The Fire Dancer Read online

  “Then how do you know so much about it?” I kept waiting for the heat to rise in my body, but it didn’t. All the triggers, fear and frustration, were there, but no flames. The knocking became frantic.

  “Because I do.” Cash placed my hat back on my head before he stepped to the door. His hand was on the doorknob when he turned back to me. “You’ve been patient this long, Holly. I want you to need me.”

  Chapter Five

  “Moorfields. It’s north of London. 1781.” I Googled the information Cash gave me as soon as we got home. “What can you see?”

  “Nothing but your excitement.” Rainey was pissed to find Cash in my dressing room, but this was the first solid lead we had on anything, ever. She came up behind me, putting her chin on my shoulder to see the screen. “Calm down.”

  Impossible. “Stop touching me, then.” I made a big show of getting up off the bed and moving to the chair in the corner of our room. As usual, it had a pile of freshly folded laundry on it, and we both giggled as I teetered on the top of it. My face fell when I looked down at the search results. “Holy shit.”

  “What?” Rainey came over to the chair, and tipped the laptop back to read it. “Oh.”

  Every result mentioned Bethlem Mental Hospital.

  “That’s the place Lucille was talking about the other night,” I said, afraid of what this might mean.

  “I know.” Rainey exhaled. “Maybe your mother was a patient.” Her face clouded over, her hand on my bare knee. She was better than any search engine. “No, she wasn’t.”

  I held my breath and didn’t say anything. I had to let her work. Rainey’s mouth gaped. When she was in Sight, it was like the human part of her died.

  “I See the patients flocking to her. Naked, filthy, not all of them crazy. Some of them like us, kids who had no parents. Women who tried to escape abusive husbands. People who were too smart and too vocal. Poor people, who couldn’t pay their taxes. Some of them did have terrible deformities. But they all loved her.”

  “Was she a nurse?”

  “I think so. I feel healing, but she’s hiding something from me.” Rainey deadened again as more information came to her. “They’re rallying around her, forming a troupe of some sort.”

  “Are you sure you’re not confusing this with what Lucille told us about Cash?” I rubbed my temples. This was overwhelming for me, too.

  “I don’t think so.” Rainey looked normal again, and she’d Seen everything she could for the night. “But there’s a definite connection. I could feel it, but since Cash is a giant black hole...” She shrugged.

  “I have to go back there!” I handed her the laptop, laundry falling on the floor as I jumped out of the chair. “I have to meet her.”

  “Holly, you can’t!” She got in the way of my pacing. “They’ll commit you. You might not be able to come back. Those places are full of people like us. I can’t even describe what I see. It’s Hell on earth.”

  People like us. Cash told me I could be the only one. Sometimes I felt like Lucille kept us like prisoners, but I knew we were treated like royalty compared to what happened to the patients of Bethlem. I shuddered, the vision of Cash’s abused face flashing in front of me, the feeling of filthy hands all over my body. Now I had to go back there, no matter what.

  “But she’s my mother.” I could barely catch my breath. “What would you do, if this was you?”

  She shook her head. “Not this.”

  I fell on the bed, defeated. We found my mother, but I couldn’t have her. Not even to exchange a smile. Maybe get that look, the one I always wanted. We’d come so close. “Maybe if I went back there, I could change things, so these people wouldn’t suffer.”

  Rainey crawled on the bed beside me, kissing my shoulder and moving my hair out of my eyes. It was still damp from after the show. “That’s what your mother tried to do.” Her face fell before she kissed me again. “They burned her.”

  “But they can’t burn me.”

  WE WERE CALLED TO WORK early the next night for a meeting. Rainey and I rode in silence. It became obvious pretty quickly we’d never see eye to eye on my mother or Cash. I knew she meant to keep me safe, and I thought this was the only way to do it.

  “I don’t know where your sense of adventure went.” I tried to tease her when I couldn’t take the quiet anymore. “I’ve gone to dangerous places before. I survived. I have to come back, because I’m meant to be here now. You’ve said that yourself.”

