Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1)
Read Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) Online
Authors: Eva Chase
Tags: #New Adult Paranormal Romance - Demons
1.
I
saw my first Glower when I was seven years old.
I should have been in school, but late that morning Mom picked me up in the silver Mustang after a quick word with the attendance secretary. “We’re going to give your dad a little surprise, Avery,” she told me with a swish of her chestnut hair. “Bring him lunch and our love.”
Even if I didn’t have the life experience to put the pieces completely together, I knew she was hoping for more than that. I knew Dad had been home less and less the last few months, and that when he was around, he moved through the house as if underwater, weighed down by an ocean of gloom. No hugs, no low rumble of a laugh, no stealthy tickle attacks. I knew Mom was worried about him and that she looked more tense than playful as her slender hand gripped the gearshift. I think I knew, without being able to put words to it, that this wasn’t so much about giving as asking. Asking Dad to remember us. To remember that we loved him. To remember that he loved us back.
I sat next to Mom in the front seat—where I was only allowed to sit under special circumstances, which I guessed this qualified as—as we cruised past palm trees and white stucco walls toward the building that held Dad’s current studio space. It was summer, and as hot as L.A. gets, but she left the top down. Scorching wind charged with the smell of baked asphalt and mesquite smoke whipped through our hair and licked away my sweat. I felt relieved when Mom turned the wheel to take us into the little parking lot around back of the reclaimed warehouse. Dad and air conditioning waited on the other side of the dun brick walls.
I think for a moment I believed Mom might have found some magic trick to turn what was happening to our family around. Stepping out onto the concrete in that teal sheath dress with her chin held high, she looked as if she could conquer kings.
The warehouse building had great acoustics and crappy security. Someone had propped open the back door with a cinder block. Mom clutched the bag of take-out Vietnamese subs with one hand and my fingers with the other, and we strode down the long gray hall, cool air washing over us with a distant hum and a whiff of mildew. The heels of Mom’s pumps tapped out a determined beat.
Grigory, the guy Dad called his “personal bouncer,” was stationed at the far end, outside the biggest studio room. He looked characteristically grim. The left corner of his mouth twitched slightly upward when he saw us. That was the closest I ever saw to a smile when he was on duty. Off... He could throw back a six-pack and whoop so loud it shook the next-door neighbor’s windows.
“So he’s here,” Mom said, sounding reassured, as if she’d been afraid he might not be.
“Just him, Mrs. Harmen,” Grigory said, giving her a respectful dip of his head. Mom had told him to call her Cath about a hundred times, but he never did when he was on the job. “He told the guys not to come in today, said he wanted to work through some riffs on his own.”
“Well, let’s see if he’s ready for a break and a bit of company,” Mom said with a strained grin.
Grigory stepped aside so we could go in. The entry way led through the control room with its consoles and monitors—dark, empty, with such a feeling of abandonment it sent a prickle down my spine—and into the big live room that had several isolation booths sectioned off along the side walls. I spotted the band’s drum kit past the open door of the closest booth and couldn’t resist stepping inside to run my fingers over the acrylic glass shells. I liked the feel of the lacquered mahogany kit Dad kept at home better, but my hands still itched to grasp the sticks and rap out a quick beat.
“Avery,” Mom said, drawing my attention back. She was craning her neck. The same question crossed my mind that must have been running through hers: where was Dad?
I rejoined her, and we walked a circuit of the room, Mom peering through the little windows above my head on the doors. I counted them, as if the number of the booth would tell me something.
It was at the fourth, near the back of the room, when a strangled, alien noise wrenched from Mom’s throat. The bag of subs fell from her hand as she jerked at the door handle.
The door swung open. When I remember that moment now, it glides in slow motion, gradually revealing a pair of booted feet, sprawled legs in rumpled jeans, untucked tee, jawline grizzly with a three-day-old shadow. But probably it happened much faster than that.
My dad was slumped in the corner. Rubber band around his bicep. Syringe on the floor an inch from his limp fingers. My voice caught in my throat, squeezed into a ball, and burst out in a shriek.
“Daddy!”
Then I saw, as if I’d need to blink to clear my vision before the figure would come into focus, that Grigory had been wrong. Dad wasn’t alone. A woman was crouched beside him. Long pale hair, slim pale limbs, all shimmering as if lit from within. Her mouth was pressed to Dad’s chest, lips parted, with a rasp like the drawing in of a deep breath. That spot on his chest was shimmering too, and as it flared brighter, the woman flared with it. The angles of her face, of her body, flickered and blurred. For an instant she looked like a he. Then her features seemed to smooth until she had no sex at all. Until she was nothing more than a skeleton of light.
My legs had frozen with panic, but Mom moved. She threw herself at the glowing woman-man-thing with a howl and swinging fists. The thing looked up at her, searing irises in a glowing oval of a face. I don’t remember it having a mouth, but I swear I could tell it was smiling. That smile haunted me in my nightmares for years afterward.
