V

"I am Devin Star, president of D the rest of the frightening creatures had left to converse with others. "Or star in a soap opera."

Death whipped his attention to the chupacabra so quickly that I thought Ace's head would snap off his neck. "Why don't you suck me, leech? Go find a goat in the lobby to stick your filthy fingers in."

Appalled, the chupacabra threw down his napkin, shoved his chair back, and stormed off.

"Here's the thing, cupcake," Death said, lowering his voice back to a huskier level again. "You're getting yourself worked up about you and me, and you're making a scene. If you make a scene, I'm going to blow a fuse." He picked up his butter knife, twirling it once around his fingers. "And if I blow a fuse, I'll lose my chance of getting my corpse back tonight. If you are the reason I don't get my corpse back . . . " He released a harsh laugh. "You better believe your body will be next in line for my taking."

We sat in silence. It felt like I was at prom with a terrible date, and I desperately wanted to go home and watch Netflix.

Out of nowhere, the lights shut off, blanketing the room with shadows. Death reached for me in an instant, his hand encircling my wrist. A slow piece of instrumental music broke the silence. A spotlight aimed at the ceiling outlined a man dressed in black and a woman dressed in white. They both wore beautiful lace masks and dangled from a web of silk ribbons, their bodies partially intertwined as they rotated slowly.

The music picked up, and the man threw himself away from the woman and dove backward, falling headfirst toward the ground like a diver as he untangled himself from the silk. My heart caught in my throat. The spotlight went off, and some of the audience screamed, thinking his fall was accidental.

Another spotlight went on, this time at the center of the ballroom. The man now stood there, motionless, with his hand outstretched toward the woman, who'd somehow dropped from the ceiling and stood beside him. The audience exploded in applause over the trick. Elegantly posed around them were men and women in dark clothes with exotic masks, gelled-back hair, and makeup that contoured their facial structures, adding an eerie, skeleton-like appearance to the actors.

The man in black and the woman in white performed a pas de deux, their feet gliding across the floor as if it were ice. They slid expertly around the ballroom, wowing the audience with various flips and twists. They moved closer and closer together but never touched. Whenever the man was about to embrace her, she'd slip away. To me, this performance expressed a story of two people who passionately desired each other but could never be together.

The music altered, and the lights came up. The dancers broke away from the floor in elegant pirouettes and flips. They paired up with members of the audience, urging them onto the floor to dance. The dancers would then go back and pull another person onto the floor, pairing them with their previous partner, and so on.

"Dance with me." Death rose beside my chair with his hand outstretched toward me. "We'll get closer to the stage this way, where Devin is seated."

I glanced at his hand. "No."

There was a flicker of emotion in his eyes, which evaporated like smoke. "Why not? Scared?"

Besides the fact that it felt so weird to be dancing with a possessed man, it was also weird to wrap my head around the fact that Death himself was asking me to dance.

"Not at all," I replied. "I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a melon scooper than dance with you."

"You forget our deal," he threatened.

I turned my attention back to the man in black and the woman in white along with the background dancers.

"I can't dance, not like that," I admitted.

"The music is hexed," Death informed me. "Everyone knows the moves without dancing it before. The enactment you just watched is the prelude to Eternal Ballet of the Seraph. It's presented every few years on the eve of Halloween for Lucifer's entertainment. Last couple standing is the most receptive to the magic of the hex." He motioned impatiently for me to take his hand. "Where's that competitive side of yours? Last time I checked, you were a Disco Rebel pro."

My mind betrayed me as it jumped back to the carnival when David Star and I had competed against one another. That was the first night in a while I'd let my hair down.

I reached for his hand.