Discount Armageddon

the one just vacating the stage.

“Hey,” I said, trusting his haste to keep him from noticing that I hadn’t said his name.

He didn’t notice. “Later,” he said, and shoved past me, vanishing through the men’s room door. I pushed away from the wall, heading for the other side of the lobby. The last thing I needed was to get cornered and grilled on why I didn’t remember a piece of prime local beefcake like the one that just passed me. That’s one of the unanticipated dangers of trying to live a double life: I don’t have the mental storage space to keep track of every cryptid in the Greater Manhattan Metro Area and remember every member of the New York dance community. Maybe if I had Sarah’s particular set of skills, but maybe not even then.

The fact that I have to keep the two identities as separate as possible doesn’t help. Verity Price has never won a dance competition. She’s never even entered one. Valerie Pryor, on the other hand, has done very well for herself, thank you very much. According to her credentials, she placed respectably in several local dance events, studied under some excellent teachers, and caught the nation’s attention when she appeared on Dance or Die, spending most of the season as a legitimate front-runner for the grand prize.

I’d probably hate her if she wasn’t my secret identity. As it is, I’m just plain jealous.

And if I ever prove I can make it in the world of competitive dance, I’m going to have to become her all the time. There’s no way a Price can risk herself on the public stage. It would be an invitation to assassination. So for right now, I can use that as a justification for never bothering to remember the names of most of the dancers I deal with: they don’t remember mine. The fact that they’ve never had the chance to learn it is academic.

“Now calling group seventeen to the main stage,” boomed the intercom, sounding surprisingly free of static. The hall might be cold, but it was better-maintained than most of the places willing to host entry-level competitions. “First dance will commence in five minutes.”

I straightened, reaching up to check my wig in a gesture designed to look like I was just checking my hair. All the pins were still in place. “Let’s dance,” I said quietly to myself, and started for the doors to the main stage.

* * *

Explaining the rules of professional ballroom dancing would take the better part of a week, and probably wouldn’t help once I got to the difference between professional and amateur dancing, the way steps are ranked, and who pays what fees to enter a competition. Here’s what you really need to know:

There are two major schools of competitive ballroom dance. International is the standard for most of the world, and focuses on crispness, precision, and the formality of the steps. There are International dancers from the United States, but they aren’t regarded very highly by the rest of the world, largely due to the existence of American ballroom. American is looser, showier, and a lot more fun to watch on television. Most of what you’ll see in movies and on reality-based dance shows is American ballroom. International is gorgeous if you know what’s going into those tight, precise steps and twirls. American, on the other hand, doesn’t require you to have any actual understanding of ballroom dance. It just wants you to stay awake.

Once you get past the whole International-vs.-American divide, you run into the second major division within the ballroom world: the smooth styles vs. the Latin dance forms. In International dance, the smooth styles are the slow waltz, the tango, the Viennese waltz, the slow foxtrot, and the quickstep, while the Latin styles are the cha- cha, the samba, the rumba, the Paso Doble, and the jive. In American dance, the smooth styles are the waltz, the tango, the foxtrot, and the Viennese waltz, while the Latin styles are the cha-cha, the rumba, the bolero, and East Coast Swing.

Confused yet? Now, just to up the ante a bit, please note that “Argentine tango” is nowhere on either of those lists. The Argentine tango is a horse of a different color, belonging to neither International nor American ballroom, and refusing to fit neatly into any specific style designation. The Argentine tango isn’t here to play nicely with the other children. The Argentine tango is here to seduce your women, spill things on your rug, and sneak out your bedroom window in the middle of the night. It’s the unabashed tomcat of dances, consisting primarily of swagger and sex, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Which is why you’ll find dancers from every side of the fence showing up for the competitions, wearing painted-on pants and lingerie disguised as dresses, all of them ready to get their freak on. Under carefully controlled and rigorously judged conditions, that is.

The Argentine tango. Because, sometimes, dirty dancing comes with rules.

* * *

Group seventeen consisted of ten couples. All twenty of us were dancing at the professional level; only four were paid partners, which is a remarkably low number for a group our size. According to the posted rosters, we’d all checked in by eight o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t seen more than five of the people I’d be dancing with, and I’d only seen my partner once, across the crowded lobby. He’d been deep in conversation with his boyfriend at the time, and I’d decided not to bother them. If we weren’t prepared by the time we paid our registration fees, we were already screwed.

(At least this was one of the more affordable competitions; buy-in had only been two hundred dollars for professionals, nonrefundable under any circumstances, including death. Only the top three couples would be getting cash prizes, but the top twenty would be going on to the regional division competition. That’s all I was hoping for. A regional would give me something to justify taking more time to practice, even if more practice meant having less time to worry about what the hell might be making the city’s cryptid population go bye-bye.)

The hall where we’d be going through our paces was a beautiful combination of “overly shadowed” and “overly bright.” Desk lights lit the workspaces of the individual judges and floodlights lit the stage, while the tiers of frozen spectators weren’t really lit at all. I used to find the silence from the audience creepy. The people who show up to watch competition ballroom dancing are sort of like the people who show up to watch really high-stakes tennis: completely silent, never gasping, applauding, or giving any sign that they’re not all dead. I’ve never understood the appeal. There’s a vast attraction to being the one on the floor, and watching televised dance competitions can be a lot of fun, if there’s booze involved. But sitting around playing wax dummy for hours on end? What’s the point?

I scanned the crowd of dancers for James as we made our way onto the floor. When I’d seen him earlier, he was wearing the standard-issue skintight pants, and a deep green shirt chosen to match my dress and complement the apparent color of my hair. (Of the three professional partners I’d worked with before coming to New York, James was the only one who’d ever realized I wasn’t a natural redhead. That wasn’t a problem for either of us, since I was the only partner he’d worked with who realized he wasn’t a natural human. Chupacabra may not be good for the livestock, but damn, those guys can dance.)

“Positions, please,” said one of the judges. His amplified voice boomed through the speakers, making it impossible to tell which of the shadowy figures was speaking. Couples began pairing off all around me, and there was still no sign of James. I was starting to worry. Couples enter as couples, and there are no substitutions allowed once the event program has been printed. There definitely aren’t any substitutions allowed after you’re on the floor.

The other nine couples had fallen into ready position, leaving me all-too-visibly alone in the middle of the floor. I barely managed to keep from wincing as the speakers clicked on again.

“Number one hundred eighty-four, please join your partner.”

I scanned the floor again, looking for James. If I didn’t find him in the next few seconds, I’d be disqualified by default. I couldn’t afford to lose the entry fee. More importantly, I couldn’t afford to lose the shot at the regional competition. I needed that title.

Still no James. I took a step backward, anticipating the instruction to leave the floor, and stopped as my shoulders bumped up against a man’s chest. “James,” I sighed, utterly relieved. My arms automatically raised to form the proper frame as I turned.

“If you like,” Dominic replied, catching my right hand and pulling me into a tango stance. I gaped at him, but there was no time to argue. The music was already starting. Instinct was the only thing that saved me, relaxing my shoulders as my back straightened, pulling me into the correct posture.

With no more fanfare than that, the dance began.

The Argentine tango isn’t as devoted to creating a frame between dancers as most of the structured forms; it’s hard to look like you’re ironing the wrinkles out of the front of your dress with your partner’s chest if you’re going to be all fussy about keeping the appropriate distance. Dominic was doing a passable standard tango, and I let him be the one to hold the structure of the dance, sliding closer in what would hopefully look like a practiced dance step as I hissed in his ear, “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” he replied, and pushed me into a half-turn before yanking me back. He definitely wasn’t