Page 25 of Specters & Spotlights

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Her fingers and her voice moved in tandem—one shaping hair, the other shaping feeling.

The wig closet filled with music, and then overflowed. She could hear her voice echo into the dark wings, trickle into the rafters, curl up into the velvet folds of the empty theatre seats like smoke. This building, this sacred shell of spotlights and splinters, was listening.

She swapped out the first wig for the second without missing a note.

Another lock. Another curling paper. Another breath.

Her voice climbed with the chorus, cresting just as she clipped the final curl into place.

She let the final high note soar⁠—

Crystalline. Unburdened. Hers.

Then, gently, she placed the second wig in the wig dryer beside the first, both of them reset and ready for tomorrow.

Elise stood still, the theatre breathing with her.

From the corner, Kevin hovered—silent for once. Reverent. “If I still had tear ducts,” he said softly, “I’d be a mess.”

Elise smiled. Not at him, not at anyone. Just to herself.

And then…

A creak.

Soft, but unmistakable, from the floorboards behind her, in the wig closet doorway.

Elise froze, the echo still hanging in the air.

Her tattoos tingled—sharp and electric along her arms.

Definitely not a person.

She whipped around, ponytail catching air.

Nothing.

Just the usual eerie stillness of a theatre after hours.

“Great,” she said aloud, “we’re creaking now.”

She turned back to the counter.

Paused.

Frowned.

Because there, on the mirror, dead center and definitely new, was the word:

Encore.

Written within the faint fog of condensation, like it had been traced by a finger.

A polite but pointed suggestion, hanging ghost-pale in the mirror’s glow.

Elise squinted. “That wasn’t there five seconds ago.”