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best of times.”
    “Angie! Thompkins! Here kitty, kitty. Here, Thompkins, come to mama,” Mrs. Martin, the landlady, called to her charges from the porch of her big house to which the apartment was attached. The cats bounded out.
    “I came by to see if you want to run up to SOSC with me,” Gregg said. “I have to pick up some materials for the institute class I’m teaching next week.”
    “Sure,” Tori said. “Okay with you, Lizzybeth?”
    Elizabeth laughed. “Why not? It must be important to you, you only use my childhood name when you’re pleading. But what’s SOSC?”
    “Southern Oregon State College. You probably remember it as just SOC.”
    “Right.” Elizabeth found a notepad and began scribbling a note to Richard in case he returned before they did. “So you’re teaching at the Institute of Renaissance Studies along with all your acting?” She looked up at Gregg. “You have a busy summer.”
    “Yes, but I love the teaching. Having an educational division of the festival is a great concept.”
    As they drove up the boulevard and turned into the sweeping grassy expanse of campus before the large golden-stucco, tile-roofed administration building, Gregg talked with enthusiasm about the summer program where teachers, festival staff and students studied Shakespeare’s works as the author meant them to be—not as novels or poems, but as plays in production. “We get some terrifically lively discussions going.”
    Tori laughed as they all scrambled out of the car and headed toward the drama department. “He’s a born teacher, and I get all his lectures. Free.”
    “Not lectures, they’re interactive discussions, thank you. You’d never guess after our discussion last night, but the class I’m assisting with is ‘Shakespeare and the Drama of Religion.’”
    “One of those cases where the teacher learns more than the students?” Elizabeth asked.
    “I hope we’re all learning.” Gregg led the way to a modern classroom with a small stage.
    Elizabeth looked around in fascination. “So this is where Angus Bowmer was teaching when he got the idea of trying out his ideas of starting a Shakespearean festival. I read his autobiography a few years ago.”
    “Well, you aren’t exactly standing on holy ground. These are new facilities, but you’ve got the right idea.” Gregg was rummaging through a file drawer. “Rats! I know I left those notes here somewhere. You ladies mind waiting here a minute while I check next door?”
    Tori was examining some books on costume design and a pile of fabric samples on the far side of the room. Elizabeth wandered across to the stage. Noises from behind the curtains made her want to see what preparations were being made for the class presentation.
    Stepping through the curtains was like entering a small chapel. Gentle light glowed behind a hanging stained-glass window. Candles flickered on an altar before a prie-dieu. Elizabeth smiled and stepped forward, expecting to hear Gregorian chant from off-stage. Instead she heard hideous laughter. There was a flash of light. A cloud of smoke exploded almost in her face. She jumped back, coughing. She stumbled over a lighting cable running across the stage. Demons and monsters jumped at her from every side of the stage.
    Realizing she had blundered into a rehearsal, she started to back up when the cable snaking beneath her feet coiled around her ankles and pulled her over. This time she didn’t land softly in grass, as in her earlier tangle with Thompkins, but hit the hardwood stage with a painful crash.
    A sharp pain stabbed through Elizabeth’s knee. She wanted just to sit there and rub it for a minute, but the demons and monsters rushed to help her, apologizing profusely. She submitted to their ministrations without protest. They almost had her untangled when a strident voice called from backstage. “All right! Who fouled my cord up? I can’t spend all day here with this amateur stuff.”
    His electrician’s tools