Chapter Sixteen
I’d never been backstage at a concert before, and I felt a little giddy as we wove our way past security and techs and who knows who else to make our way to the green room. Kent, Brian, and some men I didn’t know were deep in conversation, but I didn’t see Adrian or London anywhere. Brian turned around as if he could sense us, his eyes going directly to Dylan. They widened a little at the sight of her in the dress.
Dylan went to hug her man, and I turned to ask about London. Either Ashe knew where my mind would be or he felt my concern, because he answered my question before I could ask it.
“They’re in one of the dressing rooms. London needs the quiet time, away from people, and Adrian’s keeping him company.”
“Can I—” I began, but Ashe cut me off.
“Probably not the best idea, princess. Distraction isn’t what he needs right now.”
“I just kind of need to see him. Like, literally see him. Just to know he’s okay.”
Ashe nodded. “Keep your distance, you hear?”
I agreed, and Ashe led me to a nearby room. I peeked inside to find London and Adrian roughhousing. Boys.
Much the same way Brian had, London knew I was standing in the doorway even though I hadn’t made a sound. With Brian it had been some sort of soulmate thing, but with London I knew it was his magic, his empathy. He looked up at me, and I gave him a little wave.
Adrian disentangled himself from whatever faux wrestling move London had him in and headed for the door, surprising me with a hug on his way past. He surprised me even more by getting Ashe to leave the room with him, without even saying a word. He just touched Ashe’s arm in a “come with me” gesture, and Ashe followed. I wondered if Adrian had some superpowers of his own.
The door closed behind the men, and I just stood there, not sure what to do or say. I finally settled for asking, “Are you sure about this? Playing tonight I mean?”
London sighed, plopped down on the sofa, and leaned his head back against the wall. “You’re like the hundredth person to ask me that. I’m absofuckinglutely sure, okay? Can everyone just stop fucking asking me that?”
His reaction didn’t really do much to reassure me. “Okay. Sorry. I’m just a little concerned is all.”
“You and everyone else. I’m fine. I can do this. I want to do this. Playing live is the best part of what I do. It’s who I am.” He crossed his arms tight across his chest.
“And you don’t want the metaphysical stuff to get in the way of that.”
“No. It’s not that I don’t want it getting in the way; it’s that I can’t let it get in the way. I play music. It’s who I am. Without that...I don’t even want to think about it.” He hugged himself a little harder, and I could see his blunt nails making crescents on the pale skin of his arms.
“I get that,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to play this show, tonight. It’s not too late—”
“Yeah. Yeah, it really is,” he said, cutting me off. “I really need you to go now. I can’t seem to keep you out of my head, and you can’t be there right now. I know I scare you, and that’s not what I need right before I go on stage.”
Scared of him? I wasn’t scared of London. Was I? He didn’t give me a chance to think about it.
“Please just go,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
I went.
Ashe met me at the door, disapproval written across his face. He brushed by me and went to do damage control. Adrian, who’d been waiting with him, hugged me again.
“I don’t know what happened in there, but by the look on your face it was nothing good.”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure what happened, either. But I have a bad feeling about tonight.”
“It’ll be okay,” Adrian promised. “We’ve got backup plans for our backup plans. We’re gonna go out there and play a great show, and everything’s going to be just fine.” He sounded like he believed it, and that helped me to believe it, too.
We went to join the others, and Brian greeted me with a hug. I held onto him a little longer than might be considered appropriate, but neither he nor Dylan minded.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I lied with a big smile. Brian gave me a look that said clearer than any words that he wasn’t buying it. “Okay, I’m not fine, but it’s nothing to worry about. Besides, you have other things to deal with.”
“Yeah. It’s almost that time.”
Ashe joined us a moment later. “He’s all right,” he said to me before I could ask. “I’m going to keep an eye on him during the show and stay close by in case of emergency. You girls go with Quinn. He’s your bodyguard tonight, just in case.”
“Ladies,” Quinn said, with a slight nod. “I’ll show you to your seats.”
“Seats?” Dylan and I asked in unison.
“Who the hell sits at a rock show?” I asked.
“You do,” Quinn replied. “At least you do tonight. General admission area is too risky, too hard to watch. We’ve got you in a box.”
“But—” Dylan started to protest.
Brian stepped forward and cupped Dylan’s face in his hands. He looked her in the eye and said, “I’ll be able to see you, and you’ll be able to see me. And you’ll be safer.” He leaned in and kissed her, a soft press of lips that silenced any protest.
