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Almost.

“Troy, stay inside the marked position for the rest of the night,” I said as I stepped back into the corridor. “You can get the same reaction without crowding them into the wall.”

His expression tightened, but he didn’t argue with me. “All right. I thought I had more room.”

“You didn’t. Now you know.”

Justin’s shoulders eased by a fraction. He was still irritated, but the point had been made, and I wasn’t interested in turning an ordinary safety correction into a staff spectacle.

“Can you take the lantern offline until you check the bracket?” I asked him. “We have enough light in the room without it.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Troy scraped one boot through the dirt beside the doorway. “I can reset without the lantern. The left-side entrance still gives me enough cover.”

That was the answer I wanted from him: no sulking, no excuses, just an adjustment.

“Good. Make it work.”

A group entered the corridor behind me, their voices dropping instinctively as they approached the darkened farmhouse facade. Troy vanished through the performer door, and within seconds the irritated employee disappeared into the role he was exceptionally good at playing.

I continued toward the next section with Justin beside me.

“He’s talented,” he said after we were far enough away that Troy couldn’t hear us. “That doesn’t make him careful.”

“I know. I wrote him up last week.”

Justin gave me a sidelong look, and I could practically hear the safety lecture he was deciding whether to deliver.

“I’m not ignoring it,” I told him. “If he crosses the blocking again, he’s out for the night.”

That satisfied him enough that he peeled away toward the staff path to deal with the loose bracket.

The next twenty minutes disappeared into the kind of problems I actually liked.

A radio battery died. One fog machine started coughing more water than mist. A family of five stalled at a fork because one of our directional lanterns had been nudged out of alignment, so I shifted it six inches and watched the next group move through without hesitation. Near the eastern corn corridor, two performers were resetting too slowly between waves, and a line threatened to stack up where guests could see the next effect trigger before they reached it.

None of it was glamorous.

That was why I was good at it.

An event worked when the people attending it never realized how many tiny failures were being prevented around them.

My years in Manhattan had taught me that lesson while I managed hotel conferences where keynote speakers vanished ten minutes before their sessions and society weddings where florists delivered centerpieces to the wrong ballroom. I had been very good at fixing other people’s disasters.

I had been less good at being noticed once the disaster was fixed.

Here, every detail belonged to me.

The thought still gave me a small jolt of satisfaction.

I emerged from the corn into the broader staff crossing near the production area just as Clinton Saunders came through the opposite side carrying a tablet under one arm. He had the harried look of a man whose evening had developed more expenses than revenue.

“Your extra person fixed the Cellar backup,” I said.

“For now. Friday’s going to be worse.”

“Friday’s supposed to be worse. That’s called selling tickets.”