Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2)

by Jasmine Silvera

  “He was damaged, breathing but empty,” she said. “The Red Death took him. Said she would help him. We have not seen or heard from him since.”

  Azrael absorbed this knowledge. The phoenix, or the host body, had once been this woman’s blood kin. He had no doubt that whatever remained of the young man was long gone.

  “He is dead, isn’t he,” the woman said from the kitchen.

  Azrael looked at her and then the matriarch. The older woman nodded.

  “Yes.”

  The woman paled but held her ground. “But not dead.”

  “Yes.”

  To his shock it was the matron who began to wail, her voice rising in a long, sustained keen of grief.

  “Mama!” the young woman collapsed at her knees, holding her hands away from her withered face.

  Azrael removed the pipe before it could cause harm to them. The woman wailed about the dead who cannot rest and the curse of a life of loss. The young woman looked at him, eyes startled and afraid.

  “Master, I am sorry,” she said. “You must not hear these words.”

  He shook his head, reaching for the old woman’s hands. He held the wrinkled, knobby fists in his own, loose but firm.

  “He escaped her.” He kept his eyes on the old woman, ignoring the gasp. “What he is now is not what he was. But he is under my protection, and no more harm will come to him.”

  She stared back at him out of eyes that were flat, empty. He didn’t need to read her mind to see the thoughts on her face. What good was the promise of another necromancer? He was the same as Vanka in her eyes.

  Who was the monster, he wondered—Vanka who bared her savagery openly—or him, who cloaked himself in manners?

  He released the woman’s hands when the fury went out of her. Gently he stepped away.

  “I must go, but thank you for the tea,” he said, unable to bear his own thoughts, circling toward one unassailable fact.

  “Thank you,” the young woman said, her voice shaking but her eyes dry. “For your mercy, master.”

  Azrael paused on his way to the door. He crouched near the twins, hearing the young woman’s breath suck in deeply. They looked at him, curious and unafraid. Of course, they had nothing to fear—not yet.

  He laid a hand on both curly heads, but the hand on the right traced a geas on the boy’s temple. The stain retreated to a much smaller kernel. It took something out of him, pushing death back this way, but it was the least he could do.

  Then he rose and went to the door. He showed himself out. Halfway to the square the boy caught up, breathing hard from running and clutching a fistful of crumpled fabric.

  “Grandmother said you forgot this.”

  Azrael took the scarf, mutely nodding, and continued on his way. He held the scarf to his nose, thinking of Isela and how keenly she scented everything—not just the aroma but the sensations that went with it. What would she pick up from this—grief, anguish, the loss and hopelessness of a family that had fallen under the eye of a merciless power and been broken without regard?

  Is this what he was? He had become part of it when he raised the hood of his cloak and stood with the rest of the Allegiance before humanity, declaring his intention to rule them. They had saved humanity. Only to set themselves above, as dictators benevolent and cruel, according to their temperament. When given limitless power, they became their worst, no better than the humans they claimed to surpass.

  Electricity shot through him as his steps took up new purpose. How long had he simply been existing, coasting on his power and his status as something no longer human but more, and in doing so become something even worse? He’d admitted it to Isela—he was a monster. But when had his goal of keeping the humans in his territory safe justified the means?

  They’d all become the monsters they claimed to want to stop, and now they were at each other’s throats. There had to be another way for this to end. He thought of Lysippe’s words and what a war among the Allegiance might mean.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kyle had met them at the front door, and they’d taken over the student lounge. It hadn’t been much of a takeover; the lounge was surprisingly empty for this late in the afternoon. Even the halls seemed mysteriously absent of loitering students. Kyle led them inside, and Tariq posted himself inside the closed door.

  “Yana found out her grandpa was sick over a week ago.” Kyle started to fill up the water kettle, but his hand shook so much water splashed everywhere.

  Isela took over, planting him at the round table in the center of the room. He gave her a ghost of a smile when she squeezed his hands.

  “The oligarch?” she said, filling the kettle and setting it on the base.

