Jon walked rapidly down the hall, ticking off the things he had accomplished so far in his head, as well as all of the things still left to do. But that was why they had hired him an assistant, after all, to spread out the workload a little bit.
As he reached the end of the hallway and turned the corner, he saw his assistant, standing next to the door, her back against the wall and her arms crossed underneath her chest.
"Faith, did you ....?" he began.
"Nope." she said, before he could complete the question .
"You were supposed to go in and get them up and around to get ready for their interview!"
"Nope," she repeated. "Not gonna happen, I am not setting foot in that room right now!"
"Jesus, again?" he groaned in frustration. "I swear I'm just about ready to throw that damn thing in the river! Well, if you're not going to wrangle the guys, I guess that means that you get to deal with the idiots who can't seem to figure out where the hell our trucks are."
"Give it, then," she said, holding up her phone. Jon took his phone out and pulled up the number, so she could add it to hers. She immediately dialed, and was already conversing with someone as she walked away. Maybe that would work out for the best, anyway. Faith was less likely to lose her temper and start screaming at people.
She was the fifth assistant he'd had in the past ten months, and the one who had lasted the longest, just over five months. That was a definite improvement, as the others had been on the job for time periods that ranged between four days and nine weeks.
Jon liked Faith, and hoped she would stick around. She was smart, willing to work, and was very level - headed and not easily rattled, even under pressure. And most importantly, she got along well with the guys, being able to negotiate the line between maintaining a friendly relationship, and not losing sight of the fact that she worked for the band, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, she just had that one little quirk.
As he walked through the door into the room, he immediately spotted the source of the problem, lying on a table.
"Are you trying to make my life difficult or something, you guys ?" he asked the four men seated at the table. "Can you not leave that thing alone for one fucking day?"
"How does the fact that Jinxx has corralled those three suckers into helping him try to do the impossible make YOUR life difficult?" a voice inquired from the opposite side of the room.
"It is not impossible, C, I've made contact before!" Jinxx informed the drummer with a scowl.
"Well, do you have to do it here, for crying out loud?" , Jon asked him. " Faith refuses to set foot in the fucking room when that thing is here!"
"Yep, we have two people who actually believe in that stupid board. Lovely, isn't it?" Ashley drawled from his spot on the sofa.
"Oh, I'd say that she not only believes in it, she's fuckin' petrified of it," Andy observed. "The first time she saw you with that thing, she practically turned green, and I don't think you could've dragged her into the room with a tow truck. Somebody must've pranked her bad with one of those things at some point."
"Why do you guys insist on making fun of things, just because you don't understand them?" Jinxx queried his bandmates.
"Are you trying to tell us that you can just slap that thing down and call up a ghost, or whatever?" Jake inquired skeptically. "I sure haven't seen it happen so far!"
"No, of course it doesn't happen just anywhere, there has to be something there to contact in the first place. But Allan told me about this old empty house a mile or so down the road, and I'm gonna go check it out later. You guys can come with if you want, if you promise not to make a joke of everything."
The rest of the band declined, but Joe, Jesse, and Yanni agreed to accompany him, and Jon said " Fine, the four of you can go play Ghostbusters to your hearts content. After the interview you should have already been getting prepared for. The guy is supposed to be here in about fifteen minutes."
"Dude, I thought we dragged our asses across the country here to the middle of nowhere to have some quiet time to work on some songs," Andy grumbled. "Not to do press, or try to be Zak Bagans, or whatever."
Jinxx flipped him off, and Jon rolled his eyes as the guys got up and began filing out of the room.
As he exited the room, he saw Faith standing outside the door. "One of the trucks is in North Carolina, it's supposed to be here sometime tomorrow," she informed him. "And the other one got itself stuck under a flippin' overpass, and they have to transfer all the stuff to another truck. So that stuff won't get here for another two or three days, apparently."
As Jon and Faith walked away from the others, CC whispered to Jinxx, "Maybe you should ask her to go along on your little adventure tonight, that could be interesting."
Jinxx smirked at the drummer, and replied, "You know I'd have to get Ash to do that, C. He's the one who's good at talking women into things. Like the tour bus, his bunk ...."
"The dressing room," Jake chimed in .
"Utility closets," chuckled Andy .
Ashley gave them an exasperated look, and said "That'll never happen! I saw the same thing that Andy did when she spotted that idiotic spirit board, and even I'm not that good!"