“I’m three oh five. I put down a zero, not a two. A zero.”

“I would’ve guessed two seventy-five,” I said earnestly.

“You think?”

“Two eighty, tops.”

“Thanks. You’re all right.” But then he dropped his smile and returned to scrutinizing my license.

And so we went line by line, and I laughed even though I was nervous as all hell. I mean, I’d never had trouble convincing men I was older before, and now trunk-neck was playing twenty questions with a real ID. Okay, so I was usually only going for eighteen, and, yeah, the ID belonged to a dead girl … who had obtained it questionably from an even more questionable DMV employee. Wait. Did he have the DMV chatting with him through that high-tech little ear device?

“Go ahead,” he muttered, handing the card back.

He nodded Shay through without so much as a glance at his ID. How annoying is that?

“Your brother’s inside, by the way,” the bouncer said as Shay held the door open for me.

Kori’s brother?

I whirled back and got tangled in Shay’s outstretched arm. My nose went straight into his pit, and it smelled pretty damn good, if you want to know the truth. All Tide and Downy goodness.

“Kieren’s here?” I asked the bouncer, praying it wasn’t Kyle.

“I guess it is you. Thought it was a fake. You look too damn young. Wait, I know, Kori’s your older sister? Right?”

“Kieren’s inside? Here? In LoDo?”

“Yep, same last name, same address. He’s been here a while. If that was your older sister’s ID, you better watch out,” he said with a wink.

Shay dropped his hand to my shoulder and turned me around, propelling me inside before the guy changed his mind.

“I’ll get us some drinks, find a table?”

I nodded at Shay, but went off looking for Kieren instead. Something told me he wouldn’t be in very good shape. I searched the dark crowd, but he ended up being the one who found me.

“Serena? That you?” Kieren’s words didn’t slur, but his eyes might as well have been swimming in amber and froth.

“Kieren. Hey.”

He plopped onto a barstool and fisted some mixed nuts into his mouth all casual-like. “So, what are you doing down here, anyway?”

I swallowed, figured I should just come clean. “Singing.” Quickly I reverted to lying. “Yeah, the band called. Without Kori, they needed someone.” Lying was much better. No sense alerting him to my Kori obsession. “Yeah. So, they called me.”

“Really?” Kieren nodded, then finished off his drink while simultaneously motioning for the waitress to bring another. “Well, I guess they needed a female voice for the audition. Some producer’s here trying to hook ‘em up with a front girl or something. Wants to hear them before getting her involved. She’s some reality show diva. Who knows.”