Tears ran down Annabella’s cheeks, her fight subsiding into steady, drawn-out tremors. “But what about the blood?”
“Under control.” He assumed, or Adam would have still been in a panic.
Annabella hiccuped. For all her trembling, she felt cold in his arms. “What if he comes back? The light didn’t work. I thought it would—light worked before, that time on the street—but it didn’t work in that room.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
He almost ra—
Annabella stunted the thought. “A man came in my room in the infirmary. A soldier. He was acting all weird, but I could tell he was the wolf.”
“How?”
“The way he moved. His eyes.”
Custo nodded. “Continue.”
“He said he was the hunter and that you and I had trespassed in his territory and that he wanted a bridge back.”
Then he groped me, would have raped me if I hadn’t nailed his disgusting stuff.
Custo went hot, but didn’t interrupt as Annabella went on. “Talia came in, said she was a freaking banshee, and ordered the guy back to Shadow. ‘Kay, then it got really scary, ‘cause she made the room all dark. I hate the dark. And the hunter-wolf-guy exploded and uh, flew out the room. The whole thing is insane!”
Custo reviewed the details. “He said he was a hunter? I thought he was a wolf.”
“Aren’t wolves hunters?”
Duh.
Custo ignored the thought-insult. “And he wants a way back to Shadow?”
The real question is,
Annabella thought…“Why didn’t light hurt him? It has in the past.”
Custo could answer that. Before, the wolf was stuck in the Shadowlands. He stayed in the shadows because he had to. The divide between the worlds was inviolable. But in the brief altercation in the dark forest, when the three of them had clashed, the wolf had crossed over and fallen to Earth with Annabella’s return to her reality. Just as Custo had fallen and been reborn. Shadow would always be the wolf’s refuge, but he need not fear light on Earth. Not now that he was free.
All that was too much to explain, and Annabella was clearly too distraught to listen. The truth had taken Adam, his best friend and almost-brother, too long to believe, and they had a long history of trust. Annabella had no context to even begin the discussion. Angel? Banshee? Shadowlands? Custo settled for the simplest answer. “If he attacks again, I will handle him.”
She laughed derisively. “We don’t know what he looks like. He can change his shape. One minute a wolf, the next a man, the next a bunch of shadows. And you think you can ‘handle’ him? I doubt it.”
“But he’s made of shadow?”
“Weren’t you listening? Light does not hurt him!” Her pitch went high and painful at “hurt him,” but Custo didn’t mind. If anything, an idea became clearer.
The more he thought about it, the more confident he became, his own panic replaced by new resolve. Talia had given him the answer. She was a child of Shadow, and she couldn’t bear how “bright” he was in his current incarnation—angel. The wolf was also born of Shadow. The wolf might be able to challenge him in the Shadowlands, its primeval territory. Might be able to attack and to kill, if angels could possibly die twice (a disturbing thought). But on Earth it stood to reason that the wolf would be as repelled, as pained by him as the banshee daughter of Shadowman. Perhaps more, since Talia was half human and may have had some level of hereditary protection.
“Annabella”—Custo wiped dark strands away from her eyes—“we weren’t prepared before, but we are now.”
“He can change his shape. What if he becomes a lion? Or, or, a tiger, or—”
“A bear?” Custo finished with a smile.
She hit him again. This time it hurt. “Don’t make fun of me.”
Custo sobered. “Next time we’ll be ready.”
Annabella fell silent, though her breath still shuddered with each draw and release. She swallowed hard, her chin quivering for a second before she controlled the reflex.
Custo wanted to draw her closer, to comfort her, but he allowed her to push him away. One thing he was learning about Annabella—she liked to stand on her own two feet. As much as he admired her for the show of strength, it drove him crazy. Would it kill her to let him hold her—
really
hold her—for two minutes?
“He wanted me, or
us
, to bridge our worlds. Is that more of the Shadow stuff you and Talia have been talking about?”
Custo gave a short nod. “I don’t know what Talia discussed with you, but for my part, yes. There are three worlds: Earth, the Shadowlands, and the Hereafter.”
Her face contracted in a grimace. “So the wolf is a ghost?”
“No. Don’t get ahead of me.” Custo reconsidered his approach. “The Shadowlands is a place of possibility, of imagination, of inspiration. Yes, people pass through there briefly upon death; Talia is part of that, with her banshee voice, able to manipulate Shadow and force others to cross, like the wolf. But the nature of the Shadowlands is much more than that. Humanity accesses it during daily life for inspiration and insight. It is the source of magic, a well for talent to draw from, like yours.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” She shook her head, denying everything that he was saying.
“Yes, you do. You of all people know,” Custo said. Her chin came up, but he continued, “The first time I saw you was in the Shadowlands. You were dancing, bright and beautiful, all magic.”
“I’m not magic.”
“Your talent is a kind of magic.”
