Page 117 of Beneath the Stain

Mackey was about to rip her head off, and then he realized what she’d just done had been sort of why he called her up in the first place.

“This is true,” he said, conceding the point. “But that one had it coming.”

“I’ll try to scrounge up one that’ll behave,” she said earnestly, and some of the tension that had been squeezing Mackey’s head since they’d arrived relaxed a little.

“I’ll take that as a personal favor,” he grudged. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Briony,” she muttered, wrapping the cords around at the foot of the stage while she talked.

“Briony, you are my personal tech for the evening, you got that? If anyone needs to say something to me, they say it through you. You are, hands down, the one person not in the band that is not pissing me off right now, and if you could do that for me, I may let the rest of humanity live.”

She got to her feet and dusted off her knees, grimacing. “You’re sort of an asshole, has anyone told you that?”

Oh God. Mackeylovedthis girl. “Yeah,” he said, nodding and smiling. “But the folks I love best don’t give a fuck.”

“You don’t treat me like I’m stupid, I might not give a fuck either,” she said, smiling back a little, like she was amused to find herself talking to him like this.

“I can do that. Anything else?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Stop putting the mics in your mouth. That primal scream thing you do sounds real fucking spiffy on your CD, but we don’t got the equipment for it here. I mean, I know theymakeequipment that’ll take that, but this shit is gonna short out, zap your brain through your skull, and fucking kill you!” She nodded earnestly with that, and he almost wept.

He’d been waiting for this kid his entire fucking life.

“Heard and understood,” he said, staring. “Debra! Did you hear that?”

“Yeah, Mackey,” she said, bustling up to the stage. Trav hadn’t seen their touring equipment yet, the amps and such they needed to project in a large venue—this was supposed to be a trial run, and Mackey wondered sadly if this hadn’t been one of the things Gerry had let slide.

“You make sure Trav gets a list of shit goin’ on here. I wasn’t in a great place the last time we had this shit out—looks like a lot of it is sort of fucked-up. I’m gonna run through the playlist with the guys and the light effects with….” Mackey looked around for Lester and Keith, the two guys Gerry had hired to do effects. Again, Mackey knew their names, they warned him when something cool was coming up, and that was about it, and while Mackey had a whole list of shit he’d wanted to change and work up in the month after Christmas and before the tour, right now they were just running through the songs in public. Maybe. “Where in the fuck are my light and sound engineers?”

He looked at Briony like maybe she had the answer, and from the way she blushed and looked away, maybe shedidhave the answer but just didn’t want to tellMackey.

“They’re either fucking each other or doing blow,” he said flatly. They’d been a little twitchy, but then, people got twitchy around Mackey when he was trying to set up a show. He had no idea why.

“Or getting blown and doing fuck,” Briony said with a grimace. “But yeah. You started ranting and they took off.”

Mackey took ten deep breaths, closed his eyes, and pictured his room. Not Trav’s room, where all the sex and magic happened, but his room, where he’d been sleeping since Trav had been gone. When he was alone, he curled up in the dark space between the beds, crumpled into a little ball, where all he could feel was the peace and the music in his own head. He took ten deep breaths in that space, then ten more, and when he opened his eyes, Briony and Debra were looking at him patiently, and he thought maybe he could take homicide off the table for today.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said with exaggerated patience. “We’re gonna bump ourselves up in the rotation. The guys before us have pretty spiffy lights and sound. Right now we couldn’t find our asses with both hands and a forklift in that department—we don’t want to let the audience down. We’re going to do the first number absolutely bare. All the lights—all the fucking lights—and we’re gonna come ripping out of the fuckin’ gate with ‘Tattoo’ and destroy them, does everybody got me?”

He looked around to the band, who were hanging on to his every word and trying not to look lost. It had been a while for them too, he realized, and they missed Trav as well. Gerry hadn’t made it to every performance—or even half of them—but Trav had been so good about easing all the fucking details, they hadn’t even missed him until he was gone.

“Good. And then after that we’re going dark and romantic—Briony, do you know the light and the sound board?”

“Not that well, boss,” she said apologetically, and he loved her even more for not trying to fake it.

“Then give me a couple of names of guys who can’t fuck up a wet dream—”

“What about Keith and Lester?” she asked, making sure.

“They are no longer on the fucking payroll,” he said grimly. “They weren’t that fucking good in the first place. Holy shit—all that time we spent sitting on our hands this last month, thinking this shit would be here when we came back to it. It is time to get our thumbs out of our fucking asses and act like we get paid.”

“Righteous, Mackey,” Kell muttered, and he heard some more murmurs of assent from his guys. Okay. They’d sold a fucktonna CDs on their last tour—they could either skate on their asses, using the old CDs for sleds, or they could fucking bring it. And while Mackey knew they were going to bring it musically, until this momentright here, he had not realized how much more to bringing it there was. Trav was good at helping them be their best, but Trav did not have the tattoo and he hadn’t come up from nothing. Mackey could love Trav for all he was worth, but the fact was, this band, these guys, they were a whole different entity, and the people who bought those CDs could either be their fans or their fuckers.

It was Mackey’s job to make sure they were fans, and that they stayed with him and the guys as long as they put out.

“’Kay, Briony—go pick your light and sound board guys. Debra, you start making a list of shit me and Trav hafta fix. Guys, we’ve got five minutes to go through the new playlist—and then make it the fuck so. Are we ready, all?”

“Fucking ready, Mackey!” That was in tandem—Mackey spared a minute to grin at them, suddenly so grateful for his brothers he could cry.