Page 71 of The Paranormal Investigation Bureau
“I couldn’t get to her in time,” Merlin said. “If it hadn’t been for Beyla and Bevan, she could have really hurt you. Fuck banning her from class, that’s assault! They both need to be fired and blackballed from ever doing ballet again.”
Arden was looking at Nicolai and Merlin like he just gained a brand new respect for them.
“I wasn’t kidding when I told Bellatrix that, between the four of us, we could ruin her entire career if she didn’t leave Bevan alone. So… now I think we should do it.”
“You can’t,” Madame Lucinda said. “Marsden is a lot of things, but he will support me on this. She might be his lover, and responsible for putting butts in our seats, but I’ve been here way longer than she has. I keep his entire company trained at the level he wants, and there were witnesses this time. He has his reasons for keeping her, but if you force his hand in firing her because of bad press, he’ll cancel the entire production ofThe Sugar Skull Girl.”
“This is madness!” Bevan said.
“It’s ballet, Bevan. Everyone is weird, high-strung, and the public likes drama queens. Now, I want a coffee, a cookie, and all of you to talk me out of going back in there and beating both of them with my cane.”
“I’ll buy you every pastry at the deli if we all go in there and wail on them,” Nyx said.
“Not now, Nyx,” Arden said. “They are both petty enough to file assault charges, even though they started it.”
“Nyx, you need an entire emergency cheesecake when you’re in a mood,” Bevan said. “We need to do this.”
Nyx sulked as we got in line at the deli.
“You know you all enjoyed hearing that bitch’s nose break when she hit Bevan’s wall,” Nyx sulked.
Madame Lucinda threw back her head and cackled.
“If anyone asks, Ineversaid this… but that was pretty beautiful.”
Chapter16
Nicolai
Iwas furious, and only calmed down a little when Beyla said she had no intention of going back and removing all the magic she used to tie the evil twins up unless Marsden tried to fire her over it. Marsden wasn’t a warlock, so he couldn’t do it. The only way he was getting his girlfriends free was with the help of a witch, and no one in this building liked them.
I didn’t care if they never got free. Madame Lucinda was like a second mother to me. I owed my entire career to that woman. She didn’t just single me out and give me private lessons. She also gave me all kinds of advice from her years of experience on the stage and developing dancers. I loved that vampire. We all did.
When I saw Bellatrix and Ivory take their place at the barre, I made sure Beyla was far away from them, because I knew she was up to something. I was trying to protect Beyla, and I was too far away to stop Bellatrix from hurting Madame Lucinda.
This was gettingridiculous. The number of people I needed to keep safe was growing fast. I knew Beyla and Bevan were both powerful witches, but Madame Lucinda had destroyed her body dancing. She couldn’t walk without her cane, and I knew she was in chronic pain. If Bellatrix had gotten to her, she would have done permanent damage.
Madame Lucinda said she needed us to calm her down, but the exact opposite was going on. She was doing what she always did. She was helping us. I was fairly certain she knew we were all into Beyla, and that we’d all be stuck in rehearsal with Bellatrix in a few hours if she ever got out of those ropes.
She was entertaining us with stories about her history atThe P.Beyla already told us she was an apprentice way back whenThe Sugar Skull Girlwas being produced the first time around, and had helped us as much as she could with the restrictions the geas placed on her.
We stayed at the café throughout class and ended up ordering lunch, too. After that, I knew I was in a much better mood. I could face Bellatrix at rehearsal, if she were there… for maybe five minutes, unless she started up again. She’d have to be stupid to try anything in rehearsal.
Bevan gave her a show of his power. She might have thought he was this harmless little gay boy she could torment, but Bevan was so much more than that. Yeah, Arden nearly shifted and killed her, but if Bevan really wanted to, he could fuck her shit up in several different ways. He broke her nose.
I thought Bevan knew everything there was to know about magic, but I heard him ask Beyla to teach him the spell she used to bind Ivory and Bellatrix. Of course, she’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to try anything in rehearsal knowing that. Especially with a gryphon, a skinwalker, and Merlin in here that were all in their corner.
“Do you think she’s going to be civilized in rehearsal?” I sighed.
“She might still be tied up,” Beyla said. “The Unseelie have their own magic, but they can’t undo mine. Marsden knows that, and he hasn’t asked me to remove it.”
“Whether or not she’ll be in rehearsal, I can’t say, but she’s no longer tied up,” Madame Lucinda said. “Marsden has connections. He knows someone to call in literally any situation. He’s called someone who can do it. She hasn’t learned her lesson from this. She’ll just regroup and come up with something else. That’s what she was doing in my classroom this morning, even if she did a lousy job of it.
“Bellatrix is a talented ballet dancer, but she nearly got kicked out of the academy several times because of her school work. She’s not very smart. She plagiarized a history paper and didn’t even get the subject right! She was supposed to be writing a paper on the last gryphon king, but she copied a news article about a famous werewolf musician with the same first name.”
Arden snorted.
“That’s an insult to my lineage.”