  She retrieved mugs and picked through the assortment of teabags, wishing for her apartment kitchen and its well-stocked supply of ginger and lemon.

  “The one and only.” Kyle nodded, his fingers knitting together and unknitting.

  “Yana said he was ‘healthy as an old bear, going to live forever,’” Isela said in her best impression of their friend. She wished she hadn’t as fresh tears sprang to Kyle’s eyes.

  Tariq moved away from the door long enough to slide a box of tissues across the table. Kyle looked up at him gratefully, and his jaw softened a little. He gave Isela a covetous look she knew well—Is he for real?

  Before she could deflect, Tariq gave him a little smile and a wink. Isela stared openmouthed as Tariq retreated, but Kyle only gave a throaty little laugh and dabbed at his eyes.

  “That’s what she always said,” Kyle went on after a moment. “I mean, he has more money than a god. He got in early with the Russian necromancer—the redheaded one you like so much—and he’s been on the payroll since the beginning of time. But everybody dies, I guess. Present company excluded, of course.”

  Tariq’s mouth quirked upward. The kettle binged, and Isela poured hot water. She offered a cup to Tariq, but he looked mortally offended at the presence of the teabag.

  “Her parents sent for her,” Kyle said as Isela sat down with two cups. “A deathbed-summoning thing.”

  He wrapped his hands around the mug but didn’t appear to recognize it. Isela hooked her fingers over his wrist and squeezed.

  “I promised to look after Mischa while she was gone,” he said, hoarse. “It was just supposed to be a couple of days.”

  “Maybe it’s taking him a while to kick the bucket.”

  He shook his head miserably. “That’s what I thought. But Yana would have sent a text… if for nothing else than to check on Mischa. I looked online, and there’s nothing in the feeds about it.”

  “Her family is pretty private…,” Isela began.

  Kyle nodded doggedly. “I called her parents. No response. I went to her dad’s offices. They gave me the runaround, and when I wouldn’t leave, her father sent his goons out to chase me off. Said it was family business and I had no part in it.”

  Isela felt a sick twist in the pit of her stomach. She gave up trying to reassure him. “What then?”

  “I tracked down her flight information,” he said. “She didn’t get on the plane, Issy. She was booked on a commercial flight out to Moscow and never got on the plane.”

  His eyes were haunted, but he pressed on. “I have a friend at the private airfield, so I asked her to check the flight logs.”

  “Of course you do,” Issy murmured fondly. Kyle knew everyone.

  “The day Yana was scheduled to fly, a plane left for Russia,” he said, tears springing fresh. “Her grandfather’s. But it didn’t go to Moscow. It flew to Saint Petersburg.”

  Dread kicked the air from her lungs, and Isela sat back in her chair. “Saint Petersburg,” she whispered, her eyes finding Tariq’s.

  The flirtation was gone. Now he looked outright dangerous.

  Kyle looked between them. “What is it? What do you know?”

  Tariq’s eyes flared warning. Isela took a breath. “It might not be anything yet, Kyle. But you did the right thing, telling me.
”

  “I didn’t know what else to do.” Kyle’s shoulders slumped helplessly. “Her parents won’t acknowledge she’s gone. The police won’t touch it because of her dad’s connections…”

  “You’re very resourceful,” Tariq said with a kind of gentle praise that made Isela like him a little more.

  Kyle waved him off. “I read too many detective novels. I have some calls out to a friend in Moscow, but there’s been no sign of her there.”

  “Maybe she met some old-country stud muffin and took off for some R & R.” Isela forced the joke and a smile as her thoughts raced ahead.

  He looked pained that she would even try such a paltry attempt to distract him. “Like she wouldn’t call just to rub that in my face.”

  She squeezed his arm again, glad to see a bit of his sense of humor return.

  “How’s Mischa?”

  “He was dying of loneliness in her apartment.” He sniffed. “I brought him to ours. He’s only clawed one of the chairs, and I think Jiří is finally getting used to having him around.”

  “Take care of him,” Isela said. “It’ll mean the world to Yana.”

