Page 88 of The Paranormal Investigation Bureau
“Leave me alone!” she hissed. “I’m here to take class, and that’s it.”
“Sure, I’ll leave you alone, if you leave the people I care about alone. Don’t even look at Beyla, and if Madame Lucinda gives you a correction, you’re going to smile and thank her, not get pissy about it.”
“I apologized, and I’m here to take class. Stop threatening me.”
She wasn’t sorry, but at least I knew Madame Lucinda was safe. I didn’t think she cared about anyone else in this room enough to come at them. If she were going to, it would have happened by now. Her rage was directed at Madame Lucinda and me. She knew she’d be stopped if she came at Madame Lucinda in class again. She had plans for me, but I never intended to be alone with her so she wouldn’t have a chance to try anything.
Bellatrix was an angel in class. She was actually putting effort into what she did for once. I’d seen videos of her dancing when she was younger. She had pulled off impressive turns and leaps. She was still pushing herself and doing them on stage, but she did fewer turns than everyone else in class and left the beats out of her jumps.
She was pulling off just as many turns as the rest of us and adding the beats in her jumps this time. Madame Lucinda never said anything when she omitted either, unless she just really wasn’t trying.
What was she trying to prove? Class ended without incident, and Bellatrix walked out with her head held high, and a slight limp. Sometimes, she flat outwasbeing lazy in class, but I knew the real reason she was cutting things and not doing what we were doing.
Dancing was hard on your body. It wasn’t a career that lasted very long. Even if you didn’t permanently injure yourself, your knees and hips started protesting after a certain age. Most people her age had retired a few years before. She was saving her tricks for the stage, to extend her career as long as she could.
I didn’t fault her for that, and neither did Madame Lucinda. However, doing what she’d just done in class was going to make rehearsalmuchharder for her. I didn’t get it.
We stayed in the studio until everyone had left and walked Madame Lucinda out. There wasn’t a timeframe on Nyx’s death omen, so it could all go down today, or two months from now.
Nothing happened in class. Nyx was going to be watching corps rehearsal like a hawk. I was fairly certain we could all relax in rehearsal. Marsden was in on this plot, but I knew he wanted this curse broken.
He wasn’t just going to stand there if Santiago showed up to kill someone, right?
Chapter29
Beyla
The building our studio was in was fifteen floors tall.The Phad studios on the top two floors, and the entire structure was mostly glass. I was sure the spaces were in high demand because of the view it offered of New York City. Unfortunately, it meant we had to watch ourselves the entire time we were inside.
We also had no intention of losing Madame Lucinda. We could use her help. Bevan turned on the charm and invited her to the Rusty Anchor with us to go through photos. She admitted she wasn’t sure if the geas would allow her to identify if she found his photo among them, but agreed to help anyway.
It was adorable. She walked into the Rusty Anchor on Nicolai’s arm, and her eyes grew to the size of saucers when she took in all the scantily clad cabana boys. She threw back her head and laughed as we led her to a booth.
“They wore more clothes, but we had places like this back in my day. Do they have a lovely man in a dress singing on that stage?”
“I’m friends with her,” Bevan said. “She does Bea Arthur, and she’s fabulous.”
“I make Bevan bring me whenever she’s singing. She’s amazing.”
“They always are, dear. There was an underground club, back in my day that had booze and cigarettes flowing. They had live entertainment every night. Some beautiful, talented women sang there, but the club was packed every time a drag queen named Sweetpea performed. You had to get there early, or they wouldn’t let you inside because it was a fire hazard.”
“You’re in some of these photos,” Nicolai said. “We found one of you talking to someone in the background, with all the dancers on stage warming up. You stood out, and we all knew it was you.”
“I was a nobody then. I was sixteen years old, and only an apprentice withThe P.Schooling requirements were much different then. If you had a job, you didn’t go to school. I had my room and board paid, and was provided lunch during my apprenticeship, but they weren’t paying me wages. So I had to work harder than everyone to get noticed so they would make me a full member and I could earn money. It was long hours, but worth it.”
“Hush,” Nicolai said. “You weren’t a nobody for long. You made company at seventeen, and you were getting solos at eighteen! It wasn’t long before you took the world by storm.”
Madame Lucinda swatted at his arm.
“What did I tell you about kissing an old lady’s ass? Show me these photo albums.”
We all placed our orders and started pulling albums out of our dance bags. I wasn’t sure how much she could tell us, but I needed to ask.
“Were Selena and Tabitha close before their rivalry?”
“That started way beforeThe Sugar Skull Girl,and way back before I became an apprentice. I only started taking class with them when it was already raging. They hated each other. What they did to each other went well beyond normal rivalry. I’m sure you’ve read about plenty of epic feuds between famous women, you know, insults and pettiness. Well, in comparison, what those two did to each other was pure evil. Something happened, but I’m not sure what. There was a schism. People took sides. I stayed out of it, because I was there to dance.”
“We found a photo of them in a dressing room. Selena was dressed like she was playing the lead, and Tabitha was dressed like she was in the corps. They were both smiling and looked like they were close.”
