“Consequences?”
“Extensive consequences.” His tail curls around my waist. “Possibly involving embarrassment on a cosmic scale. I’ve had three centuries to plan.”
“You’ve been planning revenge for three centuries?”
“What else was I going to do during the boring parts of eternal servitude?”
A laugh escapes me, surprising us both.
“There’s the spirit.” Mal cups my face in his hands. “We can do this, Izzie. The wards will hold. The showcase will happen. And you’re going to be magnificent.”
I want to believe him.
I choose to believe him.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Let’s get this place cleaned up. We have a recital tomorrow and a showcase to win.”
The rest of the day is a blur of activity. We recruit help—not just Bianca and the parents, but neighbors, friends, anyone whohappens to walk past and can be convinced to grab a mop. The Bellamy Cove gossip network, usually the bane of my existence, actually works in my favor for once. By evening, I have a small army of volunteers helping restore the studio to functionality.
Mal works alongside everyone else, his supernatural strength making light work of moving heavy equipment and his demonic charm keeping spirits high. I catch him making one of the most skeptical parents laugh so hard she snorts, and I file that away as evidence that he might actually be good for something besides driving me crazy.
By midnight, the main studio is functional again. Not perfect—the floor is still damp in patches, and several pieces of equipment need professional repair—but functional enough for a children’s recital.
The costumes are another matter.
I’m sitting in the storage room, surveying the damage, when Mal finds me. Eleven tutus are completely destroyed. Eight more are stained beyond repair. That’s nineteen costumes out of twenty-three—nearly the entire junior ballet ensemble.
“I can’t fix this in time.” The admission comes out defeated. “I can reschedule classes. I can dry floors. But I can’t make nineteen new tutus by tomorrow afternoon.”
Mal sits down beside me, his shoulder warm against mine. “What if you don’t have to?”
“What do you mean?”
“The costumes were for ‘The Firefly Dance,’ right? The piece about lights in the darkness?”
I nod, not seeing where he’s going.
“What if instead of trying to replace what was lost, we change the concept? The children could wear simple black leotards—basic costume, easy to provide—and we add actual lights. Small LED clips, nothing expensive. The dance becomes about the children themselves being the fireflies, not their costumes.”
I stare at him.
“That’s... actually brilliant.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m always surprised when you’re helpful instead of chaotic.”
“Chaos and creativity aren’t mutually exclusive.” He grins. “Sometimes the best solutions come from abandoning the original plan entirely.”
Sometimes the best solutions come from abandoning the original plan entirely.
The words echo in my head, taking on a meaning beyond costume emergencies.
For my entire life, I’ve had a plan. A vision of perfection. A specific path to success that required everything to go exactly right. When obstacles appeared, I pushed harder, worked longer, forced reality to conform to my expectations.
But maybe that’s not the only way.
Maybe sometimes you have to let the flood destroy the tutus. Maybe sometimes you dance in puddles instead of on dry floors. Maybe sometimes the unexpected path leads somewhere better than the one you planned.
