Still in a daze, Lottie tiptoed out with Miko and the other stagehands, propping up the wooden bed that would be Aoi Tōyō’s doom. They draped a ghostly sheet of gauze over the left side of the stage, where shadows of the monster cat would grow and reveal their creation, and in front of both they spread hanging vines to create a garden that would melt away when the prince left.
Lottie was so focused on finding some hidden detail in the play that the last thing she expected was for something to go wrong.
A terrible retching sound echoed where there should have been flutes, but the sound was not the worst part. Rushing past, her hand covering her mouth, was their Aoi Tōyō, the fair maiden, the prince’s favorite, and she was being sick.
“Sumimasen!” the poor girl mumbled in apology, hurrying out of the theater.
They formed a line in her wake, Rio, Miko, Lottie, and the others in the vampire cat production, staring in bewilderment at the now-empty space where their Aoi Tōyō had been.
“Did we just lose our maiden?” Rio asked, the dumbfounded look on his face completely at odds with his elegant makeup.
All Lottie knew was that she’d been looking for a sign, anything to get through to the impenetrable queen of Takeshin, and if she was going to understand what these plays were trying to tell her, she needed to get as close as possible. What she needed wasn’t to watch passively from the sidelines; she had to be a part of it completely. She knew it as a fact. She needed to be in the play.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll play Aoi Tōyō.”
Miko and Rio stared at her, mouths wide open in a way she relished, and they gaped even more when she added, “But I’m wearing my tiara.”
The spotlight slowly came up on Aoi Tōyō, peaceful among the low-hanging paper vines that made up the garden. Fog surrounded Lottie’s feet, where her white robe brushed the stage. They had tried their best to comb her hair smooth.
Of all the terrifying, life-threatening things she’d been a part of, this was somehow the scariest thing she’d ever done.
Her head felt tingly where the tiara lay on it, and she was glad to have it as a reminder to be brave, but that was not why she’d demanded it be a part of the show.
She was looking for a sign, proof of Rosewood’s connection to Takeshin, a clue to solving this mystery for Sayuri, and if this was one of Kou’s favorite plays, she wanted to bring a bit of Liliana into it too.
You’re telling a story, she reminded herself. Just this time you’re telling it with your body, not your words.
“All appearance is performance . . .”
She let those words Rio had told her sink right down into her core, allowing the makeup and the costume to spark something inside her. It made her feel powerful. She felt the change within her just as the audience did, her body transforming in front of their eyes to that of the beautiful, serene maiden. It was magic, and it had the scent of roses and moss, two worlds combining inside her. Lottie Pumpkin didn’t exist anymore; it was only Aoi Tōyō.
The dance began. It felt like she’d been through the choreography with their maiden thousands of times, she and Miko determined to get the movements just right. But now, here on stage in front of the whole school, it was more fun than she could possibly have imagined. Twirling and skipping, she felt both graceful and free, the robes fluttering around her like wings.
It felt incredible to be Aoi Tōyō, to be young and full of life and splendor. Forgetting the audience entirely, she wanted the dance to last forever, but as quickly as it had begun the prince appeared, and it came to an end.
Aoi Tōyō stared at the prince, their movements blending together into a rigid march of a dance, mirroring one another. She was his favorite and marrying him was her duty. It made her stomach sink.
All the freedom of her previous display was gone, replaced by something unyielding. The prince and his favorite maiden stepped in time together; she had no choice but to follow the patterns of his body.
In every reading of the vampire cat, Lottie had always felt sad for Aoi Tōyō, that the happy ending didn’t include her, but now she felt sad in a different way. Aoi Tōyō was stuck, chained down by the burdens of expectation and responsibility.
The lights went down, but the ache in Lottie’s chest remained, Aoi Tōyō’s heart sore with despair. She climbed into the bed, the vines and flowers of the garden disappearing above her to give way to the eerie calm of the bedroom set.
Aoi Tōyō lay in the soft flowing silk, the blue spotlight growing around her, unsuspecting of the terrible creature approaching.
It flashed behind her eyelids like a tattoo in her mind: the cats in Liliana’s diary, the stone cats at the shrine, and the cats everywhere in the school, all merging together.
A fan wafted the calming scent of pine and lavender through the dark room, lulling the audience into a sleepy sense of security.
Darkness moved over her, the illusion of nighttime morphing into a solid shape behind the gauze. Rio convulsed and writhed in a twisted dance until the sheet dropped, revealing the monstrous vampire cat. He pounced on the sleeping maiden, meters of red yarn spilling from Aoi Tōyō’s neck and rolling down as the beast feasted on her blood.
This is for the best, whispered a voice deep in her mind.
A hatch in the bed swallowed her up, and a collective gasp from the audience let Lottie know that the trick had worked; her body had seemingly been devoured into nothing.
She was under the stage, chinks in the floorboards letting her see everyone watching, the show still unfolding above. Violins screeched and Rio turned
