Chapter Thirteen: Esselle

For two nights, I scoured the foyer for Lyewkin—chocolate hair, hazel eyes—only to flood with relief at his absence.

Instead of mixing him cocktails whilst hurling stones at his ego, and putting up with those bloody smirks left and right, I stared at the crackling embers of the fireplace, debating my next move and pondering my predicament.

I had to do something, but it couldn't be just anything. I considered snagging an heirloom—one important enough for its owner to throw a fit at its disappearance—and planting it on an usher. Then I realized the scheme was cliché. And if Lyewkin knew what I think he knew about what I happened to already know, he'd suspect me to do something equally rash.

I had to send him looking in the opposite direction, but I had to do so in a way that cleared my name. There could be no doubts of whether or not I was capable.

Two days of sizzling logs and crackling embers, and no ideas sprang to mind.

Until the third, when I slid open that blessed counter drawer to fetch a corkscrew, spotting the folded parchment Terrance offered me what felt like ages ago. Seeing it, opening it, and reading that title—FINAL ACT—prompted the vision I'd sought out those two nights.

I got this from one of the dressing hands backstage, Terrance's voice replayed in my mind. It marks the exact time of the faux gunshot.

There had to be at least fifty hands backstage, running about in ongoing mania. I had my doubts that Lyewkin yet considered cast and crew to be potential suspects. If I could execute the plan that hit me like a revelation, he'd have no choice but to start. Just like he'd have no choice but to rethink my involvement in this heirloom debacle.

My plan was genius, but it was risky. My success would be dependent on my execution. It would damn me or exonerate me, but those were the odds I was left with. I'd take those odds.

All that was left was to wait for the right time to strike.

➸

Since hatching my plan, I'd prepared all that I needed and waited for Lyewkin to return to the theater. In the days since he had last visited, a smidgen of me hoped he would never return. Though if truth be told, that impulsive, playful part of me hoped he would. My plan was too brilliant to be held at bay.

That part of me won. Lyewkin returned before the work-week's end.

I spotted him as soon as he entered, commanding the attention of too many fawning ladies to count. Amusing, to me, was the way he paid each one little time and even less attention, pushing his way through the crowd in a beeline for the house.

Lyewkin was back, and the day after I'd hatched my plan. The Gods truly were looking out for me, weren't they?

Though I'd be lying if I said my heart hadn't skipped a beat at the sight of him. It was nerves. Call it performance anxiety.

Tying my apron at the waist, its hem grazed the middle of my thighs, weighed down by a pouch of pilfered Djinn dust, my barely-ticking pocket-watch, the folded parchment Terrance had gifted me, and a banana.

At the end of my shift yesterday, I scouted the backstage corridors. I scouted every twist and turn and space and hall that the plan would force me to navigate.

I would head for the left wing, off to one side of the stage and up a miniature set of steps. After that, I'd back out to the hall, turn its corner, and beeline for the Director's Office. There was a map marked for whatever stagehand offered the pamphlet to Terrance—its notes and times coming in handy for my scheming.

I imagined the steps in my head, prepared for the buzz I would feel in the midst of it all. It was perfect—the deliberate plan.

I just had to await my moment. And pray to the Gods that no soul would screw it up by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Willow stuck to her developing habit of draining the crystal decanter of its unmixed wine. She guzzled some mouthfuls before seating service, and as I expected, some more after intermission. Which meant that nearly ten minutes before the curtains would close, and eight minutes before the gun was set to go off, the dust I'd sprinkled into the crystal decanter would kick in.

Right about… now.

My heart pounded once her eyelids began to flutter their way down, marking the beginning of a very short window of opportunity. Her soul escaped the blue of each iris, and I knew she was entirely gone by the fit of laughter that serenaded her body's contact with the limestone floor.

I spared no time, immediately escaping through the door parting the foyer and backstage network of corridors and rooms.

I passed offices and washrooms, storage closets with props strewn about, and costumes hanging from racks in disorderly lounges. Furthermore, I swatted my way through stagehands like they were flies, all conglomerating in too-narrow a walkway.

I checked my pocket-watch. And was right on time whilst ascending the steps to the stage's left wing, where I blended in with each laboring hand and was practically see-through given my size and stealth.

That's when I spotted him. Every decked out, powdered, glossed up inch of him. Antolie Diamond. Thee Antolie Diamond.

He was running through a sea of stagehands towards another sea of them, the latter holding out coats and paint and boots.

I made my way, not toward him, rather toward the break in the curtains he walked through to get to the stagehands who now showered him with a coat, traded his slippers for boots, and painted—literally painted—his hose from beige to black.

