Dance of Madness (The Darkest Dance #3)

Chapter 1

1

MILENA

What the fuck were you thinking?

The wind kicks up, like the very air around me is trying to warn me back.

Although it's early summer, I find myself hugging my arms around me against a sudden chill, my hands rubbing briskly as I stare up Greymoor Manor, looming over me.

Old. Ivy-covered. Beautiful, in a forgotten sort of way.

And terrifying .

Haunted mansions tend to be like that.

Okay…not actually haunted. Not in my opinion, at least. I don’t believe in ghosts, or the supernatural, or an afterlife, or really religion at all, despite my mother’s efforts when I was younger.

Do you need to believe in God to believe in ghosts?

I'm not sure.

Instead of dwelling on the question, I suck my bottom lip between my teeth and lift my eyes up to the old mansion.

Gothic columns, iron railings, stone lions half-eaten by ivy and time.

Greymoor Manor perches like a looming gargoyle at the top of Carnegie Hill, partly cloaked in shadows.

A former Gilded Age wonder, it’s been abandoned since at least the 1980s.

Well, not lived in .

Abandoned would suggest “forgotten”.

But ever since I can remember, there’s been a heavy padlock on the grand front door.

So, not abandoned. Just…

closed off.

In middle school, even high school, my friends and I used to dare each other to run past the place.

If we were feeling especially reckless—or brave, depending on your point of view—the challenge would escalate to going all the way up to the front door and knocking, which would inevitably conclude with everyone screaming and gigging nervously as we all ran away.

I swallow and ignore the spine-tingling sensation that something is watching .

Ghosts aren’t real. It’s just a fucking old house no one lives in anymore.

I take a step up the wide, cracked front staircase, heels snapping like muffled gunshots.

Somewhere behind me, a car passes.

Otherwise, it’s dead silent.

Not haunted.

This is so fucking stupid.

I’m here because of Alicia.

I can’t stand bullies, and yet I seem unable to back down from them.

And Alicia Houghton is a class-A bully.

…That's a nice way of saying “cunty bitch with a perpetual Regina George mean-girl stick shoved up her ass.”

I have no idea how or why she was at the party I just left. Roman—the older brother of Evelina, one of my besties—threw it at their dad’s sprawling townhouse on 59 th Street, right on the Park. As expected, it was crawling with a who’s-who of the young, moneyed, powerful, and mostly Bratva-connected: heirs to various criminal empires, like Evelina and Roman.

Like me.

Evie’s dad runs the Nikitin Bratva. Mine runs the Kalishnik Bratva.

Alicia’s father is a notorious Wall Street shark, which makes him arguably a bigger criminal than either my Papa or Evie’s. She was probably only at the party because she’s friends with Irina Lenkova, who is Bratva-connected.

Alicia and Irina both used to dance with us at the Zakharova up until maybe a year and a half ago, when they both left.

Thank God .

And of course it would totally be like Alicia to start an eye-rolling game of Truth or Dare at that party, like we’re still in prep school.

I should’ve known she’d pull something like this. Bullies hate being stood up to, and I made a career of standing up to that bitch when she was still dancing with the Zakharova, mainly because she was relentless with both Evelina and our friend Bianca.

Apparently she’s remembered that, because the second I was dumb enough to join the stupid game tonight, she lasered right in on me.

“Scared, Milena?” she’d asked, a perfect little smirk painted across her glossed-up lips. “Maybe you should pick truth instead. Wouldn’t want to tarnish your tiara or crack those glass slippers.”

I chose dare. Of course. My pride is a stupid, reckless thing.

And what was the dare? “Go to Greymoor, alone, tonight.”

Take something.

Leave something.

And record myself in the primary bedroom on the third floor saying, “ There’s no such thing as monsters. ”

Which brings us to the present, and me standing alone, in my heels, at the front door to the place we used to dare each other to run past, screaming.

I look down at the keypad lock on the front door. Alicia had told me the combination with a smug little glint in her eye, saying a “friend” gave it to her. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

But whatever. I’m here. Alicia is still a cunt, and I’m still more than happy to shove her shitty attitude in her face.

Let’s do this.

I enter the code.

There's a soft click, as if it’s been waiting for me.

I press my palm to the old brass doorknob, twist, then push.

My pulse skips as the door opens with a deep, aching creak, before swinging into the darkness within.

My nose wrinkles slightly at the smell of rust, cold stone and something else, old and forgotten.

Then I step inside and the door groans shut behind me, swallowing the last of the streetlight.

It’s dark in here, with the heavy curtains mostly blocking out the streetlight from outside.

I fumble for my phone and turn on the flashlight.

