‘If she can’t,’ Nava said, ‘I can.’
Terence frowned and, basically, pouted. It was unbecoming, but about what Nava had come to expect of the man. ‘Very well. Talk to Simone after we’ve gone through the bedroom scene.’ Yoshirō perked up at the mention of that scene. For whatever reason, he seemed a lot more enthusiastic about rehearsing it today than he had previously been. ‘I’m still not quite happy with the–’
A long scream, perhaps more of a shriek, cut Terence off and caused everyone to turn toward the rear of the stage. There was a figure there, hidden in the shadows but obviously feminine. The only really visible part of the shape was its eyes which glowed blue. There were more gasps. The ghost was back, it seemed, but this time it was being rather more active.
Terence overcame has initial shock and raised a hand toward the figure. ‘Now–’
The ghost flew forward, out of the shadows and into the light. Terence reared back, but the Phantom was not heading for him. Angry blue eyes with black sclera were fixed on Nava. It did fly, leaning forward with its arms outstretched, fingers clawed. The sleeves and train of its gown fluttered out behind it, and its long white hair swept back from its long face. Nava stood, impassive, and took in the details. People scattered as the white-clad woman flew straight at Nava, screaming as it went. It flew through her, and then vanished at the edge of the stage.
Nava turned to Terence. ‘You were saying?’
‘What?’ Terence was standing there, wide-eyed. His wide eyes finally focused on Nava. ‘What?’ he repeated.
‘You were saying there was something you didn’t like about the bedroom scene.’
‘A screaming ghost just flew through you!’ Twyla said in a voice which was more like a squeak.
Nava shrugged. ‘We only have two weeks until the play and, given that there will be various exams during that period, we only have today and tomorrow to get this right. I don’t think we have time to waste on whatever that was.’
‘Right,’ Terence said, visibly trying to pull himself back together. ‘Nava is right. Let’s get on with this.’
‘Nicola?’ someone called from somewhere behind Nava. She turned to see what was happening. ‘Nicola? Are you okay?’ Someone was walking quickly toward the doors at the back of the theatre. The woman who had spoken was one of the Art Club students and the one walking away – Nicola, Nava assumed – looked like the one Nava had seen earlier, the one who had seemed angry with Nava’s costume. Maybe Nicola was marching away because of the Phantom’s appearance. She still looked angry, however. What did she have to be angry about?
~~~
Nava had just changed back into her uniform and handed the costume off to Simone – who had promised to find a solution to the underwear issue for the rehearsals tomorrow – when she heard the voices. Rexanne and Terence were discussing something in one of the rooms at the back of the stage, an unused changing room, and the doors were not exactly solid.
‘You have to get her signature before we can continue,’ Terence said. ‘We’re running out of time. We can’t even prepare the posters without it and the rest…’
‘I’m aware, Terry,’ Rexanne said. ‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow. You won’t need her for the entire afternoon, will you?’
‘Of course not.’ Pause. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea anyway? She hasn’t shown any acting ability up to now. If she goes through the entire play as an emotionless doll, this will end up being a total flop.’
Rexanne sighed. ‘That is an issue. She’s said she can do it, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes…’ There was a distinct sense of disbelief in Terence’s voice.
‘If she can, the Drama Club will have quite the coup.’
‘I’m aware.’
Nava moved away, heading for one of the refectories and dinner. The others would be waiting for her by now. Rexanne and Terence had obviously been talking about her. What did they need her signature on? And why was Rexanne taking her time over getting it? She would worry about that when it became a problem. Food and interrogation awaited.
~~~
Nava looked at the image on Courtney’s ketcom screen, considering. ‘Close enough,’ she said.
‘Close enough?’ Courtney asked.
‘The eyes are different, obviously. Humans lack glowing irises on a black background, as a general rule. The Phantom’s hair was white. The face is generally correct.’ Nava paused, looking upward as though remembering. ‘The face is right, but there are slight differences. I think, if I had to pass an opinion, that the ghost is slightly idealised. Chantal Alvin after a skilled operator has worked over her image with a good graphics package.’
