Chaos Choreography (25 page)

He stopped dancing. So did I. Then, without another word, he took his hand from my waist, raised our joined hands to his lips, and kissed my knuckles. Then he turned and walked away, leaving me alone on the stage.

“There's no crime in missing the shot. The only crime is being too damn slow to take it.”

—Frances Brown

The Crier Theater, four seconds later

I
STAYED PUT FOR A COUNT OF TEN,
watching to see if Clint would come back. He didn't. I turned and bolted for the wings, heading for where I'd left Malena and the others.

The show had been over for long enough that the halls were deserted: even the technicians, janitors, and countless production assistants who could usually be counted on to lurk in unexpected places were gone, leaving me free to run. I sped up, grabbing a corner with my left hand in order to slingshot myself around it, only to stop dead as my momentum carried me straight into Dominic's chest. He was close enough to my height that my head hit him in the throat, and he staggered backward, closing his arms around me in an effort to stabilize himself.

I didn't pull away, even though every instinct I had said not to let myself be trapped. Instead, I leaned to the side, and we hit the wall with a thud that resounded all the way through my spine.

“What the hell, Ve—” Dominic caught himself before he blurted out my real name. He frowned instead, and
demanded, “Where were you? We've been looking everywhere!”

“Didn't look on the stage,” I said, and ducked out of his arms, stepping backward. “Where is everyone else?”

“Trying to find our eliminated contestants,” he said. “Pax thought they were with Malena. Malena thought they were with you. Alice thought they were with anyone but her.”

“So we've lost them.” Which meant that they were probably dead. I swallowed the urge to stomp my foot, and simply asked, “How the hell did we
lose
them?”

“Leanne left the girls' changing room to use the restroom, and didn't come back; Mac never made it to the changing room at all,” said Dominic. “Perhaps more interesting is the question of why no one finds this strange.”

That stopped me. “What?”

“Pax asked Troy—the other male dancer from Mac's season, who you would think might feel some camaraderie or responsibility for the man—where Mac was. Troy looked confused and reminded Pax that Mac had been eliminated.” Dominic's expression was grim. “I know the dance world can be cutthroat and cruel, but you've always led me to believe there was slightly more compassion in it.”

“There usually is,” I said. Sarah's brand of telepathy wasn't the only way of changing people's minds. There were compulsions, illusions, all manner of charms that could be cooked up by your local witch or Letiche—and in a city like Burbank, where everything was available for the right price, finding someone who'd cook you a charm without asking questions wasn't hard. Assuming their pet magic-users hadn't done it themselves. “We need to find the others.”

“We split up to look for the missing contestants.”

“I get that, and it was a smart move given the information available at the time, but I'm telling you we need to find the others.” I shook my head, feeling the bobby pins holding my wig in place dig into my scalp. “Something's making people not care about the
disappearances. Do we want to risk Pax or Malena going missing, knowing that nobody's going to give a shit?”

Dominic's eyes widened. Then he nodded. “This way,” he said, and turned to run.

He was only a few inches taller than me, but that was enough to give him a longer stride. That was a good thing, since otherwise there was no way he'd have ever been able to keep up with me. Dominic was in good shape. He trained hard and worked harder. I was a dancer and a fighter whose only chance of survival was rooted in speed, and I'd been training nonstop for the past three weeks. Really, the only surprise was that I was less than ten feet ahead of him by the time I hit the last corner between us and the hallway leading to the basement.

Alice and Pax were there, standing in front of the open door. Alice had a pistol in her hand, holding it low against her hip, as if that would keep her from getting in trouble if theater security came around the corner and saw her with the gun. I slid to a stop and looked up at the same time. Malena was anchored to the wall some twelve feet up, her feet bent at an inhuman angle.

“Where have you been?” demanded Alice. “We've been looking for you everywhere.”

“Dominic said the same thing, and I don't think you have,” I said. “I was on the stage with Clint. Half the hallways in this place would have led you straight there. I think someone's messing with us. Malena!”

“What?” The voice drifted down from above, not accompanied by the chupacabra. She was in hunting mode. It would take her a while to shake that off.

That was good. I needed her in hunting mode. “Go to the top of the wall and start looking for anything that seems like it doesn't belong there. Dried flowers or herbs or stones.”

“
What
?” Now she just sounded confused.

Alice, on the other hand, looked horrified. “Memory charms.”

“Or confusion charms,” I said. I looked up again.
Malena hadn't moved. “Come on. We need this if we're going to find them.”

“You need my foot up your butt,” she muttered, and skittered away, moving with a fluid, insectile grace completely at odds with her still mostly human appearance.

Content that she was trying, I turned to Alice and Pax. “Do either of you
remember
going to look for me, or did you just assume it had happened?”

“Pax and Malena told me they'd gone looking,” said Alice.

“I looked,” said Pax.

“As did I,” said Dominic.

“Okay, where?” I asked.

Silence followed.

“That's what I thought. Look: my family's spent so much time around cuckoos and Lilu and other things that scramble your head that we're a little resistant. Not immune, but . . . we do okay.” I shook my head. “If I don't remember looking for people I couldn't find, and Alice doesn't remember looking for people she couldn't find, but we're all mysteriously losing track of the folks we're supposed to be keeping our eyes on? Someone is messing with us.”

