Now Wendy felt like she’d been slapped. Darkness Fallz had sunk so low by the time Wendy was sent to them that they were getting fired from pub gigs in Tacoma because their meth-addicted lead singer couldn’t drag his ass to work at nine o’clock at night. The rest of the group had been grateful to Wendy when the funny, self-deprecating video she arranged to be shot for them went viral. They were invited to tour the talk shows, then to sign a new recording contract. She’d thought the lead singer might have been grateful to her, too, in the end, despite some of the things she’d said to him about acting like an overgrown Halloween trick-or-treater.
As the sting of the slap faded into a deep ache, again she felt like crying at the betrayal. Instead, she laughed shortly. “Their contract actually says they don’t want to work with me again?”
“Show her the contract, Katie,” Archie said.
Katelyn peered into her designer tote, thumbed through a stapled sheaf of papers to a particular page, and handed the contract across the table. Wendy took it as if Katelyn were dressed in a red rubber Satan costume like the lead singer of Darkness Fallz himself. She peered at the underlined sentence: Manhattan Music agrees that it will not employ Stargazer Public Relations to work with Darkness Fallz for the period of this contract.
To be on her bosses’ desks this morning, the contract must have been on its way while Wendy was still in Seattle, helping Darkness Fallz through their issues. Which hurt even more.
“The contract doesn’t specify me,” she grumbled.
“They meant you,” Jonathan said.
Katelyn told Wendy, “You’ve lost their business for everybody at Stargazer. We hear Manhattan Music has already retained another firm for them. Can you guess what firm that might be?”
Wendy knew. Katelyn wouldn’t have posed the question otherwise. Manhattan Music must have hired Stargazer’s biggest enemy, whose heir apparent was Wendy’s own arch-rival from college. Daniel Blackstone was the undisputed expert among PR experts at getting stars out of trouble. He was also one of Wendy’s least favorite people, along with her ex, Rick. But she was trying to save her job, so she swallowed her medicine. She attempted to look contrite rather than ill as she ventured, “The Blackstone Firm?”
“The Blackstone Firm,” Jonathan repeated in a whisper, as if he dared not say the name of the dragon too loudly for fear of calling it down from the icy mountain to slay them all.
“We can’t keep you on staff if you’re losing us business,” Katelyn explained.
“What about my current business?” Wendy asked, realizing as she did so that her bosses had already finished up her current business. That’s why they’d sent her all over town this morning, touching base with her clients. Her stars would feel taken care of for a few days, until Stargazer was able to send in someone else. But there was one client she’d met with on her own. “What about Zane Taylor?”
“We’re giving him to Tom,” Jonathan said.
Which was why her bosses hadn’t put Zane on her visitation list. She wanted to say something cutting about Tom Ruffner’s chances of whipping Zane into shape, but she couldn’t. She was Tom’s mentor and friend. And despite his youth and inexperience, Tom was good at this.
Wendy was beginning to feel expendable.
“But I get you business,” she said weakly. “Maybe my sunshiny personality doesn’t, but my results do. I’m the best you have at pulling stars out of scrapes. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Archie said, “but you’re not doing us a lot of good if the stars employ us for a month, you pull them out of their scrape, and then they fire us. We need long-term relationships.”
“One more chance,” Wendy insisted. She realized her voice had risen again when a flock of pigeons burst from the window ledge behind her bosses in a flurry of wings.
Startled, Katelyn and Jonathan turned toward the window. As they faced the table again, they looked at each other and, barely perceptibly, shook their heads no. Archie told Wendy, “It’s so much easier to fire you.”
Lowering her voice, Wendy said, “Most workplaces would counsel an employee and allow her the chance to improve before giving her the ax.” Wendy understood that most employees didn’t cost their workplaces hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight, but she left that part out. “I’ll prove to you that I can help some guy out of the gutter and make him love me, too.”
Katelyn and Jonathan shook their heads more vigorously. Archie said, “The only star we’d even think about letting you near—” Now Jonathan was wagging his head no in an exaggerated fashion so Archie could see him out of the corner of his eye. Archie put his meaty hand on Jonathan’s shoulder to stay him, then continued, “—is the star who asked for you specifically, Wendy.”
