“Where to mate?”
There was only one place he was guaranteed to get some answers. “The City. Bletchley Holdings.”
“That’s gonna cost you.”
Xane waved aside the remark. “Just get me there fast.”
-5-
Xane
Mid-June, Hellfest, France.
He could make it… push through. He could. The crowd were hyped by their surprise appearance. Roaring in response to every murmur through the mics. Xane reached for that energy, poised for the passion to envelop him, ready to use its buoyancy to carry him through the vocal gymnastics of their opening belter. One of their big crowd pleasers, it always generated a fever wall of excitement. Tonight, though it reverberated around the stadium, brushed his fingertips and scratched his senses, but he couldn’t quite catch it. The burr left him tetchy instead. The lights were too bright, the snapshots of the audience like a montage out of someone else’s dream.
He would not crack. He would not fracture. Outright rejected the possibility. Locked the pain up. Compacted it. Drove it deeper.
When he screamed between their third and fourth tracks out of pure frustration the crowd lapped it up and screamed back. Thirty thousand of them howling like banshees. The sonic boom was enough to make him stagger.
It was only proper. A man ought to feel that… that fever, that cry of unity. Pure. Unadulterated. Zeitgeist.
Yet, he remained apart from it. A black hole in a starscape of novae. Nothing in his chest but a crushing hollow.
His cousin, Ric, moved into his orbit, fingers working the frets like he was born for no other purpose. Bassist, Paul ‘Rock Giant’ Reed, mirrored him, the three of them forming a brief triune. Ash pushed into a solo, working the crowd. Luthor came in again on the drums.
It was all a masquerade.
The familiarity of the music camouflaged what the band all knew. They were drowning. It’d been difficult enough without Steve. Even Elspeth’s departure had created unanticipated ripples. But it turned out Black Halo really wasn’t Black Halo without Spook Mortensen in their midst.
-6-
Allegra
November 22nd, Ronnie Bush Arena Tour, Manchester, UK.
“Alle.” A firm hand landed on Allegra Hutton’s shoulder startling her out of her daze. “Earth to Allegra Hutton.”
Abandoning her grip on the sound deck slider, Alle turned her head to find Ronnie Bush at her shoulder, his mouth stretched into his usual nervous grin. “Huh?” she asked.
He made a sheesh noise, then tilted his head so that his shades slid down his nose to peep over the top of the frames, revealing dewy eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Fine?”
Ronnie raked his teeth across his lower lip. “The thing is…” He hesitated, attacking his scalp with his nails. “You’ve been kinda…” His lips smooshed so that his nose wrinkled. “Glowering at that sound deck for the last twenty minutes. We… I wondered, is there something up with it? Am I out of tune? Just shit?”
“What? No. It’s fine. You’re fine. What are you talking about?” He was better than fine. Ronnie was a bona fide superstar. His first album had gone platinum. He’d been playing sold out gigs for the last six weeks. Tonight, he was serenading royalty, and his second album was shaping up to be an even bigger hit than the first. Incomprehensibly, he’d insisted, absolutely insisted, mind, that he needed her to make it happen.
“Christ, I’m sorry,” she apologised, his words finally having sunk in. She shook herself, but the weight on her shoulders remained. Maybe it would never lift. “Sorry. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I get that. Do we need to take five? We’ll all take five.” He addressed the last bit to the room at large, prompting an immediate exodus to the yard out back. His touch skirted over the back of her shirt. “You’re all knots.” Agile thumbs dug into the muscles, causing her to straighten, and groan in relief. “Do you need to take some downtime, Alle? Maybe you should—? Am I asking too much?”
“Working’s all I’ve got, Ronnie. Don’t take that away from me. I’m sorry for the blip. I’m here now. I’m good. Promise.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Let’s get you some air anyway.” He slid his hand down her arm, seeking out her palm.
“Ron, I don’t really want to go outside.” That’s where the rest of the crew had headed. She could already feel the awkward prickle in her skin in anticipation. Her ability to make idle chatter had got up and left at the same time as Spook. These days, she had two operational modes, work, and—and according to her big brother, Ewan—obsessing. But it wasn’t really obsessing to wonder what had happened, to ask where her lover was, what he was doing, what she, what any of them could have done differently? She’d painted a thousand scenarios in her head, some simple, some infinitely complex. None of them had brought her any closer to finding him. It didn’t seem right that he could just be gone.
Of course, he’d always been an elusive sod.
