Wicked Glory

by Gladden, DelSheree

  As I start into an excerpt from Giselle, David starts in on his unsolicited critique. Again. “You’re supposed to hold the arabesque for a full half second before dropping your heel.”

  I grit my teeth and continue. I didn’t know he’d be choosing this dance, so I didn’t think to bring the appropriate practice attire. Where I would normally fan my skirt looks a bit silly as I just move my arms around. I expect David to comment, but he keeps his mouth shut a whole ten seconds longer until I get to the first turn.

  “Your leg is not in attitude. Your knee is dropping.”

  Once again, I ignore him and continue to move through the piece. I’m grimacing by the time I get to a series of hops on one leg. My right leg flicks back and forth from my knee to a partial extension. I stumble on the twenty-second consecutive hop, but quickly find my place again.

  “I believe that section called for twenty-seven…”

  “I know!” I snap as I begin a series of chaînés turns on pointe. David manages to keep his mouth shut through several more turns until I finally come to rest in my final pose on one knee. When I look up at him, my eyes are boring into his skull. He isn’t fazed at all. Shocker.

  Standing, David walks over to where I am still kneeling. “Well, clearly this particular dance needs a little work.”

  “I can do it just fine,” I argue. “I’m just not ready for such difficult pieces. This is the fourth dance you’ve made me do tonight. Not to mention that being back in school with my hunger so touchy and having to spend six hours a day trying to control myself around hormonal, volatile teenagers is killing me! I’m exhausted.”

  “There are many times you will face exhaustion, Vanessa. It cannot be the determining factor of whether or not you succeed.” He holds out a hand and pulls me back to my feet. “You must be able to push through physical weakness.”

  He already knows I can! He’s seen me doing that all week! I have limits, though. Everyone has limits! I’m about to reach mine in more ways than one. Yanking my arm away from David, I stomp over to my ballet bag—which is awkward in pointe shoes—and grab out a water bottle. I want to guzzle it down to make up for the sweating I’ve done, but I know that will only make me want to puke. Drawing out my sips as long as possible, I only give up when David starts glaring at me.

  “You seem to be having trouble keeping your knee up in several different positions. Is there something wrong with your hip?” David asks. His clinical attitude doesn’t exactly scream bedside manner, but I can at least hear the hint of real concern in his voice.

  I bite back as much viciousness as I can and answer him. “No, there’s nothing wrong with my hip. I’m just having trouble getting the rotation right. I’m out of practice.”

  David steps closer, and I nearly drop my water bottle on my foot when he touches my side. “What are you doing?” I demand.

  “Checking your hip,” he replies without even bothering to look up at me as he continues to work.

  “Stop it!” I push his hands off my body. I try to step away from him, but he grabs my wrist. Unless I want to snap a few bones, his grip makes it impossible to get away.

  David has always been taller than me by a good eight or nine inches, but I have never felt so small standing in front of him as I do right now. My breathing stops entirely as he glares down at me. I can’t even blink because I’m so terrified.

  “Why did you just push me away?” he asks, his voice pure ice.

  Whatever inspired me to brush him off a few minutes ago vanishes into thin air. “I… you were… making me uncomfortable,” I finish with my voice barely above a whisper.

  David’s fingers spring away from my wrist, only to have both of his hands clamp down on my waist. Before I can breathe or scream or anything, he smacks me down onto a hard folding chair tucked away in the corner of the room. My teeth clatter under the impact, and it takes me a few precious seconds to gather my scrambled wits. When I do, David is crouched in front of me, looking positively livid.

  “This is not a scene from a public service announcement. I am not trying to force myself on you, Vanessa. I have no interest in your body beyond whether or not it is working properly. Have I ever done anything to give you the impression that I would degrade you in such a way?” he seethes.

  It takes me a minute to realize he’s not pissed at me for pushing his hand away—okay, he’s probably pretty mad about that, too—he’s furious that I would think him capable of raping a teenage girl, a student no less.

