by Yelana Black
Vanessa looked for Zep, but he was nowhere to be found. Justin and the Fratellis lay a dozen feet away, all unconscious.
Around her, the thirteen ballerinas shook themselves out of their poses looking dazed and disoriented. “What happened?” one of them asked.
Vanessa looked down, not knowing what to say. Bits of ash streaked the pink satin of her pointe shoes. Just feet away, where Hilda had stood, there was nothing, not even a charred spot.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
After the ash had settled, the studio fluttered to life.
Vanessa pushed through the ballerinas, barely listening to their agitated whispers. Tears streaked Anna’s white makeup. Vanessa knelt at the side of her own friends and began pulling at the knots until they were all free.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. Their faces were dotted with ash. Blaine looked as though he had been crying, and TJ’s cheeks were red with marks from the gag. Steffie’s shoulders slumped with exhaustion. She didn’t say anything, just pulled Vanessa and the others close.
Vanessa took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet scent of Steffie’s hair, losing her hand in TJ’s curls, and feeling Blaine’s thin arm wrapped around her shoulder, but broke off.
Justin.
He was lying on the far side of the studio, his back against the wall. Vanessa ran over to him. His eyes were still closed, and his cheek was bruised and swollen, warm where Vanessa touched her palm to it.
“Justin? Can you hear me?” When he didn’t move, she gently shook him. “Justin.”
But he remained still, his eyes shut.
Two loud raps on the floor silenced the room. All heads turned toward the door where the Fratelli twins now stood. Nicola’s chestnut hair was slightly disheveled, her dark eyeliner smudged onto her cheeks. The mole under her left eye mirrored her brother Nicholas’s, highlighting the bruised circles of fatigue that hung beneath his eyes. He held up his hand, and his sister followed.
“By the dictum of the … Lyric Elite,” Nicholas said, “we, um, hereby arrest everyone in this room—”
Angry gasps rose up.
Nicholas looked nervous. “Right. I mean, not like arrest arrest. More like detain …”
“What my brother is trying to say is that we’re here to help,” Nicola said
“But if any of you were an accessory to Josef, Hilda, or Zeppelin Gray,” Nicholas added, “you are going to have to pay for the crimes you’ve committed.”
Vanessa stepped forward. “Guys, are you saying you represent this Lyric Elite group?”
“Well, yes and no,” Nicola said.
“I mean, they haven’t really been so responsive,” Nicholas said, “but we kept bugging them about Josef. We knew something was up, but we were never able to prove it until now.”
“And that’s why they’re on their way,” Nicola said, nodding.
“I don’t know what anyone is talking about,” Anna Franko said. “What is the Lyric … ?”
Nicholas said, “They’re like this secret underground dancing group. The Lyric Elite is a union of enchanted dancers who have sworn to protect people from those who seek to use the art of dance for dark purposes.” He swept his arm to indicate the room. “Like a demon raising, for example.”
“They call people like Josef necrodancers,” Nicola said. “I don’t know why the bad guys always have the better names.”
“I’m glad you find this so, so funny,” Anna said. “I’m going to call the police.”
“What, and show them the blank spot on the floor where Hilda used to be?” Nicholas said. “And Josef’s dead body? They’re going to think we killed them.”
Nicola shook her head. “Look, the Lyric Elite has sent a top guy who should be here any minute. His name is Enzo.” She held up her phone. “See? He texted us from the airport.”
Nicholas blocked the door. “That demon is on the loose, and so is Zeppelin Gray, and until we know who else was in on this, no one’s leaving here.”
Each of the ballerinas turned her head, eyeing the girls around her with suspicion. And then Anna wove through them to the front of the room. “None of the other ballerinas knew what was going on,” she said quietly to the twins.
Vanessa felt Justin’s hand close around hers.
He shifted, then his eyes fluttered open. “Vanessa?” he groaned.
“Hi,” she said, suddenly embarrassed.
