Chaos Choreography

by Seanan McGuire

  “Hello?”

  The voice was female, and coming from our living room. I stopped laughing, immediately tense. Pax and Anders turned, still blocking the doorway, ready to defend us from whatever might be coming. Then Anders groaned and stepped to the side.

  “Ladies, it’s for you,” he said.

  Lyra and I exchanged a glance before we stood and walked to the door, poking our heads out. There, standing in the middle of our living room like she belonged there, was Jessica. She had her arms crossed, and looked annoyed, probably because we’d made her wait.

  “The door was open,” she said, before either of us could say anything. “You probably shouldn’t leave it open, it’s like an invitation for people to come in and steal shit.”

  “Or to just come in,” I said, stepping out of the bedroom. “How can we help you?”

  “You’re Valerie, right?” She looked me up and down, and then sniffed, like she’d just determined that I wasn’t a threat. I bristled. “You were on the season after mine. I don’t know if you watched the show before you tried to use it to get famous, but I came in fourth my year. I would’ve won if I hadn’t been injured.”

  “How nice for you,” I said. “We’ve met before, remember? You were Sasha’s assistant during our season, where I came in second, if we’re playing that game.”

  “I’m Lyra,” said Lyra, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Hi again, Jessica. Long time no irritate. I came in first. How can we help you?”

  “I’m a really light sleeper, and Adrian said I should find someone who’s willing to trade with my roommate and sleep on the couch.” Her tone made it clear that her original roommate hadn’t seen being kicked out of the bedroom as an acceptable solution. “It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t get enough sleep and got eliminated, you know? I just need to find someone who wants to be a good sport.”

  “There are no good sports in this apartment,” said Anders. He managed to sound almost apologetic, like he was really sorry, deep down, about our lack of sportsmanship. “Sorry. I mean, if you wanted to crash on our couch, I’m sure we could work something out, but Lyra and Val are besties . . .”

  Lyra and I linked our little fingers and held them solemnly up for inspection.

  “. . . and Pax has this whole thing about sleeping in the nude, which means we need to have a door to close between the world and his magnificence. Maybe try the next apartment down? They might be suckers. You never know.”

  Jessica looked, briefly, like she was going to stomp her foot in frustration. “This is the last apartment!”

  “Well, then pray that whoever winds up with a room to themselves after next week is willing to trade with you.” Anders dropped the sympathetic act. “Of course, you’ll have to do this again once we’re back down to an even number of girls. So I don’t think you’re going to have much luck.”

  “I won’t forget this,” said Jessica, and spun on her heel, stalking out of the apartment.

  “Uh-huh, kiss noise, bye now,” Anders called after her. He rolled his eyes as he looked around at the rest of us. “Can you say ‘diva’? How does she survive in the real world?”

  “I have no idea, but I don’t have to care,” I said. “Come on. Let’s check out the kitchen.”

  Hours later—after a group barbecue in the courtyard, during which dancers I’d never met sucked down chicken breasts and tofu dogs like they were about to be made illegal, and everybody was introduced to everybody else, and just as promptly forgot everybody else’s names—the apartment was settling peacefully into sleep. Lyra was still sitting up in her bed, writing the day’s events out in her diary, but that was no big deal; she knew about my nocturnal habits. She looked over, a tolerant expression on her face, as she heard the window slide open.

  “Going for a run?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to look sheepish. As far as Lyra knew, I was an insomniac with a fondness for night running. I’d promised her repeatedly during our original season that I wouldn’t be in any danger, and after several nights when I’d returned home uninjured and capable of competing, she had grudgingly chosen to believe me.

  “Bring back more eggs,” she said, and went back to her diary.

  “You got it,” I said, and slid my legs out through the open window. My backpack was a mostly-empty weight against my lower back. After a quick, perfunctory glance to make sure I wasn’t about to become a new YouTube sensation, I let go of the frame, and I fell.