‘And the spell still didn’t detect anything?’ Rochester asked.
‘I cast it as she flew at me,’ Nava said. ‘I got nothing.’
‘We could’ve made a mistake in the schema…’
‘We made no mistakes in the schema,’ Hoshi asserted. ‘There could be an error in the original premise. The “ghost” may not be an entity like the Harbinger.’
‘I think,’ Nava said, ‘that what we’re dealing with is not a Q-field entity. However, I think a ghost would be. I think we’re dealing with something else.’
‘Do you have an idea of what?’ Courtney asked.
Nava shrugged. ‘A human who wants the play to fail. If I see the Phantom again, I’ll try to unmask that human. Currently, I have no idea who it might be.’
‘I’m going to assume you’ll call us in if you figure it out.’
‘Of course.’
‘Rather than doing it yourself and ending up with another body.’
‘To date, Captain, whoever is behind this has not done anything I would consider threatening. If they were actually to attack me, we might have an issue. Somehow… I just don’t see this going that way.’
235/11/32.
‘It’s just a standard waiver,’ Rexanne said as Nava looked at the document the club’s chairwoman had sent to be signed. ‘Everyone in the club signs the same thing when they join. Of course, you didn’t join.’
‘And it’s just so that you can use my image in publicity material?’ Nava asked.
‘That’s right.’ Rexanne was not an actress. She was planning to go into video production after leaving school. The Girard Sonkeis were an ambitious family and Rexanne appeared to be aiming for more than just ‘a job in production.’ Rexanne wanted to be an actual producer. ‘We have someone from the Art Club doing the publicity stills this afternoon, so we really need to get your signature today.’
‘Might have been a good idea to think of this earlier. You’re giving me no time to read this.’ Nava was, in fact, reading it now. Rexanne might have thought she was scanning it, but Nava was reading. She could read very fast.
‘Yes.’ A bright, disarming grin appeared on Rexanne’s face. ‘Sorry. It totally slipped my mind until the photographer mentioned it.’ The thing about Rexanne not being an actress was that she was not that great at lying. The ‘waiver’ gave the Drama Club the right to use Nava’s image in publicity material, sure, but it also gave Rexanne Girard and Terence Daniau the right to use video taken of the play in whatever manner they saw fit. That the two were specifically named was a bit of a mistake; Nava suspected that the waiver was genuine, but someone without much legal experience had tacked on extra paragraphs.
Nava nodded. ‘Well, I can’t see anything about signing my life away to slavers.’ That got a thin laugh from Rexanne. Nava tapped at the screen a few times. ‘There you go. The signed document should be waiting for you.’
‘Thank you. That’s just perfect.’
Nava nodded again and stepped away. She had also sent the waiver to Fawn and Rhianna. Separately: the two did not need to know both were being consulted. Nava had signed the thing, but that did not have to mean Rexanne and Terence got their way…
~~~
Terence was not getting his way in more ways than one. ‘Nava,’ he said in a tone which suggested long, intolerable
suffering, ‘in this scene, Yuki is finally admitting to herself that she loves Constant. Do you really think she would do it as emotionlessly as that?’
Nava looked at him for a second. ‘Two things,’ she said.
‘Two?’
‘Two. You’ve decided to take my suggestion regarding Yuki’s motivations. She knows what Constant is doing and is going along with it because she knows how it will end. Do you really think that, alone in her bedchamber, she would be saying any of this? She isn’t in love with Constant, she’s just pretending to be. When she’s alone, she doesn’t need to pretend.’
Terence blinked a couple of times. ‘Uh…’ Another blink. Then a slow grin. ‘What if, to her surprise, she has fallen in love with him. She knows how it will end, but she does have feelings for him. She’s never felt that way before, so she’s… confused. Maybe she’s not even sure how she feels. Internal conflict over her own feelings is perfect for this scene. Can you play her that way?’
