“Like, I totally can’t believe that Mr. Volk is dead and stuff,” Goldie said. Fortunately, her chest was much more manageable than Cyana’s, and it helped that she was wearing a normal dress instead of a dominatrix outfit. Still black, of course.

Unfortunately, her voice made me want to smash my head into one of the dressing room mirrors.

Apparently, demons could have valley girl accents. Yeah. I suppose it went along with the rivers of lava and eternal damnation Yaika was talking about.

“It’s just like, whoa, you know?” Goldie went on. “Like, one second he’s like there and stuff, then he’s… not and stuff.”

Yaika leaned over. “Wow,” she whispered in my ear. “What a fun person.”

Fun. As sad as it was, I knew Yaika wasn’t being sarcastic.

“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.” I kept my eyes on Goldie. “Can you tell us about the meeting you had with him last night?”

“For sure,” she nodded and her blonde hair bobbed along with her head. “But, like, it was really boring. He just, like, suddenly wanted to change all the choreography for our next show.”

I glanced around the dressing room. Even though it was in the opposite direction of the lounge, it was next to the bathrooms. That meant you had to pass right in front of Rayne’s desk if you wanted to go to Volk’s office.

Brad was by one of the well-lit mirrors with all his eyes glued to his notepad. You’d think he could multi-task with them, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Finally, I turned to Yaika next to me.

“Hmm?” Yaika tilted her head.

“Just to make sure…” I whispered to her. “Choreography is, uh… like the moves you have to do during a dance, right?”

Now that I was hearing it for the third time, I was just realizing I didn’t really understand what it meant.

“Goldie.” Yaika looked at her with her freakishly wide eyes. “Choreography is like the moves you have to do during a dance, right?”

Yeah. I guess I should have asked the popstar in the first place.

“That’s it! It’s pretty complicated, Princess,” Goldie said. “Like, I think the dancing part is probably what makes concerts so hard.”

“It’s… pretty hard, huh?” I asked, having never danced a second in my entire life. “Did Volk talk to you about your part individually?”

“Yeah,” Goldie groaned. “He totally made me run through the whole thing too.”

“Sounds like a lot of trouble,” Yaika sighed.

“Princess, you totally get it!” Goldie beamed, the batwings on her back flapping. “It’s, like, really difficult and stuff.”

Wait. For once, Yaika brought up a pretty good point.

“Why… did he do that?” I asked.

Goldie narrowed her eyes. “Why did he, like, do what?”

“Why did he change all the choreography right before a concert?” I asked. “Yai-… I mean, Princess Yaika’s right. It all seems like more trouble than it’s worth.”

Apparently, Yaika liked hearing that she was right because she grinned, the darkness in her pupils swimming around like a fish just under the surface of the water. Jeez, she looked creepy even when she was happy.

“Hmm…” Goldie looked up at the ceiling in thought, assuming she could think at all. She sat there for at least a minute before finally answering. “He, like, never said.”

Cool.

“Alright, so I’ll take it that nothing out of the ordinary happened during the meeting then,” I sighed. “What did you do after your meeting finished?”

“I, like, came here to the dressing room,” Goldie said.

“Why?”

“Because, I figured that if we were changing the dances…” She stood up and pointed down at her black sundress. “I would, like, go all out and change my whole outfit too.”

The image of her in her super normal dress flanked by two busty women in black leather popped into my mind. Yeah. That was an outfit change, alright.

“Did you ever leave this room at any point before the fire alarm went off?” I asked.

“Hmm, no, I don’t think so.” Goldie sat back down, pursing her lips together. “I was pretty, like, serious about figuring out what I was going to wear and all that.”

“Where did you go when you all split up to search for what set off the alarm?”

“I came back to the dressing room.” Her lips became progressively more and more duck-like. “Then I, like, heard Ms. Rayne scream and stuff and came running.”

“Okay.” I motioned to Yaika as I stood up. “That’s enough for now. Thanks for answering our questions.”

