Free Killer Riff by Sheryl J. Anderson Page B

going to pry.”
    “ You said we weren’t,” Tricia corrected.
    “What’s there to pry about?” I asked, slipping into a black tiered jersey skirt.
    “The next time you and Kyle are getting together,” Cassady said, stretching out on the bed, hands behind her head, ankles crossed carefully beside, not on, my pile of potential outfits.
    Tricia stretched out beside her, mimicking her pose. “And any relevant details.”
    “I’d love to share, but I have work to do,” I said, starting to pull on a teal boatneck blouse.
    “Not in that, you don’t,” Tricia said, sitting back up with a disgusting lack of effort, pulling the blouse out of my hands, and floating back down.
    “Kyle and I are talking again. Isn’t that enough for the moment?” I asked.
    “Is it?” Cassady asked. “Try the peach one.”
    I obediently picked up the peach blouse and slid into the crisp cotton while I tried to decide if the fact that Kyle and I were talking again was enough. Much as I missed him, I was acutely aware of the fact that we hadn’t addressed our problem, much less fixed it, so the slower we took things, the better our odds of successfully getting back together. I was also acutely aware that such intellectual sandbagging could hold back the emotional floodwaters for only so long. Especially when I could still feel my lips humming from his kiss.
    “It’s not enough. I can tell,” Tricia said with authority.
    “How?” I asked.
    “You’re buttoning your blouse wrong.”
    I persuaded my friends to table the discussion about Kyle, since it was making me increasingly nervous, so I could concentrate on my approach for the concert, not that it was anxiety-free. This would be an ideal opportunity to get a feel for the dynamics of the inner circle and see if any of the rest of them were supporters of the theory that Russell had died by someone else’s hand. Not that I was planning on using the question as an icebreaker, but I hoped I’d be able to pick up some undercurrent along the way.
    I needn’t have worried.
    Walking up to the entrance of Mars Hall, I took in the throng of fans waiting to get in and allowed myself a moment’s thrill at being on the right side of the velvet rope for a change. I knew that the few people who even noticed me were more inclined to be thinking “I wonder who she thinks she is” than “I wonder who she is,” but it was still cool to walk up to the heavily muscled gentleman girded with the all-powerful clipboard and say, “Hi, I’m a guest of Claire Crowley. Molly Forrester.”
    My head barely came up to his mammoth shoulder, even though Cassady had persuaded me to wear my four-inch Max Studio black ankle straps with the little satin bows, mainly because Tricia had talked me out of the jersey skirt and into the one leather skirt I own, given to me by a former fashion editor at the magazine because I’d let her niece interview me for a school project. It was a tad shorter than I was used to, but I had vowed not to tug on it once during the course of the evening.
    The doorman looked down at me with a frown. “Holly who?”
    I repeated my name for him, my buzz from being on the right side of the rope quickly dissipating as the first few people in line snickered with each other, figuring I was trying to bluff my way inside. Had Claire changed her mind or just forgotten? What was the most polite way to proceed with a guy who had no doubt heard many more inventive reasons why “no, really, my name should be on the list” than I could possibly come up with in the ninety seconds I had left before he got impatient with me? He was at least polite enough to look at the list again, but he was shaking his head as a voice said, “It’s cool, she’s with me.”
    It was a beautiful voice, low and resonant, and its owner was pretty hot, too. It took me a moment to recognize him because he was wearing his black hair shorter, the curls cropped into waves, and his face was a little thinner, his