Elfie had just returned to the hotel from the load-out and was walking up the hallway to Tryp’s suite, rubbing her filthy hands on her cargo pants and trying to get black grease streaks off, when Tryp burst through his door, grabbed her, and kissed her hard up against the wall with his hot mouth and lips tasting like whiskey. Her braid was already loose, and he threaded his hand up in her hair and then grabbed her around the waist and clutched her to his body like he was famished for her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, even though she knew she was dusty and grimy, kissing him back.
Finally, he slowed the kiss, panting, his body fuming with liquor around her. “I have to take care of this,” he mumbled, pulling away. He stumbled down the hallway, holding a bottle and dropping his drumsticks.
She ran after him, stooping to retrieve the drumsticks as she ran. “Tryp? What’s going on?”
“I’ve got to tell him to pull the single, and I have to say I lied during the interviews.” He turned to Elfie. His dark eyes were bleary and bloodshot, and he gulped more whiskey from the bottle. “And then we have to save her.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Come on.” Tryp grabbed her hand and tugged her after him. “You see this?” He shook their entwined hands. “This was how it all started. This was what caused it all, for seven years, this.”
“Okay.” Elfie trotted beside him, barely keeping up with his long legs as he lurched through the hallway. Something had to have caused this breakdown. She had left Tryp a few hours ago noodling on a small keyboard he had liberated from Rade’s room because Rade was still unconscious. He had declared his intent to write on his day off, even though he said that the death knell for all bands sounded like the drummer saying, “Hey! Let’s try one of my songs!”
Tryp careened into a wall, but Elfie steadied him, and he shoved her up against the plaster again, his hard body pressed against hers and his free hand grasping the back of her neck. His mouth came down on hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth and curling around hers, licking and sucking her. This drunk necking-pull away thing was weird, even for Tryp.
He backed off again, then pressed his forehead to hers. “If I fuck it all up, I’ll lose you, and I can’t bear that. I won’t let them take everything away from me again, because you are everything to me. You’re mine. They can’t take you. They can’t force me out and keep me away from you. I’ll do it all for you. We have to rescue Sariah, but I’m doing this for you.”
She grabbed him around the neck, holding on. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He stepped back, and he was so much bigger than she was that he didn’t notice she was trying to hold onto him. He staggered down the hall, still gripping her hand, passing Xan’s security guys, who watched with amused sidelong glances. They didn’t interfere in band business.
Elfie shook his arm. “Tryp! Talk to me! At least before you do anything nutso, tell me what the hell is going on.”
At the door to Xan’s suite, Tryp pounded on the door and roared, “Xan! We need to pull the single now!”
The single? “Set Me on the Open Road?” Oh, no. Elfie couldn’t imagine a reason he should pull it. Too many throwaway people out there needed to hear it. “Tryp, if it’s for me, I don’t want you to pull it.”
Tryp slammed his fist into the door again. “Valentine!”
Xan Valentine opened the door and glanced down the row of doors, but the suite-level hallway was empty. He grabbed Tryp’s arm and pulled him inside, hauling Elfie with him. Elfie dropped his hand as they came through the door, lest someone see.
Xan asked, “What the fuck?”
Tryp braced an arm against the wall. “We have to pull the single, and we have to do it now.”
Jonas sat in in front of the computer, scrolling through something managerial and spreadsheet-ish. He turned and frowned.
“Even if we did so immediately,” Xan said, “it would take a few days for the venders to remove it from the international sites. Elfie, do you have any idea—”
She shook her head and raised her clueless hands. “I just got here.”
Xan stared straight at him. “Tryp, look at me. Tell me.”
“One of the guys from my old church, home, my old town visited me.” Tryp paced, drinking straight from the bottle again.
“Why don’t you give me the whiskey, there?” Xan asked. “That can’t be good for you, can it?”
Tryp staggered back and forth. “They said that all twenty-two hundred people in New Empyrean were going to one-star all of our albums starting next week unless we pulled the single and I retracted everything that I said.”
“Ah, shit,” Jonas muttered.
Elfie wasn’t surprised. People who prey on children are usually vicious when someone narcs on them. Elfie had hopped on the tour’s bus leaving Texas before her step-father could find her. An entire town of them? Yeah, she could see the retaliation being overwhelming.
“I assume that you spoke the truth?” Xan said, leaning back on the couch and crossing his long legs.
“Of course, and there was a lot of worse stuff, too, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll ruin the albums. It’ll crash sales. We’re indie. We don’t have a record label to back us up.”
“Jonas?” Xan asked.
“Already on it.” Jonas was holding his cell phone to his ear. “Tryp, what’s the zip code of the town where they all are?”
Tryp told him. “What’re you doing?”
“Calling our reps.” Xan glanced back. “Our representatives, or liaisons, with the vendors. We’ll inform them of the threat, and they’ll block any reviews coming out of that zip code. We’ve got reps at all the sites. This is taken care of.”
“Won’t help,” Tryp said. “They’ll get around it. Fuck with the IP addresses or something. Call up the other strongholds in Illinois, New Mexico, and Canada to post them. They’re not stupid. They get around everything. They always fucking win.”
Tryp’s pained expression was so despondent that Elfie almost reached over to him, but Xan and Jonas were there, so she didn’t.
Xan said, “Tryp, we will handle it. This is now a technical problem.”
“But Sariah.” Tryp stumbled sideways and took another swig from the bottle. “Shit,” he whispered, and his eyes rolled up.
Elfie tried to grab his arm but missed.
Xan leapt as Tryp passed out, tackling him backward into an armchair before he smacked his head or hands against the glass coffee table. Xan plucked the whiskey bottle from Tryp’s hand before it hit the floor and set it on the table between them. “Seems like we might all need a stiff drink. Jonas, how bad is this?”
Jonas glanced at Elfie, obviously wishing she wasn’t there so that he and Xan could really talk. “We’ll mitigate the damage as much as possible. I’ll call my office and have them pull some temps in to flag reviews at the vendor sites. We can also activate the fans, tell them what’s going on, and ask them to keep an eye out for revenge reviews. But yeah, Xan, this could suck hard.”
Xan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He cleared his throat, looking down at his fancy boots as his throat worked, and then he said, his voice still hoarse, “Obviously someone has threatened the shit out of him.”
Jonas nodded and started talking to someone on the phone about the possibility of a shitstorm of revenge reviews that might be coming.
“Do you know anything else, Elfie? Did you see anyone in his rooms?”
She shook her head. “I left a few hours ago for the load-out. He hasn’t said anything more than the stuff that was in the Rolling Stone article.”
Which was horrific and devastating and gut-wrenching.
“We’ll have hotel security review the tapes and file a report with the local police, for all the good that will do, but it will at least establish a record of the threats for any future problems.” Xan braced his hands on his knees, preparing to stand. “Let’s just pour him into my bed to let him sleep it off, the poor sod.” Xan looked up at her. “Unless you have any objections?”
And so Xan knew that she had shacked up with Tryp.
Elfie glanced over at Jonas, but he was turned to stare at the computer and was talking fast.
“Um, no,” she said.
“If these recent revelations haven’t alerted you, you know that he’s had a rough life, correct?”
“Um, yeah.”
“He’s had his heart broken more times than I can count.”
“We’re just friends,” she said, even as her own heart rebelled at the lie.
“No, you’re not,” Xan said. “I’m not a fool. Jonas, help me carry Tryp to the bedroom so he can sleep off this drunk.”