Wicked Harmony

Chapter 5 | Iri

Chapter 5

Iri

Y ou could say I kind of went off the deep end trying to find the right people to make our final tour something special. Something that shifts your perspective on things. A turning point—for our fans and for the band. I had to go in deep to find the right people for the job.

If you want something unique, you search places no one else would think of.

Our lighting team used to work for the Nightmare Circus.

We plucked our costumiers directly from Nova Entertainment, the movie studio that specializes in off-beat movies with monster leads.

We chose the stadiums and arenas based on how good a vibe we got from them. And although you can count the number of tour dates we’re doing on two hands. We’ve got some that fit 15,000 souls at a push and others that fit eighty thousand.

Yeah, this tour’s going to be different. Hence why I also spent close to a year tracking down Ms. Sinjin Murphy, formerly known as Saint Madison.

I know so much about her, I could write her damn biography.

Finding her—or more to the point, what she can do—happened by chance.

Like most demons, I feed on powerful emotions. Some of my kind have a preference. Or they can only absorb specific emotions, like lust fuels Incubi. Normally, when we’re touring, I’m satiated, since having a few thousand people losing their shit screaming your name is enough to keep me fed for weeks. But when we’re not touring, I have to feed differently.

I was walking past this building one evening, and this building just called to me. There was so much pain and fucking catharsis in the air, I couldn’t keep away if I tried.

Turns out, I’d stumbled on a support group for people leaving controlling situations.

A bunch of attendees used to belong to this little-known cult, called The Path. The ex members all turned out to be real Chatty Cathys. They explained how ‘The Path’ and their regular ‘Awakenings’ used to be all they thought about for years. It sounded like a bunch of woo-woo bullshit to me, but they’d all been obsessed. Addicted. They said their Awakenings made them feel like they could walk on water and rule the world.

Until something changed, and the whole thing started to crumble.

It might make me sound like a heartless asshole, but their story intrigued me, so I started looking into these cult meetings. I stumbled across video footage from the cult’s heyday a few years back.

The look on the audience members’ faces caught my attention. They were off their fucking tits on life and it wasn’t thanks to the smarmy prick on stage in an overpriced suit.

The comments sections of the videos were a goldmine for information. They explained the bottom fell out for The Path when one of their key members left. And it was like the magic of the cult left with her.

I got this feeling in my gut that said whatever hinky shit was going down at these meetings. I wanted to see if we could tap into it for our gigs .

Not that I want people to lose their fucking minds over us—or, at least, not in a creepy, mind-control kind of way. But the more I dug, the more convinced I was that this was the missing piece that was going to make all the difference.

We needed their secret sauce.

But it was like this ‘Saint’ person, the apparent key to the cult’s success, disappeared off the face of the planet.

I could have given up after months of searching and hitting a bunch of dead ends. But thankfully, I’m a persistent fucker.

Something told me that big things would happen once I found them. That’s what has driven me over the past eleven months to track her down. Following my gut is instinctive. And it’s never steered me, or the band, wrong yet.

I went as far as employing the services of a tracker, someone more used to bounty hunting than finding tinkerers with poor decision-making skills. He led me to an interesting individual called Elara, who turned out to be Sinjin’s weak link.

She sang like a canary when I got in touch with her.

Apparently she’s a fan of ours and all it took was one breathless phone call before she was giving me all the information I could need about Saint—or Sinjin, as she goes by these days.

When I explain as much to Sinjin, she shoots me a murderous scowl. “Fucking Elara. What did she tell you?”

I pause, because she really doesn’t want to know the answer. I know everything. A lot more than she wants me to know, that’s for sure.

Settling for a vague answer that’ll tell her all she needs to know at this point, I reply, “She told me about your gadgets and how you can use them to pump up a room. That’s what we need you to do, to turn our gigs into something spectacular. I want them to leave feeling like they’ve experienced something extraordinary.”

She eyes me for a moment, seeming to weigh up my words, then nods. “I could do that. You were saying you’d want me to spend the next month with you?” she asks.

