Octo BEAR fest (Renaissance Shifters #1)

Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

M agically, just at the moment Gwen's energy was starting to flag post-setup, pre-show, Bill appeared at the little backstage area, said, "Let me take you all out to dinner. I think you're going to need something in your stomachs before the crowd demands your souls, because I'm pretty sure that's what's going to happen tonight," and shooed them all out a staff door to walk down the block toward a diner. None of them ate a lot—they rarely did before a show—but getting out of the venue and getting some fresh air and a little time to unwind was good for all of them. Tempers that had been fraying and tensions that were rising were restored, and by the time the band bounced back in the staff door half an hour before showtime, everyone was excited to get on stage.

Gwen hung back a moment, smiling up at Bill. "Thank you. That was just what we needed."

"Honestly, I should be taking you out for steak and seafood or something. I can't believe how much of a crowd you've brought in."

"Oh, this whole mess was like handing candy to a baby for Penny. She thrives in an emergency, and she's incredible at rallying the troops. I'll see you after the show, all right?"

"Assuming I can make my way through your throngs of screaming fans, definitely."

Gwen laughed and, on impulse, stood on her toes to kiss the big man's cheek. He turned pink, and she made her way to the backstage area with the rest of the band, all of whom were now looking at her like Penny had done earlier. Gemma, in the tone of a band member who had seen far too many bad decisions on the part of its lead singer, said, "It's like that, is it?"

"Maybe." Gwen dimpled. "He's nice, anyway."

"Nice is good," Gemma opined, then lifted her chin at the stage. "We doing the new stuff for the encore or you wanna mix it it up in the main set?"

"Keep 'em here," Myles said. "Do it last except for Midnight Kiss. "

"I am not playing until midnight," Sandy said automatically, and Myles gave her a lazy grin. They'd been making the same joke about the song name as long as they'd both been in the band, and it made Gwen smile every time.

"Someday I'm gonna make us do a ballad version of that song," Penny said, completing the ritual, and then they were on, walking out onto the little pub stage to a crowd that lifted its voice in a cheer.

Myles and Gemma had set up small screens at the foot of the stage so they could see the camera work, which it turned out Bill's younger brother Laurie was a certified genius at, and one of the cousins—the pretty boy, Gwen couldn't remember his name—knew how to run a lights and sound board. So when Gwen yelled out, "Hello Renaissance!" a gorgeous drone shot of the town came up, then zoomed in on live outside footage of the pub, where there were a genuinely flattering number of people gathered, yelling their heads off, in the parking lot. " HELLO, THUNDER BEAR!"

The crowd raised the roof with their cheers that time, and the next forty minutes blurred into music and joy. From time to time a cue would come up on the screens and Gwen would yell something like, "Do I have Denver representing?" and road trip pictures—whether from actual drives, or selfies at the airport or flying into Renaissance—would come up on all the screens, featuring people who'd labeled themselves as #SixtyPix #RoadTrip #Denver #ShowTheWorld on their socials. Somebody outdoors was paying a lot of attention, and when the fans from Edmonton showed up late, a text came in on Gwen's little screen and the car full of Canadians climbed out to the whole crowd chanting, "ED-MON-TON! ED-MON-TON!" before dissolving into laughter and cheers. The Canadians clapped their hands over their faces, teary-eyed with smiles, and waved wildly at the screens as Gwen pointed at them through it.

There wasn't a better feeling in the world. They took a minute break, the whole band beaming at each other and slugging down bottles of water, then they were back on stage to play again, and then a third set before the noise ordinance hours started to threaten and they had to promise this was the last song, honest . Nobody even pretended to believe them, the shouts for an encore starting before they'd even left the stage.

After a minute, in the midst of the shouting, and to Gwen's jaw-dropped astonishment, they heard the chorus of one of the new songs, Not Again, that she'd played the night before being sung. The first lines were a little uncertain, but by the second half of the chorus an unbelievable number of people were singing with confidence, and when they hit the end, they rolled around to the beginning again. Penny whispered, "Holy shit," and even Myles, who took everything in stride, was round-eyed.

"Guys, I think we got a hit on our hands," he whispered. "Maybe we go out with that one, huh?"

