by Morgan Rice
Pinsley was glad now that he hadn’t told Kaia. If he had, then she wouldn’t have experienced this in the same way. She wouldn’t have had a chance to see that she loved the theatre, before she saw the rest of it.
Currently, the theatre was starting a short ballet, after the fashion of an opera, before the next act. It was an addition to the play that Shakespeare would probably never have considered, but here in Paris it seemed to be obvious to both the director and the audience, who applauded politely as the dancers started to come onto the stage, pirouetting and leaping in what Pinsley could only assume was meant to be a grand ball hosted by the Capulets.
“Is this a part of the play too?” Kaia asked, sounding just as entranced by it as she was by the rest of it.
Pinsley was about to explain that no, it wasn’t a standard part, and go on to explain the tradition of having ballets in operatic productions to provide a break for the performers and a wider variety of entertainments when his eyes fell on one of the dancers there on the side of the stage furthest from him.
He didn’t know why his eyes fell on her, out of all of them. It wasn’t that she had the most important part in it, being just one of the chorus. She wasn’t one of those performing the grandest leaps or the big lifts. Instead, she mostly seemed to be keeping time with simple movements, stepping with the others in a complex web of dancers.
Even so, the moment Pinsley’s eyes alighted on her, they fixed there. He couldn’t look away, transfixed by what he was sure had to be a mistake. If not… if not, then for the second time that day, something impossible had happened.
Without thinking about it, he stood, trying to push his way along the row of seats.
“What are you doing, man?” a theatre-goer demanded, pushing him back into his seat.
“Shhh!” a woman hissed. “You’re interrupting!”
Pinsley realized then that he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere until the play ended. All he could do was sit there, his eyes still fixed on the dancer. She was a young woman of seventeen, slender and not very tall, with her dark hair tied back in a braid that whipped around her with every step she took. She was wearing a lot of makeup, but even at this distance, she was unmistakable.
He’d spent all this time looking for her in London, used every resource he’d had, and it hadn’t been enough. Pinsley had searched the streets, had tried to reason out her location, had given her description out a hundred times or more. Now, he understood the reason none of it had worked: he’d been looking in the wrong place.
Unbidden, tears welled in Pinsley’s eyes. He had never been one to display emotion, but now, he couldn’t help himself. He had found the one person he had never dreamed that he would.
She kept dancing, and in those movements she looked just like her mother. There was a grace to them that had always been a gift from her rather than from Pinsley. The ballet ended, and the moment she walked from the stage, Pinsley longed to walk to her, but he was still wedged into his seat.
She came out onto the stage again, this time as a part of a crowd, and Pinsley guessed that she must have a place as some minor member of the cast, performing in whatever parts came up in the plays there. Pinsley hadn’t been enjoying the play before, but now it was agony for him, counting down the seconds until everyone would move and he could go to the one person he’d been looking for over such a long time, the one person he hadn’t been expecting to see here, of all places.
There, on the stage of a Parisian theatre he’d found only because of Kaia’s strange talents, was his daughter, Olivia.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As the play ended, Pinsley knew that his chance had come to get to his daughter. Olivia was there somewhere in the theatre, and he had to find her.
“Kaia,” he said, waving Kaia back into her seat, “wait here. There’s something I have to do. I’ll find you again, I promise.”
He knew that he had to do that much to keep her safe, at least, but he also couldn’t waste a moment longer before he set off after Olivia. He’d been trying to find her for so long that he couldn’t let this chance go past.
“What is it?” Kaia called after him. “Have you found something?”
If he’d had more time, Pinsley might have tried to explain. He might even have thanked Kaia for bringing him here, for finding Olivia with whatever strange talent she had when all his reasoning and his contacts hadn’t been able to do it. He didn’t have that time, though.
“I’ll explain everything when I get back,” he promised. “Just wait here.”
Pinsley started to push his way through the crowd. It felt as if he were a salmon trying to swim upstream against a torrent, because other people were trying to get to the exits now, ready to spill out onto the streets of Paris.
Pinsley didn’t want to get outside; he wanted to get backstage. He pushed his way forward, and there were a few people down by the stage, clearly wanting to congratulate the cast. Pinsley pushed his way through the crowd towards them, using his elbows to force people out of the way. It felt a little like being in the press of a London street after a crime, when everyone was trying to get forward to look, only here, his warrant card wouldn’t make a difference.
“No one is coming backstage tonight!” a fat man said, standing in front of the entrance to the backstage area.
“I need to get past,” Pinsley said. “I believe that my daughter is back there.”
“And this man is here to meet his beloved, and this woman wants to offer her congratulations. I know what you’re all here for: to see the spot where it happened. Well, I am the director, and I say no. I will not have such ghouls backstage, when… hey, wait!”
Pinsley pushed past him, hard enough that the fat man stumbled. It was a far more direct move than he wanted to make, yet if he didn’t do it, he would never get to see Olivia. He would do far more than just push someone if it meant getting to see her. After so long, there was no fire he would not run through, nothing he would not risk.
