Page 4 of All Mixed Up

“Well, hello there.” I ran reverent fingers over the knobs, sliders, and turntables that were familiar friends. At the same time, I pulled my laptop out of my pink camo print duffel. A couple of quick plugs into the right ports and the club’s system came to life, reflecting its interface with my drives. “Why don’t we all get to know each other?”

I brought the sound up, filling the club with the strains of Lara Fabian singing of aching lust in Italian, before blending a hypnotic trans dance beat beneath it. The two songs climbed with each other, telling a tale of seduction that could only end the wrong way. Though the next stanza was unavoidable, climbing toward the explosion of heartbreak, I soared with it.

Welcomed it.

Mixed more bass into it.

And then surrendered to it.

It swelled into me, taking over my mind and thoughts. Swelled through me until I was as helpless as Fabian herself, dragged into the flow of the emotional music. I was a child of gods named melody and harmony. Their power guided my fingers over the controls, pumping through the muscles in my body, taking my heart where my head would never allow. I was lost. Moving with it. Obeying its unalterable command. Doing it with pride and happiness.

The music made everything safe.

The music would never fail me.

Would never lie to me.

Would never fall in love with a mistress then never come back. Would never seduce me into signing on risky loans, only to disappear with the money.

The music was my magic.

I didn’t expect anyone else to get it. Nor did I want to. Right here, right now, the music was all that mattered.

Until it didn’t.

Until I mixed out of the trans, into one of my favorite custom mixes. Along with a bumped-up version of Demi Lovato’s Skyscraper, I flowed in Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway. I threw on the combo on just for Gigi, since her love for both songs had inspired the mix in the first place. As I’d hoped, she screamed in delight. As I expected, she joined Leese and Greer on the dance floor for it. And as I also expected, we now had an audience. Nico had been joined by Milo Proust, as well as his girlfriend, supermodel Vivienne Dunn—

And the part of this equation I’d never expected.

The surprise guest nobody had warned me about.

The power surge nobody had given me a protector for.

The man who appeared at Milo’s side like a demigod from another realm—or maybe a wraith from the afterlife, since that was exactly where my senses placed him. Hot. Cold. A furnace blast, then an ice floe. Up. Down. And who the hell cared?

And who the hell was he, with his dark as sin stare, his black as ink waves, and his ruler of the universe stance?

And why, suddenly, did nothing else matter but that answer?

28 Days and Counting

Two days, and I was still trying not to obsess about it.

About him.

The demigod.

The Parisian plot twist for which I was completely unprepared—winding up in me getting mowed down by a Mack truck of shock. I was still in emotional traction from the impact, and struggling to figure out what the hell had really happened.

Because one second, I’d been standing there gawking at him, wondering how I was going to hide every hot, awsome thing he was doing to my nervous system, my bloodstream, the very air in my lungs…

But after one fast turn to recompose myself, I was staring at thin air.

Yes, right in the space he’d just occupied.

I’d peered into the shadows for him, but was outgunned by the spotlights on the booth and the recesses formed by the second floor’s overhang. By the time my sights readjusted and could focus, there was nothing. Not a single movement, even in the corners of the club.

But only thirty seconds at most had gone by.