Page 91 of Specters & Spotlights

Silence answered him for a moment longer than felt normal.

A faint sound—fabric shifting, a soft intake of breath—and then the door cracked open. Lark didn’t step out. She only peeked, face half-hidden behind the frame, eyes scanning the hallway first as if she were checking for witnesses.

Her gaze landed on him and, just for an instant, something like surprise flickered across her features.

“Graham,” she said, as if his name didn’t belong here.

She was wrapped in a robe, hair still up in pin curls, the faint sheen of stage sweat still visible at her throat. She didn’t look composed. Not the way she always looked composed.

Without inviting commentary, she opened the door wider and jerked her chin once—an instruction more than an invitation.

He stepped inside.

Lark closed the door behind him immediately, the latch clicking into place. The room felt smaller with the door shut, air warmer, saturated with perfume and hairspray—and something else, sharper under it. Smoke.

Graham’s eyes went, unwillingly, to the counter.

A small bundle of herbs lay there among a scatter of objects that didn’t belong in any standard backstage kit: twine, a shallow dish dusted with salt or ash, a few dark stones, a folded scrap of paper marked with quick, deliberate lines. Witchy paraphernalia, there was no other honest description for it.

And in the middle of it all sat a candle burned down nearly to the base.

A thin thread of smoke still rose from the wick, curling toward the light above the mirror like she’d only just blown it out.

Graham stood near the door, suddenly aware of how little practice he had at this kind of conversation.

He’d come with an intention. It had felt simple in the hallway. Now, with the door shut and the air threaded with smoke, it felt like stepping onto a stage with no script.

“I—” he started, then corrected, because stumbling wasn’t going to help either of them. “I wanted to see if you’re okay.” He kept his voice even, careful not to sound accusatory. “You haven’t seemed like yourself recently. Is there… anything I can do?”

Lark stared at him for a long moment.

Not blankly. Not idly. Like she was weighing him. Testing for motive, for weakness, for the hidden knife behind the offered hand. Graham had the distinct impression she wasn’t used to people checking on her without wanting something in return.

Finally, she spoke, but it wasn’t an answer.

“Elise,” Lark said. “Did she tell you about the shadow in the wings yesterday?”

Graham nodded once.

Lark’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And you believe her?”

He took a breath and did an internal check-in, the way he did before a difficult scene.

Did he believe her?

Until Lark put the question in front of him, it hadn’t even occurred to him not to.

Graham had never made a hobby of the paranormal. Ghosts and witchcraft and all the unexplainable things people whispered about in comment sections and late-night forums—he’d always categorized them under entertaining, unlikely, not relevant to my life.

He certainly wouldn’t have called himself a believer.

But then Elise had told him what she could see. He’d met Kevin. He’d watched her react to things in the air before he heard them. He’d held Ellen’s phone in his hand after it had been wedged into the floor.

The category had shifted without him noticing it happen.

“Yes,” he said finally, quiet but sure. “I do.”

Lark’s gaze held on him, searching for the crack.