From her, at least. It didn’t do a damned thing to shut me up. “And what about keeping you guys safe? How is the stage somehow safer than the crowd?”
“I’ll be near to hand,” Ashe said. “Besides, anyone would be a fool to try something with 3,000 pairs of eyes focused on the stage.”
I still wanted to argue, though I wasn’t sure why. Even if I were close to the boys, there wasn’t much I could do if danger did rear its ugly head. With a feeling of foreboding, I followed Quinn and Dylan to the box that had somehow been procured for us. We found our seats and settled in for what I suspected would be a very stressful night.
There isn’t a lot to do while you’re waiting for a rock show to start. You can listen to whatever canned music is blaring over the sound system. You can people watch. If you’re there with friends, you can talk about the band and what songs you hope to hear.
In my case, I didn’t care about any of that, so my mind reverted to its favorite pastime—worrying. I thought about what London had said in the dressing room, that he knew I was scared of him. That meant he felt fear coming from me. What had I been afraid of in that moment?
I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything I’d thought or felt—not an easy task. Bit by bit, it came back to me. I had been concerned about London, unsure whether his shields would hold under the emotional weight of thousands of people. I had felt both frustration because of his stubbornness and admiration of his courage and determination. I had also felt a tenderness toward him that I hadn’t let myself feel for any man in a long time. As I realized and accepted that fact, I knew why London had felt fear from me. He was right; I was afraid of him. More to the point, I was afraid of the feelings I’d developed for him in such a short period of time. I was scared to death that I was falling in love with him.
Before I had a chance to fully process that realization, the canned music went away and our boys took the stage. I tried to push my thoughts and emotions aside and lose myself in the music, but it wasn’t easy. Music is emotional and thought-provoking under most circumstances, but more so that night. Somehow, being unfamiliar with the songs made it worse. Hearing some of the lyrics for the first time in that setting under those circumstances gave them more impact and made me see them in a different light than I might have otherwise. It also didn’t help that Brian kept looking up at us, as if to make sure that we were still there.
With every song the guys played, I felt a little more hopeful that we would all make it through the set without any kind of catastrophe. Though Quinn maintained a constant vigil, there seemed to be no trouble on the horizon. On stage, London seemed fine, feeding off th
e energy of the crowd no more than any other musician might.
Just a little over halfway through the show, Brian said something to Adrian out of reach of the microphones and then made a little hand sign to the other boys. As soon as the song they were playing ended, most of the band left the stage, leaving Adrian alone with his guitar for a solo acoustic number. Near the end of the song, the rest of the band came back—all except London. Jimmy took London’s place behind the drums, and I fought down a wave of panic as I turned to Quinn.
“Where is he? What’s going on?”
“I’m sure he’s just backstage with Ashe,” Quinn said. “This was all part of the contingency plan.”
“I take it he told Jimmy then?”
“Yeah. Kid took it pretty well. Started calling London a Jedi.”
I shook my head and turned my attention back to the stage, trying to keep my worry down to a manageable level. Whatever was happening, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. The song ended, and Adrian took a minute to talk about something or other. I’ll never know what he said, because London walked back out on stage just then. I guess some of what I was feeling must have been obvious, because Dylan laid her hand on my shoulder in a gesture of comfort and concern. I flashed her a smile to let her know I was okay.
The show went on. Nothing cataclysmic happened, and London didn’t leave the stage again until he walked off with the rest of the band before the first encore.
“Time to go,” Quinn told us.
He led us back to the green room where we watched the rest of the show on monitors and waited for the boys to join us. Two encores and a big, dramatic bow later, the band strolled off the stage and came directly to the green room. Dylan greeted Brian at the door, and they shared a brief, sweaty hug. London came in right behind Brian; his pupils were blown and he was sort of bouncing as he walked. He looked like he was strung out on speed, but I knew better. He was high all right, but it had nothing to do with drugs.
London spent a minute or so exchanging verbal pats on the back with his friends, and then he turned his head and our eyes met. I felt a sudden spark of need, of lust. The spark flamed up so fast it should have scared me, but it didn’t. Now that I knew what to look for, I recognized the multiplier effect Ashe had described, but I was still powerless to stop it.
