“I will,” I said, and smiled. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” said Osana. “We still need to find this snake cult.”
“And I need to get you lot back to the apartments before midnight,” said Brenna, glancing at her watch. “You’ll need your beauty sleep if you’re going to dance your best tomorrow.”
“I always dance my best,” said Malena.
I didn’t say anything. I just took a deep breath and reveled in the fact that for once, I felt like we might actually get through this in one piece. It was a nice feeling. It wasn’t going to last, and that made it all the more important that I enjoy it while I could.
Sometimes it’s all about the little things.
Nineteen
“Complacency is more dangerous than cowardice. The coward sees danger around every corner. The complacent sees danger and laughs it away.”
—Enid Healy
The Crier Theater, bright and early the next day
BRENNA WAS TRUE TO HER WORD, and dropped us off at the apartments almost half an hour before midnight. The party in the courtyard was still going strong, with everyone celebrating the first day of a new rehearsal week by eating, drinking, and boogieing on the tables. The noise provided good cover as Malena and I smuggled Alice back into her apartment. We looked at each other, nodded, and vanished back to our own lodgings.
Pax was asleep on the couch when I came in. Either Anders was snoring again, or he’d been trying to wait up for me. It was as sweet as it was unnecessary, no matter what the cause, and I stopped to look at him, smiling just a little.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I said, taking the blanket from the back of the couch and drawing it over him. He made a small grumbling noise and nestled deeper into the cushions. I left him there, walking to my own bed and collapsing.
The rest of the night passed without incident, as did the early stages of the morning. Lyra wasn’t speaking to me. Pax and I sat next to each other on the drive to the theater. I put a hand on his arm, signaling him to wait as the others flowed inside. As soon as we were alone I asked, “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I just felt bad about letting you go off on your own like that. I should have been there.”
“Sweetie, it’s nice how you think you’re the muscle, but I promise, we were fine,” I said. “Between me and Malena, we could take most comers, and Alice and Dominic were with us, too. It would have been nice to have you there, for the sake of keeping everyone on the same page, but we were okay. I promise.”
“I still feel bad,” said Pax.
“Then make sure you’re ready to fight after this week’s show,” I said. “We’re going to need all hands on deck to make sure no one else gets hurt. Between you and the rest of us, we’ll have five people to cover the nine remaining dancers. We should be able to do this.”
“Only if we remember that we’re supposed to be watching them,” he said.
“Grandma’s on it,” I said. “There’s a Saturday flea market in Chino. She’s heading down there to look for her friend the routewitch and see about those counter-charms. We should be protected before the eliminations.”
Pax smiled. “You think of everything.”
“I wish.” I sighed. “Now wish me luck. I have to go convince Anders my head is still in the competition before he calls for an intervention or something.”
“Good luck,” said Pax. He punched me lightly in the shoulder before turning and heading for the studio where Lyra and their choreographer would be waiting. Anders was waiting for me in a similar room. I reached up to check the pins in my wig before continuing down the hall. It was time to get to work.
With a plan in place, Alice off arranging for the counter-charms, and everyone I cared about safe—for the moment—it was a relief to let go of my worries and dance. Valerie had been clawing at the walls of my psyche, reminding me in every pause and pose that this was supposed to be her space, her time. She wasn’t real; she was an idea I sometimes embraced, when it was convenient, when it was safe enough to let that part of me out into the world. But sometimes that part of me could be awfully loud.
“Good!” called Marisol, clapping her hands together for emphasis. “See how easy this is when you let yourself go? See how much nicer it is? Anders, let her to her feet.”
Anders, who had been holding me in a deep back-bend when Marisol called for us to stop, smirked as he pulled me back into a standing position. “See, Val?” he said. “All you have to do is stop worrying about whatever it is you were worrying about, and remember how much you want me.”
“In your dreams,” I said. Inwardly, I was scowling. Anders was there when I’d told Marisol my grandmother was sick; he’d heard the genuine concern in my voice. To have him dismissing it as not worth worrying about was frustrating in the extreme. There was a time when he and I and Lyra had been a united front, taking on all comers and making poor Pax feel like he was slightly outside the joke, even as Lyra flung herself at him. Now . . .
I’d come back on the show to let Valerie have one last moment in the spotlight before I put her away forever. I was starting to realize that it was already too late for her. I’d moved past the people I’d loved so dearly when my life was Valerie’s, and now they were just shadows in the memory of the girl I might have been. We had nothing in common. They didn’t want to have anything in common with me. That hurt.
I could channel the pain into my dancing. I forced a feral grin, wiping the sweat from my brow, and asked, “Can we do the pot-stirs again? I think I’m finally ready to hit them the way they’re supposed to be hit.”
Anders blanched. He was a tapper before anything else. The pace Marisol and I had been setting since the start of rehearsal was starting to wear on him.