She frowned, the sharpness of her gaze losing its edge as her thoughts turned inward.
“Why do you dance? How does it make you feel? What are you able to do that others cannot?”
The moment stretched. He tried to read her, but her mind was moving too fast, darting from one conclusion to another, her intellect traveling over the events and explanations, but never stopping in one place to realize it entirely. At last, she took a deep breath and exhaled, shaking her head. “So you’re saying my dance puts me in both places. That I was, in fact, in his territory.”
Does that mean I can’t dance?
Custo reached for her arm, but she pulled it out of his grasp, leaving his own extended, palm raised and empty. “Annabella…”
But she took a step back. “First the wolf, and now you. Where do you get off touching me? Getting all familiar? I don’t know you from Adam. Not really. You offered me a safe place to sleep and so far—”
He had to interrupt her before she made a drastic decision. “This is still the safest place for you.”
“Way I see it, nowhere is safe anymore,” she said, voice rising. “I can’t even dance.”
“Of course you can. But now you know that you need to master the magic as you would any other movement. Now you know why the greats were the greats, and that you can be, too.”
She put her hands over her ears and gripped her head. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore!”
I can’t.
Custo swallowed back everything he wanted to say. The words burned in his throat just as his arms burned to hold her. He held his hands up in surrender.
No more tonight.
She dropped her arms. “Now is there a frickin’ bed in this place for me or not?”
He tried not to smile at her tone. “Yes. Adam has let us have his apartment while he’s with Talia.” Obviously, Custo would be sleeping on the floor his first night back.
He signaled the door to open and glanced out. The guards were in place. Everything still. No wolves waiting. He’d have liked to put his arm around her—they’d fit so well before—but he resisted the impulse. Annabella came up beside him, also peeking out into the tunnel. Her lips pressed together, probably summoning her courage, and then she stepped outside the lab.
“Elevator?” Custo asked the guards.
The guards led the way and would be stationed outside Adam’s place for the night.
As they neared a conventional pair of silver sliding doors, Custo felt a hand on his elbow.
“Wait,” Annabella asked, expression again filled with confusion, “what were
you
doing in the Shadowlands?”
Considering her last request, Custo went with the truth. “I was crossing them, heading back to Earth.”
She stopped midstep before boarding the elevator, frowning while she tried to figure out what he’d said. He wasn’t about to offer an extended explanation, not after she’d plainly said she didn’t want to hear it.
“The Hereafter?” she asked.
Custo nodded, pulling her inside. “Heaven. I’m your guardian angel.”
A
NNABELLA
ran, a pack of wolves snarling and snapping at her heels. Her mind’s eye saw them clearly, though she didn’t dare look back: bristling black fur, yellow eyes, sharp white teeth too long and jagged for any mouth—wolf or otherwise. Her heartbeat and footfalls combined to form a gallop of sound, the rhythm of the chase.
Somebody help me!
she sobbed through gasping chokes of air.
But the forest was silent. She sprinted through widely spaced trees—
no place to hide
—their great trunks rising like columns to hold up the nonexistent sky.
Where was the sky?
She pushed her body harder, faster, channeling all her fear and strength into her stride. She felt the distance between her and the wolves lengthen. Felt their interest suddenly shift, the pack swarming on a rise, ears pricked.
Saved?
Then, an infant’s cry, a new-world wail made with a lusty first breath. A second cry signaled the twins’ birth.
Annabella tripped and fell, gouging the earth, and turned her head in time to see the wolves alter their direction, a river of furious black rushing down the hill, making for the innocents.
No! Here! Not the babies.
But she had no voice.
She clawed a tree trunk to stand and lurched to follow, but her muscles had hardened, betraying her, blood chug-chugging through collapsed veins. She pushed forward, crested the rise herself when a mother’s scream pierced the air. A banshee’s scream.
“Annabella!”
A low voice filtered through Annabella’s darkened consciousness, but she refused to wake.
The babies, my fault.
“Annabella!”
She felt herself gathered in a warm embrace, heat pouring into her shaking limbs.
“You’re okay. It’s just a dream,” a rumble of a voice told her. “Wake up, Annabella.”
The nightmare went gray, diluting, spreading into the absent sky. Her heart still pounded; her throat was raw.
Annabella cracked an eye and gazed dumbly at the gray-blue wall opposite her. The solidity was mundane, real. Yet a trio of imaginative paintings hung in the center of the flat expanse. Black tree trunks stretched across the foreground of the canvases like a wicked gate, but beyond was a magic swirl of indistinct figures, dancing. If she let her eyes blur a little bit, the picture seemed to move. The composition evoked ghostly
Giselle
, but was more mysterious than mournful.
Annabella triple blinked her bleary eyes. Where was she?
