Page 3 of Encore
She pointed a fucking gun at my mate. Theonlyreason Bellatrix thought she could shoot Beyla right in front of me and live through it was Marsden. He’d been protecting her for years as new dancers were getting injured or breaking their contracts and leaving. He continued to do so after she attacked Madame Lucinda more than once.
Was I shocked it was a gun? Yeah. Did it surprise me she tried to kill Beyla? Not in the slightest.
I really just wanted to feel Marsden’s face crack beneath my fist, but Beyla needed me. She told us this was her first assignment, and I doubted she had killed someone before. I doubted any of us had, except maybe Nicolai. I had so many questions about Nicolai now. He just made one phone call, and we had photos and someone tailing Bellatrix. They didn’t get to her right away, but how did they not see her buying a gun?
I was so angry; I hadn’t even been focused on my mate. She was furious when the agents got there, but now she looked like she was about to lose it. I tried to get close to her, but Bevan and Merlin had their arms around her.
Oh, shit. Nyx. She saw this, but she didn’t know who or how. This was officially an emergency. I hadn’t been around Beyla to know enough about how this would hit her, but Nyx was my best friend. Nyx loathed Bellatrix and could be prickly about literally everything, but she wouldn’t have wished her dead.
“Get Beyla into her apartment. I’ll join you in a minute.”
Bevan was friends with Nyx. He knew exactly what I was doing. Nicolai and Merlin shot me stink eye like I wasn’t fully invested in Beyla. I was doing this for her, too.
I ducked into the corner market while Bevan, Nicolai, and Merlin led Beyla home. Junk food was never on the menu unless it was off season and then it was limited, but Nyx had a weakness for pistachio gelato and generally indulged when she had a death omen.
I didn’t know a single soul who hated gelato, but plenty of people I danced with wouldn’t eat it because they liked to dress us in skintight white costumes a lot. Marsden justlovedsticking me in white tights, and Nyx just adored telling me my ass looked fat in them, but I loved her anyway.
I grabbed enough for everyone. I only really cared about Beyla, Nyx, and Bevan, but Nicolai and Merlin came through when Beyla needed them. Still, if Nyx could tell more people than me that their butt looked big on stage, it would really help my ego.
I paid and ran the entire way to the apartment. But, of course, the elevator was broken again. Did that thing ever work? They’d call maintenance, and something would break again it again in about two hours. Most sane people who lived here used the stairs even if you caught it when it was functional. There was a significant chance it was going to fuck itself when you got inside, and you’d be stuck inside. I didn’t want to risk it fatally breaking when I was inside, but man, did I hate running up all those stairs.
I was sure Beyla had opinions about it, but Nyx never minded if I just let myself in. I barged inside. Everyone was surrounding Nyx on the couch, and Beyla was nowhere to be found. I fished out Nyx’s gelato and handed it to her.
“I brought emergency supplies. Where is Beyla?”
“Checking in with her handler and calling her adoptive dad. She wanted privacy for that,” Merlin said.
“How are you, Nyx?” I asked.
“Pissed off. If I had seen more than the broken window, I could have warned Beyla about the gun. Something else would have killed Bellatrix because death will find a way if I have a death omen. It wouldn’t have been because of Beyla, and Marsden would havehadto fire her. Beyla could have used that to find out what exactly Marsden is up to.”
“If I find out Marsden gave her that gun, I’ll cut his thumbs off myself,” Nicolai growled.
“What about your man who was following Bellatrix?” Merlin asked.
“He got there as soon as he could, but he caught her coming home late that night and wasn’t sure where she was before that. There weren’t any stores open to legally purchase a gun, and Bellatrix was a snob, even when it came to her cocaine. She wouldn’t even knowhowto purchase a gun illegally. Shit, my family fully supported me being a ballet dancer, but they taught me how to run a criminal empire as a backup plan. I don’t even know how to do that because supernaturals don’t use them. Not even my family’s hitmen use them,” Nicolai said.
If Nicolai hadn’t been using his criminal family to help Beyla, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my mate. Still, I kind of liked the guy now. I’d rip someone apart when it came to Beyla, but I couldn’t be in two places at once. I could appreciate Nicolai could do that by calling his shady uncle. And someone needed to be watching Marsden because I doubted he would give up Santiago Suarez even now.
“This is my fault,” Nyx moaned.
“It’s not your fault, Nyx,” I said. “It’s not like you can control the death omens. Bellatrix brought a human weapon into the studio to murder Beyla in front of witnesses. This just feels planned. I don’t pretend to know about witch amulets, but Bellatrix getting one that works right around the time she gets her hands on a human weapon? It just feels like someonewantedit to go down the way it did.”
“We’ve been operating under the assumption Santiago was killing dancers,” Bevan said. “Maybe he’s been arranging for accidents where the cast kills each other.”
“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense,” Nyx said. “Marsden is a horny fairy who let his two girlfriends unleash a reign of terror on his company, but he’s not a murderer. He’s blind when it comes to Bellatrix and Ivory, but he’s a hardass when it comes to rules about our health and safety. He benched me over a toenail once.”
He’d done the same to all of us. We let our understudies dance our roles for at least one show, but Marsden frequently made us sit matinees out for our understudy when we partnered with Bellatrix, so we didn’t end up with permanent back injuries trying to lift her. Heknew,and he still gave her lead roles.
“Nyx is right,” Bevan said. “If Santiago went to Marsden and said he wassurehe knew how to break the curse this time, he wouldn’t have agreed to let him try if it involved murdering anyone.”
“Someone is dead, though,” Merlin said. “If Marsden and Santiago had some sort of arrangement, Santiago broke it. There were two agents at the scene. Marsden had every chance to tell them where he was. With Santiago in jail, there’s a good chance we could pull off this ballet, and the curse would be broken. Honestly, I’m not sure why no one hasn’t tried that yet. If it’s him killing people, why doesn’t someone just handcuff his ass in a padded room and just do the fucking ballet? Problem solved.”
Fuck me. I thought Merlin was just a dick before Beyla joined the company. Then, I spent more time around him, and he was kind of this goofy motherfucker. After I had finished ripping Bellatrix a new asshole so she would leave the people I cared about alone, I turned around, and Merlin was shoving popcorn in his face like it was the best movie he’d ever seen.
But that fucker was onto something. It was sosimple.Suppose the answer to breaking the curse was getting the ballet in front of an audience, and Santiago was the reason that never happened. So, why hadn’t he just tried locking himself in somewhere far away while the current artistic director did the ballet?
“Holy shit, brother,” Nicolai said. “Maybe we’ve been coming at this all wrong. All we have is guesses, anyway. Maybe Santiago’s curse was neverhimkilling anyone. He had to watch the cast pick each other off. Because, damn, Merlin, that’s kind of obvious. If he’s been trying this for over a century, Santiago would have to be pretty stupid not to have tried that. Marsden is cunning. If Santiago hadn’t tried it, he would have.”
