Dances With Ghosts - Erin McCarthy Page 0,2

be “tippy-toe” while Jerry wanted “lemon tree.”

I obediently said, “Lemon tree,” and Jake laughed.

Just like every time.

Relationships aren’t that hard. Just indulge your partner, even when you think it’s silly.

“I don’t think we’re going to be prepared to actually dance at this birthday party,” Jake said as he turned the car off. “We know like two steps. This might have been overambitious on my mother’s part.”

I was distracted by the thought of what awaited us inside, so I just made a non-committal sound. The studio had a window that faced the street and a sidewalk ran along it. If there was a body lying on the floor of the studio, surely someone walking past would have noticed it. I was really optimistic that we wouldn’t stumble on a corpse.

There is nothing awesome about discovering a body. I could go forever without finding another one, thanks. We walked across the parking lot around to the front of the building. I brought the bag with my heels to dance in and I took them out of the car just in case wires had gotten crossed and Carmen was somehow miraculously still alive and going to teach us a new move. I had on leggings and a tank top. It had seemed like reaching to wear a cute dress at my level of dance experience. I wasn’t there yet. You have to earn the cute dress.

“What’s wrong?” Jake asked, shooting me a suspicious look.

“What?” I widened my eyes in an attempt to look innocent. I’m not a great liar. “Nothing. Why would something be wrong?”

We turned the corner and Jake swore.

I glanced around frantically, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. “What? What’s going on?”

He pulled at the shoulder of his T-shirt. “A bird just crapped on me.”

There was a big blob of doo-doo on the cotton. “Ew.”

Jake yanked the door to the studio open, still muttering about flying rodents. “I’m going to have to wash my shirt out in the sink. This is stupid.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the dance lessons, birds pooping, or life in general was stupid, but as I followed him tentatively into the small dance space, I didn’t have time to even respond.

Jake’s arm came out and stopped me. “Bailey, stop. Back up and go out the front door and make sure no one else comes in here.”

My heart started to race. “Why? What’s going on?”

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Carmen is dead on the dance floor.”

The horror of the situation and his unintentional phrasing made me give a nervous giggle. Yep. I giggled. Our dance teacher was dead and I felt my cheeks burn in embarrassment that for whatever reason I had actually laughed. I used to do that as a kid in church. Something another parishioner would do would trigger a giggle, or my sister, Jen, would whisper to me and I would get the urge to laugh, which of course was massively inappropriate at mass. So, then I fought to contain it, which would make me want to laugh even more. I would be a wheezing, jiggling, red-faced mess until my mother would give me a look so withering it would erase all need to chortle out loud.

Jake’s look wasn’t quite like that, but it wasn’t filled with adoration either. He frowned. “Did you hear what I said? Carmen is dead.”

I nodded, not sure how to explain my reaction when I didn’t even understand it myself. I chanced a peek around his shoulder and saw that yes, Carmen was very much deceased, prone on the wood floor. There was blood pooled all around her.

“That wasn’t a heart attack,” I said, swallowing hard. “Do you think she fell and hit her head or something?”

“I don’t know. Go outside, Bailey.” He was pulling his phone out to call 911.

His voice tone had changed. He was no longer Jake, my boyfriend. He was Detective Marner, and I was annoying him.

“You knew she was dead, didn’t you?” he asked flatly, before turning away from me to talk to the operator.

Grateful I didn’t have to answer that question I decided to do what he had asked in the first place. I started to leave, but took one glance back at Carmen. The sight made me shudder. That was a lot of blood. The whole studio had the sweet sickly scent of it in the air.

Our lessons were private, so it was unlikely anyone else would come into the studio but I knew it was important to secure