“What are you doing in here? Who are you?” she asked.
He crossed his arms and leaned against the mirror again. “I told you I could give you life, remember? And I did. Now you’re in my debt.”
Red pressed her lips into a thin line. “Yeah. I don’t think so.”
“You’re going back on your word then?”
“I didn’t give you my word.”
“You gave me your consent.”
“Consent to what? Hover over me like a psycho? Tell me to blink while I was bleeding to death?” She narrowed her eyes. “Which I wasn’t, by the way.”
“Oh?” He straightened.
Even though they were about the same height, she felt as if he were towering over her.
Red swallowed. She remembered how she hadn’t been able to breathe. The gargled coughs. The blood that had flowed from her chest. The panic.
Maybe he had saved her.
“I told you there’d be consequences.”
There was no emotion in his voice. No anger. No hint of his intensity. For a moment, she had started to feel comfortable with him, but she didn’t know him. She didn’t owe him anything.
Red slowly backed away. She eyed the carabiner on the floor.
“I think you should leave.”
He clicked his tongue like a clock, back and forth. “In about ten seconds, your brother Nathan is going to knock on that door. He’s going to be frantic, angry that you didn’t tell him you were here and that you were planning on leaving without seeing him. If you don’t follow through with your commitment to me, then he will suffer the consequences of you breaking your word.”
Pounding came from the door.
Red jerked and her heart took off.
“Megan? Megan, open the door! I know you’re in there!”
She leapt forward, trying to rush away, but the man gripped her arm, locking her into place.
Another knock pounded from the door.
“Megan!”
Red’s mind raced.
Before she thought to yell for help, the stranger shoved a music box in her hands. The wood was smooth and cool underneath her fingertips.
“Listen to the melody,” he whispered into her ear. “It’s one you will recognize.” He wasn’t holding onto her any longer, but Red couldn’t move. With his half-lit face so close to hers, all she could see was his white and flawless skin in the dark.
“Tonight. When you hear the melody out in the theater, you will follow it. If you don’t, Nathan will pay the price.”
The door burst open.
“Megan!”
Nathan barged into the room.
The shadow man was gone.
Chapter Seven
Tribal Boundaries
* * *
Outside the studio, clouds muted the weak morning light. Liam’s footsteps clopped quietly in the still courtyard, the fountain dead this time of morning. Dew rested on the dried leaves and shrubbery, damp from the soft rain that had misted down earlier. Liam passed the dorms and the church and jaunted across the grass until he was out on the street behind the theater.
Thoughts of the previous day throbbed in his head. He couldn’t forget the pressure of firing the dancers based on their height and weight. He couldn’t let go of Madam Benée challenging his every word, his every decision. He already felt inadequate as it was—being only nineteen—he didn’t need Madam Benée breathing down his throat.
It was the most mortifying thing he’d ever experienced.
When he’d seen that wave of red hair in the hallway, his heart had leapt. He’d watched Megan dance for years, sitting next to her father in the orchestra pit. He’d listened to her father speak of Megan for hours during their many theory lessons. Even though Liam’s conversations with her had been sparse, he felt as if he knew her. He felt as if he knew her as well as he had known her father.
Having Megan in the studio yesterday was, surprisingly, a comfort to him. And now she was gone. And he was angry.
Another Van Helsburg had slipped through his fingers.
He should’ve cornered her while he had the chance. He could’ve demanded information about her secret fortune. Maybe she would have been more helpful than her brother. The Van Helsburg children were Stewart’s blood, and they had to know what Stewart was talking about.
My children are what keep this theater alive. You have no idea what treasure they hold.
What did Stewart Van Helsburg know? Where was the treasure hidden?
Through the years, the Bridegroom Killer had scared off all the directors, including his parents, who were unable to take the mental and financial strain from the strange events and deaths that occurred at the theater. Maybe Stewart Van Helsburg had left behind some physical evidence of the fortune that would help Liam survive and turn the theater around. A journal. Documents. Or letters. There had to be some physical proof to the Van Helsburg mystery.
Liam gripped his hair and pulled. If the theater closed, he had nothing.
Yes, his livelihood would be gone. Yes, he wouldn’t be able to finance his composition career. But more importantly, his entire childhood and theater family would be destroyed. Everything that made him who he was would be ripped away from him.
When he’d thought that man in the alley was dead, his heart had cracked. Even though Liam didn’t know the man, for that brief moment he thought he was dead it was as if he’d lost a piece of himself—like losing his own brother.
Liam ducked into the narrow alleyway that led to the bar. Trash rattled on the ground, the garbage bin down the way emanating an awful stench. Liam eyed the alley before he gave three sharp knocks on the door, waited a moment, then gave two more.
Bart opened the door a few inches, wearing his oversized cape with the hood that covered his head. His tall form loomed over Liam, his thin white arms surprisingly muscled. He placed a hand across the doorway.
“Sorry. New rules. No one can come in or out until the sun is completely up.”
“Excuse me?”
“No one is allowed—”
“I heard you, Bart. Why?”
He lowered his hood and white-blond hair hung around him in shags, like one long albino.
“Fear is stirring. Rules are becoming more strict. The deaths have begun again.”
Liam groaned. Thomas’s hoax had gone too far. “Move aside, Bart. Tell all cast members that they’re allowed to come and go anytime they want.”
The gaunt man straightened his back, growing another foot. “I’ve been instructed. Not until the sun is out. The murders only happen at night. Come back or wait.”
The door started to close, but Liam stopped it with his foot.
“This is my theater. My property. You are employed by me. Who were you instructed by?”
A chuckle erupted from Bart’s mouth. “Who do you think?”
Liam sighed. “Don.”
Bart’s mouth stretched into a sinister smile. He opened the door wider and swept an arm inside. “Go in, then, if you want to face his superstitious wrath.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Flames danced on the walls as Liam headed downward through the long hallway, heat flushing through his body. This wasn’t the first time Don had pulled a stunt like this. Don had once rallied a strike against his father, demanding more pay for him and his fellow cast members, which he had lost. Liam remembered joining the strike, rallying against his father, and he smiled at the memory. It was when the brotherhood had first welcomed him as their own.