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  “Why a plain Jane? You don't think I could get a trophy wife?”

  A smiled pulled at the corners of her lips. “You have to have something to offer first. Number one, I know you don't have money. And number two, you're apparently sterile.” She took a sip of the tequila, then sucked on the lime slice. “You're gonna half to work pretty hard on the whole good looks and charm thing. Well, at least on the good looks if there's any left after all the hard living.”

  He leaned close and grinned. “Wow, I didn't know you were a mean drunk.”

  She stared at him from under heavy lids. “Hey, I'm just getting started.”

  “Then I think I'm going to tell the barkeep to cut you off.”

  Seffy drained the glass. “Butt out. Seriously.”

  “I'm telling you, Sef, this place is going to get wild, and there are guys on the prowl looking for drunk girls.”

  “And you'll probably be leading the pack.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I'm talking about guys who will rape you if they get the chance.”

  Seffy motioned for another shot, thankful the alcohol blurred the edges of her memories. “Been there, done that.”

  Trent lowered his voice, his eyes wide. “God, are you serious?”

  Seffy rubbed her face, suddenly feeling sleepy. “It was more of a professional thing, you know. I go to try out for a role, the next thing I know the director has me up against a wall, literally.” She gave a humorless laugh. “The first time was a shock, I'll grant you that. But I thought, maybe it'll be okay if I get the gig.” She gazed into the bottom of her shot glass. “I didn't.”

  When he didn't respond right away, she glanced up at him, but couldn't discern his expression. She turned to her fresh shot glass. “You think I would've been prepared the second time it happened. Different director, mind you.”

  He swallowed. “Why didn't you call the police? Press charges? You can't let people get away with that.”

  “What, and ruin my non-existent career?” She leaned her head in one hand, perversely angry with Trent for making her depressed. This time, she knocked the shot back in one gulp. After four...okay five, she'd stop. Maybe then the dark shadowy things in her brain would slither back into their black holes and leave her alone. “One more, please.”

  “Seffy,” he said softly, touching her arm. “Let's leave.”

  She turned her head slightly and stared at him with bleary eyes. “And do what? Sit in that dank little room and wait for Judgment Day?”

  “We could talk. About other things.”

  She shook her head, pulling her small glass close, delivered by the accommodating bartender. Seffy pointed to it. “Don't worry,” she lied, “this is my last one.”

  He finished his beer without saying another word.

  Chapter Nine

  That fourth shot was a lulu. Seffy giggled to herself and tacked her way to the bathroom, struggling to avoid careening into every single person she passed. The din was deafening. It seemed like a Friday night crowd, all right. Even the line to the bathroom bore testimony to that fact.

  Afterward, she headed back to Trent even though he wasn't much fun to be with lately, acting more like a nervous mother than the party boy he claimed to be.

  “Seffy?”

  Seffy twisted in the crowd, wondering if she'd imagined the strangled word.

  “Omigod, is that you?”

  “Shhh! There's no way it's her. You know it can't be her. Let's go.”

  Seffy finally located two twenty-something girls staring at her with huge eyes. She blinked to clear her vision, but couldn't say she recognized them.

  “Look at the hair, okay? The face just kinda looks like her. Now let's go.” The pair lurched off into the crowd.

  The lights over the dance floor began to pulsate and flash. Squealing audio feedback split the air, making everyone turn like a school of fish toward the stage. Seffy edged away from the strange girls and moved in the general direction of the stage. Suddenly an announcement sounded over the speakers by the bar's DJ.

  “Welcome to 80s night!”

  The patrons hollered and clapped and whistled, while Seffy groaned. Would she ever escape the 80s? In the next moment, some vaguely familiar pop song rocked the place, lending an odd counterpoint to the direction of her steps. She looked over the heads of the dancing horde but couldn't see Trent. No doubt he was getting huffy by the bar.

  “Hey, baby, wanna dance?”

  Seffy looked up and saw the guy from Carney's. She laughed in delight, her gloom vanishing in an instant. “Hell yeah, I wanna dance!”

