by Yelena Black
‘All right, dear,’ her mother said, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘I’ll call you in a little while, and we can go out for dinner. Our last girls’ night before your father arrives in the morning.’
‘Absolutely,’ Vanessa said, kissing her mother’s cheek. ‘Sounds great.’
She turned on her heels, leaving the backstage area. Only instead of going to her dormitory, she headed straight for the coaches’ residence.
Chapter Twenty
The lawn behind the White Lodge was bustling with people. Vanessa kept her head down and walked quickly. Under different circumstances, she might have been proud of her runner-up status. She was only fifteen, and she’d nearly won one of the most competitive ballet competitions in Europe, if not the world.
But none of that mattered. She’d lost everything: the scholarship, a spot in the Royal Court and the possibility of finding the people who’d driven Margaret into taking her own life. She’d even lost Justin, she thought. He’d be here for the next two years, while she’d be back in New York. She tried to convince herself that it was for the best – after all, they hadn’t exactly been getting along these past few days – but the thought only made her feel lonely.
Behind the White Lodge was another, smaller, more modern building – the faculty residence. In a moment she was in the foyer, reading the room assignment directory.
She climbed the stairs to the second floor. It was no surprise to find that the coaches’ dorm was nicer than the students’, the walls filled with framed black-and-white pictures of various ballets the Royal Court had staged over the years.
Vanessa walked down the quiet hallway, her footsteps muffled by the plush beige runner, until she reached room 202 at the end of the hall.
She knocked gently. ‘Enzo?’
No answer. Vanessa knocked again. ‘Enzo? Hello?’ She rapped on the door again, harder this time, then tried the doorknob.
It turned easily and the door swung open.
‘Enzo?’ She had no idea what she was expecting his room to look like, but it was surprisingly bare. A bed with a white duvet, still rumpled from the previous night; a small suitcase in the corner; and in the open closet, a few clothes on wire hangers. Piled in a corner on the floor were a bunch of dirty leotards, T-shirts and tights. The air smelled stale.
Vanessa pushed the door open a bit wider, then stepped inside. Next to the bed was a wooden desk. Vanessa walked towards it; she knew she shouldn’t be snooping, but . . . what the heck.
Inside the desk were a few pens, some writing paper and a photograph of her sister.
Margaret’s face smiled back at her – her sister looked carefree, happy, resting her head on Enzo’s shoulder. Another boy was with them in the picture, with dirty-blond hair and wide, eager eyes. That must be Hal, she thought. Below the picture were a few folded papers. Vanessa picked them up and recognised the handwriting immediately: the missing pages from Margaret’s journal. Clearly Enzo had torn them out.
Enzo had lied. What had Margaret written that he didn’t want her to see? Vanessa pocketed the papers and the photo. She had to get out of here.
She took one more quick look around the room, and her eye caught something pink in the mound of dirty laundry, under one of Enzo’s T-shirts. Using her little finger, she moved aside the shirt. What she saw took her breath away.
A pointe shoe.
And not just any pointe shoe – Margaret’s. She’d know it anywhere. She pushed the T-shirt away completely and saw the other shoe. When they’d gone missing from her room the day she arrived in London, Vanessa had accused Svetya of stealing them. Only the culprit hadn’t been Svetya at all.
It had been Enzo.
Or Erik. Who was he, really? Could she trust anything he’d told her?
Vanessa picked up the shoes and slipped them into her dance bag. She was just about to leave when Enzo burst into the room.
‘Vanessa,’ he said, staring at her strangely. He looked stylish in a simple black suit, white dress shirt and a thin red tie. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, um . . . I came looking for you.’
‘I’d imagine that’s why you’re in my room.’ He stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him. ‘What’s going on?’
Vanessa tucked her hands behind her back so Enzo couldn’t tell they were shaking. Would he know she’d gone through his things?
‘I wanted to say that I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Enzo scrunched up his forehead. ‘For what?’
‘For not winning,’ Vanessa said. ‘I was dancing for Margaret, like you said I should. And I tried my hardest, really I did –’ she thought back to the competition, how much she had wanted to win – ‘but I failed. I disappointed us both. I’m sorry.’