She shifted in place, turned to find Custo holding her. He smelled fresh, like soap and shaving cream, and his hair was spiky wet. He leaned against the headboard, her body across his lap. He smiled down at her like a lover who had beaten her to the shower.
“Morning,” he murmured when her eyes focused on him.
She was tempted to curl into his chest and borrow the tempo of his heartbeat, slow and steady. His arms felt like the safest place in the world. So strong. A lick of desire had her core tingling as he nuzzled her neck.
“Everything’s okay. You’re awake now,” he said.
And it all came crashing back: The dress rehearsal, Custo, the cab ride to some storage basement, her subsequent capture and imprisonment in that frightening cell. Sweet Talia, and her babies. The wolf.
Nothing
was okay. And nothing ever would be again.
The world as she knew it had turned upside down. Monsters were just as real as she was. A nightmare stalked the shadows of her life. And the man holding her was not human. Or at least not anymore.
Angel.
Annabella sat up and slid off Custo’s lap. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to throb.
He let her go, and his expression sobered. “What time do you need to be at the theater?”
What on earth was he doing cuddling her like that? He was a frigging
angel,
for crying out loud. She’d stopped going to church a long time ago, but she was pretty sure getting intimate with an angel was a one-way ticket to hell.
Angel.
The whole thing made her head ache.
“The theater, Annabella? It’s past noon already.”
Last night she hadn’t been able to let the angel comment pass, so she’d pressed him into some half-assed explanation about how he’d died and his mission on earth: save her and save Segue. Seemed to her like he was making it up. If she hadn’t seen his first clash against the wolf with her own eyes, she’d have never believed him. His fair eyes, dark blond hair, and olive-gold skin pretty much defined
angel,
but the way he moved—which in Annabella’s opinion said more about a person than anything else—told a completely different story. His smooth prowl and tense bearing suggested a brute strength of sweat, blood, and violence. Not angelic.
She knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Now he was bent on ridding the world of her wolf. The one who’d killed Rudy and almost made Talia lose her babies. All because of her. She couldn’t let anyone else get hurt.
The insanity of the situation burned through Annabella’s body, scorching her dreams, destroying her hopes. This wasn’t happening.
Reality was worse than her nightmare. Shadows were everywhere. In most light, she cast one herself.
Annabella dragged a twisted ponytail out of her hair to cover the return of her shakes. “I have to make a call so the director can make a substitution.”
The gala was at seven. There wasn’t a whole lot of time for the company to run through
Serenade
. Thomas Venroy would be angry she was ditching
Giselle
after she swore she could do it, and that would be the end of her time at CBT. The company would say she cracked under pressure. That she hadn’t been ready. That she wasn’t cut out for principal.
Principal.
Her dream of dancing
Giselle
evaporated. She went as dry and bare as a desert inside.
Dance. Ballet. Joy. All gone. She couldn’t breathe.
Custo shook his head, as if reading her thoughts. “Annabella, you’re thinking about this the wrong way.”
“No, I’ve got everything straight now.” His explanation last night had cleared up her questions about the Shadowlands, the origin of the wolf, and the role of her talent in allowing him to cross over into the world. Only one thing had gone unsaid, though she figured it out just fine for herself: Her debut as Giselle didn’t matter when lives were in jeopardy. Therefore, she couldn’t dance.
Custo nudged her chin up, and she reluctantly met his gaze. “What is our goal?”
Annabella shrugged a shoulder. She had no idea what he was getting at, and she was hurting too much to really try. Her decision was made, and she didn’t want to think or feel anymore. Both were excruciating.
“Our goal is to return the wolf to the Shadowlands,” he said.
Not at the expense of another person’s life.
Damn. She needed a distraction before she broke, a way to disconnect her head and heart and be all body. A way to shut Custo up.
Her gaze traveled along the flexed length of his forearm to where it disappeared inside the bunch of his sleeve, to the bulge of his biceps, over the boulder of his shoulder to where the muscle met his collarbone. She went warm and liquid inside.
A life without dance was hell. Why not dive in headfirst?
“Annabella? You have to dance.” He’d gentled his bossy tone, but she didn’t need his pity. She was too close to falling apart as it was. Why couldn’t he just leave it alone?
“Annabella!”
Annabella watched his mouth move, the flick of his tongue on the
la
of her name. She’d never had sex with a near stranger before, but she was in the mood to be reckless. The wolf would probably kill her soon anyway. She had nothing left to lose.
She brought her gaze back up to Custo’s eyes, now dark and slightly distracted from his original train of thought. He paused for a moment to take a controlled breath, his intensity doubling, but then continued, “Instead of isolating you, waiting for the wolf to track you again, I suggest we make you completely accessible. Perform in the gala.”
She wasn’t going to listen to this. Was he trying to hurt her?
“Dance. Allow the wolf to come close,” he continued. “Lure him back into the Shadowlands.”
