03 Solar Flare - Spark Series by Autumn Dawn

they’d been talking. “I blame you.”
     
    The place was beginning to fill up. Brandy
nursed her bottle of water as she watched the gathering crowd of
masked women. Looked like the place did good business.
    She absently touched her own silkskin mask,
marveling that the lightweight material felt so insubstantial, yet
provided such opaque coverage as it hugged her skin. The filmy
substance could be peeled off and tucked in a pocket when she was
done, all without disturbing her makeup, the clerk who’d sold her
the mask had promised.
    When she’d gone looking for masks, she’d been
surprised by the number to be found behind the room of a local
cosmetics shop, proving that the serving girl at The Spark knew
what she was talking about. The shop did a mint in black market
disguise, and there’d been glitter and sparkle and feathers galore
to choose from. She’d opted for simplicity in the plain mask. After
all, she wanted to be found.
    Her mouth curved in a half smile as she
wondered why she’d never done anything this crazy before. She’d
been so busy trying to clean up her act for the last few years,
she’d never had the fun of flaunting convention. It was a juvenile
delight that was long overdue. Maybe she needed that stage in her
life.
    Maybe it would be fun to rebel. Aspiring to
follow her sister’s example had led her nowhere. She savored the
thought as she took a bite of the pickled veggies and savory black
noodles she’d ordered, using the disposable, wooden mini rake
they’d provided to capture the noodles. She twirled another bite
around the tines, using the food as a way to ignore the other women
as she thought. For the first time, she thought about ditching
responsibility and simply having fun.
    She wasn’t the elder sister. She didn’t have
to be diligent and save the family with hard work and sacrifice.
The family was saved. There was no reason for her to grind her life
away on the stone of responsibility. She could try being
herself.
    Maybe she could figure out who that was.
    The firing of the stage lights made her
glance up. Sensual music with a hard beat made her put down the
little rake. She frowned. She hadn’t actually planned to watch any
dancing, was pretty sure she didn’t want to see Azure baring his
body in front of a crowd of strangers. It wasn’t what she’d come
for, but now it was too late to back out, for his name was
projected onto the smoke effects on the stage, spelled out in blue
laser lights.
    Azure had come to dance.
     
    He hadn’t come to dance. Azor glanced at the
stage curtain in frustration as he changed backstage.
Unfortunately, he’d been cornered by the manager when he showed up,
told he would dance, because his admirer was a generous tipper.
He’d been tempted to blow the manager off, but he couldn’t get away
with that, not if he wanted to return to the cover. It had been a
lucrative one, generating many arrests. He didn’t want to risk
blowing it.
    As a result, he was getting dressed,
preparing to strip it all off in front of the woman he’d come to
dissuade from chasing him. Oh, and he had Blue grousing away in his
ear.
    “I can’t believe I have to sit here in the
dark and watch you bare your green Kiuyian butt when I could be
home with my wife,” he muttered. He was safely stashed in a
transport across the alley, but he had tapped into the security
system to help watch for trouble.
    “Shut up,” Azor said with uncharacteristic
frustration. It didn’t help that he knew the whole situation was
his own fault. “And stay out of my head while I’m up there.” The
communication device in his ear was tiny, undetectable to the naked
eye. At the moment he didn’t appreciate its crystal clear
reception.
    “I’ll go one better and keep my eyes on the
crowd,” Blue shot back. “I don’t want to be blinded for life.”
    Azor grunted and stepped out from behind the
dressing screen and up to the curtain. He felt a pang of
nervousness—after all, this was