Dance of Shadows (15 page)

“The truth is,” he said softly, “I don’t want to go home.”

Vanessa felt something inside her catch. “I don’t either,” she whispered. “But I’m already late for curfew—”

“I know,” he said, putting a finger to her lips. “Just one
more moment.” He pulled her toward him, his hand pressing into the small of her back. Her hair blew about her cheeks as he leaned closer, his breath grazing her lips. But before he kissed her, Vanessa hesitated.

“What about Anna? Is she still your girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend?” His breath tickled her lips. “I don’t have one—at least not now. Though I do have my eye on someone if she’ll have me.”

A gust of wind blew water from the fountain across the plaza, sprinkling them with cool droplets, and they both broke out laughing. When the wind died down, Zep wiped her cheek with his thumb.

“Vanessa?” said a gruff voice. It belonged to a woman.

Vanessa’s smile faded. She turned to see Hilda’s squat frame standing by the entrance of the David Koch Theater, squinting into the darkness.

“We have to go!” Vanessa said. Zep grabbed her hand, and together they ran through the buildings and back to the dormitory.

The weekend passed by in a slow ache. Vanessa went to breakfast with her friends and meandered up Broadway with them, until they finally settled down to study in a coffee shop a few blocks from school. Vanessa’s mind was far away, though, feeling the weight of Zep’s hand in hers, her cheek still cool from the sprinkle of water that the wind had blown between them, her lips still waiting for his kiss.

TJ interrupted her reverie. “And you want an iced tea, right? One sugar or two?”

“Actually,” Vanessa said, “I’ll have a mulled cider today.”

A hushed giggle passed over the table.

“I know where you are,” Blaine said with a wink. He pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and leaned forward. “Lost in a dream. A sexy dream.”

Vanessa felt her chest grow hot. “No,” she protested. “I’m here, really. I just—”

“Suddenly like mulled cider,” Steffie teased.

“We don’t blame you,” TJ said. “Hell, if I could go on a date with Z—”

“Shh!” Vanessa said. She had told them about the date but sworn them to secrecy. She didn’t want to think about what everyone at school would say if word got out.

“With you know who,” TJ continued. “I’d be checked out of reality so quickly you’d forget what my voice sounded like.”

Blaine raised an eyebrow. “You? Stop talking? Impossible.”

Steffie and Vanessa laughed. TJ rolled her eyes and retreated to the counter to order their drinks.

The four of them sat around the table studying in the afternoon sunshine, the buttery aroma of mulled cider filling Vanessa with memories: a lick of almond frosting, a hand buried in her hair, a tickle of breath on her neck.

To keep her mind off Zep, Vanessa spent the rest of the weekend in the NYBA library, reading about Igor Stravinsky for her
Firebird
report and relishing the quiet. It was there, sitting on a windowsill overlooking Manhattan’s Upper West Side, that she read about the strange phenomenon that had occurred in Paris during the original opening night of Stravinsky’s ballet
The Rite of Spring
.

According to historical accounts, when the orchestra started to play the opening notes, the audience began to shift in their seats. The sounds were odd, unfamiliar, the chords dissonant and unnatural. As the dancers contorted their bodies to the
strange music, people covered their ears or looked away, unable to watch. Someone booed. Someone else shouted at the dancers. People were standing and yelling, throwing playbills at the stage. A group of women in the front row fell into a strange fit of hysterics.

Vanessa shivered, staring at a drawing of the riot, the faces of the people in the aisles sending goose bumps up her skin. They looked wild, possessed, like something had taken hold of them and wouldn’t let go.

“That’s dark stuff,” a voice said over her shoulder.

Vanessa sat up with a jolt, knocking a stack of books off the windowsill. Trying to compose herself, she stood, only to see the tawny mess of Justin’s hair as he bent over her books, now scattered across the floor.

Vanessa blew a wisp of hair out of her face. “Do you make it a habit of sneaking up on people, or are you just trying to sabotage my dancing by giving me a heart attack?”

Justin looked up at her, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. “What, did I scare you?”

“No,” she said, glancing over his shoulder. “Speaking of scaring, where are your bodyguards? I didn’t see them with you when you were spying on Zep and me in the plaza. Don’t you travel everywhere with them?”

