said—but her voice sounded as unsteady as her breathing. “Of course.”
And then he found her—his hands brushing against a warm arm, which he took gently and somehow managed to tug her up against him. He folded her in his arms like it was the most natural thing to do—and, oh man, he realized suddenly it was. It felt right, comfortable, natural…and then there was her scent. It was so familiar, rising over the age and mustiness surrounding them in the old theater. He felt a pang of grief ring deep inside.
“I’m fine,” she said, but she wasn’t pulling away. She wasn’t exactly embracing him back, but she wasn’t pulling away.
It was so strange, standing there in a decrepit old orchestra pit holding the woman he’d loved eleven years ago as if those eleven years—and their unpleasant breakup—had never happened.
Then she seemed to regain her presence of mind, for she pulled back, and he heard her fumbling around—
“Don’t know what happened,” she said, and a light beamed into the darkness from her cell phone. “I’m not usually that skittish. Geez. Frigging light bulb goes out and I go to pieces? I don’t know why I reacted that way.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He just knew he was already missing her being close to him.
“What do you want to do about the, uh, headpiece?” he asked. “If it’s ruined, you might as well toss it.”
“Let’s take it up and look at it in better light. Maybe I can display it in the lobby with some of the other mementos we’ve found here. Preserve some of the theater’s history. Liv would like that. I think The Nutcracker was the last show performed here.”
He didn’t know why she’d choose to keep that creeper of a mask, but he picked it up and carried it as they made their way up the steps with the aid of her cell phone flashlight.
“All the lights are out,” she said in surprise as they got to the top of the stairs and stepped into the back stage area. “Not just the ones in the—”
She froze and grabbed blindly for him as her light tumbled to the ground. Her fingers curled painfully around his forearm as they stared at the rippling red…something…that undulated on the stage.
It twisted and writhed in the darkness, a glowing, screaming red…a sort of spiral, whipping and buffeting about as if it were trapped in a gale-force wind.
Her fingers were digging holes into Jake’s arm, but the discomfort was hardly noticeable as he stared at the vision before them. Then, all at once, it was gone. The light went out and they were swathed in darkness once more…
Except for angry scarlet letters burning and rippling in the air, high above the audience seats in the middle of the theater:
DEATH
Chapter Nine
When Vivien dropped her phone, it landed light-side down—effectively smothering its illumination.
By the time everything was over and she lunged to the floor to snatch it back up—guided by the faintest bit of glow around the edges of the phone—Jake was already moving toward the stage.
She followed, right on his heels, brandishing the light like a weapon.
“They didn’t even try to hide it this time,” she said, shining her phone up and out over the house. The sheer fabric—smoke-gray; barely distinguishable even in the light—rippled gently, causing the glow-in-the-dark red letters spelling DEATH to shimmy as if alive.
“No, they didn’t,” he said grimly. “But it was a clever performance.”
“If I’d been here alone, it might have been more effective as a scare tactic,” Vivien admitted. “Not much more—now that I’m onto him—her—them—whoever—but it might have given me more of a shock.”
“The lights going out first was a dead giveaway,” Jake said. “Did they know you were in the pit?”
His voice was steady, but she sensed the tension vibrating from him. And for the moment, Vivien was okay with putting aside their past and dealing with what had just happened.
Because what had just happened opened up a whole bunch of questions and problems.
“If I hadn’t dropped my phone, we might have seen more,” she said, disgusted with herself.
“I don’t know,” Jake said, looking at the center of the stage—right where the twisting, undulating, cyclonic thing had been. “I don’t know that there would be much to see. Obviously, it was some sort of silky scarf thing, lit from inside, maybe a fan blowing down on it? You’d know more about that kind of stuff—stage theatrics—than me. Probably dropped the red cloth from above, then whisked it