Page 76 of Specters & Spotlights

I’m worried, your phone has been going to voicemail

Romy

we’re all worried about you. can you call? are you okay?

Message after message after message.

He looked again, sharper now. The contact photo. The familiar initials. The time stamps that stretched back for days, like the phone had been holding its breath.

This is Ellen’s phone.

How could that be?

Ellen hadn’t even made it to this city. That was the story. The understudy who’d vanished.

Graham had assumed—because it was the easiest explanation—that it had something to do with her breakup with Lark. Unfortunate. Ugly. Not unheard of in a touring company where emotions ran hot and exits were always imminent.

But this⁠—

This felt like proof of something else entirely. Something wrong. Something that made the skin along his arms tighten, instinct rising before reason could catch up.

“It’s… Ellen’s,” Elise said, voice low, as if saying it out loud might make it more real. She stared at the screen like it might change if she willed it hard enough. “I don’t understand.”

Graham glanced at her hands.

She was rubbing the backs of them again, thumb sweeping over those tattoos in an unconscious, self-soothing loop. She looked more worried than he’d ever seen her—more exposed, like the calm she carried around had cracked.

Then her gaze snapped up, and her voice came out firm enough to cut through the buzzing in the room.

“We need to go. Now. We need to call Jen.”

Graham still felt in the dark—still missing pieces he didn’t even know existed—but something primitive in him agreed immediately. The theatre around them felt… different. Heavy. Dark in a way that had nothing to do with the lighting.

Dangerous.

“Yeah,” he said, already moving. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Elise clutched the phone like a warning bell, and they moved fast, grabbing their bags and rushing out through the fluorescent hallway and into the night.

Behind them, the lights flickered once, sharp and brief, as they slipped out the door.

Chapter Fourteen

Elise

The alley felt different today.

The usual sparkle—the way the afternoon light slanted just so, the way the ivy rustled on the brick—had dulled. Elise walked its length with purpose, not wonder. Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.

She entered the theatre, the familiar hum of fluorescents overhead, and scanned the lobby. No Jen.

She headed straight to the wig corner out of habit, but didn’t stop there. She wound through the halls and onto the stage, the boards creaking under her feet as she crossed to the stage left wing.

Jen stood near the curtain, arms crossed, eyes darting between a clipboard and the stage. She looked like she hadn’t slept.

“There you are,” Elise said, her voice hushed.

Jen looked up. Her smile was thin. “Hey.” There was a beat before she added, “I took the phone to the police this morning.”