Returned

by Samantha Stone

  This was nothing new, the cast becoming close without welcoming her in. In college, it had been for a few hours a day, maybe more when closer to performances. Now, she had to be around these people for more than eight hours at a time. While they obviously hung out together outside this building’s walls, she didn’t need to hear about it.

  No one else had shown by the time she was dressed and ready, so she had an extra minute to re-pin a few hairs escaping her tight bun. Her hair was waist-length and the color of popcorn without butter, so she had to wind each strand around her bun multiple times for them to blend in. Even to her, her blue eyes looked somber in the mirror, appearing more pale than usual without any makeup on her eyelids or lashes.

  Sometimes she’d think about Alex and a stray tear would escape. At least, without mascara running, the sadness she tried so hard to hide would be that much less obvious.

  Tearing her gaze away from her pale reflection, she straightened her tights, tied on her pointe shoes, and left the dressing room. Her bag had been left in her spacious and secured locker, not that there was much for anyone to steal anyway. She didn’t keep much cash on her, and she left the credit card Sebastian had pressed upon her locked in her bedroom at home, scared she’d actually give in and use it.

  I’m earning my own money now. I don’t have to take from anyone else anymore.

  That was, if she kept on dancing with the company. Her meeting this afternoon was with a graduate school professor trying to recruit her into a Ph.D. program in literature. If she entered that program, she’d be leaning on others for a long time yet.

  “But you’d be set for life,” Wish had argued when she told him about Dr. Cooper’s suggestion. “You can’t dance forever, and I’m sure the graduate school would allow you to get a degree at your own pace so you could continue to dance for as long as you want to.”

  She couldn’t dance forever, he was right—after another ten years, humans would begin to notice she wasn’t aging. In twenty years, scientists would begin to ask questions.

  Having options was enticing; it was the reason she’d double-majored in dance and English in the first place. But a Ph.D. program? It’s too much to think about right now. She’d said as much to Wish, and it was still true. She hardly thought about next week, much less planning four years around English courses and thesis projects.

  Then again, the oldest member of their company was in her early thirties, and Leila heard the rumblings from the other dancers about the woman’s age. Never before had she viewed that age as old, but she saw what everyone else did: Nina moved a little more slowly, and bounced back less quickly when she was injured. The older woman did, however, learn routines faster than anyone else, and knew the technical aspects of ballet like the back of her hand.

  No matter her age, Nina had more perfect form than anyone else in the company. It was why she danced lead roles more often than anyone else—she was predictable, and directors and audience members liked that. Despite the competition between dancers any company had, Leila always silently wished the other woman well.

  Nina was never one of those who spoke about the bars the night before, or that wonderful brunch place by the lake they had to try again for dinner sometime. Much like Leila, she kept to herself.

  “Her leg. Not ankle or foot, but her whole leg.”

  Some of the girls began to trickle into the studio where Leila was stretching.

  “How’s she going to dance?”

  “She won’t, probably ever again.”

  Someone tsk-ed sympathetically, but Leila didn’t turn to see who spoke. She hoped she didn’t know who they were speaking about, but her gut told her she was right. Nina.

  As everyone except the older dancer arrived, Leila’s stomach fell. The only other outcast was gone.

  Purely through eavesdropping—no one addressed her—she gathered that Nina had been out riding her bicycle when a car hit her, breaking her leg in more than three places. The thought of that made Leila’s head spin, and the edges of panic seized her. She didn’t know what she would do if she couldn’t dance, but then Nina likely thought the same way. What would she do?

  “I see you’ve all heard the news.” Derik Frost, the director and choreographer of the company, approached from the far side of the room, an uncharacteristically grim set to his mouth. Four of him walked toward the dancers, reflections cast from the wall-to-wall mirrors that surrounded them, the replications pierced by the ballet barre that wrapped around the space.

