answer, he went on. “That doesn’t make the best first impression. But there’s so much more to it than that. A symbiotic relationship. An exchange of energies. We give them what they want most.”

“Obsession?” I said. “Addiction? Depression? Sorry, I’m not buying.”

He shook his head. “Inspiration. Genius. Joy. The best work of their careers.”

I’d heard that line before. It always made me think of those last few months I’d had with my dad. Of the absences and the unexpected rages and the pained distance even when he was in the same room. My throat closed up.

“You give a few hours of inspiration and then drain away all the joy it brings them for yourselves,” I said. “You leave them with
nothing.
A few hours for weeks of misery—you call
that
fair? Spare me.”

“And yet so many are glad to accept our price.” He peered at me, gray eyes shining like coins under water. “Are you simply afraid that your loved one would have made the same choice even knowing the outcome?”

My hand dropped to my purse, my fingers clenching. I took a step toward him. “
You
don’t get to talk about my ‘loved ones.’ I doubt you know anything about love other than what it tastes like when you steal it away.” My voice was shaking. I took a breath, steadying myself. “Now are you going to leave easily or not?”

“Are you going to try to banish me?” he asked. “That would be interesting.”

He was holding the broom handle casually, but close enough to his body that he could use it to obstruct any move I made. This wasn’t like with the Glower in the club, who hadn’t anticipated my attack. I slid my hand into my purse to run my thumb over the string with its knots and treatment of herbs, but I left it there. He’d just as likely snap it in half before I completed the circle.

“No,” I said. “But I’ll stand in this doorway as long as I need to, to make sure you don’t go where you’re not wanted.”

The Glower let out a low chuckle. “I’m done here as it is,” he said. “So I’ll take my leave, because I choose to. I told you already, I’m not after your charge. Though if you really care about protecting the people you shadow, perhaps you shouldn’t stand in the way of those who can deliver them all the glory they’re dreaming of.”

His form wavered, and then vanished. The broom handle tipped over against the wall. And I stood there for several minutes more, breathing around the ache in my chest, until the burn of tears behind my eyes retreated.

That night’s club was as bright as Ryder’s previous haunts had been dark: stark white walls and ceiling, blurred mirror of a floor, yellow and orange lights radiating and reflecting at me from every direction, making the dance hall look like an inferno. Even the DJ in his booth in the corner was dressed in white. The air conditioning blasted over the dancers, thick with ozone.

Ryder had thrown himself into the throng the moment we’d walked through the doors. I could barely keep track of his lean form amid the figures undulating around him, but I wasn’t sure it’d be wise to try to rein him in. He’d been in a strange mood since we’d left the studio. Since before that, actually—I wasn’t sure when it had shifted. After my confrontation with the Glower, I’d spent a couple hours working through online course material on my laptop in the hall outside the control room, and when I’d returned Ryder had been off in an iso room perfecting a guitar solo. I’d thought he looked all right when he’d come out... But at some point in that last stretch of recording, we’d exchanged a look, and I’d seen the clouds creeping in. On the drive home and in the penthouse afterward, he’d been quiet. Pensive, as if he were stewing over something.

Now it seemed he was throwing that something off into the universe. I bobbed on my feet along with the rattle of the bass, edging around the wilder dancers as I followed Ryder’s circuit of the room. I caught up with him near the far corner in time to see another guy drop a couple pills into his open hand.

I halted, my stomach twisting. We weren’t supposed to forcibly interrupt clients’ recreational activities as long as they weren’t excessively dangerous and no Glower influence was involved, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed watching Ryder tip back his head with his hand to his mouth. A reddish light slid down his throat with the bob of his Adam’s apple. He brushed his hand over his hip and then raised his arms in the air.

“The rock star is in the house, and it’s time to
party
!” he hollered, springing back into the crush of bodies. His whoop carried over the thrum of the music. I sighed and took up the chase again.

“Colin Ryder, coming through!” he was shouting a minute later, still waving his arms. Whatever he’d taken, it’d hit him fast. I followed him back and forth through the crowd as he made several more announcements of his presence. Then he paused where a small circle had cleared in the middle of the dance floor. I squeezed through the throng to his side.

A break-dancer was going at it in the middle of the ring, spinning and flipping with a speed that left me breathless just watching. Every tiny gesture echoed the frenetic pulse of the music with painstaking accuracy. The guy should have been on a stage, not performing for a tiny audience of random club-goers.

As the dancer whirled onto his feet, I caught the manic brilliance in his eyes—the artificial energy of a high, maybe from the same stuff Ryder had taken—and a different sort of spark. A glimmering spot in the middle of his chest, flickering with beat of his heart. My own chest clenched up.

The dancer was marked. My gaze darted around and settled on the spiky shimmering hair of a young man at the other side of the ring. A young man whose eyes glinted like glass as he watched his meal.

