“We need to talk about tonight, review the security plan.”
Annabella was silent for a moment before answering. Finally, she shook her head. “No. I’m not going to think about that at all.” Her voice was raspy, and she gave a little cough to clear it. “I can’t, you understand?”
After seeing the mastery and grace of that dance class, he had to admit he did. Her focus had to be entirely on her performance. The rest was up to him.
Her weight shifted to her own feet, and he released her. He’d wanted to reassure her, show her that he had everything under control, to tell her that she could depend on him, but she was beyond that now. Had to be.
He attempted to follow her thought leaps. It was easier now that he was coming to know her better. She was retracing the steps of the story, and he could almost feel the veil between earth and the Shadowlands trembling.
By the time she sat at her dressing table, she was in deep concentration. He spent the next half hour checking in with his team—still no word from Adam—while Annabella transformed her girlish face into the ethereal appearance of a ghost. She pancaked her skin white. She lined her eyes black, adhering the lashes to her already thick, dark fringe. She shaded the hollow of her cheeks just so, then stood, holding her leotard over her breasts, and handed him a white-dipped sponge.
“Wipe me down, would you?” she asked his reflection in the mirror.
He didn’t know what she meant, but would do anything she asked. So he took the sponge.
“My shoulders, neck right into my hairline, and my back,” she clarified. Underneath her words was an implicit invitation. Among the complex movements of choreography filling her mind, she’d decided something.
Custo stepped close to her, their gazes locked in the glass. He couldn’t act on his desires, so he bent to his task and stroked her with the sponge. Her character was the ghost of an almost-bride, so he swept the color from her skin. He erased the pulse of life from the curves of her back and arms. He stroked the white across her shoulders to the dip below her graceful throat and the valley between her breasts.
His head was bent, mouth at her ear, arms circling her waist when she spoke, her voice thin. “My costume is on the rack.”
He could feel her heart pounding in her chest—his was, too—and forced himself to take a step backward.
She reached to take the frothy white dress from a hanger, and keeping her back to him, her face to a bland corner of the dressing room, dropped her warm-up clothes and donned the costume. Her hands molded the bodice to her frame and she backed up to him again.
“Would you?” she asked.
The back gaped open, lined with matching rows of tiny hooks and eyes, too small for his hands. He did the best he could with his clumsy fingers and when he brought his gaze back up, found Annabella utterly transformed into an other-worldly bride.
Someone knocked on the door, calling, “Ready in five,” then moved down the hall.
“I guess this is it,” she said.
“Don’t worry about anything,” Custo said. “Just dance.”
She inhaled deeply and exhaled with a shudder. “Let’s go.”
From side stage, Custo could hear the rumble of the audience and the stray, discordant notes of the orchestra. The Segue team was either already seated or circulating until curtain.
Jens was on the opposite side of the stage. He’d simplified the Segue uniform to an all-black ensemble that might pass for stage crew. Only the jacket seemed unusual, but that couldn’t be helped. He had to hide his gun somewhere. Everyone was in place. Everyone was ready.
The orchestra went suddenly silent and the audience muted to a murmur, then a general hush. The music began, each instrument weaving an eerie thread of the story.
The other dancers, brides in death, comprised the first movement. Then the stage cleared with a bustle and Custo’s space was crammed with dancers heaving for breath, watching from the wings.
A new phrase of music began, mournful and romantic, and Annabella stepped into view, a maiden ghost, a wili. The light of the stage shifted slightly with her appearance, deepening with color, with compelling light, with magic.
She mingled with the other wilis, and then exited to the other side with the group while cocky, pretty-boy Jasper took the stage.
Custo peered across the way, trying to get a glimpse of her and caught only a bit of white tutu. Not good enough. There were at least a dozen dancers in white tutus—could be her, could be some other woman. He extended his mind to see if he could glean her well-being from her thoughts: a shoe ribbon was too tight. Her throat was dry. The shreds of thought surfaced in the cacophony of mental chatter coming from the thousands in the audience and did him no good.
He touched his earbud. “Jens, how’s Annabella?”
“She’s fine,” Jens answered. “Standing right here on her tippy toes to see over the—”
Custo’s earbud crackled. “Oh, shit,” Tommy’s voice cut in, breathing heavy, shouts in the background, cars honking, a crash. “Wraiths.”
Custo’s heart lurched. “Say again?”
“A group of them! It’s a trap!” A wraith screeched, high and painfully shrill in Custo’s earpiece. “He can’t hold them off for long.”
Annabella joined Jasper onstage where he grieved at her grave.
“Who? Who can’t hold them off forever?” But Custo already knew.
Onstage, the couple mirrored each other’s movements—Jasper, strong and earthy, Annabella, light and ethereal, both utterly unaware of the nightmare unfolding outside the theater.
“Adam. He’s out there alone.”
Chapter Nine
GISELLE’S broken heart pulled her gaze to the dirt floor of the forest as she rose above from the freshly turned earth of her grave. She kept her hands folded on her breast, to hold the fragments of her love within her. Prince Albrecht would marry another, a royal lady, and not some peasant girl who knew nothing of the world. His betrayal killed her, yet she couldn’t help but love him still.
But she wasn’t a peasant girl any longer.
She was a wili, a ghost, and would dance forever.
Joining the host of other wilis caught in the midnight hush of the wood, Giselle tiptoed down the long diagonal sweep of dancers to bow to her wili queen, Myrtha.
Everything was as it should be, quiet and peaceful. Annabella’s body felt strong, ready for this moment, though a chill of anxiety had her nerves snapping. The sensation went beyond opening-night jitters, beyond nerves, to fear.
On one side of her was the woodland backdrop; on the other, the black yawn of theater where the audience sat, voyeurs to Giselle’s tragic love story. Annabella looked up and strained her eyes beyond the side curtains of the stage: A bright angel stood beyond the false trees, his pale green gaze fixed on her. He was her hope, her protection. With him watching, her dance would be lighter, her heart would be lighter.
If Custo were near, she would be safe.
Giselle rose from her deep curtsy and began the series of arabesque turns that marked her advent into the Other. Heart hammering in her chest, she stirred the air, spun her magic, and reached for a world beyond her own.
“Where are you, Tommy?” Custo bit out the words, keeping his gaze fixed on Annabella. She was dancing in the center of the stage, surrounded by the other dancers. There was no sign of the wolf. Yet.
Custo strode to the edge of the curtain. Should he grab her now? Stop the performance? Abort the mission?