I nod. “We do. We haven’t got much time left before the tour starts and it’d be intensive work until then.”

Truth be told, I never planned for the job with the mysterious Saint to be something where we’d be working so closely together. It was going to be a quick consultation before the tour, see what they could come up with, and then they’d join the tour as part of the staging crew.

Distant. Hands-off. No plans for them to be living in our godsdamned house.

But now that I’ve met her in person, my gut feeling is screaming at me to keep her close.

Yeah, she’s not leaving my sight. She’s got that squirrely look about her, like she’ll dip at the first chance, and this time, it won’t be another eleven months before I find her again. It’ll be forever.

Her eyes dance in the half light and for a second I’m struck by the color of them, brown with a coppery ring around the iris. They should be boring, just like the rest of her should be.

She’s tech support. An engineer with a touch of magic, nothing all that special about that.

But something tells me that’s not the full picture.

She scrunches her eyes up and appraises me. I guess trying to work out my angle for wanting to pay her such an astronomical amount of money to join us on tour.

I shrug back, barely knowing the answer myself. Sure, partly it’s because whatever her specific brand of magic is, it’s some powerful shit. But other than that, I’m going with my gut which says this is the right direction for us.

I can taste Sinjin’s mixed emotions in the air right now. She’s intrigued, but she doesn’t trust us for shit. She isn’t trying to shield her emotions, either. She’s raw and unfiltered. And I bask in the sensation. A grin stretches across my face and she eyes me suspiciously.

Ah, suspicion, it tastes even better on my tongue.

It’s weirdly refreshing.

Or, at least it’s something different from the usual blast of lust or the desperation which taint most of our interactions.

People always want something from us. Whether it’s riding our dicks or our coattails, it doesn’t really matter. The feeling is basically the same.

We’ve surprised Sinjin, that much is clear. From the distrustful emotions I can taste coming off her, she’s not going to say yes tonight.

I should have expected as much, especially the way she reacted when Jules turned up at her shop. Maybe sending Jules in was a bad idea, but the timing was shit. I only got her location details yesterday and we’re heading to our cabin in the woods tomorrow before we spend the next month eating, sleeping and dreaming of the tour before it kicks off. We had a bunch of PR shit to deal with today, so I couldn’t go myself.

“You’d have creative control,” I add, hoping that might sweeten the deal.

It’s true. Mostly, anyway.

As well as being pushy, I have a controlling streak, and I manage most of the decisions about what goes on with our tours.

But if I need to take a step back for Sinjin to do her best work, I’ll fight my instincts and let her lead.

She’s gonna make all the difference, I just know it.

I glance at Micah, whose empath nature means he’s a lot better at discerning individual emotions than I am. I know how the big ones taste, but subtler emotions are harder to distinguish. When he gives the slightest nod, I know that it’s time to pull back.

“Think about it. Take your time,” I say .

See? I can act like I have chill, even if it’s a total lie. Thankfully, the words don’t come out as strained as they feel since I’m fighting all my instincts to just toss her over my shoulder and bundle her into the car to bring to our cabin.

“I’ll give you our numbers and you can let us know what you decide.” I whip out my phone and hand it over for her to add her contact and then immediately text her mine and Micah’s numbers.

She gets to her feet and nods at each of us, tucking the napkin into her pocket and shoving her phone away with her other hand.

“Good to meet you, I guess,” she says, sounding less than convinced.

My lips quirk up and I stifle a chuckle. She couldn’t sound less enamored with us if she tried.

Fuck, I think I want to stick her in my pocket and keep her.

She shakes each of our hands and strides off toward the elevator, and I can’t drag my eyes away from her.

Micah glances at me with a confused smile. “Tonight was the first time you met Sinjin, right?”

I nod. “Yeah. Why?”

“You’re just feeling a lot of things about her.”

Psh, don’t I fucking know it?

Now, I just have to wait and see if she calls.

And convince my bandmates it’s a good idea having her in close proximity to us for the next four months.

