Page 25 of Encore
I tried. I gave it my all, and I was totally serious about my voice lessons. I kept up with it way longer than I should have before admitting to myself that I had inherited none of my mother’s singing talent. My sister got all of that. Me? I was completely tone-deaf. I could find the clitoris and G spot with no problem but the right note in a music number? Maybe it was an incubus thing because that was entirely beyond the scope of things I was capable of.
I was trying to stay mad because Marsden could have at least thrown Beyla a bone with her investigation and told her where to find Santiago instead of trying to explain how Bellatrix’s mind worked.
Every ballet school had some sort of drama. There were Queen Bees, some kind of sexual predator promising to further a career for sex, relationship drama, and everyone was sexually experimenting with each other. Everyone learned that shit didn’t fly when you got into a company. Bellatrix got fired enough that itshouldhave sunk in.
It was hard to stay mad, though. It might have this habit of historically murdering people, but this ballet really was fantastic. It was always great when I got to share the stage with Nicolai, but now Bevan was with me like he deserved to be. I didn’t like him as a person before, but I always did like dancing with Arden. We were cool now.
Now that Beyla was dancing Damita, it was just perfect. I would have preferred Bellatrix just get fired instead of magically blasted out of a window because Ivory was an evil bitch, but this just felt right.
Everything was just so fuckingeasy.I wasn’t straining to lift her, and I wasn’t faking my way through the connection we were sharing. We didn’t have to stop for stupid tantrums constantly.
Marsden was singing praise for all of us, but when it came time to teach us new choreography, he was being super precious. Even when I was cast with people with the work ethic of a grown-ass adult, he didn’t throw this much choreography at us at once.
His mood swings were all over the place. Male Unseelie PMS was way worse than my sister when she was a teenager. When we were running through the choreography to where we left off, he was yelling praise at all of us. He was like a chihuahua with rabies when he was teaching us new stuff.
We were all professionals. We knew how to push our bodies, take in new choreography, and retain it. We were in peak athletic condition, and since we were all supernaturals, we could go longer and harder than humans.
There were still limits for what Marsden was pushing. We were all dripping with sweat, and I was dead-ass tired. I could be some low self-esteem asshole, like Julian, and try to brag that I was somehow in better shape than everyone else, and I wasn’t feeling this as hard. He did that a lot, and I wanted to beat his ass constantly, but Bevan would neither confirm nor deny that Arden got away with that, and I didn’t want to get fired. I was fucking tired, and I wasn’t too big to admit that.
“One more time from the top!” Marsden yelled.
We all knew better, but every last one of us let out a groan. That didn’t even fly in baby ballet classes. Madame Lucinda used her cane because she needed it to walk, but she also corrected with it.
Cane-wielding ballet teachers seemed to be a staple, even if they didn’t need it to walk. They’d steal one from props because they were pretty handy for correcting shoulder and hip alignment and teaching proper posture. Most of them also seemed to enjoy smacking the back of your knees with them if you were a mouthy, little shit.
I knew better, but there was no cane in here, so I let out a louder groan than everyone else because Marsden was trying to murder us. This was only the first time he said one last time, and he was famous for saying that more than once.
“Stop complaining!” Marsden snapped. “We’re behind, and it’s vital we get to Damita’s death as soon as possible. I still need you at your best for the gala and future rehearsals. I threw a lot at you today, and rehearsals will be like this until we get to that particular scene. I need you to run it one more time to commit it to memory, and then I need you to go home and take care of your bodies.”
I had one more in me, but I had about a million questions Marsden wasn’t going to answer if it wasn’t by force. He was okay with Bellatrix derailing rehearsals with her tantrums. It wouldn’t have taken us long to get back on track.
What was so crucial about Damita’s death scene that we needed to push ourselves this hard to get to it sooner?
Chapter22
Beyla
Given the sheer number of people that could use them, I didn’t know why someone hadn’t invented something where one of those Snuggies and a heating pad had a baby. They gave you this tiny rectangle, and you just had to move it around.
Literally, everything hurt. We had to break out a power strip so that everyone could plug theirs in. I was in excellent shape, but I didn’t do ballet for a living like everyone here. Even the guys were hurting.
Nyx had started work on her solo and had a good bit of catching up on, but she wasn’t pushed as hard as we were. She seemed to enjoy Arden’s discomfort a little too much.
“Do we need to order pizza so you can eat your feelings about your broken ass, Arden?” she asked.
“Shut up, Nyx. You’re a damned mutant with your metabolism.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” I said. “I’m starving, but I also don’t want to get up off this couch.”
“I’d always cook for you when you’re hungry, but Marsden was insane today,” Nicolai said.
“Yes, and he knows better,” Merlin said. “We haven’t been rehearsing long. We aren't that far behind, even with Bellatrix’s tantrums and a two-day break. We could have caught up without him pulling what he did in the studio today. Why does he need to get to the death scene so fast?”
That was one thing I absolutely adored about Merlin. After Derek broke my feet and I found out my parents lied to me for sixteen years, I questioned everything. Merlin’s lizard brain worked differently than my lizard brain. He saw things in ways I didn’t, and he’d been around Marsden much longer than I had.
Merlin was right. I’d never been to rehearsals for a professional ballet company or even a residential ballet school, but I’d attended plenty of summer intensives and performed in many ballets. Delays happened all the time. I’d stayed late or came in on the weekend for extra rehearsals to catch up, but it was only ever a few extra rehearsals to get back on track.
Marsden hadn’t asked us to show up for extra rehearsals yet, but that last rehearsal was obscene. It was almost too much choreography to retain for the next rehearsal. He knew better. Something about that particular scene was important.
