“Anders, I’m sorry.”

“You should be.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the rehearsal room, leaving me alone with the mirrored walls. My reflection looked back at me—my reflection, and not, because I didn’t have red hair, and I didn’t wear clothing that exposed me so completely to the elements. I was alone with Valerie.

I didn’t want to be.

She was everything my sister had ever accused me of being: the sort of person who’d keep dancing above a vault filled with dead bodies. It didn’t matter that I was doing it so we wouldn’t be thrown out of the theater; I would have wanted to do it anyway. I might have allowed Dominic and Alice to drag me away . . . but I might not have. This was my second chance at the dance career I’d believed I was leaving behind, and the temptation had been huge from the beginning. The temptation was still huge, if I was being honest with myself. I wanted this.

And at the same time, I didn’t. My wig had never slipped during my original season, not once. I’d kept it pinned so tightly that it might as well have been epoxy-bonded to my scalp. This time, it had slipped so often that it was a miracle no one had seen. I’d allowed my personal feelings to get in the way of my dancing. I’d brought Dominic to Los Angeles in the first place. Sure he was my husband, and I loved him, but I could have left him behind. Before we’d known about the snake cult, it would even have made sense. The Be-Well was cheap. It still cost money. I’d brought him with me anyway. Why?

Was it because I had already known that I’d outgrown Valerie? Had I come here to try again for the spotlight, or had I come to bury her?

Someone knocked on the ceiling. I looked up. Malena’s head was protruding from a hole that hadn’t been there before. She’d moved a tile aside to make room, and was watching me with a dubious expression on her face.

“How much of that did you see?” I asked.

“Most of it,” she said. She paused before admitting, “All of it. Damn, girl, you know how to say the wrong thing at the right time. You’re going to be lucky if he doesn’t drop you on your ass during the next show.”

“He wants this too much to do that,” I said. I understood her concern. The Argentine tango was all about connection between the people dancing it. We had to sell the idea that we were hopelessly in love with each other, and that wasn’t going to be easy when Anders didn’t even want to be in the room with me.

Every time I started to feel like I had a handle on something, however insignificant, it got pulled right out from underneath me. There was probably a moral in that somewhere. If I ever found out what it was, I was going to knock its teeth right down its metaphorical throat.

“Anyway, your grandmother’s outside, and she said I should tell you she has the you-know-whats.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Malena. You’re in the ceiling. You’re dangling from the ceiling like some sort of weird bat. Do you really think this is the time to get coy about saying the words ‘counter-charm’ out loud?”

Malena responded by wrinkling her nose. “Well excuse me, Miss Knows-Everything. She’s in the alley. She said to tell you.”

“Right, and thank you for that.” I paused. “Why are you in the ceiling? You could have come in the door.”

“I wanted to wait until I could get you alone. Troy and I are doing a contemporary thing this week, and our choreographer wanted some time to work with him one-on-one, so she told me to go eat some ice chips and really try to embody my character.”

Contemporary dance routines were the most likely to come with weird, depressing, and outright morbid backstories. “Cancer dance?” I guessed.

“Thankfully not this time. It’s about eating disorders.” Malena smirked. “Troy has to pick me up like eight times, and catch me six more, and pretend I’m completely weightless for the whole routine. I figure that counts as payback for him being a total tool earlier this week.”

“Revenge is a dish best served with trust falls,” I said. “Did Grandma give you a charm?”

“She did,” said Malena. “Dominic has his, too. So it’s down to you, party girl.”

“On my way,” I said, and started for the door.

When I looked back at the ceiling, Malena was gone. Nothing lingered for long in places like this one. There wasn’t time.

Slipping out of the theater during the day was easier than I’d expected, thanks to the absence of both my choreographer and my partner. There were supposed to be security guards around, but since they were mostly to keep overeager fans from getting into the theater, they didn’t really pay much attention to dancers who were trying to get out.