With her hands bound and her breath almost gone, Zara has to do the hardest thing imaginable.
She has to stop fighting.
It’s the struggle that’s killing her. The thrashing, the kicking. It’s twisting her up in the godawful heavy layers of Cosima’s costume. This costume wants her to die. Meg wants her to die.
Zara lets her body go slack, melting into the weight of the water. She has to sink down — down is the right direction. She hits the bottom of the tank and uses every bit of strength in her legs to propel herself up —
She hits the air, heaving and gasping. Meg is still watching, standing calmly at the side of the tank, hate roaring through her pale-blue eyes. “Why did you stop him from jumping?” she asks. “I was doing this for you. For all of us. You only had to stand back and let it happen.”
Zara tilts her face up toward the stage tiles that have been put back together, creating a ceiling like a low, black night. Footsteps echo across the boards above her. Actors are coming out from the wings in ones and twos to take their bows. The company is smiling and joining hands.
No one will miss Zara. Not for a while, at least.
“I finished it,” Meg says. “Leopold is dead.”
Zara gasps, and this time water comes in, mixed with the air.
“I’m going to try this one last time,” Meg says. “I’ll help you out of the pool, and you can be Echo, if you forget what you saw. There will always be a place for you here at the Aurelia. Just. Forget.”
Zara tries to nod, but it dips her head under, sends burning cold water sluicing into her nose.
She fights her way back up. “Yes,” she chokes. “Okay.” If she can’t convince Meg that she believes her, she’ll be dead before she can come up with a plan.
Meg’s voice curves with satisfaction. “Come to the edge.”
Zara goes under and tries to work her way over to the side of the tank, her feet like useless flippers, her hands still bound.
Cosima did this.
Bound Zara’s hands.
And there was that costume, in the corner of the shop. Cosima made it so someone else could dress to look like Leopold. It would have to be convincing enough that strangers on the street would be able to confirm that they saw Leopold coming out the front door of the theater that day.
And who better for the role than Leopold’s son?
Barrett never wanted to help Leopold — he hated his father. That’s what Kestrel told Zara. Meg must have been the one who promised Barrett a better job when Leopold was gone.
But Barrett couldn’t have used the costume to give Enna the pills. To poison her. Enna wasn’t a stranger on the street — she would have seen right through the disguise.
That had to be someone else.
Zara doesn’t have the time to figure it out. She only has half of the truth, and she is going to take it with her into nothingness. It’s stunning, how certain Zara is that she’s going to die. The water tells her so. Her brain starts to sponge with black at the edges.
Zara chooses Eli for her last thoughts. Eli, somewhere in the Aurelia. Eli, waiting to tell her it’s okay and to take both of Zara’s hands in hers. Her smile. Bright, hot, white. Her blue-green tattoos, a whole world scrawled on her arms. Her black curls, everywhere.
Her Leatherman.
It’s still tucked into Zara’s bra. She can feel it there, hard against the workings of her heart.
Zara lets out her breath all at once, sinks to the bottom of the tank like a dropped stone. She has one chance to get this right. No rehearsal. No running it again if she messes up.
Zara tugs at the neckline of her dress until she has the Leatherman in a clumsy double grip. She pries at it, freeing several of the knives at once, slicing into her own fingers, pointing the Leatherman toward her wrists. The water pinks with blood as one long blade struggles through the rope.
Then she pushes against the bottom of the tank, and when she makes it to the surface, she ignores the screaming pulse in her cut fingers and lashes at Meg. The director’s assistant steps back — not quickly enough. The blade catches her in the arm, and sticks.
Applause rages above them.
Zara can feel it in the bones of the building. She can hear it over the sound of her scraped breath.
It covers Meg’s screams.
Zara pulls herself over the side of the tank, her arms doing things they shouldn’t be able to after so long tied together, going numb. Blood runs onto the floor — her blood, Meg’s blood. She’s afraid of how much she hurt Meg. She’s afraid that she didn’t hurt her enough.
Zara runs, floor slippery, hands sticky. Her feet are a nervous drumbeat on the ladder, pounding until she makes it to the top. She uses the last of her strength to lift the door above her head and crawl into the wings. The actors are onstage, looking out at the audience. There are no crew members on this side of the wings. The assistant stage manager stands on the far side of the stage, but she’s not paying attention as Zara waves one bleeding hand. Meg will be after her soon. Zara needs help. She needs —
Zara thinks she must be wrong, she must be hallucinating.
She might be dead.
Because Eli is there, in her dark-blue dress, running through the wings. She doesn’t have the shining look of a prince coming to save someone. She looks tired and desperate and painfully in love.
Zara collapses.
Her breath is gone. Her muscles are failing one by one. She’s bleeding. A lot.
Eli kneels down next to her, looking so beautiful that it’s just another ache. “Tell me what happened,” she says.
Zara speaks, pouring words as fast as she pours blood and water. She tells Eli about the roof. About Meg. “She’s down there,” Zara says, nodding at the ladder. “I stabbed her with your Leatherman.”
There is a glint of pride on Eli’s face, underneath the shock. She puts her arms around Zara and takes most of her weight, leading her to the back of the wings. The white sheet of the cyclorama cuts off the stage from the back of the theater, creating the thin passage the actors and crew use to pass from one side of the stage to the other. They turn, taking careful sidesteps.
The audience is on the third round of applause for the full company. Zara realizes, with a hazy feeling like waking up after a string of dreams, that some of this applause is for her.