"Yeaaaaaaaah," Sandy breathed. "Look, hey, how about I go out if they start again, and join in, and then the rest of you guys come in?"

Eager nods went around the band. Sandy grabbed a mic, waiting, and split a huge grin when the crowd started in on the chorus a third time. She came in on the second word, and by the fifth, before she'd even gotten on stage, the audience realized what was going on and their song broke into screams that made Sandy's eyes brighten with tears. She walked out, mic at her mouth, encouraging the crowd to come back in with her as she sang through a massive smile. Gwen watched, beaming, as Sandy fitted the mic into a stand and swung her guitar into place. She leaned into the microphone to sing as she came in with the guitar, and at the end of the chorus, murmured, "Now we're gonna bring it all back around to the beginning, yeah?" to a crowd absolutely losing its mind with anticipation.

Penny scurried out to the drums, making the audience cheer even more loudly, and Gemma gave Gwen a slow grin. "You're great at sharing the spotlight, G, but I think this time you're gonna have to stand in it. Let Sandy do the first verse. They'll lose their fuckin' minds when you come in on the chorus. C'mon, Myles." They went out together, waving and laughing as they took their places and Gemma brushed by Sandy to tell her the game plan.

She sounded so good Gwen almost didn't want to take the stage from her, but as Sandy reached the end of the verse, she pointed dramatically offstage at Gwen. Another shout rocked the rafters, and Gwen, shaking her head and smiling, brought the mic to her mouth and began to sing with her band as she walked on stage.

Not just with her band, but with the audience. They knew this song, a song she'd only played in public once, a day earlier. It was absolutely incredible, like flying, like dancing in the air, like she never, ever had to come back down to earth again. The whole band actually paused to take a bow at the end of the new song, before glancing at each other and slamming into the next one off the upcoming album. The one after that was a ballad, and then they ended on Midnight Kiss , an absolute banger Gwen had written about her love of fairy tales and happy endings.

Into the cheers and pleas for more encores at the end of it, she wrapped her fingers around the mic and said, "I swear we'd rather do nothing else but stay here all night and play for you until dawn, but somebody is actually going to come arrest us if we don't cut the noise now, so thank you Renaissance ! We'll see you again tomorrow night!"

The band got together, took a bow, and went off stage, waving and blowing kisses until they hit the darkened backstage area and, almost as one, collapsed to the floor. Penny kicked her feet in the air, shrieking gleefully under the sounds of people still calling out for one! more! song! "The new album is going to blow up the charts, guys. Did you hear them? We might have to cut the set list short tomorrow and do all the new songs so far."

"Nah." Myles was sprawled across a remarkable amount of floor. "They can have Not Again if they come in singing the chorus like that again tomorrow, but otherwise stick with two new ones and that's it. The hype will be in getting to see us do them again officially for the first time."

"I thought Penny was supposed to be the marketing genius, not you," Sandy said happily. "Are we going outside to sign stuff?"

" I am waiting for the casuals to give up on us and leave," Gemma announced. "The die-hards will wait. Although I hope those girls from Calgary are?—"

Everybody else shouted " Edmonton !" and Gemma cackled, making Gwen realize she'd done it on purpose. "The Canadians. I hope the Canadians stick it out, 'cause that's a hell of a drive."

Gwen's phone, in her back pocket, buzzed. She yelped and twitched to the side, taking it out, because a buzz stuck between her butt and a hard floor was surprisingly vibratey, and flicked to the incoming message. "Oh, uh, huh, wow, okay. Bill is asking if he can bring Mike Piccolo back to say hi. He's the guy who runs the Harlequin, the club I played at last night."

"Oh sure," Penny said without missing a beat. "Just don't expect me to get off the floor. It's nice and cool and I'm made at least ninety-eight percent of sweat right now."

"Guys?" Gwen asked. The rest of them made assenting noises, although like Penny, none of them seemed to have the slightest inclination to get up. They would soon, because the after-show adrenaline high was still coursing through them all and they'd want to go out and talk to the fans, but for the moment, lying on the floor recuperating was something of a Sixty Pix tradition. She texted Bill back with Sure , and a minute later he and Mike Piccolo came around the back of the stage. "Wow," she said to Bill, "you look very tall from down here."

