Chaos Choreography (29 page)

“I'm sorry, but no,” said Dominic.

I actually stopped walking to stare at him. Malena did the same. If anything, she looked more surprised than I did.

“What did you just say?” I asked.

“I said no,” he said. “You can't return to the theater right now.”

“Dominic, my grandmother—”

“Is a terrifying force who can take care of herself. That, or she's no longer in a position to suffer. Either way, we need to retain access to the theater. I can get inside, but that won't help us in the daylight.” His expression, as much as I could see it through the gloom, was grim. “You must return to the apartment. Get enough sleep to let you dance tomorrow. Both of you. I'll go to
the theater and search until the morning shift arrives. I'll meet you out back with the map and with anything I've managed to learn before I go to get some rest.”

It was a good plan. It was better than “we all run around half-cocked and hope things work out for the best.” It still felt like a betrayal. “I should be there. She's my grandmother. And we shouldn't be splitting the party.”

“She's my family, too, and I don't have other commitments,” said Dominic. “Let me do this. Let me help. As for splitting the party . . . that was inevitable. I can't exactly have a sleepover. At least this way, I'm doing something useful.”

“You heard the man,” said Malena. “I
really
don't want to get eliminated. I don't know if you've noticed, but we're eight for eight in losing the people whose names come up. My plans depend on me not being dead.”

“Fine, fine,” I said. “But you're coming back to the apartment with me before you go.”

Dominic frowned. “Why?”

“Because you're taking some of the mice with you.”

Now it was his turn to look unhappy. “Must I?”

“Yes. You must. If anything happens to you, I need to be able to find out what.” I started walking again, forcing him to follow me if he wanted to remain in the discussion.

Malena grabbed my arm. I turned to look in her direction, and she scowled at me.

“Mice? What the hell are you talking about? I'm sleepy, too, but the sleep-dep hasn't kicked in yet. Have you been staying up all week?”

“Oh, right, you don't know. Malena, I have a colony of Aeslin mice living with me.” I ducked through the hole in the fence. “They remember everything they see. We should have moved them to the theater a week ago. They'll help Dominic search the place, once we explain what we need.”

Malena's mouth fell open, her eyebrows shooting toward her hairline like they'd just decided to secede from
her face. “You've got to be kidding. Aeslin mice are a myth.”

“No, they're an endangered species, and there's nothing mythical about them.”

She turned to Dominic, apparently expecting him to side with her. Instead, he shook his head and said, “The mice are real. The mice comment on my hygiene, diet, and sleeping habits. The mice are not a myth, much as I might sometimes wish otherwise.”

“Okay, I need to get some sleep, but before that happens, I have
got
to see this.”

I almost laughed. “Come on. Let's get this over with.”

Breaking into the apartments was easy, thanks to Alice's lax approach to simple human things like “locking the goddamn window.” We slithered into the apartment below mine, me first, followed by Dominic, and finally Malena, who had the good sense to remain outside until she was sure the coast was clear. I motioned for her to close the window. Once it was shut—and locked, for a change, although that wasn't going to last—I moved to the center of the room, cleared my throat, and announced, as loudly as I dared, “I seek audience.”

There was a long pause. Longer than normal: normally, the word “audience” would have them popping out of nowhere like a bunch of tiny rodent jack-in-the-boxes, all cheering wildly. But even talking pantheistic mice need their beauty sleep, and it was well past the hour when most of the faithful would have taken themselves off to bed.

After several minutes had ticked by, Malena flung up her hands in disgust. “This is the weirdest prank a pair of humans has ever tried to pull on me, you get that? There's something wrong with your entire species.”

“And lo did the Violent Priestess speak unto the congregation, and she did say, ‘Ain't Nothing Wrong with Most People which couldn't be Fixed with a Good Smack Upside the Head,'” squeaked a small, rapturous voice from the direction of the floor. Malena jumped nearly a foot straight up. The mouse continued, unperturbed,
“Then she did deliver a Good Smack Upside the Head to her husband, the God of Unexpected Situations, and All Was Well.”

Malena turned to stare at the wainscoting. The mouse, which was sitting politely with its tail tucked around its feet and its cloak slung back over its shoulders, fluffed its whiskers forward as it stared back.

“Greetings, therianthrope,” it said deferentially. Aeslin mice were remarkably canny about some things. Being polite to predators was one of them.

“Uh, mouse,” said Malena. “Mouse, talking. Talking mouse. In the apartment. There is a talking mouse.”

“Okay, it's fun to listen to you chaining your way up to a complete sentence, but we don't have time for this right now,” I said and knelt, holding out my hand for the mouse to scamper onto. Once it was settled on my palm I straightened, turning to present the mouse to Malena. “Malena, Aeslin mouse. Aeslin mouse, Malena. Malena is a friend, and will not eat you. Right, Malena?”