‘Yes. I don’t feel that’s entirely inconsistent with the character either. I’ll need to go over the lines and reconsider their delivery.’
‘Of course. Take a few minutes and then we’ll try– Uh, you said there were two problems?’ Nava nodded. ‘What was the second?’
‘One performance,’ Nava said flatly.
‘One performance?’
‘When we started all of this, you said that I would have to give one performance and that is what I agreed to. Do you want it now or in front of the audience?’ Her gaze held Terence’s for several seconds while he tried to come up with an answer. Finally, she said, ‘If you keep grinding your teeth like that, your orthodontist will have a fit.’
~~~
Terence’s temper had not improved a couple of hours later when they were going through a scene with Yoshirō and Twyla and the full scenery of the princess’s bedchamber. There seemed to be a lot of scenes in bedrooms, but Nava had concluded that it cut down on production costs and was vaguely logical when you were hatching or enacting evil plots.
The scenery was all illusion, of course. In a commercial production, it needed to be designed and the illusionists had to craft the illusions. That all cost money. Money was not involved in this production, but there was still a cost in terms of time. There was, in effect, a budget and Terence found it restrictive. As in, he was always complaining that the sets could be improved.
‘The audience won’t even be able to see that!’ the Art Club student responsible for the current set said. Actually, he almost shrieked it. Terence’s temper was not the only one fraying today.
‘I can see it,’ Terence responded. It was a detail on the fireplace which, as the illusionist had said, was not even facing the audience. Terence was standing right beside the illusory fireplace, looking up at something over his head. ‘It needs to be perfect.’
‘With your attitude,’ the illusionist began. He stopped, frowning, at the sound of a scream from somewhere at the back of the stage, behind the illusory walls. ‘What was that?’
The Phantom flew through the wall of the bedchamber as though it was not there – which, in fact, it was not – and came to a stop in the middle of the set. It turned, looking around until it spotted Terence, and then it raised the knife it was holding in its right hand and charged toward the director who stood there, staring at the oncoming spirit like an idiot. There were some more screams, only one of them from the Phantom. The Phantom’s scream sounded angry rather than fearful and its blue eyes glowed with murderous intent.
Nava stepped into the space between the Phantom and Terence. The ghost reared back and then brought its knife down on Nava who barely twisted to avoid it as she thrust out a hand toward the Phantom’s chest. The Phantom vanished. One second it was there, the next it was gone. The knife stayed behind, however, falling to the stage and clattering on a surface which appeared to be carpeted.
‘Y-you killed it?’ Twyla asked from across the stage.
‘Hardly,’ Nava replied, ‘it was never alive.’ Her eyes scanned the stage and then out toward the seating. Someone was walking away, very fast, and with shoulders hunched as though in anger.
‘If it’s a ghost–’
‘It wasn’t a ghost.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Twyla asked. She was walking across the stage, her eyes on the knife near Nava’s feet.
‘Well, you can’t dispel a ghost.’
~~~
‘You must really love your sister.’
Nicola turned at the sound of the voice. That Nava was standing in the entrance to the platform was not a big surprise, really. The fact that she was still dressed in her Ice Queen costume was another matter. The next thing Nicola knew, she had dropped her suitcase and closed the distance, and Nava was deflecting wildly telegraphed swings which Nicola was putting her entire body into. Eventually, Nava seemed to get tired of knocking Nicola’s punches away, caught her arm, and twisted it into a painful lock.
‘Nicola Alvin Cook,’ Nava said when she had Nicola under control. ‘It’s a little surprising that no one connected you to Chantal Alvin until now. Courtney Martell is a little embarrassed. She didn’t think of checking the rolls for a member of Chantal Alvin’s family. She went to your apartment, by the way, while I came here. She’ll be along as soon as she realises you’re not there. Then… I’m not sure what they’ll do with you, to be honest. Like I said, you must really love your sister. Idolised her when she was alive, I’d imagine.’
‘What would you know about it?’ Nicola asked through gritted teeth. ‘You’re an orphan, aren’t you?’
