Iron Cast(45)
“For an artist you are not very supportive of the arts,” Saint told her.
“I don’t see how pretending to be someone else on a stage is art,” Corinne said. “It’s not as if they write the plays themselves.”
“You probably shouldn’t mention that to Madeline or James,” he said.
The theater had a better audience than Corinne would have expected, which wasn’t to say that it was a particularly large turnout. They took their seats as the curtain rose—a slow, juddering affair. Madeline was alone center stage. She flung her arms open and cried toward the rafters about her woebegone state. With her eyelids painted a dramatic purple and her lips a bright red, she stood out against the dark backdrop like an exaggerated flower.
Madeline was soon joined by her forbidden lover, who wore a midnight-blue doublet that Corinne was pretty sure was anachronistic to the vaguely Victorian setting. His golden hair was like a halo under the stage lights.
“That’s James,” Corinne whispered to Gabriel.
The paramours talked for a while of their ill-fated romance, her upcoming wedding, and other clichéd plot devices that Corinne didn’t bother remembering. Eventually the lover, spurned by his lady, exited the stage with a flourish. The lady had time to bemoan her loss for only a few seconds before her fiancé appeared, paunchy and black bearded and stomping a lot. Madeline widened her eyes in a show of terror that was glaringly obvious for those in the farthest row of the audience.
Gabriel shifted in his seat to whisper to Corinne, his breath tickling her earlobe. “This is absurd.”
Corinne wanted to agree wholeheartedly, but she could see Saint watching them from the corner of his eye.
“Don’t let their stage demeanor and this awful script fool you,” Corinne whispered back. “James and Madeline are two of the best thespians Boston has ever seen.”
Gabriel didn’t reply, but his expression stated clearly that he didn’t see how that was possible. Corinne gestured furtively toward the stage, where the lady’s dastardly fiancé was bellowing about the cost of virtue or some such nonsense.
“Does he look a bit like James to you?” Corinne asked, leaning into Gabriel.
“What? No.”
“Silly me. You’re right, of course. They look nothing alike. He’s obviously a completely different person.”
She watched Gabriel’s eyes narrow as he stared at the thundering fiancé, whose soon-to-be wife wilted like a womanly flower in the corner of the stage. After a minute he leaned toward her again.
“Are you saying—?”
“I’m saying that Madeline and James always put on obscure plays because they have to find scripts that never feature more than two actors on the stage at the same time.”
There weren’t many thespians with enough skill to withstand glaring stage lights and a captive audience. The ones who could project anything better than a fair likeness of their subject depended mostly on confidence and poor lighting to fool people. When James and Madeline performed onstage, the real show was the one the audience didn’t know about.
Gabriel’s expression had turned slightly incredulous, and he didn’t offer further comment about the travesty of a love story that was unfolding. Hemopaths who manifested with a thespian talent were considered the most dangerous by regs—and even by their fellow hemopaths. If the thespian was skilled enough, only another thespian could see through the impersonation. Madeline and James both cycled through a plethora of characters throughout the play, but even when she concentrated, Corinne couldn’t see any resemblance. There was no evidence that the Mythic employed only two actors rather than ten. She might not care for the Gretskys’ productions, but she had to give credit where credit was due. Johnny had tried to hire the couple countless times throughout the years, offering generous cuts of any con they helped run, but they always refused. Neither of them cared for Boston’s seedy underworld. The Mythic was their only stage.
The play went on for almost three hours, with a brief intermission. It ended with Madeline’s character jumping into a river offstage—either to drown herself or to swim to freedom. Corinne had lost track of what was happening by that point. There was no final bow, and the audience was left applauding at the lowered curtain.
Corinne led the way through the threadbare lobby and the dilapidated front doors, around to the theater’s rear alley, where a few crates rotted alongside piles of debris. Some rats scattered at their approach. Corinne banged on the huge wooden door. After a few minutes, interspersed with more banging from Corinne and the occasional comment from Saint that annoying them wasn’t going to make them more likely to help, an eye-level panel in the door slid open.
Two brown eyes appeared, paired with dark eyebrows and a delicate nose.
“No autographs,” she said.
“Madeline, this is important. Let us in,” Corinne said.
“You know the rules,” she said, eyes narrowing. “No one is allowed backstage. No one.”
She started to slide the panel shut.
“Wait!” Corinne said, and dragged Saint over. Despite his protestations, she shoved his face toward Madeline’s. “Look who I brought.”
“Sebastian!” Madeline cried warmly. “How are you? I know someone who’s been dying to see you.” She seemed to catch herself and frown. “But rules are rules. No one is allowed back here.”