  He grinned and grabbed her hand, leading her into the thick of the crowd. Soon she was gyrating her worries away. Seffy got lost in the music and the movement of her body. With her hair so short and her bloodstream fortified with alcohol, she felt weightless and graceful. When the song ended and another started, she tried to recapture the feeling but an off note of loneliness eclipsed her buzz. She reached out for her dance partner, craving the contact of a warm human being.

  He eluded her touch and threw his hands in the air. “Oh, I love this song!” He began to sing along in a strong baritone that actually complemented the song's female vocalist.

  “Should we get another try? What got us to this happenstance?

  We weren't that uptight, should we even get this chance?

  Someone up above wants us to sing,

  now our mismatched hearts will beat in time,

  We're presented with a little more time as fate would decree.”

  “Wow, you sing great!” Seffy said, wishing it was a slow dance. Would it be skanky to ask him to put his arms around her?

  But he was just getting started.

  “It's more than an odd coincidence,

  saying the future can be put on hold,

  saying I should take this second chance.

  Existence is meaningless

  if I don't have your love,

  because this is what I've discovered

  now that you're around.”

  Seffy tried not to be embarrassed about her partner's obvious obsession with singing as loudly as he could. She looked around to see if anyone noticed, but the jumble of arms, torsos, and heads bobbing around made it hard to tell. She was having a hard enough time just staying upright.

  Seffy looked for Trent, wondering if he could see her in the crowd. Suddenly through a gap in the crowd, she caught his eye, and his expression was furious. She grimaced. As if she needed his glowering face added to her own creeping depression. Maybe she should give him something to really frown about. Seffy grabbed her partner's waist and shimmied up against him, watching Trent's face for his reaction. Her partner didn't seem to notice as he was still singing.

  “I don't get what's happening

  when I got up, the pain subsided

  I'm back in the game again with you.”

  Trent began heading her way as the song ended.

  Her partner suddenly hugged her hard. “Oh my God, that was so awesome, and I think you made my boyfriend totally jealous!”

  Seffy opened her mouth, then closed it. Oh, yay. So much for her conquest. She smiled wanly at her partner, who was already moving to the next song, Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto.

  Someone grabbed her hand. Seffy looked up to find Trent's steely gaze boring into hers.

  “We're leaving now.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe I'm tired of watching you get your freak on, that's why!”

  He tugged on her fingers and she was too sloppy to resist. Ignoring the stifled oaths and exclamations of dancers in their path, Trent pushed his way toward the door. Seffy looked around, saying a silent goodbye to her fun night. It had been all too brief.

  A face in the crowd snagged her attention. She stopped cold and stared, suddenly more sober than she ever wanted to be. Popov stood five feet away from her, in his greasy coveralls, with what was left of his head pumping brownish blood into his eyes and down his face.

  Seffy scream
ed.

  Trent jerked when Seffy dug in her heels. Who the hell was screaming? When he turned, he saw her eyes wide and hollow, her mouth open, veins standing out in her throat and forehead. Her screams blended with the music. No one paid much attention. Not at first. But as she continued screaming at some unseen terror, one by one, those closest stopped to stare.

  She's finally lost it. “Seffy,” he implored, pulling on her hand.

  Her singing partner, who'd followed, grimaced. “Dude, your ex is a total psycho. Make her stop.”

  Realizing she was in some horrific world of her own making, Trent grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off her feet. Still her screams continued. Wild, lunatic screams that filled him with dread. A few drinks just weren't enough to induce delirium tremens in an occasional imbiber. Suddenly, the sound of a shotgun blast shredded the air. Shattered glass sprayed out from a wall into the crowd. Everyone ducked and started screaming, drowning out Seffy.

  She began to squirm in his arms as if to escape. He gripped her tighter and rushed from the bar, hearing another shotgun blast. What the hell was going on? As soon as they burst out onto the sidewalk in front of the bar, she wriggled free. Her shrieks turned to sobs as she stumbled and fell onto her hands and knees.