Enzo placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘There is nothing to apologise for, Vanessa. You danced incredibly well.’
She frowned. ‘At least you have Justin.’
‘Hmm?’ Enzo said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He can go undercover for you and the Lyric Elite,’ Vanessa said. ‘In the Royal Court.’
Enzo nodded. ‘Yes. He can – if he wants to. But he hasn’t been touched by the dark arts personally, like we have.’ He sat down at the desk. ‘Vanessa, you may not have won a spot in the Royal Court, but there is still a way you can avenge your sister’s death.’
‘There is?’ Vanessa asked.
‘Your connection to the demon is strong,’ Enzo said. ‘Stronger than anything I’ve ever seen or even read about. If you call it to you and offer yourself as a host . . .’ He looked at her, his eyes wild, unfocused. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but if you were its willing consort – or partner, let’s say – you would have an otherworldly power at your disposal.’ His voice trembled, his hands curling at his sides. He leaned closer. ‘You could wreak havoc – stop the evil dancers once and for all.’
Vanessa stepped back. ‘I’m not sure I want to do that.’
‘Not yet you’re not,’ Enzo said with a small smile. ‘But you’ll come around – I just know it. You’ll see that this is the best way. You’ve been given an opportunity no one else has ever had. Aren’t you upset about what happened to Margaret?’
‘Of course I am.’ She had to get out of there. ‘I’ll have to think about it and get back to you.’ Vanessa tried not to let her voice quiver and betray her.
Without speaking, Enzo reached into her dance bag and pulled out one of Margaret’s shoes. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘so I see you found Margaret’s pointe shoes.’ He sighed. ‘Aren’t you going to ask why I took them from you?’
Vanessa shook her head. ‘Um, no! I mean, I’m sure you had a reason.’ She turned and headed for the door. ‘I really have to go now, so –’
Suddenly there was a rustle in the air and Enzo was on the other side of her, blocking the door. ‘It’s just that I miss her so much. When I saw her shoes in your bag, they reminded me of her, and I just – well, I took them without thinking. I’m sorry.’
Vanessa had never thought of Enzo as being particularly large before, but he was quick on his feet and all muscle. There was nothing she could do to him. And if she screamed, no one would hear her.
‘Vanessa,’ he said, reaching out for her, ‘I –’
She didn’t stay to hear him finish his sentence. She sidestepped and then leaped into a twirl – blurring through the door and into the hallway. She slammed into the far wall, and turned just long enough to see Enzo, his face a mask of rage.
And then she ran.
Vanessa had never run this fast or for this long in her life.
Adrenalin pumped through her as she sprinted down the long driveway of the White Lodge and across the park to the city streets. She ran without looking, without thinking, until her breath came in painful gasps and she reached a familiar building.
Barre None.
She stopped, heaving in gulps of air. A warm glow shone through the frosted windows of the restaurant.
Inside, the dining room was quietly bus
y, with a few families and couples cosied up in the corners, sipping drinks and talking softly. The smell of mulled cider warmed the air.
Vanessa’s phone buzzed as she spotted Coppelia. The older woman was near the front, sharing a joke with one of the waiters.
See you at the hotel at 8.30, her mom had texted. So proud.
When Coppelia saw Vanessa walking towards her, she beamed. ‘If it isn’t the princess!’ Her long hair was in a single braid over one shoulder, and the bangles on her arms clinked together. ‘Congratulations, dear. You placed very well in the competition.’
‘How did you know?’ Vanessa asked.
Coppelia motioned to one of the televisions on the wall. ‘It was on the news!’
Vanessa blushed. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But it’s not really that exciting. There’s not much to tell.’
Coppelia put her hands on her hips. ‘Not that exciting? But OK, no big deal. I get it.’
‘It’s just . . . I have something more urgent on my mind.’ She leaned forward as a waitress walked by. ‘Could we find a more private place to talk?’
‘Only if I can join you.’
