Chaos Choreography (InCryptid, #5)(37)

“Yes, they are, and that was a sensible concern, Malena,” I said. I held my hands where she could see them and be certain I wasn’t reaching for a weapon, as I said, “My name isn’t Valerie Pryor. It’s Verity Price.”

Slowly, Malena blinked. “Verity Price.”

“Yes.”

“As in, you’re a Price.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose you’re secretly the granddaughter of Vincent Price, and you’re just hiding your celebrity pedigree?”

She sounded so hopeful that I sort of hated to let her down. Sadly . . . “No. I’m the daughter of Kevin Price. I’m a cryptozoologist. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, great. ‘I’m just going to go on reality television again, no big deal,’ she said, right before she wound up in a room with two corpses, a hungry shark-man, and a member of the Covenant of St. George.” Malena shook her head. “I should’ve stayed in the desert.”

“I don’t belong to the Covenant,” I protested. “My family quit generations before I was born. I’m on your side, and that’s why I’m saying we need to get out of here. We can read about this on the Internet tomorrow.” And I could wait a few days before bribing someone for the autopsy results. That would tell me how worried I needed to be.

I was pretty sure that I needed to be extremely worried.



Cramming five people into one of the town cars supplied for our use was easy once we put Pax in the front seat. He had the longest legs. More importantly, he was still light-headed from all the blood he’d been inhaling, and by putting him closer to the air conditioning, I hoped he could clear his head a little.

The party was raging in the courtyard when we got to the apartments—and I do mean raging. The celebration after the eliminations was always loud, enthusiastic, and guaranteed to leave more than a few dancers to face the next morning with hangovers. But we’d made it through another cruel cut, and the urge to rejoice was strong. Anders and Lyra tumbled out of the car already cheering and pumping their arms in the air. They took off running, leaving me, Pax, and Malena to watch them go.

“I don’t think I can do this,” said Malena, as the car drove away behind us.

“You have to, if you don’t want to blow your cover,” I said. “Pax and I will go up to the apartment so he can bolt a steak and I can contact my family. You’re going to head for the party and watch to see whether anyone is behaving oddly.”

Malena turned to stare at me. “What the hell makes you think I’m helping you with this? I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That doesn’t mean I’ve been recruited.”

“Kinda does,” I said apologetically. “Just see whether anyone’s being weird.” One of the jazz dancers had apparently been a cheerleader in a past life, and was organizing a human pyramid. “Weirder than usual,” I amended.

“Do you really think one of us did this?” asked Malena.

“No,” I said. “But we’re going to need to know that for sure.” Dancers wanted to dance more than they wanted to do anything else. Killing people would distract from the dancing. Whoever had done this, I didn’t think we were going to find them here—and yet I needed to be sure, which meant we needed to start watching our surroundings.

“I thought I was supposed to be able to relax when I wasn’t in the bottom three,” muttered Malena, and stalked off toward the revels.

“Come on,” I said to Pax.

No one came to ask us where we were going or why we weren’t coming to the party as we made our way upstairs. We’d pay for that in the morning, when the main breakfast conversation was about whether or not we’d hooked up. That was fine: we could weather a few rumors more easily than we could weather Pax having an incident and eating half the dancers.

He made a beeline for the fridge once we reached the apartment. I kept going, making my way back to the bedroom I shared with Lyra. We both had laptops on our nightstands. Mine had a pink shell, and was covered in sparkly stickers. I ignored it as I dropped to my knees next to my bed, reached under the mattress, and pulled out a sleek, steel-colored notebook computer. It wasn’t as big or as powerful as a full-sized laptop. I couldn’t use it to manipulate graphics or play games. But it was small, it was fast, and best of all, it was equipped with its own wireless hotspot, thanks to the tireless efforts of my cousin Artie.

Pax was still rattling around in the kitchen when I returned. I sat on the living room floor, balancing the notebook on my crossed ankles, and activated the wireless. It would use the local cellular signals to boost itself, allowing me to get messages out without Adrian’s network IT people seeing them. That was important. Somehow, I didn’t think transmitting a bunch of bloody corpses over the Crier Inc. network connection would have been good for my career.

My lifestyle has equipped me with a variety of interesting skills and coping mechanisms. As it turns out, knowing how to word the “Hey, Dad, found some unexpected corpses in the basement of my dance show, can you check them” email was not one of those skills. I finally wrote a quick line warning him about gory contents and asking whether he could tell me anything about the runes cut into the bodies. Dad would be able to take it from there.

He took it faster than expected. My phone rang only a few seconds after I hit “send.” The caller ID showed unknown number. I answered.