But just as she spoke she heard heavy footsteps, and Nicola and Nicholas Fratelli slipped out from the narrow passage between the bookshelves. They glanced at Vanessa, their faces solemn, and sat down to read just a few tables over from her.

Vanessa shrank back, embarrassed.

“Them?” Justin said. “We’re just friends. And as for the other night, I wasn’t spying on you. I was on my way to a date.”

“A date?” Vanessa asked, surprised by how anxious the idea made her. “With whom?”

“Now who’s spying?” Justin said, still grinning.

“I—I’m not, I was just wondering. But never mind.”

Justin shrugged. “Just a girl,” he said. His blue eyes lingered on Vanessa’s. He lowered his voice. “No one special.”

Vanessa broke his gaze. “I, um, I should go.”

Ignoring her words, Justin opened one of her books. “
Russian Composers and Their Muses
,” he said, reading the title. He picked up another one. “
Dance Macabre and the Ballerina
.” He chuckled. “Doing a little
Firebird
research, are we?”

“Yes,” Vanessa said, grabbing the book from him.

“You know that—”

“It won’t make me a better dancer,” Vanessa said curtly. “You told me that before.”

Justin leaned against the windowsill, the muscles on his arms flexing beneath his shirt. Catching herself, Vanessa quickly looked away.

“I was going to say that if you want to know what Josef’s favorite ballet is about, you should probably ask the people who have danced in it before.” Justin picked up Vanessa’s pencil case and looked like he was about to open it.

“Don’t go through my things,” she said, grabbing the case and stuffing it back in her bag. “I already tried that,” she said, producing the three-year-old cast list from her binder. “I can’t find contact information for anyone on the list. I even found
cast lists from earlier
Firebird
productions here—it looks like the school has
tried
to put it on almost twelve times now over the past two decades—but I can’t even find listings for those dancers. It’s like after they left NYBA, they just vanished.”

“You can’t find them because the old players aren’t around anymore,” Justin said.

“What do you mean? What happened to them?”

Justin fanned the pages of one of her books. “Who knows?”

Vanessa slammed her palm down on the book cover, tired of the way he was fiddling with her things. “They disappeared?”

Justin shook his head. “You, of all people, should know that when people disappear, it’s usually because they don’t want to be found. So call it whatever you want. They graduated and faded into obscurity, or—”

Vanessa glanced at her watch, and Justin’s voice trailed off. Suddenly he stood up, his back rigid. A dark look passed over his face.

Vanessa followed his gaze to the far end of the reading room, where Zep’s broad shoulders filled the doorway. The warm light seemed to bend around him as he ran his hands through his hair and scanned the room, looking for a place to sit. He was about to head for the east corner when his eyes rested on Vanessa.

She felt her heart skip as their gaze met.

“Dropped out of sight,” Justin said, finishing his sentence. “Which is exactly what I’m going to do now.” He gave Vanessa a disappointed look, but she was barely paying attention to him. Justin gathered his things and nodded to the Fratelli twins,
who closed their books and stood up. “Remember what I said in class about putting me under a magnifying glass,” Justin murmured, but before Vanessa had a chance to process what he’d meant, he and the twins were gone.

Zeppelin Gray was a beautiful paradox: his body rough yet smooth; his movements heavy but weightless; his eyes so deep and lustrous that they seemed to contain an entire universe. He walked toward Vanessa, his muscles shifting, sharp and lean, as if carved out of metal.

Tearing her gaze away, she glanced at one of her books and pretended to read. He couldn’t be coming this way, could he? A looming shadow answered her question. Willing herself to stop blushing, Vanessa looked up.

“Vanessa,” Zep said, his voice deep and buttery. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Zep, hi,” she said, trying to sound unfazed. “I’m just reading.”

“I would have thought you would be out with your friends,” Zep said, placing his hand inches from hers on the windowsill.

“Why would you think that?”

“You just seem like the kind of girl who’s always busy. I’m glad I found you alone.”

Had he been looking for her? She felt her heart swell.

Zep lowered his voice. “Is that revealing too much?”

“A little,” she teased. “If I had known you were looking for me, I would have made myself easier to find.”

Zep gave her a daring smile. “What did you think I’ve been doing all weekend?”

