Chaos Choreography (38 page)

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

She grinned, showing the pointed tips of her incisors. “Don't mention it. I'm still going to beat your ass for the title once we take care of this stupid snake cult.”

“Of course,” I said, and slipped inside.

There were dancers and costume assistants everywhere. The room still felt jarringly empty compared to the beginning of the season, and it seemed like there were ghosts everywhere I looked, dancers who'd died for their art and would never be taking the stage again. I wondered whether Aunt Mary would be able to find any of them haunting the theater, if I called her and asked her to come and have a look. Maybe I would do that, after this was all over. The dead dancers deserved the chance to rest in peace.

Lyra waved from where she was having her face
painted, keeping her expression neutral to avoid messing up the beautician's careful chart of colors and designs. From the look of her, she was going to be doing some sort of incredibly complex jazz number for her solo. I realized with a pang that I didn't know. I'd never asked. We were sharing the same apartment, we were sleeping in the same
room
, and I didn't know what she was going to be dancing this week.

“Hey,” I said, dropping into my designated seat. My own makeup assistant was there almost immediately, clipping my hair back with two banana clips before reaching for her palette. They never asked me to pull it back myself, and they never made any attempt to actually style it. They
had
to know I wore a wig, which meant the producers probably knew—which meant Adrian probably knew. He just didn't care enough to say anything about it.

This wasn't my world anymore. Maybe it never had been.

People buzzed around me, getting ready, getting their costumes on, getting their makeup just right, and generally oblivious to the world around them, which didn't matter nearly as much as pointing their toes, shaping their hands, and dancing their way into the hearts of America. I was so envious of them that it physically hurt. My chest ached like I'd bruised my sternum from the inside. I wanted what they had: I wanted the ignorance and the innocence that came with it.

There were things I didn't know about in the world. There were things I didn't
want
to know about. I wasn't being judgmental when I called them ignorant; I was being jealous. They didn't know, and so they didn't have to worry. They could just live their lives, and be happy.

“All done, Val,” said the makeup assistant, taking the clips out of my hair. Lyra was still being painted. She flashed me a thumbs up, keeping her face as still as possible.

“Break a leg,” I said, and grabbed my bag off the floor and my costume off the rack as I started for the stalls at
the back of the room. They were just heavy fabric sheets that we could pull closed for an illusion of privacy, allowing us to change without the producers worrying about an invasion of privacy civil suit from a disgruntled, eliminated dancer.

The mirror on the back wall showed me smoky eyes, red, red lips, and a wig that desperately needed to be styled. I hung the dress bag on the hook and dropped my duffel on the stool that had been provided for my use. Then I yanked out the pins holding the wig to my head and pulled it off, revealing my spiky, matted blonde hair. Instantly, it was my own reflection looking back at me, and not Valerie's. The bruised feeling in my chest remained, but it diminished, becoming easier to overlook. This was her world. She wasn't accustomed to feeling like an outsider when she was in it. But it wasn't mine.

If what I had to do tonight meant I got eliminated, or even banned from the theater, that wouldn't matter. I wouldn't be losing the world I belonged in. Valerie . . . there was every chance she was about to have her last dance. I owed it to her—and to the part of my life she represented—to make it as memorable as possible.

It only took a few minutes to get dressed. I'd been slipping in and out of competition costumes for my entire adult life, and that process had always included putting on and properly affixing my wig. I'd be wearing this one for the rest of the night; it would see me through my solo, and through elimination, whatever the outcome of that happened to be. It was long enough to frame my face, with careful curls running down my back, while still being believably the hair I'd had since the start of the season. The audience would accept a certain number of extensions and styling tricks, but it was important to keep them limited enough to be believable.

The dress was less realistic. Bright red and mostly consisting of fringe, with no modesty panels to cover the wide expanses of bare skin at my right shoulder and left hip, it was the kind of thing my father used to call a
“maybe.” As in “maybe you'll get a knife under that, but I wouldn't want to know how you managed it.” I gave my hips an experimental shake. The dress continued moving for almost two full seconds after I had stopped.

Strapping on the matching heels added four inches to my height. I stomped, making sure they were firmly on my feet, and gave myself one last, assessing look in the mirror. Valerie looked back, red-haired, red-garbed, and ready to dance with the Devil himself for the chance to own the spotlight. I smiled.

“I'm going to miss you,” I said.

Someone rapped on the wall outside my little cubby. “Five minutes, Miss Pryor,” called a voice—a wonderfully, frustratingly familiar voice.

I stuck my head out through the opening between the curtain and the wall. Dominic, who was holding a clipboard and wearing a headset, smirked at me. It was the slow expression of a man who is profoundly amused by what he sees, and it didn't waver one bit as my eyes widened and my eyebrows climbed toward my artificial hairline.

“Five minutes,” he repeated.

“You're here,” I said, pushing the curtain open and stepping into the changing room. It was still a bustle of activity, but none of those people were paying any attention to us: they all had their own roles to play, their own tasks to accomplish before they could take their turns upon the stage.

“I am,” he agreed, allowing his eyes to travel the length of my body. I've never been a tall person, but the amount of time he took made me feel longer than the Mississippi River. I blushed. His smirk widened in answer as he reached up and tapped his headset. “It struck me that no one would notice a man who seemed to have a purpose, especially since you've been so beautifully careful to keep me away from their cameras. This way, I'm closer and better prepared to react to whatever might happen.”

“Let's hope whatever happens is something that can
be dealt with before it eats anybody.” I reached up and touched the lock of hair that fell across my forehead, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “How do I look?”

