INTERNATIONAL SENSATION WINTER YOUNG’S NEW ALBUM
DEBUTS AT #1 IN STAGGERING 70 COUNTRIES
WINTER YOUNG SURPRISES WITH AN UNCONVENTIONAL SHOW,
SETTING BAR HIGH FOR UPCOMING WORLD TOUR
Sydney squinted in the rain and muttered a swear in Portuguese under her breath. She wasn’t Portuguese, but she absorbed languages likeWinter Young collected Grammys and found herself picking out certain ones to use on certain days based on her mood.
Today was a Portuguese day.
Puta que pariu, she thought now. Millions of people were suffering all around the world from one catastrophe or another, butthishad been the top headline on every news service for the past week? As she looked on, the billboards near her complex played videos of Winter Young—some of him from the middle of his last performance, others of him scribbling his autograph on posters for fans. Still another played a clip from a recent interview.
Are you aware of just how famous you’ve become in the last few years?said the subtitles for the interviewer.
Winter smiled coyly.I don’t know,he replied.Am I?
Sydney rolled her eyes.
He was cute, sure. Stunningly beautiful, if she cared to admit it. Sydney appreciated thick lashes and a pretty mouth just like anyone else. And sure, his musicwasunconventional—the use of Chinese drums with hip-hop, for instance. A unique sound that had allowed him to sweep last year’s Grammys and inspired a hundred imitators and even a subgenre of music that people affectionately called Winterpunk. She and the rest of the world had seen him in some of the most breathtaking outfits ever to grace a stage—sometimes he danced in black leather draped in silver, sometimes in silks like a goddamn fairy prince, and one time in a gold business suit that was quite literally on fire.
The boy loved to put on a show. He was born for the stage, that was for sure.
But as Sydney stepped into the warmth of her complex’s lobby, she let herself take some halfhearted guesses at what Winter must be like: gorgeous and fully aware of it, maybe a shameless flirt, probably an asshole. She could see it in the smirk on his lips and the way he tilted his head, like he knew a secret about you. He was the kind of boy whoprobably barked demands and expected them done, and probably didn’t care by who. The kind of boy who could point to anyone in a crowd of his screaming fans and have himself a new fling.
It wasn’t that she begrudged him his lifestyle. But musicians were the worst kind of celebrity. She’d had to shadow one once on a mission, and it’d been the longest forty-eight hours of her life. The spontaneous tantrums. The inability to function without an assistant. Treatingherlike an assistant. The incessant humming. She’d given Panacea an earful about it afterward. All that energy musicians fed off while onstage went straight to their heads and clogged the arteries. They loved excusing their behavior in the name ofart.
Her lungs trembled in another small spasm of pain, and she winced, annoyed. “Enough already,” she muttered at the billboards in the distance. The sooner the media stopped reporting every last detail about him, the sooner the world could get on with something more important.
Today the front desk had put out a new display—an assortment of glass décor and a cup of pens, a bouquet for the picking. Her eyes caught on the figurines dotting the counter as Sydney flexed her hands, both of them still wrapped in white cloth from her kickboxing training session.
The young man at the desk smiled when he noticed her. “Good afternoon, Miss Madden.” Not her real name.
She gave him a flirtatious smile, eyes twinkling. “Hey there, George.”
He blushed, his gaze following her. She fought the itch to walk up to the desk and toy with him, then when he wasn’t looking, slide one of those glass figurines into her pocket. It’d be so easy. She wouldn’t keep the figurine, of course—she tended to either toss or sell what she stole—but the thrill was in the taking, not the hoarding.
Even after years of training and therapy, the urge to shoplift was always there in the corner of her mind. At least she’d gotten much better at resisting it, though, and today, she turned her eyes away from the figurines and toward the elevators.
“See you around,” she called to George in a singsong voice.
“See you,” came his answer, always a tiny note of hope in it that she’d ask him out or invite him upstairs.
At the elevators, she punched in her code by the doors and headed up. Minutes later, she arrived on her floor, headed to her apartment, and stepped inside.
For a nineteen-year-old, she was paid well: upper five figures, with more promised once she got promoted to full agent. The apartment was nice, too, as a result—a tidy, one-bedroom place with a little balcony that led out to a view of Seattle’s gorgeous skyline. A thousand times better than the dump she grew up in.
But the inside was sparsely decorated, with the look of a place that could belong to anyone. No portraits on the walls, no personal items on display, no photo albums on the shelves. If someone broke in and ransacked the place, they would find nothing revealing about Sydney in the generic books on her coffee table or the menus from chain restaurants on her fridge. They would find no discernible personality in her closet full of clothes that could be in any girl’s wardrobe. They would find no valuable jewelry, no evidence of hobbies outside of a subscription to theNew York Times(all put in a neat stack on the kitchen counter, unread), no knickknacks from vacations, no family heirlooms or keepsakes. No part of her heart left exposed anywhere.
It made her feel safe. She was the kind of person that every intelligence agency wanted: devastatingly smart, good at keeping secrets, and with no family or personal attachments to speak of—at least, no one that wasn’t estranged. Sydney Cossette walked alone through the world, and she liked it that way.
She headed to the fridge and started pulling ingredients out for a sandwich. Deli ham, American cheese, white bread. That was generic, too, but there was a piece of her heart hidden in there. She used to hate sandwiches because she’d eaten so many of them at the hospital’s cafeteria whenever sheused to visit her mother. Afterward, though, Sydney had gotten into the habit of making herself sandwiches whenever she needed some comfort. At the very least, it made her feel like she had some control over her life.
As she went into the kitchen and pulled sandwich ingredients out from her fridge, a notification popped up on her phone.
Incoming Call
Unknown
