The Return: Shadow Souls

“Are you sure you know how to waltz?” she asked him.

“A good question. I took it up in 1885 because it was known to be riotous and indecent. But it depends on whether you are speaking of the peasant waltz, the Viennese Waltz, the Hesitation Waltz, or—”

“Oh, come on, or we’ll miss another dance.” Elena grabbed his hand, feeling tiny sparks as if she’d stroked a cat’s fur the wrong way, and pulled him into the swaying crowd.

Another waltz began. Music flooded into the room and lifted Elena almost off her feet as the small hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her body tingled all over as if she had drunk some sort of celestial elixir.

It was her favorite waltz since childhood: the one she’d been brought up on. Tchaichovsky’s Sleeping Beauty waltz. But some child part of her mind could never help but pairing the sweet sweeping notes that came after the thundering, electrifying beginning together with the words from the Disney movie version:

I know you; I danced with you once upon a dream….

As always, they brought tears to her eyes; they made her heart sing and her feet want to fly rather than dance.

Her dress was backless. Damon’s warm hand was on her bare skin there.

I know, something whispered to her, why they called this dance riotous and indecent.

And now, certainly, Elena felt like a flame. We were meant to be this way. She couldn’t remember if it was an old quote of Damon’s or something new he was just barely whispering to her mind now. Like two flames that join and merge into one.

You’re good, Damon told her, and this time she knew that it was him speaking and that it was in the present.

You don’t need to patronize me. I’m too happy already! Elena laughed back. Damon was an expert, and not just at the precision of the steps. He danced the waltz as if it were still riotous and indecent. He had a firm lead, which of course Elena’s human strength could not break. But he could interpret little signals of her own, about what she wanted and he obliged her, as if they were ice dancing, as if at any moment they might twirl and leap.

Elena’s stomach was slowly melting and taking her other internal organs with it.

And it never once occurred to her to think what her high school friends and rivals and enemies would have thought of her melting over classical music. She was free of petty spite, petty shame over differences. She was through with labeling. She wished that she could go back to show everyone that she’d never meant it in the first place.

The waltz was over all too soon and Elena wanted to push the Replay button and do it from the beginning again. There was a moment just when the music stopped where she and Damon were looking at each other, with equal exaltation and yearning and—

And then Damon bowed over her hand. “There is more to the waltz than just moving your feet,” he said, not looking up at her. “There is a swaying grace that can be put into the movements, a leaping flame of joy and oneness — with the music, with a partner. Those are not matters of expertise. Thank you very much for giving me the pleasure.”

Elena laughed because she wanted to cry. She never wanted to stop dancing. She wanted to tango with Damon — a real tango, the kind you were supposed to have to get married after. But there was another mission…a necessary mission that had to be completed.

And, as she turned, there were a whole crowd of other things in front of her. Men, demons, vampires, beastlike creatures. All of them wanted a dance. Damon’s tuxedoed back was walking away from her.

Damon!

He paused but did not turn back. Yes?

Help me! We need to find the other half of the key!

It seemed to take him a moment to assess the situation, but then he understood. He came back to her, and taking her by the hand said in a clear, ringing voice, “This girl is my…personal assistant. I do not desire that she dance with anyone other than myself.”

There was a restless murmuring at this. The kind of slaves that got taken to balls of this sort were not usually the kind that were forbidden to interact with strangers. But just then there was a sort of flurry at the side of the room, eventually pressing toward the opposite side where

Damon and Elena were.

“What is it?” Elena asked, the dance and the key both forgotten.

“Who is it, I’d ask, rather,” Damon replied. “And I’d answer: our hostess, Lady Bloddeuwedd herself.”

Elena found herself crowding behind other people to get a glimpse of this most extraordinary creature. But when she actually saw the girl standing alone in the doorway to the ballroom, she gasped.

She was made out of flowers… Elena remembered. What would a girl made out of flowers look like?

She would have skin like the faintest blush of pink on an apple blossom, Elena thought, staring unashamedly. Her cheeks would be slightly deeper pink, like a dawn-colored rose. Her eyes, enormous in her delicate, perfect face, would be the color of larkspur, with heavy feathery black lashes that would make them droop half-shut, as if she walked always half in a dream. And she would have yellow hair as pale as primroses, falling down almost to the floor, wound in braids that were themselves incorporated into thicker braids until the whole mass was brought together just above her delicate ankles.

Her lips would be as red as poppies, half-open and inviting. And she would give off a scent that was like a bouquet of all the first blossoms of spring. She would walk as if swaying in the breeze.

Elena could only remember standing, gazing after this vision like the dozens of other guests around her. Just one more second to drink in such loveliness, her mind begged.

“But what was she wearing?” Elena heard herself say aloud. She could not remember either a stunning dress or a glimpse of lustrous apple-blossom skin through the many braids.

“Some sort of gown. It was made out of what else? Flowers,” Damon put in wryly. “She was wearing a dress made of every kind of flower I’ve ever seen. I don’t understand how they stayed put — maybe they were silk and sewn together.” He was the only one who didn’t seem dazzled by this vision.

“I wonder if she would talk to us — just a few words,” Elena said. She was longing to hear the delicate, magical girl’s voice.

“I doubt it,” a man in the crowd answered her. “She doesn’t talk much — at least until midnight. Say! It’s you! How’re you feeling?”

“Very well, thank you,” Elena replied politely, and then quickly stepped back. She recognized the speaker as one of the young men who had forced their cards on Damon at the end of the Godfather’s ceremony, the night of her Discipline.

Now she just wanted to get away unobtrusively. But there were too many of the men, and it was clear that they were not about to let her and Damon go.

“This is the girl I told you about. She goes into a trance and no matter how she’s marked; she doesn’t feel a thing—”

“—blood running down her sides like water and she never flinched—”

“They’re a professional act. They go on the road….”

Elena was just about to say, coolly, that Bloddeuwedd had strictly forbidden this kind of barbarism at her party, when she heard one of the young vampires saying, “Don’t you know, I was the one who persuaded Lady Bloddeuwedd to ask you to this get-together. I told her about your act and she was most interested to see it.”

Well, scratch one excuse, Elena thought. But at least be nice to these young men. They might be helpful somehow later.

“I’m afraid I can’t do it tonight,” she said, quietly, so that they would be quiet themselves. “I’ll apologize to Lady Bloddeuwedd directly, of course. But it just isn’t possible.”

“Yes, it is.” Damon’s voice, just behind her, astounded her. “It’s quite possible — given that someone finds my amulet.”

Damon! What are you saying?

Hush! What I have to.