“Uh, sure,” said Malena, sounding unsettled. That was a common—and sensible—reaction to meeting an Aeslin mouse for the first time. She wasn't screaming and running away, which put her ahead of a lot of people. “Hello, mouse.”

“Greetings, friend who will not eat me,” said the mouse. It turned to me, forcing its whiskers forward in an expression of polite curiosity. “Why do you beg audience, Arboreal Priestess? Have we displeased you in some way? For the hour is Late, and you have said, many times, that we must Let You Sleep.”

“You can hear the capital letters,” said Malena, sounding even
more
unsettled. “Did you notice that? It talks, and you can hear the capital letters.”

“You get used to it,” said Dominic.

“What he's not saying is that before you get used to it, the mice make lots and lots of comments about your sex life,” I said. I focused on the mouse. “I asked for audience because I need your help. Can you wake the colony?”

The mouse looked conflicted. Normally, that would
have been amusing enough to distract me from the business at hand. Normally, it wasn't almost two o'clock in the morning, with the clock counting steadily down toward the start of rehearsals. “Why?”

“The Noisy Priestess is missing. We need to find her, but if we want to retain our access to the place where she disappeared, I need to get some sleep. Dominic is going back to the theater, and I want you and the rest of the colony to go with him.” Aeslin mice could fit in places where no human could ever go. They could escape through cracks and squeeze through holes in the foundation. And they never, ever forgot anything they saw or heard.

There was no guarantee the Aeslin eidetic memory would be enough to override the compulsion charms on the theater, but there was a chance. Given the situation, I'd take whatever chances I could find.

The mouse looked horrified. “The Noisy Priestess, missing? Vanished from our sight? I shall Ring the Bells. I shall Sound the Alarms. I shall—”

“You shall wake the colony and get them down here, to accompany the God of Hard Choices in Dark Places back to the theater,” I said firmly, before the mouse could work itself into a full-blown panic. “I'll be there in the morning. You can sleep in shifts, and report whatever you find to either one of us, Malena, or Pax. You remember Pax, right?”

It was a foolish question, designed to snap the mouse out of upset into indignation. It worked exactly as intended. The mouse sat up straighter, pushing its whiskers back in pure outrage, and squeaked, “The man who is not a Man, but is also a Fish,” it said. “I know him well. We all know him well.”

“Good, then you know you can trust him,” I said, bending to set the mouse back on the floor. “Go gather the rest of the colony. Tell them it's an emergency.”

“I go,” said the mouse, and put action to word, vanishing through a hole at the base of the wall almost faster than my eyes could follow.

I stayed where I was, crouched and looking at the empty space where the mouse had been. I was so tired. My grandmother was missing, and all I could think about was how nice it was going to be to crawl into my bed, pull the covers up over my eyes, and forget about all this for a little while.

It was a very Valerie reaction. Maybe I'd been trying to become her a little too hard, and was starting to lose track of the difference between my pretend self and my real one. Even more worryingly, maybe I was starting to forget which one was which.

A hand touched my shoulder. I looked up. Dominic was standing beside me, looking concerned.

“Get up,” he said, offering me his free hand. I took it. He pulled me to my feet. “You'll be no good to anyone, not even yourself, without a few hours of rest and some food in you. You're not letting your family down. If anything, by seeing to yourself, you're proving you're worthy of the trust they put in you. Now let me prove myself worthy of the trust you put in me.”

“I don't like the idea of leaving you alone,” I said.

“I won't be alone. I'll have the mice, and they are a formidable force for good, when not attempting to convince me to portray the entire Covenant in their recreation of your Grandfather's final meeting with the elders.” Dominic raised our joined hands to his mouth, pressing a kiss against the back of my knuckles. “Go. Rest. I'll see you in the morning.”

“You're both
way
too calm about the talking mice,” said Malena.

I had to laugh at that. It was a small, anxious sound, but it was a laugh, and I felt better afterward. “You have no idea,” I said. Leaning forward, I kissed Dominic quickly and properly, savoring the feeling of his lips on mine. Then I stepped away, pulling my hand from his. “Come on. Let's get some sleep. It's going to be a big day tomorrow.”

“Your real friends will love you for who you are, no matter how many heads or limbs or ovipositors you have.”

—Evelyn Baker

The Crier Apartments, nowhere near enough hours later

“W
HERE THE HELL WERE
YOU LAST NIGHT?”

Lyra's voice cut through the fog of sleep like a knife through a swamp bromeliad. My eyes snapped open a split second before I sat bolt upright in bed, turning to stare at her.

She was standing next to my bed, arms crossed, and a deeply irritated look on her face. “Oh, good, you're awake. Because
I
was awake until almost midnight waiting for you to come the hell home so I could yell at you. What the hell, Valerie?”