London bridged the distance between us in a few long strides, capturing my face in his hands and bending low to kiss me hard. The desire built between us, and London gave into it. He pulled me hard against him, his mouth eager and demanding against mine. His hands slid up beneath my skirt, gliding over skin and satin and lace. I pushed up onto my toes, trying to make up some of the difference in our height, and London spun us around so that my back was against a wall. He lifted me up a little, and I wrapped a leg around his waist.
Raised voices and the sound of a scuffle cut through the fog in my brain. And just like that I realized that I was all but having sex in front of an audience. I’m so not an exhibitionist.
The cognitive dissonance Ashe had talked about rose up and put a wall between me and London. He let me down, his face shuttered, and backed away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse. “God, Elizabeth, I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head and stepped forward, intending to lay my hand on his arm in a gesture of comfort. London backpedalled until he hit the opposite wall.
“Don’t touch me,” he begged. “I can’t handle that right now.”
“Well that’s pretty fucking obvious,” I snapped. “You couldn’t have figured that out before you tried to fuck me in front of our friends?”
I clapped a hand over my mouth, not sure where the words or the anger had come from. I concentrated on my feelings and thoughts, and once again I recognized the ripple effect of our combined emotions. I shook it off.
“London, I don’t want to be pissed at you, dammit. Get your shit together.”
“I can’t,” he admitted. “I can’t.” He slid down the wall to sit with his knees drawn up and his head down, his arms covering his head.
I felt sadness welling in me, tears pricking the back of my eyes, but I knew that sadness wasn’t mine. I was still working on the angry thing. But I needed to shelve it. If London couldn’t put himself back together, someone else would have to do it for him. He couldn’t go on feeling like this. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.
Someone was asking if I was okay, but I ignored him and went to kneel at London’s side. He looked up at me with fear in his eyes as I fought to push away the weight of his emotions to focus on my own. I cupped his face in my hands, smoothing my thumbs along his cheekbones, concentrated on all the emotions whirling inside of me and letting him feel them: my gratitude for his help in finding Dylan and for saving me from Julia; my admiration for his strength and determination; my frustration with his bull-headedness; my concern; my compassion; my affection and adoration. I let London feel that I was falling for him.
And just like that, the dam broke.
Tears slid from the corners of London’s eyes to spill over his cheeks. I wiped them away even as I felt answering tears of my own. London leaned forward to wrap his arms around me and hide his face in my hair. The position was awkward, and I had to fight to keep my balance, but I didn’t mind.
London’s feelings—doubt, and fear, and hope, and the first stirrings of love—and the echo of my own, amplified by his powers, washed over me. The rest of the world faded away, and there was nothing but the two of us. The tide of our emotions doubled and redoubled until I thought we must surely drown.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and the flood of emotions disappeared as if someone had flipped a switch. I opened my eyes to find Ashe kneeling beside London and me. I knew now what Ashe had meant about shielding against a third-party influence.
“Come on, Stretch,” Ashe said, “if you can stand, we need to get you upstairs. We’ve all had enough excitement for one night.”
I felt London nod against my neck, but he made no attempt to move. I pulled away enough to look him in his teary eyes. Dylan, bless her, handed me a couple of tissues which I handed to London. I acted as a human shield while he mopped his face and got himself under as much control as he could.
Ashe and I got London up and moving, and Dylan and Quinn left with us to go back to our hotel rooms. There was a little debate about whether Brian should join us, Ashe arguing that there were things Brian needed to hear. Brian refused to come with us, even though I knew he didn’t want to let Dylan out of his sight. He felt he needed to stay with the other boys in the band to do the picture and autograph thing and to do some damage control where Jimmy was concerned. London’s empathy bleed had hit the younger man like a freight train, and he was pretty shaken.
The five of us went up to London’s room. He headed for the shower, and as much as I wanted to join him, I did my best to bury the thought. London must have felt the intent behind it though, because he shivered and leaned against the door jamb for a moment before locking himself into the bathroom.
Ashe shook his head. “Guess I was right about you being trouble after all.”
I shrugged. “It comes naturally.”
Ashe grinned at me. “I just bet it does.”
He sat down at the table, and Quinn sat down across from him. Quinn retrieved a laptop case from under the table and pulled out an oversized notebook computer. He booted it up, ignoring everyone else.
“Okay, girls,” Ashe said. “We got through this hurdle. It’s time to start preparing for the next one.”
“How do we do that?” Dylan asked, sitting down on the bed and pulling the duvet over her legs so she didn’t have to remember to be ladylike in her dress.
