Evie
“What are you doing here?” Evie asked incredulously.
She hadn’t seen or heard from her cousin in years. She remembered so well how she used to wait by the mailbox for Helena’s letters every day, just in case a new reply to her missives arrived, but after two years, she’d had to give up hoping.
Helena glided toward the bars, dressed in a lovely sapphire gown that floated behind her as she took a seat in the room’s only rickety old chair. She tapped her finger against her chin thoughtfully. “I work here.” Her cousin’s eyes flitted to her and then her boss, keen interest playing in them. “And what are you doing here?” The finger stopped tapping her chin and now pointed around the cell.
Suddenly, Evie felt angry—so angry. She’d had no idea Helena ended up in the Heart Village, had no idea she worked in a playhouse, had no idea of anything her cousin was doing. Because she’d simply disappeared, like everyone else in her life.
“You didn’t hear?” she asked with an eye roll. “I had too much to drink and tried to strip naked on your stage.”
Her boss choked behind her, slamming a fist against his chest. He’d been doing that a lot—perhaps she should have Tatianna make him something for heartburn.
Helena laughed—a lovely, lilting sound that matched her countenance. Evie wondered if her boss noticed that loveliness. The thought sent a pounding ache through her skull. “You are still most amusing, cousin.”
“Incarceration really tickles my funny bone,” Evie said pointedly, looking at the bars and then the keys hanging on a hook by the door.
Helena followed her gaze, nodding, unhooking them from the wall. Both Evie and The Villain stood on edge in preparation for the cell door opening.
“Before I do you any favors, perhaps you could tell me what brings you to the Heart Village,” she smirked, “wicked woman?”
The Villain grimaced, but Evie’s eyes lit up as she clapped her hands. “Oh, the wanted posters of me are spreading, sir! How thrilling.”
“We have very different definitions of that word,” he grumbled, rubbing his temples.
Evie shrugged, deciding that directness was the best approach. “We’re looking for my mother, Helena, and judging by the ghastly look on your face, I’m guessing you’ve seen her recently.”
Helena flinched. Got her. “Yes,” she admitted, not bothering to hide it. “Aunt Nura was here for a time.”
But not anymore, Evie realized. The silence wore through the last of her patience. “Helena, as much as I’ve missed our correspondence, I’m done with pleasantries. Tell me.”
“She stayed here for a few months. Maybe two or three years ago,” Helena said, looking haunted. “I had just moved to the village after my father remarried.”
Evie hadn’t known that Uncle Vale had remarried. “And his new wife?”
“Oh, my stepmother is lovely, if a bit dull. I think that’s what my father needed. I just didn’t want to be in the way while they started their new life, and I heard the Heart Village was a bustling hub of opportunity.” Helena scoffed at the words as if they were a joke.
The Villain, who had been letting Evie lead the conversation, spoke up, his voice quiet but steady. “I take it you don’t feel that way anymore.”
Helena’s eyes flashed. “I work with method kidnappers. What do you think?”
He clicked his tongue as if to say point taken and stepped back, allowing Evie to continue.
“Did my mother say where she was going or why she came to you in the first place?” Evie asked, growing desperate.
Helena shook her head, almost looking sympathetic beneath her indifference. “I think she thought it safer to come to me than to my father. He loves his sister, but you know as well as I do that he would’ve sent her straight back to Uncle Griffin.” Her gaze grew distant, brows knitting together as if trying to recall something. “She wanted to know more about the stars, I think? What my father had taught me. It was the only time she’d speak. Mostly, she was a ghost, Evie. It wasn’t pleasant. When she did talk, it was incoherent muttering about wanting to disappear. To be no one. She wanted to be swallowed by midnight. I thought she’d gone mad.”
Evie had maintained a certain detachment in her quest to find her mother, but now she could see it—remember it—the lost look in Nura’s eyes. It had been ingrained in Evie since she was too young to understand its meaning. She had watched her mother fade from a vibrant, beautiful woman who ruled her childhood to a hollow shell of a person, and then to nothing.
Evie had inherited many things from her mother—the length of her fingers, the curl in her hair, the bow of her lips—but she hadn’t expected to inherit her mother’s ability to bury anguish beneath the surface. And like her mother, Evie feared that one day… she, too, would break. A tragic inheritance, seeing your mother’s flaws in yourself and knowing they’re there but having no idea how to stop them.
“I imagine the guilt drove her to it, over killing Gideon,” Helena said, snapping Evie out of her thoughts.
Her eyes burned. “He isn’t dead.”
This surprised her cousin but didn’t seem to shock her. “Oh, how wonderful! He owes me money.”
“Take heart,” the Villain said to Helena, though his eyes were on Evie; she could feel his gaze.
Helena laughed, twirling the keychain around her finger. “I wonder if the rumors about the Villain’s brutal, destructive magic were exaggerated, if rusty metal bars can hold you.”
The Villain didn’t reply, just glared and stepped subtly closer to Evie. “Let us out, and I’ll be happy to demonstrate.”
Helena grinned before tossing the keys across the room, where they landed on a small table near the door. “Unfortunately, I can’t do that.”
Evie gripped the bars, furious. “Helena, we’re family. You’re not really going to let your boss sell us out to the king, are you?”
Helena tsked, the train of her dress floating behind her as she glided to the door. “Oh, darling. You think any of those fools upstairs could run anything? Other than their hopeless careers into the ground?” Helena finished with a flourish, sealing Evie’s and the Villain’s fate.
“The Deadlands Theater is my playhouse, and I am the boss.”
