Chapter Eight

CUSTO smothered a smile as Annabella chanted “lashes, lashes, lashes” while she tore apart her cubby of a bathroom.

Lashes? Well, okay…but he restrained himself from commenting on his willingness to participate in any and all of her unusual sexual fetishes and surveyed her apartment with hungry interest instead. He wanted to know everything about her.

Her studio was a narrow space jumbled with colorful…stuff. The kitchen sink behind him was tidy, a short fridge snugged under the counter. A coffeemaker and hot plate cluttered the other side of the sink. A futon ran along one wall, reclined in sleep position, sheet in a twist, bold patchwork blanket still in the half-cocoon shape of her body. Pillows littered the area in deep reds, blues, greens, some with fussy tassels, and a small old TV-DVD combo unit took one corner. Clothes were everywhere, but mostly piled on one of her two chairs. The place smelled sweet and feminine, no one scent predominating.

Photographs sat on every surface, glass fronts glinting as the afternoon sun poured in her window. The one nearest was of her with a middle-aged woman and a young man wearing a graduation gown. The three shared Annabella’s coloring, and the way they squeezed one another’s shoulders, faces angling for space in the photo, told Custo they were her family.

For the first time in years he felt a pang of jealousy, the kind that used to precede a flood of bitterness when he’d been at school and heard the other boys going on about their family vacations. Not that he begrudged her a family where he had none, but he wanted to be in that photo, a day in the life of holding her tight, mugging for a camera.

Stop. But the want sliced through him anyway, cold and harsh. There would be no photos. Their relationship could not possibly end that way, and he’d learned a long time ago that fantasies only made reality worse.

“Yes!” Annabella shouted. He turned as she emerged, waving a small package in her hand, a set of spidery fake eyelashes. As if her natural ones needed any help. “Now just let me run the garbage down the hall, and we can go.”

“I’ll do it,” he said. No need for her to carry the trash when he was there.

“No, no, I take out my own. But can you…uh…watch me from the door?”

Of course he’d watch her; he wasn’t taking his eyes off her until she was out of danger. He’d have followed her, but his earplug beeped, and he let her drift down the hallway, plastic bag in hand, so she wouldn’t be bothered by the security details for the night’s performance.

It was a simple, but comprehensive plan: Annabella would dance, opening a way for the wolf to return to his Otherworld territory, per his wishes. Segue soldiers would be in the audience, backstage, and surrounding the building, exit strategy in place for Annabella, should anything go wrong. City Center personnel had been briefed about extra security posing as stage crew and were cooperative with Segue’s measures. Custo would be side stage, prepared to give the wolf extra incentive should Annabella attract his interest again.

“Custo here.”

“We’re in place,” Jens said. “We have the stage area covered and seventeen operatives with tickets for tonight’s performance.”

Custo stood in the apartment doorway while Annabella ducked down the hall. He leaned out when she rounded the corner. With an abrupt clatter of metal noise, she was headed back toward him. She held up a finger, mouthing “one minute” and knocked on a neighbor’s door.

He nodded to her, but spoke to Jens. “I want minimal disruption to the flow of things backstage.”

Jens’s com crackled again. “Where will you be?”

Custo thought that had been understood, but it bore restating so there was absolutely no mistake. “I’ll be with Annabella.”

Annabella stopped at her neighbor Peter’s door and signaled to Custo that she needed a minute. Yeah, right. She needed way more than a minute; the way Custo looked at her had the liquid heat in her blood short-circuiting her brain. She got no relief since he had to stay nearby to protect her, to keep the wolf in the shadows. Her dependence was as unsettling as her attraction to him.

She had to concentrate on Giselle. The rest of the world, Custo-the-angel included, she couldn’t entirely trust. All that was too different, too strange, too frightening to grasp. She had to focus on what she knew.

But, heaven help her, if not for the looming performance, she could easily do something very stupid. She almost had earlier that day. He’d just looked so good and smelled so good, and then he’d felt so good, better than anything she’d ever imagined with or without the aid of movies and steamy fiction.

Her sanity was hanging by a thread. Only dance could save her.

But first she had to deal with Peter.

She rapped on his door. Guilt had her gnawing on a fingernail, a habit she’d taken great pains to break. Talking to him was torture, but he’d worry if she didn’t show up at her place for a few days without letting him know. She always had in the past. And he’d been so good to her when she first moved into the building, so green to the city that she almost backed out of her lease to live with a bunch of other dancers when she really wanted to be on her own.

Peter opened right up, his expression avid.

