Dance of Fire (29 page)

He shrugged. ‘I saw you run off –
everyone
did, Vanessa. So I went after you. I'd done enough interviews. They can talk to Pauline for a while.'

‘If it isn't King Justin,' Coppelia said with a grin. She swung her braid over her other shoulder and pushed a stack of menus under the bar. ‘How about I make you a deal – we can talk privately, if you both promise you'll give me photos with your autographs for my dancer wall.'

Justin chuckled. ‘Sounds like a deal.'

Coppelia waved to a booth in the back of the restaurant. A pair of old ballet shoes hung on the light over the table, ribbons dangling.

Vanessa slid over the cracked leather seats next to Justin and gazed up at the pictures that adorned the walls.

‘I wonder how many of these dancers were part of the Lyric Elite,' Justin murmured.

‘The Lyric Elite?' Coppelia laughed. ‘Oh, you kids. The Lyric Elite hasn't existed for decades. It was already ancient history when I was a dancer, and that was . . . Well, let's just say that was a very long time ago.'

Vanessa remembered how Zep had told her in the cemetery about his search for the Lyric Elite, and how he hadn't been able to find or contact any of its dancers. Then she thought of how the Fratellis had been unable to get the Lyric Elite to stop Josef.

‘But that makes no sense. We've –' Vanessa cut herself off.

Justin gave her a worried look. ‘We've been working with a man named Enzo, who told us he was from the Lyric Elite.'

Coppelia leaned closer, the light illuminating her face. ‘Why
wouldn't
he say that?' she said. ‘People always try to dress up the bad things they do in a uniform and say it's
for the greater good
. But trust me, the Lyric Elite died with the last of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes.'

She pointed to a daguerreotype hanging high on the wall. A male dancer stood in the centre, wearing an ornate beaded costume, his impish eyes peering out as if he were in on some secret. Vanessa recognised him as Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the most famous dancers of the Ballet Russes, a travelling dance company that had broken off from the Imperial Russian ­Ballet.

‘That was the company that enlisted Stravinsky, wasn't it?' Justin said.

‘That's right,' Coppelia said. ‘Diaghilev commissioned him to write
The Firebird
.'

‘
The Firebird
?' Vanessa blurted out. That was the dance Josef had cast her in to call forth the demon – the same dance he had cast Margaret in three years earlier, not long before she dis­appeared.

Justin leaned forward. ‘So what happened with the Lyric Elite? They were still around during the Ballet Russes. Why not after?'

‘Diaghilev inducted many of his young prodigies: Nijinsky, Fokine, Balanchine.' Coppelia fingered her bracelets. ‘But then Diaghilev died, and without a strong leader, the Lyric Elite fell apart.'

‘And this happened a long time ago?' Justin asked.

‘Ancient history!' Coppelia drummed her fingers on the table. ‘Dancers shouldn't mess about with dark arts. The magic we do touches our audiences' hearts – isn't that enough?'

Vanessa felt her stomach lurch. If Coppelia was telling the truth, then Enzo had been lying to them from the first moment he'd shown up at NYBA. He wasn't part of the Lyric Elite at all. Somehow he must have got wind of the Fratelli twins' calls for help about Josef. But if that was the case, who was he
really
?

He had known about Margaret all along and had never said a word. Every day that Vanessa had shown up for rehearsal, every time he corrected one of her steps or criticised her form, he had been holding this secret from her.

She thought back to Margaret's diary, Enzo looming over its pages like a dark shadow, and shuddered as she reached into her dance bag and pulled out the diary pages along with the picture of Enzo, Margaret and Hal.

‘What's that?' Justin asked.

‘A picture of Enzo and my sister and a friend of theirs,' she said. Before he could ask how she got it, she added, ‘It's complicated.'

One of the waiters called Coppelia to the bar. She stood up, her skirt swishing about her ankles. ‘I can talk more after we close.'

‘Right,' Justin said. ‘Thanks for your time.'

‘Thank
you
,' Coppelia said. ‘And remember . . .' She pointed to the wall, reminding them that they owed her their own ­photographs.

