Starry Eyes(102)

“Tell me again,” he says as he kisses my neck right below my ear.

Warmth rushes across my skin. “I can’t think straight when you do that.”

“I’ll stop, then.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Tell me again,” he repeats, kissing my jaw.

“You’re mine.”

“The other thing.”

“I love you.”

He pulls back to look at me, pursing his lips as he blows out a hard breath. Then his smile is monumental. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard. I’m going to need to hear it a lot. My ego is fragile.”

I laugh, pushing away a tear. “Your ego has never been fragile.”

“It is around you.”

I kiss him under his chin, and he shivers with pleasure. “I can’t think straight when you do that either.”

“Good. Let’s not think. It’s overrated.”

“I know we promised your mom that you’d be home at a decent hour, but that eclipse won’t be happening until midnight—”

“You did say there were no bodies in the back of your hearse.”

“It’s sooo body-free back there,” he assures me. “And it’s no tent in the middle of the forest, but it’s pretty private. There may even be a blanket and a pillow. You know I follow the Boy Scout motto. Be prepared.”

“It’s my favorite thing about you.”

“When we were in the tent, you said it was something else,” he murmurs, grinning as he pulls me closer.

“I was starving and scared and not in my right mind. I probably said a lot of things. You may have to remind me.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m in the mood to solve a mystery. What do you say? Want to do some detectiving with the boy you love?”

I do. I absolutely do.





29




* * *



“I’m telling you, the members of KISS mixed their own blood into the red ink used to print the first KISS comic book,” Sunny says. “Bet you a cupcake I’m right.”

It’s nearly dark outside, and I’m standing in Toys in the Attic next to Sunny, who is lording over a stack of boxes near the front window display. Her face is animated as she talks to us. “It was in the seventies, and one of the big publishers, Marvel or DC Comics, put out a KISS comic—you know, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley in makeup, being superheroes, or whatever. And they used the band’s blood in the ink. I swear it’s true.”

Mac rolls her eyes. “Who starts these demented rumors?” she says in her Scottish lilt. “That is so not true. And it’s disgusting.”

My mom crosses her arms, nodding at Mac. “Can you imagine how many STDs those guys had? Who would want their tainted blood in a comic book?”

“Plenty of people, apparently, because it’s a fact,” Sunny insists. “Ask Lennon.”

I tug a belt loop on the back of his black jeans. He’s bent over, half of his body inside the back of the shop’s window display—a group of carved Halloween pumpkins and a black cauldron overflowing with condoms and bottles of massage gel instead of witch’s brew. Halloween was last night, so we’re swapping out the jack-o’-lanterns for a Thanksgiving cornucopia.

“Did you hear all that?” I ask.

He emerges from the window display, standing up to full height. “Sunny’s right. A nurse drew their blood, and they flew to New York and had pictures taken at Marvel’s printing plant, where they dumped vials of their blood into a vat of ink. A notary public witnessed and certified it.”

“Eww,” we all say in chorus.

Lennon shrugs. “KISS was always doing silly, shocking gimmicks like that to sell their merchandise. They were more interested in making money than music.”

“And that’s why you owe me a cupcake,” Sunny tells Mac, her face lifting into a delighted grin.

Mac shakes her fists at the ceiling. “Curse you, Rock Star Urban Legend Game.”

I’m not sure why she bothers siding against Sunny. She always loses. Or maybe that’s the point. All I know is that a cupcake sounds pretty freaking good about right now, and I’m wishing this window display were filled with actual candy instead of condoms. I think I’ve been eating too much junk food lately, which is something I didn’t know could happen. But Mom and I have been too busy to go to the grocery store for real food. Our only home-cooked sustenance has been Sunday dinners at the Mackenzies’.

It’s been a couple of months since my dad left. He’s still in San Francisco, and he’s already in full-on Diamond Dan pivot mode, doing something impulsive. He enrolled in a certification course for—I kid you not—equine massage therapy. That’s right, he wants to move to Sonoma and give horses back rubs. Hey, it’s his life, I suppose. I’ve talked to him on the phone a couple of times, but I haven’t seen him. A good thing, probably. I’m not as angry as I once was, but I don’t need any more disruptions in my life.

And Mom doesn’t either. She’s been busy too. Everhart Wellness Clinic is now Moon Wellness Spa. Yes, she’s the one who decided to christen the spa with her maiden name, but I’m the one who suggested she use an actual moon in her new logo. Sunny and Mac found her a new masseuse—a friend of a friend who was moving out here to the East Bay, because she couldn’t afford the rent in the city anymore. San Francisco got Dad and exchanged him for Anna, a young Latina who has purple hair and likes dogs. Win-win.