He looked like a movable mountain, in fact, although she'd never imagined a mountain grinning like he was. The expression was half thrilled and half bewildered, which made sense, since there were five full-grown adults lying on the floor in his pub, and not even one of them was drunk. "Hi," he said from way up there. "That was incredible. Are you guys okay?"

Myles gave his traditional laconic thumbs-up, then let his arm flop back down to the floor. Mr Piccolo, who still looked like an 80s music producer even from this unusual angle, looked around at the band with laughter in his eyes. "Is this a modern musical act bonding ritual?"

Without discussing it, they all fumbled for each other's hands and lifted them, making a very lopsided circle of trust. Or something, Gwen thought with a smile. "It kind of is, yeah. Mr Piccolo—Mike—this is the Sixty Pix. Penny," she waved the hand that held Penny's in the air, "Gemma," with a wave of her other hand, holding Gemma's, "Myles, and Sandy." They each wagged their hands in the air, demonstrating which was which while Piccolo chuckled.

Then he crouched, putting himself a bit more on their level, which Gwen thought was a kind of nice gesture. She pushed up on her elbows to see him better, and so did everybody else, curiosity obvious in their expressions. "You kids know you've got a hit album on your hands, don't you?"

The band exchanged glances, and it was Penny who said a cautious, "Yeah?" over Gemma's muttered, "Not kids."

Sandy kicked her, and Myles let go an undignified snort of laughter. Mike Piccolo, who was, to be fair, literally old enough to be Gwen's father, and she was the oldest member of the band, looked like he was trying not to laugh the same way Myles had. "I know you've gone it alone, without a producer or a label, and I respect your reasons for that. But if you'd like to consider releasing the new album with a label's support, I'd like to ask you to keep Harlequin Renaissance Records in mind." He offered Gwen an old-fashioned print business card, nodded at the whole group of them, and rose to shake Bill's hand and then head out.

A little silence fell over the band, which mostly meant they lay there listening to the still-loud, happy crowd in the pub before Sandy said, "That was the least hard-sell producer I've ever met."

"Lemme see the card." Penny took it out of Gwen's hand. "Nice design. Good card stock."

Both were true, and it might be trite, but paying attention to small things like good design or card stock could really make a difference in how seriously a company could be taken. Gwen's heart still hammered, not in a good way, at the idea of that much potential publicity . She'd spent almost fifteen years going it the hard way to avoid that kind of thing.

Myles, phone lifted over his face, said, "Their website says Harlequin Renaissance Records has been putting out about three albums a year for the past thirty years or so. Whoozis there, Piccolo, he used to work for some really big labels before that, but—reading between the lines, here—he got disillusioned with the money-grubbing executives sucking up all the profit while the recording artists themselves ended up busting their balls to make rent. He retired, didn't like that either, and started HRR. He actually…" Myles trailed off, then cleared his throat. "He's got some bands whose names we know, guys. People I thought were full indie like us who have gotten national air play."

Gwen felt everyone's gazes shift from Myles to her, and took a breath to steady herself before saying, "Then maybe we'll have to talk about it. Talk to some of those bands and see what they think about working with him."

Another silence fell as the others exchanged looks and, with their gazes, pinned Penny as the spokesman. "G, you know we're okay with the way we're going, right? You don't have to, you know, risk everything for us."

"I'm one of five here, guys. It'd be pretty lousy of me to throw up a big roadblock on your careers because I've got issues."

Penny got to her feet, signaling to everybody else that they might as well get up, too, and offered Gwen a hand so she could grin at her. "G, baby, you've got subscriptions . Thank you," she said, although not to Gwen: she turned to Bill, who was standing awkwardly at the very edge of the stage shadows, trying to be present while also not being in the way. "Thanks for the intro, and for knowing to text Gwen to ask if it was cool before you did. Me and the rest of the band are gonna go out to meet the crowd. We'll try to winnow it down to the road-trippers before you come out, G. We'll text when it's safe. C'mon, losers," she said to the rest of the band, and a moment later, Gwen was alone in the dark with Bill Torben.