Chaos Choreography (InCryptid, #5)(8)
The priest looked back to me, suddenly hopeful. “May we cheer, Priestess?”
“Yes, yes, let them cheer,” muttered Dominic, not pulling his head out of the pillow. “It’s not like I was going to get any more sleep this morning. What’s a little cheering after a dinosaur and an alarm clock?”
“It wasn’t a dinosaur,” I said automatically, before telling the mice, “You can cheer.”
The racket that went up was better than a cup of coffee for clearing my head. I blinked.
“Whoa. Um, okay. And on that note, I invoke Bedroom Privileges. Get out.”
“Yes, Priestess!” squeaked the mouse priest, now in much better spirits. The crowd dispersed with remarkable speed, vanishing under furniture and through the holes cut into the baseboards.
(If we ever tried to sell the property—which we wouldn’t; Dad would burn the place to the ground before he let it leave the family—we’d have some explaining to do when the realtor saw the tiny, geometrically perfect mouse holes cut into every interior wall. In the case of long walls, like hallways or the living room, there were multiple holes, at least one every six feet. Of course, that was nothing compared to the explaining we’d have to do if the realtors decided to look inside one of those walls, and found the intricate network of stairways, portrait galleries, and rooms the Aeslin had built there, working around the insulation and wiring. Some houses have a mouse problem. We have a mouse utopia.)
Dominic left his face buried in his pillow. I planted a kiss at the back of his neck and slid off the bed, heading for the desk on the other side of the room. Getting there required me to weave around piles of boxes, which reinforced my determination to be completely moved out of this room by the end of the week. After spending a year in someone else’s apartment, followed by six months in a U-Haul, I was ready to stop living out of boxes.
The power strip on the desk was connected to four phones: mine, Dominic’s, and two burners. I picked up one of the burners, checked its charge, and took a deep breath before unlocking the screen and keying in the number for the production offices.
I didn’t want to sit on the bed while I made the call, so I sat on the desk, crossing my legs and trying to focus on thoughts of serenity and calm.
The phone rang once; twice; three times, and I was starting to think I was calling too early in the day when there was a click and a generically pleasant female voice said, “Adrian Crier Productions, how may I direct your call?”
I took a deep breath. When I spoke, my voice was light, breezy, and half an octave higher than it usually was: the voice of a woman whose greatest concern was figuring out how she was going to pay for a new tango costume. “Hi, this is Valerie Pryor, I got a message saying you wanted to speak with me?”
“Miss Pryor!” Suddenly, the woman on the other end of the phone sounded like she was actually invested in talking to me. That was . . . odd, and a bit disturbing. “Mr. Crier is expecting your call. Can you please hold while I check to see if he’s available?”
“Sure,” I said. I’d barely finished the word when there was a click, and pleasant classical music began to play in my ear.
There was a creak from the direction of the bed. I turned to find Dominic staring at me, a bemused expression on his face. He was shirtless. I smiled and took a moment to admire the view.
Dominic is short by most people’s standards, which means he’s reasonable by mine, since I’m only five foot two when I’m not wearing heels. He has the kind of lean, solid build that I look for in a dance partner, thick, dark hair perfect for running my fingers through, and dark eyes that go well with the puzzled expressions he seems to wear almost constantly these days. I’d thought he was good looking even when he was a member of the Covenant of St. George and things could never have been serious between us. Now he’s a free agent, and he’s mine, and he’s gorgeous.
There was another click. I returned my attention to the phone as a jovial British voice came on the line, exclaiming, “Valerie! As I live and breathe, it’s good to hear from you, sweetheart! You were always one of my favorites, you know that, don’t you darling?”
“Hi, Adrian,” I said, smiling broadly so he’d hear it in my voice. Adrian Crier was the sort of man who adored you while you were on his good side, and wouldn’t hesitate to bury you once you got on his bad side. Naturally, I’d always done my best to stay on his good side. “I missed you, too. What’s going on? Why am I getting emails all of a sudden?”
“Well, darling, it’s because the number we had for you wasn’t ringing through anymore, and we needed to get hold of you rather desperately. Is this number on my display good? Can we call you here if we need to?”
It was an unassigned burner phone; that’s why I’d used it. I’d just have to keep reloading it with minutes until whatever Adrian was asking me to do was over.
No. I frowned at myself. Until I had turned down whatever Adrian was asking me to do. “This is a good number for me, yes,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Well, sweetheart, I don’t know if you’ve been watching the ratings, but we’re in a bit of a slump right now. People still care about dance—it’s a vital part of the human emotional landscape—but they get down at heart when their favorites are eliminated, and they stop watching for a season while they get over it. Just like a breakup, wouldn’t you say?”