The Impaler

Chapter 72

Cindy held Edmund Lambert’s hand as Kiernan laid out the battle plan for the matinee. With the absence of Cox, she’d grown nervous, but at the same time was beyond excited at being so close to Edmund—especially since he’d been waiting for her outside her dressing room when she arrived at the theater. They’d spoken to one another only briefly, but kissed long enough for her to know that everything was all right again.

“Now you need to focus,” he’d said, pulling away. “But I’ll be watching.”

It was going to be the best show yet, Cindy thought, and felt beyond ecstatic when she played over in her mind how Edmund had looked at her.

But now when he looked at her he seemed agitated. And he kept glancing at his BlackBerry as Kiernan gave them a pep talk about focus and teamwork.

“I thought he would have canceled the show,” Edmund said as Kiernan made his curtain speech. “Or at least the photo call.”

He actually seemed disappointed, Cindy thought.

“Not George Kiernan,” she said. “The show must go on. Just don’t get jealous in that part where Macbeth tries to kiss me, okay? Even though it’s George Kiernan, I’ll still try my hardest to resist.”

Edmund smiled thinly. Cindy kissed him and then ran to places for the opening scene—a silly scene, Cindy had always thought, in which the director had the Witches arrange all the characters like pieces on a chessboard. Edmund thought it was a silly scene, too, she learned at the cast party—just one of the many things they had in common. “A scene like that takes Macbeth’s fate out of his hands,” he’d said. “If only he’d read the messages correctly things wouldn’t have turned out so badly for him.”

For some reason talking like that with Edmund had turned her on.

His speech finished, Kiernan stepped back into the wings and took his place with the rest of the cast—directly opposite Cindy on the other side of the stage. He gave her a thumbs-up and she replied in kind. The audience was still murmuring as the music started and the lights dimmed, and Cindy felt as if the air were charged with electricity, as if she would explode from excitement at any moment. Yeah, she thought, in a sick way she was thrilled all this was happening.

“This is fucked up about Bradley,” whispered the actor playing Macduff.

“Yeah,” replied Jonathan, winner of the Perils of Inbreeding Award. “Maybe Vlad got him.”

“Or maybe Lambert finally finished the job.”

The two boys snickered, and Cindy told them to shut the hell up.

Yeah, even though it was Bradley Cox they were dissing, a comment like that was beyond uncalled for.