Page 81 of Potion Sickness

“Actually,” Annabel says, “she’s right.”

“Alright,” Tiffany says, looking at Englebert. “Once it’s on you, you stay where I can see you. No improvising blocking. In between acts you come to me in the wings for a touch-up whether you feel like you need one or not.”

“Understood,” Englebert says.

“Third Witch doesn’t appear in Act Three, but Third Witch is about to appear wherever I need her to appear. I need sight lines. I can hold it from the cauldron for my scenes, but for the rest I still need to be somewhere I can see the whole stage.”

“Stage left wing,” Vivian says. “You’ll have the full playing area.”

Tiffany kneels down to Englebert’s level with the cape. She fastens it across his shoulders, where it pools around him.

“Now, I don’t know what this is going to feel like, so… if it zaps you or something, don’t bolt. No sudden movements. I won’t be able to keep up.”

“I have never bolted in my life.”

“Fourth of July, 2007,” Hannah says. “You were startled by the Hendersons’ bottle rockets.”

Tiffany stands, backs off six paces, and closes her eyes. “Nobody talk for a second,” she says.

In the blink of an eye, where Englebert sat a moment ago, there’s a full human man. He’s tall. He’s handsome. He’s wearing the cape.

“Oh, that’s so much worse than I imagined,” Hannah says. “That’s a person. He has pores.”

“All I ever do is pores,” Tiffany says. Her voice has gone thin with the effort. She doesn’t take her eyes off Englebert. “Somebody make him move. I need to see what happens when he moves.”

“I can move on my own volition,” Englebert says, rising to his feet.

“Speak the speech, I pray you,” Englebert says, and Damien’s mouth moves, and out of the man comes Englebert’s voice.

“You look like Damien,” Addie says, furrowing her brow. “But you don’t sound like Damien.”

“The audience will be left to assume that Damien has undergone extensive classical training. That he’s adopted a heightened register for a heightened text.”

We run it. It’s as close to a dress rehearsal as we can get. Moonbeam plays Ross, reading the lines off her phone. The chair playing Lennox falls over during the banquet. The illusion drops once, when Bandit-as-Banquo crosses too close and Englebert flinches sideways to keep from stepping on him, and for a full second there’s a cat in a puddle of cape where Scotland’s king ought to be.

“Only one misstep,” Tiffany says afterward, sitting on the stage stairs with her head against the rail, looking wrung out and lit up at the same time. “And it wasn’t my fault. It was a blocking error.”

“I was on my mark,” Bandit says.

“No, you were not,” Englebert says.

“I think I can hold it,” Tiffany says. “I’ve held a glamour through the last hour of a wedding reception with an open bar and didn’t drop it. Nothing in Shakespeare can be worse than that.”

Gabe, who has been watching the whole run from the audience, lets out an audible sigh.

“What?” Tiffany asks, alarmed. “Was it not good? Could you see through the glamour?”

“No!” Gabe says, emphatically. “God no. That was a sigh of relief. I’ll be off book and ready to go on if you need me, but past that, I’m happy to run the concessions stand. Gladly. Forever. I will hand out lemonade at every performance this company ever mounts, at cost, in costume if Vivian wants, as long as nobody ever again asks me to want a crown in public.”

CHAPTER 24

The Community Center parking lot is full, so I park on the grass. Englebert is up on his hind legs against the passenger window, surveying the lot. Cars with New Hampshire plates, with Massachusetts plates. There’s a charter van from Hemlock Hill idling in the fire lane while a driver unloads walkers one at a time.

“Look at this, Marigold,” Englebert says. “Look what we’ve made.”

The whole town is here, it seems, along with a decent slice of several other towns. Dorcas walks past our car with a sheet cake. Mayor Blackwood is stationed at the door, greeting everyone as they come in.

Emma is sitting at the card table in the lobby manning the cash box, her clipboard open to a fresh page titled ‘OPENING NIGHT – INCIDENTS.’ There’s nothing written under the heading.