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I gave his lower lip a graze of my teeth as I eased back, heat coursing through my veins. The same hunger shone back at me in Jasper’s gray-green eyes.
His gaze didn’t so much as twitch toward the stands. In that moment, he was all mine, his preoccupation with his rival wiped away.
I grinned up at him. “Feeling better now?”
Jasper smiled crookedly back at me. “Loads.”
The silence emanating from the stands was telling. Neither of us gave Quentin and his partner a sideways glance.
Niko started up the music again, and the two of us soared across the ice. My heart lifted along with our movements. When Jasper hefted me up this time, I whirled through the air with him solid and steady beneath me.
The two of us felt like one person, connected where the palm of his hand met my center. I knew my expression was perfect, the angle of my arms spot-on, and his stance just as perfect. Pride rushed through my chest.
Jasper set me down at just the right speed and angle, and I glided a little ahead of him while grasping his hand. I knew I was beaming at him but didn’t care.
“Once more?” I suggested.
“Sounds good to me.”
We swept through the opening sequence with more confidence, and grace flowed through every movement. The exhilaration brought an awed giggle to my throat.
Jasper spun me around, poised in his arms—and my gaze caught on a reddish splotch on the door Quentin had stepped through several minutes ago.
Deep crimson red, like blood.
My heart lurched. Images flashed through my mind, each hitting me harder than the last.
Coach Balakin, his face sallow and twisted in pain.
The pool of scarlet staining his white polo shirt.
His body lying stiff and still.
An involuntary flinch ran through my body just as Jasper started to lower me. The jolt made me slip from his grasp. Before we could recover, I tumbled to the ice, landing hard on my thigh.
Pain bloomed through my leg. I was going to have a massive bruise there for sure. But I barely felt it over the blare of panic that’d set my heart thudding.
Jasper knelt next to me, his face taut with concern. Niko was hurrying across the ice to us too.
“Are you okay, Lou? What happened?” my partner asked.
My words came out in a breathless mumble. “The door—it looks like there’sbloodsmeared on it. I—”
I clamped my mouth shut and shoved myself to my feet. Quentin shot out some stupid remark that I let fly right past my ears. All my attention was on the door.
I yanked on my skate guards in an instant and sprinted up the steps as fast as I could with my skates on. Jasper and Niko hurried behind me.
As we reached the door, Niko exhaled in a rush. “It’s only paint.”
This close, I could tell he was right. The splotch, about the size of a human head, looked as if it’d been smacked there by a swath of wet fabric with no clear texture. A few rivulets dribbled down from the main shape. The red was just a little too saturated, and a plasticky tang rose off it that was totally different from the meaty odor of actual gore.
The paint hadn’t been there when Quentin and Jess had walked in. Someone had done this in the past few minutes. What the hell was going on?
I yanked open the door swiftly as if I might find the culprit standing on the other side.
Instead, I discovered that the paint didn’t stop at the door. A longer smear ran along the wall in the hallway, fading out and then appearing again, all the way to the door to the women’s locker room.
Just as I registered that, the locker room door burst open. A girl I recognized as one of Quentin’s fellow trainees scrambled into the hallway with a shriek, her eyes wide with panic.