He had to see reason, or he’d never stop. “You can’t actually think I’d perform? That I’d go onstage with that monster after me? What if he hurt someone? Talia almost lost her babies. He
killed
Rudy.”
“Not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
Easy for him to say, but she wasn’t buying it. He didn’t have to live with the consequences.
“And the rest of the dancers, my friends, all the people in the audience! You can’t actually think—”
Custo shook his head. “The wolf wants to get back himself. That’s why he has followed you to Segue, isn’t it?”
“What if he hurts someone to get to me?” She could not live with another death on her head. No. She wasn’t going to change her mind. All this arguing was just making her hurt more. Why couldn’t Custo shut up and kiss her? He’d been angling to do just that when he woke her. Why not now?
Now, damn it.
“Segue will be there to keep everyone as safe as possible. You dance. Give the performance of your life. Use your talent, your magic, to draw him into the Shadowlands. And then leave him on the other side. I will be there to give him a little extra incentive to go where he feels most in control.”
“Onstage? For everyone to see? The audience will all run screaming…”
“Not necessarily. The Shadowlands are pure magic, pure possibility. Its inhabitants keep to darkness and illusion by nature. The public nature of the event is actually in our favor. It is more likely that the audience will see what they want to see—a spectacular performance.” He raised a conciliatory hand. “But if the gala is ruined, Segue will take responsibility with a plausible answer. Your reputation will not be tarnished.” Custo sighed. “The wolf may not even show up.”
He made it sound so reasonable. But…“No. It’s much better to set some sort of trap with me as bait and then kill the wolf away from people.”
Custo’s brows drew together. “I thought you understood.”
“Understood what?” She couldn’t take much more.
“Annabella,” he said, voice lowered, “the wolf is a creature of Shadow. He is immortal, elemental. There is no way to kill him.”
Annabella’s heart lost its rhythm; one hard beat followed three rapid, skipping ones.
Custo placed a hand on her shoulder. “Without Talia, you’re the only means we have to attempt a cross. You have to dance, open the way, and then we can force him back into Shadow. If you think you can manage to open the way at another venue, I am willing to find a stage—”
To dance her best?
No. It had to be
Giselle
and with CBT. A different venue would be too distracting; her dancing wouldn’t be the same. But with her company behind her, with Jasper as her partner, she might just be able to get to that strange moment where music and movement came together to create magic. Anything else would be too forced, too artificial.
“It wouldn’t be the same,” she said, sighing.
Annabella needed a minute to think, to process this new information.
She looked over at the paintings on the wall. Talia’s? Had she glimpsed what lay beyond her shadows and put them on canvas? No. Each was signed Kathleen O’Brien.
“Her mother,” Custo said.
“What?”
“The paintings. They were done by Talia’s mother. Talia’s father is…from there.” Custo paused. Annabella glanced back to find he’d lost a bit of color. “From the Shadowlands.”
Talia, the banshee. Right. Annabella had seen that with her own eyes, too.
Custo lifted his hand off her shoulder and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “So what time do you need to be at the theater?”
Could she really dance? Was it right to dance?
“And what if
you
get hurt?” she asked.
“Angel,” he said with emphasis. He relaxed, at ease on the bed. “I already died; there’s not much he can do to me.” Custo gave a fierce smile.
“Oh, right,” Annabella mumbled. Her guardian angel looked less angelic with each passing moment.
But…She had to be absolutely, brutally honest, just in case something
did
go wrong. “Custo, I want this chance so bad that I’m afraid I would do anything to hold on to it. I don’t trust myself.”
“You need to,” he said, stroking her cheek with the back of his fingertips. “I don’t think the crossover would work if you didn’t embrace the dance with everything that you are. If you have reservations, the magic of your talent might not shine through.” He frowned. “I am curious why it never happened before. Why do you think that is?”
Good question. It had been bothering her, too. “I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve been pushing myself harder than I ever have.” Her life was falling apart because of it—no dates, no girlfriends, no fun. “Maybe because I’m finally in the spotlight. That sounds bad, I know, but when you are in the corps, you always need to be watching others, keeping your lines—you’re not completely free.” There were times when she wanted to let go, jump higher, interpret the music her own way, but couldn’t because she had to hold her place. “Or, maybe because Giselle is a ghost. She rises from the grave to dance in a dark forest, which sounds an awful lot like the Shadowlands to me.”
“Maybe it’s a combination of the three. Maybe with this performance you’re coming into your full gift of talent.”
She’d dreamed of this moment her whole life.
“The time?” Custo prompted again. “When do we need to get going?”
Okay…She would dance.
Dance!
The wild, careening spin of her world suddenly righted itself on its axis. Wolves might jump out of the shadows, angels might fall from the sky, but if she could dance, then she would be all right. She could breathe. She could live. The circumstances were far from ideal, but she’d take whatever she could get.