Page 18 of The Paranormal Investigation Bureau
“I’m doing my bathtub routine. I had my first company class today, and it was brutal. The ballet mistress is hard, but she seems nice. We’ve only just gotten started. Marsden announced the cast today. He has me understudying the lead, so I can be there if anything happens. It’s caused some drama, but nothing I can’t handle.”
Kaine just grunted.
“If those prissy ballet assholes knew anything, you’d be dancing the lead.”
“Kaine, I’m one of those prissy ballet assholes, and I’m not here to perform the lead. Rehearsals start soon, and I’m focused on preventing people from dying.”
“I know… but it doesn’t hurt to show off. You could do that thing you do, where you do all those turns, then do that crazy leap thingy and land in a split. That’ll show them.”
“That’s part of a solo variation fromThe Seven Ravens.Everyone here can probably do it.”
“Not the way you do! I mean it, Beyla. If youhaveto save the damn ballet then you may as well show them how good you are in the process! Get them to invite you to stay.”
“Madame Lucinda doesn’t know I’m here undercover,” I admitted. “She singled me out after class and thought I’d have a magic partnership with one of the male dancers. She made us do one of the hardestpas de deuxever. It was pretty amazing to partner with him.”
“Good! Stick to him like glue, be like that English bat and that Russian kid.”
I smiled to myself. Kaine had tried so hard to learn about ballet when I moved in with him. He got the basics, but not the finer points. It adorable when such a gruff dragon tried his best but missed the mark. It meant a lot to me that he even knew the Nureyev and Fonteyn partnership was famous, even among us supernaturals, though I imagine many people in the ballet world would have a lot to say about him calling them an ‘English bat’ and a ‘Russian kid.’
“He’s sweet, Kaine. That won’t be hard.”
“Good! Go with that, and get your mind off that shit bag that broke your feet!”
“I’m not here to date, Kaine.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Beyla. If you try your hardest at a partnership with this boy, and show off a little to impress those weirdos in tights, then I’ll look harder into Derrick’s disappearance.”
I got what he was trying to do, but now that I was here, did I even want to stay? Everyone hated me, and they all thought I’d slept with Marsden. Not even my roommate had my back. I loved ballet, I adored Madame Lucinda’s class, and I could admit, even if I was here undercover for the bureau and not really a member of the company, there was something magical about dancing with Bevan.
I liked Bevan. He was easy to talk to, and he was trying to make me feel welcome here. We clicked when we danced together. He didn’t deserve what Julian did to him when he got here. Julian had to be some kind of psycho to break up his relationship just for fun like that.
Everyone I’d talked to so far said Julian would do something even worse to him for getting a lead, and I had my own petty bitches after me. Merlin and Nicolai seemed to understand I wasn’t going to fall into bed with them and wanted to protect Bevan. They barely knew me, but they knew if Madame Lucinda saw something in the two of us being paired together that it would be good for Bevan’s career. They therefore included me in their protection.
If it was only ballet, and everyone here was as kind as Bevan, I’d consider taking Kaine up on his offer. Ineededto know what happened to Derrick, and dancing here had been my dream since I first saw them perform. The drama was just getting a little too much for me.
“Kaine, I don’t think this is the right place for me now that I’m here.”
“The deal still stands, Beyla. I’ll look into Derrick’s disappearance harder if you have a come to the gods talk with yourself about whether the bureau is what you really want to do. No one is saying youhaveto stay atThe Pwhen this is done. If this boy your teacher paired you with is a magic Russian kid, well, then the two of you could dance anywhere.”
Kaine wouldn’t drop it. If it had been up to him, I would have auditioned for the academy atThe Pthe next year, and would have already been dancing professionally for years now. He wouldn’t fault me if I didn’t stay here though. Kaine never said a thing if I failed at something, but always wanted me to try my best. He’d done so much for me, and he wanted me on stage so hard.
Still, even before I found out I was a witch, I was super into horoscopes and fate. I wanted to find out what happened to Derrick, but he wasn’t the entire reason I hadn’t tried auditioning for professional companies. What happened with Derrick and my parents had to be an enormous fucking sign that I wasn’t destined to be a professional ballet dancer.
On the other hand... this entire assignment was trying to tell me something.No onejust got explicitly hired to go undercover as a dancer with a professional ballet company. If I had even heard that before it happened to me, I would have cringed. It was a recipe for disaster, even if the ballet didn't prove to be lethal.
It had become my life though, petty dancers and all. Madame Lucindasawsomething in me and made me stay after class. I didn’t just owe it to Kaine to figure out what this meant. Sixteen-year-old me, who took an entire bottle of Vicodin because she thought her life was ruined, needed to figure out what fate was trying to tell her.
“I’ll try, Kaine. I’ll give it my best, but I have to survive this ballet first. Marsden could have me blackballed if he has to cancel this ballet because half the company ends up dead.”
“Want me to eat him? I would imagine Unseelie is a little gamey, but I can roast his ass with a little dragon fire.”
“No eating the fairies, Kaine,” I said, laughing. He was totally serious about that. “Marsden is internationally famous. People would miss him.”
“No one fucks with my girl, Beyla. If Derrick hadn’t up and disappeared like that, you know I would have lit hit ass up for what he did to you.”
“I’ll agree to your deal, Kaine, but if you do find Derrick, please don’t burn him alive until I can catch a flight home. There are things I need to say to him.”
“Can I kill him after you’ve had your say? He’s already missing. After all this time, most people think the trail has gone cold and aren’t looking that hard for him.”
