Zack runs a hand down his face. “I once hired a woman to clean the club during the early morning hours when it wasn’teven open, when we assumed all the men would be sleeping and no one would notice her. Guess what?”
My eyebrows lift. “Someone wasn’t sleeping?”
“Exactly. And I lost my cleaning woman.” He snaps his fingers.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about needing to replace me on the wildly unlikely off-chance I get whisked off the planet. I’m a one-night gig.”
“Let’s discuss that wildly unlikely, off-chance possibility. What if you were chosen?”
I draw in a deep breath. Do I care? The answer is no. Not really. “Then I guess I’d be in for the adventure of a lifetime. It’s not like I have anything gluing me here to this earth. I weigh so little even gravity barely tethers me,” I joke. I’m like a hundred pounds. Wet.
“Think about this seriously, Sara,” he says, ignoring my preferred name. His eyes are narrowed again. He’s not smiling. “You don’t even get to go home and collect your belongings. You don’t get to say goodbye to anyone. You just get on one of those pods and head for the mothership. It happens within hours of being chosen.”
My heart rate picks up. I glance at the ceiling even though I can’t see the mothership from inside the club. I know where it is. Everyone knows where the mothership is. It’s hovering above Earth—a constant reminder there are aliens visiting our planet.
I know they have a symbiotic relationship with Earth. The Eleadians exchange knowledge that will help save our planet in exchange for the opportunity to find a love match while they’re visiting. Apparently there are no women on their planet.
Do I care? I ask myself this again. Surely their planet is better than ours, considering they seem to have far more advanced technology. The men who come to Earth, seeking a life-partner, must be wealthy. I bet it costs a lot of money to make the voyage.Maybe I could get discovered on Eleadia for my talent. Lord knows I’m struggling to do so here on Earth.
I don’t need to think this over. “I accept the risks, Zack. I’ll sign whatever you need me to sign. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll even bring a bag with my most cherished belongings just in case the sexiest giant in the universe decides he can’t live without a pixie like me with a stupid name like Sara.” The only cherished belongings I have are the pages of sheet music for my own songs.
Zack frowns. “Do you have family you’re close to?”
I shake my head. It was just me and my mom growing up, and she took off as soon as I turned eighteen. I haven’t seen her since.
Zack draws in a deep breath and blows it out. He’s not laughing. I know I’ve finally talked him into this. The gig is mine.
One way or another, my night playing at Club Zoom could be life-changing. Either I get noticed by hundreds of women or I get whisked off the planet. Either way, I win.
Chapter Two
Raevion
I know something is different about tonight the moment I step into the control room. I haven’t even glanced at the monitors for the main floor where I’m sure hundreds of women are already crammed onto the dance floor and pushing to get to the bar.
It’s not the crowd that catches my attention. It’s the music. I’ve been here five nights, and this is the first time I’ve heard anything in this genre. I don’t even know what it is.
Four other men are gathered in this second-floor control room. They’re hovered around two monitors that show what’s happening on the first floor.
As I join them, I realize what’s different. “There’s a live singer?”
Kalbrac glances at me and nods. “Appears so. She’s good.”
Sheisgood. I find myself lured forward to hear better. We don’t always have the volume up loud enough to hear the music in the control room because we don’t really care, but apparently someone took a liking to this singer and turned it up.
Her voice is deep and sultry. Her tone is gravelly and unlike anything I’ve heard before. I’m lost in this female’s voice as I approach and stunned when I finally see the tiny pixie whose voice has such a wide range. I find myself staring at her. I’m transfixed.
She’s sitting on a stool, but she has a grip on the microphone, and she’s swaying with the music as if she’s living it. Sheisliving it. To her, this is a living being. It is for me, too. And I wonder if this is a song she wrote herself or if she’s singing someone else’s arrangement.
We aren’t familiar with every type of music here on Earth. Though we do have access to it and can listen to nearly everything ever produced on Earth, we haven’t had that ability long enough to be familiar with all music. The fact that I haven’t heard this one doesn’t mean this particular female wrote it herself.
I’m curious. Mesmerized. Frozen. I don’t think I’ve blinked. She sits with her feet on the top rung of the stool. She’s wearing clunky black boots and a very short skirt. With her knees up as high as they are, she has to keep her legs pinned together so no one can see up her skirt.
Her hair is odd. I haven’t seen many women with that style. Small braids that are seemingly random and hang long down her back and over her shoulders. I can’t see her face well, but I feel like I need to.
“Raevion? Hello? Earth to Raevion.”
I glance at Kalbrac next to me when I realize he’s been calling my name and is now chuckling at his last sentence. Earth to Raevion. It’s a comical phrase for us and apparently common on this planet.