“Annabella.” His voice was deeper than usual, almost gruff. He reached out a hand to touch her, but must have thought better of it because he dropped it back to his side to grip his thigh. And he was shaking.

“Hey, Peter…I just wanted to let you know that I’m probably not going to be around for the next few days. I’m…um…” Annabella heard Custo on his call, something about stage security, and glanced toward him.

Peter leaned his head out to look himself, and abruptly pulled back, wincing in pain. Yeah, Custo was hard to compete with, especially with that possessive lock his gaze had on her.

Peter’s expression changed from excited to betrayal. “I don’t understand,” he said, almost a growl. “We should be together. You came to me.”

Annabella flushed to hear him admit his interest. He never had before, though she’d suspected he was working up to asking her out.

What was with impossible men today? Annabella had never meant to lead him on. She had no idea when his feelings had gone past friendship to more. Maybe he’d always wanted more. He was attractive—tall, with dark-toned skin and expressive black eyes, though in his late thirties, a little old for her. And maybe there had been a window of opportunity somewhere in the past couple months when romantic feelings could have developed. But once Venroy had asked her to be Giselle, all her attention had abruptly shifted to the studio.

“I am so sorry. We just didn’t work out that way.” It was particularly awful that gorgeous, glowering Custo was standing in the doorway of her place while she tried to let Peter down easy. Talk about adding insult to injury.

“I could take care of you,” Peter said. “Give you what you need.”

She’d been about to offer the standard ongoing friendship, but his last comment, way too desperate, stole the words from her tongue. The conversation had just gone from uncomfortable to disquieting. Time to go.

“You’ve already helped me so much,” Annabella said. “I have to go. I’m late for the theater already. I just didn’t want you to worry if I disappeared for a couple of days. After the performance, I’m probably going back to my mom’s.” A lie, but Peter didn’t have to know that.

“The performance?”

“Yeah.” He should’ve remembered; she talked of little else for so long. “Tonight’s the big night. My dream come true. I get to dance Giselle for CBT.” She stepped back to signal a close to the conversation. She really did have to go.

“The dance is your dream?” He leaned forward to follow her, but pulled back with a hiss.

“You know me.” She shrugged and took another step back. And another. “Everything is dance, dance, dance.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

Oh, no. The last thing she needed was more stress. Besides, if poor Peter tried to see her, or…or…come on to her, Custo was likely to wipe the floor with him.

“I’m pretty sure it’s sold out,” she said, turning to her apartment.

“It’s your dream,” Peter repeated to her back. “I’ll be there.”

Custo leaped out of the Segue SUV at the City Center’s Fifty-sixth Street entrance and reached back for Annabella. What he got was her tackle box, retrofitted to hold stage makeup. She clambered out in jeans and an emerald green peacoat, wooly gray scarf at her neck, a massive duffel on her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a slick, tight ponytail that made her face teenage young, accenting her luminous skin and exquisite eyes. Her excitement brought faint, delicate color to her cheeks. The air around her crackled with energy.

“I’m late,” she said, but she grinned.

She was hours early, so she had to be very nervous if she was worried about the time. “All you have to do is dance,” Custo said. “I’ll be just offstage, watching you every second. Everything is going to be fine.”

“It has to be perfect,” she corrected, and stalked toward the door.

Custo slammed the door closed behind Annabella and hit the roof of the SUV for the driver to move off. Other Segue vehicles crowded the street, but so far it seemed Adam hadn’t elected to use his dispensation from the government to close off the block. If everything went as planned, the measure wouldn’t be necessary.

Custo moved to follow Annabella, but a tingling feeling had him turning back.

Luca. The last time Custo had seen the angel was in a backward glance thrown at Heaven’s Gate just before plunging into the water and making a break for the Shadowlands. Now Luca stood on the other side of the street. Come to fetch him, or worse.

Though traffic passed on Fifty-sixth, Custo met Luca’s gaze and held it. The world disappeared for a moment; only Custo’s heart, pounding furiously, and Annabella, thoughts full of dance, existed.

One night, Custo begged. He fisted his hands to control himself. He couldn’t leave Annabella now.

Luca’s hard expression didn’t change, though Custo knew the angel had the same capacity to read minds as he.

One night. That’s all I ask. I have to help her.

Luca frowned. You never understood.

Angels’ minds were so much easier to discern than mortals’—clear, uncluttered, full of purpose.

One night, Custo repeated. He didn’t wait for an answer—there was only one: he was staying. As he turned away from Luca, breaking the grip of his gaze, Custo could feel the shear of the universe, as if he were ripping himself out of its fabric to hurtle headlong into his own darkness.

