Chapter 21
That night, after rehearsal, Mallory removes her makeup and tries not to think about how her smeared lipstick looks like blood.
She flings the used wipe in the trash, glancing at her watch.
Saskia was summoned to the costume dungeon but said she could meet afterward so they could study the stolen documents.
Mallory eyes her bag on the counter, filled with Rebecca’s letters, and silently pleads with the rest of the cast to leave.
“Do you want to get food with us?” Arden asks beside her, yanking bobby pins from her blonde curls. Farther down the makeup counter, Jessica mutters something about pizza, peering into the mirror as she tugs away false lashes.
Mallory desperately wishes she could say yes.
She imagines herself surrounded by friends beneath dim restaurant lighting, inside jokes volleying between them.
She’s not sure how to tell Arden or Jessica that there won’t be any late-night pizza runs for her, not while she’s careening faster and faster toward a death she has no idea how to prevent.
She also doesn’t know how to explain that the idea of pizza is turning her stomach, despite feeling ravenous. Like her body would erupt in hives if she tried to take a single bite. Mallory forces a smile. “I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”
Once everyone leaves, Mallory snatches her bag, letting Rebecca’s letters fall into her lap.
She went through them once on the drive back to Shore, reviewing Rebecca’s desperate pleas to the mayor, begging him to cancel the scheduled exhumation of Lily’s grave.
But it had already been authorized by Lily’s husband, who’d permitted a councilman to perform the ceremony.
A councilman named Jacob.
It’s like Rebecca knew her efforts were futile, because she also wrote to Jacob directly. Mallory pulls that letter out now, skimming Rebecca’s elegant cursive. Despite the dainty penmanship, Rebecca’s tone shifts in this note, growing less formal, more threatening.
I know what you’re hiding. If you go through with this, I will see to it that your sinister truths are exposed, so everyone can learn what kind of man they’ve been looking up to.
Mallory reads it a few times, shaking her head. “What happened to you, Rebecca?” she whispers. She starts to tuck the letters away when another piece of paper catches her eye, one she didn’t notice earlier. Curious, she unfolds it.
“ ‘Dear Catherine,’ ” Mallory mutters, squinting at the new name.
She reads the letter quickly, registering it as another request for assistance. But this inquiry is different from the others. Mallory glances at the date and immediately understands—in this letter, Rebecca isn’t asking for help in stopping the exhumation.
She’s trying to protect Lily’s soul because it’s already been done.
I understand you value your privacy on the island, Rebecca wrote. I can assure you, if you help, no one will know of your involvement. The word “witchcraft” will never be used. You will remain safe, and you’d have my undying gratitude.
“Island?” Mallory murmurs, turning the paper. There’s no address anywhere. Witchcraft?
Her thoughts whirl, landing on the slice of history that’s been baked into every Rhode Islander’s brain since elementary school. The way the state was founded on religious freedom. The way the witch trials of the seventeenth century never reached their sliver of New England.
The way some people believe real witches escaped to the islands around Narragansett Bay, where they knew they’d be protected.
Mallory leaps to her feet, shoving the letters into her bag, ready to find Saskia. But before she can move, Hendrix appears in the doorway, script tucked beneath his arm.
She bristles at the sight of him, embarrassed over how many times she called line at rehearsal.
But it was impossible to concentrate while Ezra was staring from just a few feet away, not to mention her fever threatening to return despite the medicine she’d taken.
She presses her fingers to her forehead now, finding it laced with sweat.
“Got a moment to come to my office, Ms. Webb?” Hendrix asks.
She clocks his serious expression, darting a glance at her watch, and forces a nod, trailing Hendrix toward the faculty wing.
“I know I’ve been tough on you at rehearsals,” Hendrix says as they reach his office, “but I’ve got to tell you—I have some real concerns.”
He shuts the door, sealing them in the small space. Mallory chews her lip and sits across from his mahogany desk.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he starts, settling into his chair, “there’s the ongoing issue of your lines. But I had a little chat with our stage manager, Paisley, today. She came to me because the storage vault beneath the trapdoor reeked of smoke the other morning. Know anything about that?”
Mallory tenses as she thinks about Ezra’s candles. “No.”
“Hmm.” Hendrix leans back, chair squeaking. “How ’bout the prop loft? The one that’s been roped off since the start of the year due to an unsafe ladder? Been spending any time up there after hours?”