  There should have been ten dancers, but today nine stood—five women and four men—stretching and listening to Derik. The corps de ballet dancers weren’t required to rehearse this morning, but would arrive in the early afternoon.

  “Nina will not be dancing with us anymore, leaving the role of Kitri open. Our performance plans for this Saturday still stand.”

  With three weeks to learn the ballet to begin with, that expectation was high.

  Tension escalated, not obvious in everyone’s expressions, but in the slight widening of their eyes or the set of their shoulders. There was no understudy for Kitri, something Leila had found strange but hadn’t thought much of anyhow. Until now.

  Now, everyone in the room was dying to know the new cast—because whoever took Nina’s place would leave an open position.

  This is going to be a train wreck. Leila wished for the second time that she’d just stayed in bed. She imagined pulling the covers over her head and cringed miserably. It’s going to be a long day.

  “I have my eye on a few to perform Kitri, but I’ll make my decision after today’s rehearsal.”

  Once the excited titters died down, warmups began, and everyone fell into their routine with maybe a little more enthusiasm than usual. No, with purpose.

  Leila didn’t feel any different from usual. She simply lost herself in the music, finally, blissfully forgetting her sorrows while the notes poured through her skin, pulling her muscles and making her fly.

  As soon as Derik had made the announcement about Nina, she promptly forgot what was at stake in this particular rehearsal. Except she didn’t want any part except the one she had—a smaller role as Don Quixote’s mythical love.

  She was dancing near Zach, letting the Spanish influence she’d seen on the videos Derik had provided them sharpen her arm movements, when sound left her. She stumbled into him, and his mouth pulled into a sneer before he caught himself, calming his expression before anyone else noticed the venom he aimed at her.

  The batteries in her cochlear implants had died, rendering her temporarily deaf. It happened often enough, but it had never happened while she was dancing. Usually she was at home, or somewhere she could quickly grab more batteries and fix the problem without a second thought.

  Today, that luck had run out.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Watching Zach and the others in this piece, she got back on track in her silence, unable to feel anything underneath her feet except the hard, unhelpful floor. There was no rhythm inside her, nothing to help guide her now except the furious count she kept inside her head and the feel of the sweat gathering on her brow.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

  After one last arabesque, everyone stopped and, as one, they all looked at Leila.

  Belatedly, she realized Derik had been trying to speak with her. He’d probably been talking to her while she was still dancing; she hadn’t even sent a glance in his direction after becoming surrounded by silence.

  Helplessly, she shrugged at him and signed, my batteries died. I can’t hear you.

  Ursula, one of the dancers who’d never spoken an unkind word that Leila knew of, translated. When Leila had first visited the company before graduation, Ursula explained that she had an aunt and uncle who were deaf and used ASL. As SEE signs used many ASL signs, she could understand Leila most of the time, even if she wasn’t completely fluent in either.

  He wanted to see if you’re o
kay, Ursula signed for Derik.

  Leila held up the “okay” sign she’d used even before losing her hearing and mustered a smile. Can I go get another battery?

  After Ursula asked Derik, he nodded. Leila practically ran from the room, now finding her silence to be anything but peaceful. At her locker, she frantically searched her bag, but the batteries she’d put inside just over two hours ago were nowhere to be found.

  They must have fallen out when she let her bag drop earlier, when she was playing with Molly.

  Damn, damn, damn. If she wasn’t worried the others could hear her, she would’ve kicked the wooden bench in the center of the dressing room. If she could have conjured up a hole in the floor to swallow her, she would have.

  Embarrassment turned her cheeks scarlet. She couldn’t go back into rehearsal; she could barely keep it together for the rest of that piece. There was no way she could continue to dance for the rest of the workday without the familiar piano notes dictating her every movement.

  It was as if her deafness rendered her dancing blind.

