Page 13 of Rock Giant

“Vaguely.”Hard not to recall when he was surrounded by his constantly fornicating band mates.

“Dry patch?”

He shrugged.The other thing about being surrounded by people in committed relationships, was that there were a lot fewer random backstage visitors these days, therefore a lot fewer opportunities for scoring some fun.While he’d never been the sort of manwhore that Xane had been, his sex life had been pretty rockin’.Not so much now.He wasn’t about to send the roadies out to snag him some ego boosters.If he was going to end up in some lass’s knickers, he wanted it to be due to a genuine connection not because Cave Troll had given her a lammy.

Elspeth tugged his arm a little harder, leading him toward the smell of wood smoke and mead.“Come on, let’s see if we can’t get this rock legend laid.”

“Less of the legend, please.It makes me sound decrepit, and I’m not old.Reserve the legend thing for mine and Eloise’s folks, eh?”

“Aw, not so much a dry patch as a dry season.”

He squished his lips into a pucker, which made her laugh.God, how amazing was it to hear that sound, and to see her smiling rather than wafting around like a stiff breeze would scatter her composite parts?He’d forgive her the jibes, the same as he’d forgiven her for pretty much everything since she stole a stash of pinecones from under his nose when they were five.

“You look good, E.You seem…”

“Don’t,” she warned, cutting him off.“I’m taking each day as it comes, and it’s mostly working, but it’s a micron-fine cushion seeing me through that won’t take much bursting.”

“Sorry.”

“The drugs don’t hurt either.”

He pitched her a wary stare not sure if she was being serious.Shock ricocheted through his innards when he realised she probably was.

Elspeth levered her elbow again.“Watch it, Captain Uptight, that looked horribly like a judgy face.”

Drugs were another of those things that had circled around him endlessly the whole of his life and had failed to entice him simply by being so ubiquitous and easily obtained.He valued rarity, the unobtainable, not shit that was as common as bread.Mind you, there’d been times when bread had definitely been harder to come by than an easy high, and it wasn’t as if he’d never partaken.

“For depression,” she said, setting him straight, “although Eloise has a string of numbers if you want something harder.”

“They’re in my little black book.”She patted a virtually invisible pocket in her gothic ensemble, mostly black, with a few white stripes and a flash of muddy purple.“So handy when you need a number for those pesky scam callers.”

“You give telemarketers dealers’ numbers?”

“Only the ones who try.I don’t give my numbers out to just anyone, you know.I like to make them work for it.”

“It’s impressive,” Elspeth confirmed.“She had some guy the other day convinced she was going to refurbish her whole kitchen.”

Eloise cackled in glee.“I had to let him down in the end.He just couldn’t accommodate my electric cauldron and didn’t seem to grasp that I spend ninety per cent of my life in other people’s houses, so probably didn’t need a thirty grand do-over, or that vinyl oak effect laminate would look shit in my thatched shepherd’s hut.”

He grinned along with the girls’ laughter, even though it didn’t seem that funny.

Time to change the subject.“Why are you two here?”Of all the festivals they might have turned up at, why here and now?Not to mention they were in the band enclosure, and to his knowledge neither of them were currently in a band, so they had to be mooching along with some other outfit.

Eloise chose that moment to skip ahead a few paces.She started walking backwards.Honestly, if he hadn’t known her so well, he’d have said she was channelling her sister today.It was the hair.Definitely the hair.Lulu normally did the hairsprayed spikes, Eloise usually ironed her hair straight, and Sev, the last he’d seen her, was sporting a red and black two-tone effect complete with heavy fringe.

“The fact you need to ask shows how out of touch you are.Dad got the band back together,pfft, eight months ago.It’d be embarrassing, if the world didn’t think watching a few old geezers play was so fucking cool.”

“Toys in the Attic reformed?”

“Yeah!”She raised her arms for emphasis, which also served to show off her batwing sleeves.“Mad, eh?Sev’s helping dad out with the logistics, and Lulu’s about somewhere, doing something.I’m the official spokesperson, and Elspeth here—”

“Is tagging along for the ride and reminding them all this is no longer the eighties, or even the nineties, and things are done a little differently in the modern age.”

“The epic falling out is all forgotten, then?”

Both women shrugged.They all knew why goth pioneers Toys in the Attic had split.It’d been regurgitated at every gathering they’d attended since being small.The gist was that the D’Amon brothers couldn’t agree on something or other that forever remained vague, and weirdly, they’d kept talking while the third member of their line-up had disappeared into the weeds.He’d never met her.

“So, what’s Nellie Strife like?”