All or Nothing: The Black Lilith Series #2 Read online

  “I told you, Tommy,” Mikayla says. “Bass Note hired Sersha to help the band’s voice evolve. No time like the present.”

  Tommy has his arms crossed over his chest.

  Next to Sersha, Dash rubs his mouth with his hand. Then he leans over and takes a Tupperware container out of his backpack. Inside, Sersha can see a lump of something brown.

  “Does anyone want some cake?”

  Sersha is about to say that she does, but the rest of the band and Mikayla groan in unison.

  “You’re trying to kill us,” Logan says.

  “You’re not a cook, Squirt.” Slate adds, “Just accept it.”

  Dash purses his lips at them and tilts his head back as though he’s immune to any discouragement. Then he offers the Tupperware to Sersha. “You want to try it?”

  Sersha looks pointedly around the table. “You think I’m going to put that in my mouth after it’s gotten that reaction?”

  A ripple of laughter rolls over the table. Even Tommy joins in. Sersha feels herself starting to relax. The band doesn’t hate her nearly as much as she’d thought that they did. She and Mikayla have the same taste in musicals, and grumpy Tommy is still easy on the eyes even when he’s acting like a jerk.

  She lets herself lean back in her seat as the meeting continues, composing a song about family in her head while the band gets on with other business.

  Mikayla arranged for Sersha to meet up with Tommy one-on-one over the weekend to try and bash out a song or two. She seemed to think that maybe whatever bug was up Tommy’s ass might be dislodged if he and Sersha actually had a conversation. She thinks that might have been optimistic.

  “Just try and get a feel for each other,” Mikayla had told them.

  She goes to meet him anyway. The studio at Bass Note is supposed to be amazing. When she gets there, carrying her laptop in her backpack and dressed in a kind of ancient Greek-style dress, she finds the studio well-lit, well-equipped, and smelling of pine lime and bubblegum. She takes a moment to really breathe in where she is. Her mam’s studio was homey and small, but this place is next-level. This studio is a place where bestselling albums are recorded.

  Tommy isn’t there when Sersha arrives. She glances at her watch, but she knows that she’s right on time. She chooses to think that he’s just late because lateness is a thing with the band, and not to screw her around.

  The recording booth is behind a wide glass screen, illuminated by low fluorescent lights and packed with instruments. There’s the usual guitars, of course, and a drum kit to the side, but there’s also an accordion and a set of bongos. She can see an oboe stored beneath the keyboard and a saxophone propped up against a cello. Her fingers itch to get in there and try them all out, but she restrains herself. She doesn’t want to end up breaking a reed and getting on the bad side of her employers—at least not this soon. There will be plenty of time for her to experiment with all of these exciting new toys. In the meantime, the mixing board is interesting enough.

  Sersha knows better that to mess with another person’s board, but that doesn’t stop her running her fingers gently over the knobs, playing a song in her head and imagining how she could manipulate the levels with this awesome equipment.

  Finally, when she’s finished admiring the room, she sits down at the long gray desk and pulls out her laptop. She opens the MixVibes Cross and gets her latest project out—a dubstep version of ‘Flaming Red Hair’ from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. It’s the sort of fanciful nonsense that her mam hates, but Sersha likes to mess around with different, sometimes contradictory sounds and see what she gets. Sometimes it’s nonsense. Sometimes it’s awesome. She has a feeling that the dubstep ‘Flaming Red Hair’ is going to be awesome. When she’s finished she’ll post it on YouTube with the rest of her songs of dubious copyright legality.

  She’s playing through the song, enjoying how the heavy beat plays off of the Hobbitish flutes when she hears a voice behind her.

  “I thought you were a lyricist?”

  Sersha jumps at the sudden noise, nearly knocking her laptop off of the desk. “Jesus! Fuck! You ever heard of knocking?”

