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For one suspended moment, the theater becomes very still. The music continues. The lanterns flicker, then the audience breathes, but she has found us, and therefore the rest of the room no longer matters. Her beautiful face rests on me. Feeling the curve of my smile pull across my face and she raises one brow. There is irritation in it, with slight amusement too. Then she turns away, and the spell breaks only enough for me to breathe.

Lazarus exhales beside me, sitting back in his seat. “Good God.”

“A rare moment of theological agreement between us,” I mutter.

“She is extraordinary.” His words are full of admiration.

“Yes,” I cannot help but agree.

“No wonder Edward is useless.” Lazarus spits out.

I laugh under my breath. “He was useless long before Olive.”

“Perhaps. But now he is beautifully useless.” His words fade as the music swells.

Olive rises from the chair, cane sliding through her fingers with lethal elegance. She turns once, skirts flaring just enough for the mirrors to catch the movement and scatter it across the walls.

I should not feel proud. I do not know what right I have to feel anything. Yet when she commands the stage, when the room bends toward her without realizing it, something inside my chest warms with a dangerous sort of recognition. She is not ours to own, not ours to cage, but ours to stand beside, if she ever allows it. The performance ends with Olive at center stage, chin lifted, cane resting before her like a blade disguised as ornament.

The applause is immediate.

Lazarus does not clap, neither do I. We simply stare as the curtains begin to close, at the very last moment, Olive’s gaze finds us again. A warning alongside an invitation and a simple promise of trouble. The velvet curtain swallows her. For several seconds, silence sits between us.

We turn toward one another. His eyes narrow and mine do the same.

“Interesting,” I say.

“Very,” he replies.

A slow grin spreads across his face and I find myself matching it. How inconvenient. I appear to have made a friend.

19. A Poor Performance at Disappearing- Olive

bad decisions

I find Edward Afton in the downtown market. He looks rather dapper in his forest green ascot, black buttoned shirt, and oxfords. Paired with a leather trench coat, he looks rather diabolical. He is pretending not to see me.

A poor performance, I must note.

For a man who murders professionally, he is remarkably terrible at disappearing when personally inconvenienced. He spots me near the flower stalls, freezes for half a breath, then turns sharply toward a hat shop. I follow. Naturally.

The bell above the door chimes as he steps inside. I enter three seconds later and find him inspecting a row of men’s hats with the grave concentration of a physician studying an infected wound.

“How interesting,” I say. “I did not realize hats had become so fascinating.”

His shoulders tighten, but he does not glance in my direction. “Olive.”

“Edward.”

He lifts a black bowler from the display, trying to feign a neutral conversation: “Lovely weather.”

“Cowardly weather, perhaps.” I inch closer into his space. I’m able to inhale his cologne, mahogany with something dark and delectable.

The shop clerk, a young woman with kind eyes and too much curiosity, glances between us.

“Are you quite all right, miss?” she asks in a high-pitched posh voice.

Before I can answer, Edward turns with the smoothest, most infuriating smile I have ever seen. “Oh yes, indeed. Just a lover’s quarrel.”