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Music in the Dance
By Nalini Singh
It wasn’t raining this midnight, and Zuli actually had customers in her shop.
An entire gaggle of giggly bridesmaids dressed in sequined pink mini-dresses paired with sky high heels that made them tower over Zuli. The future bride was also an Amazonian goddess, though her mini dress was a frothy white and her mane of blond hair topped by a sparkly tiara.
They were young and pretty and a little drunk and happy and they made Zuli smile. “I’m only a 2.3 foreseer,” she’d told them when they first stumbled into the shop, honeybees who’d begun to buzz around looking at the items she had for sale, and oohing and aahing at her crystal ball. “But if I tell you something, it’ll be the truth.”
“Oh we know!” several of the women chorused. “That’s why we came to you!”
“I lost my engagement ring,” the bride whispered, and despite the hint of champagne on her breath, her eyes shimmered wet as she held out a hand covered with sparkles—except for a single important finger. “I can’t go home without my engagement ring.” A tear trickled down her face now. “Brady had it custom-made just for me.” She sniffled.
Two of her friends stroked her arms, the others huddling around her.
This was friendship. Sisterhood.
Zuli’s heart ached.
Growing up in Silence, she’d never had a chance to make friends like these—she’d always had to be so careful, never sure who would keep her secrets—and who’d turn her over to the Council.
The Arrows were like these girls, she found herself thinking. Maybe they didn’t wear pink or get sweetly tipsy on champagne, but they were united. Loyal to the bone to each other. Loyal enough to track down a fortune teller in a back corner of Vegas just because that fortune teller might be able to help one of their own.
“Tiff’s ring is the whole reason we’re here!” the bridesmaid with skin the same shade as Zuli’s own rich brown blurted out; the other woman’s cascade of glossy black braids was capped by sparkly pink beads that matched her dress. “Benny, over at the Triangle Bar? He heard us freaking out over the ring and thought you might be able to help. He said one time you told his cousin where to find his car after someone boosted it.”
Zuli remembered the brawny bouncer and his equally brawny cousin at once, now sent good thoughts up into the universe toward them. It was a relief to know that her loyal customers hadn’t fallen prey to Foxface’s slander. “I’ll do my very best,” she said, and indicated that the bride should take the customer chair across from her, the crystal ball in between them.
As she did so, she had the strangest sensation of being watched from outside the storefront. Her heart kicked, but she could see nothing in the neon-pink glow of her front window. And yet…
As she moved her fingers theatrically over the crystal ball, giving the women the full experience, she hoped both that Alejandro was watching—and that he wouldn’t think her foolish. She knew she wasn’t the kind of Psy people took seriously—not just because she was a 2.3, but because she wore a riot of color and had a waterfall of bells in her ears, and multiple bangles on her arms, and made her living as a Vegas fortune teller.
Color glinted, the bangles Alejandro had given her on his last visit catching the light.
Maybe he likes you just as you are, Zuli.
A whisper from the part of her that wanted to believe.
Cheeks warm, she held out her hands to the bride. “I need to touch you if you’re comfortable with it?”
The other woman put her hands into Zuli’s with the tactile generosity of the human that she was; Zuli wondered if humans would ever understand how much their warmth and willingness to touch affected Psy who’d been deprived of touch for a lifetime. And she hoped that no Psy ever breached this woman’s innocent trust.
Her fingers were slender and warm, her skin tanned, and her nails done up to shimmer and shine. And there, on her ring finger, a line of white that shouted of the missing ring.
“Do you see it?” the bride asked on another sniff.
A redheaded bridesmaid with skin so pale that Zuli knew it would burn in the Vegas sun if she didn’t take care, used a tissue to dab away the bride’s tears, careful not to smear her makeup. “Don’t worry, Tiffy. She’s going to find it. Benny said she was the best, didn’t he?”
Buoyed by their confidence, Zuli took a deep breath, closed her eyes—and pinpointed her foresight toward the empty line on the bride’s finger. But her ability ricocheted, unwilling to be directed.
Instead of the ring, it showed her a white clutch studded with diamantes.
The clutch in her vision sat on a vanity scattered with so many cosmetics that it looked like a cosmetics store. A perfect lipstick kiss was a little piece of art on the mirror, while a half-empty flute of champagne perched precariously on one corner of the vanity, a delicate diamond necklace curled around it.
Zuli could almost hear the echoes of the women getting ready, laughing and talking and giggling.
Despite the vision apparently having nothing to do with the lost ring, she didn’t break contact; she’d worked with her gift long enough to know that if she was seeing this clearly, it wasn’t happenstance. So she looked again at the lipsticks and blushes and other accoutrements, the dupes of which Zuli shopped for at the “Discount Palace”—then tried to learn how to use by watching the tutorials the humans and changelings put online.
Why was she seeing this room? What was this future?
The image glitched. All the makeup had been tidied away, and the woman who was unscrewing a three-quarters-empty pot of what appeared to be face cream had a gold wedding band on her ring finger. No tan now, as if this future took place on a winter’s night far from summer’s kiss.