Justin gazed up at Vanessa. “What happened?”
“The demon destroyed Hilda,” Vanessa said. “The dancers from the walls convinced it to leave me.” Her eyes traveled across the dance floor as if she were watching it happen all over again. “It inhabited her body and the two of them disappeared.” She bit her lip, at last realizing fully what they had done. “We did it. We beat it.”
“You did it,” Justin corrected. “You’re amazing.”
Vanessa felt herself blush. “Not really; I had help. The dancers did it.”
“No,” Justin insisted. “You called to them with your dancing.”
Vanessa looked up with a hint of a smile. “I guess so.”
“Besides, you always had help, you just didn’t know it.” He rubbed his jaw, which was peppered with a layer of stubble. It looked good on him, she realized. It made him look older, handsome even. “You know there’s more to you than just a talent for dancing, don’t you?” he said.
Vanessa absently wiped a bit of ash from her leg. “I’m getting that idea. Zep sort of hinted that I was almost—”
“Magical,” Justin said with a smile.
Vanessa paused, surprised. “Yes.”
“It’s real, in case you haven’t figured that out.”
Vanessa laughed. “Right,” she said. “You knew what was going on the entire time. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I only had a hunch and didn’t want to tell you until I was certain. Besides,” he continued, “I really—”
He stopped suddenly and blushed.
“You really what?”
“Well, I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
Suddenly Vanessa felt shy, as if Justin were a stranger. She realized that she barely knew him, after all.
“After I left school, I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back. Margaret had disappeared, and at that point, she was the only thing I liked about NYBA.” He averted his eyes. He did used to have a crush on Margaret, Vanessa realized.
“That’s when I started thinking that something was wrong at the school. It didn’t make sense to me—the way she unraveled so quickly. It wasn’t natural. I studied dance with a private tutor for the next two years; that’s where I learned about the legend of the Danse du Feu. I let myself believe that maybe it was true, that maybe it could help explain Margaret’s disappearance. But the only way to find out for sure was to come back to where it had happened.
“I’ve been doing my own research since. The Fratelli twins found me just this fall. They’d been watching me, noticing the books I was checking out of the library. One day they took me aside and told me they were doing the same thing. They told me about the Lyric Elite, how they wanted to join, and asked if I wanted to help them.”
“But if this Lyric Elite knew something was going on,” Vanessa asked, “why didn’t they stop it?”
Justin frowned. “I’ve never had any direct contact with them. It’s a very old organization based in Europe, and there are other schools, other people like Josef …” Justin started to choke up. “They should have sent people out here, but the Fratellis said they needed proof. That’s what I—what we’ve been trying to get.” He wiped underneath his eyes. “The disappearances made them suspicious, but it wasn’t enough. And now look what happened.”
“You tried to warn me.” Vanessa thought back to all the times Justin had told her to leave. “You always suspected Zep. I should have listened.” Vanessa looked into his eyes. “How do you know Russian?”
Justin let out an embarrassed laugh. “Oh, that’s just luck. My grandmother was Russian. She taught me w
hile I was recovering from my injury. Apparently I was fluent as a child, though I can’t remember any of that.” He leaned forward, his shoulders grazing hers. “It should come in handy if we’re going to track down the demon you brought into the world. Not to mention the people Josef and Hilda worked for.”
She must have looked incredulous, because Justin softly laughed. “Did you think Josef and Hilda were the only ones who knew about La Danse du Feu? They’re only one pair from a really dark necrodancer group in Europe.”
“So you’re leaving school again?” Vanessa asked.
“I have to,” he said. “Now that the demon is here, I have to help the others track it down. But I don’t want to go if it means leaving you behind.” He inched his hand closer to hers until their fingers were barely touching. “I wish I could have you by my side.”
She didn’t move her hand. Instead, she studied his face—the smooth angle of his brow, the sharpness of his jaw, the soft blue of his eyes—as if seeing it for the first time. She swallowed, the words leaving her before she could stop them, though she knew, deep down, they were true.
