We’d all stayed in the Crier Apartments before, and there was something oddly comforting about climbing the exposed exterior stairs to the second floor. The building followed the kind of open design that only works in deserts and places that get minimal amounts of rain: all the apartments had doors that opened on the outside, and were built around a central courtyard that contained a fountain and a barbecue grill, as well as a great deal of aquamarine tile. It was like looking down into an empty swimming pool. It also echoed weirdly, something that was being clearly illustrated by the people who were shouting across it to their friends.
“I am so glad we’re sharing a bedroom,” I said to Lyra, as I unlocked the door to our temporary home. “I know you’re not weird.”
“And I know you are weird,” she said amiably. “Do you still sneak out the window in the middle of the night?”
“Yup,” I said. I opened the door and braced it with my suitcase before turning to take Lyra’s duffel bag. As a jazz dancer, her costumes took up substantially more space than mine. Add that to the fact that I was using Dominic as off-site storage for half my stuff, and it was obvious why she needed help. “Do you still whistle in your sleep?”
“Sometimes.” She eyed my single bag dubiously as she pushed past me. “Are you planning to get eliminated in the second week?”
“David’s delivering the bag with my shoes in it later,” I said.
Lyra smirked. “You know he can’t come in, right? Show rules.”
“Right.” Show rules: no visitors were allowed in the apartments, and while our friends and family could visit if they wanted, no one was supposed to go and show them around. Everybody did, of course. We just had to make sure the producers never noticed.
The apartment was small enough to be compact and big enough to be cozy, skirting the line between “reasonable housing for four people” and “dormitory” with consummate skill. Lyra and I were the first to arrive. We claimed the back bedroom, farthest from the echoing courtyard, and I dumped my stuff on the bed next to the window. It would be easier to slip in and out if I didn’t have to negotiate a sleeping body in addition to everything else.
Lyra looked at the bed I’d chosen and shook her head in amusement. “Oh, look, Val’s next to the window. Whoever would have guessed? Not me. Never me. I know nothing.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” I said, taking a moment to nab the note from my waistband. As expected, it said “See me later.” Brenna wanted to talk. “Do we know if the boys were able to trade for the other bedroom?” Anders and Pax—Lyra’s original partner—had been deep in negotiations when we left the theater. We were allowed to set up coed rooming arrangements if we wanted, as long as it didn’t distract from our work, and sometimes sharing space with your dance partner could be a real advantage. If you wanted to practice at three in the morning, you could do it in your living room, instead of in the courtyard. Big help.
“We are triumphant!” shouted Anders from the living room.
“Uh, yeah, they did it,” deadpanned Lyra. We both broke down giggling.
We were still laughing when Anders and Pax appeared in the bedroom doorway, effectively filling it. Anders was tall: Pax was taller, a solid wall of Hawaiian muscle who moved with a grace that should have been illegal in the natural world. If he’d been human, I would have considered him a violation of several laws of physics. Since he couldn’t have been much farther from the human genome without being made of silicon, I didn’t have that problem.
Pax offered a shy, tight-lipped smile when he saw me looking at him. I smiled back. “It’s good to see you,” I said. “I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk at the theater.”
“I wasn’t talking much with anyone,” he said. “My flight from Maui got in an hour before call. I was afraid I was going to be late and get myself eliminated early.”
“How would they even have handled that?” asked Lyra. She sat down on her bed, looking coquettishly through her eyelashes at Pax. She’d been flirting with him since auditions. It had never gotten her anywhere, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her.
Too bad for her that Pax wasn’t likely to fall prey to her considerable charms: not when he had two wives and a husband waiting for him in the waters off Maui. He was Ukupani, one of the only known aquatic therianthropes, named for the shark-god Ukupanipo, who’d supposedly created them. (Maybe He had. How would I know? I don’t have much experience with gods, and I don’t want much experience with gods, since people who meet gods tend to wind up pregnant with demigods. Not my idea of a good time.) This all meant that when he wasn’t teaching dance classes on the island, he was splashing around in the Pacific Ocean, being a combination of man and shark, and birthing a million nightmares whenever someone happened to catch a glimpse of him.
Not that any of this was public knowledge. Pax was supposedly a single Hawaiian hottie, since female Ukupani couldn’t change shapes, and he was media savvy enough not to have mentioned his husband to the judges, or to anyone who might let it slip on the air. Adrian had a reputation for wanting his men to be manly, which carried with it an unfortunate whiff of homophobia. It sucked. Hopefully, this time we could do something about it.
“Probably have kicked off my partner, too, to keep things fair,” said Pax.