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.