“FUCK THAT,” DORIAN says, as soon as I lay out the updated plan to him and Cal, down in the suite we have booked for the night.

Dorian’s not the most cheerful guy, but he seems even more salty than normal tonight. The reason for that becomes apparent as Micah leans closer, his long tongue flicking out to taste the air around him.

“Huh, you smell like Sinjin. ”

Dorian raises an eyebrow behind his shades. “You picked a damn weird time to flirt with me, if that’s what this is.”

Micah just looks confused as he glances from Dorian to me and back again. “She tastes like lightning or a storm cloud. I’ve never experienced that before. Did you think the same?”

I don’t know what he’s talking about, but that’s not all that unusual when it comes to Micah. He experiences the world differently and the fact he can both taste and feel others’ emotions is a part of that.

“What’s got you so damn grumpy, anyway?” He asks Dorian.

“He got distracted leaving the hotel. Bumped into some girl that messed with his head,” Cal grumbles in reply.

Huh, interesting.

“Was she tall for a woman? Bleached blonde hair?” I ask.

“Dark brown eyes that sparkle when she smiles?” Micah adds.

“That was Sinjin? She was the one you were meeting?” Dorian replies. “That woman is a fucking menace. She did something to me in the elevator, made me feel weird as fuck. It was like she melted my mind and all I could focus on was getting Cal his fucking dinner. Meant I walked straight past a bunch of groupies who were practically throwing their sopping panties at me.”

“She used her magic on you?”

Even more interesting. I got the impression that Sin had been lying low over the past few years and that’d be difficult if she’s been using her magic carelessly.

Micah frowns. “I thought she seemed nice.”

I snort. ‘Nice’ is not a word I’d use to describe her. Defensive and kind of snippy, sure.

Nice, though? Nah. Thankfully, since none of us would know what to do with someone who’s nice .

“That’s how you’re going to wind up one day with your organs harvested. You have no instincts about who’s a bad person, and that woman is a she-demon,” Dorian spits.

I roll my eyes. Not just because Micah is older than any of us put together. He might be an innocent soul, but he knows how to survive just fine. Plus, I grew up surrounded by she-demons, and Dorian’s impression of Sinjin is... not all that far off, actually.

Shit. Would that mean I have some repressed mommy issues if I found her barely veiled ferocity to be hot as fuck?

“She’s a wildcat or a honey badger, something that looks non-threatening but could rip your face off,” I say.

Micah lets out an unhappy grumble and I inspect him more closely. I wonder what he picked up from her emotions.

His empath nature sucks for him most of the time. It makes the world a damn noisy place, but it also means he’s more sensitive to others than the rest of us combined.

If I wasn’t already convinced about Sin, then Micah’s defense of her would make me question my stance. Despite what Dorian says, Micah doesn’t trust easily and I know he’s seen plenty of shit none of us knows anything about.

Dorian scowls as he glances down at his vibrating phone. “Fantastic. Someone posted a bunch of shit online about us being here. They’re gonna be swarming the place any minute. Thank fuck we’re getting far the fuck away from here tomorrow.”

Yeah, he’s definitely feeling salty. I wonder what exactly Sinjin did to him to put him in such a foul mood, and I make a mental note to ask Micah later if he can pick up on the nuances of her magic.

“Slight change of plans,” I say, knowing this’ll piss Dorian off even more.

“Since when?” He pushes his shades further up his nose and crosses his arms to face off against me .

Oh, about an hour ago, once I laid eyes on Sin. She may not have thrown herself at my first offer, but that’s fine. When something feels right like this, I’m not easily deterred.

I wasn’t when I formed the band, when it seemed like the right thing for Micah and for me, or when Dorian and Cal joined us. Nor when it became clear that we needed to take a break.

I’m not holding back now. Not when it’s so clear to me that Sin is clearly perfect for this last tour.

We just need to convince her of that.

Or maybe I will stick her over my shoulder and bundle her into the car after all.