Lipstick & Zombies (Deadly Divas Book 1) (9 page)

"What did you girls
do
? Did you not read your schedules? You can read, can't you?" She was clapping again. Always with the clapping.

Carrie walked out of her room, bleary-eyed and still taking stock of the many types of awful she felt, when a man with measuring tape came at her, followed by his much taller assistant, also carrying measuring tape. "They certainly did procure a variety, didn't they?"

"Mmm," said the shorter one. They were holding Carrie's arms out at her sides.

"Would you mind informing me why you are measuring my arm at four in the morning, in my home?"

The man laughed. "Stranger things than this will be happening soon, I assure you."

"This is far from the strangest thing that has ever happened to me," Carrie said. "It doesn't make it polite."

"Oh, she bites," the taller man said.

"Who are you?"

"Stylist," the shorter man said.

"And assistant?" she asked. The tall one nodded. "Names are very old school, I suppose."

They both laughed, but didn't bother responding. Carrie's stomach curdled.

Dee stomped loudly out of her room, like her stomach wasn't bothering her at all. "There he is!" She came up to Carrie. "This creep was measuring me in bed just a few minutes ago. And when I kicked him out, someone came in with a camera, taking pictures! With yesterday's makeup still on!" She stomped her foot again, though she was standing still.

"We need clean slate photos," the assistant told Carrie, as though Dee weren't there. "See what the raw material looks like."

"Well then perhaps someone should have given Dee the opportunity to wash her face," Carrie said. "Where's the camera now?"

No one needed to answer that, because a second later a man with a shattered camera came running out of Sadie's room.

"That one's crazy!" the man yelled.

Meghan was following after Gerri, having clapped her awake. Gerri stalked across the main space toward Sadie's room. "You okay in there?" Gerri asked from the doorway.

"Just fine," Sadie said, appearing at Gerri's side. She wore a slinky silk robe, unfairly elegant for having just woken, and carried a small knife in her hand. "I took care of the pervert's camera."

"Good girl," Gerri said.

"No,
bad
girl!" Meghan snipped. "You are all in serious need of an attitude adjustment. There is too much to be done today. If you are not up for it, I assure you, we saved the alternate's phone numbers."

"Oh, really?" Carrie asked. "Is that a decision you get to make in your high-powered position, Meghan?”

Meghan clapped her hands. "Gather around ladies." They didn't. “Places everyone!” They shuffled closer. "Since none of you have read your schedules, we have to go over them. Now, Marcus and his team are here to get your measurements and such together so that he can work on your looks. Once he's finished, we have you moving on to your voice trainer, and once you're through there, it's on to meet your fight and dance choreographers in the afternoon. You will meet your personal fitness trainers tomorrow. No time to waste." She clapped. "If you don't wish to go through your day mistaken for the undead, I suggest hurrying."

Dee clapped in Meghan's face, proving to Carrie she was much more clever than she seemed, and bellowed, "CLOOOOOOTHES. We haven't been given any. STILL."
"What do you think Marcus is working on?"

"His tan? I don't care. I need clothes
now
."

"You were told to bring clothes with you, to get you by for now," Meghan said. "You'll be given your new clothes when Willa has consulted with Marcus on how to market each of you. In the meantime, you will not be seen by the public."

Dee asked, "And where the hell is Queen B?"

WILLA

The debate on their first single was much worse than the debate on which girls to use, or whether to make a band at all. Suddenly, every one knew just how to market to teenagers and how to introduce a band of this kind to this demographic.

The dull drones thought the first song should basically say,
sign up for the military
. Like you could just tell teenagers what to do. She explained to her peers again and again that you couldn't do that; they had to give them an image, an example, without saying straight out, "Do this." They needed to make them envious, make the kids want to
be
the girls in the band. And that meant they needed an image of the band that managed to say,
this is us, and we're better than other people, don't you want to see yourself in this picture? You need to model yourself after us, you need to do
these
things with your life.

The kids needed to think it was their own idea.

And that's how she dealt with her peers in the end, too. Adults like to think they're insusceptible to such manipulation, that they've always been much more clever than your average teen. They were wrong.

The song writer, Sonya, had been easier to lead. Song writing, as it turned out, was a lot like marketing copy, and it might have been easier to do it herself than to walk Sonya through it. In the end, Willa had exactly the song she needed. It was almost too easy, not that anyone else could have done it. Not this fast, not this well.

She'd watched through the recordings of the girls the night before. They'd bonded over their dislike of Willa, right on schedule. She'd have preferred they'd used Meghan as their villain—the woman was incessant—but whatever worked, especially since they still seemed to respect her. Things should work out just fine, as long as they did as they were told, and appeared to like each other on stage. That kind of thing could be faked, to some extent, but it was much better if they considered each other family; that kind of genuine love crap could be read in body language. It'd make for good press. For a while.

The voice trainer had called when they were through, just to complain about how hard his job was. She assured him that she appreciated his stupendous skills and efforts on this particular project. The man loved to complain. But didn't everyone?

Before going to check on the girls at their afternoon appointment, Willa stopped in her office to change back into those same brown, fake-leather shoes. She hoped it would bother them all the more with her black and pink ill-fitting pant suit. She smirked at her own reflection. There was a special place in hell for the zombies that ate all of her favorite shoe designers at the beginning of the end. Couldn't just one of them have survived?

