Page 7 of Amethyst Flame
I bit my lip. “Okay.” A giggle escaped anyway.No, be serious.“So is there some corporate, stuffed-shirt, investor meeting I have to bust up?”
“Oh, no.” Jacob huffed, as if to prepare me that I was about to hear something very annoying. “My asshole friend thinks he’s a man of the people. He’s anti-big business—don’t ask about how his father made his millions—and all about forging an egalitarian future.”
“But he’s bad?” Because he didn’t sound too bad.
Jacob shoved a hand through his hair. A vein in his forehead throbbed. “He stole my code, didn’t he? Gave me no credit for his ‘breakthrough.’ No offer to come on board his Future Express.”
“How very…egalitarian of him.”
Jacob snorted. “He’s deploying his tech at an EDM concert tonight. Great DJ, everybody dancing and having a good time. He’s going for a social media firestorm. Free publicity with a side of mystery. Start a buzz, but keep it under the Boomer/Gen X radars.”
“And you want me to hijack his bugs?”
“Well,yourmoth code isn’t some bastardized, early version.”
“Ah.” A breakthrough. “You admit you’re a bastard?”
A side of his mouth reluctantly tugged up again. “Mo, will you go to the dance with me?”
I crossed my hands over my heart. “Why, Jackho—I mean Jacob.” I batted my eyelashes. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Thanks.” He looked down again as if bashful. Then seemed to freeze. “Are your shoes purple?”
“It’s my signature color.” Swann told me so. “Let’s get up to the room. Drop off my stuff. We have a party to crash.” I pivoted toward the elevators again, my bag flaring out behind me to bounce off my backside.
He snerked as he followed. “That’s good. Yeah. Let’s crash his party.” Then he came around and took the strap of my bag. “Hey. Let me carry that. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Thank you.” I tried not to glow. It was hard considering I was chock full of super-sensitive and ultra-responsive moths. Silently, wordlessly, I willed the little fuckers to chill out. Yeah, my heart was banging, but not in response to danger.
Other people joined us in the elevator on the way up, so we didn’t talk, and I was too nervous to say anything while he led me down a narrow hallway—numbered doors off each side—and stopped at one. He fished his wallet out of his pocket and slid a white keycard out to unlock the door.
I got there first with a tap of my finger against the lock, and the little light went green.
“Show-off,” he said.
“Guilty,” I answered.
He held the door for me, which is how I knew that his momhadat some point taught him manners. He just used them selectively. He was using them for me.
The room had a wall of windows overlooking the city—a black void above a landscape of fizzy light and energy below. The décor was modern, with one big bed—white bedspread with crimson accent pillows. And a sunken area with a brick-red sofa facing a huge television.
“I can take the sofa,” he said. His neck was flushing again. “If you want.”
I had to swallow hard in order to answer. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I took a few minutes in the glossy bathroom to catch my breath. The A/C was set to arctic, so I cooled down a degree even though my heart just would not stop knocking. I didn’t want to let him down. And even more, I wanted this challenge for myself.
When I came out, Jacob was just shrugging into a black t-shirt. I caught a flash of his bare back, vampire in its hue. Flanked by surprisingly toned latissimus dorsi muscles, the arrow line of his spine led straight down…
He turned. “Ready?”
“Oh yeah,” I answered, trying to act casual.
We talked as we walked what had to have been a couple miles via inter-hotel-connected hallways and bridges with a freaking shopping mall in between. He asked how my art class at ASU was going, and I got out my phone to show him some of the gaming designs I’d been working on. I asked him how his family was doing. Over the last few months, I’d heard piecemeal about his older sister who’d gone into law, like his dad, and his mom who’d retired from HR to work on her first novel. Something about these people I’d never met seemed so…enticing. Sometimes I teased Jacob about how he’d fallen so far from their American-pie apple tree.
Finally, we circled a giant fountain to come to a monolith of a hotel with giant Roman-styled gods guarding the massive doorway.
My moths sensed the beat from outside. The venue was on an upper floor, so the line to get in went up a series of offline escalators packed with people. Some girls were dressed to the nines in tiny skirts and sky-high heels. Others wore jeans and t-shirts.