So be it. Custo doubled his step to catch up to Annabella, who was just opening one of the building’s brassy doors. He could feel Luca’s eyes at his back, his condemnation rolling across the street. Well, Luca could chastise him for eternity, but later. After tonight. There was no way anyone was going to drag him away from Annabella’s side until the wolf was back in the Shadowlands. This performance had to succeed.

And afterward? Annabella would have to develop a mastery over the magic, just as she had her dance. Talia could guide her, following the birth of her babies. This wasn’t the way he wanted to leave. He’d wanted to help her himself.

Annabella hurried across the lobby. “Where’s the warm-up class?” she asked a harried-looking woman carrying a frothy pile of white.

“Fifth-floor studio. They’re starting now.” The woman had a needle dimpling her blouse, thread cascading over a breast. Must be someone in charge of costumes.

“Thanks,” Annabella said, hurrying to the elevator and hitting the up arrow.

“Class? You don’t have time for a class,” Custo said, utterly bewildered. He’d wanted to brief her on his team’s assessment of the building’s exits, introduce her to the team members she’d be able to turn to for help, take a moment to tell her that everything was going to be fine, to trust him.

But she was beyond that. The elevator binged almost instantly. “Oh, no no no.” She shook her head as she unbuttoned her coat. Class is essential. “I have to warm up. I have to be ready.”

“But Anna—”

She shoved her coat into his arms. “I can’t dance well tonight without taking class. And we both know I need to dance well.” She flashed him a smile. “So deal with it.”

They took an elevator to a private dressing room, secured by Segue away from the other dancers for their protection. Annabella dropped her bag on a chair and started to strip. “Turn around,” she said, but not before he caught a glimpse of her bra, shocking fuchsia lace, as she peeled off a snug sweater in cornflower blue.

He turned, but watched her anyway in the reflection of the dressing room mirrors, hungry like a man at his last meal: Pale, slender body, naked. Raspberry nipples soon covered by a flesh-colored insult to women’s underwear. His gaze roamed down the long, flat flanks of her legs, which dimpled her ass as she bent over, and formed lovely, smooth planes to her knees. A swell at her calves tensed as she found what she wanted in her bag and stood. Beauty.

“Custo!” Annabella complained, though she smirked as her chest and face swept with color. He doesn’t seem mad about this morning, she thought.

No, he wasn’t mad. Not at her. He was looking for another opportunity.

It was a crime to cover that body with a dingy leotard, black tights, and faded sweats. She grasped some new shiny satin toe shoes and first-aid tape and took off down the hall to a studio. Inside, dancers gripped ballet barres at the walls and freestanding barres lined up in the center of the room. A woman was clapping a perfect, even rhythm to keep time for the dancers.

Custo tapped his earplug as Annabella took her position and joined in the deep squats, what the woman called pliés.

“Jens here.”

“I’m on the fifth floor. She’s doing some sort of dance class.” As an afterthought, he added, “Adam here yet?”

“No.”

Custo hoped Talia wasn’t in labor. Those babies needed a little more time before they could handle this world.

“Everyone else checked in?”

“All except for Tommy,” Jens said.

Custo cursed. “Find him. Now.”

“Shhhhhh!”

Custo brought his attention back the dancers, who were staring at him. Annabella managed to roll her eyes from a very interesting upside-down stretch. He’s gonna get kicked out, she thought.

“Custo out,” he mumbled to Jens.

The class resumed.

The next fifty-five minutes were a revelation. Whatever fragility he might have attributed to Annabella shattered with the acute precision with which she “warmed” her body. The teacher, a fellow dancer, led the group through a series of rigorous exercises that outmatched any martial training he’d mastered, and then some. No show of tension betrayed the difficulty of the steps, though their feet were angled into tidy, unnatural positions. Their flexibility was nothing short of gymnastic, but the transitions between their movements had an ethereal fluidity that elevated mere training to art.

Annabella might not know the first thing about defending herself, but she was far from weak. She was flexible steel, personified. Her slight body, so trim and smooth, was primed for power. Not one ounce of ease remained on her frame, yet somehow she was still soft. Vulnerable.

“Annabella!” a pretty boy called to her. He had some muscle to him and moved with a cocky swagger. “You want to run through a few things?” His junk was straining his tights, but he seemed to revel in the effect, yeah, look all you want, which made Custo want to knock his mocking smile right off his face.

Annabella, breathless, walked over to him, wiping her forehead with her wrist. “Yeah. Sure, Jasper. Let’s hit the lifts first.”

