Page 109 of Specters & Spotlights

Lark turned in the alleyway, eyes wide, voice barely a whisper. “Is he… gone? What happened? Where did he go?”

Elise couldn’t answer. Couldn’t think.

Couldn’t breathe.

And then it hit her. The talisman. The absence.

His pocket watch was in her bag, which was still strapped across her chest.

“Kevin.”

He had saved her. Or at least bought them time.

He had taken the Specter with him.

And now… now they were both gone.

Chapter Twenty

Elise

Elise hovered at the backstage door, unwilling to move forward, too afraid to turn back.

This was a different theatre, a different city. The dread followed her anyway, curling around her spine and settling in her chest like cold fog.

The door was already cracked open, wedged in place by a chipped brick with someone’s initials scratched into the surface. A simple thing, but it made the entrance feel more ominous than inviting, like someone had left a door between worlds half open. Careless. Dangerous.

Elise lingered on the threshold. The stage door for this building was tucked in a side alley behind the fly house, barely visible unless you knew where to look. The theatre loomed above her, old bones of a converted opera house wrapped in ivy and brick. It had a history, of course. They always did. But she hadn’t had the time to learn it yet, and the building wasn’t offering introductions.

It was barely 9 AM. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the tops of the buildings, and everything felt liminal—quiet and too bright, as if the day hadn’t decided what it would become. Elise hadn’t slept. Her body arrived yesterday, but her thoughts had stayed behind, tangled in the alley with Kevin’s final shout echoing through her bones.

Load-in days belonged to the crew. Cast usually flew in a day later, once the trunks were unloaded, the set assembled, and the theatre had been transformed from an empty shell into something more. Which meant, for now, Elise expected the building to be mercifully light on witnesses.

She wrapped one hand around the strap of her carry-on, the other clutching Kevin’s pocket watch like a lifeline. It had burned hot since she left the last city. She wasn’t sure what that meant, and she was afraid to find out. She hadn’t let herself think past the moment he’d dragged the Specter back out of existence. Hadn’t let herself wonder whether he’d come back from it. Whether there was anything left of him to come back.

If the Specter was going to return, it would be here. She thought she could feel him already, watching from somewhere beyond where her senses could reach. Her skin prickled with the certainty of it.

But she wasn’t going to walk in empty-handed. She had every protection Cici had ever made her swear to carry: salt vials in both shoes. Her iron nail on a necklace. A crystal in her bra, two more in her belt bag. A tumbled stone smoothed by worry in her pocket. If something was going to happen, she told herself, let it happen now. Before Graham showed up. Before Lark flew in. Before anyone else could pay the price for her unfinished business. She wouldn’t let anyone else get hurt. Maybe she could help Ellen—offer another trade.

She took a breath, shifted her weight forward, bracing herself to cross the threshold. Willing her foot to move.

Footsteps echoed down the alley—quick, confident. A bag scraped brick. For a breathless second, her stomach dropped. She had hoped to avoid any witnesses.

Graham rounded the corner, duffel swinging at his side, hair mussed from sleep or wind or both. The early light caught him like a spotlight, softening him into something familiar and unreal at once.

“Elise,” he called, voice rough from travel but unmistakably him.

She blinked. For a heartbeat, she thought the theatre had conjured him—hope shaped from fog and longing, too good to be real. But no—he was real. Solid. Tired. His smile trembled at the edges when their eyes met.

“I—what are you doing here?” she asked.

“Red-eye,” he said, like it was obvious. “Got in right before dawn. I couldn’t wait another day not knowing if you’d be okay.”

Elise stared, pulsing against her palm like a warning. “You look exhausted.”

“I am.” A faint grin. “Still worth it.”

She looked at the duffel. “That’s your whole bag.”