A pale beam slices through the dust-choked air, sweeping over the ghostly shapes of furniture covered in old sheets.

The wood floor creaks under my weight when I step forward, sending a ripple up my spine.

Ghosts aren’t real. Ghosts aren't real. Ghosts aren't real.

The Gilded Age mansion is gigantic .

I remember reading once that the old manor is pushing fifteen thousand square feet.

Columns line the entrance hall.

Wallpaper that looks like it was once ivory and gold peels from the walls in soft curls.

A cobwebby chandelier drips crystal from the ceiling like frozen tears.

Lady Greymoor had great taste: great, and expensive .

Luckily, aside from being by all accounts a bastard , Lord Greymoor—yes, they were an actual Lord and Lady—was grotesquely wealthy.

When he decided to ditch Lady Greymoor for a floozy half her age, his spurned wife took him to the cleaners and used that fuck-you money to build one of the most stately, grandiose mansions of its day in Manhattan.

And it's her bedroom in said grandiose mansion in which I’m supposed to record myself saying “there’s no such things as monsters”. A socialite from the Gilded Age who married into old money and then disappeared into rumor. Some stories say she went mad. Other, more grotesque ones claim she ended up murdering her ex and his new fling by walling them up in this very house.

Honestly, my bet—my hope—is that Lady Greymoor, God bless her, spent every last dime of that fucker’s money on food, wine, fun, and hot Gilded Age boys.

My thoughts on the former owner of the house fade as I drift deeper into it. I step into a grand salon room and slip past a grand piano swaddled in muslin, the yellowing and cracked keys peeking out from under the sheet.

There’s something romantic about it all. It's the kind of place where ghosts—should you believe in them—might linger.

Not because they’re angry, but because they just loved it too much to leave.

I think about Alicia’s instructions again: Take something.

Leave something. Say the words.

Without thinking, I walk over to an old armchair in the corner and sink down onto the sheet covering it.

Dust bunnies float into the air like little ballerinas, dancing in the still, heavy air.

For a minute, I consider just staying put .

Haunted or not, it's peaceful here, like the world has stopped screaming in your face. No Madame Kuzmina, the artistic director of the Zakharova, telling me to start from the beginning again , or to put in more grueling hours perfecting my technique. None of the expectations that come with being the daughter of one of the world's most powerful, feared, and respected Bratva kingpins.

Just me, and this old house.

I push to my feet and trail my fingers along the edge of a console table, tracing through a thick layer of dust. From the salon, I move through a small servants' hallway into the library. It’s in here that my brows arch when I lift my eyes to the extra-tall ceiling.

Holy shit .

The shelves stretch from floor to ceiling, carved from dark wood and filled with hundreds of books. Maybe a thousand, or more. Most of them are tucked behind glass-paned doors, as if the house is still trying to protect them.

Keep moving. Do the thing and then call Evelina before she freaks out and worries you’ve been dragged down to Hell by an evil spirit .

I might not believe in ghosts. But Evelina, my wonderful if extremely sheltered and superstitious friend, believes enough for both of us, and was positively beside herself that I took this dumb dare tonight.

I turn to leave the library and find the stairs to Lady Greymoor’s old bedroom, then pause.

It’s like a compulsion at this point. I simply cannot be in a room full of books and not look for it. And, come on: if a copy of a certain 1700’s book from the Sturm and Drang period of German literature is going to be anywhere, I would bet that a place like this is it.

Before I can convince myself to just drop it, I’m already at one of the massive shelves, scanning the spines of the old leatherbound books. Seriously, there's at least a thousand books here.

Mercifully, I realize pretty fast that they’re alphabetized by author.

I trace my finger over another shelf, with the “G” names.

…Wait.

Everything else in the house is covered in dust. But the bookshelves, even the ones not behind glass doors—like this one—aren’t.

It’s as if the books themselves are old, but haven’t actually been here that long.

As if someone placed them here recently…

A shiver licks up my spine.

Don’t be ridiculous.

I shake the thought away and keep tracing over the spines until I come to a sudden halt at G-O-E .

Goethe. As in Johann Wolfgang Goethe, author of the famous line “be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

Why yes, I am a huge fucking dork, thank you for asking.

And right there under my finger is the very book I was curious about finding here: The Sorrows of Young Werther.

I whisper the title out loud like it’s a secret.

It’s an old edition, the leather binding dry and cracked.

I slide it out gently, almost reverently.

I'll admit, it’s… weird for your favorite book to be a super moody and emo German book from the late seventeen hundreds. Especially one written in epistolary fashion—as in, a series of letters. And, yes, if I picked it up for the first time now , it might not even be in my top one hundred books.