The pretty boy, Jasper, had the nerve to put his hand on her inner thigh, an inch from paradise, and lift her above his head. Annabella soared upward while Custo bit back a snarl. Too high, too intimate, too…much the wrong man touching her there.

Custo probed Jasper’s thoughts, but they were all focused on the movement.

Jasper suddenly shifted, near dropping Annabella into a sweeping spin against his body, her arms embracing with a love-longing that made Custo’s throat tight. He’d have looked away, but he was rooted, hands clenching, ready to tear them apart.

Jasper glanced over to gauge Custo’s reaction, his stance cocky, his mind and body asking, What do you think of that?

“Leave him alone, Jasper,” Annabella murmured. But Custo caught her own darted gaze, eyes bright with interest.

As soon as possible, as soon as Custo got her alone, he’d show her his version of the very same movements. Perhaps not as graceful, but infinitely more gratifying.

“Let’s do the sissonne crosses.” Annabella peeled off her shabby excuse for a sweatshirt and threw it to the side of the room. On her leotard, perspiration winged beneath her breasts, accenting her curves, while tiny droplets trailed down her chest, combining at the cleft of her cleavage.

Custo swallowed to wet his dry throat.

Annabella and the pretty boy moved to a corner. Jasper said, “Two, three, and,” and she leaped, his hands high at her waist. The resulting movement was antigravity, the perfect union of strength and grace, male and female. They moved like their bodies knew each other, knew the rhythms of breath and blood without any reference to thought. Annabella didn’t even have to look, and that pretty-boy bastard was there, holding her. Hands all over her body.

Custo was shaking, silent, by the time they finished their practice.

The curve of Annabella’s lips told him she was pleased with herself. Her mind was full of possibilities for the night, with him, should the performance go as planned. Custo was in complete agreement.

“What now?” Custo said, his hands itching to touch her. He had so much to do, but all he wanted to do was shut himself in the studio with Annabella.

“Now I get ready,” Annabella answered, sweatshirt flung over her shoulder. She sashayed out of the room, hips ever so slightly swinging. He wanted to turn her to face him, fill his palms with her backside, do his own lift, and demonstrate his own flawless technique.

She strutted to her dressing room. Custo followed, biding his time.

As soon as the dressing room door closed, he had her up against the wall. His body pressed into hers, her heart pounding furiously against him as she held her breath. She was hot, sweaty, and musky with it. But her eyes sparkled up at him, waiting for what he would do next. He was close enough for her breath to brush his chin. Her upper teeth scraped her lower lip, plumping it. She wanted to be kissed.

She’d been showing off for an hour, powerful and loving every minute. She obviously wanted to revel in her high a little longer.

He didn’t kiss her. That was too easy, too expected, and they didn’t have time to finish anything the kiss would start, which she had to know. This was a tease, a flirty taunt to both tantalize him and see if she could trust him to pull back. She could, but since he wanted her so bad, there was no reason she shouldn’t want him back just as badly, just as acutely as he desired her.

Custo turned her to face the wall, trapping her in the confines of his arms. He held her tightly against him, her body just beginning to tremble, but he didn’t so much as flick the thin strap of leotard from her shoulder.

He lowered his mouth to the slightly damp column of her neck, to the spot that had set her off before and spoke against her skin. “I don’t know what the wolf did to scare you—you don’t seem nearly as scared now as you were a few hours ago.”

Her hips shifted in a feeble attempt to get away from him. Feeble for her; he knew her strength. If she really wanted to break away, he’d have let her.

“I’ll answer your questions, though,” he said.

“I didn’t ask—”

Custo tightened his hold to shut her up. “Yes, I want you. And, yes, it drives me crazy to see another man touching you and holding you.”

“He’s gay.”

“I don’t care. I want that privilege.” Custo exhaled a harsh breath, noting how her skin pimpled with goose bumps. He wrapped himself more fully around her to keep her “warm.” “But I won’t force you. I am not the wolf.”

She was utterly still now, hardly breathing.

“So think hard what you want when you look at me that way, when you sway those hips like that. I will take what’s offered and damn the consequences.”

Custo touched her mind and was surprised to find a very defined series of thoughts. She was scared he’d let go of her. Scared her knees would give. Scared they wouldn’t have a chance to finish what they’d started.

He was a little shaken himself, but he forced himself on to other pressing matters.

“We need to talk about tonight, review the security plan.”

Annabella was silent for a moment before answering. Finally, she shook her head. “No. I’m not going to think about that at all.” Her voice was raspy, and she gave a little cough to clear it. “I can’t, you understand?”

After seeing the mastery and grace of that dance class, he had to admit he did. Her focus had to be entirely on her performance. The rest was up to him.

