“Who called her that?” Zara asks.
“You mean besides everyone? The entire crew saw you two holding hands. Not. Very. Discreet.”
“Well, she’s gone,” Zara says, stubbing the toes of one boot against the heel of the other so she can kick it off. Her toes slip, and even that tiny failure floods her with anger. “I don’t think she’ll ever talk to me again. Eli’s like that. All or nothing.”
“That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” The irony of Kestrel being the one to say it makes Zara laugh so hard that she has to pretend she was coughing.
Kestrel twists to reveal that she’s curled up around a dusty bottle of Scotch. She offers it to Zara with a flourish. “My gift to you.”
Zara considers the bottle. She considers the last few days of her life. She takes a tentative sip. “Tastes like hellfire.” It’s a very Eli way to think of it, which is comforting and painful all at once. She doesn’t want to stop thinking Eli thoughts. She doesn’t want to go back to the Aurelia without her.
Zara could have walked away and hoped that Leopold would spare their careers. That he wouldn’t hurt them in even worse ways. But she couldn’t take that chance.
She takes another — longer — swig. It chokes her. She remembers how hot her throat was, screaming in Leopold’s office.
“Good, right?” Kestrel says. “Mama left it in the liquor cabinet. And she did not sufficiently hide the key.” Zara pulls herself into a tight shape on the couch. At least Kestrel knows that Zara’s heart is broken — she doesn’t have to pretend. To hide. She’s done so much of that, and now the sobs come out of her in jagged slices. She wonders if anything could make the burn in her chest go away. The Scotch just makes it burn harder.
Kestrel waits until she’s done. She stares at the moon, patiently.
“If it makes you feel better, you can ask me whatever you want about Barrett. I’d like for him to be strung up, preferably by his nether regions. I’ll tell you anything.” She stretches her fingers wide, a plea for Zara to give back the Scotch. “I took a Xanax, a real one this time. I am so very relaxed and ready to talk.”
“You’re not supposed to mix those,” Zara says, stuffing the bottle between the couch cushions. She’s suddenly furious with Kestrel, the full force of her emotions swinging around to land on her roommate. “That’s how Enna died. You know that, right?”
Kestrel waves a hand back and forth, like Zara’s words are annoying smoke that got in her eyes. “Ask me stuff.”
Zara knows that she should start with Barrett’s connection to Leopold, how much he knew about Roscoe and Enna, but a different question slips to the head of the line.
Zara can understand wading through this much pain for someone like Eli. But . . . Barrett? “Why him?”
For a minute Zara thinks that Kestrel won’t answer. When the words come, they’re messy and true, the opposite of the precise, grand way Kestrel talks onstage. “He knew I wanted Echo. I was trying to act so indifferent about it, so fine, but he could tell. He said that he and I were more alike than I could ever guess. Ambitious. Overlooked.” Kestrel runs one long, thin finger down a streak of moonlight on her leg. “Barrett came to the city thinking Leopold would give him a job. That was all he wanted. A chance to prove himself. When Leopold said no, Barrett threatened to tell everyone the truth.”
“About Barrett being his son?” Zara asks. The only thing keeping her upright now is the idea of Leopold being punished.
Paying for everything he’s done.
Kestrel shrugs. “Lots of people have illegitimate children. No one would be so very shocked by Leopold Henneman’s bastard.” The word sounds like an antique — something that should be kept in prop storage and dusted off for period pieces.
“All right,” Zara says. “So what’s the secret?”
Kestrel leans forward, as if whatever she knows is weighty and wants to tip itself out. “There is no Leopold Henneman. He invented himself out of thin air and fake European ancestors. His mother was a nurse. His father was a drunk.” Kestrel’s eyes glitter with a kind of hard glee. “Here’s the best part: he’s from Indiana.”
Zara should feel the same bitter delight as Kestrel, but all she’s left with is a frantic desire to tell Eli.
What would Eli say next? “You know that’s blackmail, right? Barrett was blackmailing Leopold.”