“Lorelei Vogel?” Wendy guessed. It was that kind of day.
Archie watched her grimly, which meant yes.
Often when a huge star like Lorelei approached the agency, Wendy, Tom, and six other operatives fought over the account like lions over a piece of meat while a laid-back and calculating Sarah watched them as if she weren’t even hungry—which often resulted in the bosses handing the job to her. But nobody was touching Lorelei. Stargazer never turned down a difficult case, and the tacit message to employees was Deliver or die. Wendy knew if she saved her job today, Lorelei would likely be the death of her career anyway.
And she had another, much more personal reason to stay as far away from that chick as possible.
But Wendy’s future lay on the metal table in front of her, with Jonathan pulling the IV out of its arm, Katelyn holding her finger on the button to turn off life support, and Archie waiting with the body bag open and ready. Lorelei Vogel was Wendy’s only sad, unlikely chance at resuscitating her job.
“I’ll take it!” She slapped her hand on the table. The wood reverberated, the coffee sloshed, and all three bosses jumped. “You said Lorelei asked for me specifically. What do you have to lose?”
“A lot, honey,” Katelyn said. “This girl is the head-lining act for the Hot Choice Awards on Friday. If she melts down, she’s doing it on national television and taking our good name with her.”
“Maybe that won’t happen,” Wendy said. “Send me. I’ll meet this pretty delinquent with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. Maybe I’ll even straighten her out, and in that case, I want a raise and a promotion.”
Katelyn glanced at Jonathan, who watched Wendy as if a lunatic stranger had sat down to this conference with him. Wendy got this look from him a lot.
“Come on, you guys!” she pleaded. “You’re concentrating on failure. What if I turned this girl around and made her a showbiz darling? Think of all the recs Stargazer would get from that! And aren’t the Hot Choice Awards in Vegas? That’s perfect. You can’t win big if you don’t take a gamble.”
Archie raised his eyebrows at Katelyn. Satisfied with what he saw in her face, he told Wendy, “Sure. You’re hired. But on a trial basis only, sweetheart. We’ve made clear how we feel about you.”
“Thanks! You won’t regret it.” Wendy jumped up and crossed the conference room before her bosses could change their minds. She took slow, deep breaths and tried to rid herself of the feeling that the dark mountains of West Virginia crouched over her. Then closed her into a narrower and narrower valley until she slipped into the only escape available, a mine shaft, and fell forever.
* * *
Daniel Blackstone was rolling his suitcase into his Las Vegas hotel room when he remembered he was supposed to call his father in New York first thing on arrival. Daniel rarely forgot to touch base with his father. He knew he wasn’t as good a PR rep as his brother would have been. He wouldn’t be as good a president of the company when he took over next month, either, which was why his father deemed it necessary to monitor him. Normally this thought made him feel sorry for his father and sad for his lost brother. But today he was jet-lagged and exhausted, and all he felt was angry.
He would not be calling his father until he was good and ready.
He surveyed the room. In a corner, the hotel staff had set up a bar for him with bottles of expensive liquor and a fresh bucket of ice, as he’d requested. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but the job required it. When he was forced to play host, the setup looked cool. He hoped he wouldn’t need it at eleven in the morning Vegas time. If he did, he was in trouble already.
Satisfied with this arrangement, he surveyed the rest of the place. It was smallish for a luxury suite, smaller than one in L.A. but a damn sight bigger than one in Tokyo. There was a sitting area, a desk where he would spend most of the next week or however long he was stuck here, and a king-size bed. Windows extended the length of the room, with a killer view of the Strip.
At midmorning, the casinos across the street didn’t seem like the wonderlands they were advertised to be. They only looked vast, mostly blocking the dun-colored mountains in the distance. But he knew from experience that in the older, mellow part of the night, after however many drinks his job had demanded of him, he could lie on this bed, look out at the lights glowing in the signs and reflecting against the glass faces of the buildings, and dream that he was on his last trip to London with his brother.