That was enough to bring me the rest of the way from disoriented grogginess into full wakefulness. “Lyra, please, stop shouting. What time is it?”

“It's good that we're both talking about time, since you don't seem to have any for me these days,” she snapped. “I knew things would be different with your boyfriend and sister hanging around—and don't think I haven't been tempted to report them
both
to Adrian, with the way you've been letting yourself get distracted—but I didn't expect you to go and replace me with a newer model. What's Malena got that I don't have, huh?”

Scales and the ability to walk on walls. I blinked. “Are you
jealous
?”

“Uh, yeah, I am, bitch,” she said, without unfolding her arms. “You're supposed to be my best friend. Do you know how few really good friends I have? I'm always dancing, or rehearsing, or auditioning. I don't have
time
to make friends. I came back to this show partially because it would mean seeing you again, and here you are constantly running off with other people.” Her face fell. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No! Lyra, honey, no!” I jumped out of the bed and hurried to put my arms around her. “I've just been . . . it's all hard on me. I'd stopped dancing.”

Her eyes went wide. “What?”

There it was: the words were out. I took a deep breath, and repeated, “I'd stopped dancing. When I couldn't get work after the show, I decided to do something else with my life. I hadn't danced in months when Adrian contacted me.”

“But . . .”

“I came back because I still love it, but I'll be honest, I feel like an alcoholic who took a job at a bar. This isn't my world anymore. Unless I win, I can't
let
it be my world anymore. I'm trying not to fall so much in love that I can't walk away when it's all over.” Every word I said was true, and I hadn't been expecting to say any of them.

“Oh, Val,” she said again. “I didn't know.”

I shrugged. “I didn't tell you.”

“How about this Sunday, we have a girls' day, just you and me? We can get pedicures and talk about how much our legs ache.”

“I'd like that,” I said. “Thanks. What time is it?”

“Oh!” Lyra winced. “I was so surprised, I just forgot! You slept through the alarm, the cars are leaving for the theater in ten minutes. I came to wake you up.”

“
What
?!” I let her go, grabbing my makeup kit as I launched myself for the bedroom door. There was no one between me and the bathroom, and I was able to
lock myself inside, beginning the quick and dirty process of putting my Valerie-face on.

Ten minutes later, I was standing on the sidewalk with the rest of my season, a fresh wig pinned to my head and just enough makeup on that I wouldn't look dead when the cameras came into the rehearsal room. Pax glanced at me, eyebrows raising as he took in my black yoga pants and loose gray tank top. They were audition clothes, “don't stand out too much” clothes, not “go to the rehearsal and keep the camera locked on you the whole time” clothes.

“You okay?” he asked. The real question—“How much sleep did you get?”—went unasked, but it hung between us, fat and ripe and poisonous.

“I'm good,” I said, mustering a smile. “I was just more stressed out about last night's competition than I expected, and I guess I slept doubly hard because of it. I'm totally fine.”

“You never oversleep,” said Anders, pushing himself into the conversation without a trace of shame. “Remember how you used to wake me up by crouching at the foot of my bed like some sort of freaky gargoyle? You never missed a morning.”

“Everybody has a bad day,” I said.

Anders slipped his arm through mine, pulling me close. It was a fraternal gesture; there was nothing romantic or inappropriate about it. It still felt unearned. “Like last night?” he asked, voice going sharp and low.

“Like last night,” I agreed. I was having trouble finding my inner Valerie today, and without her, I was an interloper in this place. All around me were dancers laughing, gossiping, totally ready for the cars to come and sweep them off to the waiting theater. Even Jessica was smiling as she chatted with Lo. It was like everyone else had fallen into some weird parallel dimension where people weren't dying and everything wasn't awful.

No, wait. I was the one in the weird parallel dimension. I was the one in the dimension where I had no choice but to know how terrible things really were.

Malena sidled up to me as the cars pulled up to the curb. She was wearing more makeup than I was, and her lips were painted a bright, bloody red that lent her the air of a ticked-off warrior goddess, ready to bite the heads off anyone who annoyed her. She pushed herself between me and Anders, forcing him to let me go. I decided she was my favorite.

“I hate everyone,” she announced, sans preamble. “Can I ride with you? If I have to listen to Emily and Troy handicapping the remaining dancers for one more minute, I'm going to get myself disqualified.”

“There are only three people in your car now,” said Lyra, with all the tact and delicacy of a charging rhino. It made sense, after this morning. It was still a complication I didn't need. “Why do you need to cram yourself into ours?”

“Because I asked nicely, and because I'd rather ride with my friends than with a bunch of jerks who insist on plotting out how, exactly, they can win their way to the finals,” Malena said. “It doesn't help that Troy's my partner, but cares more about exploring the magical promised land of Emily's pants than about noticing when he's making me uncomfortable. I'm riding with you guys.”