  “He’s casting a spell over you.” Rainey didn’t take her eyes off the road, but they narrowed to angry slits.

  I twirled the end of my ponytail around my finger. I got ready early today to try to make good use of my nervous energy. Usually I waited until I got the theater. But today I spent the afternoon teasing my hair and curling my ponytail in a retro style. My makeup matched; I traced exaggerated cat wings and filled my whole lid with liquid eyeliner. Stage makeup had to be seen all the way to the back row of the theater. I was so overdone for Rainey’s Starbucks stop, but this was Vegas. No one even gave me a second look as I stood in the coffee line. “We never considered he could be a witch.” I wiggled my eyebrows, trying to get her to lighten up.

  “Vampires can control minds,” she declared, her attention more on the treat case than me. “That’s why I can’t read them. They don’t want me to.”

  “When did you come up with that answer?” Rainey ignored me, it was her turn to order. Well, pay. The barista already knew what she wanted. Even though it was over one hundred degrees outside, Rainey always got a hot peppermint white mocha. She said it made every day feel like Christmas. I added an iced green tea to the order, and handed my debit card to the cashier. “Because that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

  She didn’t respond until she moved over to the end of the counter to wait to pick up her latte. “I’ve been doing research.” Finally she looked at me, her brown eyes big and sad. “Someone’s got to try protect you.”

  “Cash has answers.” She handed me a straw when we got our drinks. “We need to listen to him, even if we don’t do anything with the information he gives us. He came to talk to me for a reason.”

  “He didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.” She punched the little plastic thing that closed the lid into the hole, punctuating her sentence. “He just gave it a name. Anyone could have done that.”

  “He possibly led me to my mother.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.” She held the door open for me. “I could have been influenced by what Lucille said the other night. It’s not often that she gets so fired up.”

  “What if Lucille is wrong?” I might have hated that Rainey was right, but I was willing to play devil’s advocate, and Cash’s advocate. One and the same. “Maybe we need the vampires.”

  She scoffed as she climbed back in the car. “Did your memory melt last night?”

  “There are a lot of bad men in the world, Rainey. It doesn’t make them all bad. We can’t judge them all by what Noah,” it caused me physical pain to say his name, “did. What has Lucille ever done for us?”

  “She took care of us when no one else would. When there was nothing to gain from it.” Rainey glared at me. She was taking Lucille’s side over mine? That never happened.

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Lucille didn’t do things without a reason. “We don’t know that.”

  Cars honked frantically around us. She pulled out of the parking spot, but she had yet to put the car in drive and go. “I love you, Holly. It will kill me if anything happens to you. You might not care what happens to Lucille, or even yourself. But please, consider what it will do to me if Cash hurts you.”

  “I love you, too.” I put my hand over hers on the gear shaft. “And that’s why I’m doing this.”

  Rainey and I were complicated. Paired together because we belonged with no one else, we were the same age, and we needed each other. She could See the future, even with me in it, and I confirmed her visions about the past,
because I’d been there. Lucille kept us away from other people most of our lives, because I couldn’t be trusted not to summon fire and play with it like a jump rope, and Rainey felt compelled to share her visions with strangers.

  “People do the same thing over and over, wishing for change,” she muttered whenever Lucille would usher us away from whoever Rainey horrified by describing a cheating spouse, a debilitating disease, or a horrific accident. She learned by the time she was a teenager to keep her mouth shut. We’d come a long way, but we still brought the awkward. “But they don’t like it when they get it.”

  Comfort was something hard to come by, especially when you tended to rob other people of it. Again, we needed each other. More than best friends, more than sisters, we were two pieces of a puzzle that had been lost, but we fit together. We just didn’t know where the rest of the puzzle was. Like humans, there was only so long we could go without touch before we withered and died. If Rainey was ever afraid when I put my head on her shoulder and drifted off to sleep, she never said it. As we got older, we did a lot more than that. Even two scared girls who could see everything that had ever happened and would ever happen sometimes had a hard time saying they loved each other.