  Tommy is standing in the doorway behind her. He’s got purple flannel on today, and his brown hair flops into his eyes like a curtain. It’s messy, and Sersha has a sudden urge to run her fingers through it, to fix it. His jeans are tight, and his arms are lightly muscled. He looks just as good in real life as he does on Black Lilith’s album covers.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.

  Sersha isn’t sure if she should believe him. “I am a lyricist,” she says, answering his first question. “I like mixing, too.”

  Tommy frowns. “We don’t do a lot of dubstep,” he says.

  “I know.”

  There’s a beat of silence. She decides to go for a winning smile to try and ease whatever tension seems to be building.

  “So what are you working on right now?” she asks him.

  Tommy shuffles for a moment, then enters the room fully and closes the door behind him. “Just some stuff,” he replies.

  “Can I see?”

  “Why don’t you show me something you’ve written first?” He puts it to her like a question, but Sersha doesn’t think that it’s the kind of thing she can say no to.

  This is a test, she thinks. But she just keeps her winning smile on her face. If he thinks he can scare her off, he’s going to be sorely disappointed. “Of course,” she says.

  She goes through her laptop, opening files and trying to pick one of the songs she’s proud of to show him. She’s surprised that Bass Note hadn’t shared her portfolio with the band before they hired her. But after seeing Tommy’s reaction at the lunch meeting, she wonders if that was a good decision after all.

  Tommy comes to sit next to her. Their seats are inches apart and she can feel his warm, solid presence. She tilts her head just a little bit so that she can see him out of the corner of her eye. He has an elegance to him that she hadn’t expected. Sersha knew he was handsome, you’d have to be blind as a coal miner not to notice how good-looking the bass player for Black Lilith is. But her interest in him has been purely intellectual. She’d wanted to sit him down and pick his brain, to try and get into his head so that she could figure out where his words come from. But now that she’s actually seen him in the flesh she’s acutely aware of the way he moves like he’s floating, as though he’s only got one foot in reality and the rest of him is walking in the stars. It’s captivating, and it makes her want to impress him even more. To show him that she’s worthy of working with him, even though Bass Note, her mam, and everyone else she’s ever worked with could have told him that.

  You’ve earned this, she tells herself as she pulls up a song that she’s quite proud of.

  “Here,” she says. “This one’s called ‘Sounds of Silence.’” Then she presses play.

  Flutes first. She’s a sucker for woodwind—her mam says it’s the Celtic in her blood. There are a few bars where the flutes build up a rhythm, and then heavy-metal drums enter out of nowhere. Sersha watches Tommy carefully out of the corner of her eye as it plays, conscious that he’s judging every note. When his eyebrows shoot up with the introduction of the drums, she feels a small flutter of gratification in her chest.

  The drums play through. A guitar is introduced. Then a male voice sings.

  Forget about the slow burn,

  I burn cold.

  They would call me ‘black dwarf,’

  but the name was already taken.

  It’s not my fault you didn’t know to look for me.

  No visible light, you see.

  The chorus cuts in, and the flutes grow louder and bolder.

  I would be so vibrant, so bold, so exciting,

  if only you could see me on my wavelength.

  I would be an astonishing magenta.

  Not black. Not brown.

  Bright as a supernova.

  The flutes fall back into the rest of the music. The nex
t verse picks up and plays through. Sersha observes Tommy like a hawk watching a snake, but he doesn’t seem poised and ready to strike. He looks thoughtful, frowning with his down-turned lips and nodding minutely in time with the beat.

  My big sisters send me messages through comets.

  They fly past, leaving letters in their tails.

  Stay strong, keep burning,

  I love them for trying.

  I would be so vibrant, so bold, so exciting,

  if only you could see me on my wavelength.

  I would be an astonishing magenta.

  Not black. Not brown.

  Bright as a supernova.

  When the song fades out, there’s a beat of silence before Sersha switches off the music.

  “So what do you think?” she asks.

  Tommy purses his lips. When he looks at her, it’s with the same intense gaze that he’d had when he saw her tattoo. And she wonders again what it would be like to be on the receiving end of that gaze in a different context. To see this man poised on the edge of ecstasy.

