Yet, once I ducked into the neon-flooded main entrance, I found my eyes pulling away from the lifts that would carry me up to my floor. My feet reacted before my brain did, and before I knew it, I was standing at the hotel’s ground floor bar and waiting for a bored staff member to fix me a double vodka and Coke.

My own frizzy-haired reflection stared at me from the panels lining the back of the bar. I was hardly a stand-out woman in a crowd, especially not after a gig. Black eyeliner smudged at the corners of murky blue eyes, and a hard-worked foundation was starting to crack around my nostrils and the corners of my mouth. I’d tossed my dark hair up into a careless bun halfway through the night after the second spilt pint stickied it up, and what hadn’t soaked my hair had left a dark stain on the shoulder of my hoodie. The only saving grace was that the reflection was a little blurry, my glasses having been safely stashed in my bag during the gig.

“Cheers.” I offered a split-second smile and nod to the bartender as he slid an overpriced drink across the bar to me. Turning, I picked a secluded table off to the side despite the small group of people sitting nearby sporting the Silent Swansong’s shirts. Eventful night or not, I wouldn’t have joined them. Truth be told, going out like this was a rarity for me. For my all-time favourite band, I had made an exception.

No sooner had my butt hit the seat than that very same group sparkled up with loud gasps and excited chatter. For one blissful, exhausted moment, I didn’t consider what might have caused it.

A creak of leather jacket, a jangling of chains, and yesterday’s dreams came true—I had a sudden drinking companion in the form of Magnus Claymore.

Fuck.

He had followed me after all.

Between my echoing fangirl heart screaming and my sensible brain shrieking, I couldn’t bring a sensible word to my lips. Under the bright bar lights, Magnus looked decidedly more put-together than he had in the alleyway, and a damn sight closer to the mental image of him that I idolised. His short hair had been darkened and tussled by the rain (and the chase, no doubt), yet unfairly, this had only served to give him a rugged look where it had damned me with a ragged one. Somewhere along the line, he had wiped clean all trace of the meal he’d torn apart. That helped.

Magnus leant forward onto the small, circular table between us, his collection of chains and bracelets around his wrists tinkering across the tabletop. Before I could start to gather myself, I was being pinned with a glacier-blue stare.

“Can we talk?” Magnus asked, sounding as calm and cool as I bloody wished I was. The falsely flirtatious note in his voice did not elude me, effortlessly coiling around his accent. “It would mean a lot to me if you could just delete that photo you took, sweetheart…”

It occurred to me then that he was absolutely banking on me being a good little fangirl and doing as I was told. In fact, he was certainly betting everything on being able to solve this by the grace of me being his unquestioning fan, paid a thousand times over simply for the privilege of his presence.

I gazed back into those stunning, dark-lined eyes I had dreamed of on numerous occasions. A quivering breath drew through my nostrils, stilling my pounding heart as I unconsciously leant towards my idol.

“...Absolutely not,” I whispered.

I watched as his calm visage short-circuited in shock. In truth, I had surprised myself with that small burst of courage. But admirer or not, I wasn’t going to let a guy try to manipulate me so blatantly. Something about his cocky manner had shattered my image of him a little more, and the shards cut through my fangirl daze. I had no intention of sending the photo viral, but I had every intention now of making Magnus sweat a bit.

I took advantage of his brain-locked moment to down my drink like a trooper and clap the glass back down. I gathered my bag and jerked my head across to the mesmerised group nearby. “Think they want your autograph though.”

I got to my feet then, ignoring his poor goldfish impression and my heart attempting to smash out a decent drum roll. I stormed out of the bar if only to run from what I’d just done.

Maybe it was unfair. But for some reason, the idea that he thought he could just ask me to be a good girl and forget what I’d seen pissed me off. It pissed me off more than watching my beloved idol chow down on a rodent. Regardless, I had no doubt that I would delete the photo after a silly chat with my friend about it. Cruelty didn’t come easily to me, and even as I left the bar and jabbed at the button to call the lift, an uneasy pang coiled around my chest, tugging at me to go back to the bar and apologise.

I needn’t have bothered. As the lift doors opened, a taller figure shot past me and nearly knocked me forward into the lift.

There, standing in the tiny space and waiting for me to join him, was Magnus.

He clapped his hands together in front of him as though he were about to pray, and for a moment, I worried he might actually drop to his knees given the sparkling plea in his eyes.

“Okay, please,” he begged, sticking a foot out to stop the doors closing between us. “Please, at least let me explain. I’m not gonna tell you to delete the photo again. Just...can we please talk about what happened back there?”

Suddenly, I was the envy of a million screaming fangirls. Myself included.

Only I was internally screaming in terror.