Page 28 of The Paranormal Investigation Bureau
“All anyone could find when they were researching was thatThe Pcanceled a ballet for the first time, Selena was arrested, Santiago up and moved to Canada, and Tabitha and three male dancers seemed to disappear after that. Tabitha was a rising star, and the three male dancers were pretty famous, too. A canceled ballet wouldn’t have tanked their careers, and if they got fired, another company definitely would have snatched them up. Tabitha was the only one with drama attached to her name. Even if she got blackballed, the male dancers surely wouldn’t have.”
“Hold up,” I said, waving my beer bottle in the air. “I agree about the wholeSugar Skull Girlthing, but what happened to the other male lead? There’s supposed to be four in the show, aren't there?”
If one of the leads survived the show, depending on what supernatural species they were and how old they were when the show was first attempted, there was a chance they’d still be alive. I needed to pursue all my leads. Madame Lucinda had a geas on her, but maybe this person didn’t.
Bevan and Arden both perked up, like I’d asked the million-dollar question. I was guessing this was where the conspiracy theory part of the equation came in. I could admit their theories were my favorite parts of the podcast, aside from the dance history that brought out my inner nerd that is.
“So, Santiago could literally do everything in the arts, right? They don’t think Santiago was his real name. He changed it when he moved to Canada, and they are pretty sure he changed it when he moved to the US because of the people that wanted to kill him and the authorities that wanted him in jail… so how’s this for a ballet conspiracy theory? Santiago could have been the fourth male lead! What if he came out of retirement to dance withThe P,in the ballet he wrote for his wife to make it up to her he got caught with her rival?!” Bevan yelled.
Bevan was just so fucking adorable sometimes, especially when fully invested in ballet conspiracy theories. I needed as much information as possible, because I still didn’t have the full story. I was supposed to be working, but I was getting caught up in Bevan and Arden’s excitement. Nyx was only mildly interested, now that she realized it might be the same ballet.
“What’s the theory as to why Selena got arrested… and what about the missing dancers? If Santiago had all this money to do this mass cover-up, and then he left the country, why didn’t he take Selena with him? If he was fleeing the authorities in Mexico, he had to have been involved in a murder before.”
“No one knows for sure,” Arden said. “Santiago changed his name when he got to Canada and went off the grid so no one could find him and ask. People tried to interview Selena in prison, but someone put a geas on her. She wanted to talk. She still wanted the limelight, even from prison... she just couldn’t. There are theories circulating that she didn’t really forgive Santiago, and went a little crazy. She hurt the other dancers and turned on him. It broke his heart, and he left the country.”
“Was Santiago a warlock?” I asked.
I had access to the Paranormal Investigation Bureau’s records, but those from that long ago would probably be hard copies and were unlikely to have been digitized, but Kaine could get them to me. It might have information on Santiago’s location and if he was still alive, and had a feeling all the answers lay with him. Only a few supernatural species could lay a geas on someone, and only the person who put it on could take it off.
“There’s an entire separate podcast about Santiago Suarez. Some people think he was an Unseelie prince who fled his responsibilities and ended up in Mexico… that he got into some shady shit, and he fled to the US before his family could drag him back home,” Arden said. “It holdssomewater. Only someone with the best teachers could be as talented as he was in every art form. The scope of the cover-up that happened with Selena and Tabitha when the ballet got canceled would have taken more than just a lot of money.”
So, that was out. I was just a little baby agent. If Santiago was some missing Unseelie prince, those records were going to be so far above my pay grade that I’d never see them... they’d probably be above Kaine’s, too. It was a shame because, aside from vampires, the Fae lived the longest among the supernatural community, so he might still be alive. I’d just have to hope that whoever arrested Selena at the bureau had kept a detailed file, and that I could somehow get my hands on it.