He took one step forward, where two stagehands to a side powdered his cheeks with talcum-coated puffs and fingered more gel through his hair.

After which he took off, toward me, with hurried steps and what looked to be a tense expression. Five more paces and he'd meet me, amidst a sea of crew and stagers calling out, "Break a leg!" And patting him atop the backs of his shoulders. Three more paces… two more... one.

Everything stopped.

Like a painting of utter chaos, crew members froze, Antolie froze, each flick of dust kicked up from the floor… completely frozen, but only for so long.

I reached one hand out to the holster sitting at his left hip—my other hand digging through my apron. And when one hand connected with the wooden handle of a pistol sitting in leather, the other connected with the rubbery skin of a banana sleeping in linen. The two traded places in the next tenth of a breath, and when time resumed, the roar of a crowd followed Antolie's grand reentrance to the stage.

The steel barrel of my stolen prop clanked against the pocket-watch resting alongside it in my apron. Of course, no one would be able to hear it in all the commotion.

Still, now was not the time to celebrate when the pistol had a destination of its own—one that certainly wasn't the pouch of my apron.

Descending the steps, nudging through more stagehands, them and I blending together like shoals of salmon in a river, I turned the corner of the corridor and made my way to the Director's Office.

Though the corridors were a maze in themselves, I made it to the office with ease, nestled between two dressing rooms in a vacant hall at the very back of the theater.

I made it, only to swear under my breath when the door wouldn't budge with a push or a pull. Why in Djinn's name would the director lock the door? Where would the key be? What could I do with the gun instead? My mind raced with thoughts, as I hurried back to the crowded hallways.

My eyes scoured pockets—none big enough to house the pistol—none sturdy enough to bear the weight of its brass.

Seizing my pocket-watch, I took note of the time. In only five minutes, Antolie's co-lead would be snatching the "gun" from his holster and delivering the show's final blow and crème de la crème of the play.

Too small. Too small. Too small. Every damn pocket was too small. Big enough but filled to the brim with crumpled parchment. Too small. Too small. Too small.

I swore over and over under my breath before—

Bingo.

One of the backstage porters was swinging a ring of keys around on his girdle. I stepped to one side of him, swiftly snatching the ring from its place whilst our bodies collided, which I'd found to be a common occurrence in such packed and frantic corridors. Clearly the porter did, too, seeing that he didn't bat an eyelash at our collision and kept on in the direction he was headed without so much as one faltering step.

I seized my pocket-watch again. Now only three minutes remained.

And like a miracle, it took me only two attempts to fit the proper key to the office's steel doorknob, which opened up to a roomful of—

Actors.

There were actors everywhere, and I swore under my breath for the thousandth time when I spotted them—draped over sofas, splayed over the floor, one of them occupying the seat closest the desk.

I hadn't planned for any of this—not for the door to be locked, nor for the room to be teeming with stagers who would spot and report my break-in.

Their heads turned toward me and the sound of the creaking door, but once their eyes met mine, the breath I'd been holding released in a sigh of relief. They were all entirely gone.

On another planet.

As high as the clouds in the sky… on dust. Their eyes were foggy, like Willow's, and their noses were topped in flakes of powder. Powder that must've been stripped of the empty leather pouches strewn about the floor.

I heaved a breath, gathered my courage, and stuck to the plan. For not a single nob in the room of comatose stagers would notice or mind… or remember. So this is why the door was locked, I thought to myself—the room becoming a course of breathing obstacles.

I nimbly leapt over limb after limb, limp torsos and heads, in a beeline for the desk. And the brass pistol fit snugly into one drawer, where pouches of dust padded its place. At least that much went according to plan.

When I left, I didn't bother with faking a coolness. I ran—locking the door behind me, doing away with the keys, and ripping through stagehand after stagehand in the quickest exit possible.

None minded, for many of them were just as frantic as I was. And if they could run about holding fake towers of wood and paper-mache, I could certainly run without appearing the least bit suspicious.

I exited through the same door I came in from, which opened to a silent foyer. If my measurements were correct, Willow would be waking from Djinn Land in roughly three minutes—in time for the house doors to open and nobs to think little of her heavy eyelids and red, veiny eyes.

I cooled a hand towel and lifted it to my forehead, catching my breath and cooling my skin. Then I crouched down beside Willow, setting the chilled cloth to her forehead, which rolled to one side as her foggy pupils began to clear.

"Esselle?" She grumbled, at last coming-to.

"You must have swooned," I lied, "But it's okay—I've been here with you the whole time."