  “It’s good,” he says. He seems to be admitting it begrudgingly. “Really good. We’ve used astronomy before as well.”

  He says ‘we’ as though the whole band works on the lyrics, but she knows for a fact that it’s all Tommy. That he’s the one that writes words like they’re a part of him. That he is the one that fills Black Lilith’s songs with meaning, the rest of the band breathes life into them. But the life they have wouldn’t be possible without the words.

  “I know… for ‘Black Rings,’” she says. He looks surprised. “You didn’t think I’d take this job without listening to some of your work, did you?”

  He looks away. “No, I didn’t think that,” he says, in a tone which tells her that he certainly did.

  Well, he obviously hadn’t thought much of her. He’d made that clear at the lunch meeting when he’d wondered aloud whether she’d just be a poet straight from university. Sersha had actually worked for a while in the industry, but it was only on a freelance basis—ghostwriting songs and signing NDAs so that she wouldn’t get any of the credit. Some of her work had even gone out under her mam’s name. This would be the first time that her name would be on the record as a lyricist. This would be the first time she would be recognized for her work besides what she posts on YouTube.

  “Can you play it again?” Tommy asks.

  She does. She stares at him intently now, not bothering to hide the fact that she’s watching him. Sersha gazes at his lip moving as he chews his tongue, listening so hard that he apparently doesn’t notice that she’s staring. He taps his ink-stained fingers lightly on the desk, his body relaxing as he listens attentively to the lyrics that she’s playing for him, and she feels a surge of accomplishment. Maybe this will all work out after all.

  When the song finishes, he looks up and catches her staring. He frowns, but she can’t have that. She gives him her winning smile all over again, practically assaults him with it, she thinks. Tommy’s lips twitch as though getting ready to smile back. Instead, he looks away, huffing.

  “I have some notes,” he says. “Just a few things… I assume you’re open to notes?”

  “I am if you are,” she replies.

  He looks back at her. His blue eyes crinkle at the edges, but his lips remain in a stern frown. She’s clearly amusing him, though he seems determined not to show it. She remembers the way he’d laughed with his friends as he’d walked into the meeting room where Sersha, Mikayla and Logan had been waiting. The way his head had tilted back and his eyes had closed as he’d laughed from his belly, his whole body had been an expression of joy in that moment. Then he’d looked at her and the light had dimmed. His lips had turned down and his forehead had creased.

  Sersha decides that she wants to see Tommy laugh again.

  “I can take feedback,” he says. “Constructive feedback.”

  “I rarely give any other kind.”

  Timmy picks at the edge of his shirt, glancing around the room as though looking for a change in topic.

  “Did you want to show me something of yours?” she asks.

  “Oh, yeah, sure…” He reaches down to the backpack he’d dropped next to the chair. It’s an old, beat-up army surplus thing. When he retrieves a notebook and pen, she raises her eyebrow at him.

  “Old school,” she says.

  “I work better with my hands,” he replies modestly.

  “And I’m sure the ladies appreciate it.”

  There’s always a moment right after Sersha says something inappropriate where her brain freezes and she asks herself, did I just say that out loud?

  Tommy’s startled look tells her that she did. There’s a pause that follows her words and Sersha’s smile hangs on despite it. She doesn’t want to give away her own distress, she has in fact, made it a rule to never look like she regrets the words that sometimes fly out of her mouth. After a moment, Tommy’s eyes meet hers and his lips finally quirk up in a smile.

  “I’ve had no complaints,” he says.

  He’s playing along—thank the Lord. She could do without getting fired from her first big-time writing gig for sexual harassment.

  “None to your face at least,” says Sersha.

  His eyebrows disappear into his fringe. “Maybe you’d like to verify for yourself?”