  Definitely not Heather Whitestone. Resigned, she changed into her sneakers. Planning on going straight home, she didn’t bother putting on street clothes. Instead, she pulled a light, lace-back sweater over her leotard and skirt and rushed from the dressing room to head home, grab her batteries and come straight back to rehearsal. Leila only stopped for a moment to swipe a black smudge of ash from her hose. It happened so often now that her movements were automatic. For months, ash had followed her everywhere. Similar to the dripping faucet in her bathroom she needed to get fixed but kept forgetting to tend to, she worried about the ash without the urgency to figure out where, exactly, it came from. She’d mentioned it to Mary once, assuming her sister would immediately know what she was talking about. Mary hadn’t. Then again, she lived on the other side of town. Maybe there was someone who lived uptown and liked to make fireworks in his spare time.

  Cursing her stupidity, she figured forty-five minutes of missed rehearsal wasn’t the end of the world, even if it was a nuisance. Now, all she wanted to do was dance—which she couldn’t do without the ability to hear the music.

  At the front door of the studio, she almost ran into Zach.

  He mouthed something to her, but she had too much on her mind to attempt to read his lips. She lifted her hands helplessly and turned away from him, hoping he understood her dismissal wasn’t intended to be rude. I can’t understand you.

  Outside, warm, humid air pressed down on her as Zach grabbed her wrist, jerking her back toward him. Was he trying to get her back inside to talk to Derik? Without Ursula here to translate, Leila had no way of knowing. Especially given Zach’s pantomime techniques needed some work. He could have been telling her Madonna was going to sit in on the rest of their rehearsal, or that he’d fallen in love with a little person named Jorge.

  Maybe he’s mad I ran into him earlier. Surely he couldn’t be that upset. It had obviously been her fault—and all the male roles were filled anyway. None of the male dancers’ roles should change because of Nina’s injury. Just in case, she raised one hand in the universal signal for I’m sorry while she tried to jerk her other wrist free.

  Zach shook his head and held fast.

  In the past year, Leila had become accustomed to tall, muscled men because the description fit virtually every member of the local werewolf pack. It was why she’d never paid attention to Zach’s size before. He was solid muscle and had over a foot on her in height. She was short for a dancer, and he was…not.

  It wasn’t his intimidating size that scared her. Fear crawled over her skin the moment the expression in his blue eyes registered. She’d seen it once before, the moment preceding the gunshot that stopped her heart. The man who’d killed her hadn’t intended for the damage to be temporary.

  Now she suspected Zach meant permanent harm.

  He was human, wasn’t he? She refused to consider if he was somehow related to the men who’d killed her and her parents. Zach had been around her for weeks—why choose now if he’d always planned to kill her? It made no sense.

  Doesn’t matter.

  All that counted now was her apparent danger. She wouldn’t use her voice until she was sure he had deadly intent.

  Then, he’d be either dead or badly hurt within seconds.

  He dragged her, hard enough to cause her to stumble, toward a black Escalade with tinted windows. Aware her chances of survival—given he knew what she was and the few ways to kill her—lowered significantly once she got into a car with him, she opened her mouth to scream.

  Before she could do any real damage, he clasped the side of her head so hard, she thought he’d hit her. Less than a second later he’d shoved something acrid and slightly familiar-tasting into her open mouth. Just like that, the blood pouring from his ears and one of his nostrils lessened. How had he become immune to her banshee powers? A human should be no match for them.

  Lifting her free hand to her throat, she felt no vibrations. Tapping her neck, she felt nothing. Her throat was completely numb. My vocal cords aren’t working. From what she’d learned from another banshee, Birgitte, whose sister had been deaf and struggled with the same problems as Leila, the vocal folds in her pharynx were the most magic-toughed part of her. If they weren’t functioning…I have no weapon against him.

  Untrue.

  Shaking off the ache from when he’d hit her in the head, she reached into her bag and pulled out the large bottle of pepper spray she always kept on her person. His back was to her, one hand fumbling with a set of car keys, giving her the opportunity to take him by surprise.