  There’s something gloriously exhilarating about that moment where the body lets go and gravity takes over. It can be easy to forget how much effort goes into every movement the body makes. Even sitting still requires the muscles in your spine, thighs, and butt to work. But falling . . . falling can be a moment of perfect relaxation, at least until it’s time to start thinking about not hitting the ground.

  I dropped about six feet, far enough to build some momentum, and more importantly, to carry me to the first-floor windows. I grabbed the top of the sill and used it to twist myself around to where I could catch hold of the rain gutter. It was gritty under my hands. Honestly, if someone wanted to find out which apartment was mine, all they’d have to do was look for the window next to the rain gutter that had been inexplicably wiped clean.

  Bracing my feet to either side of the gutter, I slid the rest of the way to the street. I preferred to travel rooftop to rooftop whenever possible, but the Crier Apartments were too far from the surrounding buildings to let me do that without risk of major injury. I let go of the metal pipe, wiped my filthy palms against the seat of my pants, and started down the driveway toward the street.

  There was a car parked midway down the drive. It flashed its headlights at me, twice. I was still wearing my wig, still the perfect picture of a dancer sneaking out for a late-night snack run: I composed my expression into one of vague curiosity and trotted over to the car.

  The passenger side window rolled down when I got there. Brenna looked across the leather seats, expression solemn. “Get in,” she said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  I got in.

  Brenna started the engine, rolling the window back up as she turned the car around. “Where are you heading?”

  “You know the Be-Well Motel?” I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my wig bag. Then I reached up and peeled off my wig, tucking it into the bag before I started extricating bobby pins from my wig cap. My scalp itched like fire. I hadn’t been Valerie for such a long stretch in months: I was going to have to acclimate all over again. Swell.

  “Pretty familiar,” she said. “Cheap as hell, you get what you pay for, rents by the hour, day, and week, and nobody asks any questions.”

  “Exactly,” I said. The wig cap peeled away. I stuffed it into the backpack and began fluffing my sorely-abused hair. “I’m going there.”

  “You have a perfectly nice bed that the producers are paying for, you know,” said Brenna. “Far be it from me to tell you how to spend your money, but . . .”

  “But wasting money hurts your soul, even when the money isn’t yours, I know,” I said. “I’m not sleeping there. I’m meeting my husband there.”

  “Husband? Really?” Brenna glanced at me, startled. “You mean the short, broody man you were with back at the theater? You married him?”

  “Yes, I married him, not Valerie. Which is why he’s staying back and pretending to be Val’s boyfriend if anyone asks. He won’t be in the audience during the live show taping.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ex-Covenant.”

  Brenna hit the brakes, slamming me forward. The seatbelt dug into my shoulder but kept me from going through the windshield, so I was willing to call it a win. I still yelped. I yelped again, this time in surprise rather than pain, when I turned and found Brenna staring at me, all wide eyes and impending rage.

  “He’s what?!”

  “He’s ex-Cov
enant,” I said. “He quit when he realized he’d rather have a live girlfriend than a dead trophy, and when he started to figure out that cryptids were people. He knows about William, Brenna. He was there when I found him.” When I’d been offered to him as a virgin sacrifice, technically, but I didn’t see any need to tell people that. “He didn’t tell the Covenant. He’s a good guy. He just can’t risk being caught on camera.”

  “Of all the irresponsible, unreasonable, insane things you could have done, you—”

  “Went and did exactly what my grandmother did, only without the ten years of pining, flirting, pining some more, drinking the cooking sherry, and trying to date other dudes?” I shrugged. “This seemed more efficient. And better for my liver.”

  Brenna shook her head. “I take it back. I take it all back. You’re not the best of a bad lot, you’re as crazy as the rest of them.”

  “We’re not crazy, we just have different priorities,” I said. “You’re one to talk, you know. You’re the only dragon I’ve ever met who actually spends money on shoes.”

  The word “dragon” hung in the air between us for a moment, silent and accusing. Finally, Brenna blinked, and said, “You know, no human has ever called me a dragon before. Not even you.”