Sadly, I wasn’t the only one who saw it. “No, no, no, you’ll break the poor boy,” said Marisol. “We’re going to take twenty. Get some fluids in you, maybe eat a thing, and then get back here. It’s time to start working.” She beamed before heading for the door at the back of the room. The two cameramen who’d been filming our rehearsal turned off their cameras. Twenty minutes for us meant twenty minutes for them. More importantly, it meant they had time to sneak a cigarette out behind the theater.
(Adrian hated smoking, and regularly reminded his dancers that cigarettes were tools of the devil—not that we needed much reminding, since our careers depended on having clear lungs and the ability to keep moving for hours without running out of air. This didn’t stop most of the crew from smoking, which made sense once I stopped to consider the fact that they had to work for Adrian all the time. I probably would have started smoking also, or at least drinking heavily, if that had been my lot in life.)
Anders waited until we were alone before giving me a sidelong look and saying, “Something’s up with you, and I want to know what it is.”
I blinked as guilelessly as I could manage. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Last time we were on this show, you were first in and last out any time there was a chance we were going to party. This time, I’ve barely seen you in the courtyard at all. The dancers from like, all the other seasons think you’re unfriendly and uppity. They think you think you’re too good for us, which is weird, because you didn’t used to be that way, and I know you haven’t been working.” Anders glared at me. “Everyone who knew you in New York says you vanished off the scene months ago. So what’s going on? What’s the deal with you?”
“There is no deal, Anders, honestly,” I said. “I just . . . I’ve been reevaluating my priorities since the show. I probably wouldn’t have come back at all, except that I missed everybody, and I knew I wouldn’t be taking a slot away from anyone else. I’m an All-Star. I earned this. So I came back to do it, but it’s made me realize that this isn’t what I want anymore. I’ve changed.”
“So what, you’re trying to screw me ov
er? Some of us still want this, Val. Some of us would kill for this, and you’re willing to throw it away.” His glare intensified, and I realized what this was really about. I hadn’t danced well enough the week before. We were probably going to be in the bottom six, and we might be eliminated—and here I’d just admitted that dance was no longer my life.
“My grandmother was sick,” I said, as levelly as I could. “I’m sorry I didn’t dance as well as you wanted me to, but as long as I’m here, I’m here to win. I did not intentionally hurt your chances. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“You were dancing for crap yesterday, too,” he said.
“My grandmother was still sick yesterday,” I replied. “I got the call that she was out of the woods last night, and I got my head back in the game. I don’t know what you want from me, Anders. I apologized. I’m doing better. We’re going to tango so well that we’ll set the stage on fire, and there’s no way the judges will send us home after that. Have a little faith in me, why don’t you. I got you to the finale last time.”
Anders’ eyes widened. My stomach sank. That had been the exact wrong thing for me to say.
“Is that what you think?” he asked, voice suddenly low and tight. “You carried me? Because I didn’t earn my place on the show by myself.”
“Anders, I didn’t—”
“No, you did. You’ve always been good about saying what you meant, even when you probably shouldn’t have. This was one of those ‘probably shouldn’t have’ times, in case you were wondering.” He shook his head. “I really thought we were friends.”
“Anders, I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the rehearsal room, leaving me alone with the mirrored walls. My reflection looked back at me—my reflection, and not, because I didn’t have red hair, and I didn’t wear clothing that exposed me so completely to the elements. I was alone with Valerie.
I didn’t want to be.
She was everything my sister had ever accused me of being: the sort of person who’d keep dancing above a vault filled with dead bodies. It didn’t matter that I was doing it so we wouldn’t be thrown out of the theater; I would have wanted to do it anyway. I might have allowed Dominic and Alice to drag me away . . . but I might not have. This was my second chance at the dance career I’d believed I was leaving behind, and the temptation had been huge from the beginning. The temptation was still huge, if I was being honest with myself. I wanted this.
And at the same time, I didn’t. My wig had never slipped during my original season, not once. I’d kept it pinned so tightly that it might as well have been epoxy-bonded to my scalp. This time, it had slipped so often that it was a miracle no one had seen. I’d allowed my personal feelings to get in the way of my dancing. I’d brought Dominic to Los Angeles in the first place. Sure he was my husband, and I loved him, but I could have left him behind. Before we’d known about the snake cult, it would even have made sense. The Be-Well was cheap. It still cost money. I’d brought him with me anyway. Why?
Was it because I had already known that I’d outgrown Valerie? Had I come here to try again for the spotlight, or had I come to bury her?
Someone knocked on the ceiling. I looked up. Malena’s head was protruding from a hole that hadn’t been there before. She’d moved a tile aside to make room, and was watching me with a dubious expression on her face.
“How much of that did you see?” I asked.
“Most of it,” she said. She paused before admitting, “All of it. Damn, girl, you know how to say the wrong thing at the right time. You’re going to be lucky if he doesn’t drop you on your ass during the next show.”
“He wants this too much to do that,” I said. I understood her concern. The Argentine tango was all about connection between the people dancing it. We had to sell the idea that we were hopelessly in love with each other, and that wasn’t going to be easy when Anders didn’t even want to be in the room with me.
