‘Is my name being taken in vain?’ Luthor asked, appearing at the top of the entry steps. ‘Jeez, it smells like a zombie’s armpit in here. Looks like one too. Gross.’
‘It looked even worse ten minutes ago. Where did you disappear to?’ Xane scrubbed the last bit of ketchup from one cupboard front.
‘Graham collared me. I’m afraid you’re all stuck with me now. He insisted I sign a contract on the still warm bonnet of the taxi or he wasn’t letting me within two hundred yards of you.’
‘He better not have screwed you over.’
Rock Giant scratched his chin. ‘I’m astonished he hasn’t insisted on a full psych-evaluation.’
‘Would I be expected to pass or fail that?’ Luthor asked brightly.
‘Good point. Black Halo does consist of a bunch of screw-ups,’ Xane remarked. There was no sense in pretending otherwise.
Rock Giant scowled. ‘Speak for yourself. I’ve never had to check myself into rehab.’
Xane rolled his eyes.
‘Fine, you’re totally balanced, but the rest of us …’ He shook his head. ‘Ash is screwed up.’ There was no contesting that, seeing how he was currently occupying a hospital bed. ‘Elspeth is completely batshit crazy. I mean, she was before all the stuff with Steve happened. I don’t think I need to remind you she has a shrine in the back of this bus. And I freely admit to being a deranged, sex-addicted devil-worshipper.’
Both Luthor and Rock Giant sighed and chuckled.
‘The first two are true,’ Rock Giant agreed. ‘But you must have been praising Satan awful quietly, given the amount of shit that keeps being heaped on you. I thought the point of selling your soul was it reaped you major benefits and a platinum “Get out of jail free” card.’
‘I’m alive, aren’t I?’
‘Apparently so. Hey, you missed a bit, near the handle.’
‘Spook’s not screwed up,’ Luthor muttered, his brow wrinkled in thought as he wrestled a bucket and scouring pad out of the cupboard.
Xane and Rock Giant both buckled over with laughter.
‘Why’s that funny? The guy’s totally together.’
‘Spook’s the biggest fuck-up of us all,’ Xane wheezed. Dammit, he needed a good laugh, even if it hurt like hell.
‘True … totally true,’ Rock Giant added. He levelled his gaze at Luthor. ‘Come on, there’s nothing sane about taking a vow of chastity. What sort of psycho does that?’
‘Yeah, but that’s just hearsay, isn’t it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Cross my heart.’ Rock Giant made the sign across his chest. ‘Spook is unequivocally weird. I mean, he doesn’t even masturbate. How disturbed is that?’
Xane nodded in agreement.
‘There’s a reason, though. I mean, he didn’t just decide to go without for no reason.’
‘Reasons smeasons,’ Rock Giant said.
Xane fell quiet and busied himself by squirting the next set of surfaces with spray cleaner. Sure Spook had his reasons. He wasn’t about to go into them. He might not be very good at keeping his cock in his pants, but he was a superb secret keeper. If he was told something that wasn’t meant for other ears, he was never the one to spill the beans.
Dammit! He knelt in a puddle of them, the nasty fart inducers, so he was forced to use the cleaning cloth on himself.
They fell into silence as they worked. Xane watched Luthor from the corner of his eye. Spook’s vow of abstinence predated the band, but curiously none of them had ever really questioned it, or, if they had asked why, they’d been content with an answer that told them nothing. If Luthor was actually going to dig, things might get awkward.
‘Why are you interested in Spook?’ he asked.
‘I’m not specifically.’ Luthor snapped on a pair of yellow Marigolds before dunking his hand in the bucketful of water to start mopping the more gruesome areas. ‘I just thought it was a band secret, and I might get initiated into the inner circle now I’m a fully signed member.’
‘He’s just weird,’ Rock Giant replied, saving Xane the necessity of concocting an answer that didn’t require him to lie. ‘That and someone needs to act as a counterbalance to Mr Geist here.’
‘I don’t think there’s an actual limit to how much sex the band can have overall,’ Xane said.
‘Isn’t there?’
‘Why are we doing the clean-up?’ Luthor asked. ‘Can’t you get the roadies to do it, or a professional cleaning company?’
It seemed their new recruit was keen to leave his schlepping, dogsbody days behind him.
‘The roadies are busy sorting the gear and making sure it all gets shipped back to England, and we’re not going to find a professional cleaning company at zero notice.’ Leastways, not one that wouldn’t photograph every inch of the damage and start a black-market sale of their broken possessions. ‘Besides, what else are we going to do with our time?’
Luthor scratched his head, where a line of the blond strands had been shaved away and numerous steri-strips were now stuck over a gash in his scalp. ‘I can think of a few things.’
‘You’re worse than he is, if you can look at the state of this place and get a hard-on.’ Rock Giant looked at Luthor, and then squared his attention on Xane. ‘I’m going to start on the back room.’
‘Have fun …’
‘But not too much fun …’
Luthor straightened up from his scrubbing task. ‘I thought you’d have gone straight to see Dani.’
‘I’m not entirely sure where she is. Hopefully on her way here if my message to her got through.’
‘Does that make this a good time to talk?’
‘About what?’
‘Us.’ Luthor removed the gloves and hung them over the edge of the bucket.
‘What do we need to say? Everything’s sorted out.’ Tension brewed in his veins as Luthor turned his hypnotic mismatched eyes upon him.
‘Is it? I’m not sure that’s true.’
‘Dani agreed it’s OK, we can …’ She’d watched them make love, got turned on by it, agreed that him wanting Luthor in addition to her didn’t have to be a problem.
‘We can what, Xane? Shag one another senseless while she watches? That’s not really what I want out of this.’ He pointed to Xane and then himself. ‘I don’t think it’s what you want either. For starters, it means I can’t do this unless she’s standing right here.’ He slid one hand around the back of Xane’s neck and drew him forward into a kiss. A kiss that Xane more than welcomed. He opened his mouth to it and groaned in pleasure as their tongues clashed and he wrapped his arms around Luthor’s back.
However, Luthor was right: it technically wasn’t permitted. They were no freer to do this now than he’d been a little over a day ago. Though really, where was the harm in it? It was only a kiss. It wasn’t as if they were about to hump one another blind amid the detritus with Rock Giant watching them from the bedroom. He didn’t doubt that the big guy was doing exactly that. Rock Giant liked to prove his heterosexuality by watching guys make out and then proclaiming the