Page 134 of Specters & Spotlights

Elise opened her mouth, but Jen was already shaking her head. “And the new understudy—Ellen’s replacement—she’s not even here yet. Contract’s not finalized. She’s still in Chicago, I think.”

Jen stopped pacing. “We can’t put anyone in. Not tonight. We’ll… we’ll have to cancel the second act.”

The words dropped like a stone.

Elise surged forward. “No. We can’t.”

Heads turned. The room stilled. “If we cancel, there’s no audience. If there’s no audience, the spell fails.”

She turned to Jen, eyes shining. “We’ll lose Ellen. And Kevin—” Her breath caught. “He won’t make it through the night.”

Silence wrapped around them, taut and trembling.

“There has to be another way,” she said again, softer this time.

A beat.

“Could we put the swing in anyways?” Bex asked. “She knows the blocking, right? We could have her carry the script and skip the songs?”

“Or dub the vocals,” Marcie added. “We’ve got that dress rehearsal recording from Boston. We could sync it up⁠—”

“Shadow play,” Jasper chimed in, eyes bright. “Backlit sheets and interpretive movement. We use the audio tracks. Very avant-garde.”

“Okay but what if we loop the Act One finale on repeat and claim it’s a conceptual exploration of regret?” Casper suggested. “Like, Elizabeth never gets the second act because we never get what we want. Very French.”

Jen blinked. “That doesn’t solve the fact that we’re down an Elizabeth, Casper.”

“Or,” Ed offered, “we could rotate Elizabeths every scene like Company. Everyone plays her. No one plays her. Art.”

“But no one would be playing her well,” Jen muttered.

“Wait,” Talia cut in, dead serious. “Do we know any good Elizabeth Bennets in the audience?”

The room collectively paused.

Then Graham stepped forward.

“It has to be Elise,” he said, his voice calm in spite of the rising panic around them.

Jen and Elise both froze, heads snapping toward him.

“Come again?” Elise said.

“You,” Graham replied, gesturing to her like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You should go on. As Elizabeth.”

For one impossible second, Elise thought she had misheard him.

Then her body caught up.

Her stomach dropped. Her mouth went dry. Every light in the room seemed to sharpen around her, too bright and too close.

“No,” she said automatically, because that was the only reasonable answer. “Absolutely not.”

Jen blinked. “Wait—you sing?”

Elise opened her mouth to explain all the reasons this was a terrible idea. She wasn’t an actor. She wasn’t Lark. She was the person who made Elizabeth Bennet possible from the shadows, not the person who stepped into her shoes.

Even before the protest reached her tongue, she knew.