“None of my business,” he says quietly. “I know.”

Then he lifts her hand in that same courtly gesture, his lips to her knuckles, and turns away. She watches as he slings his black leather bag over his shoulder and slips out of the door without any elaborate good-byes.

On the other side of the room, Michael and Helen are kissing, their hands in each other’s hair. Lissa checks her phone again. The sand is running out—soon the magic will dissipate and the play will truly be over. Soon the night will end and there will be nothing but the flat and the call center, and she will no longer be a queen.

Mermaid’s blood.

She lets herself out of the dressing room, walks down the darkened hallway. After a few steps she stops and calls Nathan. He picks up on the second ring. “Liss?” Wherever he is, it sounds quiet.

“I want you,” she says. “Can you come here? Now?”

There is a pause and then: “Where are you?”

“At the theater.”

“How long will you be there for?”

“An hour. Maybe more.”

“I’ll come.”

She clicks off the phone, holds it lightly in her palm. Hears her breath in the hallway. It is as though she has taken half a step outside her skin, to a place where things are weightless, where there is only the logic of desire. She feels no guilt, only interest. She wonders if it would be this easy to murder.

At half past eleven, her phone buzzes in her pocket and she slips out of the room without being seen, making her way through the bar, where the bar staff are cleaning up, to where Nathan is standing waiting outside on the street, hunched into his winter coat, smoking a cigarette, smoke pluming in the cold air. It has started to snow, and flakes tumble from the sky. Already an inch or two has gathered on the pavement.

She steps towards him, reaching and taking his cigarette from him, bringing it to her mouth. The smoke hits her bloodstream, mingling with the alcohol, meeting the cold, making her reel.

“You’re her still,” he says.

She looks down at herself—her velvet coat, her boots. She had forgotten she was wearing her costume. “Yes,” she says, and she can see how this pleases him—how it excites him. “Yes, I’m still her.”

He takes her wrist and pulls her to him. His mouth tastes of smoke. She can feel him against her, already hard. “Where can we go?” he says.

“Here,” she says. “You can come in here.”