Beautiful Musician (7 page)

Lord. Jesus. She sounded like a porno.
“Okay. I get the picture. It turned you on. But no more talk about
it.”

She nuzzled closer. “When the danger
is over, we’re going to be together for real, right?”

“
Absolutely. I’ll make
love to you every night.” I would use my piercing on her, too. I
would do everything I craved to do. Nothing would be off limits.
“The bedroom is going to be our playground.” I Frenched her to
prove my point, making both of us warm and melty.

She blinked at me when the kiss was
over. “What if the warrior doesn’t show up?”

That was a definite possibility, but
as always I tried to convince her not to worry. “Don’t fret about
it. It’ll happen.”

“
We’ve been waiting for
him for a long time. Since I was twelve and Vanessa was
thirteen.”

“
I know, but he was young
then, too, remember?” They’d created him to be the same age as
Vanessa. “He couldn’t take on his duties as the warrior until he
became a man.”

“
He should be all grown up
by now.”

“
And he’s out there
somewhere, getting ready to make himself known.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
I’m positive.” That was a
lie, of course. I wasn’t sure of anything. All I could do was hope
that it came to fruition.

She relaxed in my arms. “I’ve always
believed in him, but sometimes I get scared. I think it’s because
Vanessa doesn’t want him to appear.”

“
Don’t let her doubts
cloud your belief in him. Just keep insisting to her that he’ll
come. Try to make her believe it, too.”

“
Okay.” A stream of
silence passed between us. Then she said, “I haven’t told Vanessa
how I feel about you.”

“
Because you know she
won’t approve?”

Abby nodded. “She would say that
you’re not right for me.”

I was well aware of how Vanessa
perceived me. I was too much of a bad-ass and not the kind of
hallucination she wanted hanging around her sister.

“
You don’t have to tell
Vanessa what’s happening between us,” I said. “You can keep it a
secret from her.”

“
What if I decide that I
want to tell her someday?”

“
Just do whatever feels
right.” I wrapped her tighter around me, holding her with every
ounce of my non-existent being.

Keeping the border monsters from
attacking me was the warrior’s responsibility. But oddly enough,
his life was in jeopardy, too. Vanessa had cursed him on the day
she’d created him, willing him to die when he reached a specific
age.

Twenty-one, I thought. The age I was
now. It didn’t bode well for me or the warrior. Or the rest of
Abby’s people. The threat of monsters loomed over their heads,
too.

But I couldn’t lose hope. I needed to
hang on, the way I was encouraging Abby to do. I had to believe
that this other man—this tall, dark stranger—really would save us
all.

But for now, Abby was with me, close
at hand. My girl. My fae. My sweet, crazy love.

End of Prequel

(If you’re curious to know more about
Seven and why author Sheri Whitefeather made him the hero of this
story, please continue reading. Also included is an excerpt from
Book One, where you’ll meet Vanessa and the warrior.)

Author’s Note

Thank you for reading
BEAUTIFUL MUSICIAN, the Room 105 prequel. The series will consist
of three more books, BEAUTIFUL CONFUSION, BEAUTIFUL WARRIOR, and
BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY.

I’ve provided an excerpt
of the prologue and first two chapters of BEAUTIFUL CONFUSION, Book
One. It’s a full-length novel that features Vanessa and the warrior
you just learned about. Abby and Seven play a part in it, as
well.

But first, here is the
background on Seven and how he came to be. It involves the real
musician who inspired him, as well as snippets from my life. I sold
my first romance novel in 1998, but prior to that, I fluttered on
the fringes of rock ‘n roll.

During that era, I had
some memorable encounters with Nikki Sixx. This came about through
his association with my ex-husband, Dru, who is a leather
craftsman. He worked with Mötley Crüe for many years, designing
guitar straps, belts, and other accessories for them.

In fact,
people sometimes thought that we named our son,
Nikki Lee, after Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee. But it had nothing to do
with them. At the time, I’d heard Mötley Crüe’s music, of course,
and knew of their success, but I wasn’t aware of their individual
identities until after our son was born and people started
mentioning it. Nikki was just a name I liked, for either a boy or a
girl, and Lee is my mom’s name, which was an androgynous choice, as
well.

The first time I
encountered Sixx was when he phoned our house to speak to Dru. I
inquired as to who was calling, and Nikki stated his name. Since
Dru’s career was still fairly new and the only work he’d done for
Mötley Crüe had come through outside sources and not from the band
members themselves, I wasn’t prepared for the call.

In reaction, I replied,
“Oh,” thinking that Nikki was my kid’s name, too. Then, after a
moment’s pause, it hit me that this was the guy people thought my
baby boy was named after, and I repeated “Oh,” with a stronger
inflection.

Soon after that, I was
hired to paint the sleeve of a leather jacket for Nikki, with an
image of a naked woman who resembled Vanity, the singer he was
dating then. This was arranged through Mötley Crüe’s
clothing designer, who’d seen a painting of a
leopard girl I’d done and suggested something similar, only with
Vanity’s long, lean likeness.

It wasn’t necessary for me
to meet Nikki to complete the job. Dru, however, began working
directly with the band, spending time with them at their rehearsal
studio and building a personal rapport.

