“Valerie and Lo, you are safe for another week and may leave the stage.”
Adrian’s voice sounded tinny and distant, filtered through the ringing in my ears. On automatic, I moved to hug Lyra. She wrapped her arms around me and clung as tightly as a limpet. She wasn’t crying yet, but it was coming; those tears were going to fall.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Lyra didn’t say anything. She just nodded, and let me go.
Lo was there, waiting to grab my hand and pull me from the stage before we could get in trouble for lingering too long and screwing up the schedule. Together, we walked down the stairs to the space in front of the judges’ podium, joining the rest of the safe dancers. Lo pulled her hand out of mine and threw her arms around her partner, Will, who gathered her close.
My partner wasn’t there to gather me close, even if he’d been willing to consider it—or I’d been willing to let him. Anders was still on stage, waiting to hear his fate proclaimed by the implacable force of the judging panel. I turned to watch, lacing my fingers together and tucking my joined hands up under my chin, where I could take some small comfort from the pressure.
“Well, Adrian?” said Brenna. “We still have three dancers in danger here. Can you let us know who else will be leaving?”
“Anders, step forward,” said Adrian, and my heart soared. If I’d danced well enough to save myself, maybe I’d danced well enough to save us both. I’d follow Lyra, catch whoever had been killing dancers, and then bow out of the competition, leaving an open field for my friends to exploit. Maybe they’d even let her come back.
“Anders, you danced beautifully tonight, but I’m afraid it wasn’t enough to justify your remaining in this competition, and you will be leaving us.”
“Troy and Ivan, you are safe, and can leave the stage,” said Brenna. “Anders—”
“Shut up!” Anders whirled on her, suddenly scowling, brows drawing toward his nose and mouth twisting into a sneer. Brenna took a half-step backward, looking as stunned as I felt. “You stupid bitch, shut up! You always liked Valerie! You probably told the judges to save her! But what, you couldn’t be bothered to save me at the same time?”
“Anders, calm down,” said Adrian. “We know you’re upset, but that’s no call for that sort of language.”
“Yeah, because we’re live on the air,” murmured Malena. She had appeared at my elbow, working her way through the crowd of stunned and staring dancers. Her eyes were fixed, like everyone else’s, on the stage. “Swearing gets us big FCC fines, and too much could get us put on a tape delay. Not good. Not the sort of thing that makes the sponsors happy. Did you hit him in the head backstage or something? Boy’s having some sort of meltdown.”
“Chernobyl is a go,” I whispered, turning back to the stage.
Anders switched the target of his rage from Brenna to Adrian, glaring daggers at the head judge. “I’m a better dancer than either of those assholes you just saved and you know it. You’re trying to cover your asses because you don’t want a tapper to win—you don’t want me to win. Good thing it doesn’t matter, huh? This show is nothing. You people are nothing.”
“Anders—” began Adrian.
“Shut up, Dad!” shouted Anders.
Silence descended over the theater, broken a split second later by Lindy’s hushed exclamation of, “Holy shit.”
Anders wasn’t finished. “You know, I let you convince me to pretend we weren’t related, because it ‘wouldn’t be fair’ if people knew I was your kid. No one would believe I was as good as I am, even though they’d see me dancing with their own eyes. You didn’t stick around to raise me, but you stuck your dick in my mom once, so I guess that means there’s no way I could have gotten here on my own merits. Right? I let you ignore me and talk down to me and treat me like garbage, and for what? So you can eliminate me when we’re right on the edge of getting everything we ever wanted? I was going to save your show once I had unspeakable power, you asshole. Your ratings have been sliding for the last two years. I was going to make you. But now you’re going to die with the rest.”
“Adrian, is this true?” demanded Brenna. “Is he really your son?”
“Way to focus on the scandal and not the implication of mass murder,” I said. I didn’t have a gun. My dress was too skimpy to conceal one, and the tango had required me to kick my legs around too much for me to have strapped anything big enough to matter to my legs. I reached behind myself and drew one of the throwing knives from under my bra.
Malena looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and amazement. “Do you go anywhere unarmed?”