Rock N Soul (3 page)

I wasn’t a huge fan of Incite the Masses. I mean, they were fine, I guess. Basic rock music, harder and edgier than the inoffensive bore-fest music that pumps out of the speakers at the hotel bar, but not thrashing death metal either. Alt-rock, maybe. What I’m saying is that if they came on the radio I wouldn’t change the channel but I also wouldn’t crank up the volume. They were okay.

I had a T-shirt, though. And all their albums. And I’d been to the concerts. I’d even gone to a fan convention once. But that was
not
because I was a huge fan—it was because Carmen Anders had great tits and tended to put out after listening to rock music, and she was a big fan of Incite the Masses. I mean, massive. Like when we started dating, she’d included a clause in our verbal contract that if she ever had the chance to sleep with any (or all at once if possible) of the band members, she was totally going to do it and I just had to be fine with it.

She hadn’t felt the same way about me putting Zoe Saldana on my free-pass list. Or even of me
having
a free-pass list. But that’s another story.

So anyway, playing the part of an Incite the Masses fan was sort of a requirement for getting to see Carmen Anders naked, and I didn’t hate their music or anything, so I’d bought a T-shirt, learned a few of their songs and (
bam
!) got laid. And then I’d skipped out on paying my internet bill so that I could buy her mosh pit tickets, and then I had to pay Vic Mitchell fifty bucks to cover my shift so I could take her to it, and
then
I got punched in the jaw by a very burly, sweaty biker type for elbowing my way past him to get her right next to the stage, but it had been worth it because after the concert, she kept me up all night long. And I do mean that literally. All. Night. Long. And it was
awesome
.

Which was mostly because she swore up and down that Eric Painter had made eye contact with her in the middle of “Strike a Match” and it was apparently the hottest thing that ever happened to her. And I’m about ninety-nine percent sure that she’d been closing her eyes and imagining that I was Eric with his deep raspy singing voice and his spiky gelled hair while I was boning her, but you know what? Still counted.

And after that, wonder of wonders, she’d stuck around. For a while, at least. Over a year. Then Incite the Masses came back to Boston on this year’s tour, and I’d been bare-ass broke and not in the mood to take a fist to the jaw again; plus, I’d been starting to get pretty tired of putting up with her shit, so when she’d not-so-subtly hinted that I needed to repeat last year and get her up to the stage again, I’d just told her I had to work. And she’d bitched and moaned and threatened to dump me, but I’d stood firm, man. I’d stood firm.

She hadn’t dumped me, though, mostly because while we were having a big screaming match about it, Richard called me freaking out over how Christopher Raiden had booked a room at our hotel for after the show and how he was probably going to want a rhesus monkey skeleton and where the fuck was he going to get a rhesus monkey skeleton on short notice and on and on and on about the damn rhesus monkey skeleton until I couldn’t even take it anymore and had to hang up. Not hang up
on
him, of course, because I need my job, but the “oops, I left the casserole in the oven gotta go” type of hanging up.

Carmen stared at me as I put my phone back in my pants pocket. “What the fuck, Tyler?”

“What? What did I do wrong
now
?” I picked up my jacket from where I’d thrown it on the floor earlier and fished around in my pocket for my keys.

“You took a phone call in the middle of an argument,” she said, her voice rising slowly in pitch like the argument was about to start up again.

Luckily, I knew how to shut that down. “Chris Raiden just booked a room at the hotel. Richard’s freaking out and talking about rhesus monkey skeletons.” I pulled my keys out and curled my fingers around them.

Carmen’s mouth dropped open. “Chris Raiden is staying at
your hotel
?”

I exerted a monumental amount of willpower and just barely managed not to roll my eyes so hard my retinas detached. “Yeah, that’s what I just said.”

“Well . . .” she said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading over her face. “Then I guess you know how to keep me, then.”

I had put on my jacket. “No idea what you mean.” After all, if you want your boyfriend to pimp you out to a rock star, you have to say the words.

“You’re going to let me in his room.” She leaned forward with an upsetting gleam in her increasingly cold eyes.

“Um, no.” I patted the sides of my jacket, more out of habit than anything else since I’d already found my keys. “I’m not doing that.”

“He’s on my free-pass list, Tyler!”

“Yeah, well, fuck your free-pass list.” I raised an eyebrow at her in a clear challenge. “I never signed off on that bullshit, and you’d bust an ovary if I asked you to let me fuck some other chick, so no. Not doing it.”

“This isn’t
some other chick
, Tyler. This is Chris
Raiden
. He’s my
idol
.”

“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “He’s not even your favorite band member.”

“Well, no.” She pursed her lips in her “trying to be alluringly sensual while deep in thought” expression. Which is duckface, of course. The crazy ones always think duckface looks sexy on them. They’re also always wrong.

After several seconds of duckface thought, she nodded as if she’d decided something important and smiled at me. “Surely Eric will be there too?”

“Doubt it,” I said, letting my words be clipped and harsh.

“But . . . they’re best friends. And bandmates. Surely . . .”

“Pretty sure Richard would have said that
the band
has rented out our penthouse if that was the case. And he just said Chris.”

“Oh, so you’re on a fucking first name basis with him now? All buddy-buddy?” She put her hands on her hips and sneered at me. “You’re some sort of bestie with Chris Raiden now and you won’t even let me talk to him?”

I actually rolled my eyes at that. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not sure if you can
stop
being ridiculous, but it would be fantastic if you could make an effort.”

“Fuck you,” she spat.

“That’s pretty much the only reason I’m still with you,” I snapped back.

“Let me in his fucking room, Tyler!”

