“How do you know this?”
“Because when I looked directly at you in the Mercenary Guild as you were absorbing a power word, my head wanted to explode. When I looked away and accidentally caught your reflection in the glass, it hurt significantly less.”
Saiman took one of the night tables, walked to the right front corner of the platform, and walked exactly six steps diagonally. “Do you remember David Miller?”
“Yes.” David Miller was a magical idiot savant. Nobody ever managed to teach him how to use his enormous reserve of magic, but after he died it was discovered that the objects he had handled gained strange powers. His descendants had sold them off to different buyers, deliberately trying to scatter them, but Saiman collected all of them over the years. He’d used Miller’s bowling ball to produce a vision of my aunt when we were trying to identify her as she rampaged through Atlanta.
Saiman took one step to the right and placed the night table. He came back, picked up the second night table, walked back to the first night table exactly the same way, turned, and walked to the left for eight steps.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to measure?” Curran asked.
“Measuring doesn’t work,” Saiman said.
“Why?” Curran asked.
“Nobody knows. Counting the steps is a part of the ritual.”
Saiman opened the wooden trunk and took out a pink vase with three fake pink roses in it. He walked directly to the first night table and set the vase on it. A lava lamp with pink and blue wax was the next to come out of the trunk. He set it on the second table. The third item was a bright pink fake fur rug. Saiman carefully placed it in front of the platform and turned to me.
“You’re standing on a stage Dave Miller built for his daughter when she was a child.” Saiman reached into the trunk and pulled out a pink tulle tutu.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“It won’t fit.”
“Elastic waistband,” Saiman said. “It will fit.”
Curran’s grin was pure evil.
“Don’t you dare,” I told him.
“It’s too bad the magic is up,” he said. “I’d take pictures.”
“Shut up.”
“Have no fear, Alpha,” Ascanio said. “We’ll tell no one.”
Kill me, somebody.
Saiman held out the tulle skirt to me.
“Maybe it will work without it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“If I put this on, it will be ridiculous.”
Saiman waved the pink tutu in front of me. Fine. I snatched it out of his hands and pulled it on over my hips.
Ascanio collapsed into a moaning heap of laughter.
“Now what?”
“Move around onstage. It would help if you danced.”
Curran was dying. That was the only rational explanation for the noises coming from his direction.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I told Saiman.
“Yes. The purpose being to read the writing on your skin without killing the people who are looking at it. Which reminds me. Ascanio, once she is done dancing, do not look directly at her. It will be very bad for your health and I have no desire to deal with upset Pack parents.”
“Yes,” I said. “You should both avert your eyes.”
“I believe your fiancé will be fine,” Saiman said, walking over to the table with the vase. “Dance, Kate.”
I stomped around onstage. Saiman was looking at the lava lamp.
“Not enough.”
“How do you know?”
“The lamp would glow. We need more. You have to commit and put in the effort, like the child that was originally dancing on the stage. Try to be graceful this time. You’re a swordsman. Surely you can scrounge up some elegance.”
Screw it. “Throw me my socks.”
Curran balled my socks together and tossed them at me. I pulled them on, raised my hands, and slipped into the classical fourth position. I took a deep breath, fixed my gaze on the narrow window directly in front of me, and launched into a double pirouette to pick up momentum. One, two, fouette turn, another, another, another, pirouette, pirouette, what the hell, let’s go for eight, fouette, fouette, seven, eight, pirouette, fourth position, arms open.
Botched that last pirouette a bit. It had been a while.
Saiman and Curran stared at me.
“Do you need a shovel to help you pick up your jaws off the floor?”
Saiman woke up, grabbed the roses from the vase, and threw them at me. A spotlight drenched me, out of nowhere. Behind me Zoe screamed. The spotlight vanished.
I turned around. The Maori woman collapsed in a heap, her hands over her eyes. Saiman hurried over to Zoe, leaning on his cane.
“Ballet?” Curran asked.
“There are so many things about me you don’t know.”
Voron was Russian. He tortured me with ballet for three years, until I turned ten years old.
“Is it safe to look?” Ascanio asked.
“Yes.”
“We need more mirrors,” Saiman called out. “The impact of the words is too strong. The mirror-to-mirror reflection should dull it.”
It took seven mirrors. After Zoe successfully managed to reproduce the first drawing, Saiman brought it to me. It was the language of power, alright, but I couldn’t read it. I got a few isolated words, but most of it didn’t look like the words I already knew.
We kept going and by the end of the hour my head hurt from spinning and my legs hurt from jumping. Ballet wasn’t for the untrained and it had been a long time since I’d had to do it. I was amazed I still remembered how. Voron had said it would help with strength and balance. I mostly hated it.
“I have to take a break,” I told Saiman.
“We’re only halfway done.”
As if on cue, someone knocked.
“See? Serendipity.”
“You mean coincidence.”
Ascanio opened the door and Roman walked in. He saw me onstage and blinked. “Ehh . . .”
“Don’t,” I warned him.
He raised his hands. “I do not judge.”
Curran tossed me my clothes. I slipped the shirt over my head, pulled on my jeans, and took off the stupid tutu.
A black woman with a head full of bright poppy-red curls followed Roman, pulling behind her a small metal cart full of plates. Roman picked up one of the plates and a spoon, carved a small piece of the cake on it, and held the spoon out to me.
“What is this?”
“Cake.”
“Why do I need cake right this second?”
“This is Mary Louise Garcia,” Roman said. “She is the head baker for Clan Heavy’s Honey Buns bakery.”
Mary smiled at me and waved her fingers.
“Mary very kindly agreed to bring over samples so you could select a wedding cake.”
“I did.” Mary nodded.
“Mary turns into a grizzly. A very large grizzly.”
“I know who Mary is,” I told him. “I met her before, at Andrea’s wedding.”
“If you don’t pick a wedding cake, Mary will sit on you and stuff all this cake into your mouth until you make a selection.”
“Mary and what army?”
Mary smiled at me. “I won’t need an army.”
“Can he select the cake?” I pointed at Curran. “This wedding involves two of us.”
“He already did,” Mary said. “These are the choices he narrowed down.”
I turned to Curran. “You narrowed it down to sixteen choices?”
“They were all very delicious,” he said.