‘I had sisters. You could even say I loved them. Some of them. You could certainly say that I avenged their deaths. Is that what you’re doing? I find it hard to believe that you came to SAS-squared with the intention of revenge.’
‘I came to finish what she started. She was so good. She was going to be a great sorceress and actress. I wanted to follow her lead, even if I’m not–’
Nava let go of Nicola’s arm and took a step back. She raised a warning finger. ‘If you attack me again, I won’t be as gentle. I can’t speak for your sister’s acting abilities, but Courtney dug up your academic records and you’re better than she was at your age as far as sorcery goes.’
‘That’s not–’
‘Like I said, you idolised her. You used her as the basis for your Phantom spell. I’ve seen images of Chantal and I saw the illusion you created close up. You smoothed out a few features. She had a mole on her brow which you left out. You even made her breasts a little more rounded. I bet you knew her about as well as she did herself, but you see the perfect version of her when you remember her. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se… So, Terence Daniau deciding to put on The Ice Queen was the trigger, right?’
Nicola’s fists clenched, but she apparently realised that taking another swing at Nava would be futile. ‘How dare they? How could they put on the production that killed Chantal? How could they do that?’
‘What makes you think the play caused your sister’s death?’ Nava asked flatly.
‘What? Of course it did! She was found in the theatre, wasn’t she? The stress–’
‘Probably added to her state of mind, but I doubt it was what pushed her over the edge.’
‘Then why was she… found in the theatre? In her costume!’ There were tears in Nicola’s eyes and she was more or less shouting; Nava looked on impassively.
‘She wanted to be found quickly and the remote mechanism for the lighting gave her a way to take her own life somewhere she knew people would come to. As for the dress… She was wearing her school uniform, not her stage costume. Is that just an assumption you made? She was found in the theatre, so the play is what caused her death and she would have been wearing her costume. Was that your reasoning?’
Nicola just stared at Nava, so Nava continued. ‘Chantal Alvin was worried about her grades. She was working toward her fourth-year exams which would decide what she could do with her fifth year. She also h
ad the play to worry about, but it was her performance in the exams that had her most worried. The Drama Club won’t use fourth and sixth years in primary roles now, because of your sister’s death, but she shouldn’t have taken the part.’
‘She had to grab her chance while she could!’ Nicola responded angrily.
‘I’d imagine she told herself that, yes. It was neither the exams nor the play which pushed her to suicide, however. Her boyfriend broke up with her two days before she was found dead. I understand they’d been in a relationship for some time. You can’t blame him for what happened any more than you can blame the play, but the shock of losing him on top of everything else was too much. There was a full report on this. I’d imagine it was sent to your parents. Maybe they didn’t think you were mature enough to see it at the time. I’ll ask Courtney to let you read it. The school made some changes to the mental health monitoring practices here, but it’s not really possible to catch every problem. Unless they started using some rather unethical procedures involving mind-reading spells…’
Tears were falling now and Nicola did the same, dropping to her knees and covering her face with her hands. ‘I w-was wrong?’
‘Well, yes. You were trying to get them to cancel the production, right? Attacking Terence Daniau was a last resort, I think. Up to then, it had all been scare tactics. Frankly, I can understand wanting to put a knife in him, but I don’t think Courtney will be able to ignore that. It’s a shame, because you clearly have a lot of talent as an illusionist. The detail you put into your Phantom was excellent. If I hadn’t known it wasn’t a ghost, I think I’d have been convinced. But I’ve killed a ghost before. Trying to scare me was also fairly pointless. If it wasn’t a ghost, it seemed likely that it was an illusion and illusions can be dispelled. I think you knew you’d gone too far when you attacked Terence Daniau and I dispelled the Phantom. That’s why you ran. Panic. You have to know that there’d be ASF officers waiting in Alliance City.’
‘I hadn’t thought it through that far.’ Nicola sounded drained, despondent. ‘What happens now?’
Bitter Wind (Death's Handmaiden Book 2) Page 19
