Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

He could hear them still talking as he lay in the cool, clean silk, rescued, not having hurt a soul.

“How did you get soldiers to turn out, Faye?” asked Bradley, admiring and flirtatious at once.

“The man came from an enemy nation,” Faye told him.

Bradley hesitated. “Canada?”

“They’re a rebellious people. All that ice hockey, it fires the blood. I required soldiers to bring them down.” Faye paused. “Besides, my father is in the army. He’s a general, actually. Do you know, he taught his little girl how to kill a man in twenty-seven different ways with my bare hands?” She paused again, this time possibly in dreamy reminiscence. “But the army wasn’t cutthroat enough for me,” she concluded. “It had to be showbiz. Or being an assassin for hire, of course.”

“Of course,” said Bradley.

“I’m scared, and I want to go back to the kidnapper,” Josh announced, his voice closer to the coffin than Josh usually allowed himself to be.

“And who are you again?” Pez inquired benevolently. There was a rustling noise, and Christian hoped he’d hidden all the actually poisonous stuff where Pez couldn’t find it this time.

“That was a lovely shot of Chris leaping to defend you guys,” Faye told them all. “What did he call you? His nest?”

“I heard ‘best,’” Bradley said. “As in . . . best mates.”

“That’s what I heard too,” said Josh, who turned out to be the worst liar in the world. He giggled nervously as he said it.

“What’s that on your neck, Josh?” Faye asked.

“It was a very, very enthusiastic groupie,” Bradley said with conviction. “Don’t worry, though, Josh didn’t encourage her. She wasn’t his type.”

There was a long silence. Josh giggled again, this time sounding a little hysterical.

“Oh, all right, I’ll let it go,” Faye conceded. “But I’m hiring your next kidnapper myself so I can set the stage properly.”

The tour bus was rocking as they moved toward their next stop, so gently that it was almost like being rocked to sleep in the darkness of his coffin. Oddly enough, Christian thought of the nonsensical rote lines Bradley had spouted about a tour being a journey of discovery. He didn’t mind where the journey was going, he thought, and his eyes slid shut.

Then, directly above his head, there was a rapping of knuckles on wood.

“Knock, knock,” Bradley caroled joyfully.

“Who’s there?” Christian asked.

There was a long enough pause to let Christian know that Bradley was actually startled. Christian had never replied before.

We’ll learn things about each other, about the fans. About ourselves.

“Me,” said Bradley, on a laugh.

“Me who?”

“Meow,” Bradley responded, with great satisfaction. As he proceeded to tell an enormously stupid joke about a cat, Christian let his mind drift away again, into thoughts of vampires who were scary and not safe but who just might manage to be safe enough, enjoying his job, having humans around who he could not stop remembering were people before they were food, humans who might be something like a nest.

Bradley had said the tour meant they would be bonding closer than ever as a band.

It was possible, even though it was a genuinely terrifying thought, that Bradley was a genius.

Bridge

by Jeri Smith-Ready

veryone knows

Elvis died in the bathroom.