Every time I started to feel like I had a handle on something, however insignificant, it got pulled right out from underneath me. There was probably a moral in that somewhere. If I ever found out what it was, I was going to knock its teeth right down its metaphorical throat.
“Anyway, your grandmother’s outside, and she said I should tell you she has the you-know-whats.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Malena. You’re in the ceiling. You’re dangling from the ceiling like some sort of weird bat. Do you really think this is the time to get coy about saying the words ‘counter-charm’ out loud?”
Malena responded by wrinkling her nose. “Well excuse me, Miss Knows-Everything. She’s in the alley. She said to tell you.”
“Right, and thank you for that.” I paused. “Why are you in the ceiling? You could have come in the door.”
“I wanted to wait until I could get you alone. Troy and I are doing a contemporary thing this week, and our choreographer wanted some time to work with him one-on-one, so she told me to go eat some ice chips and really try to embody my character.”
Contemporary dance routines were the most likely to come with weird, depressing, and outright morbid backstories. “Cancer dance?” I guessed.
“Thankfully not this time. It’s about eating disorders.” Malena smirked. “Troy has to pick me up like eight times, and catch me six more, and pretend I’m completely weightless for the whole routine. I figure that counts as payback for him being a total tool earlier this week.”
“Revenge is a dish best served with trust falls,” I said. “Did Grandma give you a charm?”
“She did,” said Malena. “Dominic has his, too. So it’s down to you, party girl.”
“On my way,” I said, and started for the door.
When I looked back at the ceiling, Malena was gone. Nothing lingered for long in places like this one. There wasn’t time.
Slipping out of the theater during the day was easier than I’d expected, thanks to the absence of both my choreographer and my partner. There were supposed to be security guards around, but since they were mostly to keep overeager fans from getting into the theater, they didn’t really pay much attention to dancers who were trying to get out.
The alley behind the theater was empty. I let the door swing shut behind me as I took a careful step away from it. “Olly olly oxen free,” I called softly.
A shadow peeled away from the wall behind the dumpster, stepping into the light and resolving into my grandmother. “Malena said you were having a fight with your partner,” she said.
I sighed. “Okay, wow, are we trying to set the land speed record for gossip out here or what? I said some things I didn’t mean, Anders took them in the worst way possible, everything is awful, I’m going to try to fix it tonight. I don’t want him getting eliminated if there’s anything I can do about it.”
“Just keep your focus and keep the faith, baby girl. I don’t want him getting eliminated, but I’m a little more focused on keeping you among the living.” Alice dipped a hand into the pocket of her motorcycle jacket and withdrew a long silver chain. “Catch.”
The metal was a glimmer in the air as she flung it in my direction. I reached up and snatched it, opening my hand to reveal a small silver disk engraved with a spiral of runes I didn’t recognize and couldn’t read. “What do I do with this, and what do I owe you? I thought these weren’t going to be ready for days.”
“You don’t owe me anything: you’re family,” said Alice. “And apparently, she had a feeling someone was going to need this sort of thing, so she had them waiting. I traded her my old hiking boots for the six charms. Nothing expensive. I’ve already replaced them.” She raised a foot, showing off the heavy black leather boots that had taken the place of her brown ones. “As for what you do with it, you keep it with you. Always, period. I don’t care if you have to tape it to the underside of your boob, you keep it with you.”
“
Got it.” I tucked the charm into my bra, securing it against my skin. “You okay?”
“I’m good.” Alice slid her thumbs through her belt loops. “Bon and I had a nice chat about what it would take to chuck someone like me through the walls of the world when I didn’t want to go. We also had cake. I’m pretty happy when people want to feed me cake.”
“Cake and chaos, that’s your modus operandi,” I said. The twenty minutes Marisol had given us had to be almost up. I glanced at the theater door behind me, and then back to Alice. “You have a plan for the rest of today?”
“Watch the theater. Watch you. Make sure nobody else gets chucked into a dimension they don’t plan on visiting without a passport.” Alice shrugged broadly. That worried me. The harder she tried to seem unconcerned, the more concerned she probably was. “Dominic will be here in an hour. He’s going to relieve me. You, missy, are going to go back in there and shake your tail feathers like there’s nothing wrong.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” Alice fixed me with a bright-eyed, unforgiving stare. “We’re here because you wanted to dance. Turns out that was a good thing: this snake cult would have been killing people whether you were on the scene or not. Having you on the inside gives us a better shot at stopping them. A big part of that shot depends on you continuing to be on the inside. You have to dance, and you have to make it believable. You’re not just selling yourself to the audience at home. You’re selling yourself to the people in that building. If they don’t believe you’re one of them, you’re never going to close the deal, and we’re all going to wind up in a world of trouble.”
I sighed. “I don’t know if I can. It’s getting harder and harder to pretend that dancing matters more than saving lives.”
“That’s because it doesn’t.” Alice’s tone was matter-of-fact and left no room for argument. “Saving lives matters more than just about anything else you can think of. That’s why we do whatever we have to. That’s why you’re going back in there.”