“We’re gonna start by talking about magic,” Ashe said. “I told you earlier about how everyone has different abilities. And I told you London picked up the flame magic from me. I told you that he’s a mimic. What I didn’t tell you is that mimics are really rare. I’ve only known one other than Lo
ndon. I met her the same place I met Quinn here.”
“Which is where exactly?” I asked, pulling bottles of water from the mini fridge. I kept one, gave one to Dylan, offered one to each of the men.
“We met through work,” Ashe said, accepting his bottle of water.
Quinn looked up from his computer, smiling at me as he took the water. “Thanks,” he said. And then, “Ashe and I were both recruited by an agency that doesn’t officially exist. A government agency.”
“Like the CIA?” I asked.
Quinn laughed. “Please. The CIA wish they were us.”
“So you’re what?” Dylan asked. “The magic police?”
“Essentially,” Quinn confirmed.
“There are different branches of the agency,” Ashe explained. “Quinn works in internal affairs. I was part of the terrorist response team.”
“Terrorist response team?” I asked, curling up in the armchair.
Quinn turned his chair and scooted it back a little so that he could see me, Ashe, and Dylan. “Yeah, there are magical terrorists. The response team tracks down suspects. Brings them in for questioning. That sort of thing.”
Ashe snorted. “I thought we agreed to tell the whole truth,” he said.
Quinn nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sometimes the response team has to deal with things on their own. Sometimes they’re put into situations where they can’t bring suspects in.”
“Oh, hell, Quinn,” Ashe interrupted. “What he’s dancing all around here is that people get killed. Sometimes it’s self-defense, but other times it’s assassination, plain and simple.”
Dylan and I were both quiet a moment. We looked at each other and nodded.
“People like Julia?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you use your magic flames trick?” I wanted to know.
Ashe snorted again. “If you’d seen me do it, you wouldn’t call it a trick. What London did to the ex, that’s just a faint shadow of what I can do.”
“We call him ‘Ashe’ for a reason,” Quinn added.
“Shit,” I said, my eyes going wide. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
Smiling a little, he shook his head. “You keep surprising me, princess. A lot of people—a lot of women—hear the word ‘assassination’ and run screaming.”
Dylan and I exchanged a glance, and I shrugged.
“Some people need a good killin’,” I said.
Quinn tried to smother a laugh and ended up choking on it.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I added, “I know it’s a big deal. I don’t think I could do it myself. But I’m not going to judge you for doing what you had to do.”
“And if it were London?” Ashe asked. “If he’d killed Julia?”
“I’d probably love him even more.” I covered my mouth with my hand, shocked by what had just popped out. I seemed to be doing a lot of that tonight. I sat there stunned for a moment before lowering my hand to my lap. “I don’t mean that. I don’t love him. I barely know him.”
Dylan rolled her eyes. “I seem to remember saying the same thing about Brian right after we met. Just trust me on this one, Em—don’t fight it.”
I shook my head.
“Elizabeth,” Ashe said, making me look up at him. “One, remember that there are all types of love. Just because this is the first, temporary kind, it doesn’t make it any less real. And it can lead to the lasting kind. And two, as important as I know it is for you, your love life is not the most important thing right now.”
I felt like throwing my water bottle at him for making me feel like an awkward teenager. I reigned it in, though, opting to drink the water instead of using it as a projectile weapon.
“Anyway,” Quinn said, “the point we were trying to make, once upon a time, is that the agency would love to get their hands on London.”
“And we don’t want that to happen,” Ashe said. “So here’s hoping his little stunt tonight didn’t draw the wrong kind of attention. One more thing we’ll need to watch out for.”
“Why’s London so attractive to them?” Dylan asked.
“Being able to learn new abilities, especially as easily as he does—that’s pretty useful,” Quinn explained. “And London’s got a lot of power. He’d be one hell of an agent.”
“But he wouldn’t want that,” I said.
“Hell no, he wouldn’t,” Ashe said. “It’s sheer hell. I wouldn’t wish it on my ex-mother-in-law, much less a nice kid like London.”
“Lucky for him, I’m in a position to misdirect the powers that be and keep them from noticing him. Hopefully,” Quinn said.
London emerged from the bathroom then, damp from the shower and dressed in nothing but pajama bottoms. I tried to ignore him, worried about starting another domino reaction, but he made a beeline for me. “Up,” he said, and I complied. He took my chair and then pulled me down onto his lap.