  She simply reached in front of him and pressed down, aiming the spray directly in his eyes.

  It wasn’t altogether certain, but she thought Zach cursed furiously. Jerking to the side, he released her wrist and rubbed both of his blood-red eyes with his fists, his mouth arching open. Leila didn’t stay to watch but sprinted away, toward her car on the other side of the lot. Fumbling for her keys as she ran, she didn’t look behind her to see his approach.

  A foot hit her in the back with the force of what felt like a Mack truck behind it. She landed ungracefully on the pavement, which tore through her hands and hose. Roughly, she was turned over to face her attacker.

  Before she could lift a hand to cover her face, he hit her so hard that all she saw was black. She hadn’t been expecting the blow because she’d been watching a tree about a block away. It disintegrated before her eyes, and before she was knocked out, she absently wondered if she would meet the same fate.

  Chapter 2

  ALEXANDRE wondered if the world was really worth saving. Someone had killed Leila once, and now it seemed another man wanted to finish the job. Really, if the world left Leila well enough the hell alone, Alexandre would be much more likely to help mankind.

  Today, things weren’t looking good for the world’s future.

  He’d been attaching a small device he had spelled as a tracker—it even communicated with an application on his phone, which was also magicked—to the side of the strange blond man’s car when the idiot human ran for Leila. She’d been running so fast for her car that Alexandre half-thought she might get away. He hoped she did. That way, he could track the human and find out why he tried to kidnap her without any harm coming to Leila.

  The kick to her small back wasn’t something he’d anticipate and neither was the punch to her delicate face. Whoever this man was, he would die. Not soon, but slowly, over the course of months. He was human, that much was obvious. Even a witch could have sensed Alexandre’s presence, but this guy boldly strode back to his obnoxiously souped-up SUV with Leila in his arms as if doing such wasn’t a life-endingly bad decision.

  If Leila were gone, Alexandre had no doubt he would destroy everyone and everything. She made him care to feed stray dogs when he saw their large eyes and the bones of their ribs. She expected him to be as good a creature as he could be, never hurting the inn
ocent but defending them. But was anyone really innocent? Take Exhibit A: Asshole Dancer Guy. If the werewolf pack Alexandre used to belong to had seen this man being harmed by any creature, they would have stopped it. As a human, he was weaker and deserved to be helped.

  Yet here the human was, planning to harm a creature he shouldn’t have known existed. And he obviously knew what Leila was; her screaming would have been enough to for her to save herself had he not forced her to eat something that nullified her abilities.

  The strange part was, Leila hadn’t known she wasn’t screaming anymore. Her external processors were in place behind her ears, meaning she should have had no trouble hearing.

  Her batteries. It would explain why she’d been leaving the studio almost six hours before her usual time when she didn’t appear sick or injured.

  Alexandre had to step away or the SUV would have run over his foot, the human having thrown Leila into the backseat a moment before. With a thought, Alexandre brought her discarded purse to him from where it lay across the lot in the place Leila fell.

  Her green tea and bitter orange scent wasn’t enough to stop the growl rising in his throat; although, it was more soothing than he would care to admit. He hadn’t been this close to her or anything of hers since the night he’d been taken back by the warlocks.

  Moments like this, he wished he was able to time-travel. That was a born ability, not an acquired one, so he could never go back to that night. If he could, however, he would simply kill the warlocks who’d come to fetch him. It would have bought him at least a little more precious time with Leila before he became too dangerous to be near her.

  Brendon and Jared, the two most powerful warlocks in the local float before they brought Alexandre into the fold, had managed to take away the magic keeping both Alexandre’s warlock and elemental werewolf powers bound. They’d been pleased with themselves, but also conceded the bindings were so thin that they wouldn’t have lasted another month. With his preternatural abilities, his memories of life before the clan prohibitum, or the werewolf pack for convicts where he’d lived for the past one hundred years, had been bound as well. He wished they still were.