Chapter 1
Bree
They say 95 percent of the time the first impression you have of a person is right.
Well, if anyone in the audience was watching her clutch a plastic fern with one hand and the slumping fabric on her chest with the other, all the while beads from her costume scattered across the shadowy stage with a thousand ping-ping-pings, they’d have a fairly accurate picture of the woman formally known as Bree Leake. Or, in this particular moment, Mustardseed, fairy servant of Titania, as vital to A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the fern in her hand.
“How canst thou thus for shame, Titania . . .”
Glitter floated in the green-tinted spotlight as Bree stood far upstage, where she stayed approximately . . . always. She took a step to the right. Then another. And another. Beads dropped with each movement, no matter how she adjusted her hold on the intricate fabric dissolving in her hands. Leave it to her roommate, the Barter’s one and only costume designer, to go overkill.
Actually, leave it to her roommate to plan a wardrobe malfunction like this. Evie had probably gone to great lengths, in fact, to attach the shoulder straps with just enough strength to hold up until Bree made one fatal step onto the long tulle train that—now that she thought of it—no other fairies in the cast possessed.
She could just see Evie now, in the dim light of their basement, laughing maniacally over her sewing machine.
So here Bree stood, newest member of the nation’s oldest live-performance theatre, trying to shield herself with a plastic plant while smiling a not-too-convincing stage smile as heat crept up her neck. Not that anyone would notice her blushing, given that her face and neck were painted Andes-mint green.
While she understood all of this was very, very important, her immature side couldn’t help seeing it as also very, very funny. But laughing was, by all means, the most critical thing to avoid at this moment.
Do. Not. Laugh.
She mustn’t laugh.
She was a professional artist, and artists were at all times calm, cool, and engaged.
She took a step to the right.
Ping-ping-ping.
Slid her left foot to meet her right.
Ping-ping-ping.
One creeping step to the right.
Another.
With three more swift ping-ping-ping steps she slipped offstage and broke into a run between the curtains.
“Evie!” Bree hissed, passing a couple of stagehands waiting beside overhanging set trees.
Bree swept past portable columns and hanging windows and hedged around Titania’s set bed laden with roses and vines. Stephen, the stage manager, caught sight of her while talking rapidly into his headset, but before she could propel the manic-driven man into overly manic drive, she let go of her hold on her dress long enough to give him a thumbs-up from across the room.
Nothing to see here. Just your newest actress jumping ship.
She pushed open the doors to the back hall.
Half a dozen doors lined the long hallway, one of them open to the dressing room, whose dozens of vanity bulbs were blinding even from where she stood twenty feet away. She made for the room but only found the ever-disgruntled understudy on her phone.
Bree halted beside her chair. “Have you seen Evie?”
Celia looked up. Blinked. “She just left to get coffee.”
“She went all the way to Zazzy’Z?” Bree said, her tone inching higher.
She shook her head and tilted her chin toward the door. “No, Styrofoam coffee. To the front. The gift shop.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” Bree reemerged into the hall. She had to get back onstage for one line—one. True, it may not be an important line, but it was her line.
And by golly she’d be there to give it.
It was going to take ages to throw open the back door, dash down the metal stairway, and fly around parked cars and pedestrians to reach the front of the theatre while hanging on to her dragging dress and slumping top. But she could kiss her job good-bye if she took either door leading into the shadowy aisles of the theatre’s auditorium.
She would just have to run.
She picked up speed as she moved down the empty hall in her leather slippers. As fluorescent lights shone overhead, beads fell like breadcrumbs behind her. The Exit sign loomed and she shoved the doors open with her fern.
As she pushed her way through, her fairy wings knocked against the doorframe, fighting against her as if crying out, “This is the exit door! Get back onstage, woman!” But with a final wrench of her drooping costume and an explosion of beads, the wings gave way