“You got your shields back up,” I noted.
“Yup,” was all he said as he pulled me down for a chaste kiss.
I looked up to find Ashe and Quinn having one of those silent conversations I’d grown to hate. This one ended when Quinn asked a question I never would have expected.
“So, this Julia. What does she look like?”
I felt London tense, and I moved my hand to rub the back of his neck. He relaxed a little.
“Jessica Rabbit,” Dylan replied. “She looks like Jessica freaking Rabbit.”
“Who?” Quinn asked.
We all looked at him like he’d sprouted horns, and then Ashe explained the reference. Dylan and I chimed in with more specific details on her appearance, and all the while, Quinn tapped away on his keyboard.
“Okay. And what kind of abilities does she have?”
Dylan shuddered and pulled the duvet up to hug it against her chest.
“She can make you feel pain,” I said. “Or pleasure, apparently.”
“Anything else?”
We were all quiet for a minute, thinking, but if Julia had any other super powers, I didn’t know what they might be.
“I don’t know,” London answered for us all. “But Adrian can see magic. And he never knew she had any ability. I’m not sure what that means.”
Quinn and Ashe looked at each other, and I didn’t like what I saw pass between them.
“Bad juju?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Quinn said. He tapped on the keyboard some more. Then he turned the laptop to where London and I could see it. “That her?” he asked.
London’s shields buckled. Wrapped up in his arms, I could feel his grief and confusion. I hugged him hard, fighting to keep my own emotions in control. I heard a chair scrape against carpet as London buried his face against my shoulder. Ashe laid his hand on London’s head, and the torrent of pain and guilt washed away on a gentle wave of tranquility.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Quinn said.
A moment passed in silence, and then Dylan asked the question that was only just forming in my mind: “Why’s the wicked witch of the west on your laptop?”
“Ashe told you earlier that I work in internal affairs. Being in IA, I have access to a database of everyone who works for or has worked for the agency.”
“Wait. Whoa,” I said. “Are you saying Julia is one of your agents?”
“No,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “Not anymore. She’s gone rogue.”
London turned his head a little to look up at Ashe, his eyes wide. “I don’t understand.”
Ashe sighed and dropped his hand down onto London’s shoulder. “I’m not entirely sure I do, either, kid.”
“It’s like this,” Quinn said, only to be cut off by a knock on the door.
Dylan slid from the bed and hurried to peek through the peephole. She flung the door open to let Brian, Kenny, and Adrian inside, giving Brian the briefest of hugs as she let the door swing shut.
Brian’s eyes went from London to the picture of Julia on the laptop and back to London, his feet carrying him fo
rward before he could have had time to make sense of what he’d seen. Ashe moved aside, and I could tell that London’s shields were up again. Brian half-sat on the arm of our chair and rested his hand on London’s shoulder just as Ashe had done.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Ashe brought Brian and the others up to speed. He also asked after Jimmy, who was calmer now but had opted to stay out of the whole magic mess. I figured Ashe had asked for London’s sake, because I got the feeling he didn’t really think much of Jimmy. Then he and Quinn asked Adrian a little about his ability to sense magic and his lack thereof where Julia was concerned
“Being able to mask your abilities like that, it’s all but unheard of,” Quinn noted. “There are two people in the database with that power. Both are recruiters. But it’s not listed in Julia’s dossier.”
“Why does ‘recruiter’ sound sinister the way you say it?” Kenny asked.
“Because it kind of is,” Quinn replied.
“Recruiters for the agency aren’t like recruiters for nine-to-five jobs,” Ashe added. “Sometimes it’s someone who can sense magic.”
“Like Adrian?” Dylan asked.
“Not exactly. Sounds like Adrian’s abilities are limited to seeing magical auras and being immune to some forms of magic. A recruiter who can sense magic will have other abilities as well and can also tell how much magical potential a person has. Sometimes they work alone, and sometimes they work with another agent who has a better likelihood of swaying the prospective recruit to join the agency.”
“It wasn’t real,” London said. His shields wavered, and I pressed a little closer to him, saw Brian grip his shoulder a little tighter. “It was a setup, from the very beginning. God, I feel like such a...” He grappled for the right word for a minute before shaking his head. “I feel so damn stupid.”
“She fooled all of us, London,” Adrian said, moving to sit on the end of the bed so he could look his friend in the eye. “We all thought she was the real deal.”