Kestrel’s response is half whine, half slur. “The way Barrett said it, it sounded so reeeeeasonable.”
Zara decides to move on. “So what happened?”
“Leopold stuck him in props and kept him there,” Kestrel says. “Barrett has loathed his father ever since.”
Zara’s thoughts come full circle, back to the deaths. “Maybe Barrett trashed my room, stole your pills, did everything Leopold told him, because he thought Leopold would finally give him a better job. That’s what he wanted, right? What the blackmail was all about? Did Barrett say anything about a promotion?”
Kestrel nods, biting her lip until it glistens in the moonlight. “He said things were about to get better for him. He made it sound like I would be there with him as long as . . .” She sighs, like she can finally hear how silly the words sound. “As long as we kept it secret for a while.”
Zara winces. She wishes she’d never asked Eli to keep their relationship a secret — but what choice did they have? Maybe they should have waited until Echo and Ariston was over. It seems so obvious now, but when she was staring into Eli’s eyes in the shine of a lantern under the stage, the thought never even occurred to her.
She wants to crawl into bed, nurse her heartache and her brand-new Scotch headache, and forget. She wants all this to disappear, the way the snow does at the end of the winter. Dirty and gritty and built-up and then — gone. But her life isn’t going to work that way.
Zara needs to wash it clean. Otherwise what happened to Zara and Eli, what happened to Toby and Michael, what happened to Carl and Enna, what happened to Meg, will just keep happening.
Leopold killed two people. He might kill another one on opening night. Zara can’t let this go. Not yet.
“I need to ask you something,” Zara says.
Kestrel speaks with her eyes closed. “I fell asleep.”
“It involves getting back at Barrett.”
The corners of Kestrel’s lips hook upward slightly. “I’m listening.”
Zara has an idea — a way to connect Enna’s scribbled words to Leopold. She should have thought of this sooner. Not just what the words meant, but who they pointed to. “The production of Hamlet that Enna was in,” Zara says. “The one where she played Gertrude. I need to know who at the Aurelia was involved with that play.”
Kestrel is quiet for so long that Zara thinks she might have actually fallen asleep. And then, as softly as the snow that has just decided to start falling, Kestrel whispers, “Leopold. He directed it.”
Zara stands in the lighting booth, alone.
It’s early. Too early. But Zara’s sleep was shredded into long, ragged strips — awake and restless or asleep and midnightmare. The sad part is that she would have loved the nightmares if even one of them had Eli in it.
Today is Christmas. The Aurelia is dark. This is one day when the city feels like it’s gone dark, too.
What is Eli doing? Did she go back to Connecticut to spend the day with her family? Did she stay in the city and start looking for a new job? Did she go out and try to meet another girl as quickly as possible? One who was prettier than Zara? Easier to love? One she wouldn’t have to stay in the dark for?
The lighting booth is nothing without the assistant designer. No stacks of loose paper with her deeply slanted handwriting. Zara inhales, hoping to catch Eli’s smell — spicy pencil shavings and electrical sparks and mint lotion.
Nothing.
That’s not why Zara’s here. She needs evidence of what Leopold did. If she can find evidence, then she can stop Leopold from hurting anyone else. If she can stop Leopold, then she stayed for a reason and no
t just because he told her to.
The booth is supposed to tell her more about Roscoe, to give up some clue that she and Eli missed the first time around.
Zara falls to her knees, bones meeting the floor abruptly. Trying to prove Leopold’s guilt was supposed to distract her, but it’s not enough.
She plays a new game.
You’re allowed to crumple on your side, but not cry.
You’re allowed to sob like someone reached down your throat and is trying to tear out your lungs, but you’re not allowed to cry.
The tears leave with hot fury, like they’re angry at Zara for not letting them out sooner. How could Eli ask her to leave? How could Zara say no?
You’re allowed to stay here for a while and think about her. As long as you don’t cry.
Zara wipes away the blurry salt. She sees something on the floor. It’s shiny and metal and familiar. Zara clutches it in her left hand, forgetting the bruise until it’s too late. She’s holding Eli’s Leatherman, with its mismatched teeth and sharp fingers that fold out from the handle.