  “No, of course not,” I say quietly.

  “Then why would you say something like that?” he demands. His eyes narrow, and I press myself into the back of the chair. “Has Ketchup…?”

  I start shaking my head wildly. “No,” I say, “never. I promise.”

  His anger doesn’t leave him, but something in David’s stance softens just barely. The hands that were threatening to break me in half a second ago fall away, elbows resting on his knees as he continues to pierce me with his laser-like eyes. “Who then?”

  “What? Nobody, David, I swear.”

  He’s quiet for a moment before saying, “It wasn’t sexual, but you don’t like people putting their hands on you. You’ve done this before, not the same as tonight, but you shy away from everyone’s touch except for Ketchup’s. Even Zander, to some degree, unless it’s training. Chris noticed it at the compound as well. He didn’t think you even knew you were doing it most of the time. You seemed to subconsciously avoid physical contact with others, but are very protective of the people you love. Why?”

  I don’t want to respond. It was an easier question when we were talking about sexual assault. I know the answer to that one. No one would live through trying something like that. This question, though, makes me look away, ashamed. I don’t want to talk to David about this. I don’t want to talk to anyone about this. Not ever.

  His touch startles me into jumping. When David’s fingers gently push my chin up to face him, there are tears in my eyes, and I hate him for bringing them to the surface. His expression is not gentle, nothing like my dad’s used to be, but it’s somehow the same. I knew my dad would protect me and stand up for me no matter how many times I messed up. I know when I look at David that he will too… in whatever way he deems appropriate.

  “Why, Vanessa?”

  “It’s different with Ketchup,” I say slowly. I beg myself to stop talking, but I can’t. “He’s never hurt me, and I know he never will.”

  “But others have hurt you.”

  I nod, and a betraying tear slips down my cheek. “It was the neighbor kids first, then classmates. It was so hard not to do things that made me look like a freak. They hated me. If they’d find me alone, I was fair game. If I wasn’t able to heal so fast, I’d have more scars than you can count.”

  “Why didn’t you fight back?”

  “I did, eventually.” My lips turn up just a bit. “You’ve seen my school disciplinary record.”

  “But not before? Why not?”

  Old hurts spring back to life as I remember being kicked over and over again, being hit with a rock hard enough that I don’t remember falling, and being shoved into a supply closet and left there in the dark for hours. I could have fought back. I could have beaten them all back before they ever had a chance to hurt me, but I didn’t.

  “I wasn’t allowed to,” I say. “Grandma forbid us to use any kind of violence, and my parents enforced the rule. If we even raised our voices at each other, we were punished. It was engrained in me from the day I could first understand what they were talking about to never use my hunger against others, never retaliate, and never show what I could really do. The first time my mom found me in the alley, trying furiously to heal the cuts and bruises the other kids had given me… I thought when she found me that she’d be angry with them for hurting me, but all she said was that I had done the right thing. She said I was strong enough to suffer through whatever they did. All that mattered was hiding who I was so we could all be safe and stay to
gether.”

  I sniff and scrub away a few more errant tears. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I didn’t understand why I had to sit back and let everyone else hurt me. I just wanted them to leave me alone. I finally got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Let me guess,” David says quietly, “that was around the time Oscar started losing control.”

  “He tried,” I say. More tears fall, and I can’t do anything to stop them. “He tried so hard to follow their rules, and look where it got him. When he started disappearing, I didn’t have anyone left to help me. Mom and Dad were too busy with Zander’s hunger and Oscar’s instability. Grandma was the same. There was no one left to protect me, so I had to do it myself.”

  Looking at my knees, I don’t see David’s hands until they curl around me. I freeze in fear until he pulls me into his arms. “I’m sorry, Vanessa, for what you had to go through, and for misjudging you yet again.”

