Page 127 of Specters & Spotlights

In the mirror across the hall, something moved. His eyes snapped up on instinct.

Three identical ballerinas stood at the very edge of the reflection—so precise it looked staged. Skirts perfectly still. Hair in neat buns. Heads tilted in quiet unison, as if they’d been waiting for him to notice.

Watching.

A sound tried to tear its way out of Graham’s throat—high and probably humiliating—and he surprised himself by stopping it. He forced it into something that could pass for a throat clear, or maybe a manly, noncommittal “hmph,” the kind of noise brave men made when they were absolutely not alarmed by anything at all.

His pulse hammered anyway.

He kept his gaze forward. Did not look back to confirm they were still there. Pretended he hadn’t just seen three impossible figures in a mirror.

Head swimming with the image, he turned and fell into step behind Elise and Lark as they headed up the stairs toward the stage door exit.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Elise

The theatre greeted them like a cathedral: hushed, shadowed, holy. Elise and Graham stepped through the stage entrance of the theatre together. Elise moved with purpose, her boots crunching faintly on the entryway gravel, and her warding bracelets clinked softly at her wrists with every step. A soft scent of rosemary and lavender clung to her skin, and the moon charm on her anklet tapped lightly against her ankle.

Graham carried her bag slung over his shoulder. He didn’t speak, but his hand hovered just behind hers as they walked in, not touching but close enough to feel.

As they passed through the quiet hallway toward the green room, Elise’s thoughts drifted.

The night before hadn’t gone as planned, which—to be honest—tracked.

She’d sat at the little hotel desk in her room, scribbling Cici’s emailed sigils onto tracing paper like a stressed-out student in finals week. The symbols had started to blur together—some flipping, some repeating, some twisting into patterns her brain refused to decode. It wasn’t new. Her dyslexia always got worse when she was overtired or stressed, and this was both.

Graham had stayed up with her, bless him, reading notes aloud and helping her figure out which runes looked like angry birds and which ones looked like spoons. Then he checked every single sigil against Cici’s references, just in case.

At some point, she’d dozed off, pen still in hand.

When she woke, she was tucked into bed. The lights were off. Her tracing paper sat neatly stacked on the nightstand.

Graham was asleep on the lumpy couch across the room, in nothing but an undershirt and boxer briefs. She’d stared at him for a moment longer than necessary. Nothing had happened. She was sure of that.

But still—there’d been a moment. A quiet wish. That if things were different—if dread weren’t wrapped around them like fog—she would’ve crossed the room and kissed him.

Later, she promised herself. After.

When they weren’t fighting nightmares.

Back in the present, she glanced sideways at Graham as they approached the wig closet.

He caught her look, raised a brow.

“Ready?”

Elise nodded, her heart steady for the first time all day.

“As I’ll ever be.”

The moment Elise crossed into the wig closet, she stopped cold.

Kevin was already there, standing near the trunk. Or… trying to. His form was fractured, like a photograph left too long in the sun. Edges bled into the air. His face was pale, even for a ghost, and his cravat hung colorless and slack.

A chill crawled up Elise’s spine.

Graham looked at her. “What is it?”