After Coppelia walked away, Vanessa told Justin everything she'd kept to herself over the past few days – about Zep and the empty space in the Adams tomb; how Erik's family had died; Margaret's journal and the missing pages, and how Margaret had ended her life by leaping from the Tower Bridge; how she and Enzo –
Erik
– had been in love.

The rush of words left her breathless, and though Vanessa still felt drained of the hope that dance could somehow bring her sister back, she felt lucky to have Justin by her side.

‘I'm so sorry, Vanessa,' Justin said. ‘For everything. Poor Margaret.' He unfolded the pages from the diary. ‘Have you read these yet?'

Vanessa shook her head.

‘Then I guess we should do that. There has to be some reason Enzo or Erik or whatever his name is hid them from you.'

Vanessa took a sip of water and said, ‘He wants me to let the demon possess me. To invite it in. He says that's the only way we can have vengeance on the dark faction in the Royal Court.'

‘No way are we letting that happen,' Justin said. ‘I bet that's been his game plan all along. Clearly he has a history with the darker elements of dance, or he wouldn't know all of those magical steps. Somehow, when the Fratellis reached out for help, Enzo got wind of it and pretended to be a member of the Lyric Elite just to get us to London.' He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or really, to get
you
to London. After what happened, he realised you would make the perfect host . . .' Justin shook his head in disbelief. ‘He's as bad as Josef.'

Vanessa looked at the photograph. ‘He's set on vengeance for Margaret,' she told him, ‘or for his family. Maybe both.'

Justin nodded. ‘The question is, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to stop him?'

‘
We?
' Vanessa asked. ‘This is my battle, Justin, not yours. You don't have to –'

‘Don't be silly.' He rested his hand on her shoulder. ‘I'm with you, Vanessa. Until the end. Whether you want me there or not.'

‘Thanks, but –' Her phone vibrated. She saw an earlier text
from her mom, something about meeting for dinner at her hotel, and then Nicola Fratelli's name scrolled across the screen.

It's time
.

Chapter Twenty-One

Battersea Power Station stood dark beside the Thames, its four massive white smokestacks dwarfing everything in their midst. There was a high chain-link fence around the former power plant, with curls of razor wire along the top edge.

In the parking lot were trailers and construction machinery, and the shadows of enormous cranes loomed alongside the building. Justin stopped at a key box on a pedestrian gate just off the road. He checked a text from the Fratellis, entered a code to open the locked gate, then closed it behind them.

In front of the building was an enormous lawn. ‘I thought this place was abandoned,' Vanessa whispered. ‘This looks like a park.' It worried her that things were already not going as planned.

‘Used to be abandoned,' Justin said. ‘Maybe the park is part of the redevelopment that's going on.'

They crossed quickly, the lawn soft under their feet, and soon reached the shadows along the wall.

‘Nicola said we'd find an open stairwell door on the south-west corner,' Vanessa said, shivering, though Justin had given her his coat. ‘Is this the south-west corner?'

‘I don't know north from south here,' Justin said. ‘I guess we just check all the corners and hope we're lucky.'

The first corner they checked was all locked up, but at the second corner a door was propped open with a brick. ‘Subtle,' Justin said.

Inside, the air smelled of cement dust, and it was pitch black. ‘Do we climb the stairs in the darkness?' Vanessa asked.

‘Probably for the best,' Justin said. ‘Nicholas said security is lax here, but there's no need to advertise our presence.' His hand found hers and grasped it tightly. ‘We'll go up together.'

It was a long climb. ‘Largest brick structure in Europe,' Justin wheezed on one of the landings while they rested.

‘Feels like it,' Vanessa replied.

Finally they reached another propped-open door that spilled out on to a long, narrow rooftop. To one side was the grassy area they'd crossed, the silvery band of the Thames ­visible in the distance. On the other side was a central courtyard filled
with machinery and other signs of construction. ‘This place really is enormous,' Vanessa said.

They trudged forward, Vanessa hunching down into ­Justin's jacket. A thin panel of glass ran down the middle of the roof in a geometric skylight. The cold air stung Vanessa's cheeks as she followed the panel to the centre, where she could see a flickering light.

‘That must be them,' Justin said.