It had been the best week of his life. He’d visited his grandparents every year of his childhood, but this time he and his brother had gone alone to England, in advance of their parents and their little sister. They’d explored the countryside, nearly wrecked their rental car driving on the wrong side of the road, gotten drunk in countless pubs, and marveled at the punk girls in this strange part of the world. That shining vacation, all color, was the last time he’d seen his brother alive.
Since then, all his trips had been filled with black-and-white business for his father. Looming overhead was the inevitability of not doing everything as perfectly as his brother would have, and letting his father down. The women Daniel had dated had told him how jealous they were of him, flying to the world’s priciest and toniest resort destinations, hanging out with the stars, and enjoying fine dining and the best entertainment the world had to offer. He would have preferred some actual downtime and the chance to wander off the beaten path. He did love to travel, but not like this.
What he wouldn’t give to explore Vegas with his brother.
He wanted to ride the roller coaster around the faux skyline at the New York casino. He wanted to see every cheesy washed-up pop star in concert, and maybe a few magicians. He wanted to visit Hoover Dam, even fly over it in a helicopter like a tourist. He wanted to hike Red Rock Canyon. He wanted to win a thousand dollars at craps and feel the high, then lose two thousand and actually miss the money. He wanted to pawn something for cash to win his money back. He wanted a massage in a serene spa. He didn’t deal with call girls, but it would have been nice to share his nights with a beautiful, loose woman, lost like him and lonely.
The thick window was the only barrier between his business trip and the tourists far below who were just waking up and heading onto the Strip for lunch and more gambling.
The hotel room might not be spacious, but he would take it.
He placed his bag on the suitcase rack and zipped it open. He lined up his shoes in the bottom of the closet, then hung his shirts neatly on hangers with ties around the hooks and suit coats draped over the shoulders. He tried to make his job easier by dressing well and giving the most professional, least approachable impression possible. This helped immensely when lecturing stars on why they needed to stop fathering illegitimate children. Leaving his things crammed in his suitcase bothered him and would mean more ironing later. He didn’t have time to send things out for pressing. He was in crisis mode.
The drama with Colton Farr was still unfolding downstairs. Colton’s bodyguard had texted to say that Colton was in the casino, down almost a hundred thousand dollars at blackjack. Not something that would help with Colton’s image problem—as if urinating in the fountain at the Bellagio last night and getting evicted from the hotel hadn’t been bad enough. When witnesses had called police, Colton’s bodyguard had called Colton’s agent, who’d contacted the Blackstone Firm for crisis management.
This case was so high profile that Daniel’s father himself might have taken it last year. But he was retiring in a month. He was backing away from company duties he didn’t want. It had been Daniel who’d taken the 4 a.m. call and talked the Bellagio manager down from pressing charges—even though Daniel had just finished a monthlong stint in Hollywood, threatening four different people into working together or else. He’d gotten back to Manhattan two nights ago, exhausted and happy to see his cat. Now this.
Personally, he didn’t care whether Colton Farr crashed and burned. He had a handful of clients whose work he respected, like Victor Moore, who’d made some very good action movies. In contrast, Colton Farr went around insulting women and pissing in public places, and Daniel did not do either, so he really didn’t understand why this guy deserved saving, except that it would pay for Daniel’s father’s new Maserati.
Daniel ducked into the bathroom to glance at his hair, which he’d kept short and neat since he’d grown out of his teenage punk phase. Satisfied with his reflection, he turned for the door.
An afterthought stopped him, an image he’d glimpsed in the mirror but had been slower to process. He leaned back into the bathroom and took another look at himself.
That’s what he’d half noticed: the dark shadows under his eyes. He’d always loathed his own harsh face, all angles and planes that looked whiter against his black hair. By the same token, looking naturally mean gave him an edge when he needed to twist a star’s arm. But the shadows under his eyes were new as of a few weeks ago and had gotten progressively worse. There was looking harsh, and then there was looking haggard. Not good for business. He needed to appear as if he was about to run the company, not like it was running him.