Reign

last time Terri could remember having fun with a boy had been long before she had discovered sex and the power she was able to wield with it.

She missed him as she worked in the shop, and wished that he were nearby, down on the stage with Curt. But he would not come back to the theatre, and after he had told her what he had seen the day of his attack, she could not blame him. That it had been an hallucination she had no doubt, for such a vision as he had seen could only have come from the imagination of someone who, like Evan, seemed terrified at the mere thought of standing in front of an audience. 'I might go in,' he told her, 'but not now, not yet. My gut cramps when I think about it.'

'But if you weren't alone,' she told him. 'If you were with people …”

'I know. I will. I think I will. Maybe later this week. But not now. Not yet.'

So he remained in the hotel, looking through the college catalogues he had obtained in New York. She hoped he would choose Columbia or N.Y.U. That way they could stay close to each other, even stay together.

Stay together. God, that was just too good to be believed. Something would have to go wrong, she thought with the fearful pessimism of the jaded young. She had no right to be that happy.

The following morning at nine-thirty, John Steinberg was once again in his office at the Venetian Theatre when Robert Leibowitz called and told him that Sid Harper's trial date had been set for the last week in May. There was no new evidence, and the lawyer was not at all certain that he could persuade a jury to free Sid.

If Leibowitz used the 'mystery man' defense, claiming that one individual had been responsible for most if not all of the deaths that had taken place in the theatre building, the jury might rationally assume that if circumstantial evidence indicated that Sid was responsible for Donna Franklin's murder, he might just as well have been responsible for the others, except for Whitney's, of course.

'Doesn't the fact that Whitney was murdered,' Steinberg said, 'indicate that this `mystery man' exists?'

'Possibly,' Leibowitz answered. 'But the prosecuting attorney might be able to make those wounds on the girl's lips and the broken nose look self-inflicted -struggling to escape suffocation. I'd feel a lot better if it was a more obvious murder. But if we ignore the mystery man, the jury might just as rationally decide that it was Harper and no one else who had murdered Miss Franklin and Miss Franklin only. Our only hope is that something comes up before the trial begins.'

'Like what?' Steinberg asked.

There was a long pause. 'Like another murder,' Leibowitz said. 'A murder that couldn't be anything else.'

Now it was Steinberg's turn to pause. 'Well,' he finally said to Leibowitz, 'I'll see what I can turn up.'

He hung up just as Ann came in. 'Leibowitz needs another murder to free Sid,' he told her. 'Would you please canvass for volunteers among the cast and crew?'

Ann ignored the comment. 'What shall I do, John? Do you have letters?”

“Of course. But before we get to business, how's Dennis?'

'Dennis is… very much the same.'

'Your psychic did nothing to allay his concerns?'

'I don't know, John.'

'No one seems to know much of anything. I assume the purpose of this… alleged psychic was to try and visualize our house terrorist?'

Ann paused just a moment too long. 'Yes.'

'And did he have any visions?'

'She. It was a she. Her name is Bebe Gonsalves.'

'Ah. And does she predict with fruit on her head?' He waved a hand. 'I take it back. A racial slur. Was the money well spent?'

'You mean did she find anything? No. She didn't.'

Steinberg eyed her long and hard. 'I think you're lying to me, Ann. I think that you know more than you're telling. Is that right?'

'No.'

'You are a kind and lovely woman, but a very bad liar. If you don't want to tell me the truth, I assume you must have a reason. I merely hope that you will put the safety of Dennis and yourself and everyone else in this building first. Will you do that?'

'Yes, John. And that's the truth.'

'All right.' His face soured, and he snorted petulantly. 'It used to be that I was told everything, and what I wasn't told I found out anyway. Those were the halcyon days of the past, and I trust once all this foolishness is over that they will return again.' He passed Ann a sheaf of papers. 'These are the contracts for the security team I'm hiring. Please look over them and work out a final budget.'

'Security team?'

'I'm a bit concerned too, Ann,' he said, as though explaining to a child. 'Concerned enough to bring in some muscle starting tomorrow to ensure that our stalker or whoever the hell he is has no further access to the theatre or its staff. There will be two men here at all times, guarding both front and rear entrances. There will also be a man at the hotel. If anyone wants to do any more killings, he's going to find that he's got to dispose of a few armed guards first.' Then Steinberg smiled. 'I may be ignorant, Ann, but I'm not senile. If anyone's going to get into this theatre unseen in the next two weeks, he's going to have to be a shadow. Or a ghost.'

A half hour later a live cast began to assemble on the stage of the Venetian Theatre for the first time in a quarter of a century. Quentin, a navy cashmere sweater tied casually over his shoulders, came down the aisle with Dennis. 'Do you want to talk to them first?'

Dennis shook his head. 'No. You just go ahead.'

'But, Dennis, it's your show, your theatre, you don't want to welcome them?'

'I'd really rather not, Quentin. You just go ahead and do it, all right?'

Gathering everyone to the first few rows of seats, Quentin welcomed them to the theatre, gave them a brief history of the place, omitting the recent tragedies, told them where the rest rooms, coffee pot, and Coke machines were, then had Curt pass out rehearsal schedules.

'The first scene today, as you hopefully remember,' Quentin said, smiling, 'is two-seven. We'll start right at the end of Kronstein's 'Take What Is Mine,' and rehearse the segue to the crowd scene. We'll have the scenery coming in the middle of the week. For now, Curt will show you the entrances and exits. Okay, people, let's get to places.'

When the chorus went to the stage, the theatre became filled with life, color, sound. Dex Colangelo's fingers roamed up and down the keyboard of the freshly tuned Steinway in the orchestra pit. Dancers tugged up legwarmers, stretched in their leotards, singers warbled triads and octaves, Quentin laughed, clapping people on the shoulder, techies scurried as they always scurry, and Dennis thought that maybe everything would be all right now, that the magic of the theatre could banish that other, darker magic. Glorious illusion had returned to the Venetian Theatre's stage to replace the dread reality that had darkened it.

As he sat watching the dancers and singers work, he felt happy again, as though he was back where he belonged, doing what he should have always been doing. It was the theatre, and the long years he had spent in it had done nothing to diminish his affection for it. In that moment, he loved the life as he loved nothing else. Then he thought of the Emperor, and wondered if he was watching, and how he could stand in his evil pride against such an affirmation of joy and life as was on the stage at that moment.

'Take that, you son of a bitch,' Dennis whispered, and felt his tiny smile grow larger as the music increased in volume, the harmonies blended, the players moved as one, until he was grinning, unafraid, grinning at the grim face of death he knew was hiding somewhere in the shadows of the theatre.

But the shadows would fade, wouldn't they? With song and dance and laughter, they would fade and be replaced by glorious light. It always happened that way in the books and the movies and the stories, didn't it? Christ, it had to happen that way, it just had to.

They worked the number through several times, getting used to the new stage floor, the acoustics and geometry of the space. Curt called a break, and the cast relaxed, got coffee, Cokes, sat on the apron, cooled down in a dozen different ways. At the end of the five, Quentin waved to Dennis. 'We'll go on with the scene, yes?'