“I was going to marry her, and I didn’t even really know her,” London added.
Brian made a little sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “You wouldn’t be the first,” he said.
“Hell, no, you wouldn’t have been,” Ashe added. “I made the same mistake—a few times.”
London smiled a little in spite of himself. “This is different.”
“Just a different level of crazy on her part,” Ashe said. “I had one of my exes try to kill me. Tried to run over me with my own truck—and back then I drove a full-size.”
The smile fell from London’s face and he hugged me even closer. “She didn’t try to kill me. She tried to kill Elizabeth,” he said. “Me, she’s still trying to recruit.”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Dylan said. “That’s what this whole kidnapping me thing was about? Turning you into some kind of government agent?”
“No,” Quinn said. “She’s not agency anymore. If she’s trying to recruit him now, it’s for something else. Don’t think we’d let one of our recruiters get away with endangering anyone like that.”
Dylan inclined her head toward him as if to say “point taken.” “Fine, whatever. But still. She kidnapped me to get London’s attention? That’s more than a little nuts.”
“Nuts, yeah, but with a certain sort of logic,” Kenny pointed out. “She knew he’d do anything he could to help Brian.”
“What I want to know is how she even knew about Dylan. We’ve kept things pretty quiet.”
Quinn shrugged. “There are plenty of ways she could have found out about her. All it would really take is a little surveillance in the right place at the right time. If Julia is looking to recruit London, she’s probably been watching him and everyone around him for a while.”
I felt London shiver. “No one I care about is safe,” he said.
“That’s what really doesn’t make sense, though,” Dylan chimed in. “Why me? Not that I’d rather it be your mom or anything, but...”
“And how the hell did Vanessa get involved?” I asked. “She’s about as magical as an egg.”
Ashe shook his head. “There are a lot of questions we might not ever get the answers to. What’s important is that we know who and what we’re dealing with.”
“And knowing is half the battle?” I asked. It came out more sarcastic than I’d intended, but I didn’t feel too bad about that.
“As far as all of you are concerned, it’s the whole battle,” Quinn said. “The agency will deal with things from here. We’ll arrange for bodyguards and surveillance for all of you.”
“Good God, you really are a government agent,” I said. “Dumb as a fucking boot.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped in surprise, and I saw amusement sparkle in Ashe’s eyes.
“Told him you’d disagree with his grand plan,” he said.
“Damned right I disagree with it. Just go home and sit and wait for the crazy bitch to play her next card? Fuck that. Fuck that a lot.”
“I’m with her,” Dylan said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Adrian said. “We can’t just stick our heads in the sand and wait for things to get better.”
At that point, everyone started talking at once: Quinn tried to convince everyone to leave Julia to the agency; Brian, London, and I reasoned that Kenny and Adrian should go home, taking some of Quinn’s offered bodyguards with them; and Adrian and Kent argued that they wanted to see this thing through, too.
In the end, Kenny agreed to head home the next morning, bodyguard in tow, and explain the situation to Adrian’s wife, Summer. They didn’t seem to trust Jimmy to explain things in a way that wouldn’t scare the hell out of her. Despite the fact that his new bride and love of his life was waiting for him in L.A., Adrian insisted on staying behind with London and Brian. Thankfully Orlando had been the last date on that leg of their tour, and the boys had a little downtime ahead of them.
Dylan and I had lives, of a sort, back in Texas, but we agreed that dealing with Julia and Vanessa trumped a crappy job and crappier college courses. I had a feeling I’d be repeating all my classes come fall, but right now I had more important things to deal with. Dylan didn’t seem worried about work, even though she was due back there the next day. I was pretty sure she was hoping to get fired so she wouldn’t have to deal with her incompetent boss anymore.
“What exactly do you think you’re going to be able to do?” Quinn asked us.
We all looked at each other. I’m not sure any of us had any idea what to do about Julia, but there was one thing I did know for certain.
“I’m not letting London, Brian, or Dylan out of my sight just yet,” I said. “That shouldn’t be so hard to understand.”
“And you can’t keep them in sight in another state because..?”
I sighed, and Ashe clapped Quinn on the shoulder. “Leave it be,” he suggested.
Quinn frowned and turned away to fiddle with his laptop. Let him be unhappy with us; we weren’t going to go play ostrich while some covert agency squared off—or failed to square off—against the evil ex-girlfriend.