Lyra looked like she was going to protest again. All that was going to do was slow us down, and so I made an executive decision, stepping forward, pulling open the car door, and gesturing for Malena to get inside.

“I'll ride in the middle,” I said, with more perkiness than I actually felt. “I needed a nap anyway, and I always fall asleep when I'm squished between two people in the backseat.”

“Middle child syndrome,” said Malena, and winked as she scooted into the car.

Lyra frowned. I grimaced apologetically and got in. Maybe this wasn't the safest thing I could have done when she was already jealous of how much time I was spending with Malena, but I didn't have time to screw around. I needed to get to the theater.

The theater. The more I woke up, the more I
understood that Dominic and the mice had been there alone, all night long. There were no texts on my phone, and there had been no calls; they were probably fine. They were probably fine.

Maybe if I told myself that a sufficiently large number of times, I'd start believing it.

Lyra sulked for the whole drive, while Anders chattered at Pax about the surfing in Hawaii and whether or not Pax was hoping to be home in time for the big waves. Pax gave mild, noncommittal answers. I wondered whether either of them realized the other had effectively no interest in surfing. I didn't feel like pointing it out. I was too busy resting my head on Malena's shoulder—something she endured with stoic amusement—closing my eyes, and trying not to dwell on the worst-case scenarios at hand. There were so many ways things could have gone wrong once Dominic and the mice were alone. Maybe he hadn't texted because he wasn't there anymore. Maybe he and my grandmother had found the same shallow grave. Maybe—

“Val, I'm sorry to interrupt you while you're drooling on my shoulder, but we're here.” Malena's words were accompanied by a hard poke in the arm before she brought her lips close to my ear and hissed, “Open your eyes, there's something you need to see.”

I opened my eyes.

We'd pulled up to the back door of the theater, which was open and clogged with bodies as the remaining dancers forced their way inside. Pax was already out of the car, with Anders and Lyra close behind him. Apparently, remaining crammed in the car was not on their agenda for the day. I barely registered their absence. All my attention was on the dark-haired, exhausted-looking man standing off to one side and trying to look unobtrusive.

Dominic had acquired a clipboard and badge somewhere, which made my heart leap with something between pride and delight. He'd been paying attention when I talked about the way to integrate yourself into a
setting. He looked like a stagehand, and unless he was giving orders or handing out coffee, none of the dancers were going to look at him twice.

“Don't dawdle,” said Malena, holding the door for me as I got out of the car. “I can't stop the assignments for you, and you
know
Adrian will notice if you're late.”

“I got it,” I said, and launched myself at Dominic, wrapping my arms around him and hugging him as hard as I could. I didn't care who saw us. Dancers loved to gossip, and if they wanted to add “is sleeping with a stagehand” to their collection of rumors about me, I had dealt with worse. Sometimes the worse had even been true.

Dominic waited until I let him go and pushed myself back before he said, in a soft voice, “We found many things, but nothing which will lead us immediately to our goal. The map is behind the wardrobe rack in the women's dressing room. I've annotated it as best I could. The mice can tell you what was found in each area. They're still searching, and may need you to help them update the map. There is one mouse in your makeup drawer. It has promised not to jump out and frighten anyone who doesn't really, really deserve it.”

I did a quick review of the dancers remaining on the show. “Please tell me you didn't show it a picture of Jessica.”

“I didn't, but I was tempted.” He deposited a quick kiss on my temple, leaving his lips there for a moment after the pressure of the gesture had faded. “Did you sleep?”

“Not enough.”

“Will you be able to get through this day?”

“When you met me I was working as a cocktail waitress, acting as a social worker to half of New York, and still managing to keep fit for competitions and classes,” I said, taking a step backward and giving him my best coquettish smile. It lacked a certain sincerity and sparkle, but it was close enough to what I needed it to be. “I'll be fine. You go rest up, and then get back over here. We may
be able to finish searching the place after rehearsal is finished.”

Dominic's expression was solemn. “Just because we didn't find her, that doesn't mean it's time to assume the worst. She is a brilliantly dangerous woman.”

“All the more reason to kill her quickly,” I said. “I have to go. I love you.”

“I love you as well,” he said. “Stay safe.” He turned and walked away. He didn't look back before he went around a corner, and was gone.

I was the last one to the stage. Adrian looked up when I entered, and scowled.

“So, the fabulous Valerie Pryor is finally deigning to grace us with her presence,” he said. “This is no time to get a swelled head, sweetheart. I don't know if you were paying attention last night, but if you're not in the bottom three this coming week, I'll be a monkey's uncle.”

Some of the dancers tittered, Jessica among them. I ducked my head, trying to look humble and chastened.