He Joined Midnight Rockers, Then Their Vampire Lord Claimed Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Come In
The Gilt Room's manager quits in front of the queue, and fan Lucas ends up running the door. Midnight Rockers offer him the job and a room in their dorm, and at the brownstone door the band will not step inside until he says the words.
Midnight Rockers' manager quit in the middle of soundcheck, in front of the whole queue.
Lucas heard it from the merch table, where he was folding the last black tour shirts into stacks of four.
The doors of the Gilt Room stood open for load-in, and the line for tonight's show ran down the block and around the corner.
"I'm done," the manager shouted at the stage. "Nine months of this. Find someone else to babysit you."
He threw the guest list on the floor and walked out through the crowd.
The pages blew across the sidewalk, and nobody went after them.
Nine hundred people had tickets, and nobody was in charge of the door.
The label rep stood by the stage with a headset on and a phone in each hand.
"Oh, no," she said, and then she said nothing else.
Lucas put down the shirt he was holding.
He had worked this merch table for two years, and he knew how the Gilt Room's doors worked better than the man who had just left.
He picked up the guest list pages one at a time, and he checked them against the order of the line.
Then he walked to the door staff and asked them to open the side entrance.
"Split the queue," he told them. "Ticket holders left, guest list right. Anyone with a VIP band goes through the side."
One of the door staff looked at the label rep.
She nodded, still holding both phones.
By the time the line moved, a hundred and fifty people had passed the barrier, and nobody had pushed.
On stage, Noah had stopped singing to watch.
He was at the microphone with his guitar hanging at his hip, and the lights made his black eyes look flat and bright.
Lucas had two of his posters on the wall at home, so he knew that face very well.
The band went back to the song, and Noah sang the wrong line in the second verse.
"Glass hours," Lucas said, too loudly, from the door. "It's glass hours, not glass flowers."
The whole stage turned toward him.
He wanted to disappear into the wall.
Noah laughed once into the microphone.
"He's right," he said. "Who's the guy at the door?"
Afterward, Lucas stood at the merch table with an empty cash box, and Noah came down the steps from the stage to find him.
Noah was taller than he looked on the posters.
Behind him came the other two, Luke with his bass strap still over his shoulder and Thomas with drumsticks in his back pocket.
"You know every word, don't you?" Noah asked.
"I've had your first EP since I was nineteen," Lucas said. "Sorry. I shouldn't have shouted."
"Don't be sorry."
Noah put his hand around Lucas's wrist, and his fingers were cold.
They did not let go.
"You're warm," Noah said quietly.
Lucas could not think of anything to say to that.
The label rep appeared at his elbow and took her headset off.
"Lucas, isn't it? I looked at the name on your merch badge. Can you start tonight?"
"Start what?"
"Managing them." She said it fast. "Nine thousand a month, a twelve thousand advance on signing, and a room in their dorm. The old manager had it, and he's gone. They need a person who stays calm."
Twelve thousand dollars was a number he looked at every night.
His phone buzzed in his back pocket, and he knew who it was before he looked.
FINAL NOTICE, the collector had written. Balance due: $61,214.
His father's hospital bills had been in his name since the funeral, and the student loans were his own.
He put the phone away and looked at the contract she was holding out.
"Where do I sign?"
Thomas let out a short laugh. "He didn't even read it."
"I read it," Lucas said. "I read it while she was talking."
He took the pen and signed on the last line.
For that moment, none of the three moved.
Noah's hand was still on his wrist, and Luke and Thomas stood very still, watching the pen.
Lucas set it down on the table.
"Okay," Thomas said, and he breathed out. "Now we can."
Then he reached over and straightened Lucas's collar with two cold fingertips.
After the show, they drove across the city in a van that smelled of cables and cold coffee.
The dorm was a four-storey brownstone with black windows and a red door.
It was past two in the morning, and the rain had started.
The label had put the lease in the manager's name, and the manager's name was now Lucas's.
He went up the stoop with the key and unlocked the red door.
It swung open onto a dark hall.
When he turned around, the three of them were standing at the bottom of the steps in the rain.
Not one had put a foot on the stoop.
"Are you coming in?" Lucas asked.
"House rule," Thomas said. His red-gold hair was dark with water.
Luke only looked up at him, patient and soaked.
Noah stepped to the bottom stair and lifted his face to the porch light.
"Say it, Lucas," he said. "Come in. Then we can all go in."
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