“No. I’m not losing my job just so you can get a rock star to knock you up.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Then get me an autograph. If you can’t even do
that
, we’re through.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I reached for the doorknob. And then, because I felt sentimental for some stupid reason, I didn’t turn it. Instead, I sighed and looked back at her. “I mean, yeah. I can do that.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not going to fight me on that, too?”

I shrugged. “Least I can do, I guess.”

She came over and wrapped her arms around me, laying her cheek on my shoulder. “Thank you, baby.”

I sighed and kissed the top of her head.

Apparently, the prospect of getting an autograph gets her off too, so I’d taken advantage of that newfound knowledge. Because only morons turn down chicks as hot as Carmen when they’re pressed up against them.

I, Tyler Lindsey, am not a moron.

Up at the penthouse, I stood outside the room for longer than strictly necessary while I talked myself into going inside. Finally, in a wild burst of energy so I wouldn’t have time to stop myself, I swiped my access card and wheeled the cart into the room. I closed the door behind me and eyed the carpet where he’d been lying, half expecting to see a body outline still there even though that was stupid.

But there wasn’t a corpse on the floor this time, which was probably comforting for Mr. Douchey Kingston, being as the room was his now. I looked around at his boring businessy suits and his multiple spare briefcases—which were a huge difference from the guitars, eyeliner, and syringes I’d seen in here before, although I tried not to think about that—and then pulled the cleaning cart farther into the room and parked it where I usually park my luggage cart. I eyed the carpet where the body had been again.

You’d think that it wouldn’t bug me. But it did.

It also shouldn’t have bugged me that Carmen blamed me for Chris’s death, since she’s batshit crazy and there’s no way any sane person could think it was my fault that the guy died. But when you get text after psychotic text about how if you’d just gotten off your lazy good-for-nothing ass and taken room service up five minutes earlier, you would have been able to save somebody’s life, it starts to really fuck with your mind.

And apparently with my motor skills too, because when I tore myself away from staring at the boring hotel carpet and went into the bathroom to clean, I fumbled as I was reaching for the half-empty bottle of complimentary hotel shampoo sitting on the side of the tub. The bottle hit the ground and rolled under the claw-foot sink.

I groaned. I was going to have to reach down there, and God only knew when the maids last deep-cleaned under that thing. Whoever designed that sink was a complete idiot, because there was just barely enough room to get your hand through but not enough room to scrub, and you could forget about using any kind of cleaning tool, because it wasn’t going to fit either. Mostly the housekeeping staff ignored the whole area unless somebody specifically complained about it, which hardly anyone ever did.

But I didn’t want to lose out on tip money because Asshole Kingston decided to get on his hands and knees and shine a flashlight everywhere to catch me leaving something dirty, so I crouched on the floor and reached down to fish around for the bottle.

My fingers hit something small and cold. I frowned and raked whatever it was out from under the sink. It was a ring, white gold with Celtic symbols on it. Chris Raiden’s ring, one that he’d gone on and on about in interviews until anyone even vaguely familiar with the band would have recognized it.

I peered at it for another few seconds, then put the ring on my hand. I mean, that sounds weird, but it’s a basic human instinct. You find a ring, you put it on. That’s totally normal.

What
wasn’t
totally normal was that when I looked up, Chris Raiden was staring at me from the doorway of the bathroom. And he was . . . slightly transparent.

I blinked at the cart for a few seconds while my brain tried to process everything. Then, without planning to, I screamed.

“Shut up, dude!” the ghost of Chris Raiden said, holding his hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Like hell you’re not,” I shouted, and was pleasantly surprised that my voice had returned to its usual pitch. “I’ve seen
plenty
of horror movies.”

Chris tilted his head a little and stared at me. “What?”

“You’re going to drown me in the tub. Oh God.” I covered my face with my hands and began . . . well, I won’t say “whimpering” because that’s totally not something a guy like me does, but . . . well, okay, whimpering. But come on, there was a ghost and the bathtub was
right there
and that was how someone always ended up dying in the first five minutes of a horror movie to show the audience how gory the whole thing was going to be. I’m not an idiot. I know how movies work.

When he didn’t respond immediately, I peeked out through my fingers, and Chris frowned down at me. “What are you doing wearing my ring? And why the hell are you in my room when I’m still here? If you’re trying to steal my shit, I’ll have you fired so fast you’ll leave your shoes behind.”

A version of the truth was probably the best place to start. “Um . . .” I scooted backward toward the tub, even though that would just make it easier for him to drown me in it if he decided to. “I was just cleaning under the sink and I guess the ring rolled under there?”

“Why are you wearing it?” He scowled at me.

“I’m not
wearing
it,” I said, even though that was clearly not true. I mean, come on. The thing was right there on my finger. “I just, you know, tried it on.” I reached for the ring to take it off, but Chris took a step toward me and I cringed back against the tub, flinging my arm up to cover my face like that was going to help me not die.

“Dude, calm down. I’m not going to drown you in the fucking tub. What am I, a psychopath?” I peered up at him over the top of my arm, catching him mid-eye-roll.

Carefully, I lowered my arm the rest of the way and took a second to look him over. He was wearing the same clothes I’d found his body in, although the dried blood and vomit were gone, and his face and hands had lost their unsettling purple tint, thankfully. His eyeliner was back to stage-ready perfect, and his hair was freshly styled. In other words, he looked just like he would have if he hadn’t been out of his mind on heroin and/or dead due to the heroin. Really, the only thing that made him seem ghostlike at all was the fact that I could sort of see the outline of the cleaning cart behind him through his stomach.

Carmen would have immediately commenced trying to fuck him. Ghost or no ghost.

“So . . .” I said, slowly getting to my feet. “What do you remember? You weren’t in the room a second ago when I came in to clean.”