Smoke and Mirrors - Hollywood Knights One (2 page)

The book had just drawn me in when my cell
rang. I thought about letting it go to voice mail, but when I saw
Seth’s name on the caller ID, I answered.

“You all settled in?” he asked. His voice was
rough and he sounded tired.

“Yep. Unpacked, made myself a drink, gave
myself a tour of the house, and jacked a book.” I traded the book
for my drink and settled more comfortably against the
headboard.

“I told you to stay out of my Scotch,” Seth
said.

I looked down at my drink and blinked a
couple of times. “How did you...?”

“I’ve known you a long, long time, Jen.” He
punctuated his declaration with a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Thanks for the reminder that we’re getting
old,” I said. “You sound like shit.”

“I feel like shit. I think I’m coming down
with something. Gonna drown myself in the giant fucking Q when I
get off the phone. But you wanted to ‘work out the details.’”

“It can wait.”

“AND,” Seth said, raising his voice to talk
over me --which had to suck for him-- and continuing like I hadn’t
said anything, “I need you to understand that there aren’t any
details to work out.” I tried to interrupt, but he added, “No, shut
up and let me talk while I still have a voice.”

“Okay.”

“You’re the most self-sufficient person I
know, Jen. I know you don’t need my help. Besides, you really are
doing me a favor by watching the place. And I like knowing that
you’ll be there when I come into town in a few weeks; I hate being
in that house alone. So, yeah...I don’t need rent money.”

I sighed. “Seth—”

He cut me off again. “If I needed your
services, needed you to...I don’t know…solve some great
mystery…would you charge me your going rate?”

“Of course not,” I had to admit.

“I don’t need rent money,” he said again. “If
it’ll make you feel better, we can work something out. You can send
your rent money to a charity or something.” He paused for a second
and then added, “Or if you really want to do something for me, you
can have a hot, lesbian orgy in my bed and send me the video.”

I laughed. “I think I’m going to have to pass
on that offer, Seth. For a whole lot of reasons.”

“Damn.”

I laughed again. “Go to bed, Seth.”

“Yes, ma’am. Going. Good night, Angel. And
stay out of my Scotch.”

He ended the call before I could respond.
Seth always did have to have the last word. I just smiled and went
to make myself another drink.

Chapter Three

With the question of where I would live
answered, I turned my attention to finding office space for my
agency.  I didn’t need anything fancy, and I didn’t need to be
in the middle of the L.A. sprawl.  Something humble closer to
‘home’ would work just fine.

 “First things first, though,” I said to
myself and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

 I spent several minutes poking around
in the pantry, fridge, freezer, and various cabinets.  I found
coffee for a machine I didn’t know how to work, a crapload of
sodas, bottled water, and beer, something that might have once been
a loaf of sandwich bread, some stale chips, and enough liquor to
float the Queen Mary.  What I didn’t find was anything that I
could even pretend to call breakfast.

I considered finding a coin to flip: heads,
I’d get dressed and find grub first; tails, I’d look for an office
first.  Instead, I examined the coffee maker, trying to figure
out how it worked.

 I was still poking at the coffee maker
when I heard the front door open and shut. I made a mental note to
figure out how many people had keys to my new home and braced
myself for an awkward situation.

 “Anybody home?” Elizabeth called
out.

 “You’re up early,” I called back.

“London always manages to wake me up when he
leaves for the studio,” she explained as she rounded the corner
into the kitchen, a white paper bag in one hand. “I figured I might
as well drag my ass out of bed and bring you breakfast.”

I asked her about the keys and she leaned
against the island, looking thoughtful.

“Hmm. I have London’s, Brian has one, and
Teddy. Probably JT...yeah, I’d say about half of L.A.”

“Joy.”

“Elizabeth rounded the corner into the
kitchen, a white paper bag in her hand.  “After you left last
night, I remembered the kitchen here was pretty bare.  And
since London always manages to wake me up when he leaves for the
studio, I figured I might as well drag my ass out of bed and bring
you breakfast.”

 “Here,” she said, offering me the bag.
“This will cheer you up.”

