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“Then you don’t know what happens to people who leave.”

“What happens?”

“They come back.” She turned away and started folding a bloodstained costume. “Everyone comes back eventually. The theater doesn’t let you go once it knows what you want.”

I didn’t believe her.

Not then.

But I was wrong.

Late at night, when the audience had gone home and the stage was dark, we started talking. Only the lights overhead hummed. She told me about her family, about Evangeline’s obsession with the performances, and how the audience seemed to grow hungrier every time they came back.

“They’re not watching the performers anymore,” she said one night. “They’re watching each other. They want to see who’ll break first. Who’ll admit what they really want.”

“And what do they want?”

“To stop pretending.” Her eyes were dark and tired. “That’s what this place does. It makes you stop pretending you’re a good person.”

“Are you a good person?”

“I don’t know.” She smiled again, softer this time. “Are you?”

Kissing her instead of answering was the first real betrayal.

Two weeks after that first kiss, she came to my room.

Past midnight. The theater was locked and empty; the performers were gone, and the stage was swept clean. A knock on my door pulled me from the cot, where I’d been staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep because, every time I closed my eyes, I saw her mouth.

I opened the door and found her standing in the narrow hallway, still wearing the plain black dress she wore backstage, her hair loose around her shoulders. Dark hair that caught the lamplight and turned it copper. Eyes that looked black in the shadows but I knew were brown with flecks of gold near the pupils.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” she said.

“Good.”

“It’s not good. It’s dangerous.”

“Then leave.”

She stepped inside instead.

As she closed the door behind her, I watched her move into the small space. She walked with a deliberate, controlled gait, as if she always knew exactly where her body was in relation to everything around her. The cot. The trunk. The single lamp burning low on the table. She looked nervous, but her jaw was set, determined, and her hands shook slightly as she reached up and began unbuttoning the front of her dress.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re about to make a mistake.”

“Maybe.” The dress slipped off her shoulders and pooled at her feet, leaving her in a thin cotton slip that did nothing to hide the shape of her body underneath. Small breasts. Narrow waist. Hips that curved just enough to make my mouth go dry. “But I’m tired of pretending I don’t want this.”

Crossing the room in three strides, I caught her wrist before she could reach for the hem of the slip. Her pulse hammered against my thumb. “If we do this, there’s no going back.”

“I know.”

“Your aunt will find out.”

“I don’t care.”