  She knows she’s still smiling, but her heart is beating so loud that she wonders if one of the mics in the room opposite will be able to pick it up. It’s one thing to find a man attractive—to maybe even flirt a little bit and try and get him to smile, or at least stop frowning—but when said man actually turns it around and starts flirting back, Sersha finds herself getting nervous. She wasn’t expecting Tommy to flirt back.

  In interviews, he’s always so soft-spoken and respectful, rolling his eyes at the antics of his bandmates and generally acting like a down-to-earth gentleman. Now they’re playing a game of flirting chicken, and one of them needs to make a move before it gets awkward. But she won’t let herself be outdone.

  “I’d love to,” she says. She slowly leans forward, Tommy’s eyes flicker down to her lips before moving back up to her eyes, and runs her fingers over the edge of the notebook before pulling it out of his hands. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  She flicks to the last page of the notebook, aware that Tommy is still staring at her. It might not be technically good manners to end a game so soon after another player joins, but that’s how she likes to operate. After a beat, she hears a soft chuckle. Tommy’s a good sport then, and so quick to flirt back, too.

  That’ll certainly make their working relationship interesting, she thinks.

  Sersha finds working with Black Lilith a little strange. It’s not like her usual freelance gigs where she works toward a deadline on lyrics to songs that she and the client had discussed in advance. Working with Black Lilith is nothing like that.

  For one thing, there is no deadline. Their new album, which Tommy had written single-handedly after their tour, isn’t even coming out for another week, and then they have months and months until they need to produce another album. Bass Note seemed to have brought Sersha on, to help ‘develop Black Lilith’s voice,’ but the timeline for that development was in limbo. When she asked Mikayla about it, she had frowned.

  “Usually, Tommy just brings the band songs when they’re ready and they workshop them,” she says. “But you’re right, a deadline would be helpful. Let me get back to you.”

  She hasn’t gotten back to Sersha yet.

  For another thing, Tommy hadn’t been very forthcoming about what he wants the songs they work on to be about. He seemed to like her demos, but he hadn’t tried to talk to her about what they should be working on. He’d just answered her questions about his own process, talked about which of her lyrics he thought could be improved, and shared some lingering looks with her over his notebook.

  Those lingering looks were something, but she isn’t being paid to flirt. She’s being paid to write
songs and she’s not doing it.

  Now she sits in her Airbnb apartment, trying to decide if this work is going to be stable enough for her to consider getting a regular, rented apartment in the city. It’s a nice little studio, well-lit and sparsely furnished, but comfortable enough to suit her and close to the center of the city. It’s clean, too, which is more than she could say about some other Airbnb places she’d previously stayed in. The bed has a purple quilt on it and there are red lightbulbs in one of the lamps, which is troubling in a number of ways. But she’s changed the sheets, and checked for hidden cameras, so overall she’s fairly comfortable there. Besides, the red lights make her hair look like spun gold. She FaceTimed her mam with the lights on, and her mam had commented on how lovely she’d looked. Not at all like she was in a porno.

  It’s a nice place, though. The kind of place that she could see herself living in if she got rid of those blood red lightbulbs. It would probably need a coat of paint, though. The dark chocolate walls aren’t as bright as she would like them to be if she lived there forever. She would prefer golden walls, or even just plain white if she couldn’t get gold paint. Finding a place of her own in Manhattan would probably rip the guts out of her savings, so she doesn’t want to jump into anything if this gig turns out to be less stable than she’d hoped. She makes a good living freelancing, but not a ‘rent-an-apartment-in-Manhattan’ living.

  Finally, after a week of wavering, she calls Tommy on the number that Mikayla had given her.

  It rings a couple of times, and then a husky voice answers, “Hello?”

  “Tommy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Sersha,”

  “Oh.”

  There’s a shuffling on the other end of the phone. She thinks she recognizes it as a blanket moving around. She glances at her watch—it’s 11:30 a.m., and apparently she’d woken Tommy up.

  Then a woman’s tired groan plays over the phone and Sersha feels her eyebrows rise. “Am I interrupting something?” she asks.