Eli left without her things. The stage manager had the lighting booth emptied, stripped of Eli. The crew must have missed this. Zara should return it. But as she turns it over and over, she knows that she has no intention of giving up the one piece of Eli that she still has.
That’s not right. She touches the keys that hang around her neck.
She has two things now.
A sound startles Zara into dropping the Leatherman. It takes a few rings to realize that it’s her phone, trying to leap out of her pocket. Zara has thought about calling Eli so many times. But what would she say?
Zara takes out her phone.
The little screen is lit up with a single word. Home.
She hasn’t talked to her parents in over a week. She can’t imagine doing it now. Her finger finds the button that will send them to voice mail — but they shouldn’t be calling her so late. They never do. Zara’s heart twists, finds a new way to be terrified.
“Mom?” she asks. “Dad?”
“Hi, honey.” Her mom’s voice is half sigh.
“What’s wrong?” Zara asks. She finds herself back on her feet. Moving. “Is something —”
“Everything’s fine. Except that we can’t get in touch with you.” Zara wants to apologize, but she can’t find a single I’m sorry to wring out of her body. “I know your rehearsals run late, but . . .”
“Yeah. I’ve been hard to get a hold of. I know.” The distance in Zara’s voice makes her wince. The air in the lighting booth is a mess of unsaid things. Leopold and his visions. Love and death.
Eli. Eli. Eli.
“We’re coming to see you in a few days and we need to make sure we’re all set,” her mom says.
“No.” Zara can’t have them here, not until Leopold is gone. Besides, there’s still one more problem to deal with. The curse ends on opening night. “You should come later in the run,” Zara insists. “The show isn’t ready yet.”
She tells them about her wrist — one little dark truth she can admit without dragging the rest of it into the light. Besides, it backs up her story about the play needing more time to get on its feet. She definitely doesn’t tell them how it happened. My girlfriend hit the blackout too early, probably because she thought I was in danger.
She rewrites that in her head.
Ex-girlfriend.
“Zara, honey, should we be worried?” her mom asks. The tone of her voice sends Zara back to a time when she was a little girl watching her mom’s hands reach into the darkness of their medicine cabinet, searching for cotton balls, cough medicine, Band-Aids. Whatever would make it better.
“Honey,” her mom says. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” Zara says. “Still here.” Her view of the stage becomes a watercolor. She blinks, trying to give the world solid edges.
“Here’s your dad,” her mom says, handing off the phone.
You can tell them you love them, but only if you don’t cry.
“Merry Christmas,” her dad says, which is sort of a family joke.
“Merry Christmas,” she says back, her voice halfway gone.
“Are you excited about opening night?” he asks, probably just to be saying something.
“I’m scared,” Zara says.
At least she doesn’t have to lie.
Wandering around the empty Aurelia makes Toby feel like Hamlet’s ghost. He passes through the hall where audience members wait to be admitted through arched doors. Narrow vines of stairs lead up to the balconies. This place was built a hundred years before his time, but Toby can’t help feeling like he’s a fixture here. A sconce, or a gargoyle — permanent, decorative, easy to overlook.
The hidden door that leads up to the lighting booth flies open and Zara flies out, a storm of tears and snot.
“Taking a turn around the grounds?” Toby asks.
Zara whirls around with pink, feral eyes and a switchblade held out blindly. He throws his hands up in mock terror. “So you’ve joined one of those ingenue gangs. It was only a matter of time.”
Zara breathes herself back to normal. She folds the knife back into its little knife home. “Toby. I’m sorry, I . . .”
He brushes the air lightly with his fingertips. “No need.”
Toby wants to tell Zara that he understands. Oh, he understands all too well. Eli, the girl of the midnight texts, is gone. Zara is putting on a brave face about it, but it makes Toby feel better to know that she’s capable of falling apart.
He stopped crying a long time ago.