“I never came here to dance anyway.”
Epilogue
The snow swirled around Vanessa’s feet and caught on her eyelashes as she hurried across the plaza at Lincoln Center, Justin by her side, his hands shoved into the pockets of his wool coat. It was late November, the week before Thanksgiving.
Vanessa glanced over her shoulder, letting her red hair blow across her face. A group of tourists were taking photographs by the fountain, and couples meandered past them on the street, arms linked as they gazed up, admiring the snowfall. She and Justin pushed through the glass doors of the ballet theater.
A week had passed since the demon had taken Hilda’s body. No one at school knew what had happened; only that Hilda and Josef had mysteriously left the school before The Firebird rehearsals had finished. It was a scandal, but a small one. The choreographer and his assistant had never been much liked anyway.
Justin strode inside the underground practice studio and turned on the lights, but Vanessa hesitated at the door. The white figures were still frozen onto the wall. The spot where Josef’s body had lain was wiped clean, and the floor was bare, save for the dark ring of ash in the center, where the demon had consumed Chloë. On the side of the room where the demon had entered Hilda, there was nothing, not even a smudge.
“It’s okay,” Justin said, his gaze level. “It’s long gone. Nothing here can hurt you.” He held out his hand.
Gingerly, Vanessa took a step into the room. Just the feel of the floor made her shudder, but she kept putting one foot in front of the other. She was a dancer, after all.
Justin took her elbow and led her to the wall, taking care to walk around the space where Josef had died, as if he were still there, waiting to rise again. Justin’s touch calmed her, made her feel safe. She slipped off her coat and leg warmers. Beneath them, she was wearing a black leotard and tights.
She stared up at the white figures, frozen in their poses, larger than she remembered. She put on a pair of pointe shoes, knotting the ribbons tightly around her ankles. Before she began, she gave Justin a nervous look.
“Just do exactly what we talked about and you’ll be fine,” he said gently. “Remember, I’m right here.”
Vanessa nodded and turned to the white figure on the wall before her. It was frozen in an arabesque. With a swift twist of her leg, Vanessa lofted herself up onto one toe, mimicking the figure’s pose. She held the position, pushing all thought out of her head until she felt weightless, airy. The only image in her head was the shape on the wall. She imagined she was looking into a mirror, seeing her shadow, white and luminous.
The edges of the figure began to glow, as if light were shining from behind, and its legs cracked like chipped paint, peeling themselves off the wall, followed by the rest of its body, until the luminous figure stood before Vanessa, mirroring her. Vanessa closed her eyes and repeated three words in her head.
Who are you?
She waited, holding the pose, her muscles burning, until she heard it. A soft voice, as thin as the wind.
Chloë Martin.
Unable to help herself, Vanessa teetered, her leg buckling beneath her. She caught herself just before she fell and turned to face the wall, but the luminous girl had vanished, her body reduced to a dull layer of paint.
“She told me her name,” Vanessa said.
As Justin wrote it down, she continued to the next figure, and then the next, copying their poses until they came to life. She asked each of them their names, and when she could, she asked more. “They’re dead,” she told Justin, after relaying the last name, Josephine Front. “All dead.”
They stood in a somber silence. “At least now we can put their cases to rest,” Justin said.
But Vanessa wasn’t satisfied. She scanned the walls, searching for the last figure, the one she had seen so many other times.
“Vanessa?” Justin asked. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s not here,” Vanessa murmured, turning in a circle. “The figure who looked like Margaret. She isn’t here anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Justin said, confused. He stared up at the wall. “They all look the same to me.”
Vanessa remembered that he hadn’t seen any of the figures come to life. He hadn’t seen their faces. No one could see them but her.
“I think my sister is … still alive,” she whispered.
The voices of the finally-laid-to-rest shadow dancers stayed with her all day as she and TJ packed for Thanksgiving break.
