I didn’t move. I just sat there staring at her.
She shrugged and walked out.
I sat for a few more minutes, staring at my bandaged hand, then I walked from the wings onto the stage. Elaine opened her mouth, an angry look on her face. But then she took in the blood on my shirt and bandaged hand. I thought I saw a flicker of emotion behind her eyes, but it was gone so quickly, I couldn’t be sure.
“Be ready in ten minutes,” she said.
Two broken fingers, a bitching headache and a gash in my head that needed stitches, aching ribs from where I’d been punched, and . . . I didn’t want to think about the rest.
Elaine definitely didn’t look happy to see me. Maybe she was worried that Sergei would be around more now. My gut twisted at the thought, remembering what Trixie had said.
When the other dancers saw me, a shocked murmur rippled around the room. Elaine snapped at them, and they all went back to work, throwing me quick, questioning glances.
Yveta looked like she was going to say something but bit her lip and thought better of it. Gary’s expression tightened as he eyed the blood on my face and swollen hand, but he didn’t say anything either. It was a disease of silence. And I was just as infected as everyone else.
I woke up choking, feeling Oleg’s hands around my throat. I lashed out with my feet and someone shrieked.
“Ow! You asshole!”
Panting, my hands shaking, I turned on the small bedside light and found Gary crouched at the end of my bed holding a bloody nose.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Gary moaned, then shuffled to the bathroom, dripping blood on the cheap carpet.
I yanked back the covers and stalked after him.
“What did you do to me?”
“What did I do to you? I’m the one bleeding to death!”
Gary’s voice was muffled as held a wet washcloth to his face and a nose that was twice its normal size.
“You were screaming and yelling and wouldn’t wake up. I tried to shake you awake and you almost broke my fucking nose!”
Oh shit.
I ran my good hand through sweat-soaked hair. I must have been dreaming. I’d thought that Oleg had come back for me, had tried to kill me, just like . . .
I didn’t want to finish the thought, but the memory of the air being cut off, my throat being crushed—it was wriggling like an eel in the back of my brain.
And her eyes . . . the girl’s eyes: I couldn’t stop seeing them, begging me to help her, to save her.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “It was a nightmare.”
“You’re the nightmare!”
I couldn’t blame him. It must be shitty when your roommate starts shouting, and you try to wake him up and get punched in the face.
Silently, I grabbed a towel and started scrubbing at the blood stains on the thin carpet. Gary sat on the end of his bed holding the wet washcloth to his nose.
I glanced up to catch him staring but he just shrugged.
“What can I say? You’re a crazy asshole, but you’re still hot.”
Looked like I was forgiven. I was working out that Gary’s bark was worse than his bite.
I gestured at his nose.
“Is it broken?”
“No,” he sighed. “Thank God. My plastic surgeon would throw a fit.” Then he glanced at me. “What was the nightmare about?”
“Oleg.”
Gary shuddered. “Ugh, that monster. Don’t say anymore.”
“I think he killed . . .”
“I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!” Gary hissed at me.
His words made me grimace.
“Nobody wants to know. This place is sick. The fear is like . . . it’s a cancer inside everyone. How can you stand it?”
“It’s never been this bad before,” Gary admitted flatly. “I’m scared. We all are after what happened to you today. So you know what I’m going to do? Nothing. I don’t see anything, I don’t hear anything, and I don’t say anything.”
“But . . .”
Gary dropped his voice to a whisper.
“People around here disappear. My last roommate, Erik, he was like you—thought he could change the world. One day he was just gone. Officially, he went back to his family in Poland. Unofficially, no one knows.”
He shuddered.
“The rumor is that Sergei wants to be top dog, and with Oleg helping him, it could well happen. There’s a power struggle going on. And you, my friend, have walked right into the middle of it.”
Gary dropped the washcloth onto the floor and climbed back into bed.
“This conversation is done. And if you start screaming again, I’ll toss a glass of water over you—it’s safer.”
Gary threw the duvet over his shoulders and turned on his side, huffing noisily.
I’d just been chewed out by an angry dude in Hello Kitty pajamas.
My brain was wired after everything that had happened, but my body was suffering.
I lay in the narrow bed and forced myself to relax. I’d wait, find out how this place worked, and then . . .
“Hey, Gary!”
“What do you want now?” came a very pissed off voice.
“Can I borrow your phone? I need to send an email.”