  It wasn’t such a bad life. Still, I wanted more, even if Rainey didn’t. We deserved more than what we had. I had to prove it to her.

  Everyone in the cast was already seated when we arrived at the theater. We sat alone at one of the VIP tables. Rainey nodded to the rest of the vendors who set up every night in the lobby with her, but besides us, everyone else had grouped themselves by what they did. The trapeze artists sat together, the contortionists and acrobats peppered the front few rows of seats. They trained together, and had to trust each other implicitly. No one did what we did, and I had yet to make many friends. The fire thing freaked people out more than the snake charmer did. The clown sat with the DJ, and leered at me.

  “Thanks for coming in early tonight, everyone.” Stephen McNamara, the owner of Le Cirque Macabre sat in the dimmed ring. Rainey nudged me and shook her head when I met her wide gaze. Whatever Stephen was going to tell us was not good news.

  “I have some exciting news to share with all of you,” Stephen continued, and I covered my mouth to contain my snicker. I reached for Rainey’s leg under the table, but she caught my hand, squeezing it and trapping it on her knee. “Le Cirque Macabre is entering a new partnership, which will bring us to the forefront of the alternative entertainment scene on the Strip. I’m sure you’ve all noticed the successful shows that have popped up around us. Immortal Dilemma and Fire Dancer have brought a niche audience to Las Vegas from all over the world, and now, we’re going to offer them another option to complement their taste for things macabre.” I shuddered at the mention of Fire Dancer.

  Everyone groaned as if we rehearsed it. I had a feeling Stephen had rehearsed this speech, too, because he was never this formal. A lot of the girls thought he was a sleaze ball, said he was too handsy. I sympathized. He never touched me, he knew he get burned.

  “Just fucking tell us, Steve,” Ronnie, or Ronzo the Clown, yelled out. “Am I going to be doing the kids matinee on Fremont or what?”

  Stephen smiled carefully. “Let me finish, Ronnie, and then you can all ask questions. You’re all a very important part of the success of this show, and I’m sure you’re wondering who I would trust enough to bring into the Macabre family. The answer is only the very best, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure you’re all familiar with Cash Logan’s hit television show.”

  My stomach jumped to my throat, and Rainey banged my hand against her leg. Scanning the room, I was shocked not everyone was disgusted. Some faces lit up. On paper, Cash Logan was exactly what we needed to gain respect in a crowded entertainment landscape.

  But.

  “Not only will Mr. Logan headline each show nightly, but he will also be an executive producer.” Murmurs spread throughout the theater. We all knew Stephen’s cheap-ass reputation well enough to know that he wouldn’t be offering more entertainment without either raising prices or cutting staff. A name like Cash Logan didn’t come without a hefty price tag. Something had to give. More like someone. Or a few someones. “We’ll be introducing some exciting new acts, and—“

  “You’re replacing us!” Sylvio, one of the acrobats who was amazing, stood up and approached the stage. “We’re under contract!” His muscles bulged under his skin, and I was worried he may actually rip Stephen’s head from his neck while we all watched.

  “Let me clear up any misunderstandings.” No one had noticed Cash enter the ring while Sylvio threatened Stephen. “Yes, you are all under contract. But Vegas evolves fast. What’s your name?”

  “Sylvio,” he answered without the bravado he threatened Stephen with. Sylvio stood in the ring, his arm frozen mid-air from when he was going to grab Stephen. Only feet from our table, I could see the veins pulsing against his muscles.

  “You won’t have to worry anything if your talent is up to par, Sylvio,” Cash said with his usual easy amusement. He flipped a chair around backwards next to Stephen and straddled it. Nothing conventional about the new boss. “It’s not outside of the realm of expectations to have the show reevaluated and updated based on the needs and expectations of the audience. If they don’t buy tickets, your contract is worthless. We need to ensure that we have asses in each and every one of these seats every night. And I’m sure you’ve noticed tried and true doesn’t cut it around here. We need to be at the forefront of what’s happening in this town if we want to be noticed.”

