“I’m not getting eliminated because of you,” he spat, grabbing my shoulders. “I refuse. Do you understand? We’re going to go out there, and we’re going to dance like our lives depend on it. We’re going to be so amazing that America develops time travel just to go back to last week and pick up the phones for us. You got me? Dance like I’m going to slit your fucking throat if you let me down.”
“Wow, Anders, I had no idea you had such a deep-rooted hatred of women,” said Malena, stepping out of the doorway behind him. He whirled. She smiled, as pretty and poisonous as an adder. “Or maybe you’re just an asshole. Little bit from column A, little bit from column B, I guess. You want to take your hands off my girl before I take them off your body?”
“Dyke,” said Anders, taking a step away from her.
Malena raised an eyebrow. “Was he this bad during your season, Val, or has he been taking asshole lessons?”
“Search me,” I said. I stepped around Anders to stand next to Malena. He glared at me. I looked back as impassively as I could, trying to conceal the fact that I was shaken and confused. I thought we’d made up during rehearsal. He wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be my partner, and if I hadn’t been completely committed to that partnership this season, I still hadn’t done anything to deserve this sort of treatment.
Could the confusion charms have been doing this? I’d never heard of that sort of magic making someone violent, but then, what I didn’t know about magic could fill a university.
I took a steadying breath before I said, “I’ll see you backstage, Anders. And remember, even if the dance says you need to touch me, that doesn’t mean you get to do it ever again when the lights aren’t on us. Do you follow me? I’ll break you.”
“Don’t fuck with the ballroom girls,” said Malena. She hooked her arm through mine and led me away down the hall.
I let her. At the moment, anything more complicated than putting one foot in front of the other felt like it would have been too much for me—and I still had to get changed for my partner routine, and swap my wig for something wilder, more suited to the tango. I just kept seeing Anders, shouting those horrible things I’d never heard from his mouth before, and nothing made sense.
Malena waited until we were almost to the dressing room before she murmured, “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I forced myself to smile. “I didn’t . . . he surprised me, that’s all. It won’t happen again.”
“Yeah, because maybe he meets one of us in a dark alley and gets reminded why you don’t talk to a lady like that.” Malena cast a dark look back along the hall. “Or maybe I tell your dangerous boy what he said to you, and his body is never found.”
“We’re supposed to be saving the other dancers, not digging new graves for them.” Still, I couldn’t quite deny the appeal of her unmarked grave proposal. There was something to be said for burying the people who pissed you off.
“We can revisit this after we’ve won.” She let go of my arm. “Get changed, be amazing, and don’t get eliminated. You get ganked, I am out of here so fast I’ll leave claw marks all along the walls. I’m not sticking around to be somebody else’s sacrifice.”
“I’ll be amazing,” I said solemnly. “And Malena?”
“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.