Chaos Choreography (InCryptid, #5)(44)

“Okay, break it up.” I ducked under Anders’ arm. “Nice to see you, ‘Elle,’ but what are you doing here? You know my contract doesn’t allow unmonitored contact with my family while I’m on the show.” Thank God there weren’t cameras in our apartments. Adrian would have filmed us twenty-four/seven if he’d been able to get away with it, but he didn’t want to pay the insurance fees for putting cameras in our kitchens. That, and we were dancers: many of us had a tendency to wander around completely nude. None of that footage could be used, or even kept, for fear of a pornography charge.

“Sorry, Val, but I got thrown out of my latest apartment,” said Alice, calm as anything. She raised an eyebrow, daring me to challenge her. “There were noise complaints from the neighbors.”

“Loud music?” guessed Lyra.

“Gunfire,” said Alice.

Lyra didn’t say anything.

“So I figured you’ve got room, right? There’s a whole bunch of empty apartments downstairs. No one’s even going to notice that I’m here.” She turned and flashed her most winsome smile at my roommates.

It’s weird. Grandma Alice is a heavily tattooed dimension-hopping marauder who regularly carries grenades clipped to the belt of her cut-off jeans, but for some reason, people want to like her. Lyra and Anders smiled back immediately. Pax, who was still pale and wide-eyed, did not. He also didn’t run out of the room, which would have been a perfectly reasonable reaction under the circumstances.

“Look, if security catches me, I’ll say I was squatting when the dancers arrived, and stuck around for the anonymity and free grub,” said Alice, turning back to me, like I was the one she had to convince. “I won’t get you in trouble, I promise.”

“All you do is get people in trouble,” I said. “It’s like a holy calling with you.”

Alice’s eyes widened. Too late, I realized my mistake, and managed not to compound it by slapping my hand over my mouth—although it was a near thing.

Every priestess is important to the Aeslin, but they have their hierarchy. The longer a priestess has been alive, the more rituals she’ll have, and the more excited the colony will be when they see her. Normally, this is balanced out by the fact that people die and their catechism ends, becoming a fixed loop in the Aeslin year. Unfortunately, Grandma Alice was too busy to settle down and get old like a normal person, and the Aeslin have been maintaining her worship for almost eighty years without a break, making her the senior priestess of our family. So far as I knew, she was the only priestess to have two separate liturgical lines. She was the Noisy Priestess when she was home and the Pilgrim Priestess when she was off looking for Grandpa Thomas, which meant she had double the usual number of rituals and catechisms focused on her. And now she was in my apartment, and I had mentioned holy callings.

We stayed frozen for several seconds, staring at each other and waiting for the cheering to begin. When it didn’t—when merciful silence, broken only by the shouting from the people who were starting to gather in the courtyard, reigned—we relaxed, in the sort of familial unison that was just going to make her claim to be my sister more believable.

“Fine,” I said, more harshly than I meant to. “As long as no one’s going to rat you out, you can stay.” I turned to my roommates. Maybe one of them would save me. Maybe one of them would object, and Alice would have to go stay somewhere else. I could call Brenna. Maybe there was room at the Nest for my occasionally murderous grandmother and her collection of grenades.

Instead, Lyra broke from the pack and slung her arms around my neck, pulling me into a tight, exuberant hug. “Oh, Val!” she squealed. “I’m so happy for you!” She turned to Alice and said, “It’s always been really upsetting to me how Valerie’s family doesn’t support her dancing. Your sister’s a genius, you know. She’s amazing, and your whole family should be coming out to watch her dance.”

“That’s what I’ve always said.” Alice was clearly amused, eyes glinting with barely-contained mischief. “So I’m here for the rest of the season.”

“Thanks,” I said, through clenched teeth.

“Any time,” said Alice. “I’m going to take the apartment right downstairs. Give me a few minutes, and then come down to talk to me? We should catch up, sis.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said, and watched my grandmother—regularly named the most dangerous human woman in four dimensions—pick up her backpack and walk out of the living room.

Lyra hugged me again. “I changed my mind, you can have first shower. This is amazing!”

Was it my imagination, or did I hear muffled cheers from behind the couch?

It probably wasn’t my imagination.

Lyra let me go. “You and your sister must have so much to catch up on!”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”

So very much . . . like murder.





Nine




“I didn’t start out with a lot of family. One thing I’ve learned is that people who love and accept you are worth their weight in silver bullets. You hold them fast, and you never let them go.”

—Frances Brown

The Crier Apartments, privately owned by Crier Productions, about fifteen minutes later