Originally written for the GILbert challenge hosted by OfficialBooksGalore and FairytaleCommunity

And also the winning entry of that contest!

Dancing Princesses

Adam Greene is not happy.

He sighs as he pulls out his handkerchief from his pocket and with unsteady hands, wipes his forehead.

Before him lays the body of 17-year-old Peony Bailey, still in her pink unitard, coat thrown over hastily to protect her from the chilly autumn breeze. She lays, unmoving, unbreathing. Tendrils of golden hair, loosened from her bun, fall across her face, her pink lips. Her feet are bare, battered and bloodied from various cuts and abrasions, black and blue as if smashed with a hammer, her toes and ankles broken.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and squints his eyes. Not another one, he thinks.

It doesn't help that the market place is full of people, full of potential witnesses. All they seem to remember is seeing her dance across the street from the ballet studio, on her way to pick up a smoothie at the juice bar. No one saw her die or bothered to look.

Adam sighs again, reminded of the ten pairs of ballet shoes sitting on his desk at the police station. Ten pairs of shoes, that despite being bought just a couple of weeks ago, are now worn out and tattered, almost falling apart at the seams, pale silk torn and stained with specks of dried blood. As if they've been used for years.

Just like Peony's shoes.

He thinks of the ten girls, now eleven. How they used to be dancing princesses once, twirling and swirling around in their tutus, enchanting their audience. Now, they are nothing but cold bodies, beautiful corpses lining the morgue hall.

He doesn't know who - or what - kills them. Whether it's just a bloodthirsty killer or a witch, who's cursed them. He doesn't know why these girls had to die.

He just knows, there's a twelfth pair of ballet shoes out there somewhere and a girl that wears them, twirls in them and dreams of becoming a dancing princess one day.

And he has to find her before she dances herself to death as well.