"Then tell me," Lia said. "I'd rather wish you hadn't than keep guessing."
Isaiah glanced down the hallway again, like the walls of the Halloway had ears he didn't trust. "I was with Renata."
Lia blinked. "Renata? As in Fendrik's Renata?"
"There's only one Renata around here."
"Why would you lie about being with her?"
"Because she asked me to, and because if anyone finds out we've been talking, it's going to blow up more than just my alibi."
"Talking about what?"
Isaiah rubbed a hand down his face. "She thinks Aria stole something from her. Not a role. Something real. Documents, maybe. She's been asking me to help her get into Aria's dressing room for two weeks."
Lia's chest went cold. "Two weeks. Before any of this happened?"
"I know how it looks."
"It looks like you were casing the room of a woman who's now missing."
"I never went in. I swear that to you." His voice cracked on the word swear. "I told Renata no every time. Tonight she wanted an answer, so I met her outside instead of coming straight to notes rehearsal. That's it. That's the whole secret."
"Then why not just tell Michael that?"
"Because Renata told me if her name came up in this, she'd make sure mine came up worse." He swallowed hard. "I don't know what she's capable of anymore, Lia. I used to think I did."
Before Lia could answer, her phone buzzed once against her hip. A message, no name attached, from a number she didn't recognize. "You're asking the wrong people the right questions. Ask Edith about the mirror in the east wing."
Lia's fingers went numb around the screen.
"What?" Isaiah leaned in. "Who's that from?"
"I don't know." She turned the phone so he could see. "Do you know anything about a mirror in the east wing?"
Isaiah's face lost what little color it had left. "That wing's been locked for years. Since before either of us started here."
"Locked why?"
"Nobody ever gave a real reason. Fendrik just said it wasn't safe to use."
Lia was already moving before she finished the thought. "Then I want to see it."
"Tonight? Are you out of your mind?"
"Someone left me two notes and a text telling me exactly where to look. I don't think ignoring it makes me safer, Isaiah."
He hesitated only a second before falling into step beside her. "Fine. But if this goes badly, you owe me an apology and a very large drink."
The east wing door was locked exactly the way Isaiah said, an old iron bolt with a padlock that looked older than either of them. Lia rattled it twice out of pure frustration before admitting defeat.
"There's a mirror in there," she said. "There has to be a way to actually see it without breaking the door down."
"There's a service corridor that runs behind the dressing rooms. Half the crew doesn't even know it exists." Isaiah led her through a narrow hall stacked with old set pieces, down a flight of stairs that hadn't seen a mop in years, and stopped in front of a gap in the wall paneling just wide enough for one person. "This should put us right behind the east wing rooms."
It didn't. Ten minutes of crawling through dust and cobwebs later, the gap opened into a storage closet that had nothing in it but broken lighting rigs and a single dead moth on the floor.
No mirror. No dressing room. Just a dead end that cost them time neither of them had.
"This isn't it," Lia said, wiping grime off her hands, frustration sharpening her voice more than she meant it to. "This isn't the east wing at all."
"I could have sworn this was the right corridor."
"Well, it isn't." She pressed her palms against her eyes for a second, forcing herself to think instead of panic. The text hadn't said find the mirror. It had said ask Edith. Maybe that wasn't a throwaway line.
Maybe it was the actual instruction, not a mirror to hunt down herself, but a person who already held the answer. "We're doing this wrong. We don't need to find the room. We need to find the person who already knows what's in it."
They found Edith in the costume room, methodically hanging garments that had already been hung. She didn't look up right away.
"Edith," Lia said carefully. "Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask anything, child. Doesn't mean I'll answer."
"The east wing. The mirror. What is it?"
Edith's hands stopped moving. "Who told you about that?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes, it does." Edith finally turned, and for the first time since Lia had known her, the older woman looked afraid. "That mirror should have stayed forgotten."
"Someone doesn't want it forgotten. Someone wants me to see it."
Edith studied her for a long moment, then set down the costume in her hands like it suddenly weighed too much to hold.
"There was a girl here, years before Aria, years before you," she said. "Her name was Corinne. She played the lead the same season a director before Fendrik ran this place. She used that same dressing room in the east wing."
"What happened to her?"
"She disappeared the same way. A note. A missing performance. No body, no answers, and a theater that decided it was easier to lock the door and move forward than ask what really happened."
Lia's mouth went dry. "That's why the wing's closed."
"That's why nobody wanted it reopened. Ever." Edith's voice dropped lower. "Fendrik was young then, barely more than a stagehand himself, but he was there. He knew Corinne. He never talks about her, and none of us have ever asked him to."
"You think he knows something?"
"I think that boy has been carrying something heavier than any of us understood for a very long time." Edith reached out and gripped Lia's wrist with surprising strength. "Whoever is doing this now, they know that history too. They're using it. Which means you need to decide very carefully who you trust with what you just learned."
Isaiah shifted uneasily beside her. "Lia, maybe we should just go to Michael with this."
"And tell him what? That a ghost story from years ago might be connected to tonight?" Lia shook her head. "I need to talk to Fendrik. Now."
"That's exactly the wrong move, and you know it." Isaiah caught her arm before she could walk off. "If he's the one hiding something, walking straight up and announcing what you know isn't brave. It's reckless."
"Then what do you suggest? I sit on this until someone else goes missing?"
"I suggest you let me come with you."
"So he can lie to both of us instead of just me?"
"So there's a witness if he doesn't."
Lia hesitated, weighing it. Before she could answer, her phone lit up again, this time with a call instead of a message. Joy's name filled the screen.
"I have to take this," Lia said, already swiping to answer. "Joy, now really isn't a good time."
"Don't hang up." Joy's voice came through fast and breathless. "I've been calling for ten minutes. Where are you?"
"Costume room. What's wrong?"
"I did what you asked. I looked into the old cast records like you texted me earlier tonight."
Lia frowned. "I never texted you that."