“We are triumphant!” shouted Anders from the living room.

“Uh, yeah, they did it,” deadpanned Lyra. We both broke down giggling.

We were still laughing when Anders and Pax appeared in the bedroom doorway, effectively filling it. Anders was tall: Pax was taller, a solid wall of Hawaiian muscle who moved with a grace that should have been illegal in the natural world. If he’d been human, I would have considered him a violation of several laws of physics. Since he couldn’t have been much farther from the human genome without being made of silicon, I didn’t have that problem.

Pax offered a shy, tight-lipped smile when he saw me looking at him. I smiled back. “It’s good to see you,” I said. “I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk at the theater.”

“I wasn’t talking much with anyone,” he said. “My flight from Maui got in an hour before call. I was afraid I was going to be late and get myself eliminated early.”

“How would they even have handled that?” asked Lyra. She sat down on her bed, looking coquettishly through her eyelashes at Pax. She’d been flirting with him since auditions. It had never gotten her anywhere, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her.

Too bad for her that Pax wasn’t likely to fall prey to her considerable charms: not when he had two wives and a husband waiting for him in the waters off Maui. He was Ukupani, one of the only known aquatic therianthropes, named for the shark-god Ukupanipo, who’d supposedly created them. (Maybe He had. How would I know? I don’t have much experience with gods, and I don’t want much experience with gods, since people who meet gods tend to wind up pregnant with demigods. Not my idea of a good time.) This all meant that when he wasn’t teaching dance classes on the island, he was splashing around in the Pacific Ocean, being a combination of man and shark, and birthing a million nightmares whenever someone happened to catch a glimpse of him.

Not that any of this was public knowledge. Pax was supposedly a single Hawaiian hottie, since female Ukupani couldn’t change shapes, and he was media savvy enough not to have mentioned his husband to the judges, or to anyone who might let it slip on the air. Adrian had a reputation for wanting his men to be manly, which carried with it an unfortunate whiff of homophobia. It sucked. Hopefully, this time we could do something about it.

“Probably have kicked off my partner, too, to keep things fair,” said Pax.

Anders snorted. “As if they’d eliminate a winner? Lyra took our season. That means she’s untouchable, at least until the second week.”

“Cynic,” accused Lyra.

“Realist,” countered Anders.

I laughed. I was back among the people who understood this side of me, the side that wanted to cha-cha rather than negotiate peace between disparate cryptid communities. Pax caught my eye and nodded, agreeing with my delight. His situation wasn’t quite like mine, but it was close enough that we both knew what it was like to hide half of ourselves from the world. We were still hiding, even here, but at least we could let our less-seen sides come out for a while.

“Hello?”

The voice was female, and coming from our living room. I stopped laughing, immediately tense. Pax and Anders turned, still blocking the doorway, ready to defend us from whatever might be coming. Then Anders groaned and stepped to the side.

“Ladies, it’s for you,” he said.

Lyra and I exchanged a glance before we stood and walked to the door, poking our heads out. There, standing in the middle of our living room like she belonged there, was Jessica. She had her arms crossed, and looked annoyed, probably because we’d made her wait.

“The door was open,” she said, before either of us could say anything. “You probably shouldn’t leave it open, it’s like an invitation for people to come in and steal shit.”

“Or to just come in,” I said, stepping out of the bedroom. “How can we help you?”

“You’re Valerie, right?” She looked me up and down, and then sniffed, like she’d just determined that I wasn’t a threat. I bristled. “You were on the season after mine. I don’t know if you watched the show before you tried to use it to get famous, but I came in fourth my year. I would’ve won if I hadn’t been injured.”

“How nice for you,” I said. “We’ve met before, remember? You were Sasha’s assistant during our season, where I came in second, if we’re playing that game.”

“I’m Lyra,” said Lyra, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Hi again, Jessica. Long time no irritate. I came in first. How can we help you?”