I took the bag and peeked inside.  Then
I took a deep whiff.  Cinnamon. 

 “I knew I liked you,” I said.  “If
you can show me how this space-age coffee pot works, you might just
be my new favorite sister-in-law.”

 Elizabeth smiled so wide, it had to
have hurt her face. I think she must have liked the term
‘sister-in-law’ more than I could have imagined.  She showed
me how to work the coffee maker, and within a few minutes, we were
settled at the table with chocolate coffee and cinnamon scones—and
Elizabeth still had that smile on her face.

 “Thanks for butting in last night,” I
said.  “I think I can get used to living here.”

 “It’s a great place, but it gets
lonely.”

 “I think I can handle it.”

 We ate in silence for a minute, and
then I asked, “Were you serious about helping me move?”

 “Yeah.  Of course.”  She
looked surprised that I had asked.

 “Cool.  Chris said he’d help,
too.”

 The way Elizabeth’s eyes lit up, you’d
think I’d just given her a pony.  Or a yacht.

 “I’ll definitely help, then,” she
said.  “When?”

 She was trying to play it cool, but I
could tell she was excited by the prospect of spending time with my
brother, even if it was time spent piling my crap into cardboard
boxes.  I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Elizabeth being
in a committed relationship with two guys, especially when one of
those guys was my big brother, but it was what they all
wanted.  I tried not to worry too much, but I cared about all
three of the people involved, and I couldn’t see any way they could
all live happily ever after.  I just hoped that when things
fell apart that they would end with a whimper instead of a
bang.  I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and I didn’t want to
lose any friends, either.

 “I’m not sure when yet,” I said in
answer to her question.  “Soon.  I wanted to find an
office first, but if that doesn’t happen, it just doesn’t. 
I’m going to call Chris tonight and try to get our schedules lined
up.”

 “Cool,” Elizabeth said, pausing to
drain her coffee cup.  “Let me know.”

After breakfast, Elizabeth headed home, and I
dug out my teeny-tiny laptop and started my real estate
search.  It was a long, drawn-out, boring process, and I hated
every second of it.  For about an hour I looked at listings
and made notes the old-fashioned way --on paper with a pen.  I
had found a few properties that might work, and I decided I should
go do a drive-by to get a feel for the neighborhoods and the
condition of the buildings.

 Before I could scramble into clothes
and scurry out the door, my cell rang.  A quick glance at the
caller ID, and I decided to answer.

 “London?”

 “Hey, Jenny.”

 
 I sat down on
the edge of my bed in surprise.  Random calls from London
Dahlbeck were not a normal part of my life. Despite the fact that I
was now living with the lead singer of one of the biggest bands in
the country, I still wasn’t used to rubbing shoulders with rock
stars on a regular basis, but the real reason for my surprise was
simply that London seemed to want to keep me at arm’s length—likely
because of a difference of opinion we’d had months before that had
put a massive wall between us.

 “Elizabeth said you’re moving to
L.A.”

 “Um…yeah.”

 “And that you’re looking for an
office?”

 “Yeah.”  I wondered if I sounded
as dumb as I felt.

 “Brian wanted me to tell you that he
has a friend who’s in real estate.  Apparently she has a place
that she’s been trying to convince Dylan to lease or
something.  Anyway, he’s seen it, and he wanted me to pass on
the info.”

 I smiled.  “And he couldn’t call
me, why?”

 “Because he’s Brian.”  He
paused.  “I think what he said was, ‘She’s your
sister-in-law.  You call her.’”

 I laughed. Leave it to Brian to make us
all sound like one big, incestuous family.  “That’s one way of
looking at it, I guess.”

 London gave me the address of the
office building in question and the name and number of the realtor,
and then he needed to go.

 “I’ll talk to you later,” he
said.  “And Jenny?  I’m glad you’re moving here.”

 I hung up the phone, smiling, and tried
to ignore the little shiver that ran up the back of my neck. 
Moving to L.A. was going to be a good thing, and I wasn’t going to
screw things up for myself before I even had a chance to change my
address.

