Page 27 of The Paranormal Investigation Bureau
“Nope. I trawled through their archives when I first found the show. They’ve covered a few dancers in this company from history.”
It sounded like that was exactly what I needed to be doing right now. I’d be willing to bet that one of the names on my list was on the show.
“Do tell,” I said.
“We need Bevan for this,” Arden said, whipping out his phone.”
“Thank fuck I ordered extra pizza because that boy can sure put it away!” Nyx yawned.
I collapsed on one of the overstuffed chairs and grabbed a slice of pizza and a beer. I expected Bevan to take forever to get here, but he was knocking on the door not five minutes later. What the fuck?
“Hey, neighbor,” Bevan smiled. “I haven’t told Nicolai and Merlin that Beyla lives with you, or they would have invited themselves.”
“Good,” Arden grunted. “I’ll beat their asses to a pulp.”
“What’s the emergency?”
“Ballet conspiracy theories,” Arden said, deadly serious. “Beyla is a fan, and she wants to know more about any of them related toThe P.We have the best conspiracy theories, but you tell them the best.”
“Oh, gods. Here we go,” Nyx said, with a groan.
“Okay, listen up, bitches,” Bevan said, striking a pose. “I’m going to tell you a tale of a Bette Davis and Joan Crawford level feud that resulted in four disappearances, someone fleeing the country, and the arrest of one high-level prima ballerina.”
I perked right the fuck up then. There were five leads inThe Sugar Skull Girl.This could be something, or it could be nothing. Either way, I had a feeling it was going to be entertaining.
“Start with Santiago Suarez,” Arden said, bouncing in his seat.
Bevan cocked his hip to the side and glared at Arden. Whatever was about to happen needed to happen because that was a name on my list, and I needed to know where this was going.
“You’re ruining my vibe, Arden.Of course,I was already going to start with him. He’s central to the story.”
“You two are totally ridonk with this shit!” Nyx giggled.
“Go on,” I said.
Then I was the one bouncing in my seat. The two ballet dancers who did this podcast were good. They weren’t in the same vein as baby eating Satanists. They laid out all the facts and threw out theories and were more like web sleuths.
“Okay, so… Santiago Suarez was a regular Renaissance man. It was rumored that he snuck into the country in the dead of night, because everyone in Mexico wanted him dead or in jail. He went on to make a name for himself here. Now, Santiago was a shrewd businessman, but he was also a really fucking fantastic artist. His sculptures are still in several museums. He was an amazing composer, and he even published a few novels. One of his favorite subjects was ballet. He was married, to another immigrant inThe P,Selena Whitmore… though many people suspect that wasn’t her original name, and that she changed it when she came to the States. She was a witch and apparently really deep into the dank, dark magic.”
Two names on my list already, now we were getting somewhere! I was still mad that Marsden couldn’t tell me all this, but it was certainly way more entertaining coming from Bevan.
“Selena’s career took off, and Santiago invested a lot of money intoThe P.He wrote ballets for her and did everything himself, from the music to the costumes. They still perform those ballets to this day. We just did one two years ago. They were this huge power couple in the arts world… but things started changing. A new ballerina got accepted intoThe P, a succubus named Tabitha Rex. Rumor has it that she was even better at seducing the audience than Selena was, which isn’t a huge shocker because she’s a fucking succubus. So Selena and Tabitha had this massive rivalry. There was talk Tabitha seduced Santiago. Tabitha was young and just at the start of her career, where Selena was older and kept pushing her retirement back. They were all over the tabloids with their antics. Selena was the original glass in the pointe shoe bitch, and Tabitha? Well, she was always on her heels as the understudy.”
Bellatrix and I weren’t anywhere near the level of a Bette Davis and Joan Crawford feud, but this was sounding way too close to my life for comfort. Thishadto be the inciting incident forThe Sugar Skull Girl,and I needed to know more.
“So, what happened?”
“Santiago was spotted in public getting cozy with Tabitha, and it ended up on the front page of every tabloid. Santiago didn’t love Tabitha, she’d just hit him with all the succubus vibes and had only done it to get to Selena. It was just the kind of mind games they played with each other. Selena was furious, and Santiago had to grovel to gain her forgiveness. By all accounts, Selena was a vain witch, but was desperately in love with Santiago and the life he gave her. He wrote a ballet just for her. He wrote the music, the plot, designed the costumes, and choreographed it himself. He—”
“Wait, a minute! The podcast said they had scrubbed every reference of that ballet from history. They couldn’t find anything in any news archive from that era. What if it wasThe Sugar Skull Girl,and what if that’s why Marsden doesn’t want us talking about it? What happened was pretty scandalous,” Arden said.
Arden was right on the nose… I was one hundred percent certain that’s what we were dealing with. Marsden couldn’t even be bothered to name Santiago when he sent info to the bureau with all these little details I didn’t need to know. It was finally all adding up.
I had more of the story than I did before, and I didn’t need them to be distracted by spinning alternative theories when Bevan and Arden had information I desperately needed. I could find it on the podcast, so it would require digging through years of archives, and they were both fluent on this particular story.
“Let’s table that discussion for a minute and get back to what happened next.”
“No one knows!The Phad never canceled a production before. The show got shut down, and someone made damn sure to control the narrative in the press. The Paranormal Investigation Bureau arrested Selena. They tried to do it when no one would see her get taken in, but she always loved publicity, good or bad. Some people think it was her that tipped off the media.
