Page 14 of Specters & Spotlights

Elise clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a delighted squeal. Kevin raised an eyebrow from his perch on a nearby shelf. Even from two time zones away, Cici knew exactly how to anchor her.

She quickly typed back.

I’m dead.

I have *perished.*

Please name one of them after me so I can live on through your kitten dynasty.

As she added a row of sparkles and cat emojis, Elise caught a glimpse of the tattoo on the back of her hand: a simple pentacle inked right below her knuckles, the lines delicate but deliberate. She had one on each hand. Cici’s design—the first tattoos Elise ever got. The first protective charm that didn’t fizzle or fade. The first one that actually quieted the whispers long enough for her to breathe.

Before she could blink, memory surged forward, pulled loose like thread from a spool.

She’d been just eighteen. Fresh out of a suburb so sterile it practically hissed at the word haunted. Sure, she’d caught glimpses—a shimmer here, a whisper there. Nothing that couldn’t be explained away if she tried hard enough, and she usually did. It was easier to cling to the normalcy everyone around her seemed to be blessed with. Her world had been built new. Poured in concrete and vinyl, scrubbed clean of lingering souls.

But their college? It had been standing for over a century and a half—red brick, ivy-covered, the kind of place that practically breathed with paranormal history. Elise had barely made it through orientation before she felt the shift. The ghosts there were… louder. Closer. Present in a way that made her skin hum.

By the end of the first week, she hadn’t been sleeping.

After that, denial stopped being an option. Whatever she had—the thing she’d tried to tuck away and live around—didn’t coexist with “normal” without some measure of radical acceptance. Sanity and spirits required a truce.

Cici had been her anchor. When Elise confessed what she could see, Cici didn’t laugh, didn’t flinch, didn’t tell her to talk to someone. She just nodded. Then pulled out a candle and a sharpie.

“I’ve got you,” she’d said.

A low-key witch with a high-key talent for grounding energy, Cici had helped Elise find balance. Looking back, Elise truly felt the universe must have intended for them to find each other. In a world where magic was quiet and the supernatural lived in the margins—half-believed, half-mocked—the fact that she’d been assigned a roommate who’d already fought her own way to self-acceptance felt too improbable to be luck. It had to be fate.

That first semester had been chaos: too many spirits, not enough shields. But together, they learned. Salt circles between study sessions, grounding rituals and warding bowls tucked beside homework and late-night popcorn. The tattoos came after their third close call, a quiet rebellion carved into skin: protection, intention, a permanent anchor.

Some of their tattoos even matched—little markers of battles survived and a friendship that hadn’t needed proximity to thrive.

That was over a decade ago now, Elise realized. She and Cici had grown up, moved cities, changed jobs, and still, the bond hadn’t cracked. Distance hadn’t dulled the magic.

She blinked back to the present as the whoosh of her message being delivered lit up the screen.

“Alright,” she whispered. “Let’s do this.”

Elise tucked her phone into her apron pocket. She could feel it—the shift in air pressure, the hum through the walls.

The overture had begun.

The orchestra swelled into the bright, bouncing melody of “Five Daughters and a Dowry.”

In the wings, Isla Kent would be straightening her skirts as Mrs. Bennet, preparing to launch into a full-throated plea to marry off her daughters before Mr. Bennet met his demise. The Bennet siblings would be swirling behind her, skirts flying, as the sleepy town of Meryton burst to life in dance and gossip.

Elise took a breath and stepped lightly over a smattering of loose pins littering the floor of the wig closet.

Showtime.

Chapter Four

Elise

Intermission arrived with a quiet exhale as the curtain closed. Elise stood in the middle of the wig closet and surveyed the space. Wig heads stood at attention in orderly rows, bobby pins gleamed from labeled tins, and the faint scent of hairspray had settled into something almost comforting.

Progress. Order. A little peace.

The door swung open with a theatrical flourish. Elise jumped, heart lurching.