“Yes, but Lysander’s love isn’t real. It’s just an illusion.”
“But it’s a play. It’s all an illusion.”
Just like Hollywood had been an illusion. A pretty one. One that had made her wealthy, not wanting for anything. But nothing had been real in Hollywood: in the end she hadn’t even been able to trust the people closest to her. Betrayal had nearly cost her her life. It was the real reason why she’d returned to San Francisco five years earlier: to return to her family, where she belonged, and to be safe again.
She’d managed to buy back the old Victorian house on Buena Vista Park that had once belonged to her family. And she’d made it vampire safe, so that whenever Haven and his mate Yvette visited, they wouldn’t have to worry about sunlight hurting them.
“I’d much rather be Hermia, because Lysander’s love for her is real,” Isabelle continued. “And you said yourself I know all the lines. I’m your understudy. You know I can do it.”
“You want me to switch roles with you?”
“Please.”
“You really like Cameron, don’t you?”
Isabelle nodded.
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you tell him?”
“I don’t know whether he likes me.”
“So you figured if you kiss him at the end of the play, you might find out?”
Isabelle shrugged. “No harm in that.”
Katie reached for Isabelle’s hand. “Well, we’d better get changed then. I’ve got everything in my private dressing room.”
It wasn’t really a dressing room, more a combination office/prop room she’d managed to borrow from the football coach for the duration of rehearsals.
“You’re the best!” Isabelle said.
Smiling, Katie steered her to the second door on the right and entered the windowless room, letting the door snap shut behind them.
3
“Never did mockers waste more idle breath,” Katie said, dressed as Helena in the long blue dress that Isabelle had worn before the performance, while looking back and forth between the two students who played Lysander and Demetrius.
The lights illuminated the three of them on the old creaking wooden stage of the university. In the chairs below in the auditorium, vampires and their families mixed with humans, who had no inkling about the preternatural creatures in their midst.
Before the performance, Katie had peeked through the curtain and scanned the audience. Both her brothers were in attendance; Haven had brought Yvette and their son and daughter. In the front row, Samson and Delilah sat proudly, flanked by their sons, Grayson and Patrick. Zane and the entire Eisenberg family were sitting in the back, while Amaury and Nina and their twins, eighteen-year old Damian and Benjamin, sat near the windows, which were covered by thick velvet curtains.
Quinn Ralston and his clan, which included his wife Rose, his protégé Oliver as well as Oliver’s mate Ursula and their ten-year old boy, Sebastian, sat in the row behind Samson. Blake, who was also part of the Ralston clan, had taken up a post near the entrance door, scanning the room, while occasionally speaking quietly into his intercom and listening to the mic in his ear. Tasked with guarding thirteen Scanguards minors, ranging from ages ten to twenty, he definitely had his hands full, despite the fact that all of them were accompanied by their parents.
Gabriel and Maya were surrounded by their brood, two teenage boys and a girl. Maya was responsible for vampire females being able to conceive, though they were normally infertile. Her medical and research background had finally paid off when she’d developed a treatment that allowed a vampire female to become pregnant and carry a child to term. It had made waves in the vampire community.
Her mate Gabriel, a vampire with a vicious scar marring the left side of his face, was scanning the crowd. As Scanguards’ number two, he never forgot his duty. Mixed among the Scanguards people sat the families of the other student actors, as well as many friends who’d come to support their classmates’ thespian passions.
“Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none: if e’er I lov’d her, all that love is gone. My heart to her but as guest-wise sojoun’d; and now to Helena is it home return’d, there to remain.”
Demetrius’s delivery was a little wooden, but Katie had to admit he’d proven to be faithful to his character, and she was pleased with the performance so far. Even though she’d slipped into the part of Helena—and as much as she wanted to immerse herself in the character—she was still aware of her role as the director and teacher.