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“I loved him. He was my obsession—my lover, my husband, my child, all in one.” She lifted her shoulders. “Above all else, Christine loved Leonard Vole. She knew what he was, what he did. But it didn’t matter. She would have died for him, so deep and obsessive was her love.”

Calmer now, Areena tossed the used tissues into her recycle chute, turned on the stool. Her face was marble pale, her eyes red and swollen. And still, she radiated beauty.

“In that moment, every woman in the audience understands her. If they haven’t felt that kind of love, in some part of themselves they wish they had. So when she realizes that after all she’s done, he can discard her so casually, when she fully understands what he is, she grabs the knife.”

Areena lifted a fisted hand, as if holding the hilt. “Despair? No, she is a creature of action. She is never passive. It’s an instant, an impulse, but a bone-deep one. She plunges the knife into him, even as she embraces him. Love and hate, both in their highest form, both inside her in that one instant.”

She stared at the hand she’d flung out, and it began to tremble. “God. God!” In a frantic move, she yanked open a drawer of her dressing table.

Eve was on her feet, her hand clamped over Areena’s wrist in a flash.

“I—it—a cigarette,” she managed. “I know I’m not supposed to smoke in the building, but I want a cigarette.” She pushed at Eve’s hand. “I want a damn cigarette.”

Eve glanced in the drawer, saw the pricey ten-pack of herbals. “We’re on the record. You’ll get an automatic fine.” But she stepped back.

“My nerves.” She fumbled with the lighter until Mira stepped over, gently pried it from her fingers, and flicked it on. “Thanks. Okay.” Areena took a deep drag, blew it out slowly. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually so . . . fragile. The theater smashes the fragile to bits, and quickly.”

“You’re doing very well.” Mira kept her voice low, calm. “Talking it through with Lieutenant Dallas will help.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Areena stared back at Mira with the trust Eve had wanted to see radiating in her eyes. “It just happened.”

“When you picked up the knife,” Eve interrupted, “did you notice anything different?”

“Different?” Areena blinked as she focused on Eve again. “No. It was exactly where it was supposed to be, hilt toward me to make the movement fast and smooth. I swept it up, to give the audience that one shocked instant to see the blade. The lighting’s designed to catch it, to glint off the edges. Then I charged. It’s only two steps from the table to Richard. I take his right arm, between the elbow and the shoulder, with my left hand, holding him, draw back with the right, then . . . the impact,” she said after another long drag, “of the prop knife against his chest releases the pack of stage blood. We hold there for an instant, just two beats, intimately, before the others onstage rush forward to pull me away.”

“What was your relationship with Richard Draco?”

“What?” Areena’s eyes had glazed.

“Your relationship with Draco. Tell me about it.”

“With Richard?” Areena pressed her lips together, her hand running up between her breasts to massage the base of her throat as if words were stuck there, like burrs. “We’ve known each other several years, worked with each other before—and well—most recently in a London production of Twice Owned.”

“And personally?”

There was a hesitation, less than a half beat, but Eve noticed and filed it away.

“We were friendly enough,” Areena told her. “As I said, we’ve known each other for years. The media in London played up a romance between us during that last work. The play was a romance. We enjoyed the benefit of the interest. It sold tickets. I was married at the time, but that didn’t discourage the public from seeing us as a couple. We were amused by it.”

“But never acted on it.”

“I was married, and smart enough, Lieutenant, to know Richard wasn’t the kind of man to throw out a marriage for.”

“Because?”

“He’s a fine actor. Was,” she corrected, swallowed hard before she drew one