  I’m too stunned to respond at first. Is David hugging me? For real? It’s so foreign, so bizarre, that I don’t even know how to respond. It’s not until his embrace tightens just a little that I realize how much I have missed this, how much I have missed having my dad at my back. David is a poor substitute, a point I’m sure he wouldn’t even argue, but he’s all I’ve got.

  “I’m sorry I thought the worst of you,” I say quietly.

  “Habit, I suppose,” David says. He releases me slowly and brushes away the last of my tears. There is a brief moment that I think I can almost see something other than a driven sense of purpose in his eyes, but it disappears too quickly to be sure.

  Standing, David holds out his hand to me and, for once, I don’t hesitate to take it. As soon as I am on my feet, he releases me and gestures toward the center of the room. “Now, let me see Aurora from act two of Sleeping Beauty.”

  Every semi-nice thought I just had about David evaporates. Nope, I still hate him. It’s nine o’clock at night, and he wants to see another piece? Stomping in pointe shoes isn’t easy, but I manage it just to spite him.

  As I take up position and David starts the music, he says, “Vanessa, no more hiding. Show me what you can really do.”

  His words have a strange effect on me. The music filling the small studio seeps into my soul. Maybe he knows how much I have always wanted to dance completely free of restriction. Maybe he’s only trying to gain my trust. It doesn’t matter right now. I can do so much more than I have ever been allowed to show anyone. All of my anger falls away as, for the first time in my life, I don’t let anything hold me back.

  As I dance, David doesn’t say a single word.

  Chapter Fourteen: No More Playing Nice

  (Vanessa)

  “Why did I let you talk me into this?” I growl as Ketchup drags me along behind him. The shrub he just pulled me behind scratches up my bare arms.

  “Because you wanted to know what was on Isolde’s phone, remember?” Ketchup says happily.

  I groan when he nudges me to get up again. Not only am I still recovering from my hunger, I’m ridiculously sore thanks to David’s relentless ballet expo last night. Not to mention more endurance training this afternoon. Why on earth is he so determined to make me hold various random positions for so long? I’m not a flamingo! My legs protest as we break into a jog to dart between two apartment buildings.

  In reality, we’re probably attracting more attention doing this thing Ketchup’s way than simply walking up to her apartment. I thought for sure he’d insist on black ski masks and turtlenecks, but we just look like a couple of dorky teens running around in jeans and t-shirts playing hide-and-seek or something.

  A minute later, Ketchup darts for the door on Annabelle’s building and ushers me inside like the entire police force is on our tails. I’m not prepared for Ketchup pinning me against the wall as soon as the door closes. I get half a muffled word out before his lips are on mine. I don’t know what this is about, but I return his kiss without hesitation, slipping my fingers into his back pocket while he’s too distracted to notice. When he finally pulls back, he’s not only grinning, he’s laughing, too. At me.

  “I can’t believe you just went along with that,” he laughs. “Just walking up would have been much less suspicious.”

  Rolling my eyes, I shove him away from me. “You think? I puzzled that out before you even mentioned this dumb idea.”

  Ketchup laughs again. “Then why did you let me drag you around through bushes?”

  “Because you’re a dork, and I embrace that.” I take a step away from him and pull out the lock picks I swiped from him while we were kissing. “Plus, now I get to be the one to open the door.”

  The surprise on his face is laughable. I dart out of his reach and hustle up the stairs, even though my body is very unhappy with me at the moment. I reach the second-floor landing before he catches up with me and tries to get the picks back.

  “You don’t even know how to use them,” he argues.

  Spinning out of his grip and into the hallway, I say, “Oh, don’t I?”

  I have both picks inserted into the lock before he reaches me. I do more fumbling than Ketchup ever would, but the lock clicks a few seconds later. He smirks at me and twists the doorknob. We’re both inside the dark apartment before anyone has a chance to notice us hanging around. Ketchup rounds on me. The picks are out of my hands and back in his pocket before I have a chance to complain.

  For a moment, I think he’s irritated at me, but his narrowed eyes are full of heat, not anger. I stare up at him, suddenly finding it difficult to breath. He leans in closer, nestling his lips next to my ear. “Is it weird that I think watching you break in here is about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen you do?”

