Dance of Fire (24 page)

‘Pushed it out?' he repeated. ‘That's not what happens with demons. Eventually it gets the better of you.'

‘I'm strong,' she said. ‘I can fight it.'

‘Vanessa,' Zep said, shaking his head, ‘you're not strong
enough
. No one is. In your head it probably sounds like a real person – a voice, a personality, whatever. But trust me, it's not.
That's just a mask it wears to win you over. Beneath the mask, it's a malevolent being – something almost unimaginable.'

Vanessa remembered her visions of Justin's and Margaret's faces burning away into a demonic image and, with a coldness in her gut, realised Zep was telling the truth.

‘Josef told me this spirit comes from another plane entirely, and I don't even know what that means, but the place it comes from is the same one where we get the idea of Hell and Satan and all that scary business.' Zep grimaced and stared directly at her, moonlight reflecting off his eyes. ‘Souls in eternal torment, lakes of fire – real apocalyptic stuff.'

‘But it's already
here
,' Vanessa protested. ‘What does it need me for? It's already killing people – I've seen it.'

‘It doesn't have a living host, one who belongs to this world, so it can't do much. If some idiot tries to summon a demon, it may respond to the call and kill the person,' Zep said, ‘but other­wise it's just stuck waiting for you – its chosen host – to come around. Once it possesses you, it will wreak all sorts of havoc. Feed on the souls of innocents the world over, or whatever it is that it wants.'

‘Well, it can wait forever, because that's never going to ­happen.'

Zep gripped her by the shoulders. ‘It's not going to wait nicely forever. It already has access to your memories. Sooner or later it's going to force itself on you.'

‘So then, what's the point?' Vanessa said angrily. ‘If the demon
can't
be controlled, then I can't do anything about it.'

‘It can't be controlled,' Zep said, ‘but it
can
be walled out. For a time. And if you trust me, I can teach you how.'

‘I don't trust you,' she told Zep. ‘And I never will.' She paused, considering her options – which, at the moment, were very few. ‘But I'll listen,' she said. ‘Tell me what I have to do, according to you.'

For the first time since she'd encountered him in London, Zep smiled. ‘First,' he said, seeming glad to be taken seriously, ‘you have to find a meditative talisman. Some object that you can throw your energy into. You don't need to have it with you, just in your head.'

‘A talisman? Like a magical object?'

‘Not magical, just special to you.'

Vanessa's mind drifted to a tangle of memories, all revolving around Margaret. They were small moments, which she'd never appreciated at the time – telling jokes in the back of their parents' car, whispering beneath the covers with a flashlight late at night or laughing while they tried on their mother's lipstick – yet taken together they represented everything that Vanessa held dear. She'd never thought that one day her sister would be gone, that the moments would end. She couldn't let that happen. She
had
to stop the demon and find Margaret.

‘I've got something,' she said. Margaret's ballet shoes, the ones that were stolen from Vanessa's suitcase the first day she was in London. ‘I think it's powerful enough.'

‘You think, or you know?'

Vanessa pursed her lips. ‘I know.'

‘Great,' Zep said. ‘When you feel something trying to enter your mind, the trick isn't to fight, but to focus your entire being on something else – the talisman.'

Vanessa closed her eyes and envisioned her sister's old pointe shoes where they had lain in her suitcase, the well-worn, tangled ribbons, the sweat-darkened insoles, the pale satin smudged from wear. ‘OK.'

‘Once that object is vivid in your mind, you drop your defences. Your talisman will fill your mind so there is no room for anything else but you and the emotions you feel about that object.'

She saw the shoes in her mind's eye, but the feelings that accompanied it were complicated. They contradicted one another, part sadness, part joy, part anger. ‘What kind of emotion?'

‘Some big feeling you associate with that talisman,' Zep continued. ‘Such powerful emotion that you can barely remember where you were or what was going on.'

