Anders was one of the first to make it clear of the cameras. He stopped in front of me, a bleak, anxious look on his face. “Pax was never on the bottom during the first half of our season. What the hell went wrong?”
“Better dancers, tougher competition,” said Jessica, stepping from behind one of the dangling curtains. She was smirking. “Maybe you’re going to have extra room in your apartment sooner than you thought.”
The urge to slap that stupid smirk right off of her face was almost strong enough to override my common sense—but only almost. Assaulting a fellow contestant would see me eliminated on the spot, and then my friends would be defenseless.
“Not funny, Jessica,” snarled Anders.
“Hysterical,” she said, looking him dead in the eye.
“Break it up,” I said, stepping between them. “Pax isn’t going anywhere. He’s too good a dancer to have pulled the lowest number of overall votes. Now if you’ll excuse me, some of us are interested in staying in this competition.” I slid my arm through the crook of Anders’s elbow, so I was holding him close without clinging, and pulled him with me toward the dressing rooms. We separated at the last minute, him going into the men’s, me going into the women’s. We were all dancers here—none of us actually cared—but the show’s producers needed to at least pretend they were holding to Middle American standards of decency.
Someone grabbed me as soon as I was inside the room, yanking me behind a rack of costumes. I pulled the knife from my thigh holster—worn high enough that it hadn’t been visible during my flip earlier, and low enough that I wasn’t goosing myself in uncomfortable places, and don’t think that hadn’t been a learning experience—and whipped around, ready to stab my assailant in the throat.
Only the fact that Malena was even faster than I was saved us both from a very bad experience. She hissed and let go. “Stand down, Jesus! All I did was grab you!”
“Keep your voice down!” I countered, making the knife vanish back into my dress. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to grab people?”
“I didn’t expect you to respond by pulling a goddamn harpoon out of your crotch,” she snapped. “How is your boy still among the living? You should have stabbed him the first time he rolled over in bed.”
“He’s a sound sleeper.” I cast a glance over my shoulder to the costumes she’d pulled me through. They weren’t currently moving. Maybe we were going to get lucky, and no one had noticed my impromptu disappearance. I looked back to Malena. “You need to stick close to me or Pax tonight. If you can’t find us, look for Alice. I know she’s lurking around the back of the theater.”
“She’d better be. Shit, V—” Malena caught herself before she could use my real name, and continued with a, “I didn’t expect to be in the bottom this week. I thought Troy and I danced better than this.”
“You did,” I said. “The voters make weird decisions. Now we just need to make sure that if you’re eliminated, you never go anywhere alone. Anywhere.”
“What if Pax and I both get eliminated?” Malena asked.
I grimaced. “Then we hope whoever killed Chaz and Poppy will go after the two of you, because I’m honestly not sure I can stop this if I’m the only one in the theater who knows what’s going on.”
Malena’s glare could have melted metal. “I didn’t sign up to play the bait in your little crusade.”
“No one signed on for this ‘little crusade,’ Malena. People are dying, and we’re trying to stop it.” A bong sounded, signaling the first couple to take the stage. “If you and Pax are eliminated, they’re not going to know what hit them. I still hope that doesn’t happen. I’d much rather have the two of you helping us track down our killers. Either way, I’m hoping no one dies tonight.”
“You know, when I came here, I was just hoping for a shot at the big money,” grumbled Malena. “I’m coming up on my twenty-sixth birthday. It’s time to start thinking about having kids. That’ll be a lot easier if I can actually afford them.”
“I think we all came here for that,” I said. “I know Poppy and Chaz didn’t sign up because they were hoping to get their throats slit.”
Malena looked at me gravely. “Do you think we’re going to be able to stop this?”
“Honestly, Malena, I don’t know. But we’re going to do the best we can.” That’s all we could ever do, and all my family had ever done: the best that we could. It was a real pity that even our best had never been enough to keep everyone we cared about alive.