“No,” she says—and this time it’s the truth. “I swear, I haven’t.”
“Funny,” Hendrix says, “because I was working late last night and heard footsteps. Shuffling back and forth. Took a peek this morning and found this. Mean anything to you?”
He reaches into his desk to hand Mallory a heart-shaped piece of wood. The wider end has two wheels attached, while the pointed tip bears a small hole, and as she strokes her fingers over it, a noticeable frost chills her bones.
It’s a writing planchette, like those used in old séances.
And as she turns it over, she suddenly realizes why Hendrix thinks it’s hers.
The entire backside has one word carved into it over and over.
JULES JULES JULES JULES—
Mallory grits her teeth. Ezra. War, she remembers. This is war.
“Look, Webb,” Hendrix says with a sigh. “I don’t know what it is you’ve been getting into after rehearsals, and I’m not going to ask.
But I’ll tell you right now that you’re going to stop using the theater as your personal hideout.
If I find you’ve been anywhere near this building after hours, I’m taking it straight to Dean Hale and I’ll let him decide what to do. Are we clear?”
Mallory forces a nod, still staring at the etches of Ezra’s secret name for her.
“Furthermore,” Hendrix continues, “throughout Hell Week, Tech Week, whatever you want to name it—I don’t want to hear you call for line once. You’re going to be early for every rehearsal. You’re going to be on your A-game.”
She raises her gaze, stomach flipping.
She knows what’s coming next.
“If not, your understudy will take over,” he says. “You can decide if you want to have her ensemble role or step back from the production entirely. It’s up to you, but you might want to start thinking about a different major if this one proves too arduous for you.”
She bites down on her lip, hard, desperately trying to hold back tears.
“Theater,” Hendrix finishes, “is not for the faint of heart, Ms. Webb.”
His words sting in a way that will linger long after this conversation ends. As if theater is something she’s merely dipping her toes into, rather than the one thing that’s made her feel alive her entire life. Mallory turns her head to the side. She won’t let him see her cry.
She thinks about orientation, that bloom of dangerous hope.
The future tense of it all making success seem like a tangible thing, like it was patiently waiting for her in the seasons ahead.
She thinks of Ezra outside the health center—Congrats, Jules—the way his eyes burned into hers in the courtyard as he told her she deserved this role.
Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she doesn’t deserve anything.
And with opening night falling on the same day as Victor’s gala, preparing to die as Juliet is starting to feel a lot like preparing to die in real life, too.
“Ms. Webb,” Hendrix says softly, “let’s turn things around, shall we?”
He hands her a tissue, and she summons a tearful smile.
But the gesture feels rigid and sticky. Like her heart isn’t in it.
Like somewhere, she knows the role of Juliet Capulet was always something she would lose.
Just like everything else.
After removing the rest of her makeup and swallowing two more painkillers with still no sign of Saskia, Mallory decides to look for her instead. It doesn’t take long, and she soon finds her sitting on the empty stage in the Crypt, beneath the glow of the ghost light.
A second ago Mallory was desperate to show Saskia the planchette and tell her about Rebecca’s additional letter, but now she slows and simply gives herself permission to stare.
A triangular peel of dusty gold spills over Saskia’s head, making her look ethereal.
Celestial. Like something plucked from the heavens.
Her white hair is loose around her shoulders, bare in a low-cut black tank top, evergreen flannel wrapped around her waist. Shadows gather in the curve of her clavicle, and she stares into the darkness like she just asked it a question and is waiting for a response.
Like it’s an old friend she visits from time to time.
Finally, Mallory approaches, letting her boots clack on the wood, and Saskia turns.
“Hey,” she says. “Sorry, I was just about to head down.”
“It’s okay,” Mallory replies, sitting on the stage beside her. She peers at the shadows. “It’s pretty in the dark.”
Saskia leans back on her hands. The light falls onto the arrows tattooed on her arm, illuminating them in a shimmer.
“Sometimes I sit under the ghost light after everyone goes home,” she says.
“I started doing it in high school, when I didn’t have a lot of friends.
There’s something comforting about a light that never goes out.
Even when the theater is empty, and there’s no one here to notice, it’s always shining.
Keeping the ghosts company.” She smiles. “I guess it keeps me company, too.”