“You can stay,” I tell Nix. “But if you steal anything else, I’m confiscating every ribbon in this studio.”
His face lights up—literally, his skin flushing a brilliant, joyful gold. “Deal! Dance lady is the best. Nix is going to tell everyone.”
“Please don’t.”
But he’s already scrambling up the filing cabinet, chattering to himself about warm fire energy and good choices and something that sounds suspiciously like “tiny romance babies.”
I don’t ask.
I really, really don’t want to know.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a haze of damage control.
Three parents call to express concern. Two more send strongly worded emails. Mrs. Delacroix posts a video on the Bellamy Cove community Facebook page with the caption “DEMON CREATURE ATTACKS CHILDREN’S DANCE CLASS”, which gets forty-seven comments before Bianca somehow convinces her to take it down.
By the time the last class ends and the final student leaves, I’m exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with physical exertion. My brain feels like it’s been through a washing machine, spinning and tumbling and coming out wrinkled and damp.
Mal has stayed, as promised. He sits in the corner of the studio, reviewing the choreography notes I gave him last week, looking for all the world like a normal student in a normal dance school.
Nix is curled on the windowsill, fast asleep, his small chest rising and falling with each breath.
I lock the front door. Flip the sign to “CLOSED.” Take a moment to lean against the glass and watch the evening light fade over Bellamy Cove.
An imp, I think. He has an imp. A talking, stealing, color-changing imp that apparently lives with him and does reconnaissance and knows things about his feelings that he doesn’t admit out loud.
It should be a dealbreaker. It should be the final straw, the point where I walk away from whatever this is and return to my safe, controlled, monster-free life.
Instead, I find myself crossing the studio toward him, drawn by the same inexplicable pull that’s been tugging at me since the moment he walked into my beginner class.
“Ready?” I ask.
He looks up from the notes. His eyes are darker in this light, shadowed and deep.
“Are you?”
I think about the question. Really think about it.
“No,” I admit. “But ask me anyway.”
His smile is soft, almost sad. “Brave.”
“Terrified,” I correct. “But I’ve learned they’re not mutually exclusive.”
He sets down the notes. Stands. Moves toward me with that fluid grace I’ve come to recognize as not-quite-human.
“Where should we start?”
I look at his bracelet, at the two ruby stones that glow faintly against the black.
“There,” I say. “Start with the bracelet. Start with why the stones have changed color.”
Something flickers in his expression. Pain, maybe. Or hope.
“That,” he says, “is going to take a while.”
“I have time.”
He studies my face like he’s looking for something. Whatever it is, he seems to find it.
