I couldn’t even blame him for that. He thought he was helping. He thought he was keeping me from losing faith and losing focus, when what he was really keeping me from was the chance to save a life.

Dominic, Alice, get in here, I thought, and wished Sarah were with me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to depend on the presence of our resident telepath until she was gone. We wouldn’t even have had to worry about how to get her into the theater. Sarah was a cuckoo. Cuckoos went where they wanted to go, and nobody stopped them. Most of the time, no one even realized they were there. That was what made them so damn dangerous.

“You’d have to promise me you were going to be serious,” Clint said, and his voice was solemn, and his eyes were grave. “I know how good you are, Valerie. Sometimes I think you don’t. Sometimes I think this is all just a game to you.”

“I promise, I don’t think of this as a game.” He twirled me gently out. I automatically scribed a wide arch in the air with my hand before spinning back in again, returning to our frame. My body knew the way, even if my mind wanted nothing more than to get away from here and back to my mission. “Everything I do, I do as seriously as I possibly can.”

Clint nodded. “That was what I was hoping to hear. You could be one of the great ones, Valerie. We could be talking about the things you did for dance for the next fifty years. Don’t throw that away.”

He stopped dancing. So did I. Then, without another word, he took his hand from my waist, raised our joined hands to his lips, and kissed my knuckles. Then he turned and walked away, leaving me alone on the stage.

Thirteen

“There’s no crime in missing the shot. The only crime is being too damn slow to take it.”

—Frances Brown

The Crier Theater, four seconds later

I STAYED PUT FOR A COUNT OF TEN, watching to see if Clint would come back. He didn’t. I turned and bolted for the wings, heading for where I’d left Malena and the others.

The show had been over for long enough that the halls were deserted: even the technicians, janitors, and countless production assistants who could usually be counted on to lurk in unexpected places were gone, leaving me free to run. I sped up, grabbing a corner with my left hand in order to slingshot myself around it, only to stop dead as my momentum carried me straight into Dominic’s chest. He was close enough to my height that my head hit him in the throat, and he staggered backward, closing his arms around me in an effort to stabilize himself.

I didn’t pull away, even though every instinct I had said not to let myself be trapped. Instead, I leaned to the side, and we hit the wall with a thud that resounded all the way through my spine.

“What the hell, Ve—” Dominic caught himself before he blurted out my real name. He frowned instead, and demanded, “Where were you? We’ve been looking everywhere!”

“Didn’t look on the stage,” I said, and ducked out of his arms, stepping backward. “Where is everyone else?”

“Trying to find our eliminated contestants,” he said. “Pax thought they were with Malena. Malena thought they were with you. Alice thought they were with anyone but her.”

“So we’ve lost them.” Which meant that they were probably dead. I swallowed the urge to stomp my foot, and simply asked, “How the hell did we lose them?”

“Leanne left the girls’ changing room to use the restroom, and didn’t come back; Mac never made it to the changing room at all,” said Dominic. “Perhaps more interesting is the question of why no one finds this strange.”

That stopped me. “What?”

“Pax asked Troy—the other male dancer from Mac’s season, who you would think might feel some camaraderie or responsibility for the man—where Mac was. Troy looked confused and reminded Pax that Mac had been eliminated.” Dominic’s expression was grim. “I know the dance world can be cutthroat and cruel, but you’ve always led me to believe there was slightly more compassion in it.”

“There usually is,” I said. Sarah’s brand of telepathy wasn’t the only way of changing people’s minds. There were compulsions, illusions, all manner of charms that could be cooked up by your local witch or Letiche—and in a city like Burbank, where everything was available for the right price, finding someone who’d cook you a charm without asking questions wasn’t hard. Assuming their pet magic-users hadn’t done it themselves. “We need to find the others.”

“We split up to look for the missing contestants.”