The bride dipped her finger into the cream…
Zuli’s lips curved.
Opening her eyes, she squeezed the other woman’s hands. “Was the ring loose?”
A quick nod. “I went on a diet, you know for the dress? I wanted to look perfect for our wedding day. But it wasn’t crazy loose or anything. I would’ve put it safely on my necklace if it had been like that.”
Zuli liked nothing better than giving clients good news. As she did now. “Your ring fell into a light blue pot of cream, probably eased off because of the slickness.” Where it had sunk unnoticed to the bottom, not to be found until the bride reached the last quarter of the pot.
“The pot has a rose pattern on it, and in my vision, was surrounded by about a hundred lipsticks, perfumes, and eyeliners, along with an exquisite diamond necklace with a floral motif, on a white vanity with an oval-shaped mirror. The vanity looks antique—not like a hotel vanity. Too much detailed woodwork, fragile and lovely.”
Gasps all around.
“That’s my great-grandmama’s necklace,” the bride whispered, her hand at her throat. “The vanity is mine, passed down from my other great-grandmama. We’re all going to get ready in my home for the wedding. But why would you see that?”
“I see the future,” Zuli reminded her. “And I saw you finding the ring on a winter’s day in the bottom of the pot of cream.”
“Oh, wow!” the bridesmaid with the braids said on the heels of the bride’s wide-eyed gasp. “You put that rose hip balm on under your makeup today, Tiff! Remember, we were saying how nice it smelled.”
The bride’s hands flew to her mouth. “Why didn’t I notice the ring slipping off? I didn’t realize until we were in the clubs.”
“It was crazy,” another bridesmaid said. “We were all drinking and getting dressed.”
The bride reached out to squeeze Zuli’s hands, her face aglow with hope. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” Zuli assured her. “It’s sitting safe and sound in that pot of balm.” It looked like not everything was cream; she’d have to see if the Discount Palace stocked rose hip balm.
The bridesmaids danced and clapped, while the bride beamed. And in the end, each and every woman had to have a reading—and were cheerfully pleased by the little things Zuli was able to tell them.
They left an enormous tip and the scent of their perfumes in the shop when they exited a living bouquet of color and happiness.
Sighing, Zuli went to her open doorway and looked out, searching for the man with the eyes of a puma…and her breath hitched. “There you are,” she said, when he was still too far away to hear her, a powerful silhouette in the night.
“Zuli.”
Her entire body clenched at the shape of her name on the perfect curves of his lips. The only softness in that face with its hard planes and eyes of puma gold. “Hi.” It came out more breath than sound.
Alejandro didn’t move, didn’t tell her to get out of the doorway so he could step inside. He just…looked at her. As if she was fascinating.
It should’ve been disconcerting.
Instead, it made her cheeks burn and her heart skitter. “Thank you for the bangles.”
No movement, no acknowledgment…and his eyes, those beautiful eyes, were no longer as present as they’d been only a moment ago.
Is Alejandro lost?
Her hand clenched in her skirts, the heat coalescing into an angry burn in her chest as she stepped back in a ripple of music that came from the tiny bells around her ankles and on her skirt. “Come in.”
The man who entered her shop this night wasn’t the same one who’d listened to her perform “Freedom.” He moved with the same deadly stealth, was obviously dangerous…but the heart of him, it was missing, gone somewhere she couldn’t sense.
You’ll be lost one day, but you can find your way home if you follow the notes. Just follow the notes.
The echo of her own prophecy had her straightening her spine, the rage morphing into determination. “I’ll get my violin.”
He watched her go, and had locked the door by the time she returned, but he remained by that door, his eyes in constant motion as he searched her little shop. As if he knew something was wrong, but couldn’t quite understand what.
Lifting the violin to her shoulder without further words, Zuli began to play. Surrounding him in her fury and her focus and her refusal to allow the monsters who had done this to him, win. Setting out a path for him to follow home.
Fast and hard, she played, music that didn’t soar but that demanded.
LISTEN. LISTEN.
His gaze locked on her, he stood unmoving…and then he was turning to wrench open the door and stride out into the darkness.
Breaking off mid-stroke, Zuli tried to run after him. But he was gone, a telekinetic who she now knew for certain could teleport. Sweat dampened her skin from the intensity of her playing, but it was another kind of moisture that scalded her irises.
Frustrated and so angry her entire body vibrated, she left her door rebelliously open and began to play again. This time, she chose a piece that was all about revolution and overthrowing empire. It was a piece meant for an orchestra, but while she had no bass line, no wind instruments, no drums to join her, she had her rage.
It flowed out of her in a crescendo and at the end of it, she was left breathless, her heart pounding as she stared out into the night. He was gone; she knew he was gone. And still, she hoped that he hadn’t left after all, that he’d been out there all this time, his face turned toward her shout of rebellion.
Listen, Alejandro! Listen!
