of the gels in the house right bank of lights. I forgot to tell Amanda before she left after rehearsal, so I thought I’d stay late and replace it myself.”
“You’re still at school?” her brother asked.
“Oh!” Mr. Beck stared at the box of old gels. “You didn’t hear me calling?”
She held up her one removed earbud. “Music.”
“Right. Well, that’s very kind of you. But I’m about to lock up.”
Shit. Persey forced a smile as she pushed herself to her feet. “Got it. I’ll head out through the side door.”
Mr. Beck nodded, though he looked confused. She wasn’t sure if he bought her story, but he clearly wasn’t going to argue with her at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Persey started toward the side door, pushing it open as Mr. Beck retreated from the wings. When she heard his footsteps growing fainter, she let the door close, then dashed to the hidden suite and made it back to her crash pad as silently as was humanly possible.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” her brother asked.
Persey pressed a finger to her lips, indicating silence, then waited until she heard the faint click of the main lights as Mr. Beck shut everything down. Then she let out a sigh.
Cover maintained. But she so didn’t want to explain this to her brother.
“Sorry about that,” she said, as if everything that had just occurred was perfectly natural and normal. “We have a tech dress tomorrow, so it’s crazy here.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t believe her.
Time to change the subject. “So…how are you?”
She focused on the face on the screen for the first time. Her brother sported a leathery tan, like he’d spent the better part of the last six months working outside under a hot sun, and his skin glistened with sweat. He flashed his usual impish smile, but Persey couldn’t shake the feeling that it was forced.
For once in his life, her brother’s confidence had been shaken.
“I like what you’re doing with your hair.”
“It’s in a ponytail.” Like basically every single day of my life.
“I like it.”
Persey didn’t know how she was supposed to respond. She hadn’t spoken to him in months—since that day she found him stealing from their parents—and after all that time, he wanted to compliment her hair? “Where are you?”
“Vietnam!” His face lit up. “You really need to come here one day. The people are amazing. Friendly, open. The food…” He brought his fingers to his lips and kissed them.
He was acting like he was on vacation, not fleeing a missing-person investigation back home.
“Oh, and I’ve met someone,” he continued.
“Someone?”
“Yeah.” His smile deepened, and his eyes shifted away from the camera. She’s in the room with him. “Genevieve Cooper.” He pronounced her name as if it he was in a rhapsodic trance, his eyes soft and dreamy, a hint of color in his cheeks. Whatever Persey thought of her sociopathic brother and his inability to feel emotion for anyone but himself, it was clear that this Genevieve had bewitched him.
“She’s absolutely amazing. Beautiful, smart, funny. She’s from California, but she’s been living in Vietnam with her parents and younger brother for a few years. Persey, her brother…” He leaned closer to the camera, eyes even brighter than before. “He’s…he’s like me!”
Oh shit.
“He also got into some trouble back home, and so Genevieve just gets me.”
Then she should be running in the other direction.
“But she’s not another one of those trust-fund kids. God, that’s all I met at Columbia. Entitled skanks.”
Persey bristled. How could his new girlfriend listen to him talk about other women like that and not have it set off alarm bells?
Her brother made a kissy face to the person off-screen, then shifted his focus back to the camera. “And I really hope you two get along like…sisters.”
Sisters? Persey winced. She couldn’t help herself. Her brother was thinking about getting married. Persey didn’t know if she was terrified of this Genevieve or for her.
“I know the last couple of years have been rough with me gone,” he continued, his monologue planned and rehearsed. “Sorry I’m not there to keep Dad off your back.”
“It’s okay.” Like you ever did before.
He smiled and softened his voice. “I, uh, heard about what happened. With the will.”
Mom. Persey was pretty sure their dad wouldn’t have bothered filling in his now sole heir on the fact that he’d written his not-yet-eighteen-year-old daughter out of his will, but Mom might have hoped her son could talk him out of it.