“Like a thousand fantasies harbored by those unfortunate enough not be married to you,” said Dominic. His smirk faded into something almost rueful. “I prefer you blonde, as it happens. But you have no idea how much I want to lead you back into your dressing room and remove that deceptive rumor you enjoy pretending is a dress.”

My cheeks reddened, the color mostly hidden by my thick foundation makeup. For once, I was grateful for the pore-clogging necessity of a “game face.” “I'll take you up on that later, when I'm not dancing for my life. Right now, I need to hit the stage.”

“Break a leg,” said Dominic, stepping out of my path.

I paused long enough to shoot him a feral grin. “If I do, it won't be mine.”

His laughter followed me down the hall to the stage door.

Anders didn't speak as we took our positions at the center of the darkened stage. It might have been awkward under any other circumstances, but here—me in fringe and lace, him shirtless and wearing tight satin pants, my knee pressed to his hip, his hands wrapped around my waist—it seemed only right. This was the dance floor. This was the closest thing I'd ever found to holy ground, and if this was going to be my last dance, I was going to kill it.

The music began, high bell tones warring with a sultry backbeat for dominion over the air. Anders' hands tightened, pulling me closer, and I pressed myself against him as Karissa Noel began to sing.

As a piece, “Corrupt” was about the singer leading her subject astray, wooing him away from the path of righteousness he'd always tried to pursue. It was hard to
listen to it without thinking of Dominic, and the way I'd led
him
away from the Covenant. Maybe he would have grown apart from their teachings without me—stranger things have happened—but it would have been disingenuous to pretend I hadn't had anything to do with it. I was the one who'd opened his eyes. If he'd chosen to admit what he saw, that was on him. That didn't mean I hadn't been a part of things.

So I danced. I danced for Anders like I was dancing for my husband, and I knew Dominic was watching me from somewhere offstage, and I knew he would know where the heat in my eyes and the tension in my flexed calves came from. Anders responded to my commitment by matching me beat for beat. When I spun, he was there to jerk me into his arms; when I dropped into a trust fall, he was there to catch me. For the first time since the start of the season, we danced like there were no barriers between us, and all it took was a fight so bad that we might never be able to rebuild our friendship.

There would be time to worry about that after we had both survived tonight's elimination. (In more ways than one. I was still concerned about staying on the show, no matter how much I might wish I weren't: it's hard to break the habits of a lifetime. And if either one of us got cut, I was going to be fighting for our lives in a much more literal sense.)

The dance ended with Anders submitting to me, dropping to his knees at my feet. His chest was heaving, shining with sweat in the lights. I mimed snapping his neck, and his body collapsed to the stage as the music stopped. Smirking, I turned and strutted toward the exit, the riotous applause of the audience putting a little extra wiggle into my step.

Halfway there, Brenna appeared, putting an arm around my shoulders and turning me around as she steered me toward the judging table. She was grinning, holding out her other hand as she beckoned to Anders. The lights shifted, going from performance-bright to something more subdued, and I saw the audience for the
first time since our dance had started. More than half of them were on their feet, applauding their hearts out. Marisol was in the second row, her pinky fingers in her mouth, whistling ecstatically.

My legs were shaky and my heart was pounding from the combination of adrenaline and exertion, but with that much applause ringing in my ears, it was easy to square my shoulders, raise my chin, and walk confidently beside Brenna to the marks on the stage that showed us where to stand while we faced the judges.

. . . the judges, who were also on their feet. My eyes widened, my mouth going dry at the sight of Lindy
standing
, Lindy applauding like she wanted to transcend the limitations of flesh striking flesh and become a whole drum corps all by herself. She dropped back into her seat, talking fast, like she wanted to be absolutely sure no one else was going to get a word in before she had her say.

“Valerie, I have always, always been hard on you, and I know you've hated me for it. No, don't deny it—I know what it means when a girl smiles at you with eyes like ice. Well, honey, this, tonight, was the reason why. You were
transcendent
. For the first time in all the times I've seen you dance, you moved that body of yours the way I've always known you could.”

Lindy was known for yelling. Sometimes she got so close to the microphone when she did it that the feedback became physically painful. Not this time. Her voice was low, earnest, and utterly without bullshit. She sounded like she meant every word.

“I pulled for you to be in the top twenty of your original season, because I knew you had the potential to be amazing. And I've ridden you as hard as I could, because I knew you weren't living up to that potential. Tonight, I saw that potential become reality. It was worth waiting for. Don't make me wait for it again.” She started to sit back in her chair before apparently remembering Anders was there. Lindy leaned forward again, focus shifting to him. “Anders, you were clean and solid. Your
footwork was good, and if Valerie managed to outshine you, it was only because she finally decided to wake up and start dancing like she should have been dancing from day one. You were both great tonight.”

She glanced at me one more time, and her smile was brief but more valuable than diamonds. Lindy approved of me. Maybe the world was coming to an end after all.

Clint said something complimentary and excited. I wasn't really listening. Half my mind was taken up with reviewing what Lindy had just said, while the other half was scanning the theater, looking for signs of danger.

The audience was liberally dotted with heads in various shades of gold: the dragons had kept their word and infiltrated the place. I couldn't see Dominic or Alice, but I knew they were there, sticking to the shadows and ready to move. My counter-charm was cool where it was taped to my inner thigh, despite the fact that I was sweaty and overheated. That was good: it meant it was still working, and I was still sharp . . . or as sharp as it was possible for me to be when I was dizzy from the lack of oxygen and trying to keep my professional smile plastered in place.