Page 33 of Potion Sickness

“So he gets a tutor now?” she says. “We’ve all been here for months, trying our best, and Gabe walks in off the street and gets private coaching.”

“He’s learning the whole role in a week, Tiffany.”

“I learned two roles. On my own time. With no help.” She pauses. “I asked. Did you know that? First week, I asked Englebert if he’d run the sleepwalking scene with me, in case, God forbid, something happened to Prudence. And you know what he said? He said understudy work was a matter of ‘private study and personal character.’”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Now something did happen, to the other lead, and suddenly it’s all hands, all coaching. But not me. I’ve been sitting for six weeks holding two parts in my head, and nobody has once. Not once--”

“Tiffany,” I say, keeping my voice level. “Nobody thinks you’re not working hard.”

“They don’t think about me at all. That’s the problem. You didn’t interview me. You interviewed Dorcas, but not me.” She picks a nonexistent thread off her sleeve. “I’m just saying. When they hand the crown to the person who did nothing to earn it, and pass over the person who did everything, somebody should be writing that down.”

With that, she picks up her prop staff and heads back to the stage, prepared to be a witch again.

After she leaves, I watch the props table. It sits stage right, against the wall under the cranked-up basketball hoop, dressed with Dana’s taped zones. The banquet goblets aren’t there tonight — they’re still with Annabel — but everything else is. It’s where everything lives between scenes, and I watch it, for an hour, to see who comes near it.

Unfortunately for my investigation, everyone comes near it.

Dorcas sets her box of baked goods down on the corner and the whole cast files past to take a day-old muffin, one after another. Moonbeam drapes her cardigan over the end of it. Cody leaves his gaff tape and his multi-tool there. Ms. Pelham leaves her knitting supplies there when she’s on stage. Mayor Blackwood leans against it to deliver an anecdote and knocks a rubber dagger onto the floor and puts it back in the wrong zone. Lily dies against its leg. Tiffany crosses to it four separate times, and so does Pru, and so does everyone.

Whoever dosed that cup didn’t need any special sort of access. Everyone has access. That’s the problem.

* * *

Vivian calls rehearsal off at ten because Dana tells her to. Cody comes off the light board looking for his multi-tool, which was on the props table twenty minutes ago and isn’t there now. He checks the floor.

“Somebody move my tool?”

Nobody says anything.

Emma, I notice, is furiously writing on her clipboard. Her page tonight is headed ‘VANISHINGS.’ Things have been going missing for weeks, she says, and she’s been keeping a log. Costume jewelry. A set of keys. And now Cody’s tool.

“It’s probably just misplaced,” I tell her.

“Maybe,” Emma says, clicking her pen. “But you should always keep track.”

The company drifts toward the lobby. Gabe closes his script and comes over to where I’m packing up.

“Well,” he says. “I was a tree once. Now I’m a Scottish king. That’s real range.”

“You’re doing great.”

“I somehow kept forgetting my lines through the banquet and I was reading it off the page right in front of me.”

Englebert arrives on the arm of my chair in one jump, tail high, deeply satisfied.

“Gabriel. You have promise. You’re able to listen, which puts you ahead of most men I have coached.” He turns to me. “Marigold. I require transport. I have given the company its spine back and I intend to sleep for twelve hours in celebration of my own restraint.”

“Your restraint?”

“I did not once tonight suggest that I should simply play the part on opening night, and I believe that’s quite admirable.”

“It is,” I say. “You did well, though. It’s working, somehow.”

“It changes nothing,” he says, somberly. “Damien must wake up, or Gabriel must be ready. I know I’ve fought the notion, but you’re correct in that a cat cannot command the stage in front of an audience of strangers. It is preposterous of me to pretend otherwise.” He tucks his paws under his chest. “But you’re right. It did work, tonight, in front of a audience of people who love us. I want that noted.”

“It’s noted.”