  She rose from her chair. Kyle nodded, dabbed at his eyes and nose again before beaming up at Tariq. “So, who’s the new bodyguard?”

  “Tariq Yilmaz.” He introduced himself. “At your service.”

  Kyle looked like he wanted to quip about what service that might entail, but Isela interrupted the thought before it could launch. “Does Divya know? Is that what this is all about?”

  Kyle’s brows grew together again. “That’s what I can’t figure out. I tried to get on her calendar, but she won’t see me. Even Niles is silent. But I saw the tech guys come through here. And something is wrong. Classes were canceled this afternoon. I thought—what with you and Azrael—maybe you could…”

  “We’re going to take over from here,” Isela said firmly. “I need you to stay out of it, Kyle.”

  He sputtered words of outrage.

  “Isela is right.” Tariq soothed him. “Even if she is just under the control of her family, they are dangerous people. Let us handle this.”

  “But Issy—”

  “No buts, Detective Bradshaw,” she said, teasing him gently. “Please. It’s bad enough Yana’s in trouble. If anything happened to you, I’d lose it. I promise you I will find her.”

  He sighed. “Okay. I’ll go back to sitting on my thumbs and feeling helpless.”

  “You, helpless? Never.” Isela looked to Tariq. “Let’s go talk to Divya.”

  Niles met them at the door to the director’s office. Isela made a quick introduction, and he ushered them inside. “How did you know?”

  “About Yana?” Isela asked. “Kyle called.”

  “I called Lord Azrael’s security when the theft was discovered, but I hadn’t heard back yet.” Niles looked confused. “Yana?”

  “You didn’t know?” Isela paused.

  Divya opened the inner door, deep in conversation with one of the techs. She looked surprised to see Isela, but grim. She dismissed the tech with a nod, waiting until he was gone to address Isela. “How did you find out?”

  Niles and Isela shared the ghost of a smile.

  Tariq sighed. “Perhaps, madame, we can all sit down somewhere and talk.”

  Divya gave him a long head-to-toe look. “Inside. I was just getting the report from the digital security team. We got them started as soon as we discovered the theft.”

  “Theft?” Isela followed.

  “Your recordings were stolen from the archives.” She paused. “Why are you here?”

  “Yana’s missing,” Isela said. “Wait. My recordings were stolen?”

  Under normal circumstances, rival schools and individual dancers often tried to steal or buy illegal footage of other dancers to imitate successful choreography. The Academy had benefited from Prague’s status as a major global technology center with a security system that rivaled that of any major financial institution. All the godsdancing recordings for every dancer were stored on that system. After Isela had become the consort, there had been talk about destroying her recordings altogether. Until they knew exactly how she had channeled the god, the risk was too great that someone would duplicate her efforts.

  They’d assumed the recordings would be safe until a decision was made. They hadn’t moved quickly enough.

  Niles spoke finally. “We thought it was a glitch in the system initially; it was made to look like a storage failure, but on investigation, it was a hack. The erasure wasn’t random. And the files had been copied first.”

  “This Yana is also a dancer,” Tariq asked.

  “Yana is a principal in the Academy ballet,” Divya said. “Not a godsdancer.”

  “The hack, do you know where it originated,” Isela said quietly.

  “Not yet,” Niles said. “But they will find out.”

  “You think there’s a connection,” Divya murmured, looking between them.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence. Vanka’s seat was in Saint Petersburg. According to Kyle, Yana was now in Saint Petersburg, likely against her will. A cold wave of terror washed over her. She thought of how vulnerable the human body was, fragile skin and bones. Vanka seemed the most savage of the Allegiance with the least regard for humanity.

  But the pieces didn’t quite fit. Yana was a ballerina. Even most godsdancers were not capable of the acrobatics and inversions Isela had mastered as part of her repertoire. Yana’s only connection to Isela was their friendship. Maybe that was enough. Vanka didn’t seem to be beyond pulling a petty trick like that just to stick it to Azrael.