Two figures huddled around the light as Vanessa and Justin approached. Vanessa recognised Nicola's hair dangling around the hood of her coat as she held open the yellowed parchment pages of the
Ars Demonica
.

Nicholas stood a few feet away from her, pushing a broom over the roof. He barely looked up when they approached.

‘What are you doing?' Vanessa asked.

Nicholas gestured at a pattern of intersecting lines drawn into the snow on the surface of the roof. ‘It needs to be perfectly clean,' he said.

‘A pentagram,' Justin said, standing back.

Vanessa turned around. She was standing in the centre of a giant five-pointed star inscribed in a circle.
Fi
ve other pentagrams had been drawn, all meeting at one central point. A large candle stood on the ledge behind Nicola.

In the middle stood the pot-bellied silver lamp, the one the twins had found in the antiques shop. Glimmers of light chased around its edges, as though it were catching the beam of a non-existent flashlight.

Nicholas followed Vanessa's gaze and said, ‘We've already worked the preliminary enchantments on it.'

‘Justin – here.' Nicola tossed him a ratty-looking black ­peacoat. ‘I brought an extra just in case, and you look like you need it.'

Justin gave her a nod. ‘Thanks.'

‘There's something we should tell you,' Vanessa said, not sure how to begin.

‘The Lyric Elite doesn't exist,' Justin said.

Nicholas stopped sweeping. Nicola narrowed her eyes, the candle flickering behind her. They didn't say a word while ­Justin told them what Coppelia had said about the Lyric Elite.

‘No wonder Enzo wouldn't let us join,' Nicola said finally. ‘And that explains why they only answered us in New York once the demon had actually been summoned.'

Nicholas still looked confused. He frowned, trying to piece together what she was saying. ‘But there are still necrodancers in the Royal Court, right?'

‘Right,' Vanessa said. ‘And that's Enzo's excuse – he wants the demon for himself, so he can use it to sniff out the evil dancers and destroy them.'

Nicola whistled. ‘Who's left that we can trust?'

They exchanged glances. ‘Right,' Nicholas said. ‘Only us.'

‘Is a roof really the best place to do this?' Vanessa asked. ‘I can't remember when I've ever been this cold.'

‘Yes.' Nicholas finished sweeping the sixth pentagram. He nodded at the silver lamp. ‘We don't want anyone else to get hurt if something goes wrong, so we wanted a place that was
very isolated. Which is why we're on the roof of a decommissioned power plant.'

‘You two have been hard at work,' Justin said, examining the pentagrams.

‘No kidding,' said Nicola. ‘You can't just paint a pentagram, at least not for these purposes. You have to dance its shape first, barefoot.'

Vanessa wrapped her coat tightly around her. ‘You danced barefoot in this cold?'

‘That's nothing, Vanessa,' Nicholas added. ‘Not compared to what you're going to have to do.'

Nicola rolled her eyes. ‘Don't frighten her,' she said. She opened the book again and picked up the candle. ‘Here's how it's going to work. Vanessa, you'll stand in the centre of the pentagrams by the lamp. Nicholas and I will dance a simple containment spell around you. When it's time – you'll know when – you have to cut your hand and let it drip inside the mouth of the lamp. Once the spell is completed, the demon will be called to mingle with the blood of the host. Then you, Vanessa, just have to invite it in.'

‘And this part is key,' Nicholas said sternly. ‘You have to say the formal, binding invitation. Without saying the exact words, the demon won't be
bound
to enter you – or the lamp. Do you understand?'

Vanessa swallowed. ‘Yes.'

‘Good,' Nicholas said, and nodded to his sister, who picked up the
Ars Demonica
and read from it, translating from the Latin.

‘
I declare myself your willing partner
.
The one who gives herself to your will and desires. I am nothing and you are everything. I demand that you join me.
'

‘We wrote the Latin out phonetically for you to read,' Nicholas said, handing Vanessa a slip of paper. ‘Once you chant the invite,' Nicholas said, looking at Justin, ‘we have to act super-fast and fling Vanessa out of the circle into safety. And the demon, already drawn in, will sense her blood and inhabit the next best thing.' He motioned to the lamp, which was ­resting in the centre of the pentagrams.