“Oh, like, no problem.”

“Ryley?” Yaika looked up at me.

I didn’t answer and walked out of the room. Yaika and Brad were quick to follow. When we were out in the hall, Yaika tugged on the sleeve of my shirt.

“I don’t get it.” She crossed her arms. “None of them say they killed Mr. Volk. Are you sure you’re doing this ‘investigating’ thing right?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “Obviously none of them are going to admit to being the real killer.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” I rested my back against the wall. “Whoever did it, they tried to make it seem like it was Violetta, remember? They aren’t going to just give themselves up after a few questions.”

Yaika puffed out her cheeks. “Then what are we supposed to do?”

“We just have to keep them talking. The more they talk, the bigger chance there is for one of them to slip up. It could take a while, but they’ll spill sooner or later.”

I had no idea what the hell I was saying. Would I even know if they slipped up in the first place?

Brad practically dropped his notebook. “Dude, we don’t have time for that.”

“Of course we do.”

“No, we really don’t!” Brad waved his tentacles through the air, almost giving me a PTSD flashback to when he took me to the dungeon.

I turned to Yaika. “What the hell’s he talking about?”

“Hmm?” Yaika stared back at me. “I think he’s talking about how the trial’s tonight.”

“Uhh, what the hell do you mean ‘tonight’?”

“Ryley,” Yaika was totally oblivious to my pain, a big dumb grin painted on her face. “I mean… that the trial’s tonight.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I yelled. “This isn’t enough time. How am I supposed to defend her if there’s no evidence?”

“Bro, just calm down,” Brad said, despite just freaking out about essentially the same thing ten seconds earlier. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Easy for him to say. His fucking life wasn’t riding on a trial judged by someone that had no idea what they were doing, not that I had any room to talk.

“You’re an expert, right?” Yaika gave me a thumbs up. “You’ll do fine. You said so yourself, you’ll make them slip up.”

“Can’t you ask your dad to give me another day at least?”

“Father said the trial’s already set up,” Yaika said. “We can’t cancel it now.”

This was a losing battle. A stupid battle, but a losing one nonetheless. If I was going to postpone this, I would need to bring it up with the king.

“How… much longer do we have before we have to go back to the castle?” I asked.

Brad lifted up a pocket watch with one of his tentacles. “About 5 minutes?”

Did he keep that… inside his body? Whatever. I didn’t have time to stand around with them. I took off running toward Volk’s office as fast as I could. If that was all the time I had, I would use every last second of it to find something. Anything. Anything at all.

When I got inside, I furiously went through all the drawers of his desk. They were filled with more papers, but I could tell they basically looked like the contracts Yaika told me about. Useless.

I got down on all fours and scanned the floor like some kind of miserable dog looking for food my owners dropped. Other than the paper scraps I found earlier, there was nothing. Just water from the sprinkler.

“Come on!” I yelled, jumping up. I ran over to the bookshelf and started yanking out books. I couldn’t read them, obviously, but maybe something would help me.

Or maybe something would… hit me.

As I jerked out another set of books, the shelf wobbled forward. “Oh shit…” Just as I realized what was happening, the shelf fell forward on top of me.

Could things possibly get any worse?

“Wow, Ryley.” I heard Yaika’s voice. “You’re really passionate about this.”

“Yeah,” I moaned, not even attempting to move. “Passionate. That’s me.”

“Huh?” it was Brad this time. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?” I asked.

It took Brad a moment to answer. “There’s something behind this shelf, bro.”

Brad might have well of just told me that Cyana had her top off, because I got out from under the shelf like my life depended on it. Well… I suppose, it kind of did.

“What is it?” I huffed.

A knife hung from Brad’s tentacle. Not just any knife, but a knife with red on the tip. A knife with blood on it.

I didn’t know what it meant, but I was so happy to see it that I could have cried.

Okay, I might have cried.

I might have cried a lot.