  I swallow hard, failing to stop my hands from pressing against his chest. “Yes.”

  Ketchup chuckles. The feel of his chest rumbling against mine does things not conducive to this mission. “At least you’re honest,” he says before pressing a kiss to the curve of my neck.

  My hands curl around the fabric of his shirt, doing nothing at all to dissuade him. “I already knew you were weird, though, so I’m totally okay with it.”

  “Mmm, good to know.” His lips move down my neck slowly, and I begin to think finding the phone was not his main motivation for this little field trip. I’m not even sure it’s mine anymore.

  “Um, shouldn’t we, uh, do what we came here to do?”

  “Indeed,” Ketchup says, “I suggest we start in the bedroom.”

  I almost agree, but then I remember how much time Zander spends here. That kills the mood in an instant. “Yeah, sure, the room where Zander and Annabelle have spent the night more than once. Ugh, no thanks.” I wriggle out of Ketchup’s grip, grossed out by the mental image I just gave myself.

  Ketchup tries to shake it off as well. “Do you think they’re actually sleeping together?”

  “I do not want to know. Let’s just find this phone and get out of here before one of them comes back.”

  Sighing, Ketchup nods, and we both start looking. Despite what I said, we aren’t too worried about Zander and Annabelle showing up early. Both are spending the evening training with David. I don’t know what they’re up to, but I sure appreciate a night off. It’s been non-stop since David instituted his new round of training.

  Ketchup’s mind seems to be on the same track as mine when he says, “So what’s up with David’s sudden interest in your dancing?”

  His words hit a sour note with me. Dancing used to be my escape, but now David is ruining it. Mostly ruining it, anyway. That last dance… it’s not something I’ll forget any time soon. I don’t really feel like talking about that, though.

  “I don’t know. He thinks because I dance better than I train, there must be some mystical secret in my dancing that will turn me into an uber-Godling or something. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know. It’s really getting on my nerves, though.”

  “Yeah, mine too,” Ketchup grumbles.

  I fee
l bad for him, but there’s nothing either one of us can do about David’s intrusion. Despite the fact that I still think David is about the biggest prick I’ve ever met, he’s helping me… a lot. My control over my hunger has improved drastically since he started his modified training. I feel like I’m almost back to normal, which is kind of scary. I move to the next room as I consider how much I’ve improved over the last week thanks to his updated methods. The effects of my new hunger even seem to be getting better. All the other stuff, I’m not so sure about yet.

  Reaching for the nightstand drawer, I hesitate a moment. A nightstand might be where people keep things I don’t really want to see. I have to look, though. My eyes are half closed as I pull the drawer open. When I finally dare to take a look, all I see are some loose papers and Annabelle’s iPod.

  “Afraid a snake’s going to jump out at you?” Ketchup asks with a laugh as he passes by me to check the closet.

  I choose to ignore him rather than admit what I was really worried about. Pushing aside some of the papers, I don’t find anything useful. It’s not until I try to push the drawer closed again and it catches that I think to look a little harder. I squat down beside the bed and peek at the bottom of the drawer. I don’t find a phone, but I do find a curious, plain manila envelope taped to the bottom.

  “Ketchup,” I call out, “come here. I found something.”

  Careful not to tear the tape, I remove the envelope from the bottom of the drawer and hold it in front of me. I hesitate to open it. As upset as I was the night Annabelle disappeared, I’ve moved on. I don’t know that I’ll ever completely trust her, but I believe she’s with us. What if this ruins that? Even more than what it would do to our deal with the Eroi, I hate thinking of what it will do to Zander. My fingers flip back the flap, and I find myself praying it won’t be evidence against Annabelle.

  When I finally manage to get the papers out of the envelope, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. The first article shows a business-looking guy, and all it talks about is his work in computer systems. I flip to the next page and am even more confused. An obituary?