  “Times are changing,” I said.

  Brenna smiled. “I guess so.”

  I’d only been on the set of Dance or Die for a week before I’d realized Brenna Kelly was a dragon princess—the term we still used, out of long habit, for the female members of an extremely sexually dimorphic species. The males were giant, fire-breathing reptiles the size of a bus. The females were attractive, human-looking women with perfect skin, perfect hair, and a tropism toward amassing as much gold as possible. It was just that in Brenna’s case, she preferred her gold to take the form of sequins and shiny shoes. She was the only materialistic dragon princess I’d ever met, and I had liked her instantly.

  Getting her to like me back had been a bit more complicated, since once I’d known what she was, I’d felt obligated to tell her what I was: a Price, a cryptozoologist, and a liar, appearing on the show under a fake name. She’d responded with “You’re a dancer first,” and I’d known we were going to be friends.

  Her smile faded as she drove on. “So, Verity, I’m sure you were wondering what I wanted to talk with you about.”

  “Not really,” I said. “You’re a dragon. I’ve never wanted to pry, but I assume you have a Nest?”

  She nodded. “My sisters think I’m strange for enjoying spending money as much as I enjoy making it. As long as I give half my earnings to the Nest, they don’t mind so much. I make valuable connections they can exploit for a profit. There’s a lot of work for pretty girls who don’t want to be big stars in this town. We can always find another photo shoot or music video that wants a few of us for set dressing. Private parties, too. Not the sex kind—we avoid that sort of intimacy with humans—but the sort where we just need to wander around being decorative.”

  “So I assume that when they heard there was going to be a reunion show, they pressed you to talk to me.” I paused. “Wait. Adrian said the reunion show was your idea. Did you . . . ?”

  “Please don’t think badly of me. I just needed an excuse to talk to you without calling out of the blue, and I thought this might be a nice opportunity for you. Something I could do that wouldn’t cost us a lot of money. We’re hoping to need it very soon.” Brenna cast a quick, hopeful look in my direction.

  I nodded slowly. “I can put you in touch with Candy. She’s William’s primary wife, and she’s handling all of the visitors who come to see him and discuss breeding.”

  Brenna looked appalled. “What? No. I don’t want to borrow another woman’s husband. None of us are looking to become the other woman. We’re better raised than that. Our mothers saw to that.”

  “Then what are you looking for?”

  “I understand how this is going to sound, because you’re human, and your species has the luxury of doing things rather differently than ours.” That apologetic note was back in her voice. “There’s one male in the world. We didn’t think there were any, and while we can keep having daughters by ourselves forever, we require a male if we’re going to have any sons. William . . . when you found him, you opened the doors for our species to continue, for us to have a future. But that means we don’t have the option to be coy and demure.”

  “Uh-huh . . .” I said, somewhat confused.

  “You know the Manhattan Nest. Would you be willing to act as our go-between, to help us arrange the purchase of one of their sons?”

  I said nothing.

  Brenna, who was a dragon, no matter how human she sometimes seemed, said hurriedly, “We have money. We have oodles of money. There are over sixty of us in the Nest, and we’ve been in Los Angeles since the twenties. We own and rent property, we have investments, and we’re willing to liquidate as much as necessary in order to offer a fair price. Every Nest has its own strengths and weaknesses, and we’ve learned that you have to spend money to make money—that’s something a lot of dragons never grasp. So we have more funds on hand than most. We have sufficient space at the Nest to house a fully grown male, and we have all the deeds and property documentation to make sure he’d never have to be moved. We could be good wives, Verity. Not my generation, it’s too late for us, but our daughters. They could grow up with their husband. They could learn to love each other. We could give them that.”

  I said nothing.