Even as the director cried out, other people among the crowd were pushing their way into the backstage area. They probably were there simply to see the spot where a murder had taken place. On another occasion, Pinsley would have found that distasteful and probably helped to shoo them away from there. Now, though, they were a valuable distraction for his own efforts.
He plunged backstage, trying to catch sight of Olivia. Some of the dancers and supporting actors were hanging around in a group together, and Pinsley approached, hoping that Olivia would be among them. There was no sign of her.
“Have you seen Olivia?” he asked, and then realized how it must look, some strange man running up, demanding to talk to a young woman in the cast.
In spite of that, one of the members of the crew waved a hand vaguely off to one side, and with nothing better to go on, Pinsley set off in that direction. He had to pick his way through the chaos of everything backstage. It wasn’t just that the whole place seemed to be a mess of pipes and brickwork, using the catacombs of the city the way another building might use its cellars. There were sandbags and ropes too, along with sections of set depicting everything from a castle’s walls to the interior of a grand ballroom.
Pinsley hurried through it and saw a door ahead, giving a glimpse of the world outside beyond it. A young woman was going through it, and while from this angle it was impossible to see who it was, it had to be Olivia. Pinsley would recognize his daughter anywhere, would know her gait, the barest glimpse of her hair. It had to be her.
Even as Pinsley thought that, the young woman disappeared through the door, leaving him running after her. He burst out into the open air, and the street around the theatre had started to grow dark in the time while they’d been watching the play. He looked around, not able to see which way his daughter had gone, and then he caught sight of her, walking towards the end of the street, turning right.
He set off in pursuit, and it was a pursuit now, running after Olivia and trying to close the distance between them. He was sure th
at it was her now, and he had to catch up to her. He couldn’t lose her again. He couldn’t.
She was still ahead of him, heading for the square in front of the church of St Germain. There were people in the square, gathering for what appeared to be a late night market that sold goods by lamplight. Pinsley plunged into it, trying to keep pace with his daughter.
Then… then she was gone. It was as if the crowd around Pinsley simply swallowed her up, and with her, every hope he’d ever had. He looked around frantically, trying to catch a glimpse of her browsing at some stall, or even just trying to walk away through the crowd.
There was no sign of her, though. It was as if she had vanished into thin air, the people of the crowd providing perfect cover for it. Pinsley stood there, and it felt as though his heart was breaking. He’d come so close to finding his daughter again that it hurt. He couldn’t come so close, only to lose her.
Yet he had lost her, at least for now. Standing there, Pinsley realized that he couldn’t just keep looking. He needed to get back to Kaia, before she thought that he’d abandoned her. Maybe in the morning, he could try the theatre again. He just had to hope that Oliva would be there when he did.
*
Kaia knew that she probably ought to stay put the way the inspector wanted her to. She ought to stay in her seat and be careful. She’d seen the kinds of dangers that could come from wandering off alone.
Two things made her rise up out of her seat anyway. The first was that everyone else in the theatre seemed to be leaving, so that if she waited, soon she would be sitting there alone, and probably people would start asking her questions about why she wasn’t moving, in French which she couldn’t understand.
The second reason was simply that she wanted to know more about the traces of the shadow she had felt there. It might be more difficult in some ways, investigating without Pinsley by her side, but it did mean that she could focus on the shadows more openly, without worrying about his disbelief.
Besides, she wasn’t some little girl for the inspector to simply order to stay in place. She could make her own decisions, and do what she wanted to do. Right now, what Kaia wanted more than anything was to look around behind the scenes of the theatre. It might even help with tracking down shadows, since this was the place Kaia’s sense for them had brought her.
Her mind made up, Kaia started to make her way down towards the backstage area. She could feel the presence of the shadows lingering here, the sense of something being fundamentally wrong with the world impossible to ignore. She reached the doorway that seemed to lead backstage, and now the man who seemed to be the director wasn’t even trying to guard it. Instead, he was moving among his stagehands, trying to get things packed away properly, or perhaps telling them to help get rid of the audience members who had already gotten back there. Kaia didn’t know which.
Either way, it meant that it was easy for her to slip past him, into the area behind the stage. The sense of the shadows was even stronger here, and Kaia found herself trying to follow it, trying to pinpoint exactly where they were. Or where they had been perhaps, because the traces didn’t feel as strong as they had been when she was chasing the shadows across London. This didn’t even feel the way Bedlam had, with layer upon layer of that wrongness ingrained into the very stones.
The presence of the shadows was still palpable, though, and Kaia found herself following it, down into the heart of the theatre, where there were rooms full of old props, and other rooms with mirrors and rows of costumes that were clearly dressing rooms. She found herself drawn towards one room over the others, and crept towards it on silent feet.
Then its door opened, and a woman came out, staring at Kaia with a hint of panic as she stared at someone she didn’t know, as if there was something very wrong about Kaia being there like that.