  Isela’s breath paused as a memory caught up with her. Singing. The phoenix had been singing as he dragged her through the streets of Old Town. She’d caught only snatches of it on his breath, focusing on the where they were going and what he could possibly want.

  “We need to go,” Isela said, her eyes on Tariq. “Now.”

  Tariq rose with her. “Azrael’s people will assist you. You will keep us updated.”

  Both Niles and Divya nodded. The director touched her arm. “Isela, what do you know?”

  Isela hesitated, torn between comforting her dance family and keeping the secrets of the new life she now belonged to. But she was now a god, or part of one. And even a little one had more power in this world than any human being—and possibly many of its necromancers. She could do something. And she would.

  She went to the school’s director, knowing her eyes had gone gold and not caring. “We’ll find her, Divya. I swear.”

  At the main doors, Isela hesitated. “I need to check on something.”

  Tariq followed her up into the halls of the Academy. They climbed the stairs, but she took a left on the second floor instead of continuing up.

  “We’re not going to your apartment,” he said slowly, “are we?”

  “How did you guess?” She led him down a narrow, sunlit passage that connected the main building to an older stone structure.

  “Well, your apartment’s in the attic—”

  “It was a rhetorical question.” She cut him off as she opened one of the enormous doors.

  The Powder Tower was one of thirteen original gateways to the city of Prague. In the fifteenth century, the Bohemian king restyled it as a welcoming entry point to the seat of his power, and for years it served as the gateway through which future royalty passed on their way to being crowned at Saint Vitus Cathedral. As the city expanded, its prominence declined until it earned its modern name by serving as a storage place for kegs of powder used in guns and explosives. Restored with the Municipal House for the Praha Dance Academy, it now served as home of the Academy library—the official and unofficial one.

  Isela paused at the opposite end of the room before a small door guarding another set of stairs. “I don’t suppose I can ask you to wait here for me.”

  Tariq crossed his arms over his chest, assessing quickly. “Only way out is through the door we came in, isn’t it?”
>
  “Or off the roof,” she said with a smile. “And I haven’t grown wings yet.”

  “Don’t try today,” he suggested. “Twenty minutes and I’m coming up.”

  Upstairs, Madeline was on her dais, a pair of thin gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose. She peered into an enormous volume propped up on the desk by what looked like the top of an ornate wrought iron music stand. She blinked as Isela entered. A smile lit her face briefly before she frowned with concern.

  “Bad business downstairs,” she said by way of greeting.

  Isela wasn’t surprised she knew, but she did wonder briefly how Madeline always seemed to know what was going on though she hadn’t so much as a telephone on her desk and no one had ever seen her outside the library walls. Madeline was the inner-library keeper, card catalog, and Isela had the strange impression, protector. Books lined the walls in a not-easily-discernible order that seemed to make perfect sense to Madeline. If the Academy had it, she knew where to find it.

  Isela explained the bare bones of the incident. “The phoenix said I won’t be the only one.”

  “And you think they’re going to try to get Yana to replicate your success,” Madeline finished.

  The surprise must have shown on her face.

  “This old girl didn’t hatch out of an egg yesterday.” Madeline smiled at her, flowing from behind her circular desk on the dais to the shelves. She muttered as she went, whether to herself or in conversation, Isela wasn’t quite sure.

  She emerged from the shelves in short order with four books of varying age judging by the layer of dust and the decay of their bindings.

  “What you did was a conversation between you and your little gold friend. Can’t just be copied like an old Xerox machine,” she muttered, flipping through pages.

  “What if they make her—force her—to try anyway?”

  Madeline’s humor faded, her expression grim. “Can’t force a dancer. Not the way it works.”

  “But there’re lots of ways to ‘motivate’ a dancer to try.”

  “Got to find her fast then.” Madeline nodded, memories of times Isela had only heard of crossing her face with such immediacy that Isela wondered again exactly how old Madeline really was. She flipped pages of a book in an arcane language, found what she wanted, and moved to the next book. “Mirroring is a powerful tool.”