“I don’t need the details,” I interrupted. “Can’t you just take her instead of me? Cody was starting to get into this idea…he’ll be really down if it gets canceled.”

“No need to cancel. Just go without me. I couldn’t bring her instead of you—Cody needs you.”

I groaned. “Yeah, but the safety of a group is gone, and I become the third wheel.”

“Find someone else to go, then.”

It was then that Maddie appeared beside her brother. She was relieving him for the next shift. “Go where?”

My next words made me cringe, but I did not want to go alone with Cody and Gabrielle. “Do you want to go to a, um, metal concert tonight?” At least having another woman along would kill the double date insinuations.

This clearly wasn’t an invite that she’d been expecting. “Well…I would, except I’ve got to close, and then I’m supposed to meet a friend.” I had serious doubts about the “I would” part and this so-called friend. Metal was not Maddie’s scene. She suddenly brightened. “You know what? You should bring Seth.”

“I…what?” I asked.

“Mortensen?” asked Doug, sounding as baffled as me.

“I don’t think that’s his thing,” I said uneasily. I knew for a fact it wasn’t.

“Yeah,” agreed Doug. “Probably not a good idea.”

I hid a frown at Doug’s words. With as much as he wanted to get out of this and see his smokin’ woman, I figured he’d be willing to push anyone off on me.

Maddie was oblivious. “No, really. He’s been cooped up for weeks with the book, and I think it’d be good for him to go out. I think the wedding stuff is stressing him out.”

Yeah, that made two of us. “Oh, I don’t want to, um, push him outside of his comfort zone,” I said lamely.

She laughed. “Like I said, it’d be good for him. I’ll go ask him now.”

She was gone before either Doug or I could protest. Several moments of silence hung between us. “Well,” he said at last. “She can talk him into almost anything. I guess you’re set.”

“I guess so.” He walked off, and I found it intriguing that neither of us was excited about this prospect. It drove home the double date thing even more and also made me feel guilty about Maddie’s blind trust. On the bright side—kind of—I supposed it would take some balls for Simone to crash the concert and continue her “seduction” of Seth.

As Doug had predicted, Maddie did indeed convince Seth to go. It was a late show, and the four of us had agreed to meet outside the club around 10:30 so that I could distribute our tickets. Once we were all there, I glanced at the three faces before me, trying to decide whether it was all comical or pathetic. Seth was doing the averting-his-eyes thing, clearly uncomfortable that Maddie had pushed him into this. Cody was paler than usual for a vampire and looked ready to bolt at any moment. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if both men teamed up to formulate an escape plan. Gabrielle was the only one who looked excited to be there, her eyes alight and eager.

She was also the only one really dressed for the scene, all in black, with her hair spiked up and makeup done to dramatic levels. Cody and Seth wore their usual street clothes, and I’d dressed somewhere in the middle: black jeans and a black bustier top, adorned with heavy silver jewelry. It was clearly too designer for this place, however.

“Thanks so much for letting me come along with you guys,” she said. “I didn’t know any of you liked Blue Satin Bra.”

“What’s not to like?” asked Seth, face innocent.

I kept my eyes away from him because I had a feeling I’d start grinning. I handed out the tickets, and we headed inside, surrounded by a crowd that I decided I’d want on my side if I was ever in a street brawl.

We managed to snag a high-top table in the back. It meant standing the whole time, but at least we had a surface to put our glasses on. “Offer to buy her a drink,” I hissed to Cody. The nice thing about playing Cyrano to a vampire was that his enhanced hearing meant I could keep my voice far below levels that Gabrielle could pick up. The noise in the room—even before the band started—also furthered the covert nature of all this.

Cody dutifully obeyed, and when Gabrielle started to dig out cash, he assured her the first round was on him. The smile she gave him seemed to boost his confidence as he headed off.

Seth leaned toward my ear. He stood on the opposite side of me from Gabrielle, and she was too entranced by the sights to even notice us. “This might be crazy enough to work,” he murmured.

“Don’t get carried away,” I responded back, trying not to think of his proximity. “The night is young. Any number of wacky mishaps might ensue.”

He smiled. “Those are your specialty, aren’t they?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Cody returned with the drinks, earning more approval from Gabrielle. She wasn’t showing any romantic attraction to him whatsoever, but at least she knew he was alive. While I still stood firm that he shouldn’t overdo the vampire/Goth thing, I realized we were going to have to work hard to get past the “ordinary” facade she saw.

“Talk to her,” I told him. He’d slipped back to his place between me and Gabrielle. “Once they start, it’s probably going to be impossible.”

“What do I say?”

Seth, overhearing, leaned across me, and I wished I’d covered up more skin. His arm brushing up against me sent thrills through my body.

“Ask her if she’s ever seen them live before,” Seth said. “If she says no, tell her about this one time you saw them at…I don’t know. A private party. If she says yes, ask her what she thought.”

Cody gave an uneasy nod. He leaned toward her, and while I only caught bits and pieces of the conversation, she grew animated as she spoke. I leaned back to Seth.

“When did you become an expert in dating advice?” I asked incredulously.

“It’s what O’Neill would do.”

I scoffed. “You’re using fiction to further Cody’s love life?”

“Life imitates art, and art imitates life.”

“That statement is ridiculous. And, you know, I’ve never really seen you utilize that advice.”

“Well, that’s O’Neill’s advice. I have lots of characters I can draw from.”

“Funny, I don’t remember any introverted, stammering writers in your books.”

“I don’t stammer,” he said defensively—though there was a smile under his words. “Besides, maybe there’ll be someone like that in the new series.”

“Ooh,” I said, mocking his melodrama. “What’s with the ‘maybe’? I thought you had the premise for this whole fantastic new thing figured out.”

“I do. But it can always be improved along the way.”

“Introvert authors improve everything.”

“Damn straight.”

Laughing, I remembered that I should have been helping Cody, but he was talking to Gabrielle on his own, which I took as a positive sign. I turned back to Seth. “So does this mean you’ve figured out the ending to Cady and O’Neill?”

“No.” He still held his good humor, despite a small frown on his brow. “One of these days, I’ll have to—”

His words were cut off when the eardrum-splitting screech of a guitar ripped through the room. Blue Satin Bra had come onstage while I was talking (flirting?) with Seth. I hated stereotypes, but truthfully: they looked like what you’d expect from an all-guy metal band. Black clothing, piercings, and hair that ran in extremes: shaved or super long. The one thing that differentiated them was, well, the fact that they were wearing blue satin demi bras over their clothes.

Even above the deafening music that followed, I could hear Gabrielle shrieking, “Oh my God!” Her face was ecstatic, and when Cody said something to her, she lit up further and nodded eagerly at the band. My guess was—whether it was true or not—he was reaffirming how awesome they were.

The music forced Seth and me to lean close in order to talk. “You know,” he said, “I’m pretty sure the bass player stuffed his bra.”