Cadell looked over the heads of the crowd, a bobbing sea of browns and bright colors in the darkness.
Andy and Elfie had been missing from the stage-side table by the time that they went on. Cadell had run off to the wings for a moment to check his phone, dying that he might have missed a call from the hospital that a liver had come available for Emily or that a nanny had taken Emily to the hospital because she had taken a turn for the worse.
Nothing. No text. No calls.
Xan had leaned offstage and called to Cadell to get his ass out of the online poker room and onto the stage.
Cadell walked onto the corner stage and sat on his barstool, resting the electric guitar on his thighs.
Four other people had snagged the table where Andy and Elfie had been sitting, and a waiter cleared off their nearly untouched drinks, erasing the last evidence that they had been there.
When the last song that was in working draft came up, “Burn This Song,” Xan sang it to Georgie because the other girls were missing.
Tryp frowned over his drums and managed to play with one arm, pulling a Rick Allen, while he checked his phone that he had hidden in his kit.
The new bass guitarist, Peyton Cabot, was single, so he played to the bachelorette party in the front row. Cadell watched them go ape over Peyton’s weird blue-green eyes, practically crawling up on the stage.
Cadell picked the melody out on the strings, playing a harmony line to Xan’s voice when it was warranted, and obsessed about where Andy might have gone.
This song was the whole reason that Andy had come to the gig. Unless she was hiding in Tryp’s bass drum, she couldn’t be taping it for Emily, which they had all decided would be best because Emily should have been asleep hours ago.
Where the hell was Andy?