Blaine wandered in and out, and Steffie camped on TJ’s bed painting her nails, though none of them were particularly talkative. All four had agreed to keep the secret of what had really happened in the practice room, but the truth sat uneasily with everyone. Aside from Anna Franko, none of the thirteen princesses remembered much of what had gone on, and even Anna wasn’t completely clear about it.
“There are drugs and spells people like Josef can use,” Nicholas had said, “that make people putty in their hands.”
“Like Play-Doh, he means,” Nicola added.
“I know what putty is, thanks,” Steffie said.
“Anyway,” Nicholas finished, “their minds weren’t entirely their own.”
Steffie wasn’t allowed back into her room until the sole Lyric Elite representative—a guy named Enzo who looked barely out of college—finished transcribing Margaret’s diary. He hoped it might hold clues to where she’d disappeared.
On any other day, Vanessa would have forced herself into the room and demanded to read every word, but that could wait. She was exhausted, and she wanted to spend her last moments at school with the people she knew would always be there for her, no matter what happened.
It wasn’t until late that evening that her cell phone rang. She packed the last of her books into her suitcase and answered.
“Vanessa,” her mother said with a sigh. “We got your message that The Firebird performance is canceled. I knew that Josef was unreliable: I can’t believe he ran off with his assistant. Couldn’t he have waited till the end of the semester? What’s the hurry?”
“Yeah, it threw us all for a loop,” Vanessa said, sharing a knowing glance with Steffie. “We’re all disappointed.”
“You’ll get the lead in next year’s production, honey. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”
TJ had gone to wash up before bed, and Vanessa stood gazing at the wall. It was empty now, all of the posters stripped and packed away, because she didn’t know if she was coming back.
And then she saw them. Margaret’s old pointe shoes peeking out from beneath her bed.
Vanessa slid the shoes out and wiped off the dust from the pale satin. Her sister’s initials were still carved on the soles in the same wobbly scrawl that her diary had been written in. Vanessa turned them over and looked inside, where two smooth prints were still pressed into the leather, smooth and dark like a shadow of her siste
r’s feet.
“A shadow,” Vanessa said. She slipped off her shoes. Her toes were red and bandaged. She positioned them over her sister’s shoes, wondering if they would fit. And for the first time since Margaret’s disappearance, she slipped them on.
The wads of lamb’s wool still stuffed inside the toe box felt soft against her skin. She ran her fingers down the seam where her sister had sewn the ribbon onto the shoe and wound them around her ankles until they were taut. When she was finished, she stood, flexing her feet back and forth. To Vanessa’s surprise, they were almost a perfect fit.
Carefully, she raised one toe and then the next, steadying herself on her desk until she was standing en pointe. She let go and extended her hands above her head. She raised her chin to the light as a flash of color seared her mind. A pair of thin red lips, trembling. A nude leotard matted to a girl’s rib cage, which expanded and contracted quickly, as if she were crying. And a delicate foot, bare and slender and pointed, preparing to dance.
Vanessa jumped back and stared at the shoes. The moment her feet fell flat, the image vanished, but she didn’t need it to know who it was. The shape of the girl’s lips, the angle of her arch, the line of her torso—they were unmistakable to Vanessa, who had spent her entire childhood watching her sister dance.
“Margaret,” Vanessa whispered. Did this mean she was dead? Carefully, she lifted herself onto one toe, then the other.
A flash. The red lips; the leotard; the delicate, bare feet.
Vanessa shut her eyes, holding on to the image.
Her sister extended her leg, pointing her foot as if positioning herself for the start of a dance. But it wasn’t a dance at all. With some difficulty, she dragged her toe along the floor. I. She drew out in a crooked, wobbly letter. Am. She drew slowly, carefully, scraping letters into the ground until she had written four words:
I am still here.
Her sister was almost palpable—her sweat, her tears, her breathing. Unable to hold pointe any longer, Vanessa collapsed. The image faded as her feet hit the rug, but it didn’t leave her.