The Demon's Song - By Kendra Leigh Castle Page 0,5

to keep pace.

They headed back down the wide corridor, past the spot where she’d been nearly run over by Phenex just a couple minutes ago. She found herself irrationally disappointed that he was nowhere to be seen. Sara had vanished as well, but there was really only one destination in this direction.

“Nightclub,” Amy said, her brow furrowed, then looked at Sofia with a wry smile. “We’re in one of the most exclusive clubs in DC. There’s a line out front down the street. I feel like this should be more fun.”

Sofia huffed out a soft laugh. “Once she tells us to get lost, we’ll stay and get drunk on overpriced booze. At least we know she’s alive and well.”

She had the fleeting thought that maybe she’d get another chance to see Phenex, then immediately discarded the idea. If he was in here, he was out of her league on any number of levels. No man who looked like that, and who was probably rich to boot, was going to be seriously interested in a twenty-five-year-old nurse from nowhere special who’d sneaked in wearing a borrowed, non-designer dress.

Still, the way he’d looked at her...

“Wow,” Amy said, slowing so that Sofia was dragging her. “Do you hear that?”

Pulled out of her own thoughts, Sofia slowed, too, and really listened. What she heard stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Oh,” was all she could say, and it was more a sigh than a word. Drifting out of the curtained archway that led into Amphora’s main nightclub was the most beautiful voice she’d ever heard, singing a song she vaguely recognized. Whatever the song was, though, it had never been done like this...that she knew.

The memory of Phenex’s wonderful voice whispered through her mind: Here for the show? And the half-remembered item slung over his shoulder, something that had barely registered considering how much else there’d been to look at: a guitar.

Now she understood. The show really was him.

Sofia managed to put one foot in front of the other, feeling strangely dazed as she moved to the doorway, then through it, brushing heavy velvet aside. Bouncers on either side only glanced at her. They obviously thought she belonged here, even if she knew better.

Amy murmured something beside her, but Sofia’s attention was completely captured by the sight of the man on the raised platform on the far side of the room.

Perched on a simple stool, alone under the lights, a lot of musicians would have faded into the background of a place like this. Not Phenex. He seemed to fill the entire room, that magnificent voice flooding every nook and cranny. Sofia watched the way he coaxed the notes from his guitar—long, elegant fingers dancing over the strings—and swallowed hard. Everything that had been in her mind vanished but for the desire to feel those hands on her.

His gaze shifted suddenly, and in an instant he’d found her in the crowd. It was almost as though he’d sensed her come in. That was crazy...but no crazier than the way she nearly melted into a puddle on the floor when their eyes met.

“Sofia!”

Amy’s voice was a soft, insistent hiss in her ear. Sofia drank in a quick, shuddering breath and pulled her eyes away from Phenex, feeling slightly disoriented. She’d never met a man with the kind of power he seemed to wear like a second skin. Even looking at him was like being drugged. It was seriously disconcerting.

“Sorry,” Sofia said, feeling ridiculous. It wasn’t like her to lose her mind over a guy. Especially not some random, pretty singer...though she guessed the “pretty singer” part worked well as an excuse.

Amy rolled her eyes. “Yes, he’s gorgeous. But Sara and the guy she’s with just headed for the restrooms, back behind those curtains over there.”

Sofia sighed. “We corner her in the bathroom?”

Amy nodded, her jaw set. She looked like an angry pixie. “We corner her in the bathroom. Let’s do this.”

So they did, winding through the crowd. It wasn’t as slow going as it might have been—almost no one moved into their path, everyone much more focused on the man entertaining them. When they reached the ladies’ room door, they looked at each other. Sofia took a deep breath.

“Okay, so when we get in there, we say—”

She was cut off by a soft female gasp that echoed on the other side of the door. It might have been one thing if it had been a sound of pleasure. But it was accompanied by a muffled cry