Chapter Four

I spent the next couple of days on the phone. I
called the realtor to tour the building Brian had pointed me
toward, since I’d liked the looks of it when I had driven by. I
called my brother to nail down a time when we could go pack up my
apartment and my office. I called my contacts on both coasts to let
them know I had a timeframe for moving my agency. I called three
moving companies before I found one I liked. Then I called
another
moving company.

By the time moving day rolled around and I went to
pick up Elizabeth on my way to the airport, I never wanted to use a
telephone again.

Elizabeth answered the door about two seconds after I
knocked. At first I figured she was eager to get going, even though
we had plenty of time before we had to catch our flight. And then I
heard London’s and Lori’s raised voices. It wasn’t an unusual
sound. They were as close as a brother and sister could be,
especially considering the eight-year age difference, but they were
so much alike that they had a tendency to drive each other nuts.
Living together wasn’t helping matters any, either.

“At it again, huh?”

“Sort of. Lori...oh I’ll let her tell you. I’m going
to go make sure I have everything packed and quietly have a nervous
breakdown.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and she looked up at
me. “You okay?”

She shook her head. She’d been through hell the last
couple of years, including having a metaphysical freak bestow his
telepathy on her. She hadn’t been able to learn to control it, and
until London had a stroke of genius and found a way to block her
access to magic, the telepathy had controlled her. She’d lived like
a hermit, afraid of having her head filled with other people’s
thoughts. She’d described it to me once, saying it was like
listening to a bunch of people channel-surfing, all at the same
time, with the volume turned up to eleven.

My oldest brother, Daniel, was a telepath, too; he
hadn’t been quite as good at vocalizing what it was like, but it
had driven him to abuse alcohol and all sorts of drugs. Eventually
his addictions had dragged him so far down that his girlfriend had
dropped their daughter, Hannah, off at my mom’s house and
disappeared, wanting nothing more to do with him, us, or magic. And
then Daniel had disappeared as well.

For a while, I’d been afraid we’d lose Elizabeth the
same way we’d lost Daniel. Then London had found a work-around —one
that had scared the hell out of me at first, I admit—and Elizabeth
was slowly making her way back from the brink of a serious
breakdown.

“I’ll be okay, I think,” she said. “I’m doing better,
but huge crowds still freak me out. And flying. And the thought of
being trapped with a bunch of strangers.”

I gave her a quick hug. “You can do this. And I’ll be
right there with you the whole time.”

“Thanks.” She led me into the living room where
London and Lori had apparently called a truce. She gave London a
squeeze before she hurried to the bedroom to finish packing.

“So what’s with the drama?” I asked.

London reached up to rub his temples, and I was
immediately sorry I’d asked.

“I hate being lied to, that’s what,” Lori said,
flopping down onto the sofa.

“Lori—” I have no idea what London intended to say,
because his sister cut him off, talking to me and acting like he
wasn’t even there.

“You remember how Seth brushed me off, saying he
doesn’t date girls my age?”

“I don’t think that’s exactly what he said, but
yeah.”

“Check this out.”

She gestured toward something on her laptop screen,
and I dropped down on the couch beside her to see what had her so
riled. It was a picture of Seth with some dark-haired, doe-eyed
girl in her early twenties. They looked pretty cozy. The caption
said something about the lead singer of Tangled Web being seen at a
club with the girl and about how they only had eyes for each
other.

“It’s just tabloid trash,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” Lori said. “I talked to JT. They’re
dating. She’s twenty-one, and she’s the freakin’ merch girl!”

I cringed, both because of the information and
because Lori’s voice got louder with every word.

“I hate being lied to,” she said again, slamming the
lid shut on her laptop.

“I told you,” London said, “you don’t want to date
Seth. Or any touring musician. It sucks.”

“That’s not the point!”

I stood up, drawing their attention, and said,
“Enough, guys. London, go check on Elizabeth. We need to go soon.
Please?”

To my surprise, he didn’t even argue. He just went.
Then I sat back down.

“Lori, you know guys don’t get it. But I do. Being
lied to sucks. And seeing the guy you like hooking up with a random
always
sucks.”