Her weight shifted to her own feet, and he released her. He’d wanted to reassure her, show her that he had everything under control, to tell her that she could depend on him, but she was beyond that now. Had to be.

He attempted to follow her thought leaps. It was easier now that he was coming to know her better. She was retracing the steps of the story, and he could almost feel the veil between earth and the Shadowlands trembling.

By the time she sat at her dressing table, she was in deep concentration. He spent the next half hour checking in with his team—still no word from Adam—while Annabella transformed her girlish face into the ethereal appearance of a ghost. She pancaked her skin white. She lined her eyes black, adhering the lashes to her already thick, dark fringe. She shaded the hollow of her cheeks just so, then stood, holding her leotard over her breasts, and handed him a white-dipped sponge.

“Wipe me down, would you?” she asked his reflection in the mirror.

He didn’t know what she meant, but would do anything she asked. So he took the sponge.

“My shoulders, neck right into my hairline, and my back,” she clarified. Underneath her words was an implicit invitation. Among the complex movements of choreography filling her mind, she’d decided something.

Custo stepped close to her, their gazes locked in the glass. He couldn’t act on his desires, so he bent to his task and stroked her with the sponge. Her character was the ghost of an almost-bride, so he swept the color from her skin. He erased the pulse of life from the curves of her back and arms. He stroked the white across her shoulders to the dip below her graceful throat and the valley between her breasts.

His head was bent, mouth at her ear, arms circling her waist when she spoke, her voice thin. “My costume is on the rack.”

He could feel her heart pounding in her chest—his was, too—and forced himself to take a step backward.

She reached to take the frothy white dress from a hanger, and keeping her back to him, her face to a bland corner of the dressing room, dropped her warm-up clothes and donned the costume. Her hands molded the bodice to her frame and she backed up to him again.

“Would you?” she asked.

The back gaped open, lined with matching rows of tiny hooks and eyes, too small for his hands. He did the best he could with his clumsy fingers and when he brought his gaze back up, found Annabella utterly transformed into an other-worldly bride.

Someone knocked on the door, calling, “Ready in five,” then moved down the hall.

“I guess this is it,” she said.

“Don’t worry about anything,” Custo said. “Just dance.”

She inhaled deeply and exhaled with a shudder. “Let’s go.”

From side stage, Custo could hear the rumble of the audience and the stray, discordant notes of the orchestra. The Segue team was either already seated or circulating until curtain.

Jens was on the opposite side of the stage. He’d simplified the Segue uniform to an all-black ensemble that might pass for stage crew. Only the jacket seemed unusual, but that couldn’t be helped. He had to hide his gun somewhere. Everyone was in place. Everyone was ready.

The orchestra went suddenly silent and the audience muted to a murmur, then a general hush. The music began, each instrument weaving an eerie thread of the story.

The other dancers, brides in death, comprised the first movement. Then the stage cleared with a bustle and Custo’s space was crammed with dancers heaving for breath, watching from the wings.

A new phrase of music began, mournful and romantic, and Annabella stepped into view, a maiden ghost, a wili. The light of the stage shifted slightly with her appearance, deepening with color, with compelling light, with magic.

Annabella. There could be no doubt; she was born to dance.

She mingled with the other wilis, and then exited to the other side with the group while cocky, pretty-boy Jasper took the stage.

Gay, Custo reminded himself. But he still didn’t like anyone touching her.

Custo peered across the way, trying to get a glimpse of her and caught only a bit of white tutu. Not good enough. There were at least a dozen dancers in white tutus—could be her, could be some other woman. He extended his mind to see if he could glean her well-being from her thoughts: a shoe ribbon was too tight. Her throat was dry. The shreds of thought surfaced in the cacophony of mental chatter coming from the thousands in the audience and did him no good.

He touched his earbud. “Jens, how’s Annabella?”

“She’s fine,” Jens answered. “Standing right here on her tippy toes to see over the—”

Custo’s earbud crackled. “Oh, shit,” Tommy’s voice cut in, breathing heavy, shouts in the background, cars honking, a crash. “Wraiths.”

Custo’s heart lurched. “Say again?”

“A group of them! It’s a trap!” A wraith screeched, high and painfully shrill in Custo’s earpiece. “He can’t hold them off for long.”

Annabella joined Jasper onstage where he grieved at her grave.

“Who? Who can’t hold them off forever?” But Custo already knew.

Onstage, the couple mirrored each other’s movements—Jasper, strong and earthy, Annabella, light and ethereal, both utterly unaware of the nightmare unfolding outside the theater.

“Adam. He’s out there alone.”