Vanessa closed her eyes and tried to forget where she was. Forget that she was standing in a snowy cemetery with Zep, forget what he had just told her. Margaret was as integral to her being as her heart. She couldn't lose something like that without dying herself.

‘Now – a memory associated with your talisman. The strong­est memory you can think of.'

Sitting on the green couch in her family's living room in Massachusetts, a quilt over her legs, reading. A muffled melody drifted down from upstairs, an aria Margaret had been playing all spring, the soprano's voice pure and perfect. Vanessa had heard it so often
that she knew it by heart. She rested the book on her legs and listened, only to be disturbed by a clatter of mail sliding through the slot in the front door.

Her sister burst out of her room and ran downstairs, her ponytail bouncing behind her. ‘This is it,' she said, kneeling on the floor. She held up a cream-coloured envelope. ‘What do you think it says?'

‘It says, “We lurve you,”' Vanessa told her sister, laughing. ‘Just open it already.'

Margaret tore open the envelope and slid out the letter. She scanned the page.

‘Well?' Vanessa asked. ‘Did you get in?'

Margaret's hands trembled. ‘I got in.' A smile spread across her face, and she squealed with joy. ‘I got in!'

‘Vanessa!'

She opened her eyes to find Zep standing in front of her on the snow-covered path. He was staring at her, his disappointment obvious.

‘What?' Vanessa said. The chill of the night had set in, and her teeth began to chatter. ‘I was doing what you told me to do.'

‘Not good enough,' Zep said, shaking his head. ‘Not if I can simply call your name and bring you out of it. Get
lost
in the memory. Relive it all over again. That is your only armour.'

Vanessa stared down at her feet and remembered her last night in New York, when she'd slipped her feet into her sister's shoes and seen a flash of Margaret's legs tracing a message in the ground.
I'm still here
.

Growing up, Margaret had always been the one to help Vanessa get herself out of the messes she'd got herself in. She was ever elegant, the model older sister. Now Margaret was the one in trouble, and she had reached through time and space to ask Vanessa to find her. And Vanessa was determined to answer.

She closed her eyes and focused on that memory of the shoes:
the insoles holding the shape of Margaret's feet, the lamb's wool still crushed inside the toe box, the stitching on the ribbons so neat she could envision her sister sitting cross-legged on the floor of her dressing room sewing them on.

Ballet shoes are like puppies,
Margaret had told her.
Or boys. Treat them the way you want to be treated. Take good care of them, and they'll take good care of you.

Vanessa had been only eleven, but she could see that day like it was yesterday:
sitting in her sister's bedroom, watching Margaret break in her new pointe shoes to get ready for NYBA. It was late August, and Margaret was about to leave.

Margaret came over and gave Vanessa a kiss on the forehead. ‘I'll be home for Thanksgiving. It's only three months!' She took out a needle and thread and began to adorn the first shoe. ‘These are going to be my favourite shoes, Ness. I can tell.'

‘How?' Vanessa asked. ‘You've never even danced in them.'

Margaret thought about this. ‘True. But sometimes? You just know . . .'

When Vanessa's eyes finally fluttered open, she was standing in the centre of the pathway, Zep beside her.

‘Thank God,' Zep said. ‘I thought I wasn't going to be able to get you back.'

Vanessa shook her head, realising she was covered in snow. ‘Sorry!'

‘Don't apologise,' Zep said gently. ‘
That
memory, whatever it is, is the shield you need to protect yourself. As long as you can tap into that, you'll be safe.'

Vanessa smacked her hands together to warm them. ‘Zep, I don't think I can master that before the last part of the competition! It's too soon – tomorrow.'

His eyes were as lustrous as the light-filled clouds covering the moon. ‘I know what you're capable of,' he said, his voice soft.

The wind seemed to push him towards her. He leaned in, but Vanessa turned away.

‘What's wrong?' he asked.

She averted her eyes, pressing herself against the outer wall of the mausoleum, the marble cold against her back. ‘This was a mistake. I shouldn't be alone with you.'