FENNEC NEWS

“They haven't given us a picture, or names, or a date where we'll get any of those things. You know what that means.”

“What's that?”

“Really, Tracy. Can't you figure it out for yourself? They aren't confident! They know this is a mistake!”

“Of course, John. When they do release this information, how do you think they'll do it?”

“IF they release this information, well, I still don't see them doing it, to tell you the full truth, Tracy.”

Chapter Eight

SADIE

It was even worse than Sadie had imagined. It was just so...
basic
. This wasn't music. This was a nightmare.

She kept telling herself that they hadn't even seen anything about what
their
songs would be, but she had a sinking feeling it was only going to get worse. Even Dee knew it was garbage, which she let the voice trainer know straight away.

"The quality of the song is neither your concern, nor an issue here," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I need to evaluate your voices and your ability to sing as a group so parts can be assigned at a later date. Now, can you please
shut up
so I can hear your sister."

"Sister? What are you even talking about?" Dee said.

"Someone!" He turned to the black glass wall behind him. "Remind me to bring a muzzle tomorrow."

Sadie stepped up next to Dee, and gave the bastard a cool glare. She couldn't believe it had only been a day and she was ready to hit someone in defense of one of these girls, but she reasoned that there was just something about Dee. What it was Sadie wasn't sure, but she wasn't going to stand by and let anyone threaten her. "Then I suppose it's good I always have my knives on me," she said.

He took a step back and muttered something about preferring being thrown over the wall to this horror show.

The day ended with him making them sing some song about spaghetti, and Gerri yelling that she'd had enough of this whacky nightmare. "Did you write this stuff? I mean, what is happening? Who sneezes on their food anyway? And gets so upset
they write a whole song about it
? This better be a prank." She pulled a chair up to the corner of the room, where they definitely had a camera, and yelled into the corner, "You can come out now. Joke's over."

The man, whose name they never learned, told them it was a
classic
, like that meant something, and left the room with both hands holding the bridge of his nose.

"Woooooo!" Dee yelled.

"I think that means we win," Sadie said.

"Do you think we'll have to see him again?" Carrie asked.

"If they do send him back again, we now know the path to victory," Sadie said.

"Victory!" Dee agreed. "Drinks?"

Gerri ruffled Dee's hair, earning her a glare. "I think I've had a bad influence on you, hon."

JO

Meghan came in, clapped her hands, and said, "No more drinks," which Jo was grateful for. She couldn't tell if the other girls were serious about drinks again, in the middle of the day, right before fight and dance training, but certainly thought it was a miserable idea. Her head
still
hurt from the night before. And she wasn't exactly in the celebratory mood, even if they had bested the man with the spaghetti song. She'd had spaghetti a few times as a child, it was delicious, but the idea of food was revolting today. She'd thought she had a strong enough history of drinking liquor with her family that she wouldn't become ill. She suspected it was the different types of liquor, since she'd only ever had the one. Who knew what all the different foods and drinks would do to her. Her whole world was new. She was a city dweller now. Even her stomach was having a hard time adjusting to that.

Her mood wasn't only due to the morning's ailments, or the confusing world. There was also the fact that she knew the girls didn't understand her, and the singing itself. It seemed the other girls had backgrounds of voice training and knew all types of music words she'd never heard before. She sang to herself while she walked the edge of the wall alone, or to help her youngest siblings fall asleep. It was something she did for fun. The man with the spaghetti song was not interested in singing for fun. He barked orders at her she didn't understand. She was quickly becoming tired of taking orders from people in this world. She'd thought it would be okay; she'd been raised a soldier. She'd assumed the life of a popstar would be more freeing than that.

She dragged behind on her way to class. No one had asked during auditions if she knew how to dance. How difficult could it be? She was trying not to think about that fancy stuff the other girls had done in the living room the night before.

Their dance instructors greeted them. The woman did a twirly thing in the air and landed before them with a smile. She introduced herself as Tammi. The man, Marvin she called him, just clapped, possibly as a greeting, or maybe as a way to detract attention from Tammi. Was clapping some kind of custom in the city?

"Ten minutes late," Marvin said.

"He's talking about Noah," Tammi explained, "the fight coordinator." The name made Jo twitch. No one said her old friend's name anymore. It was nice, if surprising, to hear his name assigned to someone else. It was bound to happen someday; Noah wasn't an unusual name. She'd get used to it, like everything else. “He's typically late, and I'll deny it if you tell him this, but you're lucky to have him. He's a real up and comer, a fresh voice. He's been doing amazing things this past year. Anyway...” Tammi went on to ramble off details about schedules and people being late and the value of time, but Jo couldn't follow her rapid speech patterns. People didn't talk like that at home. They drawled on some times, or barked out quick orders, or were quiet and spoke only when sure you were listening. It annoyed her, most of the time. She'd wanted to be around more animated people. And there she was. Overwhelmed. Confused. Out of place.

And then Noah walked in and looked right at her. He stopped. Time stopped. The world stopped. Everything stopped. He was looking right at her! Her friend, her boyfriend, her corpse, her delusion? He was looking right at her!

He's dead.
He's dead. He's dead.
Each time she thought it, it was like the world shifted under her feet, like she was readjusting to this reality while staring at a very different one in front of her. She didn't say it out loud, because she still hated that it was true, and speech made it truer, didn't it? If this was crazy, maybe it was better to be crazy.