The glowing thing disappeared a second before Mom fell on it, crackling away into the air like an electric shock. Mom threw herself down beside Dad. “Roy,” she said, over and over. “Roy.” Gripping the sides of his face, sobbing between each repetition of his name.
His head lolled in her grasp. His eyes didn’t gleam. There was no light in them at all, only filmy blue irises and vacant pupils that burned into my memory as my own eyes spilled over with tears.
That was the day I learned that artistic passion could consume a person, literally.
2.
“A
re you sure this is a good idea?” I said.
My Tether Society supervisor glanced over at me as we waited for the elevator he’d just summoned. He was probably thinking it was a little late to be bringing up doubts. He couldn’t have known this one had been circling through my head ever since he’d handed me my new client file: Colin Ryder, singer-songwriter-rocker, on the verge of international stardom at the tender age of 19.
It
was
a little late to suggest turning back. We were already standing in the lobby of one of L.A.’s most exclusive condo buildings, cool air with a hint of jasmine wafting around us. Two security guys were eyeing us from across the marble floor even though we’d shown our IDs and confirmed we were on the approved visitor list. But Sterling obviously knew this was an especially dicey situation, or he wouldn’t have been here. Normally I’d have come to meet a new client on my own.
“Why are you concerned?” he asked, tilting his head to the left the way he always did when contemplating a problem. His dark brown eyes, nearly the same shade as his acne-scarred skin, considered me calmly. Thoughtfully. “Because you knew each other?”
I shook my bangs from my eyes, wishing I’d kept the doubt inside me the way I’d managed to up until now. I didn’t want to be a problem. The fact was, though, that Ryder was only my second official client since completing training, and all evidence suggested he was going to be a tough one.
“No,” I said. “There’s no way he’ll even remember me. But if he wouldn’t play nice with the last two people you assigned to him, why would he listen to me?”
The door slid open and we stepped into the elevator. Sterling hit the button for the upper penthouse. I wriggled my toes in my ballet flats, looking at the little indents the wheels of my suitcase had made in the pile. Real velvet, if I wasn’t mistaken. Very posh indeed.
“It took those two trial runs to narrow down Mr. Ryder’s particular... issue,” Sterling said, with one of the famous meaningful pauses my best friend and fellow Society member Fee had been known to imitate behind his back. “He seems to have a particular allergy to authority figures. Placing him with someone his own age, someone he can see more as a... supporter, rather than a superior, we think will allow us to maintain the necessary presence in his life. At least until you can arrange a more permanent solution.”
Herbal “supplements”? An earring or watch embedded with malachite? A tattoo that included just the right construction of lines and shapes? The end goal of every Tether Society assignment was to introduce a personalized method of warding off Glowers that would allow the client more independence, which benefited both them and us since it freed us to help more of those who needed it. There were a variety of ways to accomplish that independent warding. But given Ryder’s resistance to the idea that he might need any sort of help at all, I had trouble believing I was going to talk him into a permanent lifestyle change or regular fashion statement any time soon. Especially when one of the Society’s other most unshakeable guidelines was that we didn’t try to explain to the client
why
that change was necessary. Which, fair enough—I wouldn’t have believed in demons slipping into our plane of existence to suck the life energy out of creative talents if I hadn’t been able to see it happening with my own eyes. A client who thought you were crazy
definitely
wasn’t going to listen to you.
Sterling was studying me again. I dragged in a breath and realized I’d balled my hands in the skirt of my purple-and-green striped sundress. I let go, smoothing it down.
“You’ve done well with your past placements,” Sterling added. “I’m sure you can handle Mr. Ryder.”
He didn’t sound sure. He sounded resigned. My stomach twisted with the sinking feeling I’d had since I read about the two Tethers who had already failed with Ryder in the last six months.
I wasn’t a shiny new strategy. I was a last ditch effort.
Well, I was here now. I had to see this through. Fee and Mateo were the only other Tethers under twenty-five, and they were enmeshed with other clients. The Society needed me to make this work.
The elevator bumped to a halt. When we stepped out, there was only one door in front of us: a thick cherry wood slab at the other end of an entry hall. Sterling rapped his knuckles against it. A slim, forty-ish woman jerked it open before his hand had dropped back to his side.
Ryder’s manager, Marissa Fitch. Her photo had been in the file.
“Good,” she say by way of greeting, the faint crows feet at the corners of her blue eyes—way too vibrant, had to be contacts—crinkling when her gaze fell on me. I’d spent enough time in Tinseltown to read the signs of cosmetic work left on her skin: Botox stiffness in the cheeks, red tint of dermabrasion around her mouth, not quite hidden under the foundation powdered all over her face. I wouldn’t be surprised to find those crows feet gone if I saw her again a month from now. In an industry that sold image as its bread and butter, even the people behind the scenes competed to set a certain standard.
“So this is the replacement?” Fitch said as she motioned us in. Her skeptical tone and her wording directed the comment solely at Sterling, as if I were nothing more than a new fridge or faucet. I decided not to be offended. Checking out the sights held more appeal anyway.