  “C'mon, Sef, we have to get out of here! There's some crazy shooting up the bar!”

  Seffy avoided his grasp and turned over to sit in the middle of the sidewalk. She saw a hole in the knee of her track suit and began to cry. People began streaming from the bar as pandemonium erupted. Several tripped over Seffy's prone form in their haste. Trent scooped her up and ran as fast as he could toward the nearest cab.

  He dumped her into the back seat and yelled at the cab driver to get them out of there. He peered out the back window as the car peeled away from the curb. At least a hundred people poured out of the bar like bats from hell. As the scene receded in the distance, Trent saw a man walk out and stop on the sidewalk, looking up and down the street.

  He held a shotgun in his hands.

  Chapter Ten

  Seffy woke up with a great weight across her ribs. And along with returning consciousness came a thundering headache—the kind that came with a leetle too much fun. She stifled a groan and shifted to dislodge whatever weight had her pinned. Then it moved and grabbed her tighter.

  What the—?

  She peered down and saw an arm clasped over her waist. She became aware of someone breathing down her neck—literally. Seffy realized she was on the narrow little bed in the dingy little room, and someone was on the bed with her. She assumed it was Trent but after last night, she couldn't swear to it—or remember much of anything at all. The fact that she was fully clothed on top of the covers went a long way to reassure her that he was merely hanging on to her for support, and since she was nearly falling off her own side, she appreciated the ballast.

  Gingerly lifting his hand, Seffy eased out from under his arm, amazed it was so heavy. When she was free, she attended to her most pressing needs in the bathroom, glad that throwing up wasn't one of them. After drinking approximately one gallon of tap water with her cupped hands, she emerged from the bathroom to see a loaf of white bread on the desk.

  She could almost believe Trent didn't despise her when thoughts of hangover management was uppermost in his mind. Keeping one eye on her sleeping benefactor, Seffy opened the bag and ate two pieces of bread with single-minded intensity. She found a cup and a bottle of acetaminophen in the plastic shopping bag next to the bread, along with some snacks and a newspaper. She figured that between the tequila-soaked lime only a few hours before, combined with the bread, she'd very nearly had a balanced breakfast. Add a couple of pain pills and she was almost human.

  She looked down at her clothes and saw they were a mess. “Damn,” she said quietly, spying the gaping hole in the knee of her velour pants. After a proper period of mourning, Seffy retrieved her other new suit and took a quick shower. When she came out of the bathroom, she finger-fluffed her hair and ate another piece of bread. Trent was still dead to the world.

  Seffy idly wondered when he had procured the provisions. She seemed to remember rushing from the club and getting to the room after a panicked cab ride, so she figured he'd gone some time earlier this morning. She glanced at her watch. Nine a.m. He would've had plenty of time to leave and come back, and she was eternally grateful that he had.

  As her nausea eased, some memories returned. Make that despair. Now that she thought about it, last night had been pretty bad. Planting herself in the only chair, Seffy leaned back and watched Trent sleep. While she was pretty sure she'd behaved badly the night before, he mustn't be too upset if he'd gone to the store on her behalf. Except that she remembered he had been upset. And worried. What would he have to worry about? And why did it matter?

  He was just a hanger-on.

  She decided not to wake him up. Their task was accomplished and they had a whole day to kill, and part of one tomorrow—at least until two p.m. In that time perhaps she could shake the dark feelings dogging her. Seffy got up and grabbed the newspaper. She couldn't ever remember actually reading one outside of industry periodicals like Variety, but it was either that or get caught staring when Trent finally awoke.

  She flipped past the usual headlines of wildfires and middle east troubles, past the unbelievably boring sports pages and weather pages, and looked for the entertainment section. Gossip and comics would round out her morning nicely. Seffy skimmed the local headlines first, noticing that much of the news seemed familiar; another drug overdose, casting calls, Screen Actors Guild strike threat. Did events happen the same in a parallel universe? She still wasn't totally convinced of Trent's claim, but couldn't explain Bruno not recognizing her or why someone else lived in her house.

