Page 5 of Encore
“I’m not that same sixteen-year-old girl who took a bottle of pills, Kaine. I’d never do that to you. There’s too much I haven’t done with my life to call it quits.”
“You might not be ready, but you need to talk about this so it doesn’t bite you in the ass later. It has a way of sneaking up on you. This ballet is still fatal, and we don’t have all the answers yet. You may need to defend yourself again. A flashback in the heat of battle means you’ll hesitate. It could cost you your life. I know Santiago Suarez is your big bad, and you should definitely find him, but I’d look harder at your fairy boss. He’s the one allowing all this. In fact, since I can’t bring you home, I’m going to dig into him. This Bellatrix was in his bed. The warning signs were clear as day for me, and I don’t even know the girl.”
“I don’t think you’re going to find much. His life before he defected is going to be impossible to get your hands on.”
“Oh, I’m sure. But he defected long enough ago to have a successful ballet career, retire famous, and run a ballet company for several years. There’s probably enough of his narcissism in the press to put together a profile on him. I’m also going to put someone who has been benched to desk duty looking to see if we have anything on Santiago Suarez that didn’t get scanned. I can’t hop on a plane and bring you home, but I can make damned sure no one else tries to kill you.”
“You already did. You taught me to throw a punch as soon as Reyson healed my feet. Because you brought me with you when Balthazar called you, I had some of the best witch tutors in high school. I used a disarming spell on Bellatrix because she brought a gun to a witch fight, but I know how to make it hurt.”
“Then make it hurt, kid, because if it were up to me, I’d just roast your boss’s Unseelie ass for even trying to do this ballet in the first place.”
“Thanks, Kaine.”
“Do you remember the sacred dragon meditations I taught you?”
“Yeah. I do one of them before bed because it helps me sleep.”
“You’re going to want to do all of them before bed. It’ll help you after this ordeal. I know you aren’t a dragon, and you aren’t my whelp. Some of the other dragons would be mad I taught you those meditations, but I don’t give a shit. You needed them when you were sixteen, and you’re going to need them now.”
“Thanks. Get me that profile on Marsden and anything you can find on Santiago. I’ll definitely be doing those meditations because they helped then, and they’ll help now.”
“Good. Now, get out there and solve this case. Come home or stay and be a famous ballerina, but make the company safe first. If you don’t end up arresting Marsden, I’d like to introduce him to dragon fire.”
“Thanks, Kaine. I do need to get to work.”
“Good. I like it when you fight. I’ll have the criminal profile and anything we find that hasn’t been scanned soon.”
IknewKaine could fix this.
Chapter5
Bevan
My parents had been fully supportive of my love of ballet. They hired tutors to home-school me until I could get into a residential ballet school. But, unfortunately, not all of my family was like that. My grandfather didn’t agree with it at all.
Magical theory and Arcane Magic always just clicked with me. I got my magic at the same time every other warlock my age, but I understood it enough to write working spells other witches and warlocks could use at a young age.
Plenty of people called me a prodigy. It wouldn’t have shocked me if they had tried something awful, trying to awaken my magic early just to use me. But, instead, there was all this pressure when my magic awakened to just abandon my love of ballet and go to the Academy of the Profane. I didn’t even apply, but someone did on my behalf, and they offered me a scholarship.
I got that I was good at magic, but IknewI wanted to be a ballet dancer since my first dance class when I was three years old. The people who wanted me at the Academy of the Profane were aggressive about it. The academy sent a recruiter right when I was trying to line up auditions for professional ballet companies, and it was just terrible.
Even if I had put my ballet career on hold to attend the Academy of the Profane and found a way to keep up with my training while I was there, I wouldn’t have had a magical solution for any of this.
I couldn’t write a spell and make Beyla and Nyx feel better. I knew the theory behind necromancy but had never done it before. I couldn’t be totally sure I wouldn’t make a revenant. Plus, would anythingreallyget better if I tried to bring Bellatrix back from the dead? She wouldn’t be grateful about it. Bellatrix was going to be pissed she’d died, and she’d be after Beyla even harder.
We didn’t even have something of Santiago’s to do a locator spell on him. I was pretty adept at removing superficial curses. Merlin and Nicolai had ended up with magical acne or cursed dicks more than once that I had to remove. Frankly, I never wanted to look at their cocks ever again. I really cared about Beyla, and I knew Merlin and Nicolai did, too. They’d just better not pull any of the shit I’d seen them pull before with Beyla, or I’d curse them myself.
I was a bit of a fangirl when it came to Minerva Krauss and all of her curse-breaking skills. She’d done the impossible more than once. She happened to be giving a talk during off-season in New York, and I was in the front row watching with rapt attention. I asked her to sign my book because I wasn’t like some ballet fans who wanted Nicolai to sign their boobs.
She’d talked about curses on people, but never anything quite like this. Witches had been trying to figure out immortality for ages. If Selena knew how to do that, why hadn’t she put it to good use? I had my doubts Santiago was genuinely immortal.
I was missing something, and I didn’t like it.
I loved Merlin to death. He could be any woman’s fantasy when he wanted to. When Merlin was around us, he was goofy, low-key, and frankly, hilarious. He’d surprised me multiple times. Sometimes, it was with random shit literally no one asked him about, and I needed brain bleach afterward, but he was spot on with this one.
It was obvious, and I should have seen it by now. I wasn’t Minerva Krauss by any means, but that would have been her solution, too. She hit curses pretty damned hard, but she went with the method that caused the least fatalities.
IfSantiago was the one murdering people, then staying his ass in jail while someone did the ballet would have broken the curse. Unless we were totally wrong about what would break this curse, and he was just some psycho who enjoyed killing people.