  “Love is a human aspiration, and yours has been the dominant culture for so long that we want it, my sisters and I. We want it for our daughters. We don’t want to pay for a conjugal visit with someone else’s husband; we want to bring a husband home, and raise him in love, and see him grow to love his new family.” Brenna slanted a glance at me, as if gauging my reaction. “We’re not human. It’s not in us to give something for nothing. I know if our positions were reversed, I would feel for the daughters of Manhattan, and I would still demand payment. It would show their seriousness, and their dedication to taking care of our boy. Please. They know you. They’ll trust you. Please, help us.”

  Candy didn’t necessarily trust me—she tended to view me as only temporarily outside the Covenant, which was an unfortunately common attitude in parts of the cryptid community—but William did, and money spoke loudly where dragons were concerned. I wanted to balk at the idea of selling a baby like it was a goldfish, but what other choice did the dragons have? Their species was on the verge of dying out. Male dragons were born the size of human infants. They could be moved while they were young. Once they became adults, like William, they were stuck.

  “I’d need you, and at least one other representative from your Nest, to go to Manhattan with me,” I said slowly. “William and Candy will want to meet you. You’d have to be willing to pay for transport. There’s no way we’d be able to take the baby on a plane.”

  “You may never hear these words from another dragon as long as you live, but: we are willing to pay whatever it takes,” said Brenna. “If you want to charge us a negotiation fee, we’ll give it to you. Even if things fall through, we’re willing to pay you for trying.”

  The Be-Well Motel was visible up ahead, neon sign guttering like a bug zapper the size of a billboard. “I wouldn’t charge you for this,” I said. “Helping the cryptid community is my job.”

  “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

  My human sensibilities had their objections. I did my best to shunt them aside. Candy and I weren’t the best of friends, but her fierce devotion to her Nest, her husband, and her children was unquestionably sincere. If she and William were willing to agree to this, I had no place objecting to it—and that meant I also had no place refusing to set up the conversation.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  Brenna pulled up to the curb in front of the Be-Well and turned to look at me. Her eyes were b
right with tears, catching and throwing back the neon glow until they glittered on her cheeks. “You don’t know how much this means to me,” she said. “We can never repay you.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” I said. “I’m honestly glad to help.”

  “Bring your boy by once the season’s over, and I’ll introduce you to my Nest,” she said. “Meanwhile, anything you need, you just let me know.”

  I smiled. “Sure thing. It’s good to see you again, Brenna.”

  “Likewise,” she said.

  I slid out of the car, taking a deep breath of the fragrant evening air. The smell of the neighborhood had changed as we drove from the relative sterility of the studio housing into a rougher, wilder neighborhood. Garbage, rotting leaves, and urine—not all of it canine—addressed my nose, undercut by the ever-present scent of the sea. This was the Los Angeles I felt most at home in, the one where danger and elegance existed side by side, beautiful and terrible and dangerous.

  Brenna leaned across the seat as I closed the door. She pressed a button to roll down the window, and asked, “You sure you’re all right to get yourself home again? You don’t want me to swing around and pick you up?”

  “Tempting, but I need a good run if I’m going to get through tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll get myself home safe, I promise.”

  “Anyone else, I’d call you a liar,” she said. “Be safe.” The window rolled back up, and she pulled away, leaving me standing alone on the sidewalk.

  Not totally alone: there were a few figures slumped against the base of a nearby wall, and someone farther up the block leaned against a post with the casual posture of the career lookout. I didn’t know what he was looking out for, and I didn’t care. I turned on my heel, slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked up the three shallow stone steps to the motel door.

  The air inside smelled like Hot Pockets—hot dough and cheap cheese and indefinable meats, mixed into a hot, humid slurry that hung suspended in the lobby like an invisible curtain. The man behind the Plexiglas shield protecting the desk didn’t look up from his magazine as I walked past. He always seemed to be there, night or day, and he only moved when someone was asking about a room or trying to hand him money. I suspected he was an Oread, given his immobility, but there was no polite way to ask, and it didn’t really matter. This was supposed to be a place where no one asked any questions. It seemed only fair to extend that to the staff.