A rustling wind, flicking a crumpled candy wrapper down the empty street. Just before the door of the tattoo shop next door swung open, her neighbor poking out his head to say, “Badass, Zuli. Kudos babe.”
Zuli gave a curt nod to the man whose only crime was that he wasn’t Alejandro.
“Thanks.” Stepping back into her shop as the tattooist turned to answer a client’s question, she shut and locked the door, then made her way upstairs to the little apartment that came with this shopfront. It wasn’t much, a single room that she’d partitioned with a curtain of sparkling beads—rainbow colors up here—into a bedroom, and a living area.
The “bedroom” had just enough space for her futon, which she’d plumped up with plenty of cheap but warm and colorful blankets. As for her clothes, she stored them in an open “wardrobe” that was just a metal shelving rack her other neighbor—a shop that sold legal mind-altering substances to humans and changelings—had been throwing out.
The living room boasted a plump love seat she’d found in an estate sale, then recovered herself using dark blue velvet. She’d finished it off with multiple colored cushions, and a handknitted blanket in bright pink, the latter a gift from one of her favorite customers. On the floor was a faux-Persian rug, and she’d decorated the walls with pretty art and postcards from faraway places, crystals, and of course, countless climbing plants.
“Really, Zuli?” her mother had said the last time she and Zuli’s father had visited. “You’d have a far more relaxing ambience if you went minimalist.”
Zuli had just laughed and hugged her mother, because that same “should be minimalist” woman was the one who’d bought her most of the cushions. Her raised-in-Silence parents might not understand her, but they loved her and wanted her happy. So each time her mother saw happy, colorful home décor that she knew would fit Zuli’s apartment, she picked it up for her daughter.
Love was also why her father, Rex, had helped her put up a bench in her tiny kitchenette area. It did the job…mostly. Rex wasn’t the handyman type, but that he’d tried, it meant everything.
Now, after kicking off her shoes at the door, she took the seven steps necessary to cross her living area and enter the kitchenette, then put on some milk for hot cocoa. Needless to say, Zuli had never been fond of the whole “tasteless nutrient bars and drinks” food regime of her race—she’d been sneaking real food since she was small.
Because even in the most profound depths of Silence, no one had really watched the low Gradients. So long as Zuli made sure to scrape by on her Silence tests and kept out of the way, she’d been free to live her life.
As the water began to boil, she picked up the jar of cocoa for which she paid a premium because she’d rather not have cocoa than endure the abominable fake koka that some—Psy—manufacturer was attempting to make a thing.
A knock.
She jumped, her eyes flaring wide.
Her apartment door was inside the shop. The fire exit was literally a window that led out onto a tiny metal balcony and an equally rickety ladder.
“Teleporter,” she whispered, but because she had a brain, picked up her saucepan of boiling milk by the handle as she crossed the living area. “Hello?”
“Zuli.”
Her heart kicked.
Throat dry, she threw back the lock and opened the door.
His eyes…they were his again. A feral gold tinged with green, and tormented by a pain that reignited her rage.
Even as she stepped back in silent invitation, he said, “I took a teleport lock of your shop. Invasion of privacy.”
He was warning her, she realized. Letting her know that if she let him into her apartment, he could then enter it whenever he felt like it.
Zuli Anne Flowers had grown up learning to be careful who she trusted…and to trust her own instincts.
She stepped back. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
His eyes went to her hand and the saucepan of boiled milk.
“I was making cocoa,” she said. “Do you want some?”
When he shook his head, she decided to take the saucepan back into the kitchen. No point in closing the door with Alejandro in the apartment—he barely fit as it was, all muscle and jungle cat strength as he fingered the pink blanket, and seemed to take in every single little ornament and plant and knick-knack that crowded her space.
She wondered if he saw chaos, or beauty.
Needing the cocoa to calm herself down, she began to mix it up. “Why did you leave?” She had no right to ask the question, and yet she knew she had to—because if they were going to get Alejandro on the road home, he had to listen to the notes.
He picked up a pretty blue-green crystal and played it over and through his fingers as he moved two steps and was suddenly in her kitchen area, sucking all the air out of the space. “I…” A shake of his head, a tight frown. “I don’t like being lost around you.”
Zuli’s spoon clanked against the edge of the handmade mug given to her by another client. “Don’t go again,” she whispered. “You’re starting to find your way home, but you have to stay on the path.”
He fisted, then flexed his right hand, over and over again before walking back into her living area, where he stared at the glowing lava lamp she’d discovered in a curio shop. “This lamp serves no function. The light is limited at best.”
“Everything serves a function, Alejandro,” she said after a long sip of her drink. “Even if that function is simply to be fun and pretty and to make the world less hard.”
Alejandro turned to look at her over his shoulder. “You make music when you walk.”
Putting her mug on the counter—which wobbled—she lifted her skirts enough to show him her anklets. She raised a foot, moved it to make the bells sing. “I go to dance classes at the community center in the daytime. We get to spin with our skirts, and the bells are a symphony.”
Alejandro’s eyes lingered on her ankles before rising to her face once again. “Dance?”
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