I hatched an idea. It was devious, but if Marsden wanted to play games with me, I could play them right back. I still didn’t know why he was being coy with the information I needed to do my job. He was still relatively young, and fit like he still kept up with his own dancing now that he’d retired and was running a dance company. He was way too young to be under the same geas Madame Lucinda was.
One thing they’d drilled into us at the academy was always recognizing when you needed backup. I couldn’t tell anyone in the room the truth because I didn’t know the entire story, but they wanted to know just as much as I did, albeit for a different reason. Marsdenowedit to all of us, to be honest. If he couldn’t tell me when we were alone, I could press him in front of the entire company and really put that dickhead on the spot.
“Do you think if we all brought it up at rehearsal, Marsden would tell us the actual story?”
“Nope,” Nyx said. “Don’t even hold your breath on that one. Sure, Marsden likes to hear himself talk and he can get verbal diarrhea when it comes to the most boring topics, butthe one time shit is interesting, he won’t.Somethingwent down he doesn’t want us to know, or he’d be barfing Unseelie prince secrets when he made us sign that NDA.”
“Marsden is Unseelie!” Bevan yelled. “I’ll bet Santiago was a fucking prince, and he had to get permission from the royal family just to attempt this ballet again. I’ll bet that’s the reason we had to sign that NDA in blood, and he hasn’t even discussed the whole scandal.”
It was a wild theory, but was he right? Nothing about this situation was remotely normal. Marsden had asked for a federal agent to go undercover to help get this ballet safely in front of an audience. He was crazy enough to take one into the corps he didn’t remember seeing dance before. The level of cover-up that happened one hundred and fifty years ago would probably be impossible now.
He had every reason to give me the tools I needed to do my job, that is unless it involved the Unseelie Court. The Fae was the only supernatural species that still bothered with royalty, witches and warlocks never did as we had cohesive covens with a high priestess or priest. Many species never had monarchies, and the ones that used to had long since gotten rid of them… except for the Seelie and Unseelie. Most everyone was terrified of both their courts. The Seelie Court was supposed to be less cutthroat than the Unseelie Court, but most people avoided both if they could.
I had so many reasons to want to murder Marsden, but if he dragged me into drama with the Unseelie Court, I was going to cut off his fairy balls… if I pulled this off.
I wasn’t fucking with it if he was part of the Unseelie Court and not just the ballet company's artistic director.
Why was this what my life had become?!
Chapter23
Arden
What just happened here? I was still processing that Beyla was making me want to break my no ballerina policy, but I thought we were having fun. Nyx hated the show, and refused to talk about ballet conspiracy theories with me. I had bonded with Bevan over that once I found out we had that in common.
Many people in the company hadn’t heard of the podcast, and the few that did thought it was blasphemous. The public might love a good scandal, but the sanest ballet dancers tried to avoid it. Some people, like Selena and Bellatrix, would manufacture it because they thought even terrible publicity was good.
Now that we were reviewing this particular conspiracy theory, and we were all pretty sure the ballet was the same one we were doing now, we noticed that the casts were eerily similar. Bellatrix and Selena hada lotin common, they were both two aging ballerinas who would stoop to anything rather than retire.
They had thrown Beyla into Tabitha’s part, and I knew she had already come to that conclusion, way before I did, but that wasn’t what was bothering her. She closed down and excused herself for the night after we threw out the idea that Santiago might be an Unseelie prince. She didn’t look afraid, per se, I don’t think anything scared that witch, but she definitely looked highly uncomfortable.
That set my gryphon on edge. Everyone knew you didn’t fuck with the Unseelie. Marsden let alotof shit slide, and there was plenty he did wrong as artistic director. We could have said something. Weshouldhave said something. No one ever did though, because the Unseelie were just that scary, even if Marsden always had the perfect resting bitch face.
Was Beyla in trouble with the Unseelie? Was that why she didn’t exist at any company before she got here? The Unseelie Court was definitely super secretive… but there were rumors they still kept slaves, even if supernaturals outlawed the practice centuries before humans ever did. Was she here of her own free will?
