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She jumped around the place, all taut energy. She screamed and she wailed. Her white hair streamed out behind her, moving as though it had a mind of its own.
The pain in her voice was my pain. I wanted to run from the room, to escape the accusations that were there, but I’d become mesmerised.
I’d drown in her voice rather than tear myself away, as though caught in a rip that dragged me along, more powerful than my own body. All I could do was give up the fight and move with it because any struggle would just exhaust me and leave me for dead.
The woman was a witch.
They finished their first song but the applause of a few people barely made a ripple in that small room. During their second number though, the guys in the second band came out from backstage, staring in awe. They’d be on soon and they didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping up that level of tension.
People came in slowly, still nowhere near a full house but enough to make their cheers heard. A decentish crowd for a weeknight.
Dee flashed a grin at the room and slammed into the next song. The two guys were just there to prop her up. She was the focus, the energy, the force.
A few guys around the room looked at her with more than just musical appreciation. The girl oozed sex. Her hips ground against her guitar, her breasts rose magnificently above it. She intimidated in the way a lot of guys took as a challenge. I wanted to grab every single guy that looked at her in that way and pull them out of the club. If I could, I’d throw them down the stairs and sprawl their bodies on the street outside. They had no right looking at her with that lust in their eyes. She was mine.
Except she wasn’t. She never would be. Every single guy in this place, even the old and decrepit, had more chance with Dee than I’d ever have.
“She’s fantastic,” said Holden, sliding into the seat beside me. “I’d have never thought she was capable of this, shy little thing sitting at the bar the other day, as though she’d flee any moment.”
I nodded. Then turned to him.
“She was at the bar?”
“Yeah, she came in to see Sally and hung around afterwards. She seemed so nervous about it, I said I’d check them out.”
Hell, one thing I did NOT want was Dee getting too friendly with my staff. I’m sure they’d heard rumours, God knows what they’d heard, but that was a whole other thing. I could hardly forbid her from coming in here, though.
The band went into their last song. My hand shook. My brain froze. I had no idea how to deal with this, and that was a feeling I wasn’t used to. They could not play that song.
Dee
Every trace of nerves and fear melted away under those stage lights. From the moment I walked on stage, I knew this was where I was meant to be. The times we’d played at friend’s parties and practice gigs had been nothing on this. All the pain I carried with me transformed. I screamed my feelings out to the world instead of keeping them wrapped up inside.
We finished our first song and a few of the old drunks clapped. I couldn’t see them with the lights blinding me but I was as grateful as hell to know there was someone out there listening.
As we started playing the next song, something went wrong with my guitar lead. My heart stopped. I gave the plug a good shove and hoped for the best. A screw up like that could throw off my tentative confidence. Pete raised his eyebrows at me but I kept playing. If it wasn’t the connection to my guitar, I had no idea what it would be. I looked toward the sound guy, Hamish. He gave me the thumbs up.
I got through the song with no problem. A few more people had gathered, we got a few cheers, but they seemed far away. This wasn’t about them. It was about me and the guitar. I had a power up here that didn’t need an audience. All I needed was to get the words out, the words and the pain behind them.
I had no idea how we even sounded.
We only played a short set, which was a good thing. We had a limited number of songs. Some from Jake’s notebooks that I’d worked into complete songs and one that Pete had written. I took a back seat while he sang on that one. It gave me a chance to get my breath back, crack open a bottle of water and look over the crowd.
I couldn’t be sure but it looked like Alex sat the bar with Holden King. He had turned up. Not that it meant anything. Holden might think we were the worst amateurs he’d ever heard. I didn’t need his approval anyway.
