Page 38 of Specters & Spotlights

Endearing.

Graham blinked, irritated with himself as the thought landed. He was doing it again. Slipping back into thoughts of her, like his mind had developed a habit.

He stared at the book wedged under the hoodie for half a beat, then made the decision with the same quiet finality he brought to everything else.

Fine. He’d go.

Not because he needed to. Not because Nick would be insufferable if he didn’t. Because he’d like to see her there, once, and then he could stop thinking about it.

He checked the clock on his phone, then slid it into his bag. It was time to go. Time to do the routine thing. The normal thing.

He headed for the wig closet to ask Elise for a hair check, and tried, unsuccessfully, to calm the butterflies that had nothing to do with the show.

Chapter Eight

Elise

Elise had spent just three days in this haunted, golden theatre, and now they were packing it up, ready to roll onward to the next city, the next stage, the next stretch of wooden boards beneath their feet.

It always went like this—arrival, run, departure—but it hit different this time. She’d started to feel steadier here, more like herself. And now everything was getting boxed back up again.

The final show was done, the applause still echoing somewhere in the rafters like a restless spirit, and a cast party was kicking off at a local brewery known for its hoppy flights and surprisingly decent karaoke setup. But first, the great post-show ritual: trunk Tetris.

The wig trunk was already staged in the middle of the wig closet, fully opened and waiting to be filled before it was wheeled into the moving caravan. Elise crouched beside it, making strategic decisions about which supplies to bury and which she’d need easy access to at the next venue.

She caught a flash of blonde in her periphery—Casper had found a sparkly feather boa in the costume scrap bin and was parading around the backstage hallway like a cabaret ghost, dramatically lip-syncing to a song only he could hear.

Lark was, once again, the last one to leave the wig closet. She’d made a habit of lingering: unpinning her hair, asking small, oddly specific questions Elise wasn’t sure how to answer. Tonight it was about bristle brushes. Last night it was adhesives.

None of it was strange on its own. But the way Lark hovered, fingers always touching something—a brush handle, a length of ribbon, a box of bobby pins she never actually used. It felt like she was reading the space, not tidying it. Like she was looking for something. Or waiting.

Elise had gotten used to it. She’d stopped jumping when Lark appeared in the doorway, stopped trying to make the silences less awkward. Still, she didn’t fully understand why Lark kept coming back here.

Lark tucked a chestnut curl behind her ear and glanced over, her eyes catching the soft yellow stage light coming in through the open door. “You’re not going to the party yet?”

Elise shook her head. “Still packing up.”

Lark nodded, like she already knew that. She stepped closer, brushing an invisible speck of lint off the edge of the counter, fingers lingering a beat too long.

“I’ll see you there, then,” she said, voice low. “Later.”

Before Elise could respond, Lark turned and slipped out the door, footsteps soft against the hallway floor.

She left behind a faint trace of clove and hairspray.

Elise stared at the space where she’d stood, a low hum settling in her chest. She didn’t know what the feeling was. Not quite caution. Not quite curiosity. Something in between, like an unfinished chord waiting to resolve.

A moment later, Marcie stepped in with a groan and a trunk’s worth of makeup barely contained in her arms.

“I swear, they expect us to pack the entire Sephora wall into a shoebox,” she said, eyes darting around for space. “Any chance your wig trunk has a little real estate left?”

Elise gestured toward it. “Probably. I haven’t packed everything yet.”

She eyed the collection of old playbills in the corner—some torn, some faded, all left behind by her predecessor like offerings from a long-forgotten era. She still hadn’t decided whether to keep them.

Marcie nudged the conversation elsewhere. “So. You and Lark.”

Elise looked up, one eyebrow raised. “What about me and Lark?”