If tonight was my last night of freedom, then I needed to make it count.
I peeked around the corner. Clear. Exiting the bathroom, I made my way down the grand hallway of the Beverly Regent, one of my father’s prized hotels, and through the gold-adorned doors. Mr. Blatch spotted me instantly and hurried to open the car door.
“Where to, Miss Carver?” he asked as I slid into the back seat.
“Home. I think I’ll turn in early,” I lied smoothly.
“That’s a fine idea,” he said, closing the door with a click.
Clutching the flyer in my hand, I allowed myself a secret smile.
4
SCOTT: THRILLER
The abandoned old Allard Street house was nothing but a carcass. Slated for the wrecking ball, the place had been stripped to the studs and was now just a collection of two-by-fours holding up a sagging roof. Bare bulbs dangled from uncapped wires hooked onto rusty nails driven into the beams. Broken windows were covered in plastic, and crooked boards were nailed across the front door, leaving only a crawlspace-sized gap where concertgoers ducked inside single file.
Technically, the house belonged to my buddy Johnny’s uncle, who’d rented it out since the sixties. The last tenant, Old Man Charlie, had collapsed in the kitchen and not been found for months, long enough to seep into the subflooring. The smell had never left. No matter how many times we played in there, the first whiff always landed like a punch. Thick, warm, and rotting at the edges.
Until demolition day came, it was our venue, and tonight, Rabid Jackal and a hundred of our closest friends had it packed tight. We needed a place like this: neutral ground for the Venice Beach crowd who remembered what our town was like before rival gangs turned the Boardwalk into a battleground andpushed working families east. Rabid Jackal was a local band, not known outside the city limits, but the people who showed up came for the music, the keg, and the two-dollar cover—no questions asked.
The stage was rigged along the back wall, the beer was flowing, and the crowd was already shoulder-to-shoulder. We were minutes out.
Marco stopped short.
“McKallister!” he yelled over the noise. “Where’s Wolfie?”
“Aw, shit.” I slapped my forehead. “Left him in the truck.”
Wolfie was our mascot—a department store dummy dressed in a ragged Halloween werewolf costume. We strung him on a fishing line and, during the third song, let him zip across the crowd. Well, “zip” was optimistic. Wolfie was a finicky flyer, more likely to nosedive into someone’s beer than make it across the room. But he was ours, and the spectacle of his debut was always the most anticipated moment of the night.
“I’ll get him,” I said, weaving through the packed house. I ducked under the plywood boards, noting they did more to trap people inside than keep trouble out. If a fire started, the Allard Street House would go up like a death trap. Which, let’s be honest, was half the fun.
Outside, I sucked in a breath of fresh ocean air and made my way to my truck. The residential street was already jammed with cars, but overflow parking was conveniently located at the cemetery next door. Not that I needed tomb-side parking. I was the talent. Which meant I could roll up over the curb and park right on the dead, crunchy lawn.
VIP parking, baby.
I reached into the back and grabbed Wolfie. As I shut the door, I caught a movement under the streetlight. A woman was standing there in a white petticoat dress scattered with delicate blue flowers, looking like she’d walked out of a fairytale. I’dthought she was beautiful at the gas station, but I wasn’t prepared for this. The dress. The British Parliament updo. And jewelry that should’ve come with its own bodyguard. I was stunned. Sure, I’d given her the flyer, but I never thought she’d actually show.
“Michelle?”
Her head snapped up, relief flooding her face so fast it made me laugh. She must’ve realized she was in way over her head the second she laid eyes on the Freddy Krueger house we were calling a venue.
“Oh, thank god,” she exhaled. “I wasn’t sure I had the right address. It’s a… a house. How can you be performing in there?”
“You’ll understand when you get inside,” I said, joining her on the sidewalk.
“If,” she corrected. “If I go inside.”
“You came all this way, Michelle. Aren’t you at least a little curious?”
“Any curiosity I had is now losing out to self-preservation.”
“You drove through a questionable part of town—dressed like royalty, no less—to watch a metal concert with a guy you met at a gas station. Honestly, it’s a miracle you made it this far. Might as well come inside.”
“Is that a cemetery?” she asked, pointing behind me.
“It is,” I said. “Had my first kiss behind Anita Hall’s plot. Smoked my first joint leaning against Elmer Guck’s headstone. Guck always had my back.”
