Beth Ciotta: Evie Ever After

I slept for four hours.

“For how long?” Nic asked.

“Four hours.”

“What?”

Ouch. Okay. Maybe it was a bad idea calling a night owl at the crack of dawn.

“You’re only going to be home for four freaking hours?”

“What? No. I slept for four hours.” Thanks to a recurring nightmare. A mish mosh of memories stemming from my first mission with Arch. A mission I’d bungled. As a result a man was dead. A bad man, but dead is dead. I worked my tight jaw and stirred sweetener into my nuked tea. “This conversation isn’t going well. Maybe I should call back later.”

“Screw that. I’m coming over.”

“Now?”

“If Arch is there, boot him out. I want some private time.”

“He isn’t here.”

“Is he still in the picture?

“Yes.”

“Beckett?”

I flashed on the kissing incident, something Nic knew about because she’d flown to Indiana thinking I was having some sort of meltdown and ended up participating in the takedown of the man scamming my mom. Her dealings with Arch and Beckett had been tense. Even so, I suspected she was attracted to the latter, which was why I was doubly embarrassed that I’d told her about the spontaneous lip-lock. “Just friends,” I said. “Coworkers.”

“Uh-huh.”

Okay. So admitting to her that I was a little confused about my feelings for Beckett had been a mistake. I just should have scribbled my worries in my journal.

Oh, wait. I did.

“Nic—”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

“I’ll call Jayne.” What the heck? Arch had given me permission to tell them about Chameleon. No time like the present.

“Hold off on that, Evie.”

“Why?”

“Jayne’s been…weird.”

“More weird than usual?”

“Tell you when I see you.”

“But—”

She’d already signed off. Great. Leave me in suspense why don’t you?

I didn’t have time to shower and dress, so Nic was going to have to take me as is. Striped lounge pants, Star Wars T-shirt, fuzzy purple slippers. Trust me, she’d seen me in goofier getups. The mad scientist I’d once portrayed for an electronics sweepstakes came to mind. Oh, and the time I appeared as a mermaid, which would’ve been sexy except for the lobster on my head. Not a live one, of course, but still. Larry was his name. Larry the Lobster. These days he resides in a plastic chest of drawers along with a gazillion other props. Sherlock Holmes pipe and hat. Minnie Mouse ears and gloves. Clown nose, cigarette holder, flapper headband, pom-poms…

I plopped on my boring gray sofa and sipped my Earl Grey tea. I contemplated ditching those props to make room for, I don’t know, something useful? I also thought about the various costumes, wigs, and accessories crowding my closet. A glitz and goof collection I no longer needed since I had retired (not entirely of my own choice) from entertainment.

Making a living on stage had never been easy, but I’d survived and even thrived at times for more than twenty years. But then the gigs were fewer and farther between and it only got worse. I learned I wasn’t even being considered. “They’re looking for someone younger.”

Ouch.

Still, I persevered. Until that fateful day when I flashed my breasts. A moment of righteous defiance. So unlike good-girl me. But I was desperate. Standing on that casino stage, auditioning for a gig I was more than qualified for, being ignored simply based on my age, I saw my good-girl life flash before my eyes. I envisioned someone shoveling dirt over my career. My personal life was already six feet under. Losing my husband to a twentysomething hard-body was bad enough, but being robbed of my livelihood, my passion, simply because I’d had the nerve to turn forty?

That’s when I snapped. That’s when my inner bad girl came to my rescue and told those baby-faced executives what I really thought about their obsession with youth over talent. Okay. So maybe I torpedoed what was left of my entertainment career, but I unwittingly blew open the door to a new and exciting profession in fighting crime. The transition had been swift and adrenaline-charged, the stuff romantic action-packed movies are made of…only this was real life. My life.

And I was about to tell all to Nic, who only knew a little, but way more than Jayne.

As promised she showed within twenty minutes with—bonus—two mambo cups of Dunkin’ Donuts java. Way better than Earl Grey. “How do you do it?” I asked as she passed me a cup and lounged on the sofa.

“Do what?”

“Primp, dress, make a pit stop for coffee, and drive here in under half an hour?”

“It’s not like I live in another town.”

“No, but…Never mind.” I curled into the opposite corner of the sofa, trying to think of a time when I’d seen Nic look anything short of fabulous. I couldn’t. She was one of those natural exotic beauties—kind of like Halle Berry only with Penélope Cruz hair. A head-turner I’d love to hate but couldn’t because underneath her lithe beauty and cynical personality, Nic was a marshmallow. Not that I’d ever said that to her face. Even though we were polar opposites we had an understanding. She was she and I was me and Jayne was, well, a whack-a-doodle.

“So what’s going on with you?” Blunt. Typical Nic.

“I’ll fill you in. But first, tell me what’s up with Jayne.” Evasive. Typical me.

“When’s the last time you spoke to her?”

“Yesterday. Briefly. I feel bad now. I blew her off. But at the time I needed to be pumped up and she was a total buzz kill.”

“She’s been a neurotic spaz for weeks. That’s why I didn’t want to invite her over this morning. I wanted to give you a heads-up before you told her something that might send her into a tailspin. She still thinks you’ve been hired to sing at the Chameleon Club—period. She doesn’t know about the undercover work with Arch and Beckett.”

And Nic didn’t know Arch and Beckett worked undercover for the government. Yet.

“Jayne’s convinced your fate is at risk,” Nic continued. “Karmic payback for something she screwed up in a past life.”

“That sounds like Madame Helene talking.” Jayne’s crystal gazing, star-reading psychic. Nic and I had tagged along once and had both decided she was full of hooey. She was also a name-dropper, a favored psychic of B-headliner celebrities, and local hotshot execs—or so she claimed. Call me a nonbeliever. Pegging the psychic as a fake had only hurt Jayne’s feelings and since then we’d kept our opinions of Madame Helene to ourselves. Well, at least I had.

Exasperated, Nic twisted her thick, long hair into a makeshift bun. “That manipulative phony has Jayne wrapped around her cosmic-ringed fingers. I shudder to think what kind of money our friend has shelled out in an effort to predict the future. Her bimonthly visits are now up to once a week, not including phone calls.”

My stomach turned. “I had no idea.”

“That’s because you haven’t been around much lately.” She winced. “Sorry. That was harsh.”

I forced a smile. “Harsh, but true.” I’d cruised the Caribbean then flown off to London, then, after only being home a couple of days, jetted to Indiana. Granted, I’d been working, but I’d also been having a pulse-tripping adventure and whirlwind affair. My life was on the upswing whereas Jayne’s was spiraling out of control. Chagrined, I palmed my heated cheeks. “I’ve been so self-absorbed, I didn’t realize…”

Nic waved off my apology. “Forget it. You’ve been on your own emotional roller coaster. It’s just that the past few days…I think it’s time to step in, Evie.”

“What, like an intervention?”

“Someone has to be the voice of reason and it’s not Madame Helene. We have to cure Jayne of this obsession. Sure, she’s always had a new age spirit, and we’ve always supported that because, hey, to each his own. But now it’s escalated into something scary. I’m worried about her. Financially and emotionally.”