I didn’t know either of them. Probably a guy like this, a street dancer who hadn’t grabbed enough attention to catapult into the wider public eye, would never have had a company or a manager with enough stake in his future to seek out the Society’s services. And there simply weren’t enough Tethers for us to seek out and protect every artistic flame burning in so many souls across the world. The smaller stars made for smaller feedings, but they were easier prey too, and there were plenty of Glowers happy to settle for that.

But I was here now. Maybe I couldn’t do much, but every bone in my body balked at the thought of turning a blind eye.

I’d just started moving toward the Glower when the dancer pulled off one last tumble and posed on his head for his applause. The crowd hollered and clapped, but the ring was already contracting around him. The dancer leapt upright, sweaty and grinning. The Glower came up behind him and rested a hand on his mark’s shoulder.

Before I could even let out a shout, the Glower had taken it. All the joyous energy of the moment, of a performance well-received, coursed in a quivering stream from that flicker in the dancer’s chest to the Glower’s hand. The Glower smiled even as his mark deflated, the exuberance I’d seen an instant before draining away, the triumphant grin sagging.

Bile collected in the back of my throat. I took another step toward them as the crowd shifted around us, thinking I could at least offer the dancer some reassurance or encouragement that might give him the strength to resist a little longer. Then I heard a familiar whoop, far enough away that I tensed.

Ryder had charged off again. I hesitated, my teeth gritting, and turned my back on the dancer to go find my client.

There, near the wall now, the lights painting bright streaks in his dark hair. I couldn’t deny the flash of relief that passed through me seeing him. And not seeing any other Glowers nearby. Pain in the ass though he was being, the thought of watching
his
delight sucked away made my stomach turn.

A few minutes later, a hint of smoke prickled my nose. I assumed it was some creative cologne until the flavor of it crept over my tongue as I dragged in a breath, and the shriek of a fire alarm cut through the throbbing beat.

The crowd shifted with a sudden surge, tossing me in the opposite direction. Real smoke was gushing up from somewhere to the left of the DJ’s booth. Real smoke and real flames, dancing with sharper edges amid the still blinking club lights. Holy hell.

Someone screamed. The crowd surged again with the strength of a tidal wave. I stumbled backward, only managing to keep my balance by grabbing the arm of a woman who immediately jerked away. My head whipped around. Where was Ryder? He’d been right beside me a minute ago.

I tried to turn toward the place I’d last seen him and stumbled again, caught in the rush toward the doors. My heart thudded. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to end up so much ground meat under all those feet. I craned my neck as the current carried me onward.

The guy next to me flinched with a bark of protest, and then Ryder shoved past him. He grasped my elbow. “You okay?” he said by my ear. His expression had sobered, his amber eyes alert as he scanned the figures around us.

“Yeah,” I said. “As long as they keep those doors open.”

The crush forced us closer together. Ryder slid his arm around my back protectively. Even as the contact sent a tingle through my body, it occurred to me how odd it was for him to be suddenly so cool and collected, considering the high he’d been coasting on for the last half hour.

The smoke wafted over us, following the air and the bodies streaming toward the entrance. A club employee had propped the doors open and was motioning everyone out with waves of a couple glow sticks. “We’ll all be fine. Easy does it!”

A siren was pealing through the night air when Ryder and I finally lurched onto the street. He steadied me as a few of the other club-goers hurtled past. I spotted the Mercedes down the street. Ryder dropped his arm, but I felt his hand hovering near my waist as we headed over. His strides were solid, even.

Something was
definitely
odd.

I turned to him as we reached the car. “That wasn’t much of a night out. Were you thinking we’d drop in someplace else?”

He was looking past me to the club. The fire truck had just pulled up, the last few patrons spilling out toward it. I couldn’t tell if the smoke I still smelled was in the breeze or on his shirt.

“No,” he said. “I think that was enough excitement for one night.”

I studied him as his driver headed back to the condo building. Ryder rubbed his eyes once, but that looked more like fatigue than anything else. Otherwise he sat still, his hands folded, his gaze following the lights of restaurants and bars on the streets we cruised down as I became more and more certain.

I held my tongue as we crossed the lobby and rode the elevator to the top. An image swam up—that swipe of his hand by his hip after he’d downed the pills.

When we got into the penthouse, Ryder ambled across the room toward the terrace. I caught him by the dining room table.

“Hey,” I said, touching his side. “Tell me something?”

His abdominal muscles tensed under my fingers as he swiveled toward me, the heat of his body seeping through his shirt, but I had other things on my mind. I was just hoping the contact had distracted him a little from my real intentions. Because the next thing I did was dip my hand into his front pocket.

“Avery?” he said with a husky note I’d never heard in his voice before.
That
got to me, a little tremor through my nerves, but I’d already found what I was looking for. I tugged my hand out, two white-and-blue capsules pinched between my fingers.