Vanessa swung around to see Justin standing behind her. He’d changed out of his dance clothes and was wearing an emerald-green sweater and tight blue jeans. The sight of him startled her, and for reasons she couldn’t explain she suddenly wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him. ‘Justin, what are you doing here?’
He shrugged. ‘I saw you run off – everyone did, Vanessa. So I went after you. I’d done enough interviews. They can talk to Pauline for a while.’
‘If it isn’t King Justin,’ Coppelia said with a grin. She swung her braid over her other shoulder and pushed a stack of menus under the bar. ‘How about I make you a deal – we can talk privately, if you both promise you’ll give me photos with your autographs for my dancer wall.’
Justin chuckled. ‘Sounds like a deal.’
Coppelia waved to a booth in the back of the restaurant. A pair of old ballet shoes hung on the light over the table, ribbons dangling.
Vanessa slid over the cracked leather seats next to Justin and gazed up at the pictures that adorned the walls.
‘I wonder how many of these dancers were part of the Lyric Elite,’ Justin murmured.
‘The Lyric Elite?’ Coppelia laughed. ‘Oh, you kids. The Lyric Elite hasn’t existed for decades. It was already ancient history when I was a dancer, and that was . . . Well, let’s just say that was a very long time ago.’
Vanessa remembered how Zep had told her in the cemetery about his search for the Lyric Elite, and how he hadn’t been able to find or contact any of its dancers. Then she thought of how the Fratellis had been unable to get the Lyric Elite to stop Josef.
‘But that makes no sense. We’ve –’ Vanessa cut herself off.
Justin gave her a worried look. ‘We’ve been working with a man named Enzo, who told us he was from the Lyric Elite.’
Coppelia leaned closer, the light illuminating her face. ‘Why wouldn’t he say that?’ she said. ‘People always try to dress up the bad things they do in a uniform and say it’s for the greater good. But trust me, the Lyric Elite died with the last of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes.’
She pointed to a daguerreotype hanging high on the wall. A male dancer stood in the centre, wearing an ornate beaded costume, his impish eyes peering out as if he were in on some secret. Vanessa recognised him as Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the most famous dancers of the Ballet Russes, a travelling dance company that had broken off from the Imperial Russian Ballet.
‘That was the company that enlisted Stravinsky, wasn’t it?’ Justin said.
‘That’s right,’ Coppelia said. ‘Diaghilev commissioned him to write The Firebird.’
‘The Firebird?’ Vanessa blurted out. That was the dance Josef had cast her in to call forth the demon – the same dance he had cast Margaret in three years earlier, not long before she disappeared.
Justin leaned forward. ‘So what happened with the Lyric Elite? They were still around during the Ballet Russes. Why not after?’
‘Diaghilev inducted many of his young prodigies: Nijinsky, Fokine, Balanchine.’ Coppelia fingered her bracelets. ‘But then Diaghilev died, and without a strong leader, the Lyric Elite fell apart.’
‘And this happened a long time ago?’ Justin asked.
‘Ancient history!’ Coppelia drummed her fingers on the table. ‘Dancers shouldn’t mess about with dark arts. The magic we do touches our audiences’ hearts – isn’t that enough?’
Vanessa felt her stomach lurch. If Coppelia was telling the truth, then Enzo had been lying to them from the first moment he’d shown up at NYBA. He wasn’t part of the Lyric Elite at all. Somehow he must have got wind of the Fratelli twins’ calls for help about Josef. But if that was the case, who was he really?
He had known about Margaret all along and had never said a word. Every day that Vanessa had shown up for rehearsal, every time he corrected one of her steps or criticised her form, he had been holding this secret from her.
She thought back to Margaret’s diary, Enzo looming over its pages like a dark shadow, and shuddered as she reached into her dance bag and pulled out the diary pages along with the picture of Enzo, Margaret and Hal.
‘What’s that?’ Justin asked.
‘A picture of Enzo and my sister and a friend of theirs,’ she said. Before he could ask how she got it, she added, ‘It’s complicated.’
One of the waiters called Coppelia to the bar. She stood up, her skirt swishing about her ankles. ‘I can talk more after we close.’