Zep nodded as though he'd been expecting her to say something like that. ‘Just promise me that you'll be as careful with other people as you are with me.'

Vanessa's face hardened. ‘What do you mean?'

‘The Fratellis, Justin, that shady character who's been training you . . . They're no more deserving of your good faith than I am.'

‘Why do you say that?' Vanessa said, realising Zep had no idea Enzo was part of the Lyric Elite. ‘They're looking out for me, trying to protect me from people like you.'

Zep let out a bitter laugh. ‘
I'm
the only one looking out for you. The Fratellis are idiots. And that coach of yours . . . I haven't been able to find much information about him. That troubles me. People who leave no trail always have something to hide.'

Of course Enzo had something to hide – he was part of the Lyric Elite. But she wasn't going to tell Zep that. The wind kicked up and made her eyes sting with tears. ‘I have to go,' Vanessa said. ‘I'm going to be late for curfew.'

She turned and started back down the path to the front gate, waiting for Zep to say something, anything. But all she could hear was the crunch and squeak of her boots in the snow, the wind in the branches of the barren trees around her.

She looked back, but he was gone, the flashlight wedged on the lip of a stone pedestal, its beam illuminating a message scrawled in the snow:

I'm on your side

Chapter Seventeen

The wind was bitterly cold.

From this end, the Millennium Bridge was a long, narrow line of lights suspended over the River Thames. Vanessa paid the cab driver, pulled her coat tighter and set off to meet the Fratellis.

With every step she took, Zep's warnings echoed in her mind: why
were
the Fratelli twins going so far out of their way to help? Did they even care about Vanessa's safety, or were they only using her to gain admission to the Lyric Elite?

The bridge was a peculiar place to choose for a meeting – empty save for a few pedestrians, their faces tucked into their coat collars, shielding themselves from the wind.

Soon enough she saw three figures huddled at the centre of the bridge. For a moment she remembered back to when she had thought the twins were scary, when she'd seen them and
Justin together outside Lincoln Center and thought they were stalking her. But the Fratellis had turned out to be far from scary. Her feelings for Justin were more complicated, but she wasn't looking forward to seeing him. Not now.

As soon as Nicholas spotted Vanessa he stopped talking and waved. Beside him, Nicola and Justin turned, their cheeks red from the cold.

‘The guest of honour appears!' Nicholas said.

Justin stood against the railing, his arms crossed. ‘Where have you been?' he asked.

‘I had something to take care of,' Vanessa said.

‘Take care of?' Justin repeated. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I don't see how that's any of your business.' She looked to the side, at the waters of the Thames down below, at the twinkle of lights that was the London skyline. ‘Why does it matter to you, anyway? Svetya not keeping you busy enough?'

‘Busy? Is that what you think makes a good relationship? Rushing around all the time, never making a commitment?'

Vanessa stepped back, insulted. ‘I
have
made a commitment.'

Before she could continue, Nicola said, ‘Lovers' quarrel?'

‘We'd have to be lovers first,' Vanessa said. ‘Which we most definitely are not.'

‘Thank goodness for that,' Justin said.

Nicola turned to her brother. ‘Let's get this started before my toes freeze off.'

Nicholas lowered the backpack from his shoulder and held it open just wide enough for Vanessa to see the leather-bound
Ars Demonica
.

‘While you two were bickering,' Nicholas said, ‘
we've
been studying the exact ritual required to banish the demon. It's a good thing we got our hands on this book, because it has turned out to be slightly more complicated than we imagined.'

‘Complicated
how
?' Justin asked. ‘Doesn't sound good.'

‘Good is a relative term in this case,' Nicholas said. ‘As we said before, usually you have to kill the possessed person to cast a demon back where it came from, but this book reveals a way to trick the demon into hiding itself in an object.'

‘Like a lamp?' Vanessa asked, remembering the vision she'd had of the men huddling over an ancient Etruscan lamp in that chilly distant warehouse. Almost reflexively, she turned to ­Justin. He stood by the railing, his brow furrowed.