Free Epic by Ginger Voight Page A

label that could rival Graham was Jasper Carrington. I already knew what kind of crook he was thanks to Vanni’s experiences with him. I immediately texted him to let him know what was going on, but I knew that he was balls deep in the next season of Fierce. He had other priorities.
    I thought about texting Graham, but there was no way Coy would ever take any advice from him, despite Graham’s reputation to be honest and fair with his clientele.
    All Jasper could promise was a lot of muscle behind her name, but I suspected that could come at a cost.
    Maybe it was time for me to head east and visit Corey, to dig a little deeper through Iris’s connections.
    If Jace could hear my thoughts he would have called me a white knight with that teasing grin of his. Then he would gently remind me that it was not my job to fix the world. “In the end,” he’d say, “you can only fix Jordi.”
    But what if fixing things for Shelby and for Maya was exactly how to fix me?
    If I even knew who I was anymore. I fluctuated somewhere between Jordi, a rising superstar, and Jordana, an orphan who just realized that the only family she had left in the world was in such desperate need.
    I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do something.
    Without reading Griffin’s email, I closed my laptop and headed out to see Catastrophe Rising.
    The venue was small, in a seedier part of town. There was no sign to let me know I found the right place. The only indicator I had to go by were all the groupies milling around the front door, smoking their cigarettes, and other things, as they talked about the bands playing that night.
    Fortunately the gig was 18+, or else I would have never gotten past the bouncer, a fine gentleman that likely moonlighted as a Hell’s Angel. He stamped my hand to indicate I was underage before grunting that I should move along out of his way.
    I was only too happy to do so.
    The venue was essentially a dive bar. There was a dinky stage, an even more constricted dance floor and a bar that served the basics. I ordered a soft drink before slinking away to a dark table in the corner.
    More patrons entered the bar, and some even sat with me at my table. They didn’t bother introducing themselves, and frankly neither did I. I was invisible in the inky darkness just beyond the stage. I sipped my drink slowly as I waited for Diego’s band to play.
    They were second in the lineup, warming the crowd up for the headline act. None of the bands I knew, nor the music, but they were surprising well prepared for a live audience. I was even more impressed with Catastrophe Rising, whose anarchist lyrics and hard, driving guitar licks immediately got the fans on their feet, milling around the stage.
    All of the band members looked like Diego. They were heavy metal Goth with a chip on their collective shoulders. It was hard to distinguish one or the other, but quite honestly I didn’t even try. I was too focused on Diego, who communicated his particular brand of angst through the music, using his guitar to keep anyone who could hurt him safely at arm’s length.
    It reminded me of how I felt behind a microphone. There was a fearlessness to him, one of pure self-expression. He didn’t sing much, he didn’t really talk much. Instead, the guitar spoke for him. I watched his fingers move across the fret board in a blur during his solo. The girls all went crazy for him though he barely paid them any attention at all.
    He was a good looking kid, but more than that he was the sensitive bad boy hidden inside a hard rocking exterior. How strange it was staring into his face and seeing a popular, more talented, better looking version of myself in a whole other gender. Even stranger, he shared some of my mannerisms. Had I not known who he was, I likely would have been able to figure it out, just by watching him play.
    The only time he even realized that there was an audience in front of him was at the end, when they all took their bow. His eyes fell on my