Dark Control (Dark Dominance 1)

“Absolutely.” Sometimes the best thing was just to agree with him. “Your photos fly too, Goodluck. I think people feel your work in some deep, primeval part of themselves, the part that remembers that they once flew.”

The word “primeval” probably gave him a boner. Not a boner to use on me. We were platonic, although people loved taking pictures of us together. We looked weirdly similar, with the same wild brown hair and bright blue eyes. Rumors surfaced now and again that we were an incestuous couple. But no, he wasn’t my brother or my boyfriend, and I’d never had sex with him. I was pretty sure the only sex he ever had was masturbating to the striking, blurred images he created.

“Precision. Effort. Patience,” he said, lying back again. The amber chandelier sparkled above us, lit by colored bulbs. “Nothing worth doing is easy.”

“That’s true.”

“Sweat creates magic, but the sweat is not magic. What’s in your mind is magic. Your emotion, your will, your inner spark of expression, all this magic makes the swirl and flow of an eagle’s flight.”

Sounded like an eagle-themed portfolio was in the works. “Do you want to take a trip to Mongolia?” I asked. “There are lots of eagles there, flying across a huge blue sky.”

“There are eagles in New York. Don’t edit nature, friend. Ask yourself, why is Mongolia the first place you associate with eagles? You should ask instead, what gift do eagles bring to our lives? To the world?” He made an expansive gesture. “There are so many gifts in the world if you’re open to receiving them. Sometimes you seem like an eagle to me.” He touched my face, looking at me fondly. “But more often you seem like a grieving meteor streaking across the sky.”

“Wow.”

“I understand your power, friend, and I recognize your pain.” He sobered. “But I think you need to move on. You’re still caught in your ex-boyfriend’s orbit, aren’t you? You were too good for him. You’re made of the dust of the ages. That’s a fact.”

Maybe he wasn’t moving into eagles next. Maybe he was going to try outer space photography. Either way, I was just along for the ride.

He took my hand between his, his wide, blue eyes painfully sincere. “Don’t waste your dust, beautiful friend. You need to be a comet, not a meteor. Don’t let his transgressions drag you to earth, a flaming, destructive force that—”

“I haven’t spoken to Keith in five months. I don’t even think about him anymore,” I lied.

“You should meet someone new, someone who soars like an eagle. The last guy was more of an armadillo.”

It was a relief to laugh about Keith, to get to the place where I could do it. Bless Goodluck for taking me there. It had definitely been good luck when I met him at one of his early showings, when I was a business major fresh off the bus from Tennessee. He liked my small-town roots, and his metropolitan success made me feel like I was accomplishing things, even though my social life was dead in the water.

“Don’t change, okay?” He hugged me, his long, frizzy hair tickling my cheek. “You inspire me. You’re magical, Starcomet.”

“Juliet.”

“We’ve talked about this. I think you should change your name to Starcomet. It holds more power.”

“I’m not doing that.” He suggested this to me almost every week. “I mean, it’s a nice idea, but no.”

“It can change your entire universal dynamic. It works, friend. You must call out what you want in this world, and cry and shriek and scream until the power of the universe responds to you.”

I wanted a healthy, non-excruciating relationship, not the power of the universe. “I don’t have the energy to shriek and scream right now,” I said.

He held up a finger in rebuttal. “Your body shrieks and screams at me every day. Your eyes scream like a jeweled phoenix striving to rise from the ashes of your soul’s conflagrati—”

“Goodluck.” I buried my face in my hands until I felt calm enough to look up again. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll figure things out, okay? You should be concentrating on your art, not my personal life.”

“Everyone is their own nectar,” he said, pouting a little. “Even you.”

I was afraid to ask what he meant by that. “Well, boss, I’m going to bed.” I leaned up, hauling myself from the chair. “We can work on your ‘Evergreen Life’ catalog tomorrow, if you feel up to writing the descriptions. The show’s next month.”

“Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “I forgot to tell you. Some watch company wants to use my work in some ad campaign. I didn’t want to touch it, you know, because ads are corporate and capitalistic, but my agent said it might broaden my international scope. I was thinking about, you know, using eagles in the pictures.” He drifted a moment, thinking. “But they wanted some of the prints from my ‘Graceful People’ portfolio.”

“An ad campaign? That’s new. Can you forward me the email?”

“Sure. They said the ads will run in sixty-eight countries, everywhere they sell these Montclair watches.”

“And they’re mentioning your name in the ad copy?”

He waved a hand. “I don’t know. I don’t care either way. Do you know what watches mean to me? Sadness. Watches mean slavery to time. They mean a shackle you wear on your wrist, to tell the world that you must be somewhere, even if you don’t want to be. Anyway.” He closed his eyes and curled back into a ball. “Sleep tight, Starcomet. May the dream world glisten with your light.”

“Same to you,” I said.

I left the lobby and took the outside stairwell to my apartment on the third floor. Just before I went in, I took a moment to lean on the railing and take in the city. The Black Wall only had windows at the opposite end, so I rarely got to see this view, not that it was especially breathtaking. Nothing in New York had seemed breathtaking to me for a while. I scanned the sky for eagles, but I only saw light pollution and smog.

“Everyone is their own nectar,” I repeated.

If only that made sense.

*

I’d accompanied Goodluck on countless business meetings during our ten years together, so I didn’t think much about the following week’s appointment with the watch company until he forwarded me the email from their advertising director.

It t

urns out it wasn’t Montclair watches, as Goodluck had told me. It was Sinclair watches, produced by Sinclair Jewelers, Fort St. Clair’s family enterprise. After doing more research, I learned that people were willing to shell out ridiculous amounts of money for a Sinclair watch. Their exclusive line was manufactured in Switzerland, crafted of precious, responsibly mined materials, and renowned for keeping flawless time.

Timex was more my speed when it came to wrist shackles, so I hadn’t known any of this.

It was stupid to imagine there was any connection between my embarrassing interlude with Fort, and Sinclair Jewelers’ recent decision to use Goodluck’s art in their advertising, but I still wondered. How involved was Fort in the advertising side of his father’s business? Would he be in the meeting room when we convened to talk about which photographs to use in the campaign?

I took a little extra time to get ready that morning, just in case. I applied careful makeup and put up my hair, but when we arrived at the Park Avenue offices, a company rep named Angela was the one who welcomed us with a handshake and a smile. She was an older woman with avid brown eyes.

“Mr. Boundless, we’re so glad you could be here today,” she said. “As you know, Sinclair Jewelers prides themselves on their world-famous watches, notable for their sleek and elegant design.”

“Do you know what I believe about watches?” said Goodluck.

I cut him off with a warning look and followed the two of them into a sumptuous wood-and-glass boardroom. Then I sucked in a breath, because Fort was sitting a few feet away from me, surrounded by a couple other suits, and a scruffy guy who was probably the art director.

“The elder St. Clair couldn’t be with us today,” explained Angela, “but his son agreed to sit in on our meeting so we could come to a consensus on the vision of this campaign. Mr. Boundless, I’m pleased to introduce Forsyth St. Clair.”

Fort rose from his chair at the head of the table. “How do you do?” he said, extending a hand to Goodluck, who gave him a limp shake. Fort wore a dark gray suit and narrow black tie that accentuated everything powerful about him, from his broad shoulders down to his long, muscular thighs.