When a ghost takes
over Juliet McKenna’s collegiate production of
The Sorcerer
on opening night, can she
defeat it without revealing her true Sidhe nature?
While serving as an artist-in-residence at a small Pacific
Northwest college, stage actress Juliet McKenna is directing Gilbert
& Sullivan's The Sorcerer. Rivalries among the
student cast are only to be expected -- but are other troubles the
work of the theater's restless ghost?
Nonsense, Juliet insists, and with Sidhe-born senses to back her
conclusions, she should know. But as the curtain rises on
opening night, she's forced to revise her opinions. With one
performer in chains and another possessed, the show seems poised to
end in disaster -- because even if Juliet can improvise a new
ending, she may not be able to free her students without revealing
her own Sidhe origins.
Read An Excerpt....
The exploding teapot was the first sign
that trouble was brewing.
Gentleman sorcerer John Wellington Wells had just intoned the
first verse of his incantation: “Appear, appear, appear!” As if in
response, the teapot on the stand in front of him erupted with a
sudden fwoosh, an outpouring of gray smoke, a burst of
fire-bright orange light, and the sharp crack-tinkle of
shattering ceramic.
There was also a loud THUD and a curse from behind
the billowing smoke.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Lyle Applegate, dropping
out of character and abandoning the sorcerer’s roguish British
accent in favor of his natural Texan twang.
I was out of my fourth-row aisle seat and mounting the stage
before he had finished the sentence.
The smoke was already dissipating as I stepped
around the stand, extending a hand to help my lead actor to his
feet. “A very good question,” I said.
“I gather you did not trigger the flash mechanism.”
“I didn’t touch it, Ms. McKenna,” he said, eyeing the stand
and shaking his head.
“Hey, that’s weird.” I followed his glance.
The teapot’s fragments lay in a tidy ring around the
edge of the small, nearly chest-high table, which was unmarked save
for a dirty black stain in its center.
“Indeed,” I said.
“Remarkably neat, considering.
It looked as if all three charges went off at once.”
By now, the rest of the cast had crowded onto center stage.
“I know!” said Peter Morgenthaler, a member of the
chorus and Lyle’s understudy.
At two inches under six feet, he and Lyle were of
similar size and build, though Peter presently wore his own short,
dark hair while Lyle’s yellow-blond buzz cut was presently concealed
by a thick salt-and-pepper wig.
“It must have been the ghost!”