Eli keeps her eyes on the far side of the wings. They’re moving so slowly.
“How did you find me?” Zara whispers, each word a ferocious burn. Too much water got in her throat.
“I heard Toby and Carl talking,” Eli whispers. She tells Zara what she heard, and another piece of the story becomes obvious, as if it were waiting in the dark for someone to shine a light on it.
I pray you, pardon me.
The scribbled quote didn’t have anything to do with the Aurelia production. Those were Gertrude’s last words — the words of a woman who had been poisoned by her husband. Carl must have given her a drink, a pill, several pills, and told her that he only wanted to help her relax.
Enna still trusted him.
“It was Carl,” Zara says. “He killed Enna. To fulfill the visions. He wanted revenge for what Leopold did to Enna.”
“He got revenge for Enna by killing her?” Eli says, like she’s just trying to get things cleared up.
“The revenge was for himself, too. Who he and Enna used to be. What Leopold did to them when they were in love. Carl thought she was miserable, ruined by what happened. He believed Enna was as good as dead already.” There is a horrible heat in Zara’s chest, and she doesn’t know if it’s rage or sadness or just the water, burning.
“You’re saying it was all five of them?” Eli asks as they come out on the other side of the cyclorama.
“Yes,” Zara rasps.
The whole thing was like a little play.
Cosima made the costumes. Barrett did the props, the set dressing. Meg was the director. Carl was the lead actor, playing a role only Enna would ever see. Toby was a supporting actor, providing Leopold with an alibi and then conveniently taking it away. Toby didn’t know about the murders until the curtain came down. Neither did Cosima — but she was still willing to bind Zara’s hands. Meg must have told her to do it. Cosima must have been in too deep to question why.
The part that makes Zara close her eyes — the part she doesn’t want to look at — is how they tried to warn her, to protect her from what they were doing. They ignored Zara at first, keeping her at arm’s length from the day she arrived. They avoided talking about Roscoe’s and Enna’s deaths. The more Zara and Eli insisted on the truth, the more all five repeated the same words, in different variations.
Focus on the play. Don’t ask questions.
It wasn’t until Barrett painted it on the walls of Zara’s bedroom and gave himself away that Meg told her a little story, a slightly altered version of the truth. She couldn’t risk Zara figuring out what actually happened, so she made Zara believe that Leopold was responsible for the deaths. The story to frame him was already in place.
All Meg had to do was tip Zara’s mind in the right direction.
As Zara’s thoughts whirl, Eli pulls her out from behind the stage, to where the assistant stage manager and a few stagehands are waiting. They stare at the two girls, but they don’t seem to understand what they’re looking at.
Zara kneels, trying to catch her breath. It feels impossible. Eli crouches next to her, a hand on her back. “Call 911!”
The stagehands hold up empty palms. No one has phones backstage.
And then Zara catches sight of Meg’s blond hair shining across the stage, on the other side of the wings.
The audience launches into one more round of applause. They’re unstoppable. They love Echo and Ariston.
They always do.
Meg heads for the cyclorama. Zara’s mind does a fevered turn through the Aurelia. If she and Eli head backstage with Zara moving this slowly, Meg will catch up to them before they can reach the lobby or the loading dock. “Come on,” Zara says, setting her eyes on the one place they might be safe. She stands up, grabbing the rich red velvet of the curtains.
Zara pulls Eli onstage.
After being buried in water and bricked under the stage, this is where Zara belongs. The stage is bright, like being flooded with early spring sunshine.
At first, the audience thinks Echo has finally arrived to take a bow. The applause grows wild at the edges. It’s already a standing ovation. With the houselights up, Zara can pick out individual faces. People are delighted.
And then people are confused.
Because Echo is bleeding. Echo is breathing hard. Echo is dragging someone behind her like a life preserver.
Silence overtakes the theater.
Adrian rushes up. Zara can feel him wanting to help. Kestrel, too, runs toward them. Chorus members break the ranks of the curtain call, starting to ask questions. Carl watches Zara with hard eyes. Toby starts to cry.
Zara is where she belongs, but she can’t tell the story that needs to be told, not with her throat damaged from nearly drowning. “I need you to do the talking,” she whispers to Eli.
Eli nods. And then her voice springs out, louder than Zara’s ever heard it, filling every corner of the Aurelia. “Someone call 911!” she says. “There’s been an attempted murder.”
Zara whispers in Eli’s ear.
“And an actual murder,” she adds.
The silence in the theater shatters into a thousand voices — people calling for help, crying out, yelling into phones.
“Was that okay?” Eli whispers, leaning her head in to touch Zara’s.
“Brilliant.”
Zara doesn’t know what to do next, or what to say, or how to stop bleeding. But Eli is there. She kneels down, tears off a piece of Zara’s dress, and wraps it around her fingers. “You were right,” Zara murmurs. “This play has a terrible ending.”
Eli looks out at the lights, the faces, the beautiful body of the theater. “This isn’t how it usually goes.”
“I like this ending better,” Zara whispers, pulling Eli a little closer until they’re at that distance where every word sounds like an invitation and the meeting of their bodies feels fated.
Zara touches her lips to Eli’s. Every time they do this, they’re inventing so much — themselves, each other, what it means to be in love. This is the best truth that Zara has. She and Eli stand together at the heart of the Aurelia, kissing and kissing as the lights burn into them. Now everyone can see.
This is their story.
This has always been their story.