‘Right,’ Justin said. ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘Thank you,’ Coppelia said. ‘And remember . . .’ She pointed to the wall, reminding them that they owed her their own photographs.
After Coppelia walked away, Vanessa told Justin everything she’d kept to herself over the past few days – about Zep and the empty space in the Adams tomb; how Erik’s family had died; Margaret’s journal and the missing pages, and how Margaret had ended her life by leaping from the Tower Bridge; how she and Enzo – Erik – had been in love.
The rush of words left her breathless, and though Vanessa still felt drained of the hope that dance could somehow bring her sister back, she felt lucky to have Justin by her side.
‘I’m so sorry, Vanessa,’ Justin said. ‘For everything. Poor Margaret.’ He unfolded the pages from the diary. ‘Have you read these yet?’
Vanessa shook her head.
‘Then I guess we should do that. There has to be some reason Enzo or Erik or whatever his name is hid them from you.’
Vanessa took a sip of water and said, ‘He wants me to let the demon possess me. To invite it in. He says that’s the only way we can have vengeance on the dark faction in the Royal Court.’
‘No way are we letting that happen,’ Justin said. ‘I bet that’s been his game plan all along. Clearly he has a history with the darker elements of dance, or he wouldn’t know all of those magical steps. Somehow, when the Fratellis reached out for help, Enzo got wind of it and pretended to be a member of the Lyric Elite just to get us to London.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or really, to get you to London. After what happened, he realised you would make the perfect host . . .’ Justin shook his head in disbelief. ‘He’s as bad as Josef.’
Vanessa looked at the photograph. ‘He’s set on vengeance for Margaret,’ she told him, ‘or for his family. Maybe both.’
Justin nodded. ‘The question is, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to stop him?’
‘We?’ Vanessa asked. ‘This is my battle, Justin, not yours. You don’t have to –’
‘Don’t be silly.’ He rested his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m with you, Vanessa. Until the end. Whether you want me there or not.’
‘Thanks, but –’ Her phone vibrated. She saw an earlier text from her mom, something about meeting for dinner at her hotel, and then Nicola Fratelli’s name scrolled across the screen.
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It’s time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Battersea Power Station stood dark beside the Thames, its four massive white smokestacks dwarfing everything in their midst. There was a high chain-link fence around the former power plant, with curls of razor wire along the top edge.
In the parking lot were trailers and construction machinery, and the shadows of enormous cranes loomed alongside the building. Justin stopped at a key box on a pedestrian gate just off the road. He checked a text from the Fratellis, entered a code to open the locked gate, then closed it behind them.
In front of the building was an enormous lawn. ‘I thought this place was abandoned,’ Vanessa whispered. ‘This looks like a park.’ It worried her that things were already not going as planned.
‘Used to be abandoned,’ Justin said. ‘Maybe the park is part of the redevelopment that’s going on.’
They crossed quickly, the lawn soft under their feet, and soon reached the shadows along the wall.
‘Nicola said we’d find an open stairwell door on the south-west corner,’ Vanessa said, shivering, though Justin had given her his coat. ‘Is this the south-west corner?’
‘I don’t know north from south here,’ Justin said. ‘I guess we just check all the corners and hope we’re lucky.’
The first corner they checked was all locked up, but at the second corner a door was propped open with a brick. ‘Subtle,’ Justin said.
Inside, the air smelled of cement dust, and it was pitch black. ‘Do we climb the stairs in the darkness?’ Vanessa asked.
‘Probably for the best,’ Justin said. ‘Nicholas said security is lax here, but there’s no need to advertise our presence.’ His hand found hers and grasped it tightly. ‘We’ll go up together.’
It was a long climb. ‘Largest brick structure in Europe,’ Justin wheezed on one of the landings while they rested.
‘Feels like it,’ Vanessa replied.
Finally they reached another propped-open door that spilled out on to a long, narrow rooftop. To one side was the grassy area they’d crossed, the silvery band of the Thames visible in the distance. On the other side was a central courtyard filled with machinery and other signs of construction. ‘This place really is enormous,’ Vanessa said.