I finally met Nikki
backstage at the Forum Club at somebody’s concert. (Can’t recall
who.) We were introduced, and he reached for my outstretched hand,
mumbled a greeting, and stared straight through me. His eyes were
glassy and he could barely speak. This was around the time he was
keeping a journal which would later become a brilliant book called
The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock
Star.

My path crossed with him
again, albeit indirectly, when I was working for Chanel cosmetics.
Brandi, his playmate model wife at the time, used Chanel, and
whenever she would order something the other salesgirls would give
me the sale because they knew that my husband had a connection to
the band. I would send Brandi notes with the latest product
information, along with regards from my family to hers. By now, Dru
had been to their house a few times and had given Brandi a gift
when she and Nikki had their first child.

The last time I saw Nikki
was at a music trade show, about four or five years later. Based on
his healthy appearance, I assumed he was drug-free. We’d just
received a Christmas card from his family with an adorable picture
of his kids.

His gaze kept drifting in
my direction, as if he thought that he should acknowledge me
somehow. I was standing in the background while Dru chatted with
him and Tommy.

When the band members
walked away, a cluster of fans following them, I got the sudden
urge to call out to Nikki.

He spun around and I made
reference to the card, telling him, “Your children are
beautiful.”

He flashed a proud smile
and thanked me. He was beaming, and I saw the look of a man who
loved his children more than
anything
.
He also seemed achingly vulnerable. (His marriage was on the
skids, but I didn’t know that then.)

Later that day, Dru
attended a business meeting, and I left the trade show with some
friends and walked around the area. Then one of my friends said to
me, “Nikki Sixx is across the street and he’s waving at
you.”

Yes, indeed, there he was,
smiling once again, and trying to get my attention. It was the
sweetest moment, as if I was the celebrity instead of him. I waved
back, just a little finger waggle, and we headed off in separate
directions.

A lot of time has passed
since I saw him, and I doubt he remembers me, as our encounters
were rather fleeting. But what’s important is that I remember how
he affected me that day.

When I started plotting
this series, I didn’t intend for Seven to get his own book. But as
his character developed, he prompted me to tell his story, to give
him a voice, even if he wasn’t supposed to be real.

So there you go: my
experience with Nikki Sixx and how it triggered a schizophrenic
hallucination named Smiling Seven.

And now, if you’re so
inclined, you can turn the page and read the excerpt from BEAUTIFUL
CONFUSION and continue on the path of Room 105.

.

BEAUTIFUL
CONFUSION

Book One in the Room 105
Series

Prologue

I hated schizophrenia. I hated
everything it did to Abby, the sister I adored. With her pixie
blonde hair, disturbed thoughts, and enormous blue eyes, she
reminded me of a scattered little fairy. Her full name was Abigail
Ann Winston, but I’d been calling her Abby for as long as I could
remember. As for me, I’d been christened Vanessa Day Winston and no
one had ever shortened it to anything. She was twelve and I was
thirteen, and although both of us were said to have gifted IQs, our
minds were light-years apart.

“
My people need a
warrior,” Abby muttered, sitting on the floor, rocking her
shoulders back and forth, her legs crossed Indian-style.

Abby’s “people” were the characters
she created in her head. Some of them weren’t even people, per se.
Dingo, the dancing dog, often slept at her feet. And Face, an
oversized, disembodied, generic-looking head with hands attached to
his chin, sometimes flew around the room, shaming you when you did
something wrong. There was also a movie director named Bud and a
wild-spirited guy called Smiling Seven who wanted to be a rock
star.

Four characters in total, and I knew
them almost as well as Abby did. But I couldn’t see them the way my
mentally ill sister could.

“
You have to create him,”
Abby said.

“
Me?” I recoiled. I didn’t
want any part of the crazy process. My biggest fear was that
someday I would develop schizophrenia. It wasn’t a common childhood
disease. Most people didn’t show signs of it until
later.

Abby rocked a little faster. “Remember
when I told you that someday my people are going to get stuck in
Room 105? I just figured out that the warrior is the only one who
can save them.”

Room 105 was another
dimension, a place that was inhabited by everything you could
imagine. Abby said it was because all of the beings there
were
imagined, made up
by people on earth who brought them to life. She’d never been
there, but her people had told her about it. They lived in Room 105
when they weren’t with her.

I thought of it as schizoid central,
but Abby claimed that parts of it were beautiful, like dreams from
a fairy tale. Of course some of it was ugly and evil, with
nightmarish creatures that preyed upon the good. Supposedly it was
divided into three realms: the past, the present, and the future.
The door to it was in a secret location. Even Abby didn’t know
where it was, which was why she’d never been there. Her people
didn’t know where it was, either. They traveled back and forth by
simply walking across a magical border, but earthlings, like Abby,
weren’t able to do that.

“
Maybe it will be okay if
your people get stuck there,” I said. If they were gone, then Abby
wouldn’t see them anymore.

“
Noooo.” My sister keened
out the word. “If they get stuck there, the monsters that patrol
the border will be able to attack them or maybe even kill them.
Don’t you see? I can’t live without my people. If they go away,
then I’ll go away, too.”