  Sylvio nodded, then turned to go back to his seat, making the sign of the cross when Cash couldn’t see.

  “You think that copying a bunch of vampires is going to put us at the forefront?” someone called out from behind us. “It’s been done, bloodsucker. You’re late to the party.”

  The room gasped. Cash Logan had never come out publicly as a vampire. We’d all seen his magic show on TV. Everyone in Vegas had been given a quick education in vampire abilities in the last two years, thanks to Talis de Rancourt, and the similarities were striking. He didn’t deny it. We were all going to get to know him a lot better.

  “Not like this,” he said. “Not like this.”

  Everyone murmured among themselves as they dispersed, heading backstage to get ready for the show. Cash had pretty much negated the possibility of the question and answer period that Stephen promised. Rainey didn’t move, staring straight ahead. At first I thought she might be Seeing something, but then I realized she was just pissed off.

  “Let’s go relax,” I said as I squeezed her hand, brushing it up and down her thigh. “We can hang out in my dressing room before the show.” Rainey didn’t get a dressing room, since she was considered a vendor and not talent. She nodded and stood up.

  “Holly, I’d like to speak to you.” Somehow we all forgot Cash was still sitting backwards on his chair.

  “Tell him no,” Rainey whispered. “He’s already ruined the night.”

  I shrugged, and when she opened her mouth to protest, I kissed her. With a sigh, she followed me when I approached Cash.

  “Alone.” Cash smirked, still seated. Rainey squeezed my hand so tight I thought she’d break my fingers.

  “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of Rainey.” I rolled my eyes and attempted to act bored. Problem was, he knew better.

  Cash rose from his chair, and held his hand out to me. “I could, but I don’t want to.”

  I stared at it, knowing exactly what I was going to do but unsure how to go about it without hurting Rainey. Ignoring Cash, I turned back to her, putting the hand he expected me to give him on her arm. She shook her head slightly, and I kissed her again, resting my forehead against hers. “Meet me in my dressing room.”

  “Holly—”

  “He needs me.” I didn’t want to fight with Rainey in front of Cash. He knew enough of my weaknesses already.

  “So do I!” she protested, but I didn’t look back as
I broke away from her. I grabbed Cash’s hand and followed him backstage.

  “What’s going on with you two?” Cash raised an eyebrow as I fell into step beside him. Rainey was on our heels, complaining to anyone within earshot about loyalty and danger. It was one of those times her prophecies sounded crazy. Her nagging was getting on my nerves. She was worse than Lucille lately.

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Hardly.” He laughed, and I hoped he didn’t see me deflate. Right now, with Rainey sputtering behind us, I didn’t blame him. Honestly, I didn’t want him to be. I was just hoping to finally catch him off guard. “I think it’s beautiful.”

  “Where are we going?” I needed to focus. Rainey had stomped into my dressing room and slammed the door. We passed a cluster of my stunned coworkers, who had to be wondering what deal I made with the devil. They might think they could screw with Cash, but no one messed with me. Many girls in the city bragged of letting vampires drink from them, claiming it was a sexual experience. Anyone could survive a little blood donation.

  I was scarier than Cash Logan. It was the only thing that made this awful night better.

  He led me to the end of the hall, where he punched in a code to a long-neglected door. It revealed a staircase that headed down to Hell for all I knew. Basements weren’t really a thing in Vegas. If there was going to be a portal to Hell anywhere, this would be it.

  “I thought you’d like to see my new place. I just got settled in. I think I’m going to like it here.” The pitch black that greeted me at the bottom of the stairs was devoid of everything, even oxygen. A faint trace of incense attempted to cover the mustiness.

  “Aren’t there any lights?” I asked, afraid to move.

  “Not very resourceful of you.” Cash clicked his tongue as he hit a switch. Wall sconces illuminated, and still the room was dark. Dark wallpaper, and plush, blood red furniture. “What did you do before electricity?”