“Does this fit the bill for something that doesn't belong?” asked Malena, just before a bundle of dried flowers wrapped with a string of stone beads hit the floor. Pax jumped. Alice slanted a narrow-eyed glare up at the rafters.

“Yes, it does,” I said, as I moved to pick up the bundle. The flowers were thin and fragile, but they'd been red before they were dried; hints of color still showed on the petals. I sniffed, and was rewarded with a dusty, venomous sweetness. “I think these are resurrection lilies.”

“The stone is howlite,” said Dominic. I glanced at him. He continued, “We used to carry disks of the stuff when it was thought we might be going into an area containing a cuckoo. There was no proof it helped us to remember ourselves, but the thought was that any protection, however scant, was better than none.”

“Howlite is supposed to be calming,” said Alice. “It reduces stress, anger—all the things I live by.”

“And resurrection lilies are used in a lot of memory charms,” I said. “Someone's looping memory in the halls. Keeps us from noticing when we lose track of people, keeps us from realizing that we're wasting time doing things we don't have to. This is bad.”

“We can get counter-charms from Bon,” said Alice.

“That's not going to save Mac and Leanne,” I said.

She didn't have an answer for that. Sadly, neither did anybody else.

Malena searched the rafters and found six more howlite and resurrection lily charm bundles. Once they were all collected, she slipped out through one of the high windows, on the theory that if we got the charms out of the building, we'd have a better chance of finding our missing people. (They weren't powerful enough to make her forget what they were while she was actually touching them. As for the wisdom of having her move them, rather than destroying them . . . if we didn't find Mac and Leanne, we could put the charms back and hopefully keep the people who'd created them from realizing how much we knew, at least for a while longer. Especially since we didn't know anything
useful
. We had enough bits and pieces to be a danger to ourselves, but not enough to be a danger to anyone else.)

Dominic made a small, startled sound. I turned to see him blinking, looking suddenly confused. Pax looked much the same.

“What's up?” I asked.

“I never went looking for you; I found you by mistake,” he said, expression turning horrified. “I was angry with Malena for refusing to come off the wall, and stalked away. I all but ran into you after that—before, I would have gone to my grave swearing I'd sought you, and failed to find you anywhere.”

“Welcome to the wonderful, terrible world of memory charms,” I said. “It's all right. I wasn't hurt, and you didn't do anything wrong.”

“No,” he said. “It most certainly is
not
all right, and we'll be discussing this later, at length. Right now, we need to find your missing dancers.” He turned and stalked away, heading down the hall toward the stage.

A hand touched my shoulder as I watched him go. I looked behind me. There was Pax, frowning deeply.

“You know, if you don't want to discuss this with him later, he can't make you.”

I blinked before I realized what he was implying, and burst out laughing. It was a relief, almost, to feel like laughing again, even though I knew the situation was dire. “No, no, nothing like that, Pax, I swear. He's just worried, and he didn't get a lot of coping mechanisms when he was a kid. I promise, he only wants to talk to me. And maybe make out with me. A lot.”

“If you're sure . . .”

“I'm sure. Now come on, you're the Ukupani. Do you smell blood?”

Pax closed his eyes and breathed deeply. As he did, he went perfectly still, becoming a statue of a man. Nothing moved except his chest, and once his lungs were full, even that stopped. He was motionless as only a predator could be, carved from stone and ready to return to life the moment his prey was within range.

Then he opened his eyes and pointed down one of the side halls. “Blood,” he said, voice suddenly thick with hunger and longing. “So much blood.”

We ran. Malena would just have to catch up with us once she was back in the theater. I had faith that she could; Pax was great for following the smell of blood, but Malena was a distance hunter, and she could follow the smell of
us
.

The hall ended at a closed door. I was the first to reach it, followed by Alice and Dominic, with Pax bringing up the rear. We all stopped, hesitating as we looked at it.

“Anyone know where this leads?” I asked.

Silence told me no one did.

“Great,” I said. Producing three throwing knives from the waist of my pants, I signaled for the others to be quiet before leaning forward and turning the knob with my free hand. The door swung inward, revealing a flight of stairs leading down into the dark. My nose was nowhere near as sensitive as Pax's, but it didn't need to be.

The smell of blood was strong enough that I could pick it up on my own.

“Come on,” I said, and reached through the door, feeling around for a light switch. There wasn't one. Bracing myself against the potential for things to go terribly, incredibly wrong, I started down the stairs. The others followed.

It was impossible for us to descend silently into the dark. We had to hunt for our footing, and the stairs were metal; our footsteps clanked, not every time, but often enough to alert whatever might be lurking below to our presence. Something scraped on the wall above my head.

I decided to risk it. “Malena, find the light,” I hissed.

The scraping intensified, moving away. I realized my mistake and covered my eyes a split second before the lights came on, bathing the room in burning light. Behind me, Dominic made a small, disapproving sound. Alice said a bad word in what sounded like Latin, identifiable as profanity only in its inflection. Pax didn't say anything.