Lava is hopping when I enter. The bar is full and the crowd is already thick, even though I’m not scheduled to go on for another twenty minutes. I’m wearing a long, black coat over my costume, so I don’t draw too much attention to myself as I push through the patrons to check in with Karen.

“There she is,” Karen squeals like a teenager.

She kisses me on both cheeks, as she always does. Then she looks me up and down, her other greeting ritual.

“Show me,” she says, as lasciviously as any man might utter that line.

I open my overcoat. First one lapel, then the other, the way I might if I were trying to seduce her. Rather, if Cassidy was trying to seduce her. Ella wouldn’t play this game with anybody, much less her boss.

“I like it,” Karen says, literally licking her lips. “I like it a lot.”

“Thank you kindly,” I say with a slight curtsy.

“After you blow the roof off this place, come find me. I have some . . . news.”

She looks at me mischievously, obviously enjoying knowing something I don’t. I assume her news has to do with Liam’s offer last week to let me transition into their set. I’d thought Gabriel scared Liam sufficiently to put the kibosh on that, but maybe not.

“Sure,” I say. “You’ll be the first person I’ll come to after I . . . blow the roof off.”

Most of my set is a blur. One moment I’m being introduced by Karen—or rather, Cassidy is—and a second later, I’m beside Karen again, my thirty-minute performance completed.

The only part I actually remember is doing “Never Goodbye.” I thought about not doing the song at all, fearful that I wouldn’t be able to get through it. I felt as if I owed it to Lauren to sing it in her honor, but from the first words I could feel the words fighting me. Three minutes later, I breathed a sigh of relief when the last note was played.

“Keeps getting better and better, Cassidy,” Karen says, after once again kissing me on both cheeks.

“Thanks. It was a tough one tonight. I had a death in the family earlier in the week.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Is everything okay now?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “Thanks.”

“Well, maybe my news will cheer you up,” Karen says.

I had forgotten that Karen had teased some news before I took the stage. Now I await her reveal.

“Want to open Saturday night?”

“This Saturday night?”

“The very same. You’ll be opening for Onyx. They’re awesome. They wanted a female lead-in, and I thought of you, of course. But wait . . . there’s more. The money is twice what you’re making now, and I hear that there’ll be some record people in the audience.”