  A small headline near the bottom caught her attention: Actress's Death Ruled Accidental.

  Shooting victim's death ruled accidental by city police this week. Prevalent gang violence in the neighborhood and frequency of drive-by shootings most likely contributed to the death of the young actress who'd recently landed a small role in a sitcom on the E Network.

  Seffy frowned. How sad. The poor girl finally gets a break and some random bullet takes her out. She wondered what sitcom the article referred to. Then a name jumped from the page.

  Persephone Carter died instantly at the scene while walking down the street to meet her agent. The victim had no surviving family members and a private memorial service was held on Tuesday by close friends.

  Gripping the page until the paper slowly crumpled in her hands, Seffy stared at the article. She sucked in a deep breath when a sensation of faintness overcame her.

  I'm dead.

  Her vision dimmed and a loud buzzing sounded in her ears. She shook her head to clear it and gulped in air until she could see straight. The newspaper lay discarded and wrinkled.

  She grabbed the paper and went to Trent, shaking his shoulder hard.

  “Trent, wake up! I'm dead!”

  Seffy watched as he rolled over and slowly opened his eyes. His initial smile faded when he saw her expression. He jerked upright. “What's wrong?”

  “I read the paper,” she said in a shaking voice. “I'm dead!”

  His hair was a mess, almost as if he'd been the one partying. He rubbed his face which was lined with sleep and checked his watch. “Yeah, I bought a paper this morning at a convenience store a couple of blocks down. I wanted to see if it reported anything about what happened at the bar last night.”

  “Whatever happened last night, this is worse!” She grabbed the newspaper off the floor and shoved it at him.

  He glanced at the front page first, then moved on to the second, shaking his head. “This must've gone to press before the news came in. I bet the online version has the story.” He glanced up at her with bloodshot eyes. “You do remember last night, right?”

  Seffy took the paper from him with trembling hands and folded it to the article about her. “Who cares about the bar! Read this
!”

  She watched his gaze flicker down the page.

  His face paled as he looked up at her. “No way.”

  “I don't know how many other actresses named Persephone Carter there are. It has to be me.”

  “I still can't get over your name being Persephone.”

  “Trent.”

  He quirked his mouth and reread the article. “Okay, you said you never got an acting part. So it doesn't add up.”

  “Bruno didn't know me. My house is not my house. Isn't it possible I had a different life here?”

  He shook his head, his expression shocked. “I don't have a clue what this means.”

  “It means we have to get out of here now!” She threaded her hands into her hair. “How could I be dead?”

  “Sef, this isn't our reality. You're alive.”

  “But in this reality, I'm not.”

  He rubbed his head. “We're leaving tomorrow. You can't let this mess with you.”

  She glared at him. “Too late.”

  He opened the paper and flipped to another page. Seffy walked to the window and looked out. “God, after everything that's happened at the compound and now this, it's like death is trying to hunt me down.”

  Trent didn't answer. She pressed her head against the window frame and closed her eyes. Suddenly the long stretch of time between now and tomorrow didn't seem so exciting. It would be interminable.

  Did I bleed out on the sidewalk? What was the funeral like? Did Gareth mourn me?

  “Seffy,” Trent croaked.

  She turned to find his eyes bleak. “What?”

  “Looks like I joined Club Dead, too.” He held the paper out to her.

  Seffy walked over and took it from his hand. She scanned the article he'd pointed out. Blood drained from her face anew.

  Heroin Overdoses on the Rise, City Officials Say

  The body of another West Hollywood resident was found yesterday morning, ruled death by heroin overdose by the coroner's office, bringing the total this month to thirteen. Trent Ellison, 25, of West Hollywood, was found by police in an alley off Sunset Boulevard with a needle in his arm. A friend told police Ellison had beat a heroin addiction some time before, adding that the recent death of his girlfriend may have contributed to his relapse. A private family internment will be held July 22.