The applause hit Lia Robetor like a wave she wasn't ready for. She stood center stage in another woman's dress, another woman's diamonds clipped to her ears, and waited for her legs to remember how to bow.
Three years of standing in the wings had never prepared her for this much light.
Somewhere in the wings, Isaiah mouthed something at her. She caught the two words: Go on.
She went on, and bowed. The curtain dropped, and the second it did, the polite mask she'd worn for two hours cracked wide open.
"Where is she?" Lia grabbed the arm of the closest stagehand. "Has anyone found Aria?"
"No word yet."
"She missed her cue in the second act. Which is unlike her, she never misses a cue."
"Take it up with Fendrik. He's the one who told us to keep the show running."
Lia found him backstage, arms crossed, watching the crew strike the set like nothing had happened. Fendrik Mondragon didn't look like a man whose lead actress had vanished mid performance. He looked like a man rearranging furniture.
"You knew before the curtain went up," Lia said.
"What are you talking about? I knew she wasn't answering her door."
"And you let me go on anyway."
"The show doesn't stop because one person is unreachable." His voice stayed even, but his eyes weren't. "Anyways, you did well tonight."
"I don't want a compliment. I want to know where Aria is."
"So do I."
"Then why aren't you panicking?"
"Because panic doesn't find people. It just tells everyone watching that something's wrong." He finally looked at her fully. "Go change. The police will want to talk to whoever was closest to her tonight. And that's you."
"Me? I barely spoke to her all week."
"You were her understudy for three years. That's closer than most people in this building ever got."
Lia wanted to argue, but he was already walking away, phone pressed to his ear, voice dropping into something clipped and businesslike.
She watched him go and felt the first real thread of fear work its way under her ribs.
It struck her, watching him disappear down the corridor, that she'd never once seen Fendrik rattled in three years of working under him.
Not during a botched dress rehearsal, because she used to think that calm meant he simply cared less than everyone else. Standing there in someone else's diamonds, she wasn't so sure anymore.
Her dressing room, Aria's dressing room, was exactly how it should have been an hour ago. Perfume still in the air. A half finished cup of tea gone cold on the vanity. Aria's second costume hung pressed and waiting for a scene she never came back to play.
Lia sat down slower than she meant to.
There was an envelope tucked into the corner of the mirror frame. Cream paper, no stamp, her name written across the front in handwriting she didn't recognize.
She almost didn't touch it. Some instinct, quiet but insistent, told her that whatever was inside would change something she couldn't change back.
She reached for it anyway, and the word, "Lia." was written on it.
She almost laughed because Aria never called her that. Aria called her "the understudy" when she was feeling generous and nothing at all when she wasn't.
She opened it anyway, and it reads: Ask him what he knows about the theater's other missing girls.
No signature, or explanation. Just one line, and underneath it, a small drawing of a mask, the kind that hung in the lobby display case, the kind every actor at the Halloway walked past a hundred times without looking twice.
"Lia?"
She jumped so hard the paper slipped from her fingers. Joy stood in the doorway, still in her coat, mascara smudged from crying through the whole show.
"You scared the hell out of me," Lia said.
"You look like you saw a ghost." Joy stepped inside and shut the door behind her. "What's that?"
"Nothing." Lia folded the note before she thought better of it and shoved it into her bag.
She wasn't ready to say it out loud yet, not even to Joy. The second she said it out loud, it became real, and someone else's problem to solve. She needed a few more minutes of it being only hers.
"Just a note from the costume department."
"Lia..."
"Come on, I'm fine, Joy."
"You are the worst liar I have ever met, and I've known you since we were nine." Joy sat on the edge of the vanity, arms crossed. "Tell me what happened tonight. I mean what really happened, and I don't want any lies. Because I know you're about to lie to the police."
Lia opened her mouth to deflect again, and that was when the door swung open without a knock.
Michael, the detective who handled anything the theater didn't want in the papers, stepped inside like he already owned the room.
"Miss Robetor. I want to have a word with you."
"Now?"
"Yes, right now." He glanced at Joy. "Alone, if you don't mind."
Joy didn't move until Lia gave her a small nod. She left, but not before mouthing call me the second he's gone.
Michael closed the door and didn't sit. "Explain to me everything that happened tonight."
"I already told the stage manager everything I know."
"I don't work for the stage manager. Tell me again, from the beginning, and let me decide what matters."
"Fine." Lia pulled her arms tighter around herself, wishing she'd changed out of the costume before he arrived. It felt wrong answering questions about a missing woman while still wearing another woman's diamonds.
Lia folded her hands to keep them from shaking. "I got the call two hours before curtain. Aria wasn't answering. I was told to prepare to go on, and I did. That's it."
"That's it," he repeated, like he was tasting the words for a lie.
"Yes."
"You didn't see her at all today. Not once?"
"I didn't."
He studied her long enough that she started counting the seconds in her head to keep from filling the silence herself.
"Funny," he finally said. "Because her assistant says Aria mentioned your name twice this afternoon. Once when she asked who was covering her role tonight, and secondly, ten minutes before she disappeared."
Lia's stomach dropped somewhere past the floor. "What did she say?"
"That's what I'm asking you."
"I don't know. I wasn't there."
Michael reached into his jacket and pulled out a small evidence bag. Inside it sat a second envelope, cream colored, the same weight, the same handwriting as the one currently crushed inside Lia's bag against her hip.
"We found this taped under Aria's mirror," he said. "It has your name on it too."
Lia's mouth went dry. "What does it say?"
Michael didn't answer right away. He turned the bag slightly so the light caught the ink, and for the first time all night, his composed detective's face slipped just enough to show something that looked almost like worry.
"It says you're next."