He takes one of her arms and links it through his. “Did you know that company is the best way to stave off heartbreak?” Zara shakes her head as they begin to stroll. “It’s not a cure, of course. There’s only one cure.”
Zara looks up with wide, needful eyes, and Toby wishes he had something better to offer than “Tequila.”
“Oh.” Zara drops her eyes to the ground. “Right.”
He doesn’t ask what she’s doing here on Christmas, of all days. When a heart is broken, it doesn’t follow a schedule. He takes her up the balcony staircase, the scenic route to the linoleum parts of the building. Toby is needed elsewhere, but at least they can walk together for a bit.
“Can I ask you something?” Zara says.
Toby feels a strange responsibility toward this girl. Or maybe it isn’t strange at all. Maybe, given his history and his involvement, it makes absolute sense. “Anything in the world, my love.”
“Why didn’t anyone speak up about Leopold?” Zara asks. “About what he does to people?”
“He was very good at hiding it for a long time,” Toby says, disgusted at how easy it became not to see the truth. “I, for instance, didn’t know why Michael left me. Not for years. I thought he had simply moved on.”
“How did you find out?” she asks.
“A friend.” Meg. “She discovered something unsavory about Leopold, and as soon as she started digging, well . . . let’s say there was plenty to unearth.” He takes a set of keys from his pocket and unlocks a door on the balcony that leads to one of the building’s inner staircases.
A door swings open, several landings up. Carl appears in the gloom, showered by red light from an exit sign. Meg is behind him. And Cosima. Barrett is there, too, at the very back. When Zara catches sight of him, she stiffens.
Toby can’t say that he blames her.
Carl calls down to Toby. “It’s late. We’re heading for the Dragon and Bottle.”
“We were just chatting,” Toby says.
He turns back to Zara. “Do you want to come to the bar with us? Christmas tradition. Anyone who doesn’t have plans is welcome. The bartenders make perfect, horrible eggnog. With eggs in it.”
Zara shakes her head. It doesn’t surprise him, but he felt he had to try. He can’t promise that the pain she’s in will lessen anytime soon. There is something he can say to make her feel better, though. He sets one hand on Zara’s shoulder and dust
s off his very best I’m-a-wise-adult voice one more time. “Don’t let Leopold worry you, chickadee. He’ll be done hurting people soon enough.”
There is only one rehearsal to fix what went wrong in the previews, so Zara’s not surprised when Leopold chooses to devote it to running Echo’s death. She’s not surprised, but she is terrified. The end of the curse is coming on fast — a third death — and she has no reason to think that it won’t be her.
“Again,” Leopold says, walking through the shadowy house, his voice coming from a new place every time he speaks.
Zara climbs the platform.
“Jump,” Leopold says.
Zara lets herself fall.
When the lights have been cut and the tank has been lowered, a stagehand helps Zara over the side of the tank and she walks, shivering and shedding water, up to the stage to start again.
Adrian catches her arm just as she clears the wings. “You okay?”
“How do I look?” she asks through teeth gone mad with chattering.
Adrian subjects her to one of his most soulful stares. “Hey, I’m sorry about Eli. You know that, right?”
Zara shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter now.” She barely recognizes her own voice. She barely feels herself in her own body.
She goes out onto the stage and finds that Leopold has climbed up the rehearsal stairs. He’s waiting for her — his suit pressed and lovely, his face feverish and blistered with sweat. Leopold smiles at Zara and she feels like she’s dying. He puts a hand on her arm and she wants him to die. She has never wished for something so horrible. It’s a swallowing pit that opens up inside her.
“Only a few more times,” Leopold says, ever so gently. “We both need this to be right.”
Zara is playing the statue game with all her might. Stillness is her only defense. Otherwise she will do something reckless. Spit onto Leopold’s clammy skin. Claw out his eyes.
Tell the truth.
All of it.
Leopold doesn’t move — are they waiting to see who will break first? But then his weight sags into hers, and it becomes clear that he needs her to hold him up. The muscles in his cheeks drag, his lips parting with the slow melt of honey.
Echo After Echo Page 23