Kaia recognized her instantly, even though she wasn’t wearing her stage makeup or costume anymore, but instead a simple dress cinched at the waist by a corset. This was her, the woman who had been out there playing Juliet. She was even lovelier without all of her costume, with high cheekbones and wide blue eyes that seemed to pierce through Kaia, although that might have just been the interrogating look she was giving her.
“Ou est vous?” she said, in a tone that made it clear that it was a question whose answer would either bring a call for help or let Kaia off the hook. And if Kaia had had the first inkling what the answer should be, then everything would have been fine.
As it was, all she could do was raise her hands and back away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you’re English,” the woman said, in accented English. “I was asking who you are, and what you’re doing here.”
“I’m Kaia,” Kaia said. “I came backstage because…” she knew that she couldn’t talk about shadows, but maybe there was a better way to do this. “Because I’ve never seen a play before, and it all seemed so amazing. You were the one playing Juliet? You were incredible.”
“But how do you know?” the actress asked. “If you cannot understand French?”
“That’s what made it wonderful,” Kaia said. “It was like I understood it all even though I couldn’t understand the words. It was like it was true, even though you were all just acting. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Ah, I think we have a new fan of the theatre,” the actress said.
“What’s your name?” Kaia asked. She tried to think back to the fliers that had been pasted to the wall. Are you Amelie de Fiaux?”
“Ah, non,” the actress said with a sad smile. “I am Sidonie Herve, her… replacement? Understudy? Tonight is my first night in the role. I am glad that you liked the performance though, Kaia. Here…”
She ducked back into her dressing room for a moment, coming out with a flower. To Kaia’s surprise when she touched it, the petals were made of silk, and the stem was a stick of green painted wood.
“To remember the night by,” Sidonie said. “Real flowers are unlucky backstage.”
Kaia took the memento gladly, holding it close. “Thank you, so much.”
“You’re welcome, although I imagine you should be getting back to the front of house. You didn’t come here alone, did you?”
“No, no, I…” Kaia realized that there was every chance that the inspector would be looking for her by now. She should get back and wait for him. If there were shadows in this theatre, she wasn’t going to find them tonight.
She went out into the theatre proper, and found the inspector standing there, well, more pacing than standing, waiting for her.
“Kaia,” he said. “Where have you been?”
“Where have I been?” Kaia countered. “You walked off with no explanation.”
“I had to…” She saw him shake his head. “No, that doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.”
“You’re not going to tell me?” Kaia asked.
“I don’t have to tell you everything, Kaia,” Pinsley said. “Now, where did you get to, when I told you to stay put?”
“I’m not a child,” Kaia replied.
“You are a young woman in a strange city, and you do not even speak the language,” Pinsley pointed out. “Forgive me for being worried about you.”
Kaia hated that, the way he made it sound like it was her fault for wandering off when he’d done it first. She knew that he was worried for her, but hadn’t she already shown him that she could take care of herself?
“Should we try to look for the shadows now?” Kaia asked.
She knew immediately that she’d pushed too far.
“What I found tonight has nothing to do with shadows,” Pinsley said. “And it is time for us to go.”
“But-”
“Everyone else in the audience has left,” the inspector pointed out. “And we still need to find a place to stay tonight. Our time at the theatre is done, at least for today.”
He said it firmly, and Kaia knew that there would be no budging him. There was cl
early something bothering him for him to be so short with her, but right now, Kaia wasn’t in the mood to get it out of him. Instead, she found herself looking around the theatre. She could feel the touch of the shadows there, and that was only one of the reasons she found herself already trying to work out how she would come back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sidonie was a whirl of emotions as she made her way home through the streets of Paris. She felt delight at how well her premiere as Juliet had gone, but it was all tangled up with sadness that someone else had died to give her the role, and nerves about whether she would be able to do as well tomorrow. If the events of the last few days proved anything, it was that a young actress could always be replaced.
Young? She was twenty-seven, practically ancient by the standards of the theatre. This was the kind of age when most of the young ingenues of the theatre had already been married off to artists, or occasionally even to wealthy men who got caught up in the glamor of the theatre. The ones who didn’t often gave up, trying to find jobs over in the Marais district or the Gare du Nord, where her home waited.
It was a long walk across the city, over the bridges that crossed the Seine and then up past the Palais de L’Elysée. Perhaps, Sidonie thought, she should have taken a carriage, but such things were expensive, and on the kind of money that an actress earned it wasn’t a liberty she could afford to take. If there weren’t this business of the killer, she wouldn’t even have entertained the thought, and she wasn’t about to let fear change her mind now.
So she walked, out past the abbey at the heart of St Germain du Pres, her coat wrapped tightly around her in the night air. In a month or so, when Spring came, it would be the most beautiful city in the world, but for now, it was simply cold. Sidonie was starting to regret her decision to walk, but there were no carriages in sight right now, so she had to keep going.