But this book came to me at a perfectly wrecked time in my life. I was fifteen and my mom had just died when our English professor at prep school assigned it. Where everyone else bitched and moaned about it, I ended up curling up in the corner of the ballet studio after class every day and devouring it.

It was the first thing that made the ache in my chest feel understood.

Take something. Leave something.

I feel a brief pang of guilt, but then shake it off. Is it even stealing if no one’s lived here for at least eighty years?

I decide that it’s not, and in the same instant, I decide that I’m taking this book home with me today.

Finding the book, though, is only the first part of my compulsion when it comes to dear Werther and his sorrowful, weepy letters. I swallow, hesitating, like I’m gearing up to yank off a present's wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

I’m just about to open the cover to see if it’s written on the first page when a sound cuts through the silence.

Creak .

A dagger made of ice plunges into my heart.

I whirl, clamping the book shut as my eyes stab into the darkness, a gasp choking in my throat.

There’s nothing there.

No one …

“Hello?” I call softly.

Right, like ghosts are going to respond.

Not that you believe in them…

The hair on my arms lifts in the ensuing silence.

My heart slams against my chest as I sweep the flashlight toward the doorway.

Still nothing.

I swallow, tucking the book more tightly under my arm.

Time to finish this dumb dare and go home.

It was just the house settling, or the wind , I tell myself as my footsteps echo through the empty house.

Empty .

I say it twice more in my head in an attempt to ground myself and shake off the cold sensation finger-walking up my spine.

I grip the book tighter, fingers pressing into the leather spine as I step carefully out of the library.

I don’t run up the stairs to take the video.

I'm damned if I'll give Alicia the satisfaction of hearing that I'm out of breath when I record it.

The grand staircase curves upward in a soft spiral, each step creaking faintly under my weight as I climb. Every sound feels amplified in here: my own breathing, the quiet scrape of my heels on the stairs. I feel like I’m walking through someone else’s memory.

Halfway up, I pause and glance behind me into the darkness below.

Yeah, 'cause that’s always a good idea, idiot .

Of course, there’s still nothing there.

Just the library door, hanging open like a dark, waiting maw.

I turn and keep going.

I skip the second floor and go straight to the third.

At the top, the wide hallway is lined with cracked sconces and faded portraits.

The paint has peeled from the ceiling in delicate curls, same as the wallpaper on the first floor.

Then I see what must be the double doors to Lady Greymoor’s bedchamber.

The wood is darker than in the rest of the house—heavy mahogany, with a carved crest I don’t recognize.

A woman’s face is etched in profile, wreathed in thorns.

As much as I hate to admit it, I am a little freaked out right now.

But somehow, seeing her wreathed face carved into her bedroom door in the giant-ass mansion she bought with her prick of an ex-husband’s money brings a smile to my face.

I think Lady Greymoor and I would have gotten along swimmingly.

I hesitate at the double doors, hand hovering near the knob.

Take something, leave something, say the words.

As in, let’s get this over with.

My heart’s pounding as I open the door.

Inside, the air is cooler and a bit more stagnant.

The room is enormous, the ceiling arching high above, the windows hidden behind thick velvet curtains.

A mirror, warped with age, hangs across from the bed.

I catch my reflection in it when I turn to face it: my face is paler, my eyes a little wider than I thought they would be.

I feel like I’m intruding.

Weirdly, the bed is actually made —the sheets, quilt, blankets and pillowcases are still there from whenever the house finally shut its front door.

And like the bookshelves downstairs, they aren't covered in dust, or faded with age.

They look like someone made this bed not long ago.

Somewhere in the house, a sound crackles through the darkness, and my blood turns cold.

Just a step creaking. A wall settling, that's all.

…Maybe the wind?

My throat tightens as icy fingers curl around my heart.

I need to get the fuck out of here .

My hand trembles as I lift my phone again.

The flashlight reflects off the mirror, making the room look twice as large.

Twice as empty.

I switch to the camera and take a deep breath.

Just say it and leave .

I lift the phone to my face.

My lips feel stiff, like they’ve forgotten how to form words.

I stop the recording, take another shaky breath, then hit the record button again.

“ There’s no such thing as monsters ,” I manage to choke out, throwing in a sarcastic eye roll for Alicia’s benefit before I smirk at the camera.

“There’s no such thing as monsters,” I say again, the unnerving feeling of earlier melting away.

Good, now I can get the actual fuck out of?—

“That’s where you’re wrong, little princess.”

The voice cuts through the dark like a blade.

Low. Rough. Amused.

My body locks up.

“They very much do exist.”