“Leading a life of mystery and intrigue, I suppose,” Vanessa
said. She had no idea what Zep did in his free time. “Whisking girls away to beautiful cafés where you win their hearts by ordering them the perfect dessert.”

“No,” Zep said with a laugh. “I only do that with you.” He stepped closer. “But does that mean that I won your heart?”

“You seem to know me better than I know myself. Why don’t you tell me?”

“If only I could,” he said.

“So now that you have me alone, what do you want to do with me?”

A glimmer of surprise flickered over Zep’s face. He inched closer until his fingers were barely touching hers. Leaning in, he traced his finger along the spine of her book.

“What I was thinking of isn’t exactly right for the library.”

Vanessa trembled as he slammed the book shut and stood up.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and held out his hand.

Vanessa couldn’t remember what happened next, only the feeling of Zep’s hand around hers as they slipped through campus and into an empty studio. She laughed as Zep ran a finger down her arm and then closed the door behind them, turning on only the far lights so most of the studio was still dark.

Vanessa dropped her bag on the floor and twirled into a delirious pirouette before she sat down. As she pulled her pointe shoes out of her bag, Zep came up behind her.

“May I?” he said softly.

Vanessa swallowed, then nodded.

Gently, Zep took her leg in his hand. He slid off one sandal, then the other. Her slippers looked delicate and small beneath his hands, the ribbons tangling around his fingers. He
lifted her right foot and slipped the shoe on, his grip soft as he wrapped the ribbons up her ankles.

“Too tight?” he said, tying them in a knot.

Vanessa shook her head, unable to speak.

When he was finished, he put on his own shoes and held out his hand. Vanessa’s long hair was tied in a loose braid, and Zep grazed a wisp of it with his fingers. “The Firebird,” he whispered.

“I don’t know all the steps,” Vanessa said.

“That’s okay,” he said, his voice gentle. “Just follow my lead.”

Suddenly, she was in his arms, his broad hands firm against her waist. Their feet wove together, sliding across the floor as if it were natural, as if it weren’t a dance at all, but a long, tender caress. The smell of his skin, his sweat, surrounded her as she leaped across the studio, fanning her arms as she spun. She began to lose herself; she couldn’t stop it. The mirrors seemed to warp as time slowed, bending everything in the room except Zep, who reached out and caught her just before she collapsed.

“Vanessa.” He pulled her close to him.

She blinked, the room returning to her. “Zep.” She could feel his chest expanding and contracting against her thin dress.

Zep ran his fingers across her cheek. “You’re breathtaking.”

Vanessa shivered.

Zep lifted her chin. “You’re alive, angry, passionate. You’re not dancing, you’re living. I can see it in your eyes.”

Vanessa stared at her reflection in his eyes. “Really?” she replied.

Instead of answering, Zep pulled her toward him and ran
his hand up her spine. Something inside her grew faint as he pressed her body against his. Vanessa closed her eyes. His strong hands tightened around her waist, pulling her closer, when the door cracked open. A ray of light shone across the floor, followed by a shadow of a boy. Justin.

She could feel Zep grow rigid beneath her fingers. And then, to her surprise, he moved away from her. Only an inch, but it was just enough space for the light to shine across her face, revealing her to Justin. As if Zep wanted Justin to see her.

Justin tilted his head as the realization of what he had interrupted spread across his face. Vanessa watched as his expression softened into sadness, as if she had somehow let him down. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, she suddenly felt guilty.

Even though she hated Justin, even though everything about him made her want to scream, she wanted to call out to him. To explain to him why she was here with Zep and what they were doing. But she didn’t.

For a moment, Justin stood there, watching them. And then, without a word, he left. Vanessa lowered her eyes as the door slammed shut behind him, repeating itself in every mirror on the wall.

Vanessa didn’t tell anyone. How could she when
she
wasn’t even sure it had been real? Zep wasn’t her boyfriend, and she had to admit to herself that in many ways, he was still very much a stranger.

She didn’t know what he did or where he was when he wasn’t with her. She didn’t even have a way to get in touch with him other than Facebook. Besides, the mystery was part of his appeal. Zep was the epitome of movement—a flash of him here, another flash there, and then he was gone, leaving Vanessa with nothing but the memory of his body moving with hers. And she wanted more.