Hailey glanced at him. “Do you think me an uncivilized goat? Of course, there are tapas.”
Luis rubbed his hands together and cackled.
I just shook my head and walked into the anteroom the stairs dumped us into. Angela and Hailey pushed forward, and Hailey moved us off to the side while Angela snuck out into the crowd.
“You all ready?” She glanced at each of us. “I didn’t say anything, but I got some names to come see you and give a listen.”
“Big names like who?” Bryce squeaked.
“You’ll see.”
Angela’s voice boomed on the other side of the door, introducing us to a crowd that was probably made up of people who knew exactly who we were.
Waiting on a count of three, Hailey pulled the door open and walked out a head of us.
The room was packed. There were more tables and chairs than I had imagined and all of them were occupied, as well as some of the chairs on the sides of the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Up Down Left Right!”
We waved and glanced around the room, just checking out who was there. My eyes found Uriah almost instantly, standing at a table in the back with a group of men.
Taylor gasped, “Holy shit is thatRobot Servant?”
I looked just one person to Uriah’s right.
Maddox Jones stood there, larger than life.
Uriah
“You’ve been spotted,” Maddox and I chorused, then looked at each other and laughed.
“This is going to be interesting,” Rand, the bassist, said. “You think they polished their sound?”
I looked at him. “Did you see the video that was posted like two hours ago?”
“I don’t do social media,” he said.
“You need to,” Maddox said. “I’ve told you a dozen times, you’ve got to pick one and learn it. The fans love it, and we want to keep the fans happy.”
“Ugh.”
I pointed to the small platform where UDLR was walking around and talking to the people who had come up to greet them. “You see them? That video was not planned. It was spontaneous and came from a fan who happened to be there and uploaded it. Do you know how many hits it has on the fan’s account and on theirs in the space of two hours? One hundred and seventy-five thousand. It’s not even a new song. But it’ll chart again, low. You have to go where the fans are. In the 80s it was MTV, in the 90s it was festivals and myspace. Now? It’s all different kinds of social media.” I pulled out my phone. “I even have a major Instagram. Which…”
My eyes popped. Maddox and Noah leaned over my shoulder. Noah whistled. “You have a lot of followers!”
“I had seven hundred this morning.”
Noah pointed to the corner. “That is not seven hundred. That’s ten thousand. Oh, and look what pictures have gotten the most likes?”
All of the pictures where I hinted at Austin’s costume and the teases of him in it. I started scrolling through the comments and had to stop pretty quickly. There were a metric shit ton of comments.
“How did they find this?”
Maddox held up his phone with his IG account. “You got tagged. By Austin, and a few others by virtue of him hashtagging you in on the free tickets for the kid.”
“Damn,” Rand said. “Okay, fine. Fine I’ll find one and learn it.”
“Snapchat or TikTok,” I said.
