Page 144 of Specters & Spotlights

“Chin.” She tipped it up.

“Breathe,” Marcie added, quieter. That one was harder.

Every snap sounded like a countdown. Every hood felt like a second disappearing. Beyond the wing, the stage waited—lit, fogged, dressed for romance. The audience waited for Elizabeth and Darcy. The Specter waited for Elise.

And somehow, all of those things were about to happen in the same place.

Lark waited nearby with her injured ankle propped up on a road case, Cici’s face glowing from the phone in her lap. A corner of spellbook nestled in the frame, its pages fluttering in a draft Elise couldn’t feel.

Cici was already chanting underneath her breath. It was starting.

Lark reached for Elise without a word and slipped the pocket watch into her hand.

Kevin’s talisman.

The chain was cool. The watch was hot.

It burned with stored heat, as if it had been pressed against someone’s living heart.

Elise threaded it over her head and tucked it down into the bodice of her dress, where the metal landed against her sternum, hot enough to make her flinch.

Good.

Let it hurt.

Let it remind her what she was carrying.

Then Lark handed her the photograph. Elise tucked it into her neckline, where it would stay hidden until she needed it.

Then her fingers brushed the seam of her skirt and found the hidden straight pin.

Still there.

Waiting.

A whisper curled through the air, almost too thin to be real:

“Almost there.”

Kevin.

Elise shut her eyes for half a breath.

She wanted to ask if he was scared. She wanted to ask if he was still whole. She wanted to tell him that if this worked, she was going to yell at him for every reckless, self-sacrificing, impossible thing he had done.

But there was no time.

There was never time backstage. Only cues.

Earlier that day, in the deceptive calm before the house opened, Elise had stood behind Lark in the wig closet, pinning her lace front in place while Cici recited the final steps from the phone propped against a box of bobby pins.

The room had smelled like lavender setting spray, hot tools, and old velvet. Ordinary things. Work things. Safe things.

Cici’s voice had